26. (Re)Building a Base
I slept like a log all night. Well, day? We had never actually seen the sun set on Floor 1, so it was hard to tell the time other than estimating what time it was in the Slums. I groaned, rolling over to try and get into a comfortable position, but nothing helped. I’d absolutely murder an entire family of slimes, children and all, for another slime pillow. My dumbass had left it in the base when--
SQUISH……Tsssssss…. As I flopped over again to get comfy, my hand slapped something squishy and started burning. I jolted up, yelling out as I registered the pain, and barely missed launching myself into the gathered slimes. There was movement to my left as the slime that I had inadvertently slapped lunged for me, its eyes squinting in a rage. A stone-clad boot punted the slime out of existence, sending a spray of mana to diffuse into the air, feeding the Tower a nice breakfast.
I sat back down, trying to calm my racing heart, heaving in deep gulps of air. All around me, people were stirring, roused by my yelling. Not everyone was getting up, though. As I looked around, I saw a rather large pile of corpses haphazardly piled in front of the portal. Each body was riddled with bullet wounds or contorted in horribly uncomfortable-looking positions. A shredded red robe and what was possibly the remnants of a colorful mask looked to have been thrown atop the pile.
“Pyro…” I said in as calm a tone as I could. “What the actual fuck did you do?”
Just then, Em, Milos and Josh caught sight of the bodies, as well. Milos and Josh grabbed for weapons, fumbling at them in their still groggy states. Em simply pointed a trembling finger at Pyro, a petrified but determined look in his reflective yellow eyes.
Pyro, in what might have been the first wise decision I had ever witnessed him make, slowly raised his hands and kept his mouth shut, the armor surrounding his foot falling away.
“Wait, Em!” I said hastily. “He’s one of us, I promise. There’s a good explanation, we just need to hear him out. Pyro…” I looked over to one of my best friends in the entire Tower, hoping for a miracle in the form of intelligible sentences to grace his lips.
“They was waitin’ for ya, kid,” he said, evidently caught off guard by the panic in my voice, making him nervous. His hand twitched as if to gesture to the portal, but he thought better of it. He quickly elaborated. “Twenty bastards wit’ guns, knives, jav’lins, all waitin’ fer’ a kid, they said. Wasn’t right, wasn’t right at all. So we took ‘em out.”
“We?” Em said, confusion clouding his expression.
“We,” Thwain said in a monotone from atop the portal archway, two guns pointed directly at Em.
“Put the guns down, Thwain. Em, drop the skill. They’re my friends,” I pleaded.
“Did you at least try talking to them?” Em asked, a slight whine to his voice.
“Yeah, she said she was gonna feed yer’ bones to a demon in exchange fer’ some power. That, an’ killshots get the loot.” Pyro shrugged, a little more at ease within the standoff, but still not willing to drop his arms in case Em’s skill was as powerful as the panic in my voice indicated it might be.
“Demons can’t live on Floor 0,” Em argued. “We learned about it in class. The mana density is too low, they slowly wither and die.”
“That’s why they need ta feast on kids, kid. Keeps ‘em upright.”
Em shuddered.
“Look, Em,” Milos said. “Théo escorted us across the floor, gave us our classes. His friends must have had a good reason to kill these people. They helped us just because they could.”
At that, Em slowly dropped his hand and Thwain sheathed his guns. We gathered around, Pyro and Thwain explaining the firefight at the portal in more detail. I winced. On one hand, it probably saved Em’s life. On the other hand, it might have made our lives much more difficult. With the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people throughout the Slums, thirty people couldn’t have been the entire population of goons that hung around our portal. Actually, that line of thinking reminded me of the other portal Thwain had found. We would have to explore it eventually. When they had finished explaining their part, and how Sulky and Eye-Patch had died in an ambush from the Church, we explained about the Tower Militia, how our base disappeared, and Milos and Josh’s skills.
“I need to go back,” Em said eventually. “I have classes. I probably even missed the morning ones, depending on what time it is.”
“Whole Tower’s goin’a shit and the kid’s worried ‘bout schoolwork?” Pyro asked with a snort.
“Hey,” Em said defensively. “We work on magical theory, Tower theory, combat practice and practical applications of mana. We aren’t just reading dictionaries all day, you know. The best way I can see to prepare for whatever is brewing is to throw myself into training. Hey, didn’t you guys say…” He trailed off while looking between Milos and Josh, a sparkle in his eyes. Then, he looked my way. “I have friends. Can you escort them across?”
I nodded. “As long as they help clear the floor, they’re welcome to join.”
“Great!” The kid said, jumping to his feet. “Then I’ll zip back, let them know and we’ll be back tonight.”
Thwain shook his head. “Not yet,” he said seriously. There was something off about him. It was as if a dark shadow was perpetually shading his face. Maybe the fight at the portal had left more than just physical wounds. “We’ll escort you out, just in case. Plus, we should start getting people out of the Slums and living on Floor 1. With everything going on, it’s probably the safest place, even with the slimes. Pyro, get us a base. I don’t care how far out, but we need somewhere and we need it now. Josh, stay with Pyro, reinforce the base. Maybe it’ll hold up better with your added durability. Try and make traps of some sort, too. Milos and I will go get our people out, bring them here and start bringing them across.”
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We all agreed to the plan. Thwain went through the portal first, Milos right behind him. With a deep breath for courage, Em followed suit.
Pyro, Josh and I looked around, debating the merits of putting a base in each direction. The portal to Floor 2 was what we described as straight north. To the northeast, there was an unexplored portal. Our old base had been in the southeast. If we put our base directly between the portals to the Slums and Floor 2, there was too much risk of traffic. We didn’t know if anyone snuck between portals or how often they did so. It wouldn't do to have a sprawling compound in possibly the busiest section of the floor. We also didn’t want to make our base directly at either portal, for the same reasons. It was too much of a security risk.
With the addition of wanting to ferry people between floors, we decided on going northwest. If there were no portals in that vicinity, there shouldn’t be many (or any) stragglers to happen upon our base. Not for quite some time, at least. Obviously it wasn’t going to stay top secret for too long, but the fewer people that surprised us, the better.
I summoned Slimey and had him escort us northwest of our current position. We walked for about ten minutes before stopping. I didn’t want to go too far, especially since we would be bringing more and more unclassed and weaker people to the base as we went. It wasn’t worth getting exhausted on the first trip. Then, after they had rested at the base, we could escort them the rest of the way to Floor 2, which shouldn’t take more than half an hour at the most.
Having chosen another dip between two hills, Pyro started excavating, creating first a deep cavern, then a large chimney-like tower. It was only around ten feet tall, but it would slow slimes as they were attracted to the newly available space, having to pile up atop each other to access the entrance. Pyro also tried making spikes and jagged edges around the tower, reinforced with Josh’s skills, but the damage was negligible and they only seemed to anger the slimes, whipping them up into a frenzy. He just couldn’t manage to shape the stone thin enough to be as sharp as it needed to be. As we looted shoddy weapons, though, Pyro integrated them into the perimeter of the tower, angling spears and swords upwards so that they impaled slimes as they jumped up the tower and fell onto the weaponry. Josh also enhanced the durability of those weapons with his skill, finding much more success and preventing them from being torn apart by the slimes. The more agitated the slimes grew, the more of them died to the perimeter defenses. The more of them died, the more loot dropped, giving us more tools to use against them.
Aside from the barbed air shaft, Pyro also tried a different way of keeping air flowing into the base while also taking care of some slimes. Starting from the bottom of the cavern he had excavated, he created a small tunnel a few feet out before clearing the dirt directly above, creating a sort of rectangular shaft going straight up. Then, he created stone spikes at the bottom and had Josh reinforce them with his skill. He closed off the base of the tunnel, sealing it off completely from our living quarters. Then, he cut a set of rectangular air holes between our base and the pitfall trap, three quarters of the way up the trap and affixing our last few daggers into the air vents. With everything set, he tested out his first real trap by opening the top to the slimes above. It worked, but it wasn’t great. Slimes piled in from above, fighting for space. They tumbled down the shaft, smashing into the stone spikes forty feet below. The first few waves of slimes died, having been impaled by spikes. Soon, though, too many slimes survived just long enough to cushion their brethren’s fall. Some slimes still died, caught between the weight of the slimes above and the pointy bits below, but enough survived that they soon began filling the trap. With enough time and mana, though, Pyro was sure that a moat that used the same concept would keep the base open to the air permanently. All we would have to do would be to clear the accumulated slimes before they threatened to jump into our air vents. With a moat large enough, we could go a day or so before needing to clear the backlog of slimes. Plus, if we had better spikes or weapons inside the moat, that would extend our time frame even more.
We spent some time testing Josh's other skill, too. He could temporarily enchant a weapon to cause elemental damage, lightning being the most useful in our current situation due to the overabundance of enemies. Unfortunately, it didn’t work on rocks or even rocks shaped like weapons. Still, he could infuse a dagger with lightning and lazily lob it into the swarm, where it would bounce off of or cut through slime after slime, discharging paralytic bolts that spread through nearby enemies as it was juggled by the scrabbling monsters. As long as he enhanced its durability first, the dagger would remain intact and would disrupt the amassing monsters for a few minutes as it was juggled by the unending reinforcements. Even when it landed on the ground, the dagger would still send out disruptive and harmful jolts of electricity as slimes jumped on and were pushed into the weapon.
We also tried having Josh enchant a weapon by having its hilt stick into the base and the blade sticking out into the swarm outside. Unfortunately, every element we tried caused the blade to crack or burst the surrounding stone or dirt, ultimately creating new avenues of attack for the slimes.
Once I was sure that Pyro and Josh were as defended as they were going to be in the near future, I set off back towards the portal to Floor 0. I had a dilemma, however. If I unsummoned Slimey and had Sunder leech the lingering life force from the almost 30 bodies, it would strengthen her but greatly limit the amount of uptime I had with Slimey afterwards. Summoning Sunder simply took too much mana. Sure, I could grill her for more information about the Tower while she was up, but it would also reduce the amount of people I could bring to our new base and would stop Slimey from accruing strength for what would probably be most of the day while I regained mana and rested from the massive expenditure. On the flip side, I could get Slimey to dispose of the bodies, enhancing his soul strength further and inching him closer to his next threshold. I checked his Bestiary entry as we set a fast pace towards the portal.
[https://i.imgur.com/lOtTQcK.png]
Bestiary entry: Devourer slime selected.
Soul strength: 702%. Collect more essence to increase soul strength.
Stats : Size prioritized.
Size: D
Magic power: E
Magic resistance: E
Physical resistance: F+
Speed: F
Shrinkage: F-