31. Becoming a [Hero]

11 days until the festival. Contacting Tower Administration…………. Connection established. Generating alternative subroutines………………….. Subroutines generated. Proposing alternative festival activities…………… Rejected ideas eliminated…. Shortlist created. Generating Council invites……. Invites sent. Emergency Council meeting will begin when all Council members are present.

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I woke up to the sound of an escalating argument. I blearily rubbed my eyes, stumbling out of my hidey hole and towards the commotion.

“But what protocols can we implement to guarantee the safety of the residents?” Burt asked heatedly.

“The Srayan method is already working better than our research indicated,” Jeb, the rather large, incredibly dark-skinned Woodworker argued. He was holding up a book and gesturing animatedly at some diagrams. “Slimes are falling into the spike pits and dying in droves, just like the comments in the margins of the book said they would. Between Pyro’s geomancy and Josh’s durability modifications, we are performing above even our most optimistic projections. There is no credible reason to wait on a looting system.”

Burt shook his head vehemently, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Well, how about suffocating in a slime’s loving embrace while we sleep because we purposefully let some in?”

“That’s what the monitor is for!”

“Like a single person can hold off an entire swarm of monsters. Do you hear yourself, Jeb?” Burt pulled at his nonexistent hair on his scalp in frustration.

“The chances of more than one of the Unmaker systems failing are highly improbable. It would require a catastrophic chain of malfunctions to result in such an event. One person with a spear should easily be able to oversee over a dozen tubes without issue.”

“Should, Jeb. Should!” Burt yelled.

Annoyed, I stepped in. “Ok, ok! Enough. What’s the issue and why are you yelling?” I looked between both of the suddenly sheepish men.

A red-faced Burt wiped his sweaty bald head before explaining. “Jeb, here, wants to install a system of narrow chutes, directly under the traps above, that lead into the base. He wants to line them with knives so that the slimes die as they squeeze through, hoping that loot orbs trickle down from above or spawn when slimes die on their way down.”

“What a nerd,” I replied grumpily. “Sounds simple enough with the skills we have on hand. What’s the issue?”

Burt’s face scrunched up in anger. “The issue is safety and the fact that he’s basing all of these assumptions on that book.” He gestured to the book Jeb was holding. It had a picture of a duck on it. Or was it a goose? “How to Survive the Tower by Royal Goose. It’s a climber’s wet dream at best. Probably pure fiction. Then, there are comments scribbled all over it by students from that academy that Em, Marc and Sasha go to, where they speculate on alternate methods of dealing with problems. Sasha stole it from their library for us, but it’s going to get us killed.”

“Is there any harm in trying?”

A vein pulsed on Burt’s forehead. “Being holed up in the middle of Floor 1 is bad enough. Now, you lunatics want to test out new ideas by letting slimes into the base?” He started pacing, his hand coming down in a chopping motion to punctuate his sentences. “Slimes. Are. Monsters. Not. Oppor. Tunities. For. Wealth.”

“Eeeeeh,” I said, raising both hands as if balancing scales. “They kind of are little sacks of money waiting to be opened.”

“Thank you!” Jeb said, extending a hand towards me. “This guy gets it. He’s a shitter. He gets shit done.”

I blinked a few times at Jeb. “I’m a… Shitter?”

“Eh, I saw it in the book somewhere. I’m probably saying it wrong.”

Burt gestured wildly at Jeb. “See? He can’t even quote a book right, and you’re going to trust him in designing a slime trap?”

I thought about it for a while, but then decided that it was worth a shot. “We’re starting to run low on food,” I admitted. The shocked look on the other two’s faces made me regret my honesty, but I kept going. “If we don’t figure out an easier way of looting slimes, we’ll need to send people out before they’re ready. That would get dangerous, so I’d like to avoid it. Just make, I don’t know, five traps in a line. Have Pyro stay close in case he needs to plug the holes. Worst case, he just plugs the exits while we go back to the drawing board.”

Burt grumbled a bit while Jeb excitedly rushed around to find Pyro.

When Jeb returned with Josh and Pyro, he instructed them on how to set up what the book called the Unmaker system. All of what was written was purely hypothetical, so we nervously watched as Pyro dug large tunnels up to the surface, then shrank them down to the size of a fist while inserting knives every few feet. Josh had, of course, pumped each blade with as much mana as his skill let him, enhancing the durability of the knives for what we hoped was a good, long while.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Underneath each opening in the ceiling was a blade pointing straight up, sunk into the ground. If the slimes somehow made it through, the hope was that they landed on the blade and died or were injured enough to be killed in a single blow from whoever was monitoring the situation. We were also hoping that loot orbs would make their way down without being cut apart by the knives.

After watching Pyro make the first trap, I headed off. I could spend time watching the devices later. I rounded up a few unclassed and got them ready for a trip to Floor 2. I let my parents rest, figuring I’d save them for later to give them more time to recoup their energy.

I brought two groups to Floor 2 without any deviations in the usual monotony of the journey. Then, it was time to escort my parents. I gave them each a slime pot before the journey since they seemed like they needed it. I brought two extras with me, just in case. Burt and Pyro’s cousin Hero came along with us, too, being the only other people that hadn’t received their classes.

As we walked, Burt grumbled about how the slime traps were only working temporarily and that we needed more than one monitor at a time. I didn’t necessarily think we needed two people to watch the five traps, but I suggested that we at least task someone to go check on the monitor once in a while, to make sure nobody fell asleep on the job.

Surprisingly, it was my dad, Pierre, that gave the next suggestion. “You should keep track of what loot spawns for each person. It’s like anything else in the Tower, you can never be too sure if there’s a pattern or not. I used to hear stories about loot being tied to the looter, back when I was younger. Back then, people talked more about… This whole thing,” he said, gesturing around us.

I nodded. It was a good idea, after all. If it turned out that it didn’t work, at least we could rule out the theory.

When we arrived at the portal, I warned everyone about the goblins before sitting down to rest. The four of them stepped through the portal and returned a few moments later, excitedly sharing the news of their classes.

“Jardomancer!” My father exclaimed happily. “I can manipulate plants and speed their growth.”

We cheered, knowing that it would help us survive any food shortages. We toasted slime water skins and took a sip before my mother announced her class.

“Merchant!” She said, beaming. We cheered, but somewhat confusedly, waiting for her to elaborate. “It lets me evaluate the price of goods and… Gives me a personal dimensional storage space.” We toasted excitedly. Storage spaces would be handy when we ramped up our farming operations.

We all looked at Burt. He was squirming excitedly, barely able to hold back. As soon as we were all looking at him, he blurted. “Warfare Specialist! It lets me summon an energy blade and automated beam turrets.” We cheered and toasted yet again.

“That sounds awesome!” I exclaimed. “With Pyro’s defenses, you’ll be able to do some real damage.”

“I know! It’s the absolute coolest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Burt gushed.

Buzzing with excitement, we all looked at Hero. He blushed furiously under his black beard.

“Come on!” Burt encouraged him, now in the best mood I had ever seen him.

“It’s… It’s [Hero]. My class is [Hero].” He looked stunned.

I didn’t know whether to facepalm or cheer. “Son of a… Your mother’s going to be insufferable.”

“Théo!” My mother chided.

“Well! The whole naming thing… What does the Hero class do, Hero?”

“It, uh… It just comes with a single skill. [Divine Intervention]. No description.”

“Divine intervention?” Burt whistled. “That sounds cool.”

Hero shook his head, still half in shock. “What do the brackets mean?” He asked.

“What brackets?”

“Both [Hero] and [Divine Intervention]. They’re both bracketed. Are yours all in brackets?”

“HoHO! My boy!” My dad exclaimed. “That means your class is above rare rarity. Anything [Epic] and above gets extra fanciness, from what I’ve heard. For weapons, skills and classes.”

I looked askance at my dad. I hadn’t pegged him as the type to know much Tower lore. Well, he had lived a good thirty years more than I had. We chattered animatedly as we made our way back to the base, everyone excited to test out their skills. Rinse and repeat, just like the last few trips to Floor 2.

I celebrated our arrival at our compound, happy to finally be done with the ferrying. I sent Slimey on the customary tour, then dismissed him. I slurped a slime pot to give myself another kick of energy before going to see the slime traps. The atmosphere in our home was electric, everyone running around, basking in the joy that was discovering the extent of their abilities.

I walked into the trap room, seeing Jean monitoring the situation. The traps were working marvelously. Two white loot orbs had fallen down in the hour or so since I had left, netting us some more water for the shelves. Buoyed by the initial success, Pyro and Josh constructed thirteen more traps before running out of knives. Eighteen blades sticking straight up from the ground under eighteen perfectly spaced holes marked the location of the traps. As I watched, tiny particles of multicolor light drifted down from the holes, dissipating in the air. I grinned, expecting great things from our new little farm.

I found a nearby set of stairs and climbed it, reaching the top of a tower and breathing in the fresh meadow air. Burt was there, looking out at the flood of slimes that were dying by the hundreds every second. I leaned over and tried to spot the slimes slipping down the tube traps and into Jean’s waiting arms. There were too many slimes swarming to climb the tower for me to see any sink downwards, but I knew they were there, slowly but constantly squeezing to their doom.

“Nice day out,” Burt commented.

“It’s always nice out, Burt.”

“Yeah, but I like the sight. Don’t get me wrong, I’m terrified of the slimes and that we’re in the middle of the floor, one mistake away from becoming slime food. But if I look out at just the right angle and I tune out the sounds, I can imagine that this is what the Slums used to look like. Rolling hills of green, a vast blue sky with always the right amount of clouds drifting by.”

I snapped my head up at the sky. “Clouds? Oh yeah, there are clouds… I don’t think I’ve ever noticed them before.”