8. Cleanup Crew / Downtime

I woke up late the next morning, still feeling exhausted. I made an extra effort to avoid eye contact with Thwain as I got up and walked around our little makeshift hideout. If you ignore it, it’ll go away. Yep. Feelings are meant to be bottled up. If bottles weren’t handy, potions wouldn’t come in bottles. Or, like, bottled water. Or herbal cures. Segue!

Thwain conjured another pistol while Pyro undid his earthly damage from the night before.

“Any suggestions?” Pyro asked.

“We go back and clean up for real,” Thwain said.

“We do what, now?” I asked, confused to shit.

“We need to… Dispose of the evidence,” Thwain said hesitantly.

I sighed, rubbing between my eyes and looking at the sky for a moment. “Why?” I asked simply.

“Well,” Thwain said, “they’re only a few feet down. Too much of a chance for someone to find things. Plus, we need to look again now that it’s light out again. You can’t tell me you think we didn’t miss anything.”

“You right,” Pyro said, nodding his head, “You right.”

I held back my sigh. Thwain looked like a soft wind could send him tumbling across a deserted town in the wild west. Like a tumbleweed. Because tumbleweeds tumbled across in the old stories. And he looked frail enough to be pushed like one (by the wind). I didn’t want to be that wind.

And so, as we trekked back to the shack, the quiet of the forest was loud. Like, poetically loud. The forest was absolutely devoid of animals and had been for years, the Tower having stopped spawning living creatures before I was born. In recent years, the forest had even started thinning out. Trees fell and were chopped down, but no new growth came to replace what had been lost. Most attempts at tree farming had failed. Only the most wealthy in the Slums could afford the infrastructure to support anything resembling orchards. It was just another glaring injustice on Floor 0.

When we arrived at the remnants of the shack, I was in a terrible mood. I summoned Slimey and let it bounce around excitedly as Pyro excavated the remains of our attackers. He found a total of seven bodies, which my slime consumed voraciously, growing even larger than it had been. It was easily twice the size of the regular slimes when I decided to check my Bestiary.

[https://i.imgur.com/OcSKAl2.png]

Bestiary entry: Green slime selected.

Soul strength: 211.4%. Collect more essence to increase soul strength.

Seeing my monster’s soul strength reach over 200% boosted my mood considerably. Then, we fed it scraps of any incriminating evidence we could find, which it dissolved easily, but the soul strength didn’t increase further.

When Pyro was finished covering up any traces of his skill, we wandered further into the woods before stopping to discuss our future plans.

“What now?” Pyro asked for what seemed like the hundredth time. I looked to Thwain, cocking a curious eyebrow.

“We have enough food for a day or two,” he said, “but not much more than that. I say we get a new hideout, then we hit the first floor again. We dip out and book it to safety. Real safety, this time. Not just a shack that sticks out like a sore thumb.”

Pyro kicked some dirt with the tip of his boot. “I liked the shack, though. It was cozy.”

“Pyro, it had gaps between the planks large enough that you planted onions in them last year,” I accused. “The place was falling apart. It already HAD fallen a few times.”

The Geomancer shrugged sheepishly, trying to hide a smirk behind his thick beard. It had regained most of its color from the day before, thankfully. A black beard on Pyro was as iconic as crumbs on a sandwich. He just wasn’t the same without it.

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We wandered about the woods for a while until we found a suitable spot. There weren’t any distinctive markings or giant boulders to mark the location, which was precisely why we chose it. It just looked so ordinary and dull, just another patch of forest, indistinguishable from the rest. Pyro used his geomancy to the max, first creating a set of stairs that led down about eleven feet, then carving out a large ovular room by compacting the dirt until it was as hard as stone in every direction. The room was big enough that we could all have our own little space and not be too crowded together, though not big enough to run around in.

Then, the Geomancer sent his mana into the earth, creating a few air holes that snaked out of the main room and popped up beneath patches of moss around the base of a few trees, disguising them as little critter burrows. The Tower barely had enough mana, it seemed, to change the weather, so we weren’t at any risk of drowning in a torrential downpour. Before we settled in for the night, Pyro made sure that the ground above our hideout didn’t look out of place. Then, he closed off the stairway, plunging us into darkness yet again.

An eternity later, when we were all awake, Pyro slowly opened the stairway back up, revealing a brightly lit sky. We had overslept yet again, it seemed. No surprise, the events of the last few days had shaken us, but also given us lots to think about. That, and not being able to see the sun was really throwing off our sleep schedules.

Thwain climbed a tree, breaking off a few branches for Pyro to sharpen into spears. We didn’t dare start a fire, so they weren’t hardened by any means. Still, when we walked back to the portal to Floor 1, we each had a makeshift spear in hand. Worst case scenario, they would suck and break right away. Best case scenario, we could kill a few slimes from a distance before they broke.

We slipped into the city without issue and made our way to the portal, but there were people standing in front of it, blocking our path.

“Woah there, travelers!” One of the men blocking the portal said. He was the most generic NPC (Non-Progressing Chump)-looking man I’d ever seen. He had shaggy brown hair, light skin and was wearing a set of decently clean dark leather armor. I recognized the symbol on his chest armor: a dark battle standard with a green eye sewn into it, in the middle of the vertical flag.

“Tower Guides,” I whispered to my companions. Louder, I said “You on a guided run?”

The man nodded calmly, a polite smile appearing on his face. “Ah, you recognize the symbol? Good. This makes this much easier. Yes, I am part of the Tower Guides. If you could please wait another thirty minutes, it would be greatly appreciated.”

We all nodded and stepped to the side, sitting on the edge of the empty fountain. It was normal enough to see a person or two blocking the portal, especially the more skittish groups that had enough people to spare for such a task. Nobody wanted to be caught between a wave of monsters and a surprise enemy, after all.

The Tower Guides were one of the few groups that specialized in escorting people into the upper floors. For a rather large cut of the loot, they would accompany anyone to Floor 1 and help them farm safely. Word on the street was that they even had an Awakened with a flying skill, letting them soar above the slimes and reach higher floors. Of course, monsters on higher floors were stronger and some even had ranged attacks, so it wasn’t an effective strategy for too many floors. But, a few more skills or passives could make a lot of difference when it counted. Either way, it meant that all of the members of the Tower Guides were Awakened by being flown to Floor 2 and most of them had climbed to at least Floor 4 by bypassing the enemies completely.

We sat in silence, eyeing up the few shady types skulking in the shadows. After a few minutes, a familiar face rounded a corner and strode up to us. T the Tank stood, hands on his hips, a broad smile on his face.

“Lads,” he said with a nod to each of us. “Time to pay some rent?” He asked.

I nodded stiffly. “You’ll get your cut when we come out,” I said.

“Haven't seen you around, last few days,” our extortionist said, licking his lips. “Got into any interesting trouble?” There was a glint in his eyes that told me that he knew exactly what kind of trouble we had gotten into.

I shrugged. “We might have found a few guns laying around in some bushes,” I said, trying to sound casual. “You wouldn’t happen to want a couple as payment, would you?”

He hemmed and hawed for a few moments before nodding his head repeatedly. “Yeah. Yeah, I can make that trade. Yeah. Two guns and you’re off the hook for today.” Then, he cocked his head to the side, finger tapping on his lips, reconsidering. “Three guns. You missed a few days.”

“We missed a few days because we were… Inconvenienced. Got a little Blood on my pants, you know? Three guns, but you keep more of an eye out for us,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster, trying to sound reasonable.

T nodded his head solemnly, as if it were a sacred pact. “I accept your terms,” he said seriously. Then, he broke out into a smarmy grin. “Gotta protect my investment, after all!” He cackled as I passed him three of the guns that we had looted from the Blood Oats from a bag that I had also newly acquired.

“Thanks, boss,” I said, wincing slightly at the hint of sarcasm that I couldn’t quite leave out of my voice. Thwain’s head jerked a little in my direction, his eyes cutting at me hard. The Rising Tides figurehead pretended not to notice, yet again, and walked off in an ostentatious flutter of his coat. To be fair, it was probably the only thing on his person that was actually decently clean. It was a nice coat.

I noticed the Tower Guide posted outside of the portal eyeing T the Tank with disgust, but he didn’t comment on the situation. He remained dutifully at his post until five people popped out of the portal. Four of the members looked like they were going out for a light lunch on a sunny day, unconcernedly standing at ease. The Fifth was sweating, out of breath and dirty. Not bloody, but caked in dirt, sweat and other fluids. I understood why he needed an escort. He really wasn’t capable, by the looks of him. A shame, seeing people with more money than brains or brawn. Oh well, it couldn’t be helped. He’d probably get escorted until he found a good loot drop or something valuable enough to put on a mantlepiece.

We watched as the five Tower Guides parted ways with the rich brat. I almost felt bad for the latter, as several of the Slums’ finest slunk off after him. They would probably try something before he got to whatever mansion he called home. Truthfully, he should have at least had an escort. What kind of dumbass climbed and came back defenseless and alone? True, he had already given the lion’s share of the loot to the Tower Guides, but he still probably had more valuables on him than most of the lurkers in the square combined. The more I thought about it, the weirder the situation seemed. He didn’t even have a weapon on him, by the looks of it. Maybe he borrowed one from the Guides? I frowned, looking at Thwain to see if he noticed anything. The Gunner simply grinned and tapped his nose twice with his index finger.

I shook my head. It’s not like it was important. Not wanting to spend more time in the square, we marched forwards, entering Floor 1.