Chapter 62 - Cheat codes.
I suppressed a grumble at my choice of upgrade and looked around Floor 4. Unlike Floor 3’s orchard or Floor 2’s spooky forest, Floor 4 was an almost complete simulacrum of Floor 1. Lush green grass blew in a gentle wind. Rivers burbled happily between small rolling hills. A few trees dappled the landscape, their leaves unharmed by swarms of slimes.
The key difference between the two floors was a pedestal not ten paces from the portal leading back down to Floor 3, along with a second portal, ten or so paces after that. Well, it was almost a portal. The ring of black portal stones were all there, along with the five feet or so worth of rune-engraved curved stones that formed the base of portals. Instead of a swirling multicoloured portal to Floor 5, there was nothing. It was completely inert.
Taking a deep breath, I slowly made my way to the pedestal. There, I could clearly see the engraving of a slime with a crown on its head carved into the grey stone, right above a chest-high rectangle embossed with the faint imprint of a hand. I took another steadying breath. It felt like an eternity since I had wished to climb the Tower, and half as long since we had all started actually climbing. Now… Well, now was time for my first floor boss.
Slorp and Garnush had confirmed earlier in the day that their Towers followed similar layouts, though the total number of floors varied wildly. In theirs as well as ours, every fifth floor had a safe zone, usually a city of sorts that spanned for miles, and to get there, you had to clear a boss. Slorp’s Tower had a kraken of sorts on the fourth floor. Garnush’s Tower had a fire breathing three headed cerberus. Ours… Well, ours was just my kind of enemy.
I slipped the Slime King’s Servant’s Nephew’s Neighbour’s Necklace over my head. With a moment of concentration, I summoned Slimey. I hesitated, then. Should I summon Rella or Garnush now or just hold off until later? Maybe they wouldn’t be needed at all. Actually, I should just… ask.
My Bestiary’s spectral form appeared before me as I channelled my mana into it. Rella first. Time to test out this new semi-permanent summoning thing. More and more of my mana drained until a whole 50% of my remaining mana had been spent. My Bestiary grew larger and larger until it was slightly taller than I was. Then, a page flipped, revealing a new page with a portal drawn onto it. The drawing came to life, shimmering and iridescent, and out stepped Rella, my demoness, in all of her violent glory.
My mind went a little fuzzy just as the summoning was completed. At this point, Slimey only took a few percentage points off of the top of my mana pool, and his upkeep was negligible. Rella’s summoning usually only took about half of what it just had, but I could immediately tell that there was a key difference. My mana regenerated as if she wasn’t summoned at all.
When I came out of my introspection, Rella was looking at me, her head cocked to the side. I raised my eyebrows nervously at her questioningly.
“Well, shit. You sure held up your end,” Rella said dazedly. “I was ready to wait years, but… this… I don’t feel any compulsions. And I feel… Not exactly strong, but I feel full of… potential?” She examined her arms, much like Garnush had done when I first summoned him.
“New upgrade says you can grow in power independently from me. Not sure what exactly that means, but I figured you’d be, errrr, amenable to testing it out.”
Rella gave me a grin for what felt like the first time since the day I had originally summoned her in a bloody basement so long ago.
“Oh, I’m going to more than test this out. If I can do what I think I can…” She took four quick steps towards the descending portal before I reacted.
“Hey, wait! Think you can what?”
She swung her head towards the portal, pointing with her horns. “I’m going down to the base floor, then climbing my way back up. If I can actually get a class this go around instead of being trapped in a training loop on Floor 5, I’m getting one all the way, the proper way.” And, with that, she was gone.
I sat in stunned silence for a bit, pondering the implications of what she had said. On one hand, having a summon with a class would be worlds ahead. I wouldn’t need to have them farm to level, they’d level their class alongside me. Plus, Slimey got threshold bonuses at 400 and 800%, letting me choose evolutionary options for him. If he also had a class… I’d have to wait for my mana to refill to its new maximum before pulling the trigger on sending Slimey back down. Besides, it’s not like I could survive for long without my summons.
I gave my cheeks the ol’ one-two to snap myself out of theorycrafting. My face cheeks, that is. Smack, smack. Alright, the others, too. It was time to face the big bad boss, and sitting around and monologuing wasn’t going to defeat anything. Well, that might work if I were also a Motormouth Bard.
I slapped my hand right into the oversized hand print in the rectangle. It was huge. It’s definitely not because I had small hands. A beam of green light travelled up the panel, scanning my hand, then the pedestal descended, rumbling ominously on the way down. Once it had dipped below ground, a stone slab slid into place with a satisfying thunk, sealing the hole for good.
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Boom...
Squish...
Squelch...
Boom!
I recognized that sound. On the first floor, in the far corners, spawned some boss slimes that started appearing once the Festival arrived. This was the same sound, but louder. Like a meteor, a gigantic red slime slammed into the peaceful meadow, its body spreading out dozens of metres as it absorbed the kinetic force of the impact. It gathered itself up into a sphere just in time for a second figure, limbs spread wide, to slam into it, making it almost implode on impact. Emerging from the slime like it was being birthed by a rising loaf of blood red bread, was a goblin. He wore a crown that mirrored the throne it was sitting on. Both the crown and the throne were daisy yellow and spiky, looking almost like the toys the rich kids used to play dress-up because they had too much time on their hands and got bored.
Activating my necklace, I jumped into Slimey and had him hoist me up, matching my opponent’s stance. I was propped up, my legs still in jelly, but a makeshift throne of metal plates around me. Underneath me, a whole assortment of enchanted metal scraps and every sharp or pointy bit that had ever survived Slimey’s acid roiled about, ready to shred.
The goblin king riding the slime king roared. Goblin king rider? Slime king’s goblin rider? The slime riding goblin boss roared. I matched his energy, charging ahead.
“CHAAAAAARGE!” What could have been an epic clash between two stampeding horses turned into a slightly less epic clash between two slimes that were hopping as swiftly as they could towards each other. When we were almost upon each other, both slimes reared back and shoved forwards as hard as they could. Both the goblin and I held on as much as we could as our mounts soared into the air to clash epicly.
The thing was, I was never a fan of fighting fair. If I were, I probably would have been given a class from the Tower that had to do with fighting upfront like Pyro, or dealing direct damage like Thwain.
Nope. If I had to fight, I was going to fight dirty.
“Retract!” At my command, Slimey’s bottom half receded, scrunching upwards and condensing.
“Spin!” Slimey whirled the weapons that he had readied, sending them as far out of his bulk as possible while still holding onto them tightly. My massive glob of goo turned from poison puddle to vicious blender, still retracting as much as possible. The goblin rider let out an “EEEEP!” right before impact, but it was useless. We buzz sawed our way through his chest, most of Slimey’s girth missing the other slime completely. Knives, spear tips, teeth, swords and scrap metal slashed into the goblin, sticking deep into flesh. Then, physics kind of did the rest. The red slime’s momentum carried the goblin, whizzing underneath us and tearing its rider’s flesh free from the dozen blades impaling it.
Slimey teetered a bit midair as we took the top half of the goblin with us. I sank deeper into my summon’s body to cushion myself from the fall as we approached the ground, not wanting to get caught between a Slimey and a hard place. I tumbled about Slimey’s innards upon landing, but my summon stuck the landing like a champ, swivelling back to face the red slime, which had fallen easily but riderlessly to the ground.
We danced back and forth for a bit, sometimes charging, sometimes jump-smashing, sometimes trying to out-devour one another. After a minute or two, I decided to test out one of my new abilities. I summoned my bestiary and selected the Soul Forge feature. I received a prompt asking me to choose an item to imbue. I selected a spare shirt that Slimey had in storage from when I had gone on a spending spree in Floor 1’s Festival Shop. Then… nothing.
Shirt : 0% imbued. Effect : nothing.
“Alright, Slimey. We need to kill this boss to test this new imbuement thing. Think you could hurry this up?” With a nod that shook his whole body, Slimey lurched forwards, shrinking in on itself. When the slime boss came in for a bite, Slimey let himself get devoured, moving into the direct centre of his opponent. The red slime burbled in triumph until Slimey started slashing. His arsenal of bits and bobs shredded through red goo in every direction, slashing and slicing the boss to ribbons. In seconds, it was over.
Shirt : 4% imbued - Red Boss Slime. Effect : kinetic dispersal.
I checked the shirt’s progress. 4%. I tried punching the cloth to see if I noticed any difference. I thought I might have seen a ripple go through the shirt, but it could easily have been the material wrinkling under the force of my punch. With a shrug, I put it back into slime storage and dismounted.
Red slime bits smoked, then exploded into multicoloured lights, condensing into a red key. A beam of red light shot up from the loot as I approached. I paused for a moment, recalling a similar effect on a green key what felt like so long ago in Floor 1. What had we ever done with that key? Hm. I guess I’ll have to check it out at some point. Or hope that someone else figures it out soon.
I leaned down and picked up the red key, then sat to the side of the empty portal archway, waiting for my mana to regenerate to full. I had no idea how long it would take the others to kill the boss slime and its rider, but I wanted to test out summoning Garnush before entering the next floor. What if summoning was illegal or something? Showing off too much of your skills would get you killed in the Slums. Maybe it was the same in this next city, safe zone or not.
My mana eventually regenerated to what I figured was 70% of my maximum. In that time, I figured out that my Festival Points for Floor 4 were at 400, quite a jump from the single points the slimes on Floor 1 gave. I would definitely be returning to farm some easy points after scoping out Floor 5.
Mana back to my new maximum, I set about summoning Garnush semi-permanently. It drained my mana almost to zero, but once my Bestiary grew, flipped to a portal and spat out my gnoll companion, I felt like I had made the right decision. I went over what I knew with Garnush about my new upgrade, and he hid in his hood, possibly wiping tears from his face.
“Master take upgrade for Garnush? Garnush work hard for Master!”
“NNNNOPE! We are NOT going there!” I shut him down instantly. “Théo works just fine. If you really need to, Boss is good, too.”
“Yes, Boss!”
Fiew. I shuddered at the comments I’d get if people caught my summons calling me “Master.” I already got dirty looks from people when they heard I had a female demon in my Bestiary. If they thought… Nahhh, not going there. Nope. Gross.
“Alright, Garnush,” I said, motioning to the inert portal. “Legends have it that you’ll gain a class by ascending. Wanna try it out?”
“Yes! Yes!” Garnush yipped, running excitedly in a circle and most definitely not chasing his tail.
“Alright. Be warned, it’s a safe zone, so it’s gonna be a crafting skill of some sort, but you should still get the choice of a class.”
“Class! Yippee! Garnush grow strong! Garnush crushhhhh Dynasty of Dogs.”
“The who?”
“Big meanies. Nevermind.”
“Alright, here we go! Twice in one day, eh? This has got to be some sort of record…” I held the red key up to the inert portal and it dissipated, melting and swirling until it filled the archway. I took a step forward.
You have reached Floor 5 of the Tower. How do you wish to proceed?
Option 1: And so, the crafter spent years toiling away in his workshop. And, in the morning, everyone feared his creation. (Cookie crumb of knowledge: this upgrade will give you a skill to, eventually, merge yourself and summons together through trial and error).
Option 2: Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! All out? Craft more! (Cookie crumb of knowledge: this upgrade will let you craft consumables by combining mana and souls).