Chapter 143 – Spine Forest

“You sure you guys are going to be alright?” Jack asked Hannah. “This is already more annoying than I thought it was going to be.”

“Should be fine. We can move faster, and we’ll draw less attention just the four of us.”

The two of them took a moment to inspect their surroundings. Sector five was already proving more difficult than Jack had expected. Devin did warn them that the sectors got more dangerous the deeper into the city you went. Jack had also done some scouting missions, but their small group of nine was getting attacked every few minutes, and it wasn’t like in sector six where they could just jump up to a building rooftop and fight off the ghouls.

This sector reminded Jack of those old timey photos of the hunters standing next to a mountain of bison skulls. The only difference being that instead of one large pile, there were hundreds upon thousands of piles. It was like a garbage dump, if the garbage was exclusively bones. There were natural paths that led around the bone piles you could follow, but they were constantly patrolled by some horrible variation of undead skeletons be it animal or humanoids. If you opted to climb over the bone piles you were subjecting yourself to an attack from the pile itself. Sector six wasn’t so bad because you could at least see the zombies coming. Sector five was a different beast entirely because the monsters constructed themselves at random and could appear out of the very ground you walked across. They popped out at you from every direction and there was little anyone could do to discern which bones were just regular old bones, and which ones were part of a skeleton lying in wait to construct itself and attack you.

They were currently holding up inside the skull of a creature so large it was able to comfortably fit all ten members of his party. Hannah had found a large circular opening in one of the bone piles that turned out to be the eye socket of a giant skull, so they hopped inside for a break before they split up. Jack was currently sitting on top of a molar.

The timing was going to be tricky for getting Hannah back to floor one. Unfortunately, the first waypoint you could use to travel back down was in the third sector. It was possible to buy a waypoint for your sector, but it cost around 100,000 City Coins and they needed every coin they had to rapidly build up bases once they took over a sector. That meant Hannah had to make it through the remainder of sector five, all of sector four, and then find the waypoint somewhere in sector three. During her journey Jack was also going to be killing a sector councilor and making life way more difficult for everyone.

As for why she was leaving right now and they didn’t just wait, there had honestly been a lot of debate about just that. They could take their time and slowly build up, work their way safely to sector three and then Hannah could head back down. Not only did Jack lack the patience for that, sitting around and waiting while he had multiple targets on his head just didn’t feel like the right play. The current plan was focused on destabilizing and disrupting the status quo. They always operated best under conditions of chaos, and what better way to cause chaos for everyone then rapidly pump up the danger limits of the city? The only catch was they also had to survive it as well. Which was the primary reason Hannah was heading down.

They needed reinforcements.

If Christopher was truly in charge, and if he hadn’t really betrayed them, then he should at least be in charge of a sizable army of earthlings. He honestly wasn’t sure how many humans were capable of moving on to floor two, but it had to be more than they had within his faction. The Tower Geass was going to make it difficult as hell for Hannah to explain what was going on and why they needed an entire army, but Devin had been adamant about getting as many humans involved in this as possible.

His logic was that anyone who was part of the faction was bound to get a pretty lucrative floor bonus after they completed the secret quest, even if their level of contribution was simply defending a sector. He said there was an opportunity for humanity to become a serious player within the Tower if they were able to give everyone a massive bump in power—that’s why other races of the Tower were so adamant on never letting anyone complete the secret quest. Everyone just sort of assumed that the fact it had never before been completed since the Towers’ inception meant the rewards were going to be absolutely absurd for whoever did manage to complete it.

Jack had all but forgotten about the fact he was supposed to climb the Tower to save humanity. He had other goals now. Devin on the other hand still seemed to be fighting for that cause. Even after quitting the U.F.E. he still seemed to be angling to help humanity any way he could. Jack honestly wasn’t sure if that made him trustworthy or not. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was eventually going to cross some line that Devin couldn’t abide by and they would be at each other’s throats all over again. For now, though, they did work pretty well together so Jack put those concerns out of his mind.

“Everyone got their ghost buster weapons?” Jack asked. The twins Hector and Juan each pulled out a pair of swords that glowed a bright orange and had whispers of flames on the edges. Kelsey the warrior enveloped her glaive in a blue glow that flowed like water. Sector three was all about ghosts, and if you didn’t have an elemental weapon of some type, they were apparently a royal pain in the ass to deal with. Sector four shouldn’t be too difficult for them to deal with. It was filled with abominations, he asked what those were supposed to be and apparently they were Frankenstein’s or something like that. For some reason Hannah got really pissed off at him when he referred to the green monster guy with bolts in his neck as Frankenstein.

“We’ll head out first, give us a little time and then you head west.” Hannah started, “Gaiju, make sure the group doesn’t get lost. Willow, feel free to hex him or whatever the hell it is you do if he gets to uppity.”

“Will do,” Gaiju and Willow said in unison, both grinning ear to ear.

“Good luck. If you die, I’ll build a cool statue of you,” he gave her two thumbs up. Hannah threw him a casual wave goodbye and made her way towards the eye socket of the enormous skull, her party in tow.

Jack inspected the remaining five members of the party. Willow was their healer. Gaiju was a warrior, a Cold Fury Berserker or something like that if he was remembering correctly. She had an epic mana core which was what made her so dangerous. Her mana was ice, but it was colored blood red. Lexor the gnome was a lightning mage, and they had two more human warriors, one wielded sword and board, the other wielded a giant two-handed hammer, which was incredibly effective against the skeletons.

Everyone stood there in an awkward silence for a long moment.

“How about we rest up for a couple of hours and then head over to the rendezvous point? We’re closest to it by far so we’ve got some time,” Willow suggested.

“Done!” Gaiju fell to her ass and pulled a horn shaped flask out of her voidsack, slurping down the contents of whatever was inside. Jack found himself standing next to her, and she handed it off to him for a sip.

“…is this soup?” Jack asked, inspecting the flask.

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“Good shit, huh?” she cackled, snatching it back from him. Jack couldn’t argue with her. It did taste good. He glanced over at Willow.

“You good to lead the group?”

“Who else? We all know you’re more of a figurehead,” she smirked.

That much was definitely true. Jack hadn’t been much of a team player the past few months. He was a big fan of delegation so he could do whatever the hell he wanted. He made sure to check in with Hannah regularly, but outside of that he was more of a myth within his own faction than anything. There was actually a rumor going around that he didn’t really exist. When word spread that he was forming a group to take on sector five, a small riot broke out with people trying to get into his party.

Jack opted to keep watch of the entrance. It was either that or try to resist offers from a succubus to help ‘loosen him up’. He didn’t need it though. He felt loose. He felt good. He felt confident for the first time in a while. Jack killed anything before it had the chance to realize it had wandered into his domain, and time passed rather quickly.

“Let’s head out. Willow, which way?” The group put away their makeshift camp and dusted themselves off, stretching and getting ready to push towards the rendezvous point.

“Honestly I forgot, plus Gaiju is the new leader,” she said with a playful smile.

“West,” Gaiju grumbled, wiping sleep from her eyes.

The group made their way west through the sector, although a little slower now. There was a fair number of skeletal birds that Hannah had been dealing with as she was the primary ranged attacker of the group. Lexor could deal with him, but all of his spells drew far too much attention. Jack spent more energy than he should have running back and forth from mob to mob. He was trying to figure out the best way to beat skeletons, and it was giving him pause. Simply destroying the head wasn’t enough to kill a skeleton. You needed to break them apart piece by piece. More than once now he had been attacked by just a pair of skeletal legs, or a torso wildly flailing around behind him. Every skeleton took Jack at least three hits to break apart. It was annoying.

He dropped down between a group of tall lanky skeletons, Jack honestly wasn’t sure what race they were supposed to be. They wielded swords and hatchets and swung down hard on him as he weaved through their ranks. His attack pattern was pretty simple, head, spine, groin. His daggers ripped through the skeleton from top to bottom and it fell to the ground a pile of lifeless bones. He was testing new fighting styles though. He had more or less mastered striking like lightning, which was the equivalent of a piercing ability that ripped grapefruit sized holes through his targets, destroying whatever he touched with his daggers. Now he was working on slicing and dicing. If Storm Stance had any information for him it wasn’t giving it up freely, and he wasn’t starting to think these weren’t the opponents to be practicing his ability to cut through. Still, he was searching for an answer. If lightning was his ability to strike, then what part of a storm could cut and slash?

Soon, they reached the rendezvous point.

“He’s somewhere inside here?” Willow asked.

Jack stared blankly at the bamboo forest that was laid out before them. It wasn’t actually bamboo. It was spines jammed into the ground that ran upwards of about thirty feet or so. They were so densely packed together that you could barely weave your way between them. Conveniently, there was an extremely suspicious, well paved and meticulously groomed path cut through the middle of it all.

“Yep,” Jack said, narrowing his eyes at the path. The scouts for this sector had confirmed the counselor was somewhere inside the forest of spines.

Another camp was set up and they waited on the remaining two groups to reach their location. They technically had four groups inside the sector at the moment, but one of the groups was in charge of securing the location for a new base inside the sector. Devin and his party showed up about four hours later. They all looked furious.

“Fucking Elves are making a play for the sector,” Devin spat.

“The Summer Elves?” Jack asked.

“Twilight Elves. The complete opposite of the summer elves. Black hair with a combination of pitch-black skin or pale white skin that has never even heard of sunlight. They’re well equipped and seemed to know who we are. Would have been here much sooner if we weren’t being harassed by them the entire time here.” Devin took a moment to inspect the group, furrowing his brows together.

“Where is Lonnie’s group? They should have been here before us; we came from the opposite side of the sector.”

“Outside of skeletons we haven’t seen anything,” Jack frowned, turning back to the spine forest. If there were twilight elves patrolling the sector, that meant there would definitely be an ambush waiting for them inside the forest. He turned back to Devin and his group. They looked like they had been locked in combat for the past twenty-four hours and weren’t ready to go fight a sector boss. “How long do you guys need to get back to full?”

“You already have a camp set up. Let’s take the evening and set out when we all wake up. If we’re lucky Lonnie and her group will show up.” Devin said, although without much confidence. “Can you take first watch?”

Jack nodded and shifts were decided as everyone settled in for another restless sleep. Jack decided to stay up the entire night. As did Devin.

“It’s wind,” Devin suggested as they sat around a small campfire. Occasionally Devin would send a sword flying out and cutting through half a dozen skeletons that got too close, but outside of that the skeletons seemed to keep a wide berth of the spine forest. Nothing came out of it either, which Jack found strange.

Jack chewed on the information. He asked Devin what element of a storm related to cutting. For whatever reason he had assumed wind related to defense, but Devin seemed adamant that it was the cutting force he was looking for. As he sorted through the information Storm Stance provided, there seemed to be a thread that might lead to the answer he was looking for. Which meant he would have to do more meditation to unearth the answer from the depths of his mind, which annoyed the hell out of him. He fucking hated meditation.

“Got an example for me?” Jack challenged, still not convinced.

Devin stood up and pulled out his sword. It was a single edge longsword with runes imprinted along that side that the system either wouldn’t or couldn’t translate. Jack wasn’t sure what type of sword it was really. It wasn’t a katana; it was too thick and didn’t have a curve to it. Devin fell into a stance with the sword, facing the spine forest. Jack watched closely as Devin slashed out horizontally. His swing was dangerously fast, and Jack could clearly see wind being generated from the speed of the swing.

“Come look,” he said, walking towards the spine forest. Jack joined him and Devin pointed to one of the bony spines about the same height as where he had slashed. There was an extremely shallow horizontal cut along several of them, which was impressive considering Devin had been standing about six feet away.

“And this happened from the wind generated from your slash? You didn’t use mana?” Jack asked.

“Yep. We’re superhumans now, shit like this is possible. I had to use mana to reinforce my body and get enough strength and speed, but that was it.”

Jack grimaced at that last part.

Jack pulled out his daggers and gave a few test swings, but he wasn’t getting the same results. He had been drilling the striking technique into his body for the past several months, so any other type of movement felt unnatural.

“It’ll be much harder to pull off with daggers,” Devin said with a look at Jack’s weapons.

Jack fell into deep thought as he pieced through what kind of training he needed to do next so he could cut like the wind. How the fuck am I supposed to do that? He complained to himself with a frown.

“If you two don’t sleep we might actually die tomorrow,” Came Willow’s sultry voice from behind them both. They turned around and were both hit in the chest with a purple glyph. Jack felt instantly reinvigorated as her magic worked its way through his body.

“Now I don’t need to sleep,” Jack said with an appreciative grin.

“Then my plan worked. You two can keep me company for my shift,” she smiled back.

The three of them walked back over to camp and immediately came to a stop. Two people were missing from the group.