Chapter 97 - So you’re saying there's a chance…
Jack stared at Sarah, who wore a wide-eyed look of fear. He immediately dropped his daggers and felt his hand cover his mouth, trying to hide his smile.
Shit, Jack thought to himself. Just when I was making some progress.
To his surprise, Sarah started to walk towards him. Jack backpedaled, slowly turning to run away. He had to get his… excitement under control before he could talk to her. He knew he couldn’t hide this part of himself, but he also knew what Sarah’s reaction to it would be. He wasn’t ready to face that just yet.
He got three steps before a blast of water hit him in the back of the knee, knocking him to the ground.
“Jack Atlas, don’t you run away from me.” Came Sarah’s voice from behind.
He stood up and turned to look at her. She still had that same terrified look on her face, but her steps were resolute as she walked towards him until they were face to face. She took his hand in hers.
“It’s ok Jack.” She said, her perfect hazel eyes staring deep into his.
That’s when Jack realized she didn’t have a terrified look on her face. This was a look he had seen a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times before. This was the look Sarah wore when someone was hurting. When someone was in need and needed her help.
He didn’t recognize the look because she had never used it on him.
Jack didn’t know what to think about that. He wasn’t some wounded animal or tender flower. He didn’t need to be saved.
I’m not craz-
“Cat’s out of the bag, Jack. I already know you’re a maniac.” She said with a small smile towards him. Jack just looked down at her hand, which was still holding his. She pulled it away, slowly.
“We aren’t done with our conversation by the way. You’re going to tell me everything.” She said in a tone that shot down any possible excuses he might have. Jack just nodded in response. Sarah fixed him with another smile and then turned to help out the other soldiers. Jack watched her for a long minute as she milled among the remaining troops, healing injuries and giving small talks of encouragement.
He wasn’t sure how to feel. Sarah knew. She knew he liked to kill. She even watched him revel in it.
She doesn’t hate me, Jack smiled to himself.
With little else to do, he sought out Sam and Hannah. Hannah’s arrows tearing through the sky were hard to miss, so he knew she was fine, but he hadn’t seen Sam at all during the battle.
Jack found Hannah patrolling outside the small village, searching for any stragglers or signs of any survivors in the village.
“You two lovebirds work things out?”
“Not quite,” Jack grinned, “you see Sam? I thought I would catch a glimpse of him on the battlefield.”
“Don’t act like you ever pay attention to what’s happening on a battlefield. You get all crazy killer mode and have no clue what’s going on.” Hannah said with an eye-roll. “Sam’s fine. The captain died, so I think he’s technically in charge now.”
“Huh. What’s his rank?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Hannah shrugged. “Let’s go find him and figure out what the hell we are going to do. We lost a lot of people this time. We probably have to head back to base.”
Jack and Hannah made their way back to the village and found Sam talking to several U.F.E. soldiers, sending out orders left and right.
“General! Your loyal soldiers await your command.” Jack said, falling into a mock salute.
Sam blushed furiously as they approached him.
“Don’t pick on him, Jack.” Sarah chimed in, stepping up to the group, “Samuel. What’s our next move?”
“Uhmm. We need to go back to base and regroup. We lost too many soldiers.”
“Nonsense. You, me, Hannah, and Sarah are more than enough. Send everyone else back. The four of us will move way faster than a full-on battalion.” Jack challenged.
“No.” Sam said, taking a firm tone. “We don’t have any leads as to where more raiders are, and we also don’t know what the status of the siege is. They might need us on the front lines. It’s time to return.”
Jack glanced over at Hannah and they both shared a small smile. Sam was growing more confident by the day.
“Alright Commander Supreme.” Jack said with a faux dejected sigh.
“Let’s move out, everyone! We’re going home.” Sam called to the remaining soldiers, ignoring Jack completely.
There were a few small cheers of relief from those that remained, and the group filed out of the village back the way they came. It was a boring journey back, but with everyone having enhanced stats and an eagerness to return to camp, they would make good time.
Jack tried to single out Sarah, but she seemed lost in thought and was back to sort of avoiding him. Jack was fine with that. He had made enough progress. Instead, he sought out Hannah and Sam. It felt like it had been a long time since the three of them were together. He missed that.
“So how come I’m not getting any more AP points?” Jack asked Sam. He had noticed a strange phenomenon. While killing other adventurers still paid out however much AP they had, anything tower generated was getting him 2-5AP at most.
“You said you’re level thirteen? It’s probably because you're over leveled. You’ll remember the first-floor quest only requires us to reach level five before we leave. There's likely some sort of diminishing returns once you become stronger than everything else on the floor.”
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“Well, that’s bullshit.” Jack complained. “So I can’t stick around and become king of the first floor?”
“You can if you want.” Sam shrugged. “Gideon says that lots of people make their home on various floors and just focus on becoming the strongest person on that floor. There are established organizations on pretty much every floor with someone at the absolute peak of power obtainable on that floor. While there is a hard cap on levels, people can still find a way to push their masteries to the absolute limit.”
“Why would people stay on any one floor, though?”
“I don’t know, power, comfort, any multitude of reasons.”
Jack nodded along at that. If he was being honest, he still didn’t care about climbing the Tower. If Sarah decided to climb, he would likely follow, but he honestly wasn’t sure what the future looked like for him.
“Are you guys going to keep climbing?” Jack finally asked.
“Definitely.” Sam said.
“Probably,” Hannah followed, “I like the idea of living forever. How about you, Jack? You coming up with us?”
Jack just stared at Sarah, who was still walking by herself. He honestly had no idea what he was going to do.
“How much AP do you guys have?” Sam asked after a long moment of silence.
Jack checked. He had a lot, and he honestly had no idea what to spend it on.
“8,212,500AP” He grinned.
“That much?” Sam said, an excited look in his eyes. “Why haven’t you spent it yet?”
“Because someone hasn’t been around to help us spend it.”
Jack watched as Sam’s eyes glazed over. That was all he needed to hear to start shopping for things.
“I think you should give up on your living armor, by the way.” Sam said.
“What? Why? I got that for killing a boss, if you’ll remember.” Jack said, inspecting his living armor thing.
Living Shadow Armor
Type: Soul Bound Armor
Tier: Common
Enchantment Slots: 1/1
[Living Armor - Natural Enchant]
Sentient armor that works in tandem with the user to adapt to its needs.
[Growth - 1 Slot]
Feed this item to make it grow stronger…
A shadow harvested from a mimic, bound to armor, and given life.
“Because it’s a noob trap. It seems like a good item, but in reality, it’s just a money sink.”
“How so?”
“Gideon told me that you need to feed it a ridiculous amount of armor for it to actually become worthwhile. The cost is astronomical to bring it to the level to compete with other items. Plus, it’s the only armor item you can wear, whereas if you didn’t have it, you could wear tons of different armor pieces, all with different unique effects and buffs. It just doesn’t make sense unless you're insanely rich.”
Jack pulled open the Tower store and went to the armor page, where he immediately purchased a few random armor pieces, bringing him down to about 6,000,000AP. Three different breastplates popped into reality and fell to the ground in front of him.
“Why did you do that!?” Sam said, a panicked look on his face.
“As a point of pride - I automatically disagree with anything Gideon suggests. If he says using my living armor is a bad idea, then use it I shall.” Jack said, taking a haughty tone.
Hannah rolled her eyes and Sam had an exasperated look on his face as Jack’s bracers crawled off his arm and down to the armor on the ground, enveloping and devouring two of the three pieces. Jack inspected one of the armor pieces before the shadow could devour it.
Heart of Stone
Type: Armor
Tier: Common
Enchantment Slots: 4/4
[Heart of Stone - Natural Enchant]
+20 Endurance
[Minor Stone Skin - 3 Slots]
Wraps the user's skin in a layer of stone for 1 hour. Recharge time three hours.
[Self Repair - 1 Slot]
As long as 50% of the item remains, it will pull on surrounding mana to repair any damage.
Made from the hearts of a hundred stone elementals.
“Well, if you’re going to do that, at least warn me first. I could have told you the best pieces to buy.”
“What’s it matter?”
“It matters a lot.” Sam said matter of fact, picking up the last remaining piece and inspecting it. “At least you bought armor with stats on it.” He sighed.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because living armor can absorb the stats of armor.”
“No, it can’t. I already fed it some armor with stats, and I don’t see it displayed anywhere.”
“It doesn’t work like that. Living armor has its own stat pool that it uses, not you.”
“What the hell does it use stats for?”
“A lot of things. Strength increases the sturdiness of the armor, like if you were trying to crush it underneath a hydraulic press or something. Endurance increases the resistance to slashing, piercing, and the elements depending on what type of armor you feed it. Vitality will increase the regeneration speed if a piece of it gets destroyed. Focus will increase its link with you and its ability to ‘intuit’ your needs. Dexterity will increase the speed at which it can change forms, and willpower will increase its ability to duplicate enchants as well as its mana storage capacity.” Sam said matter of fact.
“Yea, there is a zero percent chance I’m going to remember any of that.” Jack said with an eyeroll.
“Just make sure you’re always feeding it with armor that has stats on it. These pieces are fine for now, but maybe consult me first before you start randomly buying things.”
“What did you mean it can absorb enchants?” Hannah asked, a curious look on her face.
“It’s not what you think,” Sam grimaced, “and it’s also the reason why I say living armor is so expensive to improve. If you find an enchant you like you can’t just feed it to the armor, you have to feed it armor with the same enchantment ten times over, maybe more, and even that will only generate a lesser version of the enchantment.”
“Then why the hell do people do it?” Hannah asked.
“Because in theory, you could end up with an armor with hundreds of enchantments on it. All the enchantments generated via that method are natural enchantments and don’t count towards the slot amount.”
“Huh.” Jack said, the wheels slowly turning in his head. “And what about mana? Can I give it some of mine?”
“Don’t.” Hannah and Sam said simultaneously.
“What? Why not?”
“Because your mana will probably make the thing explode. Make it stronger first and then try giving it one of your mana drops.” Sam said matter of fact.
Jack just nodded in response. The living armor devoured the first two chest pieces but ignored the third. This time when it crawled back up his body, it covered his chest in a very basic black chest piece.
Jack looked over at Hannah and Sam.
“Guys. I’m going to need you to lend me some more AP,” he grinned.
He watched as both Hannah and Sam quickly moved forward, leaving him behind.
“Hey!” Jack shouted, chasing after them.