Versai and I stood shoulder to shoulder. I had the Judiths clean up the battlefield, looting the bodies. Repairing everything would take an order or three. Might be best to rebuild from scratch. Well, most of the stuff was still usable. Just have to figure out the right way to use it.

The night sky here was… beautiful, actually. The sky was speckled with endless stars. Deep in a way I had never seen before. A bright, round moon hung proudly in the sky, shining down on the nightmares below.

Nights here were beautiful. But the game taught you to fear that beauty. To struggle to avoid it. Somehow, I felt like a protagonist from a CLAMP manga, staring upwards with an otherworldly beauty who couldn’t be less interested in me, by my side.

“Ready?” I asked. She nodded.

“Advance day.”

We stood on the east side of the tower, backs leaning against the still-sealed door. Waiting for something neither of us had ever seen before.

The sun was a bright copper penny sliding its way up the sky-box. It turned the horizon every shade of blue before it peaked up over the treetops, and bathed us in the pale gold of early morning. The air even smelled like the morning- that hint of cool in the air, and the promise of it warming up. I was imagining it, but…

Rosalia might be a horrible necromancer and a worse game designer, but credit where it was due. She could make a spectacular sunrise.

Something we had never seen before- not me, not Versai. The morning of the Fifth Day.

However long we spent in that timeless place, it was worth it. I was, at least amongst Versai’s Tower Masters, the undisputed all time survival champion. Four waves, and all my summons were still alive. All of them.

“I kept everyone alive. All of ‘em. Dollies or not. I kept them alive. Some of it was luck. Finding those traps was huge. Decisive. But it wasn’t all luck.”

I think I was talking to myself as much as Versai. Sometimes, you just need to hear yourself say it. You gotta keep saying what your head knows until your heart believes it.

“You did. You went after the ruin site hard. Most don’t. Just build out resources until ‘we are properly secure.’”

I snorted. “No chance. We never have enough people to really defend our walls. We needed an edge, and we weren’t going to build it ourselves.”

Versai wiggled her platonically ideal hand. “Yes and no. Others built their own traps. With varying, usually low, degrees of success. They also had different Awakened Souls.”

“Fair.”

“One guy? Had four snipers.” She shook the finest head that ever graced a neck. “One-shotted everything they aimed at. They shot about as often as Radz. The fastest shot like Pomoroi.”

“Oof.”

“Yep. Long range as anything. He tried more or less what you did- lots of barriers, slow them down as much as possible. ‘Versai, you will be my guerilla fighter. Go out there and slow them down long enough for the snipers to clear the field.’”

“Second wave?”

“Mmmhmmm.”

The fifth day settled into place. I hadn’t issued the first order, so when the sun was clear of the horizon but not yet high, it stuck there. There was a gentle wind that made the forest rustle. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine you were by the shore, listening to the waves run up on the beach.

Soon enough we would go into the Tower, examine the loot, get ready to fight the next wave. But for now, we just treasured the moment. We looked at the sky, and couldn’t help but smile.

The sun hung in the sky, burning like the brightest copper penny ever. Fingers crossed it would be a lucky one.

“Um.” I said, intelligently. Suavely. Dare I say? Rizzly. “What?”

Ladies, please control yourselves. I am strictly for the 2-D. Guys… look, I know what my browser history suggests, but it’s a very, very niche interest and 2-D is still mandatory. Don’t try to make this weird.

What was weird was that my Tower had a new room open… which was actually two rooms, and maybe as many as four? Or more? It got real vague real fast, my eyes blurring and a headache coming on at speed.

“The Commerce Department? Surely that name can’t be permanent.”

“Can the Tower Master change the names of rooms? I had no idea.” Versai looked in wonder at the new door.

“If we can, I haven’t figured out how yet. And I’m not optimistic.” We had poked our heads through the door that exited onto the stairs only to find ourselves in a room with more doors.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“‘Armorer’ sounds promising, let's start there.” I pointed to the door on the far left.

The room was blatantly too long to fit inside the tower. It looked like a factory. Not a modern one, but one with long benches where a piece would go from hand to hand and be assembled by the time it reached the end.

Right now, it was empty except for a metallic golem sitting behind a counter at the front of the room. The golem sort of approximated the shape of a person, but it also sort of looked like a tree stump that got hit with lightning then covered in aluminum, so…

“Welcome to the Armory. We can currently craft Trash Tier arms and armor. Please deposit the crafting material in the hopper to see what arms and armor can presently be manufactured.”

The golem had the most girly, squeaky, twee voice I ever heard this side of Flora from Asterisk War. “Grating” didn’t do it justice. This was a violation of the Geneva Convention.

“Trash tier? Can the room be upgraded?”

“YES!” ohgodithurtspleasemakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop.

“How?” I immediately jammed my fingers into my ears.

“Pass Wave Ten and pay the required amount of runestones and Frozen Diamonds.”

I had exactly two of the latter, and passing Wave Four was a not so minor miracle. Not going to worry about it for now.

“Would you like to make some weapons and armor for free? The first batch is free, today only! Except it’s free!”

“Are you saying I can make it for free?”

The silver coated tree stump rocked back, hydra-fingered hand pressed to its… gonna go with ‘chest’. “How did you know? It’s for today only!”

“Special Tower Master powers, as well as the need for furious vengeance against a certain Rosalia. Where’s the hopper for crafting materials?”

“Just here, Tower Master.” She pointed to a distinctly industrial looking plastic tub on wheels. Not a farming guy, but I am going to guess that thing could hold an entire cow. Apparently, the Armory expected to be working in bulk.

Problem. In order to put the materials we harvested from all those monsters into the hopper, I would have to take my fingers out of my ears. On the other hand, this had to do with life and death- had to risk it.

After four waves, we had accumulated what felt like quite a lot of monster parts. I knew how gacha worked- it felt like a lot, but really, it was nothing. Not a drop in the bucket. Load ‘em up early on, make them feel like tycoons, then they will be extra motivated to spend when they suddenly run short.

“Oky-doky!” DAMN! It caught me. I jabbed my fingers back into my ears, but the mental damage was done.

“You have enough for the following armor kits and weapons kits.” A screen popped up in front of me. It was… interesting. All trash tier gear, broken out by class, then subdivided by type, then subdivided again by style.

You could have an armor kit for workers that gave them better boots, and those boots could be knee high PNW logger style boots, or they could be distinct-for-copyright-purposes Timberland knockoffs. The bit that was interesting for me was that they specified the country of origin. Kingdom of Verperania, Federated Republic of Bechim, Empire of Gaspee, others.

Now… were those places and people that we would encounter through the game? I was betting yes.

What did I really need to spend resources on, right now? I could finish leveling up Versai’s weapon. That seemed like a useful thing. Might not evolve, you usually need some special something and the next higher tier loot for that. But it would be useful.

Then… Mikas’ DPS. Had to go up.

“Do any of these kits improve rate of fire? That is, make artillery or direct damage shoot faster?” I clarified. The store critters tend to be kind of dim.

“Huh?”

Case in point. Gonna take that as a ‘no,’ but I would read through everything carefully.

I did read through everything carefully. It seems that the number of stars was irrelevant- Trash Tier gear cost the same regardless. The price for different classes’ gear varied. Boots for workers were actually more expensive than boots for artillery.

The reverse was true, to an eye-watering level, for weapons. Worker’s weapons were cheap as hell. Artillery? Strictly speaking you don’t need both kidneys, right?

Well. Four battles worth of loot. I could get more or less something for everyone. Almost everyone. My quartet of eye candy/Tower ballast already had unique costumes. So I was totally justified in not giving them anything, and definitely not holding a grudge.

I tried to match the maker to the summons, but wherever Rakim was from, they didn’t manufacture trash tier goods. She was getting a weapon upgrade kit. No idea what it would look like.

Eventually, the orders got sorted out. Everything was a low-single-digit buff to armor or damage, which was… fine… but frustrating. The real benefits showed in the tens or hundreds of points between a One Star and a Three Star. The gulf between a One Star and a Six Star was from Earth to the Moon. No amount of trash gear was going to make up for that.

So. It was fine. But frustrating.

I put in the order. The hopper raced off to the first of the long stone top tables. From the benches around the tables, more of the metallic golems extruded themselves. They hauled bits and pieces from the hopper, and quickly set to work. They had their own chattering barks-

“One-Two, One-Two!”

“Let’s get the job done!”

“Quickly, quickly, quickly!”

Over and over again, accompanied by the sounds of angle grinders and other heavy industrial equipment. It must have been the angle grinder of the soul, because nothing of that sort was at all visible.

I collected the equipment, packed neatly into little cards, to hand out later.

“Want to flee and check out the next room?” I asked Versai.

“What?” The most perfect index fingers in the world had, naturally, perfectly sealed the most searingly, achingly, spiritually inspiring ear canals to exist in any world. I violently shook my head and pointed towards the door.

She beat me out of the room. Versai was as eager as I was to see what else the Tower had in store for us.