The Tower of Emnu

“I am sorry, Captain.” Beresix said with as much chagrin as Merlin had ever seen the tall warrior display before. It was rare for the big man to show any sort of emotion really. Merlin balled his fists on the table he leaned over. He was beyond frustrated and angry, but not because of Beresix. The warrior had done far more than was expected of him and Merlin tried his best not to let his fury boil through. It was a fact that the Cultivator had escaped despite all of their best efforts and blaming his team helped nobody.

“Its alright Beresix, you truly outdid yourself. This siege was better organized than anything I have ever seen and you did it on the fly.” Merlin shook his head.

“I would be a fool to blame you.” he said and he believed it.

“That may be so, but I let him escape nonetheless, if I just laid the trap somewhere else, somewhere closer to the stairway we would have caught up to him in time.”

“Nonsense, it was not your fault at all. The teams just left too much of a gap by pursuing the Cultivator into the hills. If anything its their fault.” Merlin said and ground his teeth as he stared down on the map of the impromptu siege and a map of the second floor he had bought in ambition a long time ago.

The rest of his team stood or sat around the small Headquarters Merlin had established. People were all over the place, breaking camp, organizing themselves after the short battle. It reminded Merlin of the expeditions up to the 17th floor for mining that were organized every few months in Ambition. And that said quite a lot about how well done the siege had been.

But maybe, just maybe, the entire concept had been a mistake from the start.

Merlin had been so sure that he Cultivator would try to kill his way out instead of fleeing, had been sure they would have days to prepare. Had relied on the organization of the siege to prevent the man from fleeing if that was the cultivators plan. But none of his predictions had come true. Nothing had gone their way in this engagement, well almost nothing. After he had left Khatrak in the Town of Beginnings, to make a Wanted Poster of the Cultivator, he had paid a visit to Aurix and had made a new deal with the man. Aurix had looked seriously concerned at the news that his team had problems taking down the Cultivator.

Merlin had half expected for the senior mage to brush him off and send him on his way at first, but the man had caved in to his demands quickly after he had gotten over the initial shock. Now Merlin’s Team would make 100 manastones per day they were hunting the Cultivator. Which was a pretty sweet deal all things considered. A medium grade manastone for their team a day was generous and much better than most escort missions paid. Merlin had rallied the troops and brought reinforcements from the Town, fully expecting to come back to an unorganized mess, but what he had found instead was military precision. Beresix had basically taken command the instant Merlin was away and had organized everything in such a short time and with such high efficiency Merlin had been flabbergasted.

“I must say, I was surprised that you took over command, while I was off to negotiate with Aurix. But you really have talent for this sort of stuff.” Merlin said and gave Beresix a smile.

“Talent? Nah, my grandfather taught me all of this. He hoped I would come after him and become a mage general. But I didn’t have the aptitude for magic.”

Merlin raised his eyebrows and studied the tall dark haired man. “Your grandfather is a mage general?”

“Was, retired for a long time now. He led 2 successful Expeditions through the gap and had some campaigns against the 58th floor…” Beresix said with obvious pride before he fell quiet and shrugged. Merlin knew what the gap was of course, it was the colloquial name of the stretch of the Tower between the 20th and 50th level. There were no habitable floors at all on the 30th and 40th floors, for different reasons he was not privy to as a simple team leader in Ambition. But he had no concept of what a campaign looked like beyond the 50th floor. He was not keen on asking follow up questions either. Beresix and Artis were both notoriously quiet about what was going on upstairs. Like everyone who was born beyond the 50th floor.

“But I was never his favorite.” Beresix continued after a small sigh. “Never showed the right interests. He used to create mock battles for me and my siblings to command an army, that is the only reason I got good at this stuff, not because I have talent.”

“I can not imagine you as a mage, Beresix.” Melia said with a smirk. “Can you imagine the big oaf in a silk robe? He would look like a stuffed sausage right before all the stitches burst.”

They all chuckled at that, including Beresix, who was a good sport about such things. Merlin at least thought he would make an excellent Officer, or even team captain. But Beresix had never even hinted at wanting the job and maybe it was just the cultural differences, in that no Vessel ever made officer, but Merlin suspected the man was glad not to have the responsibility.

But that was just his gut feeling about it, seeing what Beresix had done, he could not help but feel inadequate. He could not have done this siege in a fraction of the time nor as well. But he said none of that in front of the group. They trusted him and the news of their new pay had mollified them all easily enough.

“What about you Atris? Any hidden talents? Are you secretly a master alchemist?” Morris asked with a smirk, while he meticulously prepared and repaired the fletchings on his arrows.

“Me?” Atris laughed. “Nah, I am as common as they come. I am just good at fighting, that is all.”

“He was an arena champion with 14, no false modesty there, friend.” Beresix said with a broad grin and Atris frowned, grunted and threw his mug at the man.

“Noble prick, you were just as good.”

Beresix caught the mug with a grin and set it down.

“Is that how you two met?” Morris looked between the two towering men and both nodded.

“We were training for the day of Awakening and kind of beat the rest of our age groups to a pulp.”

“They were just too coddled. I did not even have to try, they would be in tears at the slightest bump. Until that lump of an idiot came through my arena doors and thought he was tough shit.”

“I did beat you.”

“Yeah and I beat you twice on our rematch.”

“Its still 132 to 130 in my favor.” Beresix said with a grin.

“That one bout does not count and you know it doesn’t…”

Morris turned to Melia as the two warriors started bickering over what counted or what did not count as a duel win. They were already on their feet and had their hands on their weapons. In a few minutes they would start another duel, which was a regular occurrence between the two when nothing else was happening. Still they had been surprisingly open about things. Merlin took it as a good sign that they trusted the team, trusted him.

“What about you Melia?” Morris asked, but the Rogue held up her hand, before Morris could continue and shook her head.

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, you won’t get any stories about my past.”

“Oh come on, even the two brutes are lightening up. We know there is an arena up on the 50th floor now and Beresix grandpa is a big-shot. What about our tight lipped femme fatale? A princess maybe?”

“Shut up.” she said and turned to Merlin.

“So what is our plan now, Captain?”

“You are changing the topic!” Morris accused and Merlin sighed.

“Shut up Morris, everyone is free to tell as much or as little as they want about themselves.”

Morris grumbled and Atris and Beresix were just exchanging insults, when Merlin cleared his throat and both of them stopped bickering and looked over to him.

“We will have some time to relax and prepare ourselves. But I fully plan on going after the Cultivator again.”

“How?” Melia asked, her hand resting on the empty sheathe of her enchanted dagger. That woman really held a grudge.

“I think we will form 3 shifts to go after the Marks on the second floor, so he can’t advance to the third, then block the 4 stairways to the first floor with the rest of the volunteers.”

Beresix nodded slightly.

“Good thinking. That way the curse on the 2nd floor will weaken him until he has no choice but to go down into our waiting arms.”

Merlin grinned. “Exactly. But for that we need to make sure he can’t get any Marks himself, if he gets up to the third floor there is literally nothing we can do anymore.”

“I don’t like it.” Atris said with a deep frown.

“What? Why?” Morris asked just as surprised as the rest of the team.

“You don’t block off all ways up or down. The tower won’t like it.”

“Oh, there you go again. The Tower is not a sentient being, it does not like or do anything, its a bloody magical construct!” Melia said with more words than she usually used, but Atris almost religious belief in the Tower as a sentient being was a sore spot between the two.

“Its quite normal to block off passages between floors Atris and you know that.”

“The tower upstairs is different than down here and you know that, Beresix!”

“Enough.” Merlin raised his hand and they quieted down before this could devolve into another pointless argument.

“I don’t see any better way to find and eliminate the Cultivator if he is on the 2nd floor. The curse will work against him and as long as we got the Marks he won’t be able to get rid of it if he stays up there. So, if anyone thinks the plan won’t work, or you have a better idea, please go ahead and tell me. I rely on you guys, you know that.”

But the entire group stayed silent and Morris sighed.

“It will take ages to catch this bastard, won’t it?” Morris asked with a deep frown.

“Yes it will and we will be paid for every day like kings. I have no problem spending the next 3 months on this manhunt and then return to Ambition rich and ready to learn some more spells.” Merlin said and rolled up the maps he had been studying.

“Now that does sound like a plan.” Morris said with a smirk.

“I will get myself one of those metal bows the dwarves make, you know the ones you can only use with 30 strength or more.” Melia snorted at that, but stayed silent.

“What?”

“Nothing, I could use a new pair of boots.” Melia said and peered down at her downtrodden pair.

Atris nodded and patted the hilt of his sword. “I could use a new sword too.”

“We all could use some better equipment and skills.” Merlin said with a smile and stepped away from the table. He held out his fist, while he looked expectantly to the rest of his group. They all stepped closer and dumped fists, even though Melia rolled her eyes at his team building antics.

“Lets catch that Cultivator.”

“Or make lots of shards while trying to do so.”

“Whatever comes first.”

Lisa ran through the snow, her breath coming fast and her legs, her arms, her back, her everything hurt. Still, she came to a skittering stop, drew an arrow, aimed and released in one smooth movement. She missed the target by a hair, but was too tired to curse.

“Keep moving!” her instructor bellowed and Lisa fell back into a dead sprint to her next target. She hated this exercise so, so much. But it was the last exercise of the day at least.

Her day started at the break of dawn, when the sky was still dark and the air so cold it felt like it would freeze your lungs. Not that she minded the cold, she liked it actually. It reminded her of home. In the almost complete dark, the Army Instructors herded every single Aspirant staying in the barracks into a big open courtyard. There, they did some stretches and warming up exercises by torchlight and then a nice morning jog of about 10 miles while the light brightened all around them.

The first time Lisa had participated, she had been certain she would not make it, had dreaded the run more than anything. But to her total surprise she finished the 10 miles like it was nothing. She was not even breathing that hard because she had tried to conserve her energy. She had felt great after it in fact. Still she wasn’t the only one in good shape, but she was by far the highest level of the new Aspirants.

Lisa was Lvl 3, while the rest of the Vessels in her class had not started leveling in earnest yet. Her survival quest had paid out when she had gone to bed the first night after coming to the Town of Beginnings. And she had been rewarded handsomely for her survival. Melissa had helped her decide what she should invest in and then the whole group of new arrivals had a big old lecture about the stats and what they did when they came here. There were 4 basic stats to level up for now and every single one was important. Everyone started at 5 points in each category and would gain 5 attribute points per level. At least with a basic class. The higher the rarity the higher the attribute gain. There were also class evolutions every 10 levels that would increase attribute gain and unlock some attributes that not everyone had access to.

The standard practice for normal classes was to level all 4 attributes at every level up and just define your build with the 5th point.

So Lisa’s stats looked like this:

Strength – 7

Dexterity – 9

Constitution – 8

Mental – 7

The [Survivor] skill she had gotten for living through her close encounter with the Cultivator gave her a 10% Increase in Constitution, which was rounded up, so she technically only had 7,7 Constitution. It was still one of the better passives Vessels could get this early and it would benefit her for the rest of her life.

She also had almost double the dexterity of the other new arrivals and so she did very well in all of the training sessions the army offered to them at first. But that was not enough for Lisa anymore. Instead of going out with their newly formed teams to hunt some wolves, bears and mountain lions that inhabited the first floor, Lisa had stuck to a strict training regimen. She did not need to level for a while and she planned on taking full advantage of her level lead to make sure she was ready to face whatever the tower would throw at her. But for that she needed to train, to learn how to fight, because quite honestly she was pathetically weak despite her great Attributes.

After stretching and running in the morning she would go to eat in the cafeteria and devour whatever they put in front of her. The food in the Town of Beginnings was varied and multi cultured. From very simple to exceptionally spicy you could basically get anything, although the cafeteria food was mostly simple pasta or rice dishes with meat and some kind of sauce. It still beat hospital food by a mile and Lisa felt ravenously hungry for every meal.

After eating Lisa went to the Archery range, where she would spend hours shooting targets at different ranges.

But that is not where her training stopped, but began. She joined the workout of the army once it was around 10 in the morning and followed their grueling muscle training regimen. Push ups, squats, working with weights, sprinting and jumping over obstacle courses. It was everything she had expected from a boot camp.

When she was finally done with that training it was already past noon and she would go to eat lunch and take an hour break, which had turned out to become a nap for the last two days. Then she would go for her personal training. Which was this hellish experience.

Run in a dead sprint, stop, aim and hit a target in range. She had started with a predetermined course yesterday, but now her Instructor, a thin athletic man in his late forties called Kolt, had started to mix in skills as well.

“Keep running girl, stop at the next marker, right target low, Power shot!” the man yelled at her and Lisa could barely make out what he was saying over her quick breath and hammering heart.

She stopped at the next marker, which was a patch of snow marked with red paint, turned right and drew one of her arrows, while she took aim. She drew the bowstring to her cheek and activated her only offensive Skill. [Power Shot] infused her muscles with something, or maybe her bow, she did not know or understand how the skill worked, but suddenly it felt like she was holding power. It felt like coiled lightning in her hands and she released it quickly by pure instinct.

With a crash her arrow burst through the top of the target almost missing it entirely. Lisa winced.

“And you call yourself an Archer girl? Go run a lap and try again!”

Lisa ran. The insults of the man did not faze her much anymore after she had endured them the whole afternoon yesterday. Her whole body hurt, but she kept going. Because she was doing it. She was training. She could run, she could shoot, she could do everything she set her mind to and her body obeyed without issue. Not like in her last life where walking had sometimes been so tiring she had to stop and rest for a moment before continuing. And that had been when she was not bedridden and unable to stand.

No, this pain, this feeling of exhaustion was pure bliss. Yes it hurt, yes she wanted to stop and rest, but at the same time she did not want to stop at all. She wanted to keep going, to struggle, to fight, to feel her body work and work so well. She was in the best shape of both of her lives and more confident in herself than she had ever been before, and so she vowed to herself not to stop until she could not move anymore.

She powered through the lap around the small archery range Kolt had set up and stopped where she had begun.

“Good, Power shot, left, far.”

Lisa drew, aimed and used [Power Shot] while she drew her arrow back. The feeling of power flowed through her arms and she released the arrow in the perfect moment this time. The Arrow burst through the target just inches from the bullseye. Yes! Finally she had properly hit the target and at much greater range at that. Lisa grinned and cheered.

“What are you so happy about? Keep moving, next mark, next target. Never stop. Go, go, go!”

An hour later Lisa’s arms felt like jello and her legs hurt so much she had stopped feeling them altogether. She barely realized she had fallen face first into the snow, when she almost choked on a mouthful of cold icy wetness. She spluttered and tried to get up, but her arms and legs gave out and so she just laid there for a long moment panting and shuddering in exhaustion. Her accuracy had steadily declined over the last hour, which had only led to more running until she was more stumbling to the next target than running and now she could just not move at all.

Kolt stepped next to her and she turned on her back and looked up to the man, breathing heavily.

“Well shit, you call yourself a Lvl 3? Have you forgotten to put points into Constitution?”

“No, sir.” she said hoarsely and tried to stop herself from panting like she had just almost drowned on dry land.

“Well in that case your body hasn’t gotten the memo yet. Its an archery platform now. But we will drill that into you quickly enough. A month from now you will understand. Now get up and take a bath, you stink.”

Kolt offered her his hand and she gratefully took it and let him pull her up. The Instructor shook his head and walked away.

“See you tomorrow, same time.”

“Yes, sir!”

Lisa took almost 15 minutes to get back to the dorm and even longer until she found a free tub she could fill with hot water. Plumbing wasn’t a thing here yet, although people told her it was normal in Ambition and they suspected that the Instructors thought new Aspirants needed the ‘Character building’ that carrying buckets of hot water while dead tired would give you.

Finally after what felt like hours of carrying water buckets back and fort, Lisa closed the door, locked it from the inside and took a well earned bath.

She sighed when she entered the hot water and felt her whole body relax. She had bruises from where she had fallen and on her forearm from the bowstring snapping back when she had been careless this morning on the range.

At least she had so short hair it barely bothered her and washing and maintaining it was easy. Lisa let her hand glide through the short messy hair and sighed contentedly.

When was the last time a bath had felt this good?

She looked up towards the wooden ceiling and felt her whole body burn, from the soles of her feet to her neck.

She closed her eyes and remembered her mom sitting behind her in the bath, her arms around her. She could feel her warmth, her gentle voice singing old french songs in her ear. She sighed. She must have been a little girl in that memory. But that had honestly been the last time she had taken a bath with someone.

A lump formed in Lisa’s throat as she remembered her mothers laugh, her gentleness, the pain in her eyes when she looked at her daughter in a hospital bed.

She missed her so much.

Lisa ignored the tears falling down her face and tried to go back to her relaxation. But she could not relax, not really. Not since she had come here. Every noise made her turn her head, every movement brought her hand to her dagger.

She felt how coiled up she was and how vulnerable she felt while she sat crying in her bathtub. She did not like it.

They had told her like all the other Aspirants to mourn their loved ones and hope they would never end up here. It was a cruel thing to say she had thought at first, but then she had understood. Everyone who had come here to the tower had died a violent death. Some of them had been shot, others had been in brutal car crashes. A few had fallen to their deaths, one of the Vessels had told the group he had literally fallen from a plane and his parachute had not opened.

Lisa shuddered at the mere notion of falling to your death from that height. But the man had said it wasn’t that bad, the only thing that had bothered him was to see the end coming and not being able to do anything about it. Not the actual crash. Lisa herself had stayed quiet.

She had been delirious and sick the last time she remembered in her old life. But if every single one had died violently, then there was a good chance that she had as well.

But how? Did a botched revival attempt count as a violent death? Did they try some sort of surgery that went wrong? Lisa did not know and she did not like to think about that. But the thoughts came anyways. Unbidden, whenever she was alone like this. They crept in, whispering in her mind that someone had murdered her in her old life. Someone had ended her suffering and she felt ice cold at the thought, because it sounded so compelling.

But she really did not know and it did not matter in the end. There were real boogeymen in this new world. Real evil was prowling the lands, was living in this city. She knew. She felt the gazes of the men on her skin and they felt like hot oil, sticky uncomfortable and yes sometimes she felt a little guilty pleasure at the attention she got now.

That men had any interest in her at all was a totally new experience for her, but she was super conscious of it after what Melissa had said about Aurix. The thought of that man forcing himself on her...she shuddered.

But that was not the only thing that scared her. In the night, when she was trying to fall asleep she could hear him. The cultivator, his gentle voice, his mad cackling laughter. The meaty crunch of him beating people to death. It followed her around everywhere. It scared her more than she could admit and the only way for her to fall asleep was with the comfortable weight of a dagger in her hands, ready to stab anyone coming too close.

She new that this was not healthy, that she was paranoid, traumatized. But she could not help herself.

So she laid there in the cooling water of her bathtub, her body feeling sleepy and relaxed, but her eyes were wide and awake as she stared at the shut door. She knew where her dagger was, in its sheathe on the little stool basically right next to her. But only after she had taken it into her hand and hidden it underwater did she close her eyes again.

Next time she would be ready, next time she would not be a victim. Next time she would kill those who came after her.

That she swore to herself.