The Tower of Emnu

Aaron packed up his tent, removed the deadbolts that had been the tent posts and stored them in his quiver. Then he made his way back to the desert. Finding the way was not hard, because he kept to the jungle canopy where he could see the wall. He was too curious if he was right and he had brought enough water with him to ensure his test would be accurate enough. If his thirst returned even though he was drinking plenty of water and the symptoms of his disease vanished, then he would be right. If anything else happened he had to revise his theories.

It took Aaron a few hours to reach the desert and it was difficult not to be amazed by the sudden change in scenery again. The desert looked impressive and he could see the heat dance above the dunes. Aaron climbed down a tree, caught in between having to relieve himself and having a coughing fit. He did not know how much time he had, but not more than two or three days until he was too sick to stay in the jungle. Once he was down he had to hack his way through the undergrowth until he finally stepped of soil and clay and onto sand.

He walked slowly until he met the invisible wall between the two biomes and the dry heat made him breathe out in relief. He barely had noticed anymore how humid it was in the jungle, the desert felt much better, even though the heat was just as if not much worse. He sat down only a few feet away from the jungle and set up his tent. Then he sat in the shade of his tent and sipped water while he waited. He could have cultivated but instead he just sat there meditating. At first nothing much happened and for 20 minutes he just sat there in silence, listening to the distant noise of the jungle and the wind whispering between the dunes.

The first thing he noticed was that he was starting to get thirsty, so he took a sip of water and waited some more. His thirst increased quickly and Aaron could literally feel how the sickness his body had been afflicted with vanished within an hour. Only to be replaced by a headache inducing thirst as if something was magically removing the water from his body. Which was as likely an explanation as any.

Aaron sat there not really satisfied being proven right, he would have much preferred not to face this curse at all. So now he had to decide what to do. He had limited time left and he was not sure which curse was worse. Being half dead from dehydration or dying from some strange disease. But for now, while the thirst was still manageable he used the time to cultivate and absorb another manastone. His dantian was close to 70 or 80% full and that was really good news. He wanted to go back down to the first floor so badly to get some more techniques, but he suspected they would be waiting for him down there. Still he had to try. After he was done cultivating, he packed up, drank the remaining water in one of his waterskins and then sped through the desert along the wall to the next way down.

It took hours and without any movement technique Aaron really started to notice it in his calves how strenuous it was to run on sand. It was good training, but at the moment he was more concerned with his survival. Getting out of the second floor was honestly his only choice now. If he could ascend to the third floor? Great. If he could not, then he would have to go back to the first floor.

He passed by a way up to the third floor, the giant door standing still and locked before he finally spotted another stairway down in the distance. But this one was not empty or deserted. No, there was a small army emerging from the first floor.

As soon as Aaron spotted any sign of people in the distance, he activated wind steps and jumped behind the next dune, keeping low. He laid down with his back to the sand and closed his eyes. As much as it irked him to do, he tried to sense the group he had spotted with his mana senses. Since it was the only way to gather information without showing himself at all. It did require him to close his eyes though, because otherwise he would barely be able to sense anything. So with his eyes closed he sensed the surrounding mana, felt it fluctuate and flow, until he felt the blips on his mana radar. In the distance he felt multiple signatures, weak but many. They moved away from the stairway and into the desert at an even pace.

He opened his eyes and peered over the dune once he felt they had passed by enough so he could risk it. But he could not see them from this angle. He crept along the dune and followed them with his senses, with his ears. This group kept together from what he could sense and hear, but they definitively had a goal in mind as they walked straight into the desert. Aaron moved closer slowly, silently keeping always more than a full dune in between them and once he was sure of their pace and position he peered over the dune and at the group through a gap in between dunes.

At first glance it looked like a mass of people walking into the desert, but they were organized, well organized in fact. Their melees walked at the outer edges of the group, each one spaced evenly, warily scanning the surroundings, their weapons drawn, their shields and blades ready to intercept any threats. [Ranger]s, [Archer]s and [Rogue]s followed right behind them, a bit at a distance, but their better senses and ranged capabilities made them quick to react to anything the melees missed. In the center, protected from all sides were the mages. He could sense three of them, two looking ahead, one occasionally walking backwards while looking behind the group.

It was a good setup and the group was way too big for Aaron to handle. But it did not really look like they were here for him. It looked more like they were wary of the scorpions coming for them. Aaron debated following them, which would be risky in the long term or trying the stairway they had come up. With any luck it would be weakly defended. He hesitated peering over the dune and then made a decision.

It was difficult to pursue them into the desert, there were too many stretches where his cover would be compromised and if anyone looked his way at the wrong time they would probably spot him and then hunt him down, forcing him to expend valuable resources to escape. It was unlikely for them to catch him, but he could not do anything to them either. Sure, he could shoot some arrows at them, but he was honestly running low on them after his liberal use during the siege.

All in all it would be a bad plan to follow them and either way he suspected he knew where they were going. The center of the desert. It fit with the heading they were going and maybe they were after the key to the third floor. It was entirely possible they were here to climb, but also a possibility that they were here to deny the key to the door to him.

As long as they denied him one key, he would be incapable of going up and was stuck here. It was honestly the sort of cunning plan he came to expect from his enemies by now.

So Aaron backed off and ran towards the stairway.

He wasn’t sure if this was the same stairway he had come up at, but either way it was deserted now. Carefully after he studied the stairway for 5 minutes he approached. Unexpectedly nothing happened. Nobody had followed him, nobody waited for him here in stealth and there were no traps around he could see or sense.

Everything was still and quiet. Aaron could hear his own breath, feel the sweltering heat of the desert and his own thirst and hunger gnawing at him. His heart beat faster as he peered down the stairs and hesitated for a long moment before he began to slowly walk down.

The stairs were just like he remembered them and going down was much easier than going up, although he could soon feel it in his knees as he buffered his weight over and over again. The stairway still took a long time to climb down, especially since Aaron was not using his movement technique. So all in all it took him almost half an hour of steadily making his way down until he froze mid step and strained his ears.

He could have sworn he heard laughter and then he heard it again. Someone coughed and then he heard a very low conversation in the distance. Slowly and as silently as possible Aaron took the next few stairs, looking around the bend, poised to flee or attack.

The closer he got, the clearer the conversation.

“...It’s been days, Frank, I just don’t think its worth our time anymore is all.”

“What, you don’t like killing the bosses on the second floor for basically free and get away with snake bladders and poison sacks to sell? The Price has tripled since the whole manhunt began. How can you not think its worth our time?”

“Its not about the money, shards, whatever. Its about levels. Grinding the same bosses over and over does not give as much XP as going up and killing new stuff on the third or fourth floor. You know that, all of our levels have stagnated.”

“Common man, you know I can’t see your levels, I don’t have the spell impression for it.”

“Right, still you gotta believe me, we stopped getting as much XP after the second kill. Hell its worse now than when we were just doing basic missions for the guilds. We came away with a third of a level each time we finished a mission, now we barely get a tenth of that for a bloody boss kill just because we keep repeating it and so many vessels leech XP.”

“You know what Merlin said, if we go up in small groups up, the cultivator will slaughter us.”

“Oh come on, he can’t be that strong. He ambushed one group and we almost caught him during that siege.”

Aaron peered around the curvature of the stairway and got a good look at what looked suspiciously like a barricade. No, more like a wall they had crammed into the stairway to block it off. With his tiny slice of vision he could not see much, but he could hear the burble of more than one conversation, although the one closest to him was the loudest.

“I know that group that got killed, they were months my senior and good. You think our group has any chance on our own?”

The other man, who was probably a vessel clicked his tongue and sighed.

“Fine, I just don’t like it. I get why we have to bring that murderer to justice, but sometimes I feel like we are just being used by that mayor guy to pursue a personal vendetta.”

Aaron heard a scuffle and then a loud hiss.

“Shut the fuck up. Don’t you think everyone knows that? But he is the mayor and he is a senior mage by decades, maybe even centuries. The man could climb not just up to Ambition, but to Climbers Rest for a vacation. He could zap us with a wave of his hand and nobody would raise a fuzz. Now I don’t know about you, but I for one want to survive this shit hole. The man has the fate of every team down here in his hands, think, he could just bar us from the guilds if we cross him. Which means no shards, no food, no supplies, no missions. So if he tells us to kill a bloody cultivator we bloody well do it without so much as a squeak.”

“Jeez, fine. I get your point, no need to snap at me man.”

The other man took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

“Sorry, its just, we really need to catch and kill that bastard, then everything goes back to normal.”

Aaron peered around the corner a bit further and was unsurprised to find the entire staircase blocked by a solid looking wall made out of wood and spikes. There were little gaps in the barricade where people could peer through and release some arrows or crossbow bolts. In the center of the barricade was a gap, manned by two tall men in plate armor.

Aaron quickly ducked back behind the corner of the stairway and leaned against the wall while he thought about what to do now. The two men he had listened to had the conversation from behind the barricade and getting through that looked just as likely as trying to get through a fortress wall. Extremely Unlikely. Sure there was a possibility that he could just punch a hole into the barricade, but that would make a lot of noise and the reaction of the defenders should be instant. So that was a no go. He could not leap over the barricade either as it had no gap above. The only way through was through the gap guarded by the two melee fighters in plate armor.

If he could batter them aside he would have to fight however many people were behind the barricade. There was little chance to escape and Aaron did not know if this was just one layer of defenses. It was entirely possible for a second barricade to wait behind this one, which would make this an effective death trap. Sure, Aaron could risk it, but it would be a bad gamble. He might kill quite a few of them, but there was always the risk of reinforcements and if there were enough people behind that wall, then he would not be able to escape anymore making it a zero sum gamble for him.

In every engagement he had won so far he had taken out the mages first. In his last escape attempt he had almost died because he was not able to do that. The mages in the tower were more than capable of killing him. They had the fire power, or the Crowd Control abilities to pin him down, after which he would be dead either way. Still this was a tempting opportunity and Aaron closed his eyes and tried to sense the mana signatures of the people behind the barricade. If there were few people, he might just be able to escape with a few scrapes. It took him a few breaths to calm down and focus on the novel sense impression but once he had activated it, his blood ran cold.

There were only around 10, maximum of 20 people behind the barricade, but that was not the only defense of this barricade. Aaron could sense spells all over the barricade, inert, but full of mana, full of potential. Could feel them on the stairs in front of the barricade, all over, even on the ceiling. They felt exactly like the spell impressions he had felt from the mage with the flying daggers of the high level group. If it was the same person who had given orders that the men spoke he had eavesdropped on then his name was Merlin. An apt name for someone who had created layers upon layers of what Aaron suspected were magical traps to entangle and tie him up with that invisible rope the mage conjured. This entire corridor was thoroughly trapped and if he had taken another few steps he would have ran right into them. If Aaron tried to break through here by force then he would probably trigger those traps instantly, spelling his certain death.

Aaron cursed silently to himself, hesitated for a long moment and then climbed back up the stairs. The risk was too great. He could not say with certainty that he could escape from one of those traps, let alone a dozen overlapping each other. This was not his way back to the Prison, he decided and Aaron suspected that every single way down to the first floor had been barricaded like this. They had a good amount of time to do it after all.

So what were his options now?

He could not stay on the second floor long term and the way down had been blocked. The only way out of this situation was to go up to the third level. Which meant it was time to fight his way through to the bosses on the second floor.

From the conversation he had just eavesdropped on he could assume that the bosses they talked about were regularly farmed by his pursuers to trap him on the second floor. This was to deny him entrance to the third floor. But that also meant they kept killing those bosses and would show him how to kill them if he found a place to hide and observe. There was a distinct possibility that whatever keys he needed to ascend to the third floor would drop there and that he could snatch one from them.

Aaron blinked into the bright sunlight on the second floors desert and looked down at the churned sand and the tracks leading into the center of the desert.

It was time to kill steal some bosses and get out of here.