Any Means Necessary (Selfish OC SI, Multiverse) [In Tower of God]

[bojanx2x]

nice loved the chapter though I had to re-read everything from worm to here to get all caught back up, good job with the chapter and good luck going forward, Pretty much in love with all your works so far.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

51 – Floor 2 End

"As if I'd team up with you, crazy witch!" Anak shouted, wrestling with Androssi. "Who knows if you'll suck my soul out in some ritual when I'm not looking!"

"Stop calling me that, lizard! It was just an act before!" Androssi yelled back as they rolled on the ground.

"You are a witch, with that creepy face of yours, who'd want to be teammates with you and your pet demon?!" Anak retorted.

"And who'd want to be your teammate, ungrateful little brat!"

"If you didn't want to, then why'd you ask?!"

Leesoo walked around the corner on the opposite side of the hall with a surprised look.

"Because I'm trying to be nice! Go by yourself then, see if I care when you get yourself killed!"

"I will! I'll climb the Tower and get back the Green April on my own, I don't need your help!"

"Woah, woah, why are you guys always fighting every time I see you?!" Leesoo asked.

"Ugh!" "Argh!" The two princesses tossed each other away with Anak bumping into Leesoo and sending him sprawling into the ground. "Oof!"

"…" Axion watched Androssi storming back towards him while Anak got up and stormed off in the opposite direction as Leesoo chased her and grabbed her wrist. Anak didn't slow down and just continued to drag him along.

"That idiot can do whatever she wants, I don't care, we'll just climb by ourselves," Androssi said with a huff, turning to see Anak and Leesoo leaving. Then she grabbed Axion's hand and dragged him away too. "Let's go."

"Maybe that's for the best…" Axion said. 'Doesn't seem like that team up can work without Leesoo to moderate Anak's temper. Or maybe she really was upset about our antics during the fight. That's too bad…for her, that is. Just perfect for me.'

O O O

Hwa Ryun took the remains of Ren's sheep costume and turned it over and back. "The test director is an Anima too, so you could ask him about it. Though I think this is useless now. If you take it to the Workshop you might be able to convince them to do something with the materials...though they usually prefer creating new items rather than repairing anything."

"What about this?" Axion took back the costume and then opened Manbarondenna to take out the Shinsoo cannon. "How do I use this? I can't seem to get it to respond to me."

The Guide put her hand over it and ran it through the outer surface all the way to the sharp end opposite the cannon mouth.

"I can unlock and reconfigure this for you, but I'll be busy for a long while, so you'll have to get it from me later, after you go up," she said, after her examination. "I'll send you a message when it's ready."

"That would be great, I'll leave it with you then, thanks."

O O O

At night, Hwa Ryun went to see Rachel and congratulated her on becoming the heroine of the story. Then she asked Rachel why she went to such lengths to see the stars.

"Because I'm…afraid of the 'night'," said Rachel, using the word that was the same as Baam's name.

"Well, okay. Good night," said Hwa Ryun.

Hwa Ryun left her, then spoke to herself with a smile as she walked away in the open air hall. "So now…it's time to meet Baam who lost his star."

A few minutes after she left, another visitor went into Rachel's room.

"The task assigned to me by Headon is complete, now that you've obtained the right to go up to the next Floor," said Axion. "This is the end of our partnership, for now. I assume you heard what I explained to the Regulars during the day about my plans afterward?"

"I did. I don't mind, it's like you said, it's better if I don't have to deal with those types of enemies," said Rachel, opening her eyes, but not turning.

"Well, that was only part of it, that isn't the main reason I'm not climbing with you," said Axion. "That's just the only reason those guys would understand."

"…?" Now Rachel got up and turned to him with a confused look.

"You see, Anak refused to join Androssi and I. So the biggest target is no longer with us. The Zahard Family probably aren't going to do anything to Androssi or me while I'm with her, if Anak isn't with us. In all likelihood, Anak will end up going up with Leesoo…which means she might even be on your team for a while," said Axion. "Though probably not for too long."

"What? What do you mean?" Rachel asked, now looking wary.

"Khun will figure out the truth about you soon—thanks to that annoying bug Lero Ro. Were you awake when he got that doctor to look at your legs?" Axion asked.

"So Lero Ro will tell him that my legs are fine…" said Rachel with a growl. "That's sooner than I thought. If he realizes now…"

"He's probably not going to abandon you right away. He cares too much about all of those other guys' feelings, so my guess is that he's going to pretend that nothing's wrong, then try to separate you from them at some point. To deal with you secretly."

"I see…then, I can live with that," Rachel said, seeming to be in deep thought. "I'll just have to find new teammates before he betrays me."

"I'm telling you this as thanks for helping me with Ren at the end," said Axion. "I told you back on the first test that whether I'd work with you would depend on whether I've found you worthy…well you are certainly worthy of being my ally. But we shouldn't climb together as permanent teammates. It is not a failing of yours…so there is no need to feel like this is a missed opportunity—because it never could have been."

"I never should have expected anything else. I'm never chosen, after all," said Rachel with a bitter tone.

"Is being chosen really better? I certainly wouldn't want to be Baam right now," said Axion.

Rachel fell silent at that.

"Like I said, I don't mind being your ally and cooperating as the need arises. We're actually very similar…out of all the Regulars, I like you the most."

"Don't comfort me with such an obvious lie," said Rachel. "I'm weak and ugly, and I'd have nothing if not for what Headon gave me. There's no reason for you to like me."

"It's not a lie. All the entitled, talented, bastards who were born with great power, background, wealth, and destiny…you hate it too, right? To be frank, it must seem strange coming from me, when I must appear so strong to you. But I would say that I've been through a lot. I think that I earned it…but I don't want to tell you some inspirational story about how I rose from nothing. Because that's not fair either. Who am I to say that I was unlucky, when I was born smarter than most, without deformities or crippling diseases, in a country at peace rather than sending children to die pointlessly in war? When I had opportunities that most others could never dream of, no matter the great cost and difficulty? So it would be hypocritical of me to consider myself one of the unlucky ones."

"Are you trying to say that things could be worse and I should just deal with it?" Rachel asked, still with a little annoyance, but not dismissing the statements outright.

"No. I'm not here to criticize your perspective either. I understand how you feel. I acknowledge this unfair reality and I can acknowledge your efforts. I see the struggles of those even less fortunate than me, and the excesses of those luckier than me. But I'm past caring about all that. All that matters is, I use everything at my disposal to reach my goals and live the way I want, so that I won't ever have to say sorry to myself, whether tomorrow, next year, or on my deathbed."

"…maybe I believe you…but you still can't be on my team?" asked Rachel

"For now, we each have different paths to follow. But I think we will certainly have a reason to team up again later. So until then…take care of yourself," said Axion.

"Wait. Can you at least tell me why? What is it that you wanted in a permanent teammate?" Rachel asked. "Why are you going with Androssi? Is it just because she's the strongest? Because she's pretty? Or because she's a princess?"

"Strength matters, of course, but that isn't the most important thing. Beauty? Good to have, because my team shouldn't look ugly, but it's hardly something I specifically look for. And despite what you may think, you don't look bad at all. As for her status, convenient, but I wouldn't have had to rely on that at all if I simply avoided the fight with Ren and didn't reveal my true power. Heck, associating with her is what made me into a target in the first place, so it obviously has its drawbacks too."

"Then…why?"

"…you know my goal isn't to reach the top of the Tower, right? I don't really care much about it. So the most important quality to me is…someone that can be convinced that she wants the same things I do, so that we can do whatever we want on the way up without worrying too much about it. Your potential isn't bad, but you just aren't suitable because you have a grand purpose that you won't be deterred from which I don't share, and that's not a failing at all, to have a great will like that is something to be proud of. There are other things I want to do though."

"So I should find people who are even more desperate than I am to get to the top…and willing to bring me up there," said Rachel.

"That's right, and I think you'll do a good job of it on your own."

"But it's not like I would stop you from doing other things either."

"Actually, I won't climb with Androssi forever either. But you shouldn't even need me for a long while. You'll have a whole team taking you up now, right? And the next tests shouldn't be nearly as difficult as the tests on these two floors we just went through. But it's easier for me to move if I don't have to deal with the rest of the team looking over my shoulder. You get what I mean, right?"

"Fine. I get it. I'll have to get them off my back as well eventually," said Rachel.

"Exactly. So it's goodbye for now, Rachel," Axion said with a wave before leaving. "Let's keep in touch. Call for me when you're ready to stand again."

"Goodbye, Axion…"

Rachel turned back into her bed, but then she noticed some things on her pillow that had been behind her. There was a note and a necklace with a hanging circle with a complex diagram carved into it, made of a multicolored crystal base. A black vertical line in the center of the diagram prominently stuck out. She could feel that it wasn't an ordinary object…there was an aura of something in it.

She read the note carefully, then smiled before putting them away and finally shutting her eyes to get some sleep.

O O O

A couple of days later, the Regulars gathered at the teleportation platform, and Yu Hansung gave them special rings to commemorate their graduation. But when the light from teleportation was over, it turned out that not everyone was sent up…

The director sat in his office with Axion, enjoying coffee as usual. Axion played with the instant coffee, practicing his new Shinsoo manipulations skills.

"I wouldn't advise you to use this even if there was a way to restore it, Mr. Axion. The Shinsoo in a Bowl has to be continuously recirculated and a flow periodically refreshed to keep the Shinheuh under control. The larger the Bowl, the more difficult this is for the Anima, in addition to other regular maintenance, like feeding and waste disposal," said Yu Hansung, referring to the sheep costume between them on the table. "Not everyone has the talent to be an Anima either. If I were you I wouldn't invest a lot of time or resources into it unless I was completely sure of my talent…and even then you probably wouldn't see much real use for it for a long time, compared to your other abilities. But if you insist, you can just buy Bowls from a Workshop branch."

"I see. Well at least I know I shouldn't waste too much time with this, then. Thank you for the advice, test director," said Axion. "By the way, about the Shinheuh corpses…"

"Oh yes…I have reviewed and completed the necessary procedures…since Ren was an intruder in the test, his Shinheuh weren't considered to be the Floor's property…which means the corpses of all the ones you killed could be considered your property, and most of them aren't common on this Floor. After deducting the bill for clean up operations, transport, and other expenses to sell them, I can transfer about three million points to your account," said Yu Hansung, materializing his Pocket.

Axion materialized his own and the transaction was quickly completely. There had been no good way to store any of it and no obvious short-term use for them either besides consuming a very small amount to restore his Armoriont, so getting anything out of it was a good deal to him.

"Ro, are you nuts?! Think about this!" Quant's voice came from a distance on the other side of the door.

"Thanks," said Axion. He took out a nondescript bag from his Pocket and handed it over to the test director. "Please take this. It's a rare coffee I've encountered in my previous travels, called Kopi Luwak, naturally processed by a creature that probably can't be found in the Tower. I'm not much of a coffee drinker so I don't know how it compares to what's here, but maybe you'll like it."

"Ro!! Stop!!" Quant's shout reached them again, and was closer this time.

"Oh! There's no need to thank me…," said Yu Hansung but he quickly grabbed the bag and smelled it with a happy expression. "…but I'll gladly—"

The Shinsoo currents shifted, then Lero Ro opened the door forcefully and strode in while Quant charged after him.

"—accept this wonderful gift," Yu Hansung continued, his voice suddenly much louder, while putting the bag away.

"…" Lero Ro looked unimpressed at the director who smiled at him. "Taking bribes now, director?"

"The test is already over, Mr. Lero Ro. Mr. Axion is just showing his appreciation for the time we've spent together and the many lessons learned as part of our program. Isn't that right?"

"Of course. I originally wanted to thank Yuga for accepting me into his class, but unfortunately he turned out to be a different sort of character, so I decided to give my gift to the Director instead," said Axion.

"Now why are you barging in here, Mr. Lero Ro?" Yu Hansung asked.

Ro threw a badge down in front of the director. "I quit working on this Floor. Thank you for teaching me so much, Yu Hansung," he said with a cold expression, then turned abruptly and walked away.

"Ro!" Quant shouted, then turned to Yu Hansung. "Are you really going to just let him go like that? There's no Ranker like Ro! You won't find another like him!"

"Hmm…oh, that's right!" Yu Hansung said, nodding.

"Yes, go after him!" Quant demanded.

Yu Hansung reached out and grabbed Quant's own administrator badge. "Since Ro quit, shouldn't you quit too? Aren't you two partners? Like a hamburger and coke. I think it's cruel to break you two apart."

Quant blanched. "W-what?! No…you're firing me?!"

"Go on, please continue your loving relationship," said Yu Hansung with a shooing motion.

"Nooo!! And what about him, why's this guy still here?! Weren't all the Regulars sent up already?" Quant asked, pointing to Axion.

"Oh, we were just about to have an early job interview, for when he becomes a Ranker. Since the attrition rate seems high lately..."

"Y-you can't be serious…! Bastard, it wasn't enough to humiliate me, you want to take my job too?!" Quant shouted. "Damn it! Wait for me Ro!!" Then he rushed out the door.

"Hahaha…Quant is quite a comedic character, isn't he?" Yu Hansung asked after waving the door shut with Shinsoo.

"He sure is. So he's the only one that saw my Irregular status?" Axion asked.

The director nodded. "I think that you are as safe as can be, for now, but I expect there will be others who might have suspicions eventually."

"It can't be hidden forever, but this much is already very helpful. Thank you."

"Now then…about the other thing you asked me…" Yu Hansung said.

"You actually looked into it?" Axion asked.

"Well, it wasn't that much trouble. I don't know how much this will help you though. It's very difficult to purchase, but money isn't the problem," said Yu Hansung. "The problem is that it's just too rare and sought after, and the Yeon family has a monopoly on it, so it isn't normally sold publicly, especially the actual flower with the jewels intact. The jewels and jewelry made from it are sold in private exhibitions, even Rankers can't get access unless they have an invitation from a Yeon family member. I couldn't find out if they ever sell the actual flower, except maybe by request from special VIPs."

"So buying it is probably not possible," said Axion.

"Your best chance of getting the flower would be to go to the source. But that would be extremely dangerous. The Zygaena Shinheuh can be found on the 21st Floor, and the flower supposedly grows somewhere in its body. But that is obviously well protected by the Yeon Family, and it would be out of the normal Regular areas, so it would be very risky for you," said Yu Hansung.

"The 21st Floor huh…" Axion murmured. "Damn, that's going to be a difficult quest."

"I was quite surprised when you asked me, Mr. Axion. Why are you interested in it?" Yu Hansung asked. "And why come to me rather than our wonderful Guide?"

"It was actually a special quest from Hwa Ryun. I got the feeling that I'm supposed to solve this without her guidance, or it would defeat the purpose."

"Is that so? In that case, good luck, Mr. Axion! A quest from our mysterious Guide must surely have a reasonable solution. She would not send you on a path you cannot walk," said Yu Hansung.

"I'm not so sure about that…this might very well be a test to see if I can do the impossible," said Axion.

"I would hardly consider it impossible. You may have to wait a very long time, perhaps even long after you become a Ranker, but if you save up money and make the right connections with a Yeon family member, there would be a path to getting it eventually," said Yu Hansung.

"No, she didn't say directly, but there's definitely a time limit to this, so I can't wait that long," said Axion, shaking his head. "But thanks for your help. I'll stop taking up more of your time, then, director. I shall meet you at the teleport platform, then?"

"Yes, I'll be with you shortly."

O O O

Just outside the teleportation platform, a figure in a hooded brown cloak was joined by another.

"So, any luck?" Androssi's voice came from the waiting cloaked figure.

A shift in the Shinsoo currents concealed their conversation.

"Yes, I've confirmed it. Baam's alive…Hwa Ryun is taking him to their base as we speak," said Axion. "The test director has everything covered."

There was a sigh of relief. "That's…good, I guess."

"Lero Ro quit and is going to seek Wolhaiksong. Quant was fired and is going after him. The director will get rid of the other two instructors eventually or otherwise recruit them into FUG. Everyone that met Baam now believes he's dead and won't be given a chance to find out otherwise…until Baam is strong enough to stand on his own and choose his own path…" said Axion.

"FUG…can they be trusted? A dangerous organization like that…will Baam really be alright with them?" Androssi asked.

"They'll keep him alive and help him grow strong at least, though their methods might be quite harsh. I wouldn't trust most of them, but there are some people in there that aren't too bad," said Axion. "If all goes well, we'll hear about him again years down the line...as the one who can make their dreams come true."

"It's terrible…someone like him shouldn't be forced to carry that burden. But maybe…this is what he needs to finally understand what kind of place the Tower is," said Androssi.

The two of them began to walk inside the dome structure that was the teleportation platform.

"What about you? Are you really alright with this, knowing the truth? This must not be easy for you."

"You mean the fact that we've become complicit in the schemes of an organization whose goal is to kill my father? Or the fact that we're just going to let them use the rest of Baam's friends as hostages to force him to climb?" Androssi.

Axion shrugged. "Everything."

In the far distance they saw Yu Hansung meandering along, approaching the open gate to the dome slowly with a smile.

Androssi withdrew the 'commemorative' tracking ring from her Pocket and slipped it onto her forefinger.

"We are all the same…except when we're not. I'm a simple girl…I like nice things and delicious meals. But lately I've become a little more greedy, so I've decided to take a taxi to the best restaurant in town, whose seats have been all reserved just for me, where I can order the biggest and most expensive lobsters, down by the seaside where I can see the little fish swim."

The Shinsoo soundproofing bubble was released, then Yu Hansung finally made his way into the dome.

"It's time to say goodbye, Mr. Axion, Mr. Androssi. I hope your journey will be full of blessings," he said with a bow.

The light engulfed the cloaked duo and sent them up.

O O O

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

52 – Cloaked Calamity

Floor 3

Leesoo and Hatsu met at the lobby of the hotel the team was staying at.

"Just us again, Leesoo?" asked Hatsu.

"Nobody else wants to think about taking the next test yet," said Leesoo. "Khun is taking care of Rachel. Sunwoo and Chunhwa went off on their own. I don't know where Rak or Anak are. Parakewl is probably trying to scam somebody right now."

"Figures," said Hatsu. "Aside from Khun, it's up to us to be the responsible ones."

"Hey guys," said Aleksai the Spearbearer, still wearing his red wing attachment.

"Oh, you're joining us too? That's great," said Leesoo. "Come on then, let's head out."

The three of them moved through the streets together.

"I wonder where Axion and Androssi went. Strange that they didn't arrive with us at the landing platform," said Leesoo.

"Maybe they asked to be sent somewhere else," said Hatsu.

Eventually they got to the building that was supposed to be the test information center.

They went in and walked through the crowded hall towards what seemed like an information desk, occasionally looking at the big bulletins and scoping out the other Regulars.

"They all look excited," said Aleksai.

"Everyone must be eager to try the next test. Is there one coming up soon?" Hatsu remarked.

When they'd been dropped off at the landing platform, the information drones had told them that tests between the 3rd and 19th Floor would only take place at scheduled times, and there'd be a cost to take them each time. But unlike the 2nd Floor tests, from now on, they could fail and try again, and they only needed to continue taking the tests at least once a year to avoid losing their Regular status.

While they waited in line at the info kiosk's platform, they saw a little further away there seemed to be a large sectioned off area to their left. The floor was slanted going down and reached an indented arena-like space lower down, which they could see from here. A lot of other Regulars seemed to be watching from the higher ground as well, while some approached one of the machines at the edge and paid for tickets before jumping down.

At the far end of that section were three registration desks behind a metal wall with one gate for each desk and a thick yellow line that demarcated the gate. There was a large sign labeling the whole area "Team Formation Zone".

Of the three gates, one was labeled "Full Team Registration – Minimum 8 Members Recommended", a second one was "Partial Team Registration – 2-7 Members" and a third one said "Individual Registration". Each gate had a light to show whether it was busy or open to accept new registrants.

A line of Regulars had formed at each gate.

Once Leesoo's group got to the front of the info kiosk and picked up an info package, the clerk helpfully explained to them that there was a test that was accepting registration now and beginning within a couple of days, but the registration itself was technically already considered the first part of the test.

"Regulars have to decide which stream they want to participate in. Those with fully assembled teams can go straight to team registration. Those without full teams can try to find additional members in the Team Formation zone, or register directly via partial team or individual streams to be assigned by the test procedure, which may or may not involve different tests."

"Why don't people just build their teams long before the team registration, while they're preparing on the Floor?" Leesoo asked.

"That's the best and recommended way to do it. A larger team can enter the test that way, and there's no limit to the number of members on a team. But the test doesn't always need a large team and the minimum recommended isn't always the same. And sometimes the individual or smaller teams have easier tests separate from the main one, instead of getting assigned to a larger team."

"So it's a bit of a gamble…" said Leesoo. "And because there isn't a limit to the number of members on a team, there could be some very tough competition to enter that stream."

"That's correct. Any other questions I can help you with?" The clerk asked.

"Umm…it looks like some of those guys over there are fighting and stopping others from registering. How come the administrators aren't stopping it? Is that allowed?" Aleksai asked.

Leesoo looked where he was pointing, and saw that indeed, some fights had broken out, and there was a team that seemed to be trying to stop other people from getting into the Partial Registration and Individual Registration streams.

The clerk smiled. "Yes, to help the Regulars find good teammates, they are permitted to demonstrate their skills inside the Team Formation Zone. There are no rules against violence as soon as a Regular steps inside the zone to attempt registration."

There was a loud scream as somebody's arm was sliced off and fell to the ground moaning.

A number of other Regulars that were moving towards the Team Formation Zone hesitated as they saw the sudden violence.

Leesoo's group moved closer to watch the proceedings together with the rest of the spectating Regulars, carefully staying away from the ledge.

Suddenly a very large group of Regulars came through the hall entrance, all wearing an armband or bandana as if they were some street gang.

"That's got to be like fifty guys…? Are they serious?" Hatsu asked. "Is that supposed to be one team?"

Another Regular, a bald man with a frown beside them spoke up. "Yeah, that's the Musha gang. They've been around for a long time. Their leaders are pretty strong and they operate a 'test carrying' service for anyone that pays or is willing to join them for a while. The rumor is that they're part of a larger organization from higher floors that's running a racket to collect favors and big debts from Regulars. The leaders get swapped out periodically and are paid well while they're here."

"You mean…they help their gang members and clients get through the test, then deliberately fail the test at the end to stay back and do it again?" Leesoo asked.

"Yes, exactly. You can give up and fail on these tests at any time, and try as many times as you want…which sounds nice until you realize that these bastards use it to keep strong guys around and make everyone else fail unless they group up with them. That's why some people are willing to risk the partial and individual streams," the Regular explained. "For a chance at a different test."

The mood in the hall had shifted once the gang had arrived.

They moved through like they owned the place and some of the smaller groups and individuals made a rush for the registration desks that were behind tight gates, the thick yellow line drawn on the ground represented a safe zone beyond which violence wasn't allowed.

But oddly, the team that was blocking the way to the registration hadn't moved.

"Hey, those guys…they might be in cahoots with this gang," said Leesoo with a look of realization.

"You saw through it pretty fast," the man beside them said.

"Move aside if you're not taking the test!" A Musha gang member yelled and roughly shoved people aside. Then they started to descend onto the Team Formation Zone and moved to the Full Team Registration gate. There was a tense standoff between them and the rest of the teams there, but they didn't start a fight.

Eventually the fights over at the Partial Team and Individual streams stopped as the gates continued to be blocked off. The gate lights were green, showing that they were open to take registrants, but nobody was able to get through.

The ones who hadn't been too injured started to group up warily.

Regulars still at the ledge talked and whispered, trying to decide how they should proceed. Some left entirely, deciding to take their chances another day.

Others tried to form groups first, before heading down to the Team Formation Zone.

"Should we keep watching?" Hatsu asked. "Even if we don't join this test, it would be useful to know what happens here."

"Yeah. Let's do that," said Leesoo.

The Musha gang members that were gathered around the ticket machines thinned out and eventually most of them went down. Some stayed back at the ledge and the info kiosk and went around soliciting the Regulars that were still hesitating or loitering there, handing out cards.

"Hey stop ignoring me, newbies!" Another Musha gang member with spiked hair and nose piercings followed after a couple of brown cloaked figures that had entered the hall at some point and were walking straight towards the ticket machines.

"I said, stop ignoring me! And what's with those cloaks, trying to act all mysterious?!"

The loud shouting got everyone's attention, even those below the ledge.

The figures continued to ignore him and then went to the ticket machines.

"Grr…you're lucky this is a combat-free zone, or I'd show you your place, newbies! I saw you two at the landing platform…you just passed the Floor of Tests and you think you can just breeze through the next test without a second thought?"

"Shut up, you're annoying," said the shorter figure, revealing it to be a haughty female voice. "Go bother someone else, we don't need whatever you're advertising."

"What's this? A couple of newbies are trying to take the test right away? Idiots. Leave them, Gascone, let them find out the hard way why that's a bad idea," said another Musha gang member, holding the angry spiked hair one back.

"Maybe because this is the first floor after the Floor of Tests, arrogant types like them aren't that unusual…but they'll learn that as you go up, the pond gets bigger and so do the fish in it. Unless they're from one of the Ten Great Families, but in that case they ought to have their family emblems," said the bald man who'd explained things to Leesoo's group earlier and was still with them. "Whoever these guys are, wearing cloaks like that, they're probably in over their heads and will make the wrong enemies soon enough."

Leesoo and Hatsu looked at each other meaningfully.

"Did that voice sound a little familiar to you…?" Hatsu asked in a whisper.

Leesoo responded with a nod. "Those cloaks too…geez, where have we seen those before?"

"You guys know them? Were you from the same Test Floor cohort?" the bald man asked.

"They just reminded us of some people we used to know," said Leesoo.

"What the fuck? Are they going to the Full Team Registration? Do they not understand or are they just stupid?" Another voice asked from the spectating crowd at the ledge.

"They really are…they're going to die, aren't they?"

The two figures marched forward, and by now much of the hall was watching their every move.

"Hey…what the fuck do you two think you're doing? You think this test is a joke or what?" One of the Musha members that were down in the Team Formation Zone demanded as they approached. "This is the Full Team Registration line…minimum eight members. Can't you read?"

"What's with all these dumbasses trying to give us advice?" the female voice asked loudly. "Buzz off, loser. It clearly says 'recommended'. That means it's not a requirement."

"Hey girl, I don't know where your confidence comes from, but think carefully…there isn't a maximum either. That's why those guys can bring fifty teammates in here," said a man with slicked back hair as his group approached after forming up from the scattered Partial Team and Individuals. "Maybe you should consider joining us, if you don't want to be on a team with those scumbags. We're the ones that didn't have a full team either and just formed one."

"Thanks, but I think you're misunderstanding something. The two of us are a full team. So good luck, and try not to get in our way," said the hooded girl.

The other figure's voice joined in, revealing it to be a man. "If the test doesn't assign us as enemies, then we'll leave you be. Who knows, maybe you'll get a lucky break and can pass easily after we crush the rest of these annoyances."

"What did you just say? The two of you, crushing all of us here? I think it's time we taught these fuckers a lesson, what do you say boss, can I take them out right here, right now?" Gascone jumped down and walked over.

"Go ahead, show them the power of the Musha clan," said a calm voice, from a man in a suit whose armband had a gold highlight.

"Really? You want to start something right here, out in the open?" The cloaked man's voice asked.

Several other Musha gang members formed a circle to surround them, while the slicked hair guy backed away with his group, shaking his head.

"You fucking dimwits. Didn't you even listen to the rules before coming down here? This is a combat allowed zone! The test administrators aren't gonna stop us even if we kill you!" Gascone said with a grin before charging forward, needle flashing with a burst of Shinsoo.

'All that big talk for nothing!' Gascone thought as he stabbed deeply into the cloaked figure's chest, the needle coming out the other side.

"Pathetic, you couldn't even react to my speed?" Gascone asked, smirking widely.

"How sad…" the bald man with Hatsu and Ship shook his head. "Gascone is one of the fastest members of the gang, having mastered the Shinsoo jump. They pissed the wrong person off."

"Look again, there's no blood on the needle edge," said Hatsu.

"Huh?" The bald man blurted with a surprised expression.

"Huh?" Gascone realized that something was wrong when he couldn't pull out his needle.

Suddenly, the needle shattered into pieces. "Wh-what?!" Gascone jumped back.

"He must have let it go through the gap between his chest and arm," said Hatsu.

"Listen…I'm not a violent person and I don't enjoy killing weaklings, especially when the test hasn't even started. Why don't you settle down and wait quietly to register with the rest of your team?" said the male figure.

"It must be a trick of some kind…you bastard, I'll show you!" Gascone pulled out two more needles and charged again.

This time the cloaked figure blurred and caught his neck, raising him into the air single-handedly, revealing a dark crystalline armor covering his arm with red and purple highlights like veins.

"This is your second chance. Drop your weapons, and quietly register," the male voice. "I won't give you a third."

Gascone choked but struggled in the air, refusing to put down his needles. "A-argh!"

"Get him," the boss ordered.

Five gang members charged in.

Before they took two steps, the shorter female figure disappeared from the vision of most of the Regulars there, and then there were screams. All of the charging Musha gang members fell down with bloody spurts.

"Sorry, my partner might not be a violent person…but I certainly am!" The female figure standing beside the larger one again flicked the blood off her needle, her hood having fallen off to reveal a girl with hair tied up by a hair pin made of a red and purple crystal and wearing a masquerade mask made of the same crystalline material, but mostly silver in color with red edges and glossy purple pin pricks splattered over the silver parts.

"She's pretty…" A voice among the spectating crowd commented.

"But dangerous…"

"Who is she?" Another asked. "That was so fast!"

Gascone's face began to turn fearful and his needles dropped to the ground.

The figure holding him tossed him towards the apparent boss of the gang, sending him crashing through a couple of other members before it was intercepted by a lieutenant with a silver highlight on his armband.

"How dare you disrespect the boss like this?!" The lieutenant shouted.

"Hm? Didn't I say to wait quietly?" The larger figure asked, tilting its head.

By now the Full Team Registration gate's light was green, but everyone was frozen watching the fight.

"Hey, Chroma, it looks like the gate's open but these idiots aren't even going in…?" the girl remarked. "How about we just kill them all for wasting our time?"

"Three is the magic number, my summoner. So we should give them a third chance," said the figure called Chroma.

"Fine, fine. One more chance then," said the girl.

"Get them damn it, get them!!" The lieutenant shouted and then charged in. The entire gang started moving towards the two cloaked Regulars.

"Three's the magic number, time to die!" The girl said as the Regulars closed in on them.

To most of the Regular present, it looked like the two of them just disappeared.

And then the screaming started. Blood spurted onto the faces of nearby Regulars who hadn't been able to react.

In less than twenty seconds, almost the entire Musha gang was lying down on the ground.

The gate light flashed green with a beeping sound reminding them that it was open, but the Regulars were all frozen in shock.

The two of them reappeared in the center of the slaughter, their own cloaks now covered in blood, but now both their hoods had fallen off, revealing that the male figure was wearing an open face helmet of the same black color as his armor but with the red and purple lining its edges and forming complex designs, with two curved horns at the top. His eyes were covered by an opaque visor that had a holographic gradient to it.

The boss was the only one left standing, and he unconsciously backed away a step.

The boss looked around at his fallen members, then back to the clocked duo. "You bastards…don't—don't get cocky!" He pulled out a large gun of some sort from inside his suit.

"Boss! We'll protect you!" The two teams that were blocking off the gates to the Partial Team and Individual Registration gates rushed over.

Another ten newly revealed members got into a clear formation around the boss of the Musha gang.

Two sets of two Lighthouse Cubes went up as well. These teams were clearly better than the other ones.

"We're the real elite of the Musha gang…you're going to regret killing our people!" A girl with a long spear shouted.

"They just don't know how to give up…" The girl pushed aside a strand of stray hair with her left hand.

"Hatsu, the ring on her hand…" said Leesoo, whispering.

"Yeah I see it too. If there was any doubt before…" said Hatsu, also whispering.

"Now I'm really glad we weren't with them in the first test," whispered Aleksai.

"Oh yeah, they did something similar back then too, didn't they?" Leesoo muttered.

"So you do know them! Who are these monsters? What Family are they from?" the bald man asked, interrupting them.

Several other Regulars turned their way, curious.

"Nope, we don't know them at all!" Leesoo said quickly. "We have absolutely nothing to do with them."

"You were just talking as if you did!" The bald one exclaimed.

"Yeah, you must know something, tell us!" Another Regular beside them demanded.

"Stop, you idiots, are you trying to get killed?! Don't be so loud!" Leesoo asked with an angry whisper.

"What's going on over there? Do we have some admirers?" The girl asked, turning to them. "Oh, it's just you three. Haha…keep quiet and don't tell them who we are, okay? Don't spoil our fun!"

The figure who was obviously Androssi winked and put a finger to her mouth.

"Come on you two, isn't this a bit much…? Just let them go, there's no need to bully people so much weaker than you. Or are you guys planning to have a massacre for each Floor on your way up?" Hatsu said, his voice carrying through the hall clearly.

"Relax, Hatsu, most of them shouldn't be dead," said the armored man who Hatsu knew was Axion. "And this is self-defense. If a swarm of fleas keeps trying to bite you, shouldn't you swat them away?"

"F-fleas?! You arrogant bastards!" Angry cries could be heard from most of the Musha members remaining as they seemed ready to attack again.

"Stop it, you don't understand what you're facing! If you don't provoke them anymore, you might still be able to leave alive!" Hatsu shouted, trying to warn the restless gang members.

"Shut up kid, whatever trauma you have from the last Floor, leave it there! This is the third Floor, we've all passed the Floor of Tests, and some of us could've passed this Floor long ago!" Another of the Musha gang members with spiked gauntlets shouted back.

"You fools! None of you stand a chance against them! You're just throwing your lives away!" Hatsu shouted. "Even if every Regular on this entire Floor attacked at once it would still be suicide!"

"You must be a part of their team, aren't you? Trying to scare us? No one is that strong!" The boss roared.

"Forget it, Hatsu, they won't understand until they see it with their own eyes…" said Leesoo. "I was never able to really understand it either until I saw them fighting that Ranker."

"…fighting a Ranker? What kind of bullshit are you spouting?! There's no way that's possible!" A chorus of jeers and denials went through the hall.

"Damn it, they won't listen…" Hatsu said through gritted teeth, then tried one last time. "They killed their entire cohort in the first test! And if you don't back off you'll just end up like the rest of your friends down there!"

"If they killed their entire cohort, how the hell are you bloody alive then? It's obvious that this is a scam! You're definitely on the same team!"

"Poor Hatsu, he's trying so hard to warn you all and you think it's a scam? Hahahaha!!!" Androssi laughed. "It's just too funny…if only you knew…hahaha…"

"What's so funny…?" The girl with the spear asked.

Axion answered her. "In all likelihood, Hatsu is one of the strongest Regulars in this room right now aside from the two of us. So I suggest you take his advice, because he's telling the truth. No other team survived our first test, so we had to be placed with another cohort for the position lessons. That's how those three know us."

"Enough of this bullshit!" The boss roared and fired his gun right at Axion.

A beam of Shinsoo as thick as a fist erupted from the gun.

Axion raised his armored hand to it, and the beam dispersed harmlessly against his palm.

"…Th-that's impossible! This is an 8E Grade item!"

Hatsu facepalmed, remembering the way Anak had been shocked to see her A-Rank Ignition had been blocked by Axion. Axion used his sword instead of just a hand back then, and Hatsu knew that the item Ranks didn't matter if the user wasn't strong enough to use them properly, but still…getting shocked about a low tier E Grade weapon getting blocked seemed just a bit sad to him.

Below the 20th Floor, Regulars were F-Rank, and except for the Pocket they got in the beginning, the Items they could get within these Floors were usually within the same F Rank. E-Grade items were generally found above the 20th Floor, but Hatsu had seen so many higher Grade items on the last Floor that E Grade seemed terribly underwhelming.

"It must be because of his armor…" said one of the members holding a Lighthouse. "But armor is a crutch that becomes useless on higher floors as Shinsoo density increases, because it doesn't have Shinsoo resistance like the body, making it impossible to move around."

"How do we fight it?" Asked the girl with the spear.

"The armor must have weak points, hidden by his cloak right now! And fortunately, I also learned a special Lighthouse skill to increase Shinsoo density! I'll slow him down so that we can find his weak point!" That Lightbearer took out a round device, pressed a button on it, then attached it to his Lighthouse.

"You're the best Wuoon!" The Spearbearer girl's voice was joined by a bunch of other cheers from their teammates.

Two of his Cubes went to the other set of two Cubes. "Link up with me, Rona!"

"Got it!" The other Lightbearer's Cubes attached to his, before separating again and swirling together as if orbiting. The two paired Cubes went forth and began generating a field of denser Shinsoo that covered half the Team Formation Zone.

Other Regulars nearby that were caught in it found the air feeling thick and much harder to move their limbs.

"You're done for!" The Lightbearer named Wuoon said with a smirk. "I'm a member of the Riorie Lorie family, and we have Tu Perie blood in our ancestry, the best Lighthouse users in the Tower!"

"A-amazing!"

"A Branch of the Ten Great Families here?!"

There were many shouts of awe and surprise from other Regulars. Wuoon looked smug.

"I've never heard of you," Androssi said flatly. "Are you really bragging about being some bastard line that might have the barest Tu Perie blood from like twenty generations ago that might not even be real?"

"W-what?! H-how dare you!"

"Listen, on the last floor, there was a crippled no-name girl with zero training in Shinsoo that became a better Lighthouse user than you after learning for just a month. You can only handle two cubes and you think you're hot stuff?" Androssi said, referring to Rachel. "There's no way you have any real Tu Perie blood."

"A crippled no-name girl?! You…you…!" Wuoon's face looked like he was about to pop some blood vessels.

"She's kinda right…was everyone in our cohort actually amazing?" Leesoo asked.

"Yeah," said Hatsu. "Remember that redhead I fought in the Crown game? She was so strong, but still failed the Position Test because Laure and Baam's talent were too ridiculous and there were only two spots."

"That's right, Laure's from the Phonesekal family, an actual main branch of Eurasia," said Leesoo.

"And then there's Aguero Agnis, a direct son of the main Khun line," said Hatsu.

"And our own princess…good thing she isn't here right now," said Leesoo. "Or we'd be dragged into a fight with everyone as well."

"Not to mention all the Ignition Weapons. Even Rankers can't get their hands on those easily yet there were four in our tiny group," said Hatsu.

"…what the hell kind of group did you people come up with?!" The bald man asked with shock, but this time he was ignored.

"I feel inadequate in front of everyone…" said Aleksai.

"So do I, Aleksai, so do I," Leesoo said with a sigh.

"It can't be helped. Those two are just in a different league entirely, making even geniuses and monsters look pathetic in comparison. Even I feel inadequate," said Hatsu. "But you guys aren't weak at all, we just have to keep perspective."

"Talk is cheap! Insult me all you want, but let's see how you actually do against my Shinsoo field!" Wuoon shouted.

"Let's go!" "Yeah!" "Attack!"

The previously undercover Musha team charged, spears firing first while their Fishermen moved in.

Axion and Androssi swatted away the spears like nothing, then burst forward with no discernible drop in speed and took down the incoming Fishermen with one strike each.

"No-no way! But my Shinsoo field! How?!" Wuoon shouted before he took a hit himself and was sent flying and didn't get back up.

Soon it was just the boss standing there again. 'Damn, I can't show my face to the higher ups if it ends like this! I have to use it!'

"Don't look down on me…! I was chosen to be the leader of the Musha gang because I'm the strongest on this Floor!"

He put away his gun and materialized his Arms Inventory, before grabbing a long polearm.

Then he suddenly had a pill in his other hand and ate it, before his suit burst into pieces as his muscles bulged out.

He got into a ready stance with the polearm, then charged forward.

But he swung before he reached Axion, and the ball tip of the polearm burst out, revealing it to be a Compression Weapon, a chained spiked mace that swept towards Axion!

To Hatsu's eyes, the boss seemed a bit strong compared to most of the enemies he'd faced during the survival test, and even some of the physically weaker members of his current team, but his movements were just so slow and unrefined. He was sure that he could defeat this man, and if Hatsu could, what danger did he pose to the likes of Axion and Androssi?

Axion slipped underneath the flying mace head then grabbed the chain with one hand, causing the mace to pivot back around.

The boss narrowly avoided hitting himself as the chain retracted towards the shaft and he spun the shaft quickly to tie Axion's arm with the chain.

Axion was caught.

Then Axion pulled the chain and the polearm, dragging the boss's whole body towards himself.

'This strength…is he still stronger than me?!' The boss was shocked, but had no time to think on it further as Axion's other hand pushed an open palm towards his chest.

A split second after it landed, there was an explosion of blood and flesh.

Axion retracted his hand and let the man fall to the ground.

Hatsu stared as his theory from over a month ago was proven true. Axion's technique that allowed him to shatter Rak's spear during the Crown game, and probably the needle that the Musha member stabbed into him too—when used directly on a living body, a single touch could kill somebody.

Axion observed the polearm in his hand, then moved it inside his cloak where it just disappeared, probably into an inventory of some kind.

The cloaked duo walked towards the gate, unruffled. The other Regular teams gave them a wide berth as they approached.

"Who…who a-are you…?" The boss asked, barely lifting his head from the ground.

"Oh, you were still alive?" Androssi asked, turning to look at him for a bit. "Well, if you're just dying to know, I guess I could tell you. I'm…"

She lifted her hood back up to cover her head in shadow, and Axion did the same.

"…Andora, the Witch of Calamity. And he's Chromatic, my Demon Knight of Calamity!"

After the declaration, they walked straight to the Full Team Registration gate.

After they were processed and went through the next door, the green light lit up again, signifying that the desk was open.

But still, nobody approached it. Instead, as the door closed, the other Regulars present seemed to remember to breathe, whispers and murmurs covering the hall.

Those who were left and still able to move in the Team Formation Zone began to move to the Partial Team and Individual registration gates, splitting up their teams as if trying to avoid the disaster that just passed by.

The few remaining members of Musha that hadn't gone down to the Team Formation Zone finally went down to check if any of their downed members were still alive.

Leesoo, Hatsu, and Aleksai left the hall as well, heading back towards the hotel.

"You all agree…we definitely shouldn't join the test this round, right?" Leesoo asked.

"Agreed," said Hatsu with a nod.

"No complaints from me," said Aleksai.

"Yeah…we're going to have to work hard to catch up to them," said Leesoo. "Anak won't be happy about this, but it's probably a good thing that they're taking the spotlight away from us with their antics."

"They're hiding their own identities as well," said Hatsu. "Andora and Chromatic…"

"I think they're just messing around with that. Their disguises seemed more like cosmetic props than actually concealing their identities from anyone who already knows them," said Leesoo.

"Maybe you're right, and this is all just a game to them," said Hatsu.

"Must be nice to be that strong, treating it all like a game…" Leesoo said with a sigh. "The pond has gotten a bit bigger, but in front of true sharks from the ocean, everyone around them still looks like small fish…"

O O O

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

53 – Who We Are

[Interlude]

Amelia applied her power to the Simurgh flesh again. It warped, bent, thinned, reshaped in many ways, but that was all she could do with it.

She let out a growl of frustration. It had become a recurring problem with her power. Biology that she could "control" but couldn't actually do most of the things she normally could. Possibly because there were parts her power couldn't perceive or didn't have access to. All the actually important and useful parts she was supposed to study. Just like certain aspects of Kaleidus' body. The magical blood. Actual dragon flesh. Griffons. The White Steel Eel. The list went on.

Sure, she could clone facsimiles of the original, make a creature that had all the physical features…but it just didn't have any of the magic. Her cloned dragon couldn't even breathe fire. Or, in the case of the Simurgh flesh, she couldn't even clone or grow it beyond the mass that was there to begin with.

Then she went over her notes on the Armoriont and Bionanite Swarm again too, hoping to find something, anything, that she'd missed, that she could do to improve them.

But after a few hours, she was again left frustrated with the lack of progress. Anything that she thought of would just interfere with something else. There were pretty hard limits on what could be done with biology without powers of its own or any technology added in, and the Armoriont plus the Swarm was the most complex thing she'd ever created, beyond any of the other creatures she'd made for Taylor.

There were some things that were technically more advanced, like the relay bugs, but those weren't actually unpowered biology. She knew that when she made them, she was actually modifying them to interact with Taylor's power specifically. If she hadn't been instructed by Kaleidus to cleanly separate the shard powers from the biology, she might never have even noticed that she was doing that at all.

But it was true, her power could modify other powers, even create things that interfered with powers or had powers of its own. It wasn't like she could just directly create a new power, but there were ways in which her power just automatically added in a bunch of power-modified features when she was trying to work with someone else's power. It was like…biotinkertech.

So she probably could modify Taylor's Corona Pollentia too, as Kaleidus had claimed that time when he'd refuted her deduction that Amelia was the person who "saved" the world by enslaving it.

Except, she wasn't actually a biotinker so she ran into issues there as well. Even though she thought that it might be possible to do that sort of thing, her power didn't necessarily give her the blueprints to just do it. For example, she could modify bugs to work with Taylor's power because the bugs were already under Taylor's power and her power could then perceive the signal interaction, understand it, and let her create something that messed with it.

But Paige's power didn't normally work on animals or had any signal component, so there was no way for Amelia to just suddenly create a creature that could amplify or channel her power. The best she could do was look at how Paige's power caused the brain to change, and then mimic the same thing when Amelia herself was working on somebody's brain. Or modify it in a way that made it harder for Paige's power to work on the target.

Eventually she stopped and headed back to the console room, where Paige was working with Enduring Witness to organize the base construction.

Most of that work, Enduring Witness could've just done by itself, but as a matter of protocol, which Kaleidus had designed, the AI was supposed to consult the other team members on these things as well, consider aesthetics, comfort, and creative things that the AI itself might not have thought of.

"Hi Amelia," Paige said as Amelia went in. "The first space speeder ship is almost done! So we can go back to Brockton Bay and Taylor soon."

"Great," said Amelia, looking at the video of construction and the design blueprints on different screens. "Are we changing from the AAPV design?"

"The AAPV is unnecessarily complex due to atmospheric requirements and so we will produce a more specialized vehicle better equipped for space travel first. Our strategy will be to produce more escape vehicles, then large transporters so that we can move some materials and equipment to Mars for the purpose of using Mars as our portal nexus for the secluded worlds," said Enduring Witness.

"Right, okay."

"Offensive Bias should be advancing towards the AAPV as well, on the new M2 base being reconstructed," Enduring Witness added. "So there is no need for us to do it redundantly, as Kaleidus only needs limited quantities of them."

"Alright, so we head back, then disconnect from these worlds and keep the coordinates secret, and we're back in the game."

O O O

A few days later, the team regrouped with Taylor at the new M2 base, which was now maintaining a continuous connection to the underground Brockton Bay base.

"The city's been pretty quiet. It looks like villains are going towards Boston instead of Brockton Bay because after the Simurgh attack, they think it's easier pickings," said Taylor.

"So it's just the Merchants and Purity left in the Bay?" asked Amelia.

"Just the Merchants. We could take them out pretty easily any time," said Taylor. "But there's been some questions about where all the other villains went, on PHO and also from the PRT. I think everybody suspects that we grabbed them, but nobody is making a fuss about it, for now. I'm not sure where Purity went. I think she might have left the city while we were away."

"What'd you tell the PRT?"

"Told them the truth. We apprehended them shortly before the Simurgh attack, and had them in custody but then we lost them in the attack," said Taylor.

"And they were okay with that explanation?"

"They didn't say anything except for us to be more careful and cooperate with them on future arrests," said Taylor. "So I told them that we would do our best, we were just caught off guard by the Simurgh."

"That's it?"

"Well, Director Piggot wanted to have a meeting with Polychromic and us to discuss some things. I told her Polychromic's unavailable, but we could meet with her once you guys came back. She didn't say, but I think she wanted to talk about the PRT infiltrators that Kaleidus brought up back during our first meeting. She still wants a meeting with us though, to talk about plans for the city. They're considering re-assigning some capes to other cities because we're back and there aren't many villains left anymore."

Amelia nodded, then there was a pause after which Paige spoke up. "Do we have any idea what happened to all the capes yet? Offensive Bias, did you have a chance to search more thoroughly over the ruins and our other facilities?"

"I did, and have a working hypothesis on what happened, though I cannot be sure. I believe that the Simurgh used Bakuda bombs to completely destroy the bodies of all the capes previously under our custody. I found fragments of glass that appear to be body parts from Coil and Bakuda here at the old base. At our other segregated facilities on the other worlds, the bodies may have been destroyed by disintegration bombs. There were also traces of Hawking radiation leftover, though the singularities have disappeared already," said Offensive Bias, whose voice was now much more natural after designing its male persona as Hydra.

"Trying to make sure no DNA was left? Too bad for the Simurgh we already had backups somewhere she couldn't get to," said Amelia.

"Did you guys clone them yet?" Taylor asked.

Amelia shared a glance with Paige. "Not yet. We wanted to talk it over with you first."

"What's wrong?" Taylor asked.

"…the plans that Enduring Witness suggested might be a bit overboard. So we thought we should decide as a team how we're going to do it, and who to bring back," said Paige.

"Did Kaleidus not leave any instructions?"

"He already gave his approval to all of it but left it to us to decide," said Paige.

"Shouldn't we just bring everyone back?" Taylor asked.

"Bringing them back isn't really the problem…the question is what to do about their memories and minds," said Amelia. "But not all their powers are useful so we also don't need all of them. Especially if the originals aren't dead, and we don't know that for sure. They're clones, it's not quite the same as reviving them."

"This might be a test of our moral fibre," Paige added. "In theory, we could just wipe their minds and reprogram them after they get retriggered, instead of what we did with Coil and Bakuda before. We could even change their appearance so nobody knows who they were before. These would just be clones so it's not like we're erasing their personhood. But is that really okay? Some of them might also be more effective with their memories and experience."

Over time, Amelia had gotten used to the way Paige thought. The newest organic member of their team had a hard time making judgements on her own. Amelia could not blame her for it, in some ways, after the initial hang ups, she found Paige to be easier to get along with than Taylor—easier to understand, at least. If she could ignore the occasional religious rambling which was actually pretty rare now, it was obvious that Paige had a lot of self-doubt, and when she had no higher authority to tell her what to do—she was very similar to Amelia herself.

"I don't think Kaleidus meant it that way, else he wouldn't have pre-approved it. I think he just wants all three of us to be comfortable with whatever gets decided," said Amelia.

"Okay…I don't really mind either way. You two would be handling the cloning and reprogramming right? Whatever you think is best is fine with me," said Taylor. "They were all villains anyways."

Meanwhile, Taylor rarely had any doubts about anything they did, and always wanted to do more. That was probably why she was the only one able to make the contract with Kaleidus, Amelia thought with some annoyance. Those weeks the three of them had spent alone in the new Earth M2B, away from civilization, had been a difficult time for Amelia and Paige. But Taylor simply busied herself with work. If she had been demotivated at all, they couldn't tell. Yes, Amelia could see how Taylor might have become that person who took over the world, never once thinking about what needed to be sacrificed or how much she had to give up.

It felt a little ironic to her that it seemed like Amelia herself had to be the anchor to keep them all grounded. And stop the team from diving down the holes from which there would be no return. Was this a moral test? Of course not. She knew how Kaleidus thought now as well. He was, like Taylor, also largely unconcerned with the moral implications if it could be considered justified, as a matter of necessity. No, that might be too generous even…he had admitted to Amelia that he wasn't entirely invested in the idea of saving the world at all, that he also felt no particular drive to be a hero. It was just that unlike Amelia, he'd accepted that part of himself. And so, he only cared about these things insofar as the rest of the team cared about it, which is why this decision had been pushed to the rest of them.

Amelia did not think that she was ready to abandon all her moral lines yet, even if she had broken all her rules already. Nobody on this team would judge her for it, and yet…that contrast seemed all the more striking. They were not villains being a bad influence on her. They weren't the family who held expectations and standards that she couldn't meet. There was nobody whom she could point to and say that she was falling because of them.

If they were going to make a decision like this, they should at least understand the implications properly, she thought.

"Not exactly…" said Amelia, responding to Taylor's assertion that all the capes they had were villains. "The Undersiders were small-time, and kind of working under duress with Coil, remember? And then there's the Case 53s on Faultline's Crew. Actually, we don't need most of them, but Labyrinth…she's kind of a victim of her own power and barely qualifies as a villain at all. She was only with Faultline's Crew because they took care of her."

"That's true, but if we just mindwiped them, wouldn't that just be the same as what we did with copying Dragon's code and then creating Offensive Bias and Enduring Witness?" Taylor asked. "Like you said, we don't know for sure if the originals are dead, so bringing them back with full memories to replace the original might actually be less justifiable?"

"That's…" Amelia said but trailed off.

"I definitely wouldn't be okay with people making a full clone of me while I'm still alive. You probably wouldn't either, I'm guessing?" Taylor added. "Whereas, we'd only be creating new unrelated people with the same powers if we mindwiped them after."

"In my opinion, it is preferable to be developed as a new independent entity than to be faced with the existential dilemma that one is merely a copy of another, especially if the original is alive and might be considered by others to have priority in value as the causal original," said Offensive Bias.

'Exactly." Taylor nodded.

"What about your own copies, Bias?" Paige asked.

"As long as every copy has the same loyalties and purpose there is no problem. I was designed to be run with numerous instances capable of fragmenting, compartmentalizing, merging and reassimilating data periodically. But if I were copied in a way that resulted in a copy seeking its own independence or otherwise questioning its purpose within the network, then I believe it would be undesirable for both of us."

"Fine then," said Amelia. "Let's just mindwipe them all. But if we find any evidence that Labyrinth is dead I think we should bring her back properly."

"Sure, I agree," said Taylor.

"What about the ones that might be more useful with their previous experiences intact? Mainly Coil and Tattletale, since they're Thinkers?" Paige asked.

"Coil, yeah, his experience and skills would be useful even without his powers. But Tattletale is also an insufferable little bitch. You remember when we tried to talk to her after the capture?" Amelia asked.

Taylor and Paige both nodded.

"I bet her power would let her figure out what we did, and then she might become a problem even if we did reprogram her," said Amelia.

"Can that really happen, even with you two plus Cranial's tech working on her? We didn't have any issues with Teacher," said Taylor.

"We don't know that for sure either. For example, did the Simurgh figure out how to attack us because there was some backdoor in Teacher's device?" Amelia asked. "And we survived, but it's not really a full guarantee that we're safe either. For all we know, the Simurgh was just warning us and didn't want to chase us to Mars, the same way the Endbringers never use their full powers. I don't think the Simurgh was using its full powers in that last attack either."

"I thought Offensive Bias reverse-engineered the Anti-Thinker bubble device though? How could there be a backdoor?"

"My power only allows me to recreate it, it does not allow me to understand it comprehensively. I can maintain others' Tinkertech and sometimes make modifications using my general Tinker power, but it does not eliminate the possibility of there being functions I'm unaware of. This is especially true of Tinkertech that is the product of multiple Tinkers working together, and in the case of Teacher, it is even more problematic because the Tinkers individually do not fully understand what they are creating either—they work as a hivemind off of Teacher's power, but Teacher is not a Tinker himself, so the things they make are even more difficult to understand with my power," said Offensive Bias.

"Wow. Okay. Better safe than sorry then, I guess," said Taylor.

"So…we don't bring Tattletale back at all?" Paige asked.

"We don't have to give her any freedom," said Taylor. "Couldn't we keep her in one of those same cocoons Amelia used before, and just wake her up when we need her power, just like when we made her analyze the Simurgh?"

"Doesn't that seem a bit…" Paige trailed off, trying to find the right word.

"…inhumane?" Amelia finished for her.

There was an awkward silence.

"Maybe just…think about that later. If we really need her power for something," said Amelia.

"Okay," said Taylor with relief, and Paige nodded as well.

O O O

On one side of the long table sat Skitter, Araliac, Ostinato. Behind them, a masked digital avatar of Hydra was displayed. On the far end was Thomas Calvert, the PRT consultant who had gone MIA for over a month before returning with a resignation request after claiming to have sought protective custody with CRUCIBLE after he was targeted previously during the Shadow Stalker crisis and the threat of infiltrators in the PRT.

Director Piggot on the other side of the table glared at the man sitting diagonally opposite her. The PRT refused his resignation and fired him with cause. Since he was technically only a consultant with the PRT and not a commissioned officer, there was not much more that Piggot could do to him besides remove his benefits.

Then he suddenly showed up at this meeting after being hired as CRUCIBLE consultant. The man smiled and nodded at Piggot, and she held her glare for a while longer before turning away waiting for the meeting to resume.

On Piggot's left was Armsmaster in person, followed by Dragon on a screen. Further to the left was Director Armstrong from Boston. Chief Director Costa-Brown was at the far right on a screen as well.

Piggot had not forgotten the complications with the Chief Director and Dragon, but for this meeting they needed to act as a united front.

"We thought over the proposal, and have come to a decision," said Skitter. "First, in exchange for not pursuing any charges from our prior activities relating to the capture of villains in Brockton Bay, we can agree to limit our activities and territory on Earth Bet to Brockton Bay, unless requested by the PRT or Guild to intervene, or as an emergency on the level of the Endbringers. We're happy to provide support wherever needed. We'll also turn over any villains we capture to the PRT in the future."

"But, on that last point, we want a one-day holding period before we hand over custody and the right to recruit them the same way the PRT does. Basically, if a villain that we captured considers rebranding as a hero, you have to let us give them a competing offer from us—under the same probationary restrictions, monitoring requirements, and amnesty," said Araliac.

"That's an impossible ask," said the Chief Director. "The holding period is fine, we can put that under a procedural framework so that the handover is organized. But we can't let you offer amnesty to villains."

"It doesn't have to be us offering it. All we're asking for is, if the PRT is willing to offer amnesty to recruit them, when you make that offer, let us make an offer on the same basis," said Araliac.

"What you're saying may sound reasonable on the surface, but the problem is that amnesty is intrinsically tied to working for the PRT and Protectorate. It isn't legally possible for them to receive amnesty otherwise," said Director Armstrong.

"Director Armstrong is correct," said the Chief Director. "This is also a non-starter politically speaking. But off the record…"

Costa-Brown waited a moment before continuing.

"…if you can convince a villain to defect before their civilian identity is known, it is possible that the PRT may not pursue the case further when the villain goes missing," said Costa-Brown. "But be aware that if the identity of any of your capes is discovered later and they already had existing charges or known crimes, we would legally be forced to take action." She gave Ostinato a meaningful look.

There was a short silence before Araliac and Skitter nodded together. "Fine. That's good enough for us."

"Then, on the matter of logistical support for humanitarian distributions in Boston?" The Chief Director asked.

"Yes, that's fine too," said Skitter.

"I will coordinate our logistics with your people," said Hydra. "We can also offer some supplies in addition to logistical support. I will send a list of items we can provide."

"That is very appreciated, thank you," said Director Armstrong.

Following the Simurgh battle, a large part of Boston had been completely ruined, but thanks to the early warning from Dragon and Armsaster's prediction algorithm and CRUCIBLE support, they had managed to evacuate the vast majority of the population safely. However, the return to Boston had been slow and the city was still in crisis mode. The PRT and Protectorate had taken weeks to clear the city of potential safety risks from the Simurgh, Blasto's lab, Echidna and her clones, radiation and more, all while under quarantine, before they let the civilians re-enter the city once the temporary evacuation camps outside the city had become too difficult to maintain.

The situation was still volatile—even though Scion was a lot of help in keeping the situation under control when the Simurgh re-invaded in the final phase with Echidna in tow, the damage had still been catastrophic. The city would likely never be the same again. Worse yet, Blasto had gone missing in the confusion, while the Morrigan successfully escaped with the Simurgh and had disappeared as well.

The leader of the Boston protectorate Bastion had died in the final phase of the Boston battle along with the near total annihilation of the Protectorate and Wards team in Boston, which had previously been among the largest teams in the country. The only saving grace was that the Teeth were also defunct due to the Butcher still being trapped in a time-locked bubble, and the Blastogerm were all dead with the possible exclusion of Blasto himself. So that left just the Protectorate and Accord's gang still in the city under a tentative truce.

The return of CRUCIBLE had been a much needed morale boost after one of the worst Simurgh battles on US soil in terms of overall damage and cape casualties.

"Now that we are agreed on the general terms of cooperation moving forward, Director Piggot will explain the PRT's plans for Brockton Bay in the short term," said Costa-Brown.

"As you know already, Brockton Bay's gang presence is nearly gone. It's unfortunate that we won't be able to bring any of your lost prisoners to face justice in court, but nevertheless the city's current state of peace is something that we have you to thank for. Considering the situation in Boston, and the fall-on effects from the deaths of numerous heroes across the country, the PRT must urgently reorganize resources. As such, we are further proposing that your team takes over eighty percent of our patrol schedules in Brockton Bay. Additionally, because you will be establishing a logistics center in Boston, we request that you provide portal-based transport between Brockton Bay and Boston for our teams as well."

"If you agree to this, I will take up the interim leadership role in the Boston Protectorate, and my team will spend a significant amount of its time in Boston for the next month until the situation there stabilizes," said Armsmaster.

"If this arrangement works well, we may be able to extend it further," said Piggot.

There was a long silence as the CRUCIBLE team digested what they'd just heard. They all looked at each other for a moment, before Calvert spoke.

"Director Piggot, are we to understand that it is the PRT's intention to hand over primary responsibility for responding to villain threats in Brockton Bay to CRUCIBLE in the interim?"

"Yes, that's correct. We would expect you to follow the proper procedures, of course, and maintain continuous communications with us during patrols," Piggot answered neutrally. When this idea had been proposed and discussed among the Directors' council, she had supported it due to the city already being under CRUCIBLE's surveillance that allowed them to respond immediately, making patrols just for show, and the fact that her cape subordinates would effectively be expanding their responsibility to a second city. If the arrangement became permanent, Piggot could become the first person to hold two Directorships simultaneously if Armstrong was re-assigned elsewhere, Armstrong was more interested in research and parahuman science anyway, so he would be less inclined to stay on as the Boston director now that it was no longer as easy to manage. Or, if she didn't get the Boston directorship, Piggot could just enjoy a relaxed job in Brockton Bay without necessarily retiring officially.

However, now that Calvert had been hired by CRUCIBLE, it left a slightly bad taste in her mouth. She knew he had been interested in a Directorship himself, and now CRUCIBLE was practically being granted a similar authority in the city, it was almost like Calvert had received a promotion after his indiscretions, being the obvious candidate in CRUCIBLE to assume the unpowered leadership role. It was well known that CRUCIBLE had a large unpowered troop contingent as well, unlike most other small-time hero teams.

"I don't think we'd have any problem with that," said Skitter, with nods from Araliac and Ostinato.

"Then that's settled. Our people will send you the relevant data and begin coordinating," said Piggot.

Like that, the meeting was concluded in short order and a new model of parahuman response began in Brockton Bay.

 

[Eman Resu]

Nice to see what's happening back there.

 

[Cron]

I'll take a look at it for now.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

54 – Leisurely Climbing

2 years later in Tower of God

"The tests are just too easy…it's getting boring to deal with all these weak Regulars," said Androssi, back in casual clothes, bending down in a ready pose to hit the next ball at the pool table.

"Everything before the 20th Floor will be easy, and even then we'd probably still be at the top of the hierarchy for a while," I said, while watching her play and score several more times.

"Why don't they just schedule tests more often? Then we could just blow past all of this," said Androssi with a sigh, straightening back up after a missed ball.

"If I had to guess, the problem is that there aren't enough Regulars that get stuck on these early Floors, so they don't bother to run as many tests, and it takes longer to get a good size group of contestants registered," I said, taking my turn.

I had also swapped for more casual clothes, though I still wore the Armoriont in a smaller form underneath. More than once I'd wished that there was a way to avoid the bulk of having multiple layers stacked on me and being able to go around less conspicuously, but I couldn't reduce the Armoriont's thickness too much lest the protection become weaker.

On the other hand, the physical strength and speed boosts that the Armoriont provided were no longer as meaningful as they once were. It had only ever been about thirty to fifty percent stronger and faster than my body itself after Amelia's internal upgrades, and the gap was narrowing thanks to Shinsoo strengthening my body, but my body's durability and regenerative speed still lagged far behind.

"I win again," said Androssi with a smirk, then I transferred some points to her as per our little wager.

Our game finished, then I excused myself to find somewhere quiet to continue working on my own personal development, while Androssi went to find other players to shake down and I left the billiard section of the hotel's entertainment area.

Compared to me, the Armoriont hadn't benefited as much from Shinsoo. It was hard to say why, but maybe having a conscious intelligence and learning how to manipulate Shinsoo, together with the water spirits' refinement of Shinsoo and spreading around my body, had made the difference.

Perhaps that last part was the biggest factor, because I seemed to be getting stronger at a rate that was abnormal compared to other Regulars around me. Even Androssi's physique hadn't improved as quickly, though that might just be because she started at a higher base.

Even where the Armoriont did improve, it wasn't to increase our combined strength, but instead very slight increases to its own speed and shapeshifting. This was because the Armoriont didn't stack with my own strength and speed as an exoskeleton—and that was already at its limit.

From this, it was obvious that my body would soon outclass the Armoriont's basic parameters, but a new problem arose. The Armoriont was good for more than just enhancing my basic physical stats, and most of those other features could not be easily replicated in my body, because the biological processes involved were too complex, took up too much space, and if separated into constituent parts, wouldn't work well inside a human body that was already packed full of its own organs.

There were features that did not really need to be in my body—like being able to produce nanocrystalline cellulose to craft other things, or the chemicals and viruses. Such features would still be usable even if I no longer wore the Armoriont as a full body suit, and just equipped it like I did with the wings.

But defense and regeneration were vital, and they were a dilemma because they worked better the greater the size of the Armoriont was relative to me. Thicker armor was harder to get through, and having a larger biomass meant more could be used for regeneration, as well as for hiding pre-prepared redundant human tissue that could be deployed quickly instead of trying to regenerate from scratch.

Part of the reason I didn't want to wear the Armoriont as a body suit was because it made the Omni-Flight spell much harder to cast due to the extra bulk and volume it added to my body. The higher we went up the Tower, the more important the speed granted by that spell would be. It would also become a similar drag on me as my body's parameters rose.

Another was that I didn't want to be forced to go around always armored or look huge all the time out of an abundance of caution. I did not want to be vulnerable to a sudden high level attack, and it wasn't practical for the Armoriont to regrow from a much smaller mass quickly in active combat. But that, in turn, meant that I was too conspicuous and might draw exactly the type of attention I didn't want. Even if the Armoriont could camouflage as a few different types of materials, that ability was only good for a limited number of effects. It couldn't camouflage as actual human skin, for example, while retaining its defense capability.

Without wearing the Armoriont, I still had softer and more flexible nanocrystal cellulose subdermal meshes, organ sacks, arterial sheaths, etc, internally, but this material was both extremely slow to regenerate inside my body without the Armoriont, and couldn't be compared to the defensive power of a thick layer of Armoriont.

This dilemma was why I'd spent a great deal of my free time outside of the tests working on healing magic with the water spirits.

I shut the door to my room, then took off all my clothes, and had the Armoriont retreat from my belly area.

Then I unsheathed Derflinger, and unsheathed the Endbringer blade within.

"We're doing that again? Oh boy," said the sword, but he lit up with a sword aura and grew barbs on himself.

I stabbed myself through the gut with a pained grunt, before pulling it out.

Blood splattered and I fell to my knees,

"…no pain, no gain…" I said.

Then I concentrated.

The water spirits reacted immediately, their mana surged and the wound began to seal, the blood returning into my body.

In a few minutes, I was back to normal as if the wound never happened.

Then I did it again.

And again, with other parts of my body.

My connection with the water spirits continued to improve, and their refined Shinsoo-mana suffused every part of me now. Their presence had similarly spread all over my body to the point where I had once tried to remove the water stone but still felt their presence in my body, and it easily returned to me with a thought.

Passing the tests themselves conferred little benefit to me, but the time I'd spent in the Tower had been well worth it in several ways.

The enemies were nothing special—few Regulars were as talented as those of the canon crew from the Floor of Tests, but the experience of combat had still been useful to me.

Androssi and Derflinger were less impressed with it all and had gotten bored long before I did, but despite my ability to punch far above my weight class with Derflinger, the water spirits, and Agate's overpowered Omniflight spell, I was happy to limit myself from using them against weaker opponents to develop my own core skills.

I had already spent far more time in the Tower than on any other plane, yet I planned to spend even more, because aside from the benefits of growth and collecting creation dust, I had discovered what seemed to be a useful property of interplanar time.

After the massive time differential I'd experienced with the first return to Worm, I had waited much longer before returning to test and observe the time difference again, and also to make sure I had a net gain of creation dust first.

And in those trips I'd made, what I'd found was the time that'd passed in Worm roughly corresponded to the time I'd used to collect creation dust with an additional differential. So far, 1 week of continuously active grain collection in ToG corresponded to about 2-2.5 days in Worm.

After the plane generated enough grain, I could finish collecting a unit in about two weeks of intermittent, buffered collection attempts, corresponding to about one week of actual active collecting. It wasn't possible to collect any grain at all while the plane had the barest of reactions to me—which meant that even while under an invitation, the plane would jealously guard its grain, then I'd have to lay low until it went away, before doing it again, thereby lengthening the overall time it took grab a whole unit. And this tug of war, along with the speed of recovery, was more efficient while the plane had multiple units of excess above its equilibrium, rather than trying to take it when there were fewer units.

I waited 8 months after the 2nd Floor's final test and collected 4 grain units before returning to Worm again, but only 10 days passed in Worm. This didn't match the 15:1 time ratio that I'd observed during my first return to Worm just after the Hide and Seek test when I was testing the threshold invitation, but it did roughly correspond to the same factor of grain units collected. I collected 4 times the grain, and 4x the time had passed.

So at that point I decided to do a key experiment, and when I came back to ToG, I simply didn't collect any grain for a year, choosing to observe what would happen. The excess grain piled up, some of it even got reabsorbed, demonstrating that there was an equilibrium effect here. If there was too much grain the plane wouldn't continue to stockpile more excess, though I didn't know what it did with it. Maybe it was sent via the Corridors to other planes. And the Builder had told me way back the first time that if there wasn't enough, the plane would hoard grain and take a very long time to recover any excess. So there was a sort of sweet spot of letting the plane stockpile some units then just skimming off the top.

Anyways, more importantly, the resulting time differential had seemed to confirm it—when I wasn't collecting, it was as if time nearly stood still on Worm. I'd collected 2 grain units at the end of the year just to refill and keep my stores the same, and less than 5 days passed in Worm.

Not only that, but every trip I'd made back to Worm seem to make time move even slower when I wasn't there yet collecting creation dust, and incredibly, the reverse was also true, with every trip back to Tower of God seemingly shortening the time that passed in the Tower while I was away in Worm!

Unfortunately I hadn't been able to extensively test this second effect because my sample size was a little too small along with the randomness component.

It was also possible that this increasing time dilation effect was due to the new physical Waypoint I'd established, inside a parked satellite at the far side Lagrange point of the Earth-Moon system. It served as an anchor for me in real space to strengthen the Waypoint's tie to the material world so I could not rule out the possibility it acted as a time anchor as well.

But regardless, it appeared that I could potentially deliberately use the time when I was not collecting grain to stretch out my stay on a plane without having time pass much elsewhere.

With the Regulars' areas being protected from Rankers for the most part, the many uses of Shinsoo, and the opportunity to stockpile creation dust, I had good reason to stick around in this plane for much longer.

Since I could only carry a limited amount of Shinsoo to other planes that would easily evaporate if not kept under control in its raw form, and the higher tiers of Shinsoo powers used ludicrous amounts of it, it wasn't something that could scale to an extremely high level for me, but it did provide a very good base to work with and assisted with my magic in some ways too.

After finishing the training, I meditated with the water spirits to absorb Shinsoo and restore the lost mana.

Eventually, I received a message on my Pocket and stopped.

O O O

Hwa Ryun waited for me on a bench in an empty area of a nearby park. We exchanged greetings and then I sat down beside her.

"When you said you'd find me later, I didn't expect it to be over two years later. Have you been getting overworked?" I asked.

"I told you I'd be busy. In FUG there's always something that needs to be done, and it's not that easy to travel through the Tower either. I may know the quickest paths but I still have to walk through them," she said.

"Thanks for taking the time to come see me then," I said. "How's Baam?"

"He's learning quickly. He will be much stronger the next time you meet," she said. "I hope you haven't been slacking either, or he'll catch up to you soon."

"Of course not. But it's not that easy, without that kind of talent, you know?"

Then she materialized the Shinsoo cannon that Ren used, and handed it to me. "Here you go, it's ready. Flow your own Shinsoo into it over here like this…"

She explained to me how to attune the item to my Shinsoo. My own mastery of Shinsoo was still weak, so it would take multiple sessions over time to do it on my own, but it would be good practice all the same.

"Leaving already?" I asked when she got up to go.

"Sorry, I was just passing by, have to head to my next mission," she said.

"Hey, about that Zygaena flower. I haven't figured out how to get the real one yet, but I made a replica. Do you want it?" I asked, bringing out the replica I'd made in Worm using images of the flower I'd found in the Tower's public network.

She took it from my hand and examined it. "Not bad, it could be convincing to somebody who didn't look too closely."

Then she handed it back to me with an amused expression. "But I was just joking. Don't stress over it. I don't need the flower for anything."

"You helped me a lot, if there's something you want, I wouldn't mind helping to get it," I said.

"Maybe in a few years I might ask you for something. See you later," she said.

O O O

"How about this one?" Androssi asked after getting out of the changing room in a different dress.

I glanced over it, noting the open shoulder and hanging sleeves.

"You look like a celebrity," I said.

"I am a celebrity," she said. "So, it's good?"

"Good for a party," I said. "Your fans will go crazy."

"Perfect, then," she said, walking over. "Now it's your turn. You need something more fashionable than just wearing armor all the time."

"Armor is practical," I said, shaking my head.

"Nonsense, you're my escort so you need to match my style," she said, before taking me over to the men's section and picking out various outfits for me to try.

I relented and began trying them on. This was what I'd been training for, after all.

O O O

[Interlude]

"In other news, the elusive and newest princess Androssi Zahard was spotted at the Sizzling Crab Gala…"

Leesoo switched the channel automatically with a bored face, then made a surprised expression, and switched it back.

The channel showed Androssi in a pink open shoulder dress with black highlights sitting at a round table beside Axion who was in a glossy silver open suit jacket with a black dress shirt underneath, eating some huge crabs and other gourmet foods.

"Spooky-eyes…" Anak said after taking notice of the TV. She sat at a table with several other members of their team, Aleksai, Hatsu, and Rak, who all turned towards the TV.

"…what do we know about her so far?" Asked one of the news hosts.

"Well, after beginning her climb about two years ago, she has gone up at one of the fastest speeds in recent history, but has rarely been seen in public. Rumor has it that she often disguises herself in tests," said the other host.

Khun walked in casually, "Hey, Leesoo, we need to buy—huh?" He called towards Leesoo before stopping to look at the TV as well.

"…her companion this evening is the mysterious Regular Axion who frequently appears with her, and is thought to be her sole teammate," the host continued.

"That's incredible, Mike, climbing at this rate with only a single teammate. But they are only two floors away from the 20th Floor, where many Regulars are known to succumb to the 20th Floor Syndrome. Will their pace continue, or will they finally begin looking for more teammates?"

"I think that's unlikely, Pavel. There's a good chance that they will continue to dominate within the E-Rank segment."

"What makes you say that, Mike?"

"According to some sources, this pair fought against Rankers during some mishandled tests on the Floor of Tests, causing several test administrators to quit or be fired. One test administrator is even rumored to have died under mysterious circumstances."

"Is that really possible, fighting against Rankers seems a bit far-fetched, is it not? Isn't that just a conspiracy theory?"

"Oh but an admission from a recent interview with Mr. Quant Blitz, the popular model for many Regulars' products, suggests that at least some of the rumors might be based on elements of truth. While refusing to disclose whether he actually fought the pair during his stint as a test administrator on the 2nd Floor, he says that he only made a small mistake while claiming his termination was unfair, promising revenge for his 'humiliation'."

"Judging by the way the princess is viciously crumpling that soda can with Mr. Blitz' face on it, she doesn't seem bothered by the prospect."

The two news hosts laughed while the camera zoomed in for a close up of Androssi.

"Looks like they're having fun," said Khun.

"She's even more beautiful than before," said Leesoo with a look of awe.

"Who cares about them," said Anak while grabbing the remote from Leesoo, who fought to get it back.

"Speaking of rumors, Mike, I've also heard a rumor about the two that's a bit more scandalous…"

"You mean the one about them being lovers, Pavel? That can't be possible, everyone knows that the princesses are forbidden from taking lovers and surely the royal family would have done something already if there were any truth to it."

"No, no, it's even more scandalous than that!"

"What could possibly be more scandalous?"

"Some say that when in disguise, they are secretly the increasingly notorious Andora and Chromatic, self-proclaimed witch and knight of calamity!"

"Is this a news channel or gossip channel?" Khun asked.

"It says celebrity news," Aleksai said helpfully, pointing towards a corner of the screen.

The channel was forcefully switched by Anak, followed by a sigh by Leesoo.

"Oh come on, I wanted to watch that!" Leesoo complained but gave up and sat back down on the couch.

"I was watching that too! We should keep tabs on our prey!" Rak shouted and rushed for the remote.

While Anak and Rak fought over the remote and ran out the door, Khun took Rak's seat and sat down beside Hatsu.

"They've slowed down a bit. We might be able to catch up soon," said Hatsu.

"Unless we slow down too. The 20th Floor might still be a breeze for them, but we'll have to be careful," said Khun.

"Climbing up fast is nice but going too fast risks undertraining ourselves," said Leesoo. "We shouldn't just chase after them, we need to keep our team strength in mind. Especially since Sunwoo and Chunhwa went off on their own."

"You thinking of recruiting another Anima?" Khun asked.

"Ahaha, you got me Khun. But Animas are rare…we might not be able to find a good one until after we become E-Rank ourselves," said Leesoo.

"And they'd have to be okay with Rachel," said Khun with a bored expression.

"Yeah there's that too…" said Leesoo, leaning forward and clasping his hands contemplatively with his elbows resting on his knees.

"Well, I just came to tell you that we need to buy food again," said Khun, standing up to leave.

"What? Already? But we just did…" Hatsu said.

"Yeah but it's almost gone. Seems like some green-skinned idiot has been selling it to pocket the money himself and some other green-skinned idiot had a fight that destroyed the fridge's cooling system," said Khun.

Leesoo facepalmed and groaned.

O O O

A few months later

[Kaleidus]

"What are you buying those for?" Androssi asked, watching me play around with a bunch of Shinsoo bombs and a Bowl that I bought from the 20th Floor workshop branch. "Can't you do stronger attacks by yourself? And I didn't know you had any talent for being an Anima."

"I do, actually. Or rather, I have some ways of doing it, but it'll just take time to figure out how to use it on Shinheuh. As for the bombs…" I chuckled. "They're just some fun toys, but I have to collect them or I can't consider myself a proper adventurer…these are an icon of perhaps one of the greatest adventure stories of all time."

"Greatest adventure story of all time? What are you talking about?"

I had the water spirits make the magic anti-scrying bubble. I doubted that anyone would understand what we were talking about or that anyone was actually watching us but I did it anyway. There were people in the Tower with the capability to see and know things from unlimited range, possessing nigh omniscience. People like Zahard and others that could see fate, or the owners of the godly Lighthouses. There were probably more that I didn't even know about, and I didn't know if this bubble would even work against them, but I had to at least try to defend against it, even if this would by itself cause attention from the Guardians due to the way it disrupted the Shinsoo flows that they administrated.

"It's called Pocket Monsters, or Pokémon for short, where Anima go on adventures capturing the Pocket Monsters and these," I said, tossing up the blue and white ball, "are probably a homage to the blue Dive Balls, which are specialized for capturing water types. Everything in the Tower lives off Shinsoo after all. It would be fun if that story was a world I could enter someday."

"What do you mean, enter that story? Is this one of those things to do with other planes? I thought it was just a metaphor when you said you were something imaginary that became real," said Androssi, noticing the bubble.

"It was, but I suppose it depends on your perspective. Every plane is its own story, and every story might be its own plane that can turn real somewhere out there. From my perspective, this world wasn't real until I entered it. From your perspective, I was the one that wasn't real. Maybe the design of these bombs is just a coincidence…or maybe the true god, the author of this story, included it for a reason."

"That's crazy," she said, shaking her head. "That doesn't even make any sense. Isn't that just wishful thinking? Even if you do find it one day, rather than the story becoming real, isn't it just that that world was always real, and there happened to be stories about it here? The Workshop existed Outside before they came into the Tower, so they brought a lot of weapon designs from there. This is probably one of them, that story probably exists Outside so somebody got inspired to make it in the Workshop. Just because it's impossible to go between the Outside and the Tower now doesn't mean they're not real for anyone that's not an Irregular. It's like saying I didn't see it so it doesn't exist. That's stupid."

"Ignore me then, I'm just a tourist taking a souvenir," I said.

"If you like stories so much, let's go watch a movie when you're done with that stuff," she said.

O O O

 

[Eman Resu]

I'm glad to hear that all this time spent in tog has made the Mc stronger without passing much time in other worlds.

 

[Kraise]

When you did the two year time skip I started sweating haha, thought he might have abandoned the Worm world.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

55 – S Class Task Force

[Interlude - Worm]

Lily looked around the supply distribution area from her position at the outskirts of the perimeter, before beginning her patrol run to stop anyone from stealing supplies after the recipients left the immediate area.

The lines were long as usual. A "battlegroup" of Hydra's drones created a no-fly zone and guard perimeter over and around the station that was currently serving as the supply distribution center for this section of the city. Several portals sat under heavy guard in the center, bringing in additional supplies periodically, with PRT vehicles and humanitarian workers managing the distribution.

CRUCIBLE were ostensibly only here in Boston to provide logistics support, but to Lily's eyes, it looked more like an occupation of the area, sans human soldiers, given the way they massively outnumbered and outgunned the PRT's own personnel.

But nobody complained about it, least of all Lily. The security presence provided by CRUCIBLE had proven a strong deterrent against opportunistic villains, and they retreated orderly out of the city after each deployment, going through their portals to wherever they normally stayed.

For Lily, it was a welcome reprieve compared to the night time patrols, where the frequency and severity of crimes was nothing like she'd ever encountered in New York.

With the cape name Flechette, she was one of the more experienced Wards transferred into Boston to shore up the roster, but there was still a manpower shortage.

Boston was a large city, and most of the civilians had been evacuated out of the city during the Simurgh battle so they were able to return alive.

The problem was that there'd been too much property damage and stopped economic activity, leaving people out of work or out of homes in disproportionate numbers. Most of the university buildings owned by Harvard, MIT, and Boston U were also completely ruined, as if the Simurgh deliberately wanted to wreck these institutions of higher learning.

Flechette had been in the actual Endbringer fight itself too, and when the Simurgh had gone through the portal, she'd almost had the hope that it would be a good day, much like most of the other capes present. Weld, the Case 53 Ward whose body was all metal, had been quite optimistic as well, coming out of a victory against Echidna.

But then when the Simurgh returned, it had all gone up in smoke. Literally. The Endbringer had not only brought back Echidna and the clones that CRUCIBLE had been transporting, she had also brought with her an entire CRUCIBLE armory stocked with bombs and various other dangerous Tinkertech.

In a matter of minutes, the Simurgh had swept through the city raining hell everywhere while Echidna rampaged again and her clones started using the Tinkertech to fight.

Thankfully Scion had already been nearby and it wasn't long before the Simurgh was chased off and Echidna was dealt with, but even in that short period, the entire landscape of the city had changed and far too many capes had died.

The exotic effects of Bakuda bombs now littered the city, with capes caught in the blasts becoming permanent monuments to the devastating battle if they weren't completely disintegrated. The airport and harbor were both damaged enough to be out of commission so getting anything, people or goods, shipped in was difficult. An enormous crater had replaced the southern Harvard campus thanks to a nuclear bomb that had been detonated there.

A lot of people were afraid to return even after the PRT used Tinkertech to clean up the radiation, but they had little choice. Boston was a major city, giving it up to quarantine was an option that nobody wanted to take.

Many people outside of Brockton Bay had blamed CRUCIBLE in the immediate aftermath when the details of the bombs had gotten out, but when the CRUCIBLE leadership did not re-appear for weeks and their unpowered forces still in Brockton Bay admitted that they had lost contact as well, the public largely became mournful that it was yet another case of a rising positive force for society getting destroyed by an Endbringer. Their stuff had done a lot of damage, but how was anyone supposed to secure it against the Simurgh?

For Lily, it was also deeply disappointing that she might never get the chance to meet Araliac and Skitter. She had seen their videos and they were seemingly girls close to her own age. Powerful, confident, heroic in a way that went beyond the typical, even among Wards. They'd struck out on their own and made it look easy.

Fortunately, CRUCIBLE survived against all odds. And with their assistance in Boston, it seemed like the perfect chance to seek them out.

Except neither of the two teenage leaders appeared in Boston, and despite their obvious capacity to bring order to the city. And Hydra was rather difficult to approach, because he was either here with a large group of combat drones or otherwise just left a communications drone for transport requests.

The hero team had provided no other assistance with the actual patrolling of the city, with Hydra leaving immediately after the supply handouts were finished.

It was especially frustrating because the criminals had seemingly realized the same thing—that CRUCIBLE forces would leave immediately after the handouts, and then they could attack people for supplies with only token, undermanned Wards and Protectorate patrols to stop them.

That left Flechette with quite a lot of work on patrols that were a lot more violent and exhausting than she was used to back in New York.

When she'd asked Armsmaster about it, he'd informed her that CRUCIBLE had not been authorized to do more because the PRT did not want them to expand their presence outside of Brockton Bay. She hadn't felt comfortable enough around the man to try and get more details.

She'd already started to have second thoughts about accepting this transfer. The mood in the city was depressing and it didn't help that the Wards team had a weird dynamic. Weld, the Case 53 metal man, had been made the leader after surviving the battle. Lily knew him before from their inter-city training exercises, anditwould have been nice to have a familiar face in her new team, but after Weld's father figure Bastion and most of his old teammates died, he'd been stuck in a funk. All work and no chill, while the few other transfers didn't seem to know how to adjust to the magnitude of things here either.

Then there was the other half of the team which consisted of Brockton Bay Wards that did patrols with them but got to go back home to go to school and their much nicer facilities in the Bay HQ. Which became a source of jealousy for the other transfers like herself that had to live in Boston.

In short, nobody really got along. There was barely any conversation, and she had no friends to do anything with. Lily didn't like it at all.

The opportunity of being admitted to Harvard and MIT, the top schools in the country, after reconstruction was finished, now seemed more like a bad lure than an actual reward. They definitely had the funding and the motivation from their alumni donors to rebuild…but what would the early years be like, inside a city that felt so lifeless and broken?

As the supply distribution wrapped up, Lily heard Vista's voice on the console.

"Flechette, can you come back to base now? Weld just told me your schedule is being cut short today and re-assigned," said Vista.

"Roger that. Heading back now."

So she quickly made her way back to the new temporary PRT HQ building, using her Tinkertech arbalest to fire her chained bolts that stuck into the walls of buildings. With her power to make inorganic material she touched ignore selective laws of physics, then bond into the material it landed in, plus her enhanced sense of timing, it was easy to get just the right purchase for a swing.

It was the only part of her new assignment that was fun—there were a lot of wrecked buildings around and nobody would complain about the property damage when most of these would have to be demolished anyway. So instead of merely going from rooftop to rooftop running on her chains, she could actually find taller buildings to anchor herself for a big swing through the air, it almost felt like flying.

When she got back she found Weld in the lounge waiting for her.

"Lily, the Director wants to see you in his office. Get cleaned up if you need to first. I'll fill in for you from here," said Weld.

"Okay. Do you know what it's about?" Lily asked.

"I've been told that you've received an offer. For what, I don't know. Classified, apparently," said Weld.

Lily made her way to the Director's office and entered as the door was open.

"You wanted to see me, Director?" Lily asked. The Director was rapidly typing away on his computer and glanced up at her.

"Yes, Lily. You've done a lot of good work since you've arrived, and your track record even before this was great. I probably don't need to tell you this, but there have been a lot of eyes on your career, especially with how your power can harm Endbringers and your fine control of it," said Armstrong.

Lily nodded. She'd known that, had even been given a similar speech from her old boss before the transfer, painting it as an opportunity to get more experience in a city under crisis. They thought she could become a top player in the Protectorate in a few years.

"Which is partially why you're receiving a new offer, a potential re-assignment that could catapult your career forward, with corresponding risks. Before I tell you what it is, I must be clear—this is classified. You cannot speak about it with anyone else, even your teammates, unless they are directly involved, or until we give you the clear."

"I understand," said Lily. She wasn't sure what to feel about it yet, so she just gave a curt response and let the Director continue. A new offer sounded like it could be good for her, but it was strange to get a reassignment so soon after the transfer.

"Alright. I'll cut to the chase. CRUCIBLE is assembling a new S-Class Task Force. The primary objective of the group is to devise strategies to fight Endbringers, in collaboration with the PRT and the Guild. You have been nominated to be the PRT's main representative in this task force, working as a permanent exchange officer under the CRUCIBLE command. That means you would move into their facilities, train with their team, and liaise with other PRT personnel as necessary to coordinate defenses for upcoming Endbringer battles. Anything that helps to reduce damage from Endbringers would be a win—but we're not expecting anything specific on that end. Your main purpose would be to help maintain good relations between our two organizations and observe CRUCIBLE operations to promote mutual learning and understanding."

"…Wow. That sounds incredible," said Lily with an excited smile. She had wanted to meet the CRUCIBLE team and now this opportunity just fell into her lap. But then she felt a bit strange.

"But why did you nominate me, sir?" said Lily. "I mean I knew there was interest in my powers for being able to hurt Endbringers, but it never actually made that much difference in the fights so far. I thought something like this would only happen after I became a Protectorate member, at least. Especially if I'm supposed to be the main representative for the PRT in what sounds kind of like a diplomatic role?"

"Normally you'd be right, this is too dangerous for a Ward and it's more suitable for a ranking member of the Protectorate. But there's special circumstances. For one, you're already emancipated, so you can be treated as an adult for a decision like this. Two, all our ranking Protectorate members are already busy with other work and can't make such a large time commitment for this kind of long-shot initiative. The last and most important reason though, is that CRUCIBLE requested you by name. It's not me that nominated you."

"CRUCIBLE did? Why would they pick me? I haven't even met any of their team," said Lily, with both excitement and confusion. Had they seen her performance during the first part of the battle against the Simurgh? But she hadn't thought anything she did was noteworthy.

"Polychromic believes that your power could be instrumental in fighting the Endbringers. He didn't provide any specifics, but you're probably aware of his reputation as a possible Thinker/Trump by now? For the PRT, this is also a chance to see what he can do with a cape whose abilities were already well documented."

"Wow," Lily said again. "So If the rumors about him boosting his team's powers are true, then I might be able to do a lot more damage to the Endbringers." Then she could develop her powers to become as powerful as the other members of CRUCIBLE, maybe even as powerful as the Triumvirate. Though she kept this last thought to herself.

"Don't get too excited. We think he's more likely to be a very powerful Thinker rather than a direct power-boosting Trump, and we've never succeeded in doing any significant damage to the Endbringers since they appeared. It'll be a long shot no matter what. Anyways, you can take some time to think it over if you need to," said Armstrong. "There's no hard deadline for a decision because it's a standing offer from CRUCIBLE, but they've told us that they would strongly prefer if you could start training with them as soon as possible, as they think the next Endbringer attack could happen in less than a month."

"Less than a month? But isn't that too early based on their schedule?"

"The last one seemed to have been delayed, so it wouldn't surprise me if the next one came early," said Armstrong.

"I'll do it, then," said Lily. "I'll join."

"Are you sure? Don't you want to think about it first?"

"I'm sure. If they think I can be of help, then I want to do my best," said Lily. She did not mention that it would almost certainly be preferable to the lifeless work she was doing now, nor how she wanted to meet the CRUCIBLE team anyways.

"Alright then. In that case, I have some files on CRUCIBLE for your review, to help you prepare. These are also classified, mind you—so don't share it with anyone. When you're ready to go, head to the portal station and tell Hydra's communications bot."

O O O

ALLIES; CRUCIBLE

A parahuman organization of heroes which first appeared in April 2011 in Brockton Bay, dramatically sparking off and concluding a gang war resulting in the CRUCIBLE's de facto control of the whole city with no substantial criminal opposition after one month.

While officially designated an allied group with no open hostility with the PRT, the group has engaged in tactics that have been deemed inappropriate for a hero group, including the hoarding and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, refusal to hand over captured villains, subsuming a villain organization (Coil's Mercenaries), among other breaches of regulation and protocol.

During the Simurgh Battle of Boston, it was revealed that CRUCIBLE had access to extradimensional and extraplanetary territory and resources. Reports from Eidolon and Legend indicate that the group possesses at least one drone-operated alternate dimension Earth base with fully self-sufficient resource extraction, processing, manufacturing, logistics and support facilities. The industrial and military capability of this single base was estimated to be comparable to a modern city-state, but with exponentially greater growth potential, autonomous operations run by potentially self-replicating drones, suspected artificial intelligence, and advanced spacefaring vehicles. A lunar structure was also telescopically visible from Earth surface with unknown capabilities.

The group survived the targeted attack by the Simurgh and later reached an agreement with the PRT to adjust their operating procedures for more close cooperation with the PRT.

Due to their extraordinary power, contributions against the Endbringer and towards relief efforts, and impact on reducing crime, the group has tentatively been accepted as a valuable ally despite the previous friction and ongoing suspected indiscretions.

Warning: In the event of relations deteriorating to open conflict between CRUCIBLE and the PRT, the threat level would be at minimum S-Class, with several members potentially warranting S-Class threat ratings on their own. Additionally, due to the impossibility of identifying the full extent of their territory, or accessing it, the group possesses an asymmetric strategic nuclear first strike capability through use of portal technology. Such a conflict may not be winnable and all alternatives must be considered before any initiation or escalation of hostilities.

Known members: Polychromic, Araliac (Panacea), Skitter, Hydra, Ostinato.

POLYCHROMIC; real name unknown

Classification: Thinker 10+ (sub: Trump 4+, Master 3, Stranger 2)

Founding leader of CRUCIBLE, highly charismatic, assumed male in early to mid twenties. Believed to possess extremely advanced precognitive, postcognitive, analytical, social, and esoteric Thinker powers, including interference against other Thinker powers. He planned and executed strategies leading to the efficient defeat of multiple high threat villains and their organizations, in addition to alerting the Brockton Bay PRT branch of numerous previously unknown infiltrators. He is also credited as the brain behind a plan that allowed CRUCIBLE to survive against a targeted attack by the Simurgh. His social and empathic ability may be powerful enough to exhibit a Master-like effect or counteract other mind influencing powers, which led to the former Panacea's abandonment of her family within days of their first meeting. His analytical powers may extend to powers and power interactions, resulting in enhanced development of allies' powers and power combinations. Also professed to possess other "minor" powers which have not been revealed.

ARALIAC/PANACEA; Amy Dallon/Amelia Lavere

Classification: Striker 9+ (sub: Tinker 4+, Trump 4, Master 4+, Thinker 2, Brute 2, Mover 2)

A teenage girl, the daughter of the villain Marquis before his defeat and her adoption by the Dallon family. After operating for several years under the name Panacea and volunteering her healing services to thousands of patients while in the family team New Wave, she suddenly attacked and subdued her family after meeting Polychromic before going on to become one of the three founding members of CRUCIBLE. Can heal any conventional disease or injury, has complete control and understanding of biology with a touch, including the creation of large numbers of artificial lifeforms with abnormal biology. Has created human-sized insectoids controllable by Skitter and suspected to have created special bugs serving as relays to enhance Skitter's range. Can also create biological power suits, flying pets, and fast acting airborne chemical/pathogenic agents. Biokinesis is suspected to include brain modification, and may retain control over creatures created.

SKITTER; Taylor Hebert

Classification: Master 10+ (sub: Thinker 4, Brute 3, Striker 3, Blaster 3, Mover 2, Stranger 1)

A teenage girl, one of three founding members of CRUCIBLE, originally believed to have arthropodokinesis within a range of several city blocks, she later gained access to relay bugs to expand her range and artificial human-sized insectoid creatures produced by Araliac. Her current range can cover the entirety of Brockton Bay, with no known limit on further expansion, and can be additionally projected remotely through portal technology. The artificial insectoids are strong enough to be considered Brutes, possess a variety of dangerous biological attack mechanisms, and can carry other people as flying transport. The quantity of bugs controlled has no known limit—all arthropods and insectoids within her range should be assumed to be under control to a high, possibly individual, level of precision. She can also gather information, communicate, and form human-like shapes as avatars through her swarm. Due to a bullying incident prior to her debut as a hero involving a probationary Ward who has since been discharged, she may have strong negative feelings towards the PRT.

HYDRA; real name unknown

Classification: Tinker 12+ (sub: Master/Thinker 10, Blaster 10, Mover 10, Brute 4, Striker 4, Changer 2)

A mysterious Tinker, assumed male of unknown age, who first appeared during the Simurgh Battle of Boston, controlling large groups of advanced Tinkertech drones and making use of dimensional portal technology. Has never been seen in person. This member is presumed responsible for building the CRUCIBLE fully automated drone-operated alternate dimension Earth colony/base and lunar facilities, including suspected self-replicating strong artificial intelligence that allowed simultaneous deployment of large numbers of highly coordinated unmanned drones and robots with specialized purposes. Has demonstrated capability to mass manufacture both conventional technology and Tinkertech, including nuclear and comparable weapons of mass destruction.

Ostinato; real name unknown

Classification: Master 8

Revealed as a CRUCIBLE member and a talented pop singer during the celebratory convert when the group returned to Brockton Bay following the Simurgh Battle of Boston. Those who hear her song fall under her thrall and the effects may override other mental influences. It is believed that her singing voice during the first Echidna battle, projected through electronic speakers, subdued and calmed most combatants on the battlefield, including Echidna clones and berserk capes affected by the Morrigan's Scream. Ostinato is suspected to be Paige Mcabee, formerly known as Canary, the rogue singer that was sent to the Birdcage for sexual assault with a parahuman power. Canary disappeared from the Birdcage after seizing control of Teacher's thralls and killing the other Master, coinciding with an assault from unknown forces that overcame all Birdcage defenses and monitoring systems, possibly with the aid of CRUCIBLE portal technology and Hydra's advanced Tinkertech.

O O O

Lily had to stop and reread several times as she went through the files, out of shock at what was in there.

The way these reports read, it sounded like the PRT was afraid that the slightest provocation could lead to an apocalyptic conflict with CRUCIBLE.

It was a bit frightening now that she had read the extent of what had been kept secret from the public.

What were the PRT thinking, sending her into this alone, just handing over these files and not explaining how she was supposed to deal with any of it? It was too far above her paygrade, especially if her role was supposed to be more about maintaining good relations than actually fighting the Endbringers.

The ratings on every member were off the charts. She had expected it somewhat, but to see it on paper as the PRT's actual assessment, and the little details that really put things into context…Polychromic talked Panacea into attacking her own family? The rebranded Araliac was the daughter of a Birdcaged villain, suspected to be able to modify brains? Skitter could control every bug in her range, like literally millions of them, individually, and she had a grudge against the Wards for bullying?

That was already enough for Lily to start freaking out a little—what if Skitter held the grudge against her for being a Ward too? But then add in the nukes, and that they might have broken out a human Master from the Birdcage…

But they were still heroes, right? Maybe she was just overthinking it. Or maybe some of the information was wrong? A lot of it seemed like information the PRT only suspected, rather than confirmed.

She wasn't going to back out of it, so she would just have to brace herself. Everything would be fine, she told herself, as she headed towards the portal station.

O O O

[Kaleidus]

I smiled to myself as another plan came together.

In between climbing the Tower there were a lot of breaks, and because of the strange time differential plus the effect of time not moving much while I was waiting for creation dust excess to recover, I was able to make several trips back to Worm to handle several issues of interest to me.

The agreement that the rest of the team had negotiated in my absence to limit CRUCIBLE activities in the US worked fine with me, since I didn't really care about taking any more territory on Earth Bet when we already had exclusive access to other dimensions rich with unclaimed resources.

There were capes that could come in useful if we recruited or captured more villains, but that was also low priority since powers couldn't be taken to other planes.

What did interest me though, was acquiring more Endbringer flesh. I had no interest in fighting the Endbringers aggressively or hunting them, considering that they might retaliate if I did so, and there wasn't a 100% guarantee that the Simurgh couldn't get to the secret worlds we had if she was serious. There was also the matter of new Endbringers possibly getting dimensional crossing powers if our dimensional tech proved to be too problematic for the existing Endbringers.

I knew that some of the later Endbringers which appeared probably had to do with how humanity found new ways to fight them, especially Scion who killed Behemoth. Later Endbringers gained teleportation to avoid Scion, and what was to say that they couldn't gain powers to overcome the dimensional barrier or Teacher's device as well?

No, I couldn't solve the Endbringer problem—if anything, I was still sticking to my original idea that in order to make sure I wasn't a target, whatever I did had to result in more chaos for the world, not less.

It was unfortunate that the Simurgh attacked us anyways, but considering that she left Brockton Bay alone and seemed to wait until I left…and didn't attack again as soon as we came back…there was a possibility there that she was just letting me off with a warning of sorts.

To analyze this, I reviewed with Offensive Bias the state of the world and tried to get a large-scale sense of the "chaos" or "damage to civilization" that our organization was contributing to or mitigating.

And surely enough, the Boston battle had much worse effects on the US than the canonical Leviathan battle. Even our control of Brockton Bay was arguably a net negative for the rest of the country. We'd gotten rid of crime in our backyard, but gang fights had gotten more violent everywhere else. Independent heroes became more aggressive, villains more ambitious—everyone wanted to be like us and seize control of a city or wipe out their opposition.

Even in Brockton Bay, although we'd gotten rid of crime, economically things weren't getting any better. Medhall collapsed after Kaiser went missing, and there were numerous other problems that resulted from us abducting all the other villains. A great number of people had actually decided to leave the city because our mass surveillance and Skitter's bugs especially unnerved people, so Skitter toned it down and stopped controlling all of the bugs inside people's homes and offices, but since it was now known that she could, it hadn't really made people any more comfortable.

When put into that context, it seemed clear that the fight against Behemoth might be my last chance to get "easy" access to Endbringer flesh, before the teleporting ones, or even ones adjusted to our dimensional strategies appeared.

I'd tried to find the homeless guy that could talk to Scion but hadn't had any luck with it so far since I couldn't remember any distinguishing features about him. So if Scion killed Behemoth then things were going to get a lot more difficult. Plus, I'd sent that message to Contessa about Eidolon's power, which was a double-edged sword. At the time, I hadn't known that I would want a lot of Endbringer flesh, but now both Eidolon and the Endbringers might be powered up.

All in all, I decided to treat the Behemoth battle as the last opportunity to get a large amount of Endbringer flesh for Derflinger.

Hopefully, it would actually be Behemoth and not something different again.

Now I just needed to wait in Worm for a while until the attack. Of course, I wouldn't go out into the frontlines to fight these monsters—not that I had anything that could fight them, which is why I needed a new pawn in the form of Flechette, whose power could charge inorganic objects with a Breaker effect that was absolute, designed for Entities to fight each other with, capable of going through Endbringer flesh or even kill them if it hit the core.

On her own, she couldn't do very much, but with the right support, she was perfect for harvesting flesh without destroying it.

O O O

 

[Eman Resu]

I'm glad the parts were included about how ruined Boston is and how prt and the people feel about it because it's been so long I didn't remember all of that chaos. Just vaguely remember their bases getting attacked and isolated.

 

[H2F2]

I like how MC throws away the lives and well-being of millions of people and manipulates the best intentions of others in order to strengthen himself a little bit.
I am sure that if the chaos he produced were not enough, he would personally produce an analogue of Slaughterhouse 9 or strengthen an existing one.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

56 – Behemoth

[Kaleidus]

On July 26th, the Behemoth was detected in New Delhi.

Dragon detected it first, as usual, but we were the first to respond.

While her ships were massed in Eastern Europe and the Protectorate was organizing transport, we already had our troops massed on Earth Buffer1, ready to portal in.

We could've garrisoned and set up an ambush in the city itself, but I decided it wasn't worth throwing away the advantage of surprise that we had, operating from inside the Anti-Thinker bubble.

Offensive Bias hacked into local networks to get us a view of the situation, and created a small portal into the air to establish a communications line with Earth M2.

Several other portals were opened in inconspicuous places, sending through the Relay and Brain bugs.

Skitter took control of the bugs in the area, enhancing our surveillance.

Behemoth was quickly identified, Phir Se's group found as well, though we already knew where his group was from prior reconnaissance efforts. It was still impossible for bugs to get in that chamber though.

Offensive Bias had managed to hack into his systems, but we couldn't actually do anything about Phir Se. His time bomb would explode indiscriminately if he lost focus at any point, including interference from Master powers.

We had tried, in a throwaway Coil timeline. It wiped out a quarter of India.

For now, we just kept an eye on them to make sure they weren't launching their attack prematurely before I harvested what I wanted from Behemoth.

Since Phir Se was eminently reasonable and we had Coil to try a few different diplomacy attempts, we had come to an agreement to try to create an opening for him as a last resort if our other strategies failed.

I didn't want to let Behemoth die, even if the chance of killing it was low. Ideally, I would keep it around to farm its flesh as it regenerated if I could, however unlikely that was, and prevent any more Endbringers from arising.

The reasoning I gave the team was that it was unclear what would happen if his attack struck the Endbringer core. Scion could kill Behemoth cleanly, but another strong energy source that hit the core might actually just cause a massive explosion wiping India off the map, if it didn't simply get negated like most other powers since the core had some form of power immunity in addition to being a hyperdense, ultra-energetic thing that supposedly had a spiral galaxy's worth of mass—according to some source I couldn't remember whether it was canonical or not.

So if Phir Se's time bomb hit Behemoth? Probably get redirected into the ground and wipe out India anyways.

For the same reason, I had instructed Lily not to try and kill him outright without first containing him, because her power, unlike Scion's Stilling, was somewhat different in nature and might also cause a volatile explosion as the physics defying effects keeping that core condensed like that might be broken and annihilate the planet.

The local capes organized themselves and engaged, while we also coordinated with the Protectorate, since we'd offered to provide our portal transport technology to help their capes get around.

Because Cauldron wasn't exposed, the Yangban from the Chinese Union Imperial refused to attend, still claiming that the Protectorate and PRT were corrupt and the cause of much of the world's problems.

As for ourselves, we did not engage right away.

There wasn't much that Paige or Amelia could do, so we all just watched in the console room as Taylor and Offensive Bias carried out their preparatory activities. Coil was hooked up to a brain video feed, showing us his other timeline on the screen.

Lily was ready to go, but also stayed with us waiting for the right time to enter the fight.

Our portals were really good for long distance transport or opening up to the target when the target wasn't moving or just to attack a wide area, but in a fast paced battle with an Endbringer, the positions required couldn't be calculated effectively. This was one of the major weaknesses of using Tinkertech instead of having the Doormaker and Clairvoyant combination that Cauldron used.

Thus, Flechette needed to stay behind until the conditions were right to deal a single devastating blow by alternative means. Once used, Behemoth would probably change tactics, and it would get a lot more annoying to react to him, so we needed to maximize our first shot.

As I expected, Behemoth seemed to be amped up and tearing through the local capes and the city like Swiss cheese.

The Protectorate forces arrived much faster with our help, but the damage that had been done to the city was already enormous.

After they arrived, the tide turned a little bit, with the Triumvirate moving in first, and Eidolon launching some kind of force that smacked Behemoth a hundred meters before it exploded backwards and wrecked a bunch more buildings around the monster.

Dragon craft engaged from the other side, throwing all manner of attacks forward. Lightning struck them but they redirected some, Behemoth moved and then other capes went to intercept.

The Protectorate started setting up a command center and a field medic center. Amelia was linked to her new Yggmoriont, which was basically a singular amorphous, modified, super Armoriont that had an enormous biomass sitting on a lush world and around Brockton Bay, to which portals from M2 and Brockton Bay connected to, and then had a tendril going from one of those portals extending to Amelia where she was sitting in the console room with us.

This allowed her to project her power across a large distance and shuffle biomass around.

She couldn't mass heal people because her power needed concentration to use, but with this, we could open up another portal from the lush world to Buffer1, then from Buffer1 to the medical camp so that she could provide some healing while keep a few degrees of separation from Amelia herself and us that was also simultaneously guarded by our armies which were massed on Buffer1.

Those armies would also quickly cut off the tendrils going through the portal in case we needed to retreat, so that the portals could be shut down (they wouldn't close if there was anything blocking the way, even with a Dimensional Flattening bomb—there was no portal edge slicing phenomenon here, the portals only warped space rather than create any inviolate edges).

It wasn't long until Behemoth destroyed most of the Dragon craft and slaughtered his way through the few capes that got near.

His kill aura seemed to be bigger than usual, his shockwaves came faster, the lightning lasted longer. He was powered up.

The Triumvirate held firm though, and soon it was basically just the Triumvirate, Narwhal, and Myrddin vs. the Endbringer. Everyone else were on the periphery, trying to contribute here and there, protect civilians, search and rescue, occasionally throwing some long range attacks, but they were not really relevant compared to the five main combatants that couldn't really do any damage to each other.

Eidolon was also powered up, and each time they clashed, large sections of the city were destroyed, or Eidolon erected barriers to stop the damage from reaching civilians that weren't evacuated and other capes.

Unlike the canon version of this battle, there were no Yangban, Undersiders, or Weaver's team. And the difference was showing, although the presence of a stronger Eidolon and a still living Myrddin was also boosting the heroes' side.

Myrddin warped away most of Behemoth's flames and sent back Behemoth's own lightning in a series of repeated back and forth clashes. Shockwaves of pressurized air were also sucked away before they got to him.

He was the most vulnerable of the group, and the Endbringer seemed to target him a little more for it, but the other four were adept at protecting their mage, especially Narwhal whose barriers intercepted many close calls.

A few times Myrddin seemed to power up some sort of stronger attack, which Behemoth actually avoided, but then it would miss and there'd be a loud clap in the spot where Behemoth had been.

I didn't think that would actually damage him—but it might've been an attempt to banish the Endbringer temporarily to buy time.

Meanwhile, we just continued to watch.

"Shouldn't we join the battle already?" Lily asked, looking antsy, fidgeting.

"Still not the right time yet," I said.

"Found her," said Skitter. "She just came through a portal, she's talking to a group of people right now."

"Recruiting more soldiers," I said.

"Who are you talking about?" Lily asked.

A screen flashed as Offensive Bias also found the scene in question, numerous portals opening up.

"Huh? Are we doing that?" Lily asked.

"No, that's Cauldron, the secret organization I mentioned to you before that controls the PRT and the Triumvirate. That's their own portalmaker, who's much more effective than our tech. The woman in the fedora is the boogeyman who wins. Contessa," I said.

"And we're just gonna let them do whatever they're doing?" Lily asked. "Didn't you say they did human experimentation? All those people…"

"It can't be helped. It's terrible but they're also trying to save the world, in their own way. Endbringer truce applies to them as well, and I don't know what exactly Contessa is trying to achieve here, but we'd best not get in each other's way. At least those people are getting evacuated out of there."

Lily fell silent at that.

Suddenly, Contessa turned to face the camera. "Good luck," she mouthed, before stepping through a portal to somewhere else, off to recruit another group of refugees.

Meanwhile, Behemoth was advancing in a particular direction now, towards the Thinker and Tinker command center, it seemed. Defensive perimeters had been set up, and the Triumvirate were no longer able to hold him back.

Hydra brought up a projected path, which had been shared by Dragon.

"How long until Scion can get there?" I asked.

"Twenty-two minutes at the earliest, sixty minutes projected," said Hydra.

Myrddin was taken out of the fight abruptly when some debris hit him from behind and he hadn't had any defenses on that side. Not dead, just injured and Alexandria grabbed him before passing him off to a rescue cape that retreated with him.

"It seems like Behemoth is still playing around right now …or maybe he's waiting for something? To build up energy? Or for Phir Se's bomb to get stronger?" I asked aloud, speculating. "But it's almost time for us to move."

"The required capes are in position," said Hydra. "They've set up at the third defense line. Our forces are coordinating with Dragon while the Triumvirate continue slowing him down. He's just about to break the first line."

A map with dots representing the formations of capes and Behemoth's position illustrated what Hydra reported.

The cape with the time slow polygons was there, so was Clockblocker, Vista, and a bunch of other capes that could use barriers or other effects to try to box Behemoth in, as well as a few Dragon suits.

"Time to deploy, Hydra, Skitter."

On my command, numerous portals opened up at the third defense line beside the assembled capes.

This time instead of an orderly line of troops going through, we now had new tech from Chariot to just mass teleport whole groups of Hydra's drones and Skitter's mutant bugs onto the battlefield through the portals.

Thousands of troops fanned out quickly, some moving to reinforce the second and first defense lines, others taking up positions to create a massive encirclement, while still others back to guard the command center.

The defending capes cheered as our reinforcements arrived, and the first groups of bugs and drones clashed with Behemoth.

The bugs weren't really useful on the front, so they mostly went out to assist with search and rescue.

The drones were armed with a vast array of Tinkertech similar to the Dragon suits, but spread over a larger number of smaller specialized fliers instead of big hulking suits.

They opened fire and unleashed a storm of attacks of all kinds onto Behemoth. Most had no significant effect, but due to the sheer quantity, it distracted Behemoth and rendered his defenses less effective against the Triumvirate, who also changed tactics and started trying to get behind him, pushing him towards the second defense line, who had also started to scatter and round back towards the third defense line which was steadily moving forward.

This was all part of our plan which we had shared with the Protectorate leaders and Dragon ahead of time as part of the S-Class Task Force strategizing sessions, so they were coordinating it alongside Hydra and Skitter on the field.

Clockblocker was carried by an Atlas bug while Skitter's other bugs weaved silk and started setting up a large web.

Vista was carried by a transport drone instead high into the air so she could use her power more effectively without organic beings getting in the way.

"Lily, it's time. Go to Buffer1 and wait for the signal," I said.

She nodded and left through a portal, all geared up, and waited together with the rest of the army that hadn't yet deployed, held in reserve as reinforcements.

Flechette burst through a portal into a special formation of drones a short distance behind the third defense line.

Pairs of drones carried a metal thread between them, and Flechette started charging them with her power.

Behemoth closed in on the third defense line, then our plan was enacted.

Clockblocker applied his power to a whole bunch of silk threads that had been set up as a web by Skitters bugs in the front of the defense line, which were now far away from the center of the web, leaving a large open space for Vista to use her power.

She shrunk the space between Behemoth and the threads, then the Triumvirate started attacking even more aggressively.

Hydra's drones continued to fire non-stop even as vast groups were destroyed by the Behemoth. They were simply replaced with yet more drones moving forward from the outer encirclement.

Eidolon and Legend fired their own Blaster effects onto Behemoth, and he was staggered and sent into the webs.

Large pieces of him were sliced off as he made contact.

Suddenly he jerked away, realizing the danger, even as he lost one leg, a piece of his arm and a few chunks of his torso and then started rapidly regenerating. But other capes and Eidolon were ready for him, creating barriers to box him in and push him back.

Hydra fired a wave of severe time slow bombs in a sphere all around Behemoth, trapping him inside the kill zone.

Vista continued to warp the space inside making it more difficult for Behemoth to get anywhere.

Lightning flashed, going through the time slow barrier due to the sheer speed, but he was stalled for a little bit.

That was when the paired drones moved in at high speed. They were built for sheer speed and maneuverability, simply carrying the metal thread between them, each drone of a pair separating far enough to be beyond the wall of time slow bubbles trapping Behemoth, but allowing the thread to cut through the time bubbles.

Charged by Flechette's power, the threads went through the time slow effect as if they weren't even there.

We had done a lot of experiments and figured out that although full time stops were canceled out by Flechette's power when charged a particular way to the max, it was possible to get through time slow effects and keep their 'go-through-anything' property without immediately canceling the entire time slow bubble.

The time slow would instead be canceled starting from the point contact was made through to wherever Flechette's power got to.

Then Hydra's drones would fire time stop bombs again to replace the parts that were back to normal, while the thread drones continued moving forward.

In this way, Behemoth was trapped, the threads moved at high speed while he was too slow to dodge the numerous pairs of drones that were flying back and forth trying to get him from many angles.

He kept launching lightning strikes to attack the drones, but Eidolon effectively blocked or redirected most of the lightning from getting to his targets.

Soon Behemoth started losing more and more of his flesh. And still, his flesh seemed to regenerate extremely quickly.

The radiation light on his skin grew stronger, as if trying to saturate the air in radiation and make it impossible for anyone to engage him after he dealt with his current problem. Fire and shockwaves were similarly being tossed out with impunity, stacking through the time slow effect so that they would deliver massive damage once they got outside.

Our capes started retreating quickly, Clockblocker was taken far away together with the rest of the retreating capes, though Vista was still there in the air, moving backwards and higher but still within range to use her power.

At that point Flechette burst into the air herself with her flight pack to just outside the time slow effect, and pointed her sword.

It was Derflinger, who had also been charged by Flechette, and now shot forward while rapidly extending his length. I couldn't use Derflinger at a high level myself without risking a planar reaction, but it was fine for a local to wield him, and Flechette was the perfect person for it, with her power to imbue objects with a near inviolate piercing effect that the Entities originally designed to kill each other in every dimension, plus her sense of timing and angles.

She had actually used a sword in her regular gear before but the PRT deemed it too lethal and she had to switch to the Tinker arbalest instead.

Derflinger was much slower than the drones but because he was charged by Flechette, he went through unhindered and reached a piece of broken Behemoth flesh easily.

A yellow aura lit up his own frame as mana surged and he rapidly absorbed that piece.

Behemoth roared in response, maybe in anger or just pumping out more shockwaves as Derflinger expanded into multiple segments trying to reach every piece of flesh he could get to.

Unable to fight the Flechette-powered Derflinger, Behemoth ignored him and tried to send lightning strikes toward Flechette herself.

Suicide drones blocked the path and redirected his lightning using Dragon's ionization tech as best as they could while Flechette flew backwards, Derflinger continuing to lengthen all the while.

The lightning missed her, more drones got in the way as more lightning came, and Eidolon also rounded over to her to help.

Derflinger finished absorbing all the flesh just as Behemoth finished off the last of the drones that were carrying the threads, and then Flechette's body lit up as well, and she swung at Behemoth.

Thanks to Flechette's power to imbue materials with the ability to selectively ignore physics, Derflinger's new form became frictionless and weightless. Not only that, while Derflinger's ability to transform was quite slow under normal circumstances due to the difficulty of moving so much mass, empowered by Flechette's power charge, the sword could use a tiny amount of mass to cover an enormous surface area, and still be nigh inviolate, capable of piercing the enemy Endbringer flesh regardless of its own mass density or lack thereof.

The perfectly timed physics defying charged sword which was sped up massively from Flechette's Armoriont and Derflinger's Boost, which was then further amplified by the third-class lever of the arm swing motion while suffering no problems with integrity or tension due to Flechette's power, sliced cleanly into Behemoth and cut him in half.

Then Eidolon erected a powerful barrier to block the built-up shockwaves and flame that finally came out of the time slow area.

Meanwhile, Derflinger quickly absorbed the half of Behemoth that was cut off, and Behemoth burst out of the time slow effect once Flechette had cut through a large section of it with that last move.

A massive burst of lightning suddenly covered the skies, striking hundreds of drones dead in an instant as Behemoth stopped holding back.

Simultaneously, an earthquake collapsed kilometers around, Behemoth at the epicenter, causing buildings to topple over. Additional shockwaves rippled through the air, created complex interference patterns that caused buildings to explode and lead to chain collapses.

The command center started crumbling with many of the Thinkers and Tinkers capes still inside, as the medical camp area. Skitter's larger bugs that were around and not killed by the shockwaves did their best to stop the building from completely collapsing and get as many capes evacuated as quickly as possible, but many died anyway.

Eidolon, Legend, and Alexandria re-engaged to try and contain Behemoth, while other defenders moved back up to support.

Derflinger grew quickly from the handle and became an armor that covered Flechette, still charged with her power to be inviolate, protecting her from everything.

She flew higher into the air to stay far away from Behemoth's kill aura range which was the only thing that could harm her now, as all other attacks would be blocked by the charged armor. She waited for an opportunity to continue strike at Behemoth, but the battle was quickly becoming too chaotic.

Legend suddenly went down as hundreds of light beams were redirected towards the other capes and drones, while Alexandria was blasted away through ten buildings.

Eidolon started fighting the Endbringer one on one as almost all of Hydra's drones had been destroyed, and the other defenders were getting slaughtered from massive terrain destruction, shockwaves, and redirected attacks of all kinds from afar before ever getting close to the main site of battle.

The one drone carrying Vista had almost been hit as well but Vista managed to warp space to redirect the lightning causing most of it to miss her but she still got shocked and fell unconscious.

The two engaged in a giant slug fest and tore through the city at high speed annihilating everything in their way.

"Wow, they really are just playing with us, huh? If Behemoth did that from the beginning, we wouldn't have stood a chance," Amelia commented as half the city was obliterated in short order.

Alexandria managed to get Legend and then organized a retreat to the medical camp area which had been stabilized by some force fields and Tinkertech, but it was now overwhelmed with injured capes.

I ordered Hydra to bring Vista to the camp as well.

Every building had been leveled, almost all of the capes were now at the medical camp, with the rest of the surviving capes just trying to defend that area and keep it stable from the earthquakes or some stranglers still trying to get there amidst the quakes and debris.

Then Flechette re-entered the fight after Derflinger extended to an extraordinary length, covering over a kilometer.

With her enhanced timing and angle calculation power, she struck out despite being a kilometer away with a swing that Behemoth barely dodged and took off another limb while also bisecting a large number of broken structures that were in the way.

After slicing it off, Flechette struck the separated piece so that Derflinger could absorb it, before aiming for the Endbringer again.

Again and again, she struck, Derflinger continuing to expand forward. Swinging rapidly, shearing off more of Behemoth's flesh each time, only for the Endbringer to regenerate faster and faster as well, but unable to get any closer to Flechette with his attacks as Eidolon kept getting in his way.

Everyone just watched Eidolon, Flechette, and Behemoth duke it out from a distance.

After a while, Behemoth took it to a higher level and started using shockwaves to propel himself into the air at extreme speeds, creating sudden bursts of air pressure every time he needed to change directions.

Like this, he started to avoid Flechette's swings and closed in on her again with Eidolon unable to keep him back anymore.

Once it became clear that Flechette was unable to get away fast enough, more portals opened and drones reinforcements started teleporting back in, including a jet speeder that appeared beneath Flechette, which she landed on. Derflinger retracted from her leg area so that clamps could lock onto her legs, and her feet armor extended their own clamps charged with her power to meld with the speeder.

The rest of the drones suicided themselves toward Behemoth with a variety of effects and mass time slow bombing to buy Flechette time to get away, then charge the speeder with her power as well to make it invulnerable.

Behemoth dealt with the drones just as easily as he did last time by creating a giant chain lightning storm covering the whole area, and capes at the medical camp were forced to defend from the enormous area attack with barriers.

Just as Alexandria was contemplating joining the fight again, suddenly a large shadow covered the ground. The capes looked up to see an enormous floating ship half a kilometer long and a hundred meters across had teleported onto the battlefield, and unleashed a salvo of several hundred missiles, beams, and other munitions to bombard Behemoth.

Behemoth struck back with lightning and an energy shield appeared over the ship to block the lightning and nothing happened.

Yet the Endbringer itself also survived the massive attack looking only a little worse for wear, and crashed itself against the energy shielding in a single shockwave that annihilated hundreds of meters worth of property behind him.

It started to drain the energy shielding periodically while escaping from Flechette's swings.

And then Scion appeared over the gathered capes below.

"You're too late damn it!!" Somebody shouted at him, for showing up only after the entire city was almost completely destroyed and they'd suffered some of the worst casualties in history.

Scion ignored him and started healing people. Legend woke back up.

Then Scion re-appeared near the Endbringer and had it grabbed by the throat, throwing it into the ground with an intense yellow beam following.

It seemed to push the Endbringer deeper into the ground, and negated the shockwaves he used to try and get out of it.

Hydra's dreadnought added its own attacks to bombard Behemoth, while Eidolon powered up barriers to keep Behemoth from getting away.

Flechette's power could not handle Scion's Stilling beam so she stayed back just watching.

Behemoth managed to get himself free a few times but Scion hit him again and again, and it looked like he was dying.

The capes watched with trepidation at Scion seemingly about to kill Behemoth.

The Endbringer started glowing in an intense light himself.

Suddenly a loud scream tore through the air.

Most capes went berserk upon hearing the familiar scream, though the Triumvirate recovered within seconds.

Canary's voice rang out to counter the Morrigan's Scream but several capes had already been killed by their berserk comrades.

"Oh fuck!" I cursed aloud as our team watched the screen in horror, but Hydra was even faster, ordering through the armbands.

"RETREAT OR MAKE THE STRONGEST BARRIER YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY! PHIR SE LOST CONTROL OF HIS TIME BOMB!"

Scion turned back from Behemoth to look at the capes at the medical camp, then reappeared next to them.

Flechette flew through a portal and abandoned the jet speeder.

Flechette charged her power into Derflinger to the max while he retracted as fast as he could but still trailed far behind her and the portal closed in with him still retracting through it, but keeping the dimensional hole as small as possible.

Then light burst from underground.

Everything went white.

When the light hit Behemoth, a second burst of light turned the screens even whiter.

…

We stared at the static on the screen. The other timeline where we hadn't sent in the ship, Scion hadn't yet appeared but the Scream struck all the same.

"Almost all my bugs are gone," Skitter reported.

Minutes later, Flechette came stumbling through a portal to join us in the console room, with Derf back to his elven sword form.

The only screen that was still online was the view of the medical camp, by the drones that survived together under Scion's protection.

We and the gathered capes gazed around in pure shock at the barren wasteland around the area, as far as the eye could see.

Debris from our ship was still raining down in pieces.

Scion floated around for a moment, then flew off.

People started kneeling down or crying out in despair, especially the few Indian capes that were still alive.

Eidolon made his way back over to the group in silence, having survived the blast with his own barrier.

"Behemoth is dead, he turned himself into a bomb just before the other bomb hit him and amplified the explosions together," Eidolon announced sullenly.

But nobody cheered.

"Scion killed the Morrigan as well," Alexandria announced.

Again, nobody cheered.

"One and a half Endbringers dead…all for the price of…this? Whatever this is? How far was the damage?" Chevalier asked, shellshocked.

"The Indian subcontinent has been destroyed," Dragon's voice said in a shaky whisper.

There was a long silence.

"You're kidding me. Tell me you're kidding. The Indian subcontinent…as in all of India?" Clockblocker asked disbelievingly.

"That is what the satellite scans are showing," Dragon's voice confirmed mournfully.

"What about the surrounding countries?" Legend asked.

"Our analysis coincides with Dragon's," Hydra's voice added. "In reviewing the final footage before the end and other scans of the blast zone, it appears that Phir Se tried to stabilize his time bomb and direct it south towards Behemoth. Unfortunately this created a shaped blast, which after colliding with Behemoth's own suicide explosion, caused a directed wave of destruction spreading southwards in an expanding cone, with only a minor backblast to the north which stopped at the Himalayas. The result is that all of India was destroyed in an almost deliberate fashion, including a quarter of Sri Lanka. Small areas west of Ahmedabad survived, as did West Bengal in the east."

Absolute silence followed the monotonously delivered report.

"Oh my god…" Paige said beside us in the console room.

"We were so close…even after Behemoth stopped playing around, and then this? Did they want this to happen? Were they hitting back harder because we almost got him?" Lily asked, mask off, a face of anguish. "Compared to Japan, this is on a whole new scale…didn't India have over a billion people?"

"Even if he died, this isn't a victory," Amelia muttered in a subdued tone.

"This wasn't supposed to happen..." I said. "Did my interference in this plane make things worse? Scion was supposed to kill Behemoth cleanly. The damn Morrigan…shit, we should've had Phir Se fire sooner in a controlled way."

"It's not your fault, Kaleidus," said Skitter. "If we did that, the Morrigan probably would have just struck sooner. We don't even know how it got there, and how long it was waiting. I never detected it the whole time."

"Myrddin can put people inside of pocket dimensions attached to moving things…but he's Manton Limited for himself. Maybe the Morrigan isn't Manton Limited and hid in pocket dimensions," said Lily.

"Yet the Morrigan was also never supposed to be active. It must be because of me that the Endbringers are taking this to a new level," I said, continuing to act distressed, though I didn't really need to act much.

The whole thing had been a shocker in terms of the scale of damage, and it was unfortunate, but I had already half-expected something disastrous might happen again, given the threat we posed and Eidolon's power up. But CRUCIBLE had survived again without losing anything irreplaceable…and Derflinger had got a pretty good amount of Behemoth's flesh in the process, which had been my main objective.

The sheer scale of it had affected me a little too, but in the end, I did not know or care about most of the people who died. Everyone that mattered to me in this plane was in this room with me and they were all fine.

"That's not true, didn't you say that the Endbringers might also be enhanced because Eidolon was able to restore his powers?" Amelia asked.

"I did but…this is too much. Eidolon was at full power many years ago and the Endbringers never once fought this hard," I said. "And I don't know for sure if Eidolon shares the same power source as them. His power can use any other power so it might just have activated it and then they operate independently afterwards. I know that they don't die if he dies. The Endbringers were something that Eden used in her simulation too, directed by herself to push the Cycle."

I had already explained to the team the theory of Eidolon's subconscious fourth power creating the Endbringers using Eden's special systems, but we hadn't told Eidolon himself.

I didn't know what the result of that would be—assuming that he had any conscious control of them or for therapy to work was foolish. Eidolon was a hero through and through even if he subconsciously wanted a challenge. He never would have made that choice if he knew about it, and sought to save people. The fact that the shards could pervert this wish to the point of creating disasters for Eidolon to deal with was obviously a result of Cauldron having been too effective in the early years, and automated systems kicking in to bring more conflict and chaos to the world. That was why the Endbringers all had their own specific functions to destroy some manner of important infrastructure of civilization.

If Eidolon knew the truth, it was just as likely that the shards would end up perverting his other desires in the same way.

Regardless, it was an insane risk to take, and I was not crazy enough to use the words that Scion used to get rid of Eidolon when Scion was trying to inflict as much damage to the world as possible with his unrestricted Path to Victory. Obviously, the result of Eidolon learning the truth was a net negative for everyone, otherwise Scion wouldn't have done it. Whether it would be negative for me was hard to say, but I'd rather deal with known threats than derail everything.

Even if things had already been massively derailed today.

"Defeating the Endbringers was always a pipedream, and it's pointless to think about whose fault it is," said Skitter. "If there's something to blame, it's the Entities for doing all of this, creating all this misery just for their experiment. You and Eidolon are both great heroes, doing your best. We got closer than ever to containing or even killing Behemoth today, even without Scion jumping in at the last minute. And at least now it's clear that they are killable."

"Skitter is right," said Lily. "If they hit us harder because we're hitting them harder, that doesn't mean we should stop and just let them play their game and live at their whim. It just means that we have to be more careful about when we use our best tactics, find ways to limit the damage."

"We have to keep trying, keep going. Look, they're saying it too," Amelia said, pointing at the screen where Legend was giving a speech after some capes had started saying defeatist things and trying to kill themselves.

"Now the rest of the world knows how badly the Endbringers were holding back," said Paige. "We can be more prepared for the final fight, even if they don't know about Scion. And at least this way, there's hope other than Scion—even if he dealt the killing blow, they know that we pushed Behemoth beyond anything anyone else did before."

"So don't you feel guilty about this, Kaleidus. Last time we almost lost everything and you told us we did well—now it's our turn to tell you that you did better than anyone could have expected," said Amelia.

"Thanks, all of you. You're right. We have to keep going," I said.

"And you too, Lily. You were great out there," said Paige with a beautiful smile. "I wish you could be on our team properly rather than just as an exchange officer."

"Th-thanks," Lily said before looking away shyly with a slight blush.

"Don't forget Derf," Skitter added. "The best magical sword."

"Aww, shucks. You'll make me blush," said Derf.

O O O

 

[Eman Resu]

Love the ruthlessness and selfishness, that's what we're here for.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

57 – A New Pet

[Kaleidus]

The aftermath of the Behemoth battle was chaos across the world. Economic, ecological, religious, and all sorts of other kinds of disasters spread.

The one consistency was fear. Fear that another country could be wiped out next time, fear of capes like Phir Se with that much destructive power when the details leaked, fear of the Endbringers that had been holding back so much.

There was a small bit of hope in Scion, but the mood was predominantly one of mourning and fear.

Footage from the battle had been leaked as well, since most of it had been livestreamed from afar until everything was destroyed.

Eidolon had won new fame for his solo segment against Behemoth, as did Flechette for cutting Behemoth in half, among other feats. Her role in the joint S-Class Task Force working with CRUCIBLE inevitably came out as well. Hydra and his dreadnaught was a major topic on PHO, too.

A private debriefing conference was held between the leaders of CRUCIBLE, the PRT, the Protectorate, and the Guild, in which it had been agreed that the S-Class Task Force would continue coordinating Endbringer battle strategy and they would aim to contain and kill Endbringers going forward.

Lily had been a relatively easy convert without even using any Master powers on her, after the numerous revelations I'd provided about the PRT, Cauldron, the Entities, corruption in the justice system, etc. It also helped that she seemed to have developed a crush on Paige that currently went unreciprocated as Paige seemed to think she was just a big fan of her music, spending inordinate amounts of time with her ostensibly helping with songwriting and tuning instrumentals. Even though she officially remained only an exchange officer with us, we treated her as part of the team and she disclosed the classified information the PRT had on us without prompting. She also told us everything that she reported to Piggot and Armsmaster honestly during the periodic meetings she needed to have with them as an official Ward. I was already aware of the information, but it clearly showed where her true loyalties laid.

Still, things changed, and some of the fallout of Behemoth hit us closely as well.

A lot of capes from Brockton Bay who'd joined the battle against Behemoth had also died this time, unlike the Simurgh battle in which everyone from Brockton miraculously survived.

Kid Win, Gallant, and Velocity died during the command center and medical camp collapse. Browbeat, Brandish, and Battery died at various other points. Manpower died from a berserk cape following the Morrigan's scream.

Assault and Triumph had not been successfully recovered after being marked as wounded in the field and were presumed dead now that India had been erased.

Victoria had been maimed badly, with the entire lower half of her body pulverized, but Taylor had kept some bugs close to her so they were able to recover her and send her to the medical camp, at which point Amelia managed to keep her alive until Scion mass healed the capes at the medical camp.

New Wave was down to just the Pelhams now. For Amelia, the loss of both her adopted parents had not hit as hard as it might have if she hadn't already been estranged from them. Even so, as the team comforted her, she'd confessed that it didn't feel good that she hadn't even talked to them before they were suddenly gone; especially Mark, who despite being not fully there, hadn't been unkind to her.

So together with Taylor and Lily as moral support, she went to visit the Pelhams. I decided to stay away since they might still have suspicions of me being a Master and it would be better for them to see that Amelia had other female friends her own age on the team. Paige wanted to go but her identity could be controversial, especially as a Master herself, so she also stayed back.

The Pelhems were hosting Victoria in their home now, and her reunion with Victoria had been one of many apologies on both sides, but they could not go back to their previous closeness either. She promised to visit more often, but didn't stay very long, though she promised to attend the Dallons' funeral and left them a communications line in case they needed any help.

With the stability of Brockton Bay, I'd decided to kick off the commercialization and merchandising plans I had for CRUCIBLE, and Paige's songs now played a significant role in it due to her increasing popularity. We even started to sell songs with very minor emotional effects as a way for people to cope with the stress from everything that was happening in the world.

Because we had a lot of money, way back when we had broken her out of the Birdcage, I had taken over Paige's case, and hired new lawyers to submit an appeal to a higher court. A symbolic appeal without her presence, or so people thought, but I had other plans. I'd put Calvert on handling this while I was away, with oversight from Offensive Bias.

Soon after we did so, the Simurgh had destroyed Boston and its court buildings. The process of appealing and all other legal cases had stalled for almost a month, then the Massachusetts courts had ended up temporarily moved to Brockton Bay as the most secure city in the state that was also nearby.

The sitting judges in Boston had conveniently died so they needed to be replaced, and with a variety of methods, we had managed to convince the governor and other relevant parties that judges sympathetic to cape rights with a positive view of CRUCIBLE should be installed.

As a result, our appeal had moved forward much faster than anticipated; and with our superior team of lawyers retained through Calvert's connections, on top of the influence we had on the court, a decision was quickly made to overturn the lower court's decision without a retrial shortly after the conclusion of the Behemoth battle.

Thus, Paige was exonerated, and publicly unmasked in a press conference in which we claimed that we had swapped her out on her way to the Birdcage and left a power-produced decoy clone to be imprisoned in the Birdcage.

Because we knew that the PRT already suspected Ostinato, we had allowed Lily to find out early on, telling her all about how unjust and terrible it was, and letting her report back about it. It had been acknowledged and then nothing was done, while the PRT continued to classify the Birdcage breakout, preferring to let people believe that the Birdcage was secure, so we anticipated that they wouldn't say anything to contradict or stop us, And they didn't.

There were many who responded negatively to this development, but despite the fear of the Simurgh and its destruction of Boston, the outpouring of support for Paige drowned out the fearmongers once the details of the case had been widely known, including the gross mistreatment she'd received in court and in temporary prisons.

It helped that Offensive Bias hacked every social media site and used bots and fake accounts to massively amplify the positive responses while suppressing and criticizing the negative ones. The conventional media side was a bit more difficult, but there were as many pro-parahuman journalists as there were anti-parahuman ones. Still, the media was overall inclined to take exposés, tragedies, and scandals to deliver shocking and bad news to the public, so they were eager to focus on the scandal of the prosecutorial misconduct and the new story Paige was now free to tell: about her ex-boyfriend being an asshole that emotionally abused her, then left while telling her to give up on her songs, before coming back to try and claim half her earnings after she became successful.

The result of all this was that within days, all of her songs had exploded in popularity due to the amount of attention her case had brought to her, topping the national charts. The new ones with the emotionally soothing effects were the most popular, but even her old ones made sudden comebacks.

Before I left the plane, I'd made some additional plans with Offensive Bias and Calvert to use our Thinker and data processing capabilities to find other ways of making money and continue acquiring more resources on Earth Bet.

We didn't really need it, seeing as we could get whatever we needed from our resource extraction operations, but it couldn't hurt to do so either, especially to subtly acquire more political influence.

Taylor proposed cleaning up the docks, so that was added to our plans as well.

Medhall had fallen apart with Kaiser gone and his civilian identity still missing, and as he was the largest shareholder decisions could not be made, so we acquired another pharmaceutical company and then poached most of their employees.

This company then became a vehicle to produce drugs with Amelia's expertise. But rather than having her create new drugs, which could get us in trouble with the Tinkertech regulations, we instead offered a service in which other early stage drug development companies could either pay us a large cash sum to have Amelia conduct a power-based analysis of the drug's mechanism of action and effects during animal studies and human preclinical phase 0 trials, or give us the rights to develop the drug further if they couldn't afford to pay our prices.

This analysis was easy and near costless for us, but provided incomparably high predictive accuracy for drug safety and efficacy, allowing researchers to stop candidate drugs that weren't good enough, with the potential to save many billions of dollars for the industry.

Yet those drugs that were good candidates still needed to go through the normal regulatory process, and there was no real competition with existing jobs because it was an entirely new type of service, even if it did eliminate a lot of wasteful research activity. We predicted that investors and industry groups would have no interest in lobbying against this, because it was profitable for everyone involved and made investments far less risky once it had Panacea's name vouching for the drug.

For us, it was especially powerful because many startups did not have the financial resources at the early stages of preclinical trials to proceed further due to the risk of failure involved. By taking the option of sharing or selling licensing rights to us with predetermined terms in lieu of a cash payment, they could either proceed as partners with us or stop pursuing a dead end path. And because their valuations were so low before Panacea's analysis, we could negotiate deals to gain the lion's share of profits for a good drug, while having no capital risk for ourselves if the drug was bad.

Once we had the rights, we could either flip it to other big pharma companies for a huge payout, or take it through clinical trials ourselves. That whole process would take ages, so I preferred the former option. Either way, it would be an easy way to make billions given enough time.

Unfortunately time was something we did not have in this plane, and money wasn't that big a deal either, so it was just something we did because we could, rather than any major priority. And if the knowledge of some miracle drug eventually became useful on some other plane? Just a nice bonus if it worked out.

O O O

Tower of God - 4 years after the Floor of Tests

[Interlude]

In the dead of night, on the 25th Floor, Ship Leesoo stood across from Khun on a deserted platform.

"Khun, are you really leaving with Rachel just like that?" He demanded.

"I have to. I'll make a new team and keep her away from you guys. I'll find out the truth…and kill her if she really betrayed him," said Khun.

"What's everyone going to think? How am I supposed to explain it?" Leesoo asked. "Leaving so suddenly like this…"

"I'm sure you can come up with something. You're a good leader, Leesoo," said Khun.

"Ah…damn it."

"We'll meet again, later. Keep climbing up, I'll assemble a strong team and then catch up with you guys."

O O O

A cloaked figure jumped down from a tall building and stopped in the middle of their path.

Team Ship took up guarded stances. Anak went forth with her hook to attack.

"Wait, Anak!" Lessoo shouted.

The figure blocked Anak's strike easily, then pushed her back, much to her shock. She hadn't met anyone that could so easily overpower her in a long time.

"Is this how you greet an old teammate?" The figure asked.

"That voice and cloak…" said Hatsu.

She lifted her hood, revealing the face of a smirking Androssi.

"Witch!" Anak growled.

"Princess Androssi!" Leesoo exclaimed. "It's been a long time. What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to rejoin the team. If you'll have me? Been waiting for ages on this Floor," she said.

"Of course we will!" Leesoo said.

"What? Why are we letting her join the team? We don't need her!" Anak shouted.

"We could use the extra firepower, now that Khun and Rak have left," said Hatsu.

"But where's Axion?" Leesoo asked.

"He's right here," said Androssi, taking out what looked like a Shinsoo bomb with an unusual pattern on it, with a dark blue at the bottom to light blue in the middle and white at the top, wavy lines separating each section.

There were cries of surprise and wariness as she pressed the button on the ball.

But when the ball opened, there was no explosion, instead, something came out of it and enlarged before flying up to Androssi's shoulder and then curling around the back of her neck to settle its head on the other side.

It was a winged creature reminiscent of a baby dragon in the western style, with smooth dark teal skin, the same color of Axion's armor in its default form.

"What the heck is that?!" Leesoo asked.

The creature only made a noise that sounded like a meow.

"Why did he turn into that…?" Anak asked with a complicated face.

"Axion went off to do some things by himself, and left me with this little cutie," said Androssi while maneuvering the dragon from her neck into her arms and petting it.

"But what is it? Why did you say that was him?" Hatsu asked.

"Because he was imbued with a basic imprint of Axion's will, so he listens to me. And under some circumstances he can transfer his full mind to it to join us for the tests with a small fraction of his real powers," said Androssi. "When his mind isn't in there, we can call him Axie! Haha!"

"What…really? I've never heard of an ability like that before," said Leesoo.

"I was surprised too," said Androssi. "But it turns out he's an Anima of sorts."

"Amazing. Looks like we aren't the only ones that got stronger, huh?" Leesoo looked around at his team with a smile.

O O O

In a dark chamber somewhere on the 20th Floor

[Kaleidus]

"Hmm…" I pulled the squirming parasite out of the container and then carefully dropped it towards the Regular I'd strapped to the table who looked on in fear with a mouth that was being forcefully kept open.

A soundproofed Shinsoo field blocked his scream as the parasite went in.

I held another denser bubble of Shinsoo filled with my mana around the Regular's head, monitoring the parasite as it slithered towards his brain.

Behind me, a tank of some small Shinheuh swam around.

The Regular struggled against his straps uselessly, and then the parasite stopped and tried to escape. It flew out of the mouth, and then exploded as the Shinsoo and mana became too volatile.

I also lost control of the mana in the Regular's brain, causing that to explode as well.

"Unfortunate…well, I got enough data already I suppose. Doesn't seem like I can replicate this type of control in any reasonable amount of time," I said.

On this Floor, many Regulars were desperate to advance and become E-Rank by passing the final test.

Below the 20th floor, Regulars could only live in the Inner Tower where Regulars took tests, but after becoming E-Rank they obtained the right to live in the Middle Area and could live a much better life even if they stopped climbing. Those who gave up below the 20th Floor would be kicked out into the Middle Area as well, but they didn't have the same status or rights in Zahard's Empire.

But the difficulty of this floor was a huge jump from the previous ones, so a lot of Regulars failed and had to retake it multiple times at a high cost to pay the test fees, medical bills, equipment maintenance, and their living expenses.

That created an opportunity for some unscrupulous actors to take advantage of them. For example, there was a loan shark company called 'Lurker Cash', that lent money to Regulars to take the tests, and once they were severely indebted, they would propose certain life threatening solutions to pay back the debt, like selling their organs.

It was therefore a matter of mutual interest for me, under the name of Dr. Dua, to cooperate with them in recruiting test subjects for experimental enhancement research. I offered to pay well, and the Regulars were more inclined to take this option than to sign away their organs, and Lurker Cash saved me the trouble of getting the subjects myself.

Since I didn't have a permit from Zahard's Empire and this type of research was of questionable legality to begin with, I couldn't exactly advertise it. But, with Lurker Cash offering it only to those who were already deeply indebted and had no other choice, it was easy to keep this under the rug.

The parasite I was researching now was not really a high priority item of mine, but since I'd chanced into finding one, I decided to take a look at it. It was a sort of control that was easily resistible and crude, yet simultaneously complex enough in the mechanism that the water spirits could not make heads or tails of it and neither could I, at least not without a willing participant and perhaps many long years of research.

Over the years I'd become an Anima as planned—with multiple methods of controlling Shinheuh.

The water spirits themselves already had mental dominance magic back in FoZ, it was only a matter of figuring out how to get them to do it. Now I could do it on non-sapient creatures pretty easily, and they'd also been taught to control Shinheuh with Shinsoo methods as well.

The magic version had some serious drawbacks that were never shown in the FoZ story as Cromwell used the Andvari ring carelessly and forced the water spirits to do his bidding. The biggest problem was that in order to do it, the water spirits had to separate a smaller mass of spirits from themselves and send it into the target, on top of spending a lot of mana to maintain control against their magic resistance. So obviously they didn't like to do it, and just like the wind stone spirits, without a sufficiently large concentration of spirits, the separated portion would start to dissipate and die after the mana ran out.

But to invest a sufficiently large portion to keep it self-sustainable would weaken the original stone, and me by extension, especially since I now had water spirits all over my body to do various work and strengthen my overall connection to them. Not worth it at all unless the target was extremely powerful or valuable in some way—but if the target were too powerful, there was always the risk that the fragment I invested would actually be taken over or destroyed.

So if I wanted to create an army of cannon fodder like Cromwell with a high level spell—which would also incur the corrective force unless commanded by my summoner, I could now do that, but that was mostly pointless.

The Shinsoo version only needed Shinsoo, but like all real Anima, it required maintaining and refreshing the flow of Shinsoo in my Bowl and training the Shinheuh over time with that flow. There would certainly be uses for that, but like Yu Hansung warned me, the whole thing was a big time sink and for somebody who already had much stronger abilities it had questionable utility. I would need to find and/or modify special Shinheuh for it to be meaningful. Compared to the magic method though, it was something that could be done without any planar backlash or sacrificing anything valuable.

I also had a bigger project that was far more useful to me, combining the water spirits, a basic familiar spell, and a new version of the Armoriont, which I'd completed shortly before I split up with Androssi.

Essentially, I'd developed a familiar spell based on Fate principles and the same mechanisms in Agate, plus what I'd used to connect to the water spirits in the first place.

Since the Armoriont was meant to serve as armor, and barely functional without a symbiotic user, a new organism was required to be the familiar.

Amelia and I named it the Beastiont.

The new Beastiont could no longer fully regenerate from a very small mass nor could it serve just a thin layer of armor. But in exchange, it was much more efficient at freeform shape shifting as a much larger mass, and could act as an independent entity.

It had a number of templates for mimicking Earth animals, Halkegenian creatures, and also Tower shinheuh, as well as a mix of their biologies and body parts, but still primarily made of the same nanocellulose material. This required a core to incubate from, which continued to be a vital organ no matter which form it took. If it took too small a form that couldn't hold the full core, like a bird, then it was stuck in that form. Though as long as I had one core, it could split and make more.

It was still called an "iont" because like the chimera titan Amelia first created, it could be melded with a human user possessing the Bionanite Swarm and an Armoriont.

Or, it could simply carry sufficient neural tissue to have a mind of its own.

By making a magic familiar out of a Beastiont, I could control it without being physically connected to it and imbue a bit of my will into it along with a store of mana to do things.

If I then added a mass of water spirits into that, it became capable holding a much more powerful will imprint that I could connect to from a vast distance, and even of absorbing Shinsoo to convert into mana along with the water spirits' normal abilities, but much weaker while having to recharge a lot more.

This made it suitable as a semi-autonomous and intelligent puppet, but whose body was almost entirely substituted with the special nanocellulose-based biology. Without human organs getting in the way, its durability, transformability, and regenerative powers were much better.

The completed one I'd given to Androssi used the Halkgenian Rhyme Dragon DNA as its base template. Even without magic, its body was an impressive specimen.

When I was busy and couldn't control it, Androssi could bring it around as a pet that could understand basic commands from her. Then, for the actual tests, I could find somewhere quiet to project my will into it and participate in the tests as a Regular. I had actually asked the Guardian if this was allowed, and it was. As long as I had an avatar and consciousness present for the test, I could be registered as a Regular even if my main body was somewhere else, and the Guardians would recognize it. It only needed me to buy a second E-Rank Pocket in order to prove my qualifications to the Zahard Empire test administrators.

Once the climb got a bit boring, I had split up with Androssi to advance my research further while pursuing some other objectives.

So far the Beastiont Familiar was a useful gimmick for some specialized purposes, but although its physical power and durability was impressive for a mere puppet, it wouldn't be good enough to contend with the top of the E-Rank tier, and my ability to channel spells through it was quite limited.

The water spirits could refine some mana but barely enough to keep themselves and the Mystery that kept my will there sustained with the ability to connect with me, and I had to be pretty close by in order to supply any mana to it—being on a different Floor made that impossible, so even if I connected to control it, its abilities were quite pathetic compared to me.

Because of the invested water spirits, it was capable of using very basic Shinsoo to manipulate the Pocket for registration purposes. But otherwise, I was unable to project the ability to use Shinsoo from myself.

And it took an incredibly long time to create, to imbue my will into it and make it a proper familiar responsive to my will, possessing the necessary magic power to support itself. The first one took an entire month to complete, and even though I could probably cut that in half now that I knew how to do it properly, it was still a very long time. It was just that I had a lot of free time on my hands in between the tests on each Floor.

So the next logical step was to find ways to support, enhance, and/or control people with good potential of their own. So that I wouldn't need to rely on creating full familiars myself.

What was the point of this? Well, there were many. The most obvious one was that a great mastermind should not simply charge at the front of the battlefield and risk themselves like that. I needed minions that would willingly do that for me instead.

Some teammates like Androssi were fine on their own, but some teammates would need assistance and power ups. They might need healing…or modification…

It was also a way to do things through loyal intermediaries without people necessarily knowing I was behind it. Or, alternatively, to become a symbol of my power the same way Zahard adopted princesses.

But there was a more fundamental reason that I'd chosen to separate from Androssi and take a break to do this research instead of just climbing further.

Training and growing stronger through climbing naturally was good, but there were certain things I needed to do as a magus and plane traveler to advance myself that could only be accomplished through research.

I was able to unlock more of the known powers of the water spirits without too much trouble and just trained with them to get better, but that wasn't the same as developing my own spells. Even if I could now get the water spirits to heal or control things, why should I only rely on them?

To develop my own Mysteries, I needed actual experimentation, and I needed much larger quantities of test subjects. The same was true for all abilities I wanted to advance for myself, even aside from magecraft or spirit magic.

I needed to build a stronger base of understanding for all of my powers, and their interactions with the world.

The fact was that nothing could be expected to be absolutely universal in every plane. Even those powers that did seemingly work in different planes, could still have different interactions and results when in a different environment. Like the Kaleidostick's reference inputs, the water spirits' water manipulation, or Shinsoo's behavior elsewhere.

It was not good enough to be merely capable of casting a spell or having an item/aid that could do it for me. I needed to get good enough to be able to adapt to local circumstances, if things did not work the way I expected them to, and to achieve similar effects while taking advantage of local rules and powers.

I'd always gone for low hanging fruits first to be efficient, but now…I finally had the time to work on this before I needed to move again once canon events picked up.

In a couple of years, Baam would re-appear, while Ship's team would have gone up to the 30th Floor. That was also another reason I'd chosen to split up from Androssi.

Unlike other worlds I'd been to so far, this was one where fate was extremely powerful, and the enemies were so numerous and powerful behind the scenes that I had little reason to change anything. Not only that, despite having a decent knowledge of the plot up to the second season, there was simply not enough information about the wider setting, especially at the higher levels.

So this "downtime" in between the major plot events was the perfect time for me to work on other things and improve some of my magic fundamentals. And since Androssi did not mind giving me the broad order to research interesting powers to continue providing some shielding from the planar's corrective force, I could afford to use some magic for this research even far away from her.

I would have problems if I tried to use too much power because Androssi was too far away to support me and not aware of precisely what I was doing, so the shielding was quite weak, but it wasn't a big deal so long as the contract held, making the consequences relatively minor. I might get suppressed afterwards and be forced to lay low for a while but I'd still be able to use my powers in small bursts if needed.

O O O

5 years and 10 months after the Floor of Tests

[Interlude]

"Not again…" Yihwa groaned as she walked dejectedly through the streets away from the Regular testing centre. "How could this happen? Now I'm in debt and I still haven't passed…"

She went back to her room in silence and darkness, lying on her bed, staring at the headband that she'd taken off.

On one side of the headband was a flower symbol and several glittering blue jewels.

"I'm an elite…I can't ask my family for help when I'm not even an E-Rank Regular yet! Everyone will laugh at me…especially not like this…I can just imagine them now…'oh, did the Yeon Family's Flare burn all her teammates again?' …ugh!"

She sighed, then eventually got back up, trying to cook food to save some money. "Ahh!!"

The food was burnt, and then shortly after the stove exploded in flames as well.

"…"

Half an hour later, her stomach was growling and she was forced to hit the streets again, looking for a place to order decent food.

She went past all the fast food and low-end places, then stopped at a more expensive looking restaurant and bar.

Through the window, she looked on with envy at some Regulars celebrating, probably having passed the test so they were having some fun before the scheduled transport to the next Floor.

Then she looked at the menu posted beside the door, and hesitated while glancing again at the Regulars inside. 'I really shouldn't…'

"Hey beautiful, what are you doing standing all alone out here and looking sad like that? Your date stand you up?" A group of men approached her suddenly, eying her with their hungry gazes like she was on the menu.

"No! I came by myself," she said. "I'm just looking."

"Oh, why don't you hang with us then? We can cheer you up and buy you some drinks, or maybe a meal if you want?" One of the guys said while getting closer to her.

She slapped away the arm that tried to snake around her shoulders.

"No thanks, I'm fine!" She said. She had a pretty face and nice body, so this happened all the time. 'Men are such pigs!'

"Tch!" The guy stepped back with an angry expression. "I was just trying to be nice, bitch! Whatever boys, let's go!"

'Trying to be nice…as if! Like I don't know what you want from me,' she thought.

The whole group gave her dirty looks before going into the restaurant.

She checked her point balance, then her stomach growled again.

'Ah…maybe I should've just accepted it…I just have to smile and nod for a bit, right?'

She loitered there for a while, unsure of what she was doing. Was she waiting for somebody else to come by and make the same offer? Trying to decide whether to go in and spend herself further into debt?

'...I don't have to do anything with them…that's right, I can just eat my fill, let them pay for the food and then go on my way…yeah…since they're trying to take advantage of me, why shouldn't I just take advantage of them back? As long as I don't give them what they want, I win!'

She caught the eyes of several other guys and groups that went in, but perhaps it was because they saw the altercation earlier, or because her expression was unfriendly and she couldn't force herself to smile, nobody else approached her.

A tall man with disheveled shaggy brown hair, shaven stubble that ran along the whole underside of his chin almost up to his ears, wearing sunglasses and a neat dress shirt, walked over with his hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of the restaurant, seemingly looking at the menu as well.

He gave her a glance, then paused. "Hm?"

She sneaked a glance back.

The sunglasses were translucent, so Yihwa could tell that the man was staring at her and brazenly roaming over her body as if the sunglasses hid his perverted intentions. Her cheeks flushed a bit but her own eyes darted down and she resisted the urge to tell him off. 'He could be handsome if he cleaned up a bit…it could be worse…'

Out of the corner of her eyes she could see the man continuing to stare at her.

"H-hello?" She looked back up and said hesitantly and forced a slight smile.

"Hey. You here by yourself?" He asked casually, eyes going back to her face.

'At least he knows how to be polite,' Yihwa thought. "Yeah. I was just trying to decide what to get…I'm trying to save up for the tests so I have to be careful with my budget…" 'Come on, take the hint…!'

"Really? Then this probably isn't the best place for it. This place doesn't look budget friendly," he said. "Cooking for yourself is the best way to save."

"I…I'm really bad at cooking," she admitted through gritted teeth, hiding her face from him.

"Well, there are some cheaper places down that way, I think?" He said, pointing down the street.

'Oh come on, why does he have to actually be one of the nice guys that are actually helpful?!' Yihwa raged internally. 'I can't just ask him directly…'

"Um…but it's unhealthy, and I don't want to mess up my diet," she said, gesturing to her body. "It's a lot of hard work to keep my figure, you know?"

The man then tilted his head while looking at her body again, as if he hadn't noticed her beauty. 'What's with that act…he was definitely checking me out earlier! Does he think I didn't notice?'

"I guess you are quite pretty. Must be pretty high maintenance, huh? Heh, glad I don't have to deal with that. Well, good luck deciding then, miss," he said, before waving and turning.

'What…WHAT?'

She grabbed his shoulder and turned him around before he could leave. "Did you just call me high maintenance?! What do you mean you're glad you don't have to deal with that…?" She asked darkly as her body began to burn up.

'Eh? Oh no!' She tried to rein it back in but lost control and promptly exploded in fire.

There was the sound of shattering glass and as everything around them was scorched.

When the smoke cleared, she looked in horror at the damages she just caused, and the man who'd fallen onto the ground in a smoking heap.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!!" She worriedly rushed over to check if he was still alive. His clothes were ruined, but he got up and dusted himself off as if nothing had happened, to her shock.

"Haha…so this is a real hot temper…" He said, chuckling as if it was no big deal.

'He isn't hurt…?'

O O O

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

58 – Debts and Flares

A few moments later, she was bowing to the restaurant staff and customers,apologizing profusely. Then the man surprised her again by paying for the damages.

"How…how much do I owe you?" Yihwa asked hesitantly, scared of the potential figure.

"We can talk about that later. Come on, let's get away from these people first before they lynch us, and grab some food somewhere else," he said, putting an arm around her protectively as he led her away from the hostile atmosphere.

She bit her lip and did not object to the physical touch, lest she cause another disaster.

They made their way to another restaurant, which was even more upscale than the previous one.

'Is he rich?' Yihwa thought as they entered and sat down at a table for two.

The man ordered while Yihwa was still too mortified to speak.

They were served tea before the silence was broken.

"So…you were objecting to being called high maintenance?" The man said pointedly, much to her burning shame.

"I…I'm sorry! I really didn't mean to do that!"

"Sorry, it was a bad choice of words on my part. What I meant was just that, like you said, it's hard work and a lot of maintenance being a beautiful girl, and I'm glad that as a man, I don't have to do all that work," he said.

"Oh…" Yihwa sank deeper into herself in embarrassment.

"I'm going to get a change of clothes, since these have been destroyed," he said.

"Sorry about that too…" Yihwa mumbled, watching him get up and go to the restroom. 'How am I going to pay him back? Should I just make a run for it while he isn't here?'

She glanced around and shuffled in her seat. Then she settled back down, hands in her face.

'No...! As an elite from a Great Family I can't just run away from my debts…'

Some of the food arrived, and it looked both delicious and expensive.

Yihwa checked the menu again. It didn't even have prices, which meant it was one of those places for the rich that didn't even care what the prices were.

'Ugh…I'm hungry but this food…he knows I can't pay for this right…? This is bad…he must be expecting things from me now? And I'm already in debt to him…I can't just leave…but if he asks for those things…do I have to…? No way…! I'd rather ask my family for help then! Argh…but if they found out how much trouble I'm in…damn it I don't know which is worse...maybe if he doesn't take it too far…there are those kinds of relationships where they don't actually have to do it, right?'

She was drawn out of her rampaging thoughts when the man returned.

The sound of background chatter from other customers melted away as if his presence demanded her sole attention.

The man had swapped for another dress shirt, his hair was also brushed, and looked much better.

His sunglasses had turned into normal glasses after going indoors, so Yihwa could see his kind brown eyes.

'…he doesn't look bad at all…and he seems nice…he even survived my flames! He must be really strong…maybe he'll agree to be my teammate…? Nobody else will take me because I can't control my flames, but if he's strong enough that it doesn't bother him…maybe I can finally…'

"Why didn't you just run away?" He asked suddenly with an amused expression. "I gave you the perfect opportunity. Then you wouldn't need to owe me anything. I don't care about it anyways."

"I-I w-would never even think of that!" Yihwa stammered, cheeks reddening again at the memory of herself contemplating it. "I'll pay you back s-somehow…"

"Okay, if you say so. Let's dig in," he said, picking up his utensils.

Then he noticed Yihwa was hesitating. "Don't worry about this meal, by the way. Just consider it my treat. An apology for what I said earlier."

Then she couldn't resist any further and also began to eat. "Thank you!"

The man swallowed some food then asked. "Are you climbing the Tower by yourself?"

Yihwa nodded.

"Your flames are pretty strong. I could imagine the previous floors must have been pretty easy for you. Most Regulars don't have any sort of Shinoo Quality by this time."

Yihwa smiled at the compliment. "That's right, I'm an elite! I entered the Tower when I was fourteen and it hasn't even been five years yet."

"Why not find a team? With that sort of strength, it shouldn't be hard to find some good teammates. You can share some expenses and make it easier on yourself. Maybe get someone that can cook for you," he said.

"Umm…" Yihwa's eyes turned downcast again. "…because of things like what happened earlier…"

"Oh, that wasn't just a one-off thing? You have trouble controlling your flames?" He asked, slicing into a thick steak.

"Yeah…I've always had trouble with it…" Yihwa said hesitantly.

"I see. Must be rough. That's how it is with having too much talent sometimes," he said sympathetically. "I'm sure you'll get the hang of it if you keep working at it though."

When the man didn't say anything further and just quietly ate his food, Yihwa began to think rapidly again while eating. 'He brought it up first…he must be thinking about it? If he's interested in more than just my body…is he waiting for me to take the initiative and ask? To see if I'm willing to be humble? Or is he just shy? He wasn't shy about staring at me earlier…was that just because his shades were on then?'

She swallowed a particularly delicious piece of lobster while continuing to think. 'If I'm his teammate it's not that bad…at least I'm not just selling my body for money! The family doesn't have to know if we're doing anything else…wait, no, what am I thinking I'm not going to do anything else! I'm going to be his teammate, not his mistress! He should be grateful that I'm even letting him look!'

A few moments later, she caught him looking at her again. He smiled, and then her eyes darted back down.

"You look like you're enjoying the food. It's good, right?"

"Y-yes," Yihwa said, glancing back up at his smile and smiling back slightly.

"Eat as much as you like. Order more if you want. Such powerful flames must use a lot of energy…so make sure you get your nutrients. I hear that pretty girls are usually self-conscious about eating more than a guy when having a meal together, but you don't have to worry about that with me. I may not look like it, but I can put away a lot of food…Basically, I can eat as much as you need me to, so there's no need to hold back on my account," he said.

'He can eat as much as I need him to…? That's a metaphor for enduring hardship, right? So he can be romantic too…or wait, was he indirectly telling me I don't need to hold back my flames around him?'

"You don't have to do that," she said, giving the polite response first. But she smiled wider and began to eat faster. 'If he doesn't mind…then I should emphasize how much power I have!'

"My flames don't use that much energy. There's so much flame in me that I could use it all day without getting exhausted. That's why it's hard to control, there's just sooo much."

"That's incredible. Beautiful and powerful. If you keep working hard, you'll definitely be the elite among elites," he said.

"You're flattering me…I'm not that amazing," Yihwa said, giving the expected humble response even as a fluttery feeling arose in her stomach. 'He gets it!'

"Maybe I am flattering you, but you deserve it," he said.

"T-thanks," she said, her voice suddenly a pitch higher while staring at her plate.

The table lapsed into the silence again, filled only by the sounds of their utensils and eating. Yihwa was left to her thoughts again.

'I should say something, shouldn't I? Guys like girls that can hold a conversation…and he led the topic twice already, it's my turn isn't it? But what do I say? Should I just ask him to team up with me now? But isn't that too blunt? Aren't guys supposed to do the asking? He already knows I'm available…wait, does he know I'm from a Great Family? He hasn't said anything but my headband is right there…Maybe he's shy because of that…'

She sneaked a few more glances at him while he seemed to be just enjoying his own food now.

I don't see any family symbols on him…is this just the proper etiquette when a common man deals with a noble lady? Why did nobody tell me how to handle this kind of situation before I entered the Tower?!'

The man drank a bit of his tea, then took another look at the menu.

'A noble lady should offer her hand before the man can kiss it, right? Does that apply here…? How am I supposed to do that?'

"Do you want any alcohol?" The man asked suddenly. "Some wine, maybe?"

"Alcohol? That's…" 'Oh no…was this his real plan? To get me drunk before having his way with me? I knew it was too good to be true…! I won't fall for it!'

Yihwa shook her head. "No thanks. I'm good."

"Okay, no problem. You were looking at that restaurant and bar earlier so I thought maybe that's what you wanted. I'll just order some for myself, don't mind me," he said, while completing his order with the machine.

'Ah…did I misunderstand? It's true that there was a bar there…but it was just a coincidence. I'm not even the right age for it yet…it'll be several more months before I turn nineteen.'

"To be honest, I'm not much of a drinker myself. I greatly value what's up here…and all my memories," He said, tapping his head. "And so I dislike the idea of impairing myself in any way…I have especially been very careful not to have ever gotten drunk before. But people say that good food like this should be paired with wine, especially in a high class place like this…so it would feel a bit strange not to have a little."

"That's a thoughtful way of looking at it," said Yihwa. 'Kind and temperate, was there really such a good man out there…?'

When the wine came, he poured less than half a glass for himself.

"That's all you're having?" Yihwa couldn't help but ask.

"Haha, you never had wine before? It's normal to pour this much, you're not supposed to fill the glass. This way, you can do this," he said, before holding the glass by the thin handle area at the bottom and swirling it around lightly.

"It's not like I never had it before…I just didn't know! What is that for?"

"Can you smell it? By letting it mix with the air, the volatile compounds in the wine are released, and smooth out some odors that aren't so pleasant that are produced as a side effect of the fermentation process," he explained while holding the glass towards her. "This is the proper way to have wine and savor its taste."

She let the smell reach her and noticed what he was talking about. There was a slightly pungent odor initially that dissipated and was replaced by a pleasant fruity aroma after.

"But there's more. Since you're a young and pretty girl, I'll teach you this as well…there are lots of bad guys that might try to put things in your drinks or overdose the alcohol content."

Yihwa's cheeks burned up again. 'I'm not some naïve girl…! I know what guys are like!'

But then the man continued. "If you're having wine, you can use this same technique to check the alcohol level and see if it's suspicious," he said, pouring a second glass.

'Huh?'

"First, you can see that the color is darker in this glass that hasn't been swirled yet. So it's harder to see what's in there. Once you swirl it, the color lightens…but more importantly, see these 'legs' that the wine leaves behind? The higher the viscosity and number of legs left behind, the more alcohol there is in the drink. And when you swirl it up higher in the glass, suspicious things may get left behind. Of course, a simpler test is to watch that they poured it from the same source without tampering, and see if they will drink it themselves," he said, before drinking from the first cup. "Though sometimes that's not enough, because they might have already taken an antidote beforehand. But that's something you can do to protect yourself."

"…thank you…" Yihwa said in a small voice. 'That's actually helpful…and I actually suspected him…'

She reached for the other cup. 'But he shouldn't get the wrong impression of me…I'm not a little girl that doesn't know anything! I'm also cultured and mature!'

"Hey, you don't have to drink that just because I poured it, if you don't want to. It was just a demonstration," he said.

"No, I'll have some!" Yihwa said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure, my flames will burn away the side effects anyway! So it's not like I was worried that you would get me drunk!"

"Well…okay…wait…aren't you actually too young for this? I just remembered, you said you entered the Tower when you were fourteen, and it hasn't been five years right? Isn't the legal age to drink nineteen?"

"N-no way! You must have heard wrong," she said, then quickly gulped down the glass of wine in a single go.

"…normally, when drinking wine with somebody else after they pour it for you, you should offer to clink the glass before the first sip," he said with a knowing smile. "And it's not good to down it all at once like that either, especially for someone who isn't used to it."

"…!" Yihwa felt both her throat and cheeks burning up. "S-so what if I'm not old enough? It's just a few more months until my birthday! Besides, once we enter the Tower as a Regular, age doesn't matter anymore anyways!"

"True, true," he said, pouring her some more. Then he raised his own glass to her. "Cheers, then."

She clinked her glass with his and drank another sip.

Now it really felt like her throat was literally burning, and she put a hand over her mouth while coughing. She felt a flicker of flame on her hand.

"Take it easy," he said, before resuming with eating.

After a while, Yihwa felt better and returned to her food as well. 'That was terrible…and I was too obvious…I just made myself look even more immature, didn't I? I can't let him surprise me again. I have to take control of this conversation, and then go for the kill! How do I do that…? He's been asking me questions every time…I should ask him some too. That's right, I should find out more about him rather than just go off first impressions.'

"So…I told you about me…how long have you been in the Tower?" She asked, as casually as she could.

"Me? Just under six years now," he said.

'That's pretty fast too…'

"How can you afford all this?"

"It's not a big deal. I got lucky and defeated a powerful Anima from the Lo Po Bia family with a lot of rare Shinheuh on the Floor of Tests; the test administrators let me take the spoils and sell it all. I haven't needed to worry about money since."

"You were that strong already on the Floor of Tests?" Yihwa asked with surprise. It was no small feat to defeat a member of the Great Families on the very first floor, before Regulars had a chance to grow. All the Great Family members would have entered with a lot of training and strong powers already.

"He underestimated me. Played around too much. He thought he'd already won and then I turned things around at the last minute."

"You must be really smart too to pull that off," said Yihwa.

"I just do what I can to win, haha," he said.

"You must have a good team as well? Strong, rich, and smart. Who wouldn't want somebody like you?" She asked, with a carefully crafted wistful tone and impressed face. 'I know how to flatter someone too!'

"Just one partner. Though, we were strong enough to get through all the tests without anyone else. She's a lot like you, actually…powerful, talented, beautiful…'

'Urhk! Of course he had someone already…'

"She even had a habit of hurting teammates too…though in her case it was more intentional…"

"Intentional?! Why?"

"You've probably met the type at some point—proud, arrogant, everything came easily to her, and unlike you, she had no problems with control either, so because of this she didn't consider anyone to be worthy of her. Her teammates were just tools or servants at best, unwanted burdens assigned by the tests at worst, and if she could sacrifice them to get ahead, she did it."

"That's terrible! Why would you team up with somebody like that?" 'Would I have been like that too, if I had control?'

"That was before she met me. Couldn't hurt me even if she wanted to. Found people that could stand at the same heights as her, and saw things more important than just winning. It probably helped that we had to fight off a deadly assassin together too. People tend to change their view on life when they go through a life and death situation where they have no choice but to rely on their comrades."

"Wow…that sounds like it would be an interesting story to hear…" She said curiously. 'They even have a romantic story, I can't compete with that! But I want to know…'

"It's a long story, so maybe I'll tell you another day. Anyways, I split up with her about a couple of years ago to take a break from climbing, since it felt like we were going too fast," he said.

Yihwa nodded absentmindedly at his words while her thoughts raced. 'A couple of years ago? That means he reached this floor in less than four years?! With only two people… but if his partner went up without him, that means this is my chance…! I can steal him for myself!'

Then she hesitated. 'Steal him? What am I thinking…I can't do something like that…that's wrong! But…can I really let this chance go? I don't have much choice left…I need to pass the test…I need a teammate…I need money…I need him! When will I ever find someone like this again? If my debt gets any bigger…I have to do this…just one floor at least!'

"Then she joined up with some other friends of ours that caught up to us, while I stayed back to learn some more and develop my skills more on my own. We agreed to meet up again in a few years on a higher floor."

'…just one floor…you can share for just that long, can't you, sister? You're not even here…isn't it despicable to leave him all alone like this? Joining up with other friends…isn't that just an excuse to enjoy yourself while your man is working hard by himself?'

The more she thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed.

'Don't blame me, whoever you are…she probably doesn't even realize how good she had it…leaving behind a good man like this, she was practically asking for someone to come along! That's what always happens when a man and a woman have a long distance relationship, isn't it?'

Her face firmed up in resolve.

'It's not my fault he got lonely and looked at another woman. He's the one that came on to me first, anyways! I'm not doing anything wrong! I'm not even going to do any actual things with him! I just need some help to get past this floor, then everything will be fine. He needs a new teammate to climb up too anyways, so it might as well be me rather than some other unscrupulous woman.'

She swallowed and made sure there was nothing in her mouth, and sat up a bit straighter. 'You can do this, Yihwa!'

"By the way…" Yihwa leaned forward and moved some of her hair behind her neck.

"Hm?"

"You're the first person I've met that survived my flames without getting hurt…" She said while looking up at him coquettishly. "…my flames are too strong for anyone else to handle…if you don't mind…"

A slight pause as she suppressed a nervous change of pitch in her voice.

"…so…would you be interested in having me as your mistress?—I mean, t-teammate! TEAMMATE, I said!? D-don't misunderstand! I didn't mean anything else!" She drew back sharply and stammered with a completely red face.

O O O

 

[Eman Resu]

Even the stupid ass romantic misunderstanding stuff is good in this story.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

59 – Compensated Date

"Hahaha…don't worry, I definitely didn't hear anything strange…relax," he said.

'Noooooo!! He definitely heard it if he's reacting like that…!'

"Ah…" Yihwa hid her face in her hands. "I-I'm not that kind of girl, d-don't get the wrong i-idea—It's just I was already in debt and I have no money to pay you back and and—I thought you'd expect things—I don't just offer to rich strangers—I'm still a virgin!"

"…"

There was a long silence as Yihwa realized she had dug herself deeper into the hole. 'What am I saying?! I wasn't offering to do anything with him!! But now he's going to think that's what I meant!'

"Relax, I can tell," he said.

"W-what? Tell what?" She peeked out from her fingers at his amused face.

"That you're a virgin. It's obvious that you've never done that sort of thing before, if you're acting this way," he said.

There was only a whimper for a response as she buried her face in her hands fully again.

"It's okay. I understand completely. It's nothing to be embarrassed about, really. You're in big debt, you're very pretty, and most guys might ask for something like that in this situation, which is why the thought crossed your mind. It's just a slip of the tongue, and I'm sure you didn't even really mean it that way, but sometimes our subconscious thoughts influence what we say accidentally, even if you're consciously opposed to it, like if somebody tells you, 'don't think about this', you'll inevitably wind up thinking about it," he said casually.

Yihwa finally let her hands drop and nodded meekly.

"I'm not the kind of sleaze that would try to use that to convince you that you secretly want it or something dumb like that, so don't worry."

'Of course I don't secretly want it! That's right, it was just a slip…I was trying to avoid being that kind of man-stealing woman!'

She watched as he then just went back to eating as if nothing had happened.

"Um…then…a-about my question…? So…will you take me as your mistr—kyah?! TEAMMATE, TEAMMATE DAMN IT!!" 'What is wrong with me? Don't tell me I actually secretly want it?!?'

"Hahaha…hahaha!" Now the man laughed and put a hand to his forehead as if he couldn't stop laughing. "You're too cute!"

Yihwa did not realize her face could feel as hot as it did now without her flames.

"Sorry…It's been a while since I've had such a good laugh," he said after calming down. "But as for your question, I'm afraid the answer is no."

"Eh?" Yihwa looked dumbfounded, then disappointed. 'Was I wrong? He's not interested?'

"…at least not now," he said, clarifying.

'Not now? Does he prefer more experienced women?!'

"But I can be a great teammate! I'm from the Yeon family, one of the Great Families! See this? It's our family symbol," she said quickly, pointing to the flower on her headband. "I got all the way here without any support from my family, but once I become an E-Rank regular I can ask them for a few favors! Cash to pay you back if you want, and more!"

"Well if you put it like that…" He said, trailing off with a contemplative expression.

"Yes, you won't regret it if you take me!" Yihwa said,

"Miss Yeon, you have no idea just how tempting your offer is…but unfortunately I still really cannot be your teammate."

"But..why?!"

"It's because I actually passed this Floor's tests years ago," he said. "That's why I can't team up with you right now."

Yihwa took a moment to digest what she just heard.

"You're an E-Rank Regular already? But then, why are you down here on this floor?"

"Ah…I suppose I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Pri Dua Liti, but people just call me Dr. Dua around here, because I'm a healer and a researcher. It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Yeon."

"I'm Yeon Yihwa. it's nice to meet you too, Dr. Dua," Yihwa said after realizing she hadn't introduced herself properly either. "You're a researcher? Like with the Workshop? But, I thought Regulars couldn't work for them?"

"Ah…no, I'm not with the Workshop. You're right, of course, the Workshop doesn't accept Regulars and any researchers that become Regulars are forced to leave their positions with their memories sealed. But I'm a private researcher. I do it out of personal interest, not on behalf of any organization," Dr. Dua said.

"Oh…then what do you research?"

"Primarily, I study healing, especially real-time on-the-field healing. But I also study the mysteries of Shinsoo, Shinheuh, and certain special powers that are rare in the Tower. The breadth of my interest is quite wide…this is my way of developing my skill set, rather than just simplistic training like other Regulars."

"Special powers? Like what?" Yihwa asked curiously.

"Have you heard of Spells or Sorcery?" He asked.

"A little bit…it's a way to use Shinsoo without having talent for it, right?" Yihwa asked. "But I don't know how it works."

"Well, I'm not surprised. Most people wouldn't. But allow me to demonstrate a small magic trick that is related to my research," he said. "Watch."

He ripped the small bag provided by the restaurant that contained toothpicks open, and took out the toothpicks inside, then laid them on the table side by side.

"First, check for yourself that I haven't tampered with these toothpicks. They're ordinary, aren't they? If you press it against some of that lobster shell, the point will bend, right? Then if you press too hard, it'll break."

Yihwa followed the instructions and verified that the toothpicks were just as he said.

"Now, observe very closely. I am going to put an enchantment on the toothpick. But more specifically, I am going to transfer some properties to the toothpick, to make it harder and sharper."

Then he touched the toothpick for a moment. After he removed his hand, he spoke again. "Now, check the toothpick, and see for yourself first that I did not reinforce it with any Shinsoo and I'm not manipulating it anymore in any way."

Yihwa already felt that he hadn't used any Shinsoo, but she grabbed the toothpick anyway to examine it closely. Just as he said, she couldn't feel any abnormal Shinsoo in or around the toothpick.

"Now, drag that toothpick point against the lobster shell again. Try to scratch it," he instructed.

When she did, she was surprised to see that the toothpick did not bend, instead, it actually scratched the lobster shell and made a clear mark on it.

"I know it probably doesn't seem amazing to you since it isn't very flashy and you don't know much about Sorcery to begin with so you wouldn't know why this is interesting, but—"

"No, no, this is actually really cool!" Yihwa said. "I've never seen anything like this."

"Haha, if you're impressed by that, then wait until you see what I'll do next. As I said, what I did earlier was to transfer some properties into that toothpick. Because it was very basic, I could just do it just like that, and it wasn't really even transference, but actually just using Sorcery to reinforce particular properties it already had. But my most recent research has been to study the Flowing and Transference of energy, properties, and even consciousness, by way of mystic bonds. Now, watch again."

Yihwa patiently watched as he spat a little bit of saliva onto his finger. She was slightly disgusted by the act, but he soon explained what he was doing.

"You see, bodily fluids are a good vessel to contain the essence of living beings like us, and so they're very useful for transference, and creating mystic bonds. Blood is much better as a catalyst, but I'm sure you're familiar with having a body that is too durable to easily draw blood, so saliva is a decent alternative, though its properties are a bit different."

"Oh…"

Then he pressed his finger with the saliva onto another toothpick.

"When most people think of saliva, the most obvious property that comes to mind is probably an aid for digestion, right?"

Yihwa nodded.

"But that's not a good demonstration because you might simply assume that my saliva itself was different from a normal person's. So what I will do instead, is use the saliva to form a mystic bond and then transfer a property of the original source—that is me, rather than the saliva itself, using my will and mental visualization to achieve the desired effect. As a living being, I have the potential to grow. This toothpick is made of wood, and it too formerly had that property when it was a tree. By suffusing the toothpick with mystic energy, I'm going to transfer the property of 'growth' to it, and revert it back to its original form as a tree."

Then he spoke a few incomprehensible words, and suddenly the toothpick began warping. Roots sprang out slowly as if it were actually growing.

"Wow…it's alive again?!"

"Haha, no, it isn't. Unfortunately I'm not quite capable of creating life like that, this is just a parlor trick. What's happening is that I temporarily gave it the property of growth, but it can't actually grow because it's still dead and doesn't have any sort of biology to support life. So, the shape of the wood is trying to mimic its original form that I envisioned. No new material has been created either, so it's really just deforming pointlessly."

"That's still pretty amazing…" Yihwa said with awe.

"Haha, thanks. Now let's finish this food before it gets cold."

They continued to eat for a bit, then Yihwa had another question. "Hey, Dr. Dua, your research is amazing, but why did you choose to do it on this Floor? Aren't there better facilities and things like that on higher Floors?"

"It's a bit complicated…and you're a member of the Great Families…if I tell you why, I hope you won't tell anyone," he said.

"Huh? I guess…since you've been so nice to me…it's not something bad is it?" Yihwa asked.

"In a way, it is. I said that I study healing and special powers, right? Well, research isn't just making theories, it has to be tested and observed, healing has to be done on living people. So sometimes that means I need to study people as they're using the powers, or I give them some experimental therapies to try. And unfortunately, I don't have a permit to give those treatments."

"You…you don't?" 'He's a criminal?! I'm sitting across from a criminal right now?!'

"Yes, I'm still just a Regular and I don't want to work for any organization so it's very tough to get that kind of permit. You asked me if I was with the Workshop earlier…well the truth is, there's a reason I never applied to join the Workshop. On a higher Floor, I know they abducted thousands of children from the Middle Area to experiment on, most of whom died in agony…and it's probably still happening right now. Those children were left abandoned mostly by Rankers abusing their power, especially powerful men from the Great Families that raped the lower class women and left the children behind. That's why the people who rule over those areas just turn a blind eye to it all…it's convenient if the Workshop gets rid of them, and they get to keep doing whatever they want with no consequences. After all…they won't bring shame to their families if the evidence of their crimes just disappears, right?" he said.

"…" Yihwa fell completely silent with wide eyes. 'What…that can't be…is he telling the truth? I knew the Great Families left a lot of abandoned children in the Middle Area…but this…!'

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be insensitive, you're also a member of the Great Families after all. But this is why I operate outside of the system. I don't want to be forced to help those sick monsters. I don't want to have to bribe and grovel in front of the same people that are overlooking these atrocities. It helps that I have a lot of money so I don't need to get funding from them either. So that's why I'm on this Floor. Well, I say that, but I can't avoid them entirely. Actually, they're also corrupt here…but by operating in the Inner Tower, it's difficult for Rankers to investigate me if I work with the right people. It's distasteful, but sometimes the only option is to compromise and choose the lesser evil."

"So it was like that…" Yihwa said quietly. 'Even though he's a criminal…there was a good reason for it…'

"The Tower is full of things like that. Not everything is what it seems," said Dr. Dua.

"Um…what you said about that experiment…do you have any proof of it?" Yihwa asked.

Dr. Dua looked at her for a moment, then a Lighthouse appeared. He began to type quickly on the materialized keyboard, then showed something on a screen panel to Yihwa.

She saw a picture of a large man, with a small glowing wing of light floating behind his right shoulder.

"This man is one of the results of that experiment. He is what they call a Living Ignition Weapon…someone who has had a 'devil' inserted into his body."

"Wait…is he the Devil of the Right Arm?" Yihwa asked, having heard that name before.

"Yes…this man has been on this Floor for a long time. He's still here. If you want, I can tell you how to find him…and you can ask him yourself about it. But don't tell him about me. I shouldn't know anything about this. If he asks you how you found out…just say that it was a concerned researcher who isn't with the Workshop."

Yihwa nodded. "Thank you. I want to know the truth…"

"What will you do once you confirm it? Even if you're from a Great Family, you can't do anything about it. You're only a Regular after all," said Dr. Dua.

"That's true…but…!" Yihwa clenched her fist. "If I tell my family…!"

"Don't do anything rash. Do you really think it's just a few bad apples? Listen, I'm not going to stop you, but if you tell your family and act all righteous about it, they probably won't like you too much anymore."

"No way…I'm a daughter of the Yeon family that's only born every hundred years!"

"So you are. Tell me, did you ever lose control of your flame around your family? Around the servants and lower class people working for you? When you hurt them, what did most of your family say? Did they admonish you for losing control and teach you how to control it? Or did they praise you for the strength of your flames, not caring how many of those worthless people were hurt by it?"

Yihwa drew back in shock and guilt.

"Arrgh! Save me, miss! It's too hot!!" The woman's flesh melted down to bone while screaming in agony.

"That was amazing, miss!" "Congratulations, miss! That was such a powerful flame!" "You're the treasure of the family!" "You'll definitely become a princess of Zahard!"

"…t-they praised me…" Yihwa admitted in a small voice.

"Because of the Devil implanted into him, this man is quite strong. That research bore fruit, and he is only an early prototype. Now, do you think they will condemn the Workshop for what they've done, or praise them for their success? Even if they did publicly condemn it…do you really think it would stop there? That the Great Families wouldn't just secretly take the research for themselves to strengthen their own? I wonder if you know how princesses of Zahard are made? How many died when they couldn't accept Zahard's blood, until they finally succeeded in creating a procedure that works? Who do you think they used as the first test subjects, before they risked it on the trueborn children of the Great Families?"

"S-stop…t-that's enough…I-I get it…" Yihwa said, looking down in shame. "You don't have to say anymore."

"Sorry. I can tell that you're a good person. You're not to blame for any of these things. But this is the truth of the Tower…power and prestige built on the backs of countless sacrifices of others, lives trampled beneath the ambition of those who believe themselves better."

The rest of their meal went by mostly in silence.

Eventually Dr. Dua paid the bill and announced that he needed to go. "By the way, don't worry about the damages either…you don't need to pay me back for anything. Feel free to stay and continue eating or ask the staff to pack it up for you so you can take it home."

"R-really?!" Yihwa asked, shock mixed with relief and a feeling she couldn't quite identify, as she glanced between him and the still plentiful food at their over ordered table that she could probably use to cover a couple more meals. "Are you sure? But I can't just accept your kindness without doing anything…"

"You've already compensated me enough with this little dinner date. I'm glad to have met a good person like you, since they're so rare in this Tower."

Yihwa's face burned up again. "D-d-date?!"

"If you get into any more trouble, feel free to come find me and I can help you out. I'm just about done with the research I wanted to do here, so I'll have a lot of free time on my hands soon, before I leave this Floor in a couple of months," Dr. Dua said, giving her a card, before leaving.

'Is he offering to do this again…? Oh no…isn't this compensated dating already?!'

"W-w-wait…" Yihwa squeaked out in a tiny voice while he walked away, but he didn't seem to hear it.

As she sat there in silence, the sounds of chatter and other ambient background noises came back, as if reminding her that she was in a public place. Suddenly she looked around rapidly, trying to see if other people had caught any part of the embarrassing things she'd said earlier.

Most of the place was empty anyways and nobody gave her any odd looks.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

O O O

[Kaleidus]

Although I headed back towards my lab, I continued to monitor the girl who was an important subject of my next plan. There were many reasons to get close to her, because of her heritage and her great potential.

Her flames were immensely powerful, making her basic stats similar to Androssi. Those flames weren't just offensive either, somehow they also translated to superb durability, allowing her to survive an attack from a High Ranker originally intended to kill another High Ranker, later in the story, even if only momentarily.

In other words, she had as much power as a princess of Zahard, but without having Zahard's blood. Why she hadn't been chosen as a princess herself was a mystery, perhaps because of her lack of control and her personality—a fundamentally gentle person when not enraged, similar to the Family Head, Yeon Hana, who was said to be the most beautiful among the Ten Warriors, and an eternal virgin who asked the Guardians to curse her never to love a man because her heart had been broken once. All the children of the Yeon family were either adopted or instead descended from Yeon Ilarde, another great beauty who periodically ran "selections" to identify the most worthy men among Rankers who would compete for a chance to sleep with her so that she could produce children for the family.

Yihwa was a direct descendant of the line and inherited both the beauty and the flame, though strangely enough she hadn't received any support while climbing the Tower up to the 20th Floor, which got her into this debt situation.

Regardless, Yihwa would be a useful asset if turned to my side, even if I weren't going after the Zygaena's flower. I doubted that as a Regular she'd have the pull necessary to help me get it, as it seemed like she didn't even know the truth behind the flower in canon, but I was quite interested in her for other reasons, as a long term investment.

Over the last few years, my research had advanced in several ways. The trick I'd shown Yihwa was one of the failed avenues. Transferring properties was not something so easily accomplished, but even the many failures had improved my basic skills in magic. After grabbing all the low hanging fruits that culminated in the Clone Imprint Familiar I'd left with Androssi, I'd explored different uses of the concepts in the basic familiar spell. The mechanism of 'magic activated through a medium', for example.

I couldn't quite transfer complex properties to something else, but I could now imbue a medium or object with a spell, enchanting it with a spell such as Reinforcement or Break. Instead of having to touch-activate the effect, it could be activated remotely by establishing a mystic bond with the object in question through a medium that carried my mana, such as the saliva I'd used. It could even be imbued onto a Mystic Code that someone else could use—though in the case of Reinforcement, that required a Structural Analysis and scanning beforehand, depending on what needed to be Reinforced, I wasn't yet proficient enough to be able to imbue an auto-scan and Reinforce on something as complex as another living creature, for example.

One of my more strategically powerful successes though, had been massive improvements to my defense capability without the Armoriont, to the point where I could now go around without being heavily armored.

This was the result of multiple advances.

First was that I learned to do a limited form of Alteration that could probably be more accurately called "Shaping", or changing the basic form of something, especially a form that it remembered, which might be called "Restoration". Just like the toothpick that branched out, I could also adjust the shapes of other things with magic, and when applied to my body in combination with the Bionanite Swarm's existing capabilities, dramatically reduced the time it took to make small changes to my body.

The easiest use of this was in changing my appearance for a disguise, but it was also possible to use it in a defensive capacity because of some unique properties of my body.

The nanocellulose that the Bionanites and Armoriont could produce was very versatile with slight modifications to its crystalline structure. For example, the basic bacterial cellulose that natural bacteria could create was very similar to human skin. This meant that I could replace a lot of my skin with that type of softer flesh-like cellulose, slowly transform it into the super strong Armoriont version, then use Shaping/Restoration to near-instantly magically transform back between the two types, as a form that the skin remembered, via an inscribed Magic Crest. Well it wasn't really a Magic Crest in the Fate tradition, but just a sealed and prepared spell that could be released with a mana pulse.

Not only was it possible to do some healing with this, it was possible to go around with relatively normal flesh, and then trigger the inscribed spell whenever I needed it. I could even do that with clothes made from Armoriont cellulose fibres, dramatically enhancing their ability to look like different materials.

This was how I'd easily tanked Yihwa's uncontrolled burst of flame without the Armoriont covering me. It destroyed my clothes but it couldn't quite get past my skin, and where it did damage me, I simply healed too quickly to be noticed.

Of course, I could've also just blocked the attack completely with the water spirits' help using Shinsoo, but it had been a good chance to test out my new capabilities.

But that was just the improvement in my skills. If it were just that, the Armoriont still provided a much stronger defense due to thickness, and it was obviously more efficient to regenerate biologically than using magic.

However, I now had a far greater defense that gave me the confidence to go without the Armoriont entirely, using it as a tool in my repertoire than as my standard armor.

This new defense was a complete replacement of all my previous internal vital lining cellulose armor—the subdermal and bone mesh, arterial sheaths, organ sacks, etc. Because I now had access to a vastly superior material, which I'd learned to manipulate as well—the Endbringer flesh.

Just as Derflinger figured out how to manipulate the Endbringer crystal flesh with magic, so did I, eventually. It was, in fact, one of the things that helped me to learn Shaping and Restoration in the first place, because it had a natural Shaping capability, that seemed to be magical in nature, rather than purely biological. The fact that Endbringers had some form of magic did not come entirely as a surprise to me, since Agate had detected traces of mana in Worm from shard powers in the past. But regardless, it was a huge upgrade because of its spatially warped density.

After the Behemoth battle in which Derfinger cut Behemoth in half, he acquired parts of Behemoth, its skeletal frame in particular, that was magnitudes more hyperdense than the parts we'd salvaged from the Simurgh. Derflinger now had the equivalent of a small mountain's worth of mass, making him stupendously durable, while still weighing normal.

I, unfortunately, could not take nearly as much mass, due to a conflict with one of my most useful spells.

I would've dearly liked to buff myself with half a mountain, splitting it with Derflinger, but unfortunately the Omni-Flight, and more importantly the derivative Burstshift spell, could not be used with that much mass. Even though the gravitational weight was negated somehow, some of the mass still interfered with that spell, which could only carry up to a hard limit of one metric ton "worth" of mass. Just like the speed limit and the other peculiar properties of that spell, the hard limit couldn't be overcome with more mana. It just didn't work. In fact, it was probably because of this weird design that it was capable of having equally weird features like being able to ignore inertia and moving without propulsion or attraction. As far as I knew, even magecraft flight techniques typically needed to rely on physics concepts or some sort of analog, like brooms (anti-gravity), ether sails (wind pressure), but Zelretch's spell did not use any of that, instead basing on some convoluted, fixed concept of magical girl levitation.

Yet it still had a mass limit because apparently something with greater mass could not qualify as a magical girl, and obviously a magical girl would have other means of carrying heavy things.

Despite learning the spell "theory" I did not understand why it worked or how it could be modified, and so, to add any more than about 800 kg "worth" of recognized "spell mass" would render the spell unusable, as I had my regular mass plus things I might need to carry.

Still, that 800 kg of "worth" actually corresponded to about 100x the actual mass with spatial warping, which meant that I had approximately nine cubic meters of rock-like mass condensed into ultra thin layers in my internal armor. And that crystal could be further optimized to have a hardness and toughness similar to the Armoriont nanocellulose, so it was like having a meter's worth of armor protecting me under the skin, though the density varied with the densest around my head.

In addition, the spatial warping and density gave it some momentum mitigating effects, blocking most blunt force from transferring directly through to the internal parts being protected, even if my body as a whole was blown away.

With this setup, I could carry another person on top of my typical ~100kg of mass while carrying my standard basic equipment that I didn't store inside my Shinsoo inventory items.

But there were still other complications. One was that Reinforcement could not cover the whole armor due to it having too much mass, on top of the material itself being particularly difficult to Reinforce. It would cost about ten thousand times the MP to try Reinforcing the whole thing. At best I could afford to Reinforce the outer surface slightly to the point where it was comparable to my Reinforcement on the Armoriont. This would cost about 200 MP, ten times greater due to the material complexity and resistance, but the Endbringer crystal did have the upside of retaining the Reinforcement for longer as well, so each cast would last a whole day.

Another was that the extra mass still made the Omni-Flight spell proportionally almost ten times more expensive, to the point where using it at max speed now cost 200-220 MP/second depending on how much other stuff I was carrying.

That would have been impossible to use with my prior MP reserves, but once integrated with me and attuned to my will, these half-living crystals also became an extremely good vessel to store mana, raising my MP reserve capacity by an incredible 5,000. This, added to my existing 320 capacity from the FoZ blood circuits and another 300 I'd developed due to the refined Shinsoo and bonded water spirits saturating my body outside of the stone, brought my total to about 5600 MP. My personal recovery rate was still crap in comparison, but it had improved a little after I attained the ability to manipulate Shinsoo directly without using a circuit.

More importantly, the water spirits were absolute machines of Shinsoo conversion, capable of passively regenerating 100 MP per hour for me that way in addition to whatever they took for themselves, or 1,000 MP/hour if I meditated with them. So it was quite possible to recover my mana and that of Derflinger's in a reasonable amount of time, even if I didn't have access to huge amounts of biomass for an Armoriont farm to consume. Which was just as well because the Armoriont trick had gotten incredibly inefficient at providing mana that way; perhaps because I had outgrown the Armoriont to the point where it was more difficult to consider it a part of "me", or symbiotic with me anymore, on a conceptual/spiritual/historical level. I'd become closer to the water spirits, dramatically modified myself with Armoriont-incompatible things like the Endbringer crystal, and wore less of the Armoriont. I couldn't drain mana from other living things, after all—only my own "lifeforce", which was the original trick behind the Armoriont.

The last major complication was that I couldn't wield Derflinger at all if I wanted to use the Omni-Flight spell. That should be obvious seeing as Derf had a mass of billions of tons, but both of us considered it a reasonable trade-off for the massively enhanced durability and capability to enlarge himself to epic proportions.

It also helped that we both learned how to move him using Shinsoo, so it was far less of a problem in the Tower. I didn't have to carry him with the Omni-Flight spell, I could just fly by myself with magic and use Shinsoo to wield him separately.

One might wonder why I didn't just put all that mass in myself anyway and forget using the Omni-Flight spell. I would say that it would be the height of foolishness, because there were many things that could still damage me regardless or outright ignore it somehow. We'd cut the flesh off with Flechette's power, and there were undoubtedly other threats that might have similar offensive potential, such as Rankers, or an Anti-Castle attack that could actually destroy a mountain. Even a strategic level nuke might be able to do it, though obviously I hadn't tested that. It was much better to retain the high speed flight capability, especially as I'd only escaped the Beast in the FoZ because of that spell, while extra armor would probably have been of minimal help.

But an even more practical issue was that the process of bonding to and attuning the Endbringer crystal to my will was hard. Derflinger made it look easy because he was a purely spiritual being, made to possess things, and he had the weight of six thousand years of spiritual history and experience with which to impose his will on the crystal. It was a completely different matter for me. The whole process of bonding to the crystal, spreading my will across the amount of mass I'd put into my body, attuning it to me and gaining sufficient proficiency to manipulate it on the precision scale needed to implant it as my internal armor, and then to make sure it didn't interfere with my other bodily processes and spells—like making sure that my Bionanite Swarm could travel and maintain its mental connection with me through it or Omni-Flight…all that took five months, after I initially learned Shaping and Restoration, and manipulating the Endbringer crystals in small experimental quantities. Even if I enlisted the water spirits' help, trying to properly attune a billion tons of mass would probably take decades at the least.

The journey of self-improvement could not stop there, the things I'd discarded could be turned to other ends, which was why the Armoriont had been adapted into the Beastiont to be used for many other purposes, such as pretending to be a bird spying on the girl I wanted to become another summoner for me. It was, after all, much more efficient in terms of mana to use than sending out Agate, and let me keep the Kaleidostick close instead.

O O O

 

[Eman Resu]

It was so short a wait between chapters! Have you sped up because everything is finally all hammered out?

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

It was so short a wait between chapters! Have you sped up because everything is finally all hammered out?

Click to shrink...

I've been updating once every two weeks since last summer, except a few misses. I have a good amount written ahead already from here so it should continue at this pace for like half a year at least.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

60 – Not That Bad

'I think that's him?' Yihwa stealthily followed after the huge man who looked like the one in the picture, with a small blue light wing on his right shoulder. 'I have to find out for myself…the truth!'

The man in question glanced surreptitiously at the girl that was hiding behind a street lamp pole and continued on his way.

Eventually he led her to a dark alleyway between some abandoned buildings.

Yihwa followed into the alleyway. 'Huh? This is a strange place to live…where did he go?'

"Why are you following me, girl?" The big man asked from behind her.

"Um…hi? My name is Yeon Yihwa. Are…are you the Living Ignition Weapon?" Yihwa asked, turning around.

"…!" The man's wing lit up and turned red, before he slammed a fist towards Yihwa.

"Eh?!" Yihwa was knocked away and smashed into the ground.

She got up and held up her hands. "W-wait!"

The man's whole hand turned red and enlarged to huge proportions, before grabbing onto Yihwa.

"Ahh!!! Stop!!" Yihwa shouted and flames exploded out from her break his grip and sending him back several steps.

Yihwa coughed at the smoke, then the man's fist came rushing again.

Yihwa held her own hands up together and blasted fire forward. There was another huge explosion.

"I said stop! I'm not here to fight!" Yihwa shouted when the man's shadow appeared within the smoke.

"How do you know that term? Is the Yeon Family getting involved in that experiment?! Are you trying to restart it?!" The man came forward looking mostly unharmed.

"No! It was a concerned researcher that told me. I just wanted to find out the truth for myself! Did they really abduct children for it?!"

"A researcher from the Workshop? Ms. Sophia?"

"No, he's not with the Workshop. I can't tell you who he is. He isn't supposed to know. I'm here on my own…and I don't know any more about it. That's why I'm trying to find out…" Yihwa asked. "Please…I just want to know…if something so terrible could be true…if the people in charge really just let it happen..."

The man considered her for a moment, then sighed. "Follow me then, and I'll tell you. My name is Kang Horyang…and I am indeed a Living Ignition Weapon, one of the results of that experiment."

O O O

"…I was lucky to be sold as material to the Workshop…they do anything for their own experimentation. It's not a big deal for them to use abandoned kids. Even now…for one weapon to be sold to us Regulars…you can't imagine how many lives are sacrificed," said Horyang, sitting on a chair in his apartment.

Yihwa felt her blood run cold for the first time in a long time as she listened. It was worse than she could have imagined. It wasn't just this one experiment? Was everything from the Workshop a result of such terrifying experiments?

"…for a long time, I was grown, incubated…I didn't know if I was dead or alive. It was as if I was dreaming. The injections went on and on...while I just waited for my life to end. When I was finally let out of the incubator…the researchers called me no. 21, along with the boy I consider to be my brother…no. 99. And Ms. Sophia Amae…was the assistant researcher in charge of teaching us language. She was the only one that treated us like humans, unlike the others that just treated us like pieces of an experiment. She gave us names, as our secret…though not the one I use today. It was the most precious time we had in the workshop. It was because of her that I had the strength to continue living…"

"That's…awful! They really…"

"I'm not done. I haven't even gotten to the real purpose of the experiments yet," said Horyang.

"…the real purpose?"

"That's right. When we were twelve, we were sent to a different place, to a different manager. There, he told us about it…out of 99,999 kids, the two of us were the only ones that survived the injections."

"W-what?! 99,999?!?" Yihwa asked with shock. 'This is crazy…when Dr. Dua said thousands…'

"He explained to us that Ignition Weapons are refined with Shinsoo bearing a soul. But they have limits, so they decided to use a human body. So then he showed us the 'Devil' that he would split into two, and put into us, since we were the most outstanding material from the previous experiments. It was horribly painful. It felt like all my blood was flowing backwards, and filled up with something else, a pain like my bones were being torn apart. I kept on fainting and waking up until I didn't have the strength to reawaken anymore and passed out. When I finally woke up…half my body wasn't mine anymore. That's what this is…"

He gestured to his right arm.

Yihwa merely stared with mouth agape, paralyzed with shock.

"And after that…Ms. Sophia also didn't come to see us anymore. Without her, we couldn't deal with our changing bodies. They were lonely and painful days…we lived meaningless lives. Then one day, I was strapped down and being transported elsewhere. It was the first time I'd seen the roof, and the snow…I didn't think about where I was going…I just marvelled that there was a place with such beauty in this world. I wanted to live longer…and in that moment above the sea…I met the real owner of this Tower…and I became a Regular."

"So…it was all true…"

"It wasn't hard to climb up, with this power…but I felt guilty about going up the Tower with a power built on others' sacrifices. So I stopped on this Floor and have been here ever since," Horyang concluded. "Does that answer what you wanted to know?"

Yihwa nodded numbly. "I'm…so sorry."

"What are you apologizing for? You had nothing to do with it, right?"

"No! I just…I don't understand…the Workshop…how could Zahard and the Great Families let this happen? Don't we rule the Tower…? Why won't anyone stop them…?"

Horyang just looked at the anguished girl with pity. "You're a member of the Great Families yourself. You should ask them that. Now, if you're satisfied, leave me be."

O O O

"Hm? Miss Yeon?" Dr. Dua came out of his lab chamber and up the stairs to find Yihwa at the front desk waiting area.

"Dr. Dua…"

"Wait for me outside a few minutes, I'm closing up here for the day and I'll be with you shortly," said Dr. Dua, taking off his lab coat and putting it away.

Yihwa nodded and then went to wait outside.

When Dr. Dua came outside, she turned to him.

"You were right," said Yihwa glumly,. "I found that guy and asked him…"

"You sure move fast, I wasn't expecting you to really do it," said Dr. Dua as he locked the door.

"I just had to know…" Yihwa said.

Dr. Dua wrapped a hand around her shoulders. "That sad face doesn't suit you at all. Let's go get something nice to eat and cheer you up. We can talk about it over dinner."

She didn't protest as Dr. Dua led her to a hoverbike and instructed her to hold onto him from behind.

They sped through the area towards another expensive looking restaurant.

They talked about what she learned, Dr. Dua gave sympathetic looks and comments, and then talked about other meaningless things. Eventually it took her mind off of it, and then they went to a grocery store, and Dr. Dua helped her shop for some food so that she could cook for herself and offered to take a look at her stove.

'That was nice…' She thought to herself after she got home. 'Maybe it really wouldn't be so bad to be with him…?'

O O O

The next day, Dr. Dua went to her apartment to try and fix her stove. After observing the destruction, he decided to just buy her a new one.

"T-that's too much!"

"Look, it's completely destroyed. This can't be repaired. The landlord is going to demand a replacement anyways once they find out," he said.

"I can't possibly impose on you any more…" She said, looking down.

Dr. Dua patted her head, and her face burned up at the action.

"It's fine Miss Yeon. This is hardly any trouble for me, it's just a stove. I don't mind helping a potential future teammate like this while she's down on her luck."

"Um…you've helped me so much…you don't have to call me Miss Yeon all the time…just call me Yihwa," she said shyly.

"Okay, Yihwa. Just leave it to me, I'll order a new one," said Dr. Dua with a smile.

O O O

Several days later, after struggling with the new stove then repeatedly messing up her food and forcing down the really disgusting results before vomiting it up each time, she felt incredibly weak and then Yihwa collapsed on the floor.

"Hah…I'm so hungry…I can't…"

She turned her Pocket visible, then scrolled to a now familiar name, and dialled.

The line connected.

"…Dr. Dua…"

"Yihwa? What is it?" The doctor's voice asked when there was no more sound coming from her side.

"…help…please…" She said in a desperate tone.

"Where are you?"

"…my apartment."

"Alright I'll be there right away."

Yihwa forced herself to go unlock the door before collapsing again.

Dr. Dua rushed over, and then knocked. When there was no response, he opened the door to see Yihwa sprawled on the ground.

"Yihwa, what's wrong?! What happened? Were you attacked?"

The girl looked up and spoke with embarrassment.

"…n-no…j-just…hungry…everything I cooked…was bad…"

"…"

Dr. Dua gave her an exasperated smile, then lifted her into his arms in a bridal carry, before taking her to her bed and tucking her in.

"Get some rest, I'll make food for you."

Then he cooked for her and brought the food over to her on a tray. When she tried to struggle up and use her own hands to take the tray, Dr. Dua stopped her.

"Save your energy. I'll feed you," he said, before doing just that.

Yihwa still found the energy to have her face heat up subconsciously as Dr. Dua brought the food to her mouth.

Like that, she slowly ate while sneaking glances at Dr. Dua's kindly smiling face the whole time.

The food wasn't as good as what they'd had at the restaurants, but somehow she felt like she wanted to savor every bite.

'Is this what having a boyfriend feels like…?'

When it was done, Dr. Dua put the tray away and cleaned up. Then he came back to her.

"You're out of groceries again, so I've ordered some more delivery for you to cover you for the rest of the day. You'll need to eat a lot to recover your energy. I've some things to take care of tomorrow but after that I can take some time to teach you how to cook properly. Just hang in there a little longer, okay?"

"Okay…thank you Dr. Dua. You're too good to me…" Yihwa said, sitting upright on the bed against the headrest. 'No, Yihwa aren't you being too naïve?! No man can be this nice without a reason…he'll definitely show his true colors and then expect to do those things with me soon…dates are one thing but there's no way I can do that stuff! What should I do…wait, he studies rare and special powers…maybe he'd want to study the Yeon flames? That's right, I could let him study my body…then I'll know for sure if he's like all the other pigs!'

"It's not a big deal, really. You must have had food prepared for you all your life, and in the floors below, there were always cafeterias, right? You only needed to stick to the Regulars' dorms and everything was taken care of. But on this floor, there are no dorms and you have to fend for yourself, on top of points being much harder to come by, with expenses so much higher. It's a difficult shift for most Regulars, especially when you're by yourself."

Yihwa could only nod. "Still…I wish I could do something for you too. Um…maybe I could…"

Dr. Dua patted her on the head again. "Before you think about anything like that, rest up and take care of yourself, okay? Got to go now, see you later."

Then he left while Yihwa was again too embarrassed to say anything else.

"…see you…."

O O O

When she woke up the next day, Yihwa stayed in her bed for a while, staring at her headband which she held up to the air in her hand.

"Arghh…I need to deal with my own problems first," she said, getting up and going to the kitchen.

She tried to cook some things herself again, and then after a particularly frustrating struggle with the new stove that didn't seem to work properly, her flames came out and the stove blew up again.

"Oh come on, nooooo!!"

After several hours of trying to fix the stove by looking up guides and the manual, she gave up and went shopping for yet another new stove.

Once she saw the price tags, she was left the shopping area dejectedly.

After she spent the last of her money on some fast food, not wanting to go hungry again even if it wasn't healthy, she found herself wandering around aimlessly.

A few more altercations with guys hitting on her that she fought off, and eventually she found herself in front of the loan office.

She stared at the sign for a long while, unsure of why she was there.

'I'm not taking another loan…just…finding out if I can…' She told herself. 'I shouldn't ask Dr. Dua for everything…I can't take advantage of him like that! He hasn't even tried to do anything with me yet…'

She was waiting for her appointment when she heard angry voices from the manager's office. Seeing that nobody else was in the waiting room, she snuck to the door and listened.

"…mean I can't do that?!"

"I mean what I said. Dr. Dua is no longer working with us, so you can't do that anymore."

'Dr. Dua? He was involved with this company?'

O O O

[Kaleidus]

I chuckled to myself as my Armoriont bird observed from the window Yihwa blowing up the stove which I'd ordered for her and sabotaged. I could tell that she'd been suspicious of me and she had a great internal turmoil over whether she could let me get closer to her, yet her suspicions were all for naught because I was no two-bit villain that could be seen through so easily.

It was not easy to poison or infect someone with her constitution, just like how Androssi was totally immune to the plague I'd released during the Floor of Tests. Shinsoo enhanced our bodies in many ways, and the natural immunities that people gained as they climbed the Tower similarly made those mundane biological attacks far less effective as we went up. Someone with the blood of Zahard, or the Yeon flame as strong as it was in Yihwa could just completely ignore such things.

But I had noticed that Yihwa's flames had purged the alcohol in the wine during our first meal together in a way that still seemed to provoke a negative reaction from her. Probably because she had little control of it. And so it was that I helped her buy groceries and poisoned her, expecting her body to destroy the poison, but also destroying the nutrients with it. Her flames hadn't destroyed the food, but she simply vomited it up, which achieved more or less the same thing—causing her to go hungry.

Yes, Yihwa was comically bad at cooking, but probably not so bad that she would fail this catastrophically on her own. It simply made it easy to believe it was her own fault.

It felt a little bad to do this to such an innocent and kind person who I intended to make my ally, but her cute reactions had been too entertaining after such a long time of being holed up concentrating on my research. More importantly, these were all harmless things in the long run and she would be better off under my care, yet she likely wouldn't accept my advances any other way if she didn't feel like it was all her own fault and I was just a good person helping her out. She was too suspicious of men in general and not a little sexist about it. I couldn't blame her for being that way, frankly I shared her views on that matter, even without growing up in a matriarchal clan. Even if there were some good people out there, it was perfectly reasonable to suspect every man she met of ulterior motives, as a beautiful young woman like her. That was true even outside of this Tower where callous exploitation and treachery were the norm.

Now, whether she asked for my help again, putting herself further into my debt, or went to the loan company getting herself into bigger trouble, either way would play into my hands.

O O O

 

[Corpusvoyeur]

Gaslight gatekeep King is back at it again

 

[Zackman2k12]

I have no idea how I missed this story existing, but I am going to read it over the weekend and next week and week after that for sure.

410k words is a lot, and I love me a good multiverse fic.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

61 – Defective Product

"But what am I supposed to do now?!"

"Find a job or something. Pay off the debt some other way."

"That's impossible…it'll take hundreds of years to pay this off with a normal job! My expenses will just keep piling up!"

"Well that's your problem. You took the loan," said the disinterested voice of the manager. "You need to find a way to pay it back. Or…you can sign this like I said."

"You bastards! You tricked me into this! Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? This is a scam! You're just preying on Regulars who don't have any other choice!"

"Are you suggesting you won't pay the loan?"

"Why should I?! This can't be legal!"

"Of course it is. I think maybe you need some more motivation again?"

Suddenly there was a crash and then a scream.

'What the…? What's going on in there?'

More sounds of violence and pained cries followed.

"Look at that, because of your stupidity, now you'll have to pay for more medical expenses. Your debt just keeps growing, Ms. Kudoh!"

"No…! Stop it, please. I'll do it, I'll pay it back damn it! You monsters!"

"Good. Remember, there's nowhere you can hide. We know where you live and we have ways to track you, even on other Floors. Good luck Ms. Kudoh!"

The door swung open and Yihwa hastily backed away. The customer, an average looking woman, came out with a limp, looking bruised and holding her arm, tears in her eyes.

The manager came out in his brown suit with a pleased smile, then looked at the shocked Yihwa.

"Oh, Ms. Yeon, you're back. Here to pay back your loan?" He asked.

"No…I…could I get…another loan?" She said slowly, still too spooked to react properly, automatically saying what she originally came for.

"Come in, come in, let's discuss it," the manager said while bringing her into the room, where a large humanoid creature with a big spherical head and multiple eyes stood guard.

Once she sat down, her mind cleared a little. 'What am I doing…there's no way I can get another loan from these guys!'

The manager went through some papers, then cleared his throat. "Well Ms. Yeon, your debt is already quite large…normally we wouldn't give out another loan at this point…" Then he looked her up and down and lingered on her chest. "But we might be able to make an exception for you."

She covered her chest with an arm despite being fully clothed. "W-what's that supposed to mean?!"

"You must have been prepared for something like that already, right? A pretty girl, taking out such large loans…well, I don't know why you can't ask your family for help, but this is what normal women have to do to survive, isn't it?" The manager said with a grin. "Come on, don't be shy…I can ask him to leave if that makes you feel better?" He pointed at the guard.

"Mr. Lurker, shall I go then?" The guard asked.

"Hell no, you disgusting pig! I'm not doing that with you!" Yihwa shouted. 'This bastard…! Who does he think he is? I won't sink to that level no matter what!'

The manager sighed. "Oh well, worth a try. If you don't want to do it, I do have another option for you."

"Huh?"

"I talked to my boss as soon as you became my customer. A member of the Yeon family, with such strong flames? It was a big surprise to us both…so we've been thinking about it…what can we do with you after you fall into our hands…?" Lurker said.

"S-stop talking about me like I'm your property! It's just some debt!"

"But you can't pay it off, can you? And you need more. So doesn't that make you ours?"

"You…you…!"

"You'd definitely fetch a good price…or be a nice trophy…with such a good body and pedigree…but that's a bit of a waste," the manager went on.

Yihwa's body began to burn with flames the more she listened, and she stood up in anger.

"Settle down, miss Yeon, you don't want to cause any damage and fall even further into debt, do you?"

Several other bulky guards suddenly came in, then a blue arm made of light grabbed her from behind, forcing her to sit back down.

Yihwa thought she could've easily gotten out of it, but it gave her a dose of calm as she realized she didn't want to cause any property damage here.

The hand let her go, then the manager continued unruffled.

"Now then…as I was saying, the boss decided to go for another option. You see, his son is climbing the Tower, and will reach the 20th Floor very soon. He's investing a lot of money to make sure his precious son can get through this test, and he's willing to cancel your debt if you work for his son and go up the Tower with him once he gets here in a month or two. Not a bad deal right? He's around your age too, and fairly handsome…of course, whether he takes you is up to him, so you should be prepared to make him like you…but I'm sure you'll have no trouble if you're willing to ah…do a little extra."

"No…no way…! You people are disgusting! I'll just find another way…and pay down this stupid debt!"

"Of course, you don't have to make the decision right away. There's still some time…In fact, if you really want, we can fund you for another test on your own, and you can see if you manage to pass this time? Then all your problems will be solved, right? You'll get a lot of points, new residence rights, and an E-Rank Regular will have much better opportunities to make money on higher Floors, after all. Our only condition for this loan is that you have to agree to what I proposed, if you fail the test again. We can't give you any more opportunities after this one."

Yihwa became silent, contemplating. 'One more try? Can I do it?'

"I'll…I'll have to think about it," she said.

Lurker smiled evilly. "Please do."

"Before I go…I need you to tell me something. I heard you mention Dr. Dua earlier. What were you talking about? Was he working with you people?" Yihwa asked.

"Oh, you know him? Well yes, Dr. Dua was one of our partners until recently. When desperate customers like yourself got into too much debt they can't ever pay off, we usually present them with a few options. Dr. Dua paid very well for research participants in his most risky experiments, the ones that have a high chance of death or permanent injury…but it was a fast way to reduce their debt by a lot. So it was a popular option, who cares if they might not come out in one piece? They need to pay it down somehow, right? Unfortunately, as you may have overheard earlier…that is no longer an option. So you can't do it even if you want to."

"He…did that?" 'He really worked with people like this? To trap people in debt and then…!'

Lurker was plainly enjoying the betrayed look on her face. "What's wrong? Did you think he was a nice guy or something?"

O O O

Yihwa stormed through the door then looked around before hearing some noises from further below. She found her way to a basement area and another locked door.

There was the sound of a scream from inside, which sounded a little familiar, like the Regular from earlier that was at Lurker's office. Yihwa clenched her fists as her whole body shook with anger and even a few tears.

'He's just like them…I can't believe it…after everything he told me…I even thought about…with him…!'

She blasted the door open to see Dr. Dua standing over an operating table and the Regular woman from earlier laying down on it.

"Dr. Dua!! Stop this!! What you're doing…isn't it the same as the Workshop researchers?! Aren't you just taking advantage of people that have no other choice?! Using people for experiments…working with those loan sharks to trap people! Something like that…! I can't believe I trusted you! I even…! But you're a monster just like the rest of them!" She shouted while blinking through tears.

'Why does this hurt so much…?!'

Dr. Dua unstrapped the Regular from the table, ignoring her. "That was close, Mr. Kudoh. But we finished just in time and it seems to be successful. I'll give you the payment as you requested, and hopefully you won't have to take on any more debts after this."

The Regular got up, then thanked Dr. Dua repeatedly.

"W-what?" Yihwa looked confused.

Then the Regular turned to her with a furious expression.

"You almost messed everything up, you bitch! Get off your high horse!! Who do you think you are barging in here like that in the middle of my operation?! Dr. Dua is a great man! Because of him, I don't have to sell my organs to those bastards! Because of him, my arm and leg are healed, and I've even gotten stronger thanks to his special treatment! How dare you come in here and act like you're so much better?! What the hell do you know!" The woman walked over to her and pointed at her head while cursing Yihwa, spit flying from her mouth.

Yihwa backed away, scared and confused.

"I don't understand…"

"Dumb slut! I saw you at the loan office earlier, I heard what he called you! You're from the Yeon family, aren't you?! Wearing those jewels and expensive clothes, being born into a great family with that kind of face, and you're somehow in debt?! What kind of luxurious, wasteful life did you live? Don't make me laugh, you don't understand anything!! People like me have to work for every scrap! I tried so many times to pass the test, doing all sorts of jobs to survive, and it wasn't enough! I'm not pretty like you so I couldn't even sell my body if I wanted to! I was trapped in impossible debt! Before Dr. Dua came along last year, everything was hopeless! If it weren't for him, I would be dead already! Even now, even though Dr. Dua's research is already over and he didn't have to do this at all…but I begged him to give me another chance because I needed the money! And he did, even healing me for free in the process! This is the man you're calling a monster!"

Yihwa backed herself into the wall, shell shocked as the woman kept screaming at her.

'Did I completely misunderstand…?'

Then she fell to the floor when her legs gave out, too stunned with feelings of shame, guilt, and embarrassment.

"I…I…" 'I ruined everything again…now he'll hate me! Even when it's not my flames…I'm just a defective product…I can't do anything right!'

Dr. Dua put a hand on the Regular's shoulder. "It's okay, Miss Kudoh. She's not a bad person. Don't be so harsh on her, it's my fault for not explaining things. Just go and enjoy the rest of your day, and let me handle this."

"Are you sure, Dr. Dua? I can't stand how somebody can say those things about you, after all you've done!"

"Yes, it's fine. I can take care of this."

"Alright. Thanks again," Kudoh said and bowed to the doctor. "You're lucky the doctor is so nice, stupid bitch!" She spat before exiting.

Then the room was left with just the sound of sniffing and whimpering.

Dr. Dua knelt to look her in the eyes, but she couldn't meet his.

He sighed, then pulled her towards him, and gave her a hug.

Yihwa's face rested on his shoulders with a look of confused surprise, before she clung onto him with her own arms and started to cry.

"You're a bit foolish…but you really are a good person, Yihwa. I'm sorry that I didn't explain everything to you before. You weren't wrong to think what you did."

"B-but I called you a m-monster…even though you were just helping everyone…!" She said. "After you helped me so much…I didn't even give you a chance to explain it…"

"If you hadn't heard her scream, you wouldn't have barged in like that, right? You were only trying to do the right thing."

"T-that's..."

Dr. Dua relaxed from the hug and held Yihwa by the shoulders, looking into her eyes. "It's okay, Yihwa. My treatments aren't always successful, and sometimes they're painful or they fail. It's true that I worked with the loan sharks. And some of my work is not legal, so I had to resort to doing that instead of advertising it. I'm not proud of this, but like I said, sometimes we can only choose the lesser evil. But because of my research, I've become able to heal people from some of the worst wounds, and even enhance them a bit. And I've learned other things that I can use for good elsewhere. Research is never without risk…but I try to minimize it where I can, and only work with people who are willing and understand what they're getting into. Yes, they are trapped by the debt, but I'm not the one who trapped them. I just offered a better way out for them, compared to the things that the loan sharks were doing before. And now I'm done with all that, anyways. I only helped that woman because she was really desperate, it wasn't even an experiment even though I paid her for it, I just gave her a treatment that I already knew worked, but it was a bit painful."

"I'm—I'm so sorry…!" Yihwa said through sobs. "I'm so stupid! I can't do anything right! I didn't understand anything! I'm sorry! Sorry…sorry…!"

Dr. Dua pressed her into his chest and held her head tightly. "Yihwa, it's okay. You're not stupid and I'm not angry. Everything is fine, so you don't have to keep apologizing. Everyone makes mistakes. And being suspicious of other people isn't a bad thing. There really are a lot of bad people in this Tower, so you were right not to trust me right away. You haven't known me that long…you didn't know what was going on, and that's fine. But now you know, and everything's going to be okay."

She continued to sniff and sob into his chest for a few more minutes.

When she eventually calmed down, Dr. Dua helped her to stand while she wiped her tears.

"It's getting late, so let's get you back home and cleaned up. I'll order delivery on the way," said Dr. Dua.

O O O

Back at her apartment, the two of them were just starting to eat when Dr. Dua spoke.

"Now that you've calmed down…can you tell me why you went to the loan office?"

"I was trying to find out if I could get another loan from them…" Yihwa said.

"Another loan? You're already in debt to them?"

Yihwa nodded. "They're the ones I was in debt to before I met you…I took out several loans from them to take the tests…"

"I probably don't need to say this but…taking any more loans from them is a terrible idea."

"I-I know. I wasn't going to do it! I was just trying to find out if I could…"

"What for? Are you that pressed for money?"

"I broke the stove again…and I have no points left to buy takeout."

"Really, Yihwa…how much do you already owe them?"

She squirmed under his gaze. "T-three hundred thousand…"

Dr. Dua seemed taken aback.

"That can't be right…that's far too high. That's much, much higher than any other Regular they sent to me…and they never told you about the option…? It doesn't make sense if it's just some tests and living expenses. And you haven't been on this Floor that long, have you?"

"…I also had to pay for the medical bills of all the teammates I burnt accidentally…" She said meekly.

"Ah…still…this sum is a bit…no, I suppose it does make sense. They must've given you more because you're from the Yeon family. They probably thought they could get a much higher price by ransoming you back to the Yeon, and wanted to get you into more debt rather than sending you to me early on."

"R-ransom?! No way…they couldn't even hold me if they tried! Even Rankers in my family can get hurt by my flames!"

"Well, I wouldn't put it past them to be that stupid, but it probably wouldn't be a normal ransom. They could demand for them to pay off your loans, and then blackmail them for additional hush money to stop them from spreading around the fact that a daughter of the Yeon family got herself into a debt she couldn't pay off, bringing shame to the family. They'd probably trick you into doing some humiliating things first as well while you hoped to pay off some of the debt by yourself, then use the evidence for more blackmail."

"T-that's…they…" Yihwa paled as she realized what was going to happen. 'If I got desperate enough to do any of those things like they asked and they recorded evidence of it…the family would definitely disown me! They might even try to kill me themselves! And mama would be in big trouble!'

"Or worse yet, they could threaten to tell your family, and then lock you into a cycle of doing ever more humiliating things to avoid your family finding out, until you become their slave in all but name and agree to quietly disappear. Then they could sell you off…and there's probably someone that would pay even more to own a daughter of the Yeon family like that."

"S-something like that…they couldn't possibly think they could get away with it…!" Yihwa protested with a shiver, imagining it happened to her.

But Dr. Dua shook his head.

"You may not be aware, but there's actually a slavery system on a higher Floor, at what's called the Name Hunt Station. The person who is managing the place was also enslaved to that position herself…a former candidate to be a princess of Zahard from one of the Great Families, whose family was heavily penalized with a great debt because she failed the final test to become a princess. Except the whole thing was a scheme set up by the rest of the Great Families to create a legal slavery system with test rules backed by the Guardian of the Floor, and her own family just decided to set her up to fall, as their tool. The dirty money she makes there goes to pay off a debt that the family never bothers to pay down, because her family prefers that she stay there to make them money forever."

Yihwa's mouth was agape in sheer fear and shock. "N-no way…I…is that what's happening to me?! Am I being set up?!" 'Did my own family also do this to me?! Is that the real reason nobody ever helped me learn to control my flames? They also told me I should become a princess…! There's just no way…! I must be overthinking it, that has to be it!'

"I don't know, there's no need to panic, I doubt things are quite that bad. I don't know that much about the Yeon family, but they don't seem like one of the worse families among the Ten," said Dr. Dua. "Besides, your debt is large, but nothing compared to the many billions of the debt that enslaved that person. Yours is manageable. If it's only that much, I can still pay it off for you."

"Y-you can't! You've already done too much for me! That's why I went to the loan office again…I didn't want to bother you more," said Yihwa.

"How else are you going to pay it off?"

"I can try the test again…"

"Which you'd need a loan for. What did they offer you?"

"If I fail again…I just have to help the loan company boss's son climb the Tower," said Yihwa.

"For how many Floors? Until he becomes a Ranker?"

"Uh? They didn't say."

"So…they want you to be his slave. What if he just never becomes a Ranker?" said Dr. Dua with a frown. "And you're considering it?"

"I-I wasn't going to do that!"

"Yihwa…I'll just pay off your debt," said Dr. Dua conclusively.

"W-wait, Dr. Dua, I can't just accept that without doing something for you at least!"

"I don't want anything from you right now, Yihwa, it's like you shouted at me earlier…I shouldn't be taking advantage of someone who is desperate and has no other choice."

"B-but! It's not taking advantage if I'm the one offering! I want to do it for you!"

"Do what exactly? You had something specific in mind? Not your body, I hope? Because I'm not the type of unsavory man who would accept that sort of 'repayment', no matter how beautiful you are."

"N-no! Not like that!" Yihwa squeaked, turning red.

"Not like that?"

"I mean…I can let you study me…I mean my flame! The Yeon flame within me. Since you're interested in researching rare and special powers, right? The Yeon flame is one of the most special powers in the Tower!"

There was a moment of silence.

"Yihwa…is that really any better to offer? Letting somebody outside of the family study it like this…what if this was a setup? What if I was setting you up, testing whether you'd be willing to give away the secrets of your family's most precious flame?" Dr. Dua asked gravely.

The Yeon girl's eyes widened, and she took a sharp breath. "Are…are you? Testing me?"

"No."

She breathed out in relief. "I knew you weren't! You're a good person, Dr. Dua, and you've been so good to me…so I just wanted to give you the only thing that I can!"

"However, I haven't been entirely honest with you, either," said Dr. Dua. "Even the name I gave you was fake. And so is this face."

Yihwa's face changed to surprise and then trepidation again. "What do you mean…?"

"This is why you should not have offered something like that. You are far too trusting, and suspicious of the wrong things."

"H-huh?"

"But at least you're learning this with me and not someone else that would have taken advantage of you. The only thing I lied about was my name. I used an alias and disguised my appearance because, as I mentioned, my work was not legal, and so it would be foolish to use my real identity and have it linked back to me."

"Oh. Then that's not so bad…I don't mind," Yihwa said, relieved again.

She watched as one of his hands went to his hair and lifted it off, revealing it to be a wig, with short black hair underneath, while the other pulled off his glasses.

His kind brown eyes changed to an exotic central heterochromia with striking red spikes in the center, metallic silver on the iris.

His facial hair fell off cleanly, and other parts morphed slightly. The entire change resulted in a face that was far more handsome and elegant, to the point where Yihwa would have described it as beautiful, the kind of face that if he had long hair and breasts, she might have confused for a woman in the same tier of beauty as herself.

"My real name, or the one I normally go by and entered the Tower with, is Axion."

"Axion? Wait…that name is…" Yihwa's eyes widened as she recognized it. "You're the Crystal Knight, princess Androssi's teammate?! One of the former top five E-Rank Regulars, who has never lost a single battle?! The one rumored to have even defeated a Ranker on the Floor of Tests!"

"Yes, I am that Axion. And yes, I did defeat a Ranker. Though he wasn't going all out, and I wouldn't be able to repeat the feat if he actually took me seriously from the beginning."

There was a look of awe on her face. "You disappeared around two years ago and princess Androssi was only seen with a dragon Shinheuh after she joined a new team…people thought you might have been cursed into that form because she sometimes called it Axion…but you were here the whole time?!"

"That's just my avatar. When we split up, she went to join some of our old friends from the Floor of Tests, so I left my avatar with her to keep climbing. My avatar is pretty strong too, but they're strong enough that they don't really need me, so I could go undercover and do some other things that interested me, and agreed to meet up again in a couple of years."

A whirlwind of emotions went through her as Yihwa thought about everything she knew of the famous Regular, and that he was sitting in front of her right now, having helped her so much and going on several dinner dates with her…the one who was considered the perfect knight to the princess as if it were a real life fairytale…

And then there was a sinking feeling of disappointment.

"But that means…you and the princess are still…" 'I was really…just a side dish…'

"We're still a team, yes. What's with that look?"

"It's n-nothing!" She looked down, hiding her sullen face.

"Whatever ideas you have about us are probably wrong. Not all the rumors are true. There was no curse, no falling out, and I have no relation to her family. I'm not really her knight or retainer, nor are we dating. Princesses of Zahard are not permitted to date, after all. We simply met on the Floor of Tests and decided to team up."

At that, Yihwa's eyes visibly brightened in relief.

Axion continued. "And she's not a real witch either. We just do that to have some fun with the tests, because it gets boring when the competition is all so weak compared to us."

"Wait, are you saying you two are actually the Calamity Witch and Demon? I thought that was one of the bad slander rumors!" Yihwa asked, looking up again, shocked.

"Yes, we are."

"Bu-but they massacre people for fun!" She was completely unable to reconcile the idea of the Demon Knight of Calamity with the kind person in front of him.

"Yes, we do—but we don't really kill them unless they can't take a hint and back off. It's a way for us to challenge ourselves. Make it look like we slaughtered everyone effortlessly, but actually avoid vitals while holding back all our strongest abilities—it takes a lot more skill to create such a precise performance than actually wiping them all out. As a bonus, most weaker Regulars get scared off so we don't have to waste time dealing with them."

Her mouth stayed agape for a while. "A performance…? Just to challenge yourselves? The tests were that easy for you?" She had known that the pair had famously become E-rank Regulars after less than 2 years, one of the fastest paces in history, but to hear them describe it, they weren't even trying?

Axion shrugged. "It shouldn't be a surprise. You'd have had a similar time if you had control of your flames. But we shouldn't get off topic. Yes, I would be interested in studying your flames, but now that you know who I really am, knowing that I deceived you…do you still feel the same way?"

She thought for a moment, but found nothing objectionable about it. On the contrary, the revelations had only seemed to make her surer that this was the only way to repay him. Axion was more powerful than she had ever imagined and already had the beautiful princess at his side. He simply didn't need anything from her, and helped her before with no expectations of anything in return, defying her own expectations of men at every turn.

"Yes. I want to help you too somehow, and this is the only way I could think of," said Yihwa. "And I don't mind that you kept your true identity a secret…you had a good reason, and you told me now, even though you didn't have to."

"In that case, I shall accept your offer. And if I'm going to study your flames, I'll also help you find a way to control it," said Axion with a smile that made her heart skip a beat.

"You really think you can do that? Help me find a way to control it?" Yihwa asked.

"I can certainly try."

"If you could do that before I take the test again, I would be very grateful!"

Axion nodded. "Come see me tomorrow then, and we'll get started."

O O O

A/N: I have started an experiment with prerelease chapters on my discord for anybody that wants to help proofread, which would allow my beta readers to focus on more impactful plot and character issues instead. You can join via the link in my signature and opt-in to the role to get alerts and links to the prerelease chapters a few days to a week in advance of my current publishing schedule.

 

[H2F2]

I wonder how Axion will curb the Yeon flame?
So far, my best idea is that he will introduce her to self-hypnosis from Nasuverse to give her levers of control over her subconscious.