THE TOWER
[FLOOR GUARDIAN ALERT: MORRÍGAN — STATUS: ACTIVE]
[GOOD LUCK.]
The entrance runes pulsed and the first-floor doors opened and I walked in. The first ten floors were autopilot. Low-level bosses, basic encounters, the kind of thing I could clear while eating breakfast, which I actually had, on multiple occasions.
Floor 9: the mimic.
He was in his usual spot. Center of the room, lid slightly ajar. A party of three low-level adventurers were circling him with their swords drawn, debating whether to open him.
"I'm telling you, it's a trap," one of them warned.
"It looks like a normal chest," another one said.
I walked past them. "Morning, Chester."
The lid of the mimic's mouth popped open, revealing a row of dagger-sized teeth. A long, wet tongue flopped out and waved.
"Brought you something." I dropped a cloth for polishing on the top of his lid. Earlier, he had mentioned, in a way that I interpreted as a complaint, that his hinges were becoming stiff. "For the rust."
The lid snapped shut happily. The adventurers stared at me.
“He's friendly,” I said as I made my way to the stairs. "Don't open him though."
Floor 12. Ooze.
The room was damp and faintly greenish. Ooze was in the center, wobbling gently, his translucent mass catching the torchlight.
"Oozy! How's the little one?"
"Growing," Ooze said. The voice came from somewhere inside its mass, and was always slightly delayed. "Split off a new bud last week. He's about yea big." A tiny pseudopod emerged from his body, indicating a size comparable to a tennis ball.
"Oh my god, that's adorable. Does he have a name yet?"
"We're calling him Drip."
"Drip! I love Drip. Tell Drip his auntie Ayla says hi."
"Will do. Clear on through."
"Thanks, Oozy. Take care of yourself."
I waved and kept going. I noticed the entrance of two explorers into the room, followed by their immediate shrieks. Ooze let out a bubbling sigh and set to work.
Floor 23. The Jorogumo.
Her dark hair cascaded over her shoulders. She was sitting cross-legged in the center of an intricate silk lattice that spanned the entire ceiling.
"Jun! Did that salve work?"
She extended one of her spider legs from behind her back. The swelling near the third joint, which she had been complaining about for weeks, had visibly decreased. It seemed that web spinning caused repetitive stress on her joints.
"Like a charm," she replied. "Where did you even find that stuff?"
"The guild. They have a whole shelf of topical remedies. I'll bring you more next time."
"You're a gem, Moonbeam."
"Stopppp it, you're making me blush."
"I mean it. You're the only person who's ever asked about my joints. Everyone else just screams and dies."
"Well, their loss. Figuratively and literally."
She waved me through with three legs. I winked and kept climbing.
Floor 42. Sable.
I'd suggested she vary the atmosphere, maybe with some colored lighting, and she'd actually followed my advice. Today the fog was faintly purple.
"Sabs! Love what you've done with the place."
She emerged from the haze, fully coiled, and immediately dropped back down to casual mode when she saw it was me. "Ayla, baby. How are we doing? You eat today?"
"I had an apple."
"You need to eat more. Look at you, you're skin and bones! I could wrap around you twice and still have tail left over."
"You know, they’re saying skinny is in again,” Sable rolled her eyes. “How’d things go with that adventurer?”
Her expression darkened. "I did the thing you told me. I led with my personality. I made eye contact. I asked him about his interests. And the second he saw the tail, he screamed and tried to stab me."
"Okay, so he wasn't the one. There are other adventurers, Sabs. Someone's going to see you — all of you — and think it's the most beautiful thing they've ever seen."
"You really think so?"
"I know so. You're a catch."
She smiled. "Get out of here before I eat you."
"Love you, Sabs!"
Floor 67. Yuki.
She sat on the floor. No chair would fit her, so I had offered to look into custom furniture. She declined. She’s been a little harder to win over.
"Yooks."
"Moon."
She nodded. I nodded. I walked through.
Floor 73. Ren.
There, in her human form, she sat on what resembled a lounge chair that hadn't been there the previous week. She was engrossed in a book.
"Ren-Ren."
"Don't call me that."
"Renny. Renecita."
"I will eat your heart, Ayla."
"You always say that." I leaned on my staff. "Whatcha reading?"
She held the book up. The cover featured a painting of two people embracing in front of a castle. "I can't stop."
"Any good?"
"The dialogue is mediocre. The love interest has no personatlity," She turned a page. "I'm on chapter 42."
"Save it for me when you're done?"
"You'll hate it. The lesbian subplot goes nowhere."
"Yeah. Pass. See you tomorrow, Ren."
"If you survive," she wiggled her eyebrows.
"I never survive. That's the fun part!”
Floor eighty. Hana.
All eight limbs were in motion. The knitting had evolved. She was making something enormous, spanning several feet, with patterns that changed depending on the angle you looked at it.
"Hana! Oh my god, is that the blanket?"
"You were right about the stitch pattern. The double helix gives it more structure." She held up one corner with two legs while continuing to knit with the other six.
"I told you! My grandmother used to do the same thing with her quilts. Different materials, obviously. Less... body silk."
"You should bring her by sometime."
"She's dead."
"Oh. Sorry."
"No, it's fine, she'd have loved you. She was into crafts and things with lots of legs. Long story."
"The tower could use more crafters."
Floor 88, Nyx.
Her body was standing by the door. Her head was on the shelf across the room, watching me enter.
"Nyx! I like what you've done with the — uh — separation today."
"I'm airing out," the head said.
"Valid."
"She's in a mood," the body signed with its hands. I'd learned some of the body's sign language over the past few weeks.
"I am NOT in a mood," the head shrieked. "I told you, the neck joint is stiff. I need space."
"Take all the space you need," I said. "Self-care is important."
"Thank you, Ayla. Someone understands."
The body gave a thumbs up. I gave a thumbs up back. I walked through.
Floor 99. Floor 100.
I stopped. Took a breath.
[MP: 298,441 / 342,568]
[HP: 4,217 / 4,217]
[STAMINA: 89%]
When nobody fights you on the way up, you arrive at the top in pretty good shape. It didn't matter. I could have maxed out my stats and the demon queen would still have looked at me and I'd explode. But it was nice to feel prepared.
I pushed the door open.
The room was meticulously clean, even the floor gleamed. The demon queen was on her throne, arms crossed, her tail curled around one leg, staring at the far wall.
"Hey!" I said.
She ignored me.
"Hellooo? Demon queen? Scourge of the Hundred Floors? Big scary lady on the big scary throne?"
Spite and Malice were standing behind the throne, watching me. Spite shook his head frantically. Malice drew a finger across his throat.
Uh oh. The silent treatment.
"Aww," I said. "Are you cranky?"
Her tail twitched slightly.
"Is it because I didn't come see you yesterday? I'm sorry! I had a quest. The Guildmaster made me clear a wyvern nest and it took all day, I would have come if I could —"
I walked closer. My boots echoed on the floor. I could feel the Aura of Dread pressing against me, the passive stat debuff she radiated constantly, but I'd built up a tolerance over two hundred visits. It felt less like existential terror now and more like a mild headache.
"And!" I swung my bag around and rummaged through it. "Look what I got you!"
I took out a cloth bundle. I unwrapped it. Inside were six black rabbit hearts, still glistening. I had noticed, during another one of my visits, that Spite and Malice were roasting them over a small fire for her. She'd eaten all of them before remembering to kill me.
"Black rabbit hearts!" I presented them to her. "You like these, don’t you?”
Her eyes moved, just barely. A flicker toward the hearts and back to the wall.
"I hunted them myself. Almost got caught in another trap, actually, but I learned my lesson from last time so I was watching the ground —"
"I don't want them," she huffed.
I set the bundle on the arm of the throne.
Her hand shot out and grabbed three hearts at once, which she shoved into her mouth without chewing.
"I'm glad you like them," I said, smiling.
"I don't like them," she said, with her mouth full. "I'm eating them ironically."
"You can't eat something ironically," I teased.
"Watch me." She seized a fourth heart and sank her teeth into it. Her eyes challenged me to voice my opinion.
I didn't comment. I just stood there and watched her eat. My chest suddenly did a strange thing. Something that had nothing to do with Victoria. I pushed the feeling down.
Her expression hardened instantly as she caught me staring.
"Stop looking at me."
"I'm not looking at you. I'm looking at the throne. I love the bone accents."
She finished the fifth heart. Reached for the sixth, then paused. Set it back down.
"Thank you," she said, almost inaudibly.
"What was that?"
"Don't make me say it again."
"I didn't hear it. Could you —"
[HP: 0 / 4,217]
[YOU HAVE DIED]
[RESURRECTION: COMPLETE]
[Outstanding Balance Updated.]
I sat up and looked at the ceiling of the temple. The guild's contracted cleric, a bored-looking woman named Petra who'd stopped bothering to make small talk, was already cleaning the consecration circle.
"Same time tomorrow?" she asked, not looking up.
"Probably!"
[STATUS]
[MP: 342,568 / 342,568]
[HP: 4,217 / 4,217]
[GUILD DEBT: ████████ GOLD]
[INTEREST ACCRUED THIS MONTH: ████ GOLD]
I didn't even look at the debt number any more. Each resurrection cost more than the last, compounding with interest.
I downed a stamina tonic from the guild's supply closet, which was also added to my tab, and headed for the door.
"Bye, Petra! Bye, Morty!" I waved to the temple attendant on my way out. He waved back. They all knew me now: the temple staff, the guild clerks, and the apprentice clerics who were honing their skills on my remains. I was their most loyal customer, their most frequent flyer.
The evening air hit me, and I continued walking. I pass Barney's clinic every day, and I always look in the window. He was in there, alive. Just not speaking to me.
He'd been right, about something though. All those nights, all those rants, he'd been saying the same thing over and over and I hadn't listened.
You need to change your approach.
You can't keep doing the same thing.
If you actually want to beat her, you need to rethink everything.
The epiphany had come a few weeks earlier.
The demon queen's stats were beyond anything I'd ever encountered. Her MP was infinite, and her resistance was in the 90s across the board. She wasn't even using a fraction of her power when she killed me. Two hundred deaths and she hadn't once had to try.
I couldn't beat her. Not with strength, not with better spells or faster casting or more potions. A hundred mages at my level couldn't beat her. She was the final boss for a reason. The system had made her unkillable by design.
But she wasn't unkillable by nature.
She was a person in there. Under the stats and the horns and the title, she was a person. A person who could be known. And a person who could be known could be understood.
As I walked, I pulled out my quest log.
[ACTIVE QUEST: Clear the Sceach Chaille Burrow]
[OBJECTIVE: Defeat the Chaille Matriarch (Lvl 38)]
[REWARD: 800 Gold, Guild Reputation +50]
[STATUS: In Progress]
The Sceach Chaille Burrow was an hour's walk east of the city. A colony of oversized, armored, vaguely canine creatures with spines running down their backs lived there. A matriarch ruled over them, raiding nearby farms. A standard extermination contract.
As the sun was setting, I arrived at the burrow entrance. As the sun began to set, I heard the colony stirring within, with low growls, the scraping of claws, and the rustling of the smaller ones burrowing into their dens.
I sat down at the entrance. I reached into my bag and removed a piece of dried meat. I waited.
Ten minutes had passed when the first chaille emerged from its burrow. It was a young one, just reaching level 8. As it stuck its head out and took a sniff, it caught sight of me and instantly froze.
"Hey there," I said my voice soft. "I'm not going to hurt you."
Its back was low, and its spines were pressed against it. It was curious, cautious, but not afraid.
I threw the dry meat toward it. It landed a few feet from the burrow entrance. The chaille sniffed, then crept forward and ate.
"Good," I said. "That's good. You're okay."
Over the next hour, three more came out, then five. Then the whole colony gathered around me, eating scraps from my bag, sniffing my boots, letting me scratch behind their spines, where the armor plating was thin and soft. They were warm, and their growls had shifted into a sort of low, purring noise. The young ones pressed against my legs.
The matriarch emerged last. Her spines were longer and darker. She stood at the entrance of the burrow entrance and watched me with her colony pressed against my legs.
I held my empty palm up.
She came forward. Slowly, step by step, until her nose was against my palm, and her breath was warm, and her eyes were close enough for me to see my reflection in them.
"There you go," I whispered. "See? I'm not scary."
She nestled her head into my palm.
I directed every point of mana I had into a single Arcane Spike through my palm.
[SKILL: Arcane Spike — Cost: 500 MP]
[CRITICAL HIT]
[DAMAGE: 184,902 → Chaille Matriarch (Lvl 38)]
[Chaille Matriarch defeated! +420 EXP]
[QUEST COMPLETE: Clear the Sceach Chaille Burrow]
[REWARD: 800 Gold, Guild Reputation +50]
The matriarch fell to the ground. The colony scattered into the burrow, panicked.
I stood up and I wiped my palm on my pants.
[GUILD DEBT REMAINING: ████████ GOLD]
The walk back to the city was quiet. The stars were out, and the road was empty.
I thought about Victoria's smile.