“You two!” shouted a man in a suit and sunglasses. “Stop right there! Restricted area, civilians can’t go in!”
The government? They reacted fast. I kept walking toward the entrance.
“Hey! Can’t you hear me?” He and another man in an identical suit stopped in front of us. “You can’t go through!”
“Why not?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“This area has been classified as extremely dangerous. We’re stopping everyone. It’s for your own safety.”
He didn’t know anything either, as expected. They had reacted fast, but no one could understand the whole situation in so little time. I turned to Rafael.
“When you said you wouldn’t attack anyone who didn’t want to hurt you, does that go for anyone who wants to hurt me?”
With empty eyes, Rafael raised the big shield.
“Don’t kill them. Taking them down is enough,” I said, without bothering to lower my voice.
The two drew their guns, too late to stop Rafael’s charge, which pushed them back with the shield. Before they could get their balance back, I activated Shadow Emergence, appeared behind them and hit both with the shaft of the Hsu Quandao.
Firearms still worked; they were just mechanics and gunpowder. But to hit someone who vanishes into a shadow, you need more than a trigger.
Two guards, one shield, one shadow. It didn’t even count as a fight.
The onlookers around us were stunned. Some backed away, afraid of getting hit too. Others got restless: they wanted to investigate the tower too, and seeing two people willing to take on the government changed their math.
“We drew too much attention. Let’s move.”
“Right.”
“Wait, you two!” A slightly older man, who had been watching from the side until then, came toward us, taking a step forward with every word. “Why did you attack those men? In a chaotic situation like this, creating more confusion will only cause more dam—“
Before he could get any closer, the blade of the Hsu Quandao was already at his neck.
I hadn’t decided to do that. It was simply done.
“Stop right there.”
He took a step back, surprised, both hands in the air.
“Why should I listen to anything you have to say?”
“What are you talking about, child? You don’t understand how serious the situation is!”
“On the contrary. You’re the one who doesn’t understand.”
“You insolent little br—“
I pushed the spear one finger’s width closer.
“Shut up. Can’t you see I’m talking?”
His Adam’s apple went up and down. He closed his mouth and backed away until he disappeared among the onlookers.
The sentence stayed in my mouth, like a taste that wasn’t mine. Shut up. Can’t you see I’m talking? The Kai Sehun who paid his PC bang bill in coins didn’t talk to anyone like that. That was the voice of someone used to being obeyed the first time, and I had the uncomfortable feeling it had enjoyed getting out.
You again, roommate? At least give me a heads-up.
I looked at the rest of the crowd. I didn’t recognize anyone, no surprise. It had been twenty years in Erebus, and the index had names, not faces.
“I’ll give you a tip!” I shouted to anyone who wanted to hear. “If you keep stalling, you’ll regret it. In a fight over limited resources, whoever starts ahead stays ahead. Anyone who wants to end up like that gentleman, be my guest. The rest of you, run.”
Since I’ve started the speech, I might as well get an extra resource out of it.
“We’re going in now,” I announced. “A lot of you have already figured out the basics of the class you got. We have one spot open in the group. Anyone with an area-damage skill?”
The Tower of Despair builds new settings with every terraforming, so that information from one plane is useless on the next. But basic ideas, like gathering a pile of enemies in one place and hitting them all at once, work in any situation. Any general would call that a chokepoint. In Erebus, it was called surviving.
“Rafael, you’ve got a defensive class. You got some kind of taunt skill, right?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth.
He just nodded.
“Great.”
The groups started whispering, eyeing me with suspicion. Only a boy who was on his own came over, looking both ways with every step, as if he were crossing an avenue with no traffic lights.
“I-I have a skill like that.”
He seemed shy. His lowered head made him look even smaller than he was. Short blond hair, not a single whisker. He had to be under sixteen.
“What’s your name?”
“S-Sun Hwei.”
The name wasn’t in the index. Even so, for a second, the boy’s voice sounded like music heard from far away, in the next room. I shook my head. Tired.
“Can you tell me what kind of skill? You don’t need to tell me your class or profession, just the description.”
Normally, asking that was bad manners. But newcomers didn’t know, and I wasn’t in a position to be polite.
“It’s a-a simple skill. Ignite. It burns a five-by-five area for three seconds.”
“Five by five? Great skill. It must have a weak point.”
No skill is all-powerful. The stronger the good side, the heavier the bad side the system adds to balance it out.
“Yes, sir. It takes a few minutes to recharge.”
“A few minutes? We can live with that. We’ll have time.”
One bomb every few minutes. On a first floor, one well-placed bomb is worth more than ten swords.
“And you don’t need to call me sir. I’m, I don’t know, two years older than you.”
“Yes, s-sir.”
That’s fine. We’ll work on it.
While we talked, groups of three and four people were going into the tower.
“Sehun, shouldn’t we hurry? You said we had to be fast.”
“I’m not worried about them. Let’s go.”
When we got close, a screen appeared in front of me.
[Group detected]
[Kai Sehun]
[Rafael Jeon Oliveira]
[Sun Hwei]
[Choose a floor]
[1st Floor]
[2nd Floor (Locked)]
[3rd Floor (Locked)]
I touched the only floor available.
[1st Floor: Whispers of the Forest]
[Choose the difficulty]
[Normal]
[Hard]
[Nightmare]
Every floor has three difficulties. On the higher ones, changing the difficulty can change the objective of the whole quest. On the first ones, it basically changes the quality and number of enemies.
The Tower of Despair raises the difficulty drastically every ten floors, and not just in the strength of the opponents: their intelligence and the complexity of the objectives go up too. It’s a way of sifting the summoned. Strength gets you to a certain point. From there on, whoever doesn’t think gets left behind.
Nightmare without healing is suicide with extra steps.
That was when a child, even younger than Sun, tugged at the hem of my windbreaker.
Where did she come from?
I hadn’t sensed her presence until she made herself noticed, and that, by itself, already said something. She wore rags, her skin was dirty and she looked like she hadn’t eaten in days. Her wrist was barely the width of two fingers.
“This one… can go… wit’ you?” She looked about twelve, and the Korean coming out of her cracked lips was hard to understand.
This one. Not “I.” I tucked that away in a corner of my mind without knowing why.
“Why would I take you?” I asked, hard. Child or not, she could be the dead weight that cost us the floor.
She understood. She crouched, picked up a stone and pressed it into her own hand. Rafael grabbed her arm on instinct, but the stone had already opened a small cut in her palm. When he tore off a piece of his shirt to clean the blood, I stopped him.
“Let her finish.”
“She’s just a kid!”
The girl pulled her arm back and pressed her palms together. In the dark night, a small glow escaped from her.
Healing magic?
The golden glow of every regeneration skill is unforgettable. Being touched by it is like getting a jolt of serotonin. When she pulled her hands apart, the cut was gone.
“Sehun, I’m taking her, even if you’re against it,” Rafael declared. Sun didn’t say anything. “I’ll take responsibility.”
“Fine by me. Actually, she’ll be of great use.”
When I said “use,” Rafael looked at me as if I’d stepped on a grave.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not some monster who treats people like tools. I just meant her skill could save us.”
Rafael kept staring.
Note to self: in a new group, never say “use.” Or “resource.” Or “asset.” Or, come to think of it, open my mouth.
[New member detected]
[Lili Ferrer]
The girl couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. She looked at the letters the way you look at a drawing.
So did I.
Lili?
The name froze me. There was one line about her in the index, just one, and I had reread that line more times than I’d have liked. Looking into the girl’s dull eyes, I ran face-first into a reality my head couldn’t hold.
How had such a harmless child turned into a mass murderer?
Around us, the groups were making their decisions, including the one with the man who had interrupted us. Circles of blue light spun around them as they were teleported into the tower.
Not now. Even if it wasn’t just the same name, she wasn’t that Lili. Not yet, at least. One wave at a time.
I went back to the screen and chose the option I wanted. A gong sounded all around us.
It had begun.
A circle appeared around each member of the group.
“Red?” Rafael had noticed the color that took the other summoned. “Why is ours different?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I answered. “We can’t waste time on Normal.”
“Sehun?”
“We’re clearing this floor on Nightmare.”
“O-on what?” Sun asked.
The red light covered the four of us before anyone could answer. Which, come to think of it, was a great way to avoid the argument.