Tower Apocalypse 3, page 29
She took my hand, pulling me along.
The stalls around us became a blur.
Emma was so excited that she sped right past them, not giving me enough time to closely inspect the different classes.
After the hexmancer lesson, I’d be sure to go around and take a closer look. The various skills and classes were the most exciting thing in Gaea.
The hexmancer stall’s symbol was a hand twisted in an arcane gesture, with purple flame blazing around it. The stall itself was strange. The canvas was pitch-black, and the wood was rotting.
There was no rabbit inside.
I stepped forward, leaning over the counter.
The shadows in the stall swirled together, and then a figure emerged.
It was a rabbit person with black fur and stark red eyes.
“Hi. I am Hemlock, heir to the Nox family. How can I help you?”
“Hemlock,” I said, greeting the rabbit person. “I’m a hexmancer. Do you have any skills you could sell me? Or any quests to give out?”
It would have been so easy if I could just buy whatever he had, but I knew I wouldn’t be so lucky.
It’d be quests all the way, I was sure of it.
“I have a quest for you,” Hemlock said, leaning his hairy elbows on the counter. “But it’s a tough one.”
I snorted, unable to hold back. Tough? Everything that happened to us since we got here was tough.
“Yes, please.”
“So, here you go.”
SECRET TIER 2 QUEST RECEIVED
POWERLESS QUEST
DESCRIPTION
Use three debuffs thirty times consecutively without breaking the chain.
REWARD
License to buy [POWERLESS] (cost, 27,000 fres)
“Just to make sure, you want me to use each debuff thirty times in a row, then use the next one? For three debuffs in total?”
“Yes, exactly!” Hemlock said excitedly. “And you can’t use any attack skills—you can only use physical strikes and force manipulation.”
I frowned. That sounded bad enough. But then Hemlock went on. “This quest only applies on floors six and higher.”
I was so surprised by the absurd request that I laughed out loud. I’d thought that the [TRIFURCATE] mission was pretty annoying, but this was on an entirely different level.
“Thanks. And do I have to come back here? To get the skill license?”
“Oh, no, you don’t. The system will just charge you the necessary fres and transfer them to me. Quite handy, isn’t it?”
I nodded, “Yeah, I appreciate it.”
There was no way Gaea wouldn’t collect its due, but that was still better than making me run around across different stages.
“Do you have any other quests?”
Hemlock shook his head, his expression shifting to one of genuine sorrow. “I’m sorry, but they do not allow certain classes to gain more than a single skill or spell on this floor.”
Then his face warped into a sudden grin. “Hah! Almost got you there, didn’t I? There is a way to gain more skills…but you’ll have to get on my good side.”
I stared at him, trying to keep my impatience from showing on my face. “Alright. How do I get on your good side?”
“Well, you’ll have to get on the Nox family’s good side.”
Great.
He was answering one confusing question by proposing another one. That wouldn’t do me any good.
I wasn’t angry, but I was getting pretty annoyed. I was in a rush here, and I needed to gain new skills as soon as possible. “Look, man. Just tell me what to do so I can move on. Does everyone in your family love wasting time too?”
Hemlock frowned and got up from his chair.
His body shimmered, and suddenly, he was scowling and rolling up the sleeve of his shirt. His paw had curled into a fist like he was ready for a fight. “Hey! What did you say about me and my family?”
I put my hands up in a peaceful gesture. There was no point in getting into an argument with someone who could teach me skills. “Ah, I just misspoke. Sorry about that, Hemlock. And thanks for the skill.”
The rabbit’s body briefly glowed again, and then he was smiling again. Not only that, the long-sleeved shirt that’d suddenly appeared on his body had vanished—now he was back in a cloak.
“Hah! There’s a lot more where that came from, and not just hexmancer skills, if you know what I mean,” he said, shooting me a friendly wink.
Now that was strange.
The rabbit person’s outfit had transformed along with their expression. He’d even gained a shirt so he could roll it up and dramatically start a fight with me.
I nudged Emma, who’d been watching me talk to Hemlock. “Hey, Emma. What’s that rabbit person wearing?”
She frowned, “Um, a robe? What else would he wear? He’s the hexmancer teacher, right? Everyone is wearing outfits based on their class.”
“Did his clothing change at all? You know, when I was talking to him?”
“Um, no?” She looked utterly befuddled. “Is the stress of the last mission getting to you? I know it was pretty tough…”
I shook my head. “No, I’m fine.”
Maybe it was some kind of bug that only I could see. I thought back to the incomplete fourth floor and the secret bonuses the System had shown me before getting reset.
Now that I had the Fragment of the Demigod, I’d probably see a lot more of those strange events and occurrences. That was just another thing to keep track of.
A new notification appeared…
Giving me yet another thing to keep track of.
NOTIFICATION
Reputation with Hemlock Nox has risen by 3 points.
Reputation with the Nox clan: 3
Reputation with Hemlock Nox: 3
I frowned.
A reputation system?
Was this another Demigod-specific function?
Maybe I could make the rabbits give me skills after I befriended them enough. It certainly seemed like the Demigods and the System had some degree of control over them.
“Devin? What’s going on?” Emma asked. “You just spaced out again.”
I decided not to say anything just yet.
Emma knew about the Fragment of the Demigod, but I didn’t want to elaborate on my broader plans just yet.
Quickly gathering skills, allowing us to overwhelm the darkling, would be a dream come true. Escaping Gaea while keeping the new superhuman abilities we’d gained would be even more than that—a blessing beyond our wildest dreams.
But I wasn’t an idiot. I knew things wouldn’t come that easy, so until I had an actual concrete plan, I’d keep everything I’d discovered to myself. I didn’t want to give Emma any false hope.
I laughed, trying to sound casual so she didn’t think I was hiding anything, “Nothing, sorry. I’m just tired and hungry. And I look like shit.”
“You smell like it too,” she giggled.
Then she laughed, leaned in, and pressed her lips on mine. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
I shrugged, “I can’t blame a lady for telling the truth. By the way, what secret Tier 2 spell quest did you get?”
“Oh, it’s a good one, Dev. It’s called a [FIRE NOVA]. I can make a massive fireball appear overhead, and then I bombard a group of enemies with it.”
She motioned with her hands, imitating an explosion. “Everyone will go kaboom!”
I smiled. “Great. Now you can blow up more forests and buildings. That’s just terrific.” I was making fun of her, but it really was terrific. Since we were going into more army battles against other species, we definitely needed more area-of-effect skills. I’d specced my summons for that exact purpose, and it was good that my party members were picking up on the common theme.
She slapped me playfully. “Well, you haven’t heard anything yet. I also got another spell— [FROST NOVA].”
“Which…let me guess, forms a big ball of ice and then drops it on top of an enemy?”
“Oh, my, you’re quite sharp,” she purred. “Can’t wait to try it out in the coming fights.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Fights? Where?”
Emma grabbed my arm. “Ah, right. You guys weren’t there for the announcement. Let’s get going.”
Emma pulled me past several more rows of stands until we reached what looked like the center of Fresvale.
Three large fighting rings stood there, slightly spaced apart. The rings were about a hundred feet across and sixty feet wide—plenty of place for people to battle alongside their summons.
Three simultaneous battles raged between human players. Everyone there seemed reasonably strong. They had to be to make it to this floor.
The stands were filled with a mixture of humans and rabbit people.
Between the ring and the crowd, I recognized a few of Schroder’s warriors as well as the unaffiliated humans who’d joined Allan to help us fight against the World Boss. The key members of Maxwell and Allan’s factions were also there. I saw Ming, Maxwell’s teleporter, chatting with Blaine, Allan’s powerful necromancer.
Suddenly, a human fired off an enormous lightning bolt. His opponent dodged, and the blast was now going straight for the stands.
My eyes widened, but then the attack dissipated harmlessly against an invisible dome around the ring.
“Should I fight too?” I asked. “Are there any benefits?”
She nodded. “You should—the strongest fighter will receive the respective ‘Archon’ title and stat buff. But first, you should wash up.”
She pointed to a large fountain at the side of the ring. A bunch of human players were washing themselves in the water. Not only that, some of the fighters just leaving the ring hopped in as well, right in front of me.
The dirt immediately soaked off their bodies.
“Isn’t that dirty?” I asked. “Wouldn’t we get sick?”
Save for specific debuffs, like Tang’s poison, I hadn’t gotten sick yet since coming to Gaea. However, jumping into a fountain everybody else was washing in might test that.
Emma shook her head. “Take a closer look. The water can’t get dirty. It just takes the dirt away from everybody.”
I strode towards the fountain and realized she was right—the water remained crystal clear no matter what. The filth falling off people’s bodies just vanished.
The players inside saw me, then waved.
“Hey! I know you—you’re Devin Cain!”
“Devin! Glad to see you made it here!”
“Look! It’s the Hexmancer with all the summons!”
I didn’t recognize any of them, but I was happy with their support. I’d worked hard to help humanity, both through sharing my discoveries like the Resource Hub and the Dungeon Hub and through fighting on the battlefield.
I waved back, then got inside. “Thanks for sharing the fountain,” I said.
The water was ice cold, but it wasn’t unpleasant at all.
It was almost soothing, like putting ice on a burn wound. I almost instantly felt refreshed again, all fatigue and tiredness gone. The wounds on my body gradually healed.
Even stranger, the dirt and dents on my white glint armor began to vanish.
I glanced at the man right next to me. “Are you here to fight?” I asked.
“Oh no,” the man said, shaking his head. “I didn’t take any of the Archon routes—I took the easier civilian path.”
After taking a closer look at him, he seemed more like a trader. He had a neat beard, a well-groomed face, and a fancy civilian outfit, with a ruffled shirt and nice breeches.
“A civilian path? I didn’t hear about it.”
The man laughed. “It’s because the Demigods knew you could entertain them! Luparia took one look at me and asked if I’d like something easier.”
Luparia had to pick out of people who completed the Archon floors, so if someone couldn’t do it, it made sense she’d just shove them out of the way instead of wasting her time evaluating a dud.
“What was that like?” I asked.
“Ah, sort of like the earlier floors,” he said. “Some simple fights, nothing special. I wanted to help humanity keep climbing, but I also didn’t want to take too big of a risk.”
“Well, thanks for that,” I said.
The system requirements—that thousands of humans move up together—meant that we needed people willing to do the easier floors, even more because the floor limiters would come back after Floor 10. It might have been easier than the absurd Assault Archon mission Allan, Maxwell, and I did, but it was still a risk.
“So you’re just here watching the fights?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes. I’m trying to see what good items people use, so I can bid for them later when I return to the market.”
But then, the man pointed at the ring in the far corner. “I think he might be interested in fighting you though. He was looking for you when your group arrived.”
A man had just finished fighting there.
The winner sat cross-legged on the floor.
He had a plain and forgettable face, with a wide forehead and a prominent widow’s peak. His tangled black hair trailed past his shoulders.
I blinked.
His face…
This was the man at the store, the one who said he was an emissary of Verdunn.
Before, he’d worn a simple baggy tunic that covered up his whole body, and he looked like a civilian.
But now, I realized was a fighter.
He was shorter than me—perhaps five feet and eight inches—but his broad shoulders and thick legs meant he might have weighed just as much as I did, if not more. The man had the body of an Olympic wrestler.
It wasn’t just his muscles either. His whole body was radiating with force.
He was wearing a mixture of half-plate armor and a dark hooded cloak. A group of oversized animals prowled the area around him. Some of them were also wearing matching armored pieces. As the fight ended, they dissipated into mist.
It seemed like they were summons, just like my living armors.
His injured opponent staggered out of the ring, hobbling towards the fountain before falling inside with a loud groan.
“Who were you fighting?” I asked the injured man. “I heard he walks for Verdunn.”
The man blinked. “Oh. You’re Devin, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
The man laughed, the air coming back into his lungs now that he was inside the restoring fountain. “Man. Good to see you. Maybe you can finally give him a challenge. That guy isn’t an emissary of Verdunn—he is Verdunn.”
My eyes widened, and I suddenly put two and two together.
Verdunn had been climbing the tower before us, and doing side quests. I knew he’d climbed the Assault Archon path before we did, and that meant he knew how to suppress his force.
When he met me in the tower’s marketplace, he hadn’t just wanted to buy my White Glint armor. He also wanted to get a measure of me face-to-face. Meanwhile, I hadn’t learned about force suppression yet, so I’d thought he was just an ordinary guy.
The man in the ring tilted his head, then got up. He stepped to the edge of the arena floor, then pointed his finger right at me.
“Devin Cain. Nice to meet you—again. Why don’t you join me in the ring? Let’s see if you’re really as tough as people say they are.”
VERDUNN
I got up out of the fountain, frowning.
I could already tell that we wouldn’t get along.
Initially, I’d hoped that Verdunn had some kind of long-term plan to help humanity, sort of like Schroder and Tang’s army.
From the looks of it, that wasn’t the case—he really was treating this like some sort of game.
Coming up to me, measuring me, then leaving without saying anything…
Who the hell did he think he was? Some kind of secret agent?
And now, he was challenging me to a fight, acting like he was the king of the world even though he hadn’t actually done anything.
Well, I was more than happy to rise to the challenge.
“Don’t bother, he’s taunting you,” a new voice called from behind.
I turned and found Ren shaking his head as he stated the obvious.
I smirked. “Ren, what do you know about taunting? I thought you were a polite merchant boy. Who knew you had a wild side?”
Ren laughed, dismissively waving his hand. “Ah, it was usually just to bait people into telling me financial information back home. You know, trick them into telling me they were hiding something. It never worked on other bankers, but it wreaked havoc on newbies. Anyways, I bet he wants to wager armor pieces, or something like that. He tried buying the White Glint, after all.”
“Maybe he does,” I replied. “But I don’t think I can back down with everyone watching.”
In the corner of my eye, I pulled out my stat box and bonuses.
STATUS SCREEN
NAME
Devin Cain
CLASS Hexmancer
KARMA -125
LEVEL 81
HEALTH 2260 (+1330) FORCE 1305 (+341)
ATTACK 1202 (+362) DEFENSE 764 (+453)
SHIELD 1760 (+352) SOULS 0/100
RESISTANCES
FIRE 30% (+20%) AIR 30% (+20%)
WATER 30% (+20%) LIGHTNING 30% (+20%)
POISON 30% (+20%) CURSE 40% (+20%)
When I pulled open my stats this time, something very strange happened.
The Fragment in my chest flared, and I felt like I was pulled into the box. The numbers whirled around me, and this time, I completely understood Gaea’s inner workings. At just a glance, I perfectly comprehended how the stats were calculated, and what exactly went into each and every number.
Karma was simple—it was the number of people I killed.
Souls were simple too. Each kill was a soul, but I’d since used all of them up on reviving summons.
Level was the last simple stat. Even a fucking caveman like Verdunn could probably understand it. Normally, I would have tried taunting him back, but this was just way too fascinating. Not even a smartass like me could look away to talk shit.
Health, Attack, Shield, Force, Defense, and my Resistances….
