Chapter 73: The Tower of Ash: The Rematch (1)
The portal’s heat washed over Nathan strong and hot.
Floor 1 materialized around them: the familiar volcanic corridor, walls of scorched black stone veined with glowing red mana. The air was dry and ashen, the kind of heat that made the lungs ache. Distant rumbles echoed through the stone.
But this time, Nathan felt no dread. Only focus.
His [Hunter’s Insight] activated, threading the darkness ahead with tactical clarity. Six signatures. Ember Hounds, already boiling out of the shadows. Their molten jaws dripped fire onto the stone. Their cores pulsed through the gaps in their rocky skulls.
"Standard formation," Nathan said. "We clear through Floor 5 before lunch."
Dillon’s grin was sharp. "Confident. I like it."
"Confidence earned," Elise murmured, her staff already glowing.
The Hounds charged. Nathan didn’t call targets. He simply thought the marks... Three on the left, two center, one flanking right... and Mirko read his intention through the link.
She activated [Impenetrable Fortress] and slid forward. The mana barrier angled, creating a curved wall that funneled the charging Hounds into a narrow corridor. They couldn’t spread. Couldn’t flank. They ran directly into the trap she’d shaped.
PEW! PEW!! PEW!!!
Elise’s [Mana Bolts] streaked through the gap, destroying legs mid-charge. Dillon’s [Quick Draw] was a single arc that passed through three cores in one motion. The Hounds didn’t even have time to dissolve before the next wave hit.
Garrett stepped into the gap. [Impact Strike] came down,WHOOSH! crushing the last Hound into the volcanic stone with enough force to leave a crater. Obsidian fragments scattered across the floor.
Nathan hadn’t fired a single arrow. He watched his party move like a well-oiled, recalibrated machine.
"Floor 2," he said. "Cinder Bats. Dillon, you’re up."
---
The bats came from the ceiling like a swarm of living missiles, wings trailing embers, bodies primed to detonate. Last time, this floor had pushed them.
But last time was last time and this time is this time.
Dillon’s Cloud Serpent launched upward in a spiraling ascent, scales crackling with electric fury. Static arced across the swarm, frying three bats simultaneously. Their premature detonations lit the ceiling like dying fireworks.
Elise layered [Mana Shield] above the party, not a flat canopy, but angled panels that deflected the surviving bats into a single trajectory. They tumbled into the space directly in front of Mirko.
BOOM!
Mirko’s [Aegis Strike] released. The shockwave carved a crescent of green-and-silver energy through the clustered bats. They detonated all at once, a chain reaction of fire and light. Obsidian shrapnel rained against the walls.
The last bat tried to dive toward Garrett. Red caught it on its horns, wool hardening to absorb the blast. When the light faded, Red was still standing. A thin trail of smoke rose from its armored wool, but the crimson fibers were already smoothing, adapting.
[Floor 2 Cleared.]
Nathan checked his quiver. Still full. He hadn’t needed to draw Moonlight yet.
---
Floor 3 opened into the lava chamber. Rivers of molten rock cut through the floor, their surfaces glowing dull orange. Narrow stone bridges spanned the flows. Last time, these bridges had felt like death traps.
This time, they were just terrain.
The Magma Serpents erupted from the lava. The first struck at Dillon, jaws wide. The second at Garrett, its tail whipping toward his legs. The third rose from the center of the largest flow, its core pulsing bright orange.
Elise’s Frost Golem slammed its fists into the lava.
Ice erupted outward, flash-freezing the river solid in a ten-meter radius. The temperature differential was so extreme that steam exploded upward in a white geyser. The serpent that had been swimming through the center flow found itself trapped in volcanic glass. It thrashed. The ice held.
Mirko sprinted across the frozen bridge. [Quick Reflex] let her read the surviving serpents’ lunges before they committed. She sidestepped the first strike, and her counter-stroke carved through the serpent’s core in a single motion. She was already flowing into the next target.
Dillon’s katana severed the third serpent’s head. [Quick Draw] flashed twice—first the neck, then the exposed core as the body began to regenerate. The creature dissolved before it could reform.
Garrett and Red held the rear bridge. A serpent lunged from below. Red intercepted, horns catching the strike. Garrett’s [Impact Strike] came down on the creature’s skull, sending fractures spiderwebbing through the volcanic stone. The serpent dissolved into fading embers.
[Floor 3 Cleared.]
Nathan drew Moonlight on Floor 4.
The serpents were larger here, their cores hidden behind dense volcanic scale. The bridges were narrower. The heat ticked up to High, and the Winterhart cloaks shimmered with renewed intensity. Nathan could feel the reinforced enchantments working. The heat was there, but it didn’t reach him.
He nocked an arrow. The Tyrant’s Eye swirled, piercing through the heat shimmer. A Magma Serpent was rising on the far bridge, its core hidden behind interlocking obsidian plates.
[Focus Shot] at half-charge. Fifteen seconds. The serpent lunged. Nathan released.
The arrow crossed the chamber and punched through the serpent’s chest plates, through the core, through the stone pillar behind it. The creature dissolved mid-lunge, splashing harmlessly into the lava.
Kuro materialized from Nathan’s shadow.
She appeared on the far bridge behind the last serpent. [Silent Step] made her movements less than a whisper. [Assassinate] drove both daggers into the base of its skull. The serpent convulsed once and dissolved. Kuro met Nathan’s eye across the chamber, inclined her head slightly, and dissolved back into shadow.
[Floor 4 Cleared.]
---
The Alpha’s chamber was exactly as Nathan remembered it.
The vast volcanic hall. The ceiling lost in smoke and crimson haze. The maze of obsidian platforms separated by rivers of slow-moving lava. Heat shimmers distorting the air. The taste of sulfur and ash.
And at the center, coiled around the volcanic pillar, the Magma Serpent Alpha.
Three times the size of the others. Obsidian scales streaked with glowing red veins. Eyes burning white-hot. Its body wrapped the pillar in coils that could crush stone.
Last time, this fight had nearly broken them. This time, Nathan intended to make it a showcase.
"Mirko, get in close and start building your combo," Nathan said evenly. "Elise, lock it down with ice. Dillon, take away its vision. Kuro..." A faint smile crossed his face. "You already know what to do."
’Yes, Summoner.’
Mirko stepped onto the central platform. The Alpha’s tail whip came faster than anything that size should move.
[Impenetrable Fortress] caught it. The impact cracked the obsidian platform beneath Mirko’s feet, but she angled the barrier, deflecting the force downward. The platform groaned. The Alpha’s tail rebounded.
[Aegis Strike] released. The shockwave carved a gash across the Alpha’s flank. Obsidian scales shattered in a spray of black fragments. The Alpha screamed, and its coils tightened around the pillar.
Dillon’s Cloud Serpent streaked across the chamber, static electricity arcing in a sustained discharge. The Alpha’s burning gaze flickered and dimmed. Its head thrashed blindly.
"Now." Elise’s voice was cold.
[Glacial Lance] formed at her staff’s tip—a spear of absolute frost, denser and brighter than her [Mana Bolts]. The air around it crystallized. She released. The lance crossed the chamber and punched through the Alpha’s tail, through the volcanic pillar behind it. Ice erupted outward, freezing the serpent’s lower body solid. Steam exploded where frozen scale met volcanic heat.
Kuro activated [Invisibility] and vanished.
She materialized behind the Alpha’s skull. [Assassinate] drove both daggers into the soft tissue behind its jaw. The critical strike found the nerve cluster. The Alpha’s scream became a gurgle. Its coils spasmed.
Nathan had been charging [Focus Shot] for thirty seconds.
Moonlight hummed in his grip. The arrowhead blazed white-hot. Kuro marked the core with [Weak Point Sense]. Mirko’s tenth [Unstoppable Force] strike crashed down. Scales shattered. The core was exposed.
Nathan released.
The arrow punched through the exposed core, through the Alpha’s body, through the volcanic pillar. Stone cracked. Lava hissed. The Alpha froze, its white eyes flickering.
Its coils went slack. It collapsed into the lava and dissolved.
[Floor 5 Cleared!
Nathan lowered Moonlight. His arms were steady. His mana was recovering.
[Level Up! Level 37]
[Level Up! Kuro: Level 21]
He did a headcount.
Mirko, sheathing her sword with a satisfied click. Elise, her Frost Golem still eight feet of pristine ice. Dillon, his Cloud Serpent crackling with energy. Garrett, his mace resting on his shoulder, Red’s wool in perfect armored formation. Kuro materialized beside him, daggers still dripping shadow.
No shattered summons. No close calls. No desperate gambles.
"Five floors down," Nathan said, glancing at the shimmering portal ahead. "We’re halfway through. And we’re in a much better place than we were when we reached Floor Three the first time."
Garrett stretched his shoulders with a grin. "Almost felt too easy."
"It wasn’t easy," Elise said, shaking her head. "It was efficient. There’s a difference. Easy means the challenge wasn’t real. It was. We’ve just gotten stronger."
"The Pyre Wyrm is still waiting for us," Dillon said, though there wasn’t a trace of fear in his voice anymore, only anticipation.
Nathan gave a small nod. "Then it can wait a little longer. We’ll get there... and this time, we’ll be ready."
He turned and walked toward the portal.
Behind them, the Alpha’s chamber had fallen quiet once more. Rivers of lava flowed as steadily as they had before, and the volcanic pillar stood marked only by patches of frost and scorched shadows. Aside from those faint scars, there was nothing left to suggest a desperate battle had ever taken place there at all.
But Nathan remembered the first time. Every floor had felt like a war. Every victory had cost too much. He remembered the extraction on Floor 9. The green light of Mirko’s forced recall. The hollow walk back to Ashwick.
This time was different.
He stepped through the portal, and the Tower swallowed him toward Floor 6.
