Fay and Lifara looked Martin up and down. Martin covered himself at once, plainly unwilling to let the two women size him up any further.
"Swap places with me. I'll lead the tower raiding team," Fay said.
Martin did not argue. He only nodded. They exchanged leader badges, and Fay turned back toward the fifty floored tower. Ahead of her, the colored squares shifted in their maddening pattern as she climbed.
The cultivators nearest the entrance noticed her approach, saw the badge in her hand, and returned their attention to the battle below. It was clear enough what they were doing.
Rotating their fighters, measuring timing, sending replacements when needed, since the maze floor itself could not hold all hundred of them at once.
Fay climbed in silence, but her mind never stilled. With her peerless comprehension, she had spent every idle moment studying the way Jackson shaped blood.
She could not use his method as he did, yet she had already begun imitating its principles through flame. The ice spear the Flesh Titan had thrown earlier had given her the final push.
She took a bottle and poured its water into the air.
Qi flowed from her in careful threads. The water gathered and hung before her, quivering as she guided it into shape. Then, little by little, she froze it with her ghostly qi.
She was no true ice cultivator, so the process came slowly. It took her half a minute to form the large spear.
That was only the shell. With delicate control, she hollowed the inside of the spear and fed underworld fire into its core. Unlike ordinary flame, underworld fire did not feed on oxygen. It fed on the qi in the air itself.
When the weapon was ready, Fay hurled it at the charging centipede chimera.
The beast noticed at once. Its eight limbs shifted, and a fire spell burst forth to meet the spear. It was the right response, at least at first glance. The thick ice melted under the spell's heat.
Then the trap opened. The underworld fire sealed inside splashed across the centipede chimera the instant the ice gave way.
Soul pain ripped through it. The creature twisted and writhed, its body convulsing so violently that it lost all rhythm.
The cultivators did not waste the chance.
Blades, arrows, and spells crashed down on it in a storm. The chimera barely had time to scream before its life was torn away.
For a moment, no one spoke. Then every eye turned toward the entrance to the fifth floor.
No one doubted Fay. That was not the problem. The problem was time.
It had taken too long just to clear this tower to this point, and every floor made the centipede chimera worse.
Each new level added another segment to its body. That meant the next one would have five segments, and with them the ability to unleash ten spells in wild succession.
So they looked to Fay in silence, waiting for her judgment.
None of them wanted to be the one who decided.
That was one of the hidden flaws of working with smart people. When the risk turned ugly, everyone preferred someone else to carry the blame.
"There's no problem. We can clear this tower faster. I seem to be a natural counter to it. Just make sure you're ready to strike each segment with the element that opposes it," Fay said.
Her mind was already moving ahead of her words.
"I'll need help making a few things."
She called for the ice cultivators first and had them shape simple spear shafts. The earth cultivators she directed toward another task, molding crude clay balls dense enough to hold together when thrown.
Fay understood her own fire better than anyone there, and she gave exact specifications for what she needed. Before long, the ten man pursuit team stood armed with ice spears and clay bombs, each one prepared to carry her fire into the fight.
Then Fay turned to the rest.
"Everyone, we're changing tactics. By now you've all noticed it isn't just the segments that grow stronger. The centipede itself grows sturdier with every floor."
"Group up by element and keep a few seconds behind the pursuit team. The moment the stun lands, bombard the matching segment. Control your spells. Control the size of your strikes. Do not waste power. All right. Move."
The order lit a spark through the group. It was clever. More than clever. It sounded possible, and in a place like this, possibility alone could lift a man's courage.
As the others started forward, Fay lingered by the corpse of the chimeric centipede. She drew a blade from her side, crouched, and cut into the underside with quick practiced motions.
From within, she removed a small sack and slipped it into her storage space in one smooth movement.
"Leader Fay, what do you have there?" one of the cultivators asked.
Fay did not so much as pause. Instead, she held up a different piece she had cut away, a small section of carapace.
"Nothing important. I was curious, so I took a piece," she said.
The cultivator looked it over, found nothing suspicious, and nodded. A moment later, he bent down and took a fragment for himself.
Fay said nothing.
She was Radeon's disciple, and she had entered this place already knowing how to exploit the Life Bane Contracts.
The first agreement had been written with enough room for a clever hand to slip through.
First, anything taken here that may be sold will be sold. We can settle it once we return to Radeon Terraces Arena.
That was what it said. More importantly, the settlement would occur only once they returned to Radeon Terraces Arena.
So long as an item was not presented as recovered loot when they returned, it remained outside the settlement. Hidden goods left behind in the secret realm were not counted as loot at all.
In practice, something only became loot once it had been openly pulled from danger and laid before everyone for division without dispute.
Better still, the sheer weight of the work had made the others careless. They were so busy climbing, bleeding, and proving their worth that few stopped to ask whether the value of their labor was being measured honestly.
The numbers used to measure their effort dazzled them more than the rewards themselves. Worse, the treasures were so strange and singular that few of them could judge their true worth at a glance, which made deception all the easier.
That was why Lifara opened the haul in full view of the others and let them count it with their own eyes.
Seventy pills and three manuals lay on display, and that number alone was enough to please most of them. They saw abundance, felt relief, and never thought to look deeper.
What they did not see was the quiet work already done behind the curtain.
The instant the cache had been opened, the system storage space had snatched away two manuals and thirty pills so quickly that no ordinary eye could have caught it.
Lifara offered a simple excuse and said she was checking each pill one by one. No one found that strange. In a place like this, where every treasure might hide some trick, caution looked a great deal like diligence.
In truth, her fingers were doing far more than inspecting. As she sorted through the haul, Lifara quietly switched out the resources she knew Fay, Oswin, Thaddeus, and she herself would need later.
The movement was clean, practiced, and easy to miss unless someone already suspected her.
No one did. The reason for all of it was simple enough. Their system had given them a task, and this was how they intended to profit from it.
[Radeon's True Disciple Task]
[Task: Pull off a heist that yields the greatest benefit for yourself and your brothers. You may do it alone or work as a team. The choice is yours.]
[Reward: 24 to 72 hours of one-on-one cultivation coaching.]
[Reward: 500 to 5,000 contribution points.]
[Reward: A customized weapon forged by Radeon.]
[Failure: No cultivation resources or enlightenment for five years.]
The first reward alone was worth scheming for. Seventy two hours of consumable coaching from Radeon was treasure beyond treasure. Good to them though he was, their master portioned out enlightenment with such deliberate restraint that it left all four of them frustrated and faintly miserable.
They understood why. He wanted them to wrestle with insight instead of swallowing it whole. That did not make it any easier.
Learning under Radeon often felt like being dragged into the kitchen by the finest cook in the world, made to chop and stir and breathe in every glorious scent, only to be denied a single bite.
A man could live through that. His stomach would hate him for it.
The contribution points needed no selling. With enough of them, they could buy artifacts worth fighting over and clothes worth killing for.
Worse still, there were training chambers and other facilities beyond their reach, places that demanded contribution points before the doors would even think of opening.
Fay had tried more than once to pry favors loose from Radeon.
She had gone from simple cooking to shameless seduction, only for him to look at her as if she were some baffling little creature that had wandered in from the brush.
It bruised her pride more than she liked to admit.
Still, none of them took it for miserliness. Fay had heard enough from the disciples back at Everwritten Archivists to know the pattern. Outer disciples were barred from certain grounds. Inner disciples were barred from others. Core disciples guarded privileges of their own.
This was simply how such places breathed. Even as true disciples, they had access to perhaps a fifth of what lay under Radeon's hand.
Then there was the customized weapon. Fay already knew what a difference such a gift could make. Her whip was proof enough. If she could secure a proper shield next, one with richer functions worked into it, her fighting power would climb again.
So failure never truly entered their minds. Fay, Lifara, Thaddeus, and Oswin were not wondering whether they could complete the task. They were wondering how to wring the highest possible score from it.
