The best thing Sorin could possibly say about Blood Thorn Garden was that it had no undead in it. After two areas full of them—even if Black Walls hadn’t smelled nearly as bad—he was happy to get away from that particular type of monster.
The new area was instead stuffed with plants. Most of them were alive. Some of them could move around. All of them were nurtured by blood spilt into the soil. Sorting out what wanted to kill them from what was just a mundane plant wasn’t an easy task for most climbers, but Horizon Walker made it trivial for Sorin.
Thank you, Lorvaine. If I hadn’t run into you, Rue would be doing this on her own, and Aura Sense is a lot weaker than what I’ve got now.
Being able to sense auras made it trivial to spot the monsters hidden in the foliage. That turned what would have been an immensely stressful and paranoid-fueled walk into a relaxing stroll. Nothing could sneak up on them, and if their route was somewhat winding, it saved them a lot of hassle when they skirted around the range of all the stationary monsters.
Plant-themed monstrosities weren’t the only hazard, of course. Nothing was that simple in the tower, but the swarms of stinging insects it sent their way were also easily disposed of. The real enemy was simple exhaustion. Most groups didn’t push through five areas straight, and there was a good reason for that.
“I must be more tired than I thought,” Odric said abruptly, “because all of a sudden I really want to eat one of those.”
He pointed off to their right, where a tree with an enormous bole spread its branches over a glade. Bright red apples, or something that looked close enough, at least, dangled between the leaves. Sorin had to admit that they did look delicious.
“That’s a monster. They’re probably poisonous, and even if they’re not, they’re bait to get you into its range,” he said.
“Yeah, I know, but I still want one.”
“Fair enough, as long as you don’t try to go over there and get it.”
“Should we be worried about some sort of mental compulsion luring him in?” Rue asked.
“Do you also feel compelled to walk over there?”
“Hell no,” she said.
“Then I think we’re fine. I imagine handing your brother a nice apple would remove any compulsion he feels to acquire another one.”
“We’re out,” Odric said sadly. “I already checked.”
“Not a great sign. We need enough supplies for another week, at least.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of trail rations left. We just won’t get any apples to go with them.”
Sorin sighed. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something good. There should be plenty of edible monsters where we’re going.”
“Yay.”
In a lot of ways, the garden was just what they needed. The Citadel had been a rough floor for them, and even if it wasn’t a true break, the garden gave them a bit of space to unwind. They avoided almost everything they could have fought, only occasionally going out of their way to pick something off if their anima reserves topped out and they could bombard it from outside its range, or if something blocked the trail.
Sadly, all good things came to an end. After ten hours—two of which were spent just sitting around or napping—they reached the border of the Blood Thorn Garden. It was surrounded by a wooden fence, waist high and more a token gesture at a border than an actual fence. An arch had been built into it, and the trail they were on led right up to it.
“None of the transitions between areas have been trapped so far,” Sorin said, glancing left and then right. “But there’s a pretty good chance there’s something watching the exit. It’s called the Stalking Depths for a reason.”
“It’s kind of weird how none of the monsters move between areas, isn’t it?” Rue asked. “Even when we cleared ruins, they had no problem going past the boundaries to chase us.”
“There’s a lot of speculation about that, actually,” Yoru told her. “The popular theory is that the Citadel functions sort of like a cluster of mini-floors you can physically walk between rather than a single unified landscape like the other floors.”
“Doesn’t seem like something the tower would do. That helps us.”
Sorin had to laugh. “It’s because of the labyrinthine nature of the floor. If the layout wasn’t constantly changing, there’d be plenty of overlap and monster-on-monster action at the borders of their territories.”
Standing in the archway and peering out into the darkness, Sorin could feel the tension that had flowed out of him earlier starting to bunch back up in his shoulders. Nobody liked the Stalking Depths. It was supernaturally dark and stuffed to the brim with ambush predators. Even with their sensory soulprints helping, they were in for a rough few hours.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
A few hours if and only if we find the door quickly. And since the floor shuffles everything around, we could theoretically search forever without finding it. So we have to move fast and hope we’re lucky. The treasures better be worth it.
“It looks clear,” he announced. “I’m going first. Follow close behind. Stay in formation. No wandering.”
He stepped into the Stalking Depths. Lush grass vanished, exchanged for dark, dry dirt with the occasional scraggly tuft poking out of it. Shadows seemed to swirl through the air, like a black mist drifting by. Within a few steps, the fence vanished from his senses behind him.
One by one, the rest of the team came through. They assembled into a diamond, with Odric to his right, Yoru to his left, and Rue at the back. Vendis and Nemari held the center. Everyone knew their roles, and he trusted them to perform competently.
On his signal, they started running. With weapons out and eyes straining to pierce the dark shadows, they cleared ground until they reached the first crag. It stood by itself, a lonely sentinel looming over them in the dark. Everyone eyed it warily as they passed by, almost expecting something to leap down on their heads.
Strange how it’s more nerve-wracking that we haven’t been attacked yet than if they’d just get it over with.
One crag turned into a maze of dry ravines, canyons, and valley trails as the elevation dropped and stone walls rose up higher and higher around them. The general understanding of the Stalking Depths was that the very center was its deepest point, and that if they weren’t interested in actively exploring the area, their best bet was to stay on the outside until they found the exit.
It was also generally expected that the deeper they went, the more powerful the monsters would get. But an hour in, they’d yet to be attacked or even so much as spot anything skulking around. Time marched on, and they got more and more anxious.
“Okay, something jump out at us already,” Rue announced. “I can’t take the suspense.”
“Let’s take a few minutes to reset,” Sorin said.
It was obvious that they were starting to fray around the edges. Sorin couldn’t really blame them. They’d pushed hard for weeks and were theoretically at the finish line. That was exactly when he’d expect the tower to pull something. The fact that it wasn’t only made them all more paranoid that they’d missed the warning signs.
Two more hours of poking their noses into every little nook and cranny they could find finally yielded an explanation. They gathered around a monster corpse, cleanly bisected into left and right halves and laying in a pool of its own blood. Considering it was over eight feet long, that was a particularly impressive feat.
“That is a smoke-hide panther,” Yoru said softly, almost as though he didn’t dare raise his voice.
Claws that can slice through stone and steel. Jaws that can crush a breastplate with a man inside it. Hides in its own smoke cloud and teleports through shadows. And this one was killed in a single strike. Whoever got it did it cleanly, too. It’s hard to sneak up on an ambush predator like that.
“Someone else is here,” Sorin said.
“It’s the only logical explanation,” Yoru agreed.
“Someone who shouldn’t be, though. I don’t see any rank 10 pulling this off. And the only reason for a high ranker to be here is…”
“If they’re looking for someone with a key,” Rue said. “They’re hunting for us.”
“And they’ve probably been here for half a day at least. They’ve been killing monsters and the tower’s been cleaning the kills up, but new ones haven’t appeared yet to take their places.”
It was worse than the others thought. They had circumstantial proof that there was someone lurking in the area, looking to challenge them and claim the Lion’s Fang Key from Sorin. That didn’t mean there was only one person, though. There was no reason there couldn’t be a whole team, though the fact that Sorin hadn’t spotted so much as a footprint anywhere made that less likely.
It was possible that a whole team would dedicate themselves to stealth attacks, but it wasn’t likely. However, multiple individual climbers operating in the area with the same objective was certainly plausible.
“I think we need to be very careful,” Sorin said. “Whatever ambushes us probably won’t be a monster we can take in a straight fight. It’ll be a climber ten ranks higher than us.”
He reached into his shirt and pulled out the key to hang it openly from his neck. If someone did take a shot, he wanted it to be him that they targeted. He was the most likely to survive an ambush. And regardless of who it was lurking in the area, he was confident he could put the assassin down.
With any luck, they’d just find the door, use the key, and go beyond the grasp of any would-be bandit climbers. The longer it took them to get that far, the more the odds of someone attacking them went up. Sorin cast a last glance down at the dead panther, then shook his head.
The Stalking Depths weirdly wasn’t that big. At least, it didn’t appear to be on the surface. Once all the underground space was accounted for, it probably rivaled any other area for square footage. Finding the entrances wasn’t even that difficult, not with Living Earth stretching out his perception. It also helped them sweep the shallower caves without needing to go in.
The door, stubbornly, remained elusive. They found several more kills, some sliced into two pieces, others riddled with holes, and even one that had been flash-frozen into a block of ice and shattered. But they never spotted a single sign of the person or people who’d done the deed.
And then, so abruptly that Sorin almost missed it, a person passed in front of him. Horizon Walker never detected them. Living Earth didn’t feel their weight on the ground. Nobody noticed anything at all. The only reason Sorin noticed was because he physically felt the key being lifted from his chest.
He triggered Speed Burst reflexively, it being his standard response to being surprised by something in hostile territory. Even then, the climber trying to claim the key was nothing but a black blur. Force Weaver didn’t care about that, though, and Sorin didn’t need even a micro-second to activate it.
By the time the rest of the team even thought to react, the would-be thief was a pile of meat cubes and blood on the ground at Sorin’s feet. The key fell back into place against his chest, its strap still intact.
“Holy hell!” Rue yelped.
“Well, this one was fast enough to take out the monsters,” Sorin said. He stared down at the corpse. “But… I don’t know.”
It took him a second to realize the others were all staring at them. No one said anything at first, then Nemari let out a delicate, fake, little cough and said, “You’ve got some blood on your face.”
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