After stepping inside, the door closed on its own and couldn’t be reopened. Once you’d made your choice, you were committed. I informed Hugo about this, and that I’d update again once I found something. Though my initial instincts about this place were telling me that might be sooner rather than later.

  The next floor began with a simple office hallway. Aggressive fluorescent lighting was fixed to the ceiling, and the floor was covered in the type of linoleum that my shoes used to squeak on. Now my steps were silent, but the unpleasant memory lingered. If this attempt at ugly normalcy was trying to put me at ease, then it had failed. If for nothing else than the smell.

  The stench of death was overwhelming.

  I moved with caution. The stink growing stronger the deeper in I went.

  Though I should point out, it wasn’t the smell itself that bothered me. Such things had long stopped being a concern. No, it was the possible causes for it that put me on edge. All of them were bad. Either a dangerous creature was creating the smell, or something dangerous had killed something or someone to create it. No matter what, it would be my next obstacle to overcome.

  The source of the smell ended up being just around the corner. Ten human bodies lay eviscerated across the space, with arterial blood spray coating the walls. Some were missing limbs, some had their bellies cut open with intestine’s half hanging out, while others were posed in an almost pristine fashion. Just a single clean slash across their throats. Their clothing was tattered robes, with an insignia from another planet. Volunteers who signed up to stay on one floor and survive that floor for a year. Apparently, that was the safer way to exist in the Tower. Not that it did these guys any good. To me, that sounded more dangerous than being a Climber. But hey, at least they’d had a choice.

  Out of everything in this gruesome scene, it was their weapons that gave me the most pause. All of their unused swords and axes were stored together upright in the corner. There wasn’t a single drop of blood on any of them.

  I bent down and touched the hand of the closest body. It was still warm.

  The limited number of doorways in the past chamber told me that this had to be the work of a Tower Climber. But which one? Multiple Climbers could’ve easily achieved this, hell maybe even all of them with a little creativity. However, despite telling myself this, only one came to mind.

  Daisy.

  Indira had described an encounter with her almost identical to this. I couldn’t fathom the purpose behind what I was seeing other than casual cruelty, and I regretted not asking Indira more questions about what she’d seen.

  I took one last look at the scene and shook my head. Daisy had been alone in the Tower for too long. Without friends or allies, being here becomes an endless march of death and violence. One that ends up shaping and twisting the person into a colder, uglier version of themselves.

  I suppressed a sigh. I needed to get to her fast and talk her back from the ledge she was on. Daisy could come back from this. I was sure of it.

  A little more of my power slipped away due to my armor being active. None of the blood in this room held power or healing for me, since none of it had been spilled with my own hand. If I didn’t find an enemy to bleed soon, then I’d return to my much weaker, injured state.

  I proceeded cautiously past the bodies and around another corner that led to a metal door. There was no handle on it, just a big red button on the wall next to it. The door looked like it was sealed into the concrete. Could I have broken through it? Maybe. But that felt like the wrong move. Sometimes you can sidestep whatever the Tower intended and sometimes you have to play along. This felt like the latter, so I pushed the red button.

  A part of me expected an alarm to go off and a monster to drop down behind me. Instead, there was a quiet mechanical hiss as the door opened. Beyond it lay an underground office filled with cubicles.

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know!” a man shouted.

  I ducked down and crept closer while using the cubicle walls for cover. In the center of the office was a little open area surrounded by blocks of cubicle space. That was where the man who’d shouted was, and he was currently bleeding to death.

  The man was sat on the floor against a wall. He was trying to keep pressure on a stomach wound, but it was a losing battle. The Tower Climber who’d inflicted said wound was crouched next to him, holding a knife.

  “This is your time,” Billy said calmly. “If you want the rest of it to be in silence, then so be it. I merely thought the conversation might take your mind off of less pleasant things.”

  The man laughed. “You mean what you did to my friends in the other room?”

  Billy leaned closer, staring into the man’s eyes with curiosity. “Actually, I was talking about your own impending mortality. But is that what you were thinking about before I interrupted?”

  The man tried to move away from him but couldn’t. “Man, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “I wonder if it’s a coping mechanism?” Billy asked himself. “To focus on someone else as a distraction. Using grief of lost comrades to mask that existential dread that comes when death is close at hand.”

  The man groaned and shifted in pain. “Man, get away from me!” he yelled, which turned into a coughing fit.

  Billy waited for him to stop coughing before continuing. “It won’t be long now. Are there any messages you want me to pass on?”

  The man’s face contorted in rage. “Fuck y…” Then the fight went out of him as he changed his mind. “Tell my mom I’m sorry. That I…”

  He passed out from the blood loss before he could finish his last words. Billy stabbed him in the heart to be sure and then stood up.

  Well, I guess we’re doing this, I thought to myself. Whatever this is.

  I was about to move out of cover to confront him when my head exploded with pain. My vision went dizzy, and I cried out, stumbling forward onto the floor next to a pair of feet. The child smiled in amusement while playfully tossing his knife from hand to hand.

  The pain was too much. Couldn’t fight. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.

  Suddenly, Billy’s smile froze, and the pain stopped.

  “Oh, it’s you, Lucas,” he said, sheathing his knife.

  The sudden shift from agony to pain-free was so stark that I still needed a moment to collect myself. It also reminded me to read the flashing message in the corner of my eye.

  *Player Identified* [Billy Chatsworth, Class: Telepath, Level: 205]

  205? He’s literally a lower level than me. Wait, Telepath? I began to panic. He was inside my head! Is he reading my thoughts now?

  I thought back to when he’d fought those men in the cage. At the time, I’d focused mostly on his sadism and assumed his abilities included some form of limited invisibility. But that hadn’t been the case at all. He had gotten inside their heads.

  I shivered. There was something particularly violating about having someone else route around in my head. But the most chilling part is that Billy hadn’t gotten into their heads and turned off their ability to see. No, he had enough precision to make it so that they only couldn’t see him.

  How do you fight someone like that? I asked myself. I might not even be seeing the real Billy right now. He could be in another part of the room projecting a false image and I’d never know it.

  I thought about killing him now, or attempting to. A Hemorrhage Gate could appear behind him and take him out. If that wasn’t the real Billy, then I could retreat into my Domain until he decides to move on.

  “Sorry, I didn’t recognize you in that armor. Given your current appearance, I mistook you for a Floor monster.” He chuckled, but the laugh didn’t sound sincere. It was like he was trying it out as a gesture to see if it would elicit the right response. He eyed my armor curiously. “Did you always have that armor, or did you earn it from surviving Vhar's attack?”

  “Does it matter?” I muttered, trying to regain my bearings as I got to my feet.

  "Hmm, I suppose not. You know we all had a conversation after you were incapacitated. Half of the group thought you'd die, and the other thought you'd survive. I was one of the ones who thought you'd make it."

  I grunted. "I guess I'll just have to take your word for it."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I deactivated the armor. It clearly had no effect on stopping his abilities, and I was almost out of power. Though I didn’t want him to know that. Instead, I just made it look like I was putting my weapons away as a peace offering.

  “Who were those guys you killed?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “How should I know? Probably just more Floor fodder. Though they did feel a little too easy, even for me.”

  I desperately wanted to know what constituted a difficult enemy for him, but then that would be far too obvious a question. Instead, I pivoted to another subject that had been on my mind.

  I pointed to the man who’d just died. “You say they’re nobodies, but you seemed pretty keen on talking with that guy.”

  His eyebrows rose, surprised that I’d overheard his conversation. “Oh that. No, that was just one of my hobbies while in here. I’ve started collecting people’s last words. You’d think they’d all be the same, but often there’s a surprising amount of nuance to their final moments. Plus, it’s good to ask questions. Too many people here just take things at face value and never look beyond the surface.”

  For someone that had ignored everyone back at the cage, he was now being awfully chummy.

  “Is that what I should do with you?” I asked. “Look deeper?”

  “Well yes, it would help if you didn’t look at me like I’m a science project.”

  I guess some of us hadn’t hidden our facial expressions well when watching him fight. His power was intimidating, so I wanted to stay on his good side for now. But he was also clearly intelligent, so I decided to be honest.

  “I guess it’s because I don’t understand you. Your age, the manner in which you speak, the way you kill. Like different pieces that don’t fit right. You feel… incongruous.”

  Billy smiled. “That’s a good word for it. I’ll answer in order then. I am twelve years old and I have yet to encounter a Climber my age or younger. The youngest I found was sixteen, and they were a complete moron who didn’t survive for long. So I can understand your suspicion there. Although it should be obvious that there’s nothing I can do about my age. The manner in which I speak is partially based on me and partially based on one of my abilities. You see, I can absorb a certain amount of knowledge from a person’s head if I go deep enough. It hasn’t turned me into a genius, but it has made me smarter than most people in my age group.”

  He fell silent, but he hadn’t fully answered my question.

  “And that last part?” I pressed.

  “I’ve taken down men three times my size. I’ve slain monsters that would terrify anyone I knew back home. I’ve grown stronger and I’m good at killing, so I enjoy it. It’s really just as simple as that. Now what about you? Did you have a death wish when you attacked Tanver Vhar?”

  “It was a poor impulse on my part,” I lied. “The knife I used had a very specific magical curse on it that I believed had a good chance of taking him down. I figured if I killed him, then I’d gain at least a hundred levels.”

  Billy looked at me like he didn’t believe me.

  Inwardly, I cursed. That was dumb. Trying to lie to telepath. Is he reading my mind right now? It’s not like I can ask him now without it sounding suspicious.

  “You don’t like the way I kill. Fine, let’s see how you do it,” Billy said.

  Before I could ask what he meant, one of the doors at the back of the office burst open. Men wearing futuristic black tactical armor surged in, carrying rifles.

  I summoned a Hemorrhage Gate and fired blood spikes at the overhead lights, bathing the room in darkness.

  “I’m not sure that’s going to help,” Billy said. He was now sitting cross-legged in one of the office chairs, watching me with no concern for his safety.

  I looked again and saw that they were putting on night vision goggles. One of them spotted me peering over a cubicle wall and opened fire. I dove for cover away from where I’d just been. The rifle released a burst of blue gas around the muzzle, followed by a series of bullets that shredded the cubicle wall next to me.

  Something tells me that these aren’t ordinary bullets.

  *Enemy identified* [Xilax Tactical Support Soldiers (Uncommon)] Level 215 - A smart human unit that works together to prove that they are worthy of cybernetic enhancement. Their weapons are state-of-the-art Xilax rifles that use a magnetic field to launch Solidium rounds.

  They’re carrying hand-held railguns?!

  I tried to crawl along the floor to the next cubicle when I felt a sharp pain in my chest. At first, I thought it was Billy, but then I remembered. I was still too hurt from Vhar’s attack. There’s no way I can fight these guys as a group.

  Gritting my teeth, I managed to find a column in the corner of the room that looked sturdier than the cubicle walls. From there, I could sneak right down a corridor of cubicles or go left back the way I came.

  The squad’s footsteps were getting closer. I had to make a decision soon.

  I decided right and tried to reactivate my armor. A flash of pain went through my body for the attempt.

  “Converge!” one of the soldiers shouted.

  More footsteps were moving in my direction from the left. They knew where I was hiding and were now getting into position to become my firing squad.

  I tried to summon another Hemorrhage Gate, but nothing happened. I didn’t have enough power for even that anymore. I still had my sword and knife, but using either before one of those guns managed to cut me down was unlikely.

  An area of carpet to my right was softly compressed down. The sound was barely audible, but I turned sharply and threw my knife anyway. It took the man sneaking up on me by surprise. The knife landed in his leg, and he screamed, firing his gun wildly while hobbling away.

  I pressed my back against the column and held my breath. The edge of the column was chipped away by the bullets, but luckily, the core held.

  Well, there goes my knife, I thought bitterly.

  I extended my senses, listening for more movements. The rest of the team were still closing in on my left. Billy had remained where he was, using his telepathy power to render himself invisible to them. The guy I’d injured had stopped firing and had moved further away. I’d spilled his blood, so I knew exactly where he was from that. But there was other blood that I was sensing.

  Of course, the lights!

  Usually when I fired blood spikes, it was a one and done thing, but now that my ability had been upgraded, the rigid blood spikes remained stuck in the ceiling. My power was extremely low. I had maybe enough for one move with them. The only problem was that the enemy wasn’t in the right position for it. I’d have to move them there, but I was still hurt.

  I reached out to the injured one with my knife. Drawing his blood to me. A thin line of it reached my hand, and its healing power flowed into me. Now it no longer hurt to breathe, and the pain in my legs had diminished. It was a good start. I just needed a little more when suddenly the blood was abruptly cut off and the healing stopped.

  The man had applied some kind of first aid to his leg injury and severed the blood supply. I could still feel the rest of his blood pumping in his body, but without an open wound, I lacked the power to currently take it.

  I sighed. I still wasn’t fully healed. A lot of me still ached and hurt, but it would have to be enough.

  I dove to the right, away from the column. Gunfire followed as I crawled along a cubicle wall. With their backs turned, and the loud guns going off, nobody except Billy seemed to notice when some of the blood spikes impaled in the ceiling fell to the ground.

  I circled around the soldiers while making sure to steer clear of the knife guy. After a few seconds, I popped my head up over the wall just long enough for one of them to notice. One did and fired, but by then I’d already moved on.

  Billy started clapping.

  The bait worked though, and two of them moved in the direction I’d wanted them to.

  I waited, listening for their steps.

  Now!

  Using Strong Blood Ignition, the blood spikes on the floor exploded at their feet. Both men collapsed, screaming. One was missing a foot and the other their entire leg up to their knee.

  I siphoned off a little of their blood for healing, but left them alive. Their screams made it easier to move quietly around the office.

  The core group left was four. I was trying to think of how to separate them, when one of them yelled out, “deny coverage!”

  Two of them opened fire on a section of cubicle wall to cut it down, while the other two waited. As soon as the firing two ran out of the bullets, the other two started firing while the original pair reloaded.

  The bullets were veering closer again, and I didn’t think they’d be running out of them anytime soon. Eventually, by process of elimination they’d find me.

  I drew more blood to myself, feeling not just vitality but my power returning. They thought they had me cornered, but they were wrong.

  Cardinal Armor surged over my body, encasing me. I drew my sword and leapt out of hiding.

  Three rounds hit my armored chest from the closest soldier. It felt like getting a really hard punch, but the armor held. I closed the distance and sliced downwards, cutting his rifle and body in half.

  The remaining three backed up while firing. I threw my arms up to block the worst of it, and let the remaining ceiling blood spikes drop above them. I detonated them in mid-air. They howled as they fell, and part of the office caught on fire.

  This time I used Consume as their blood flowed to me, and I felt their lives slip away to empower mine.

  *DING!* Class: [Blood Reaver] has reached level 210 – Experience and Currency Acquired.

  *DING!* Class: [Blood Reaver] has reached level 211 – Experience and Currency Acquired.

  *DING!* Class: [Blood Reaver] has reached level 212 – Experience and Currency Acquired.

  *DING!* You have gained [Rupture (Rare)] – This ability allows you to stop the heart of a single target within half a mile if you have spilled their blood within the last twenty-four hours.

  I casually walked up to Billy. “Shall we go?”

  He held up a finger. “You still missed one.”

  The injured soldier who still had my knife. The one who had bandaged his leg and was now hiding under a desk. He was hoping to be forgotten until I deactivated my armor and turned my back.

  I used Rupture and his heart stopped.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Billy gently applauded and got to his feet. By this point, the fire around the office was spreading quickly. Smoke was swiftly filling the room, and my helmet was doing nothing to filter it out.

  As we were leaving, I grabbed one of their intact rifles. Having my own miniature railgun sounded fun.

  [Error!]

  [DNA profile not recognized]

  I tossed the rifle aside in disgust. Typical. Guess it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  Billy tried the door that the soldiers had come through, but it wouldn’t budge. I quickly ran back and tried the one I’d come through earlier and got the same result. I jogged back over to the boy. Billy’s door was the way forward though, I was certain of it.

  “Need a hand?” I asked.

  Billy gave a ‘be my guest’ gesture and stepped aside.

  I drew my armored fist back and punched the door with Scarlet Strike. The door crumpled around my fist, before it was blown off its hinges and sent flying back.

  Billy gave a nod of approval.

  I deactivated my armor, and we began moving down another hallway.

  “See, we make a good team,” he said. “I don’t know why you have to be so uncomfortable around…” He suddenly stopped. His eyes widened as he realized something. He looked scared. It was the most child-like I’d ever seen him.

  “I forgot my backpack,” he said quietly.

  I looked back at the office. The fire was raging now and I could see little in it except smoke.

  “Leave it,” I said. “You can get more gear later.”

  Billy ignored me and raced into the smoke.

  I stood there and waited, mentally counting the seconds. After a minute passed, I cursed and went back in after him.

  I started coughing immediately and couldn’t see any further than a foot in front of my face. I careened into several desks as I searched for the boy, but there appeared to be no sign of him.

  “Billy!” I called out before instantly regretting it. Smoke rushed into my lungs, giving me a hacking cough. I could barely breathe. The smoke was choking me. If I didn’t find him very soon, I’d have to call it quits or else I’d end up joining him.

  There was no response when I called his name. I stretched my hands out, trying to feel my way back to the center of the office where Billy had left his pack.

  As I got there, my feet hit the legs of a body and almost tripped me up. I was about to see if it had any blood left to drain when I realized that it was Billy. He was unconscious, with the backpack on the floor beside him, just out of his reach.

  I stood over his body and paused. I thought about leaving him here or stabbing him for the experience points. But then I pushed the thought aside. I didn’t want to be that type of person, and I refused to let the Tower turn me into it. I grabbed Billy and threw him over my shoulder, before taking his backpack and heading for the exit.

  Smoke was billowing through the open hallway now, So I kept running until I found the next door. There was one word printed on it. ‘Waystation.’ I opened it and carried Billy inside.