Things were a bit crowded inside the ring of trees, but that was an acceptable trade off for the solid wall of foliage keeping them safe. Nothing bigger than a squirrel was going to get through, which was about as defensible as a makeshift camp could get. After a dinner of cold rations, they all settled down in their various spots to rest. Sorin found himself with Odric on one side of him and Nemari on the other, with Rue directly across from him in the circle.

  Rue ended up with first watch, mostly because Sorin and Odric volunteered to take the two middle shifts, inarguably the worst ones since they required the watchers to wake up in the middle of the night instead of just staying up late or getting up early. Sorin doubted he was going to get much sleep either way, not with this new group.

  They’re just a bit too raw to be unsupervised all night. Maybe on the next climb…

  He wasn’t sure if he really believed that, or if he just didn’t trust them yet. Their first day had been modestly profitable, and he’d seen people kill for less. This group didn’t strike him as the type, but he’d been wrong before. Building a long-term climbing relationship with other people wasn’t something to be rushed into. Some people would crumble under pressure; others would be overcome by avarice the first time they saw an opportunity for true, life-changing wealth.

  After forty years of climbing, Sorin liked to think he was a good judge of character. He didn’t think anyone in this group would betray him, but he wasn’t going to bet his life on it. And that meant he was in for a long, sleepless night with nothing deeper than a light doze while he kept an eye on whoever was on watch duty.

  Unlike a lot of the higher floors, Floor 1 wasn’t pitch-black at night. It wasn’t scorchingly hot or covered in ice. The weather was nice, the night sky was studded with bright stars, and the monsters were all nice and physically tangible. It was almost like being on vacation here. That made it easy to lower his guard, so much so that Sorin caught himself almost nodding off as he laid on the ground, cloak wrapped around him and sheathed sword clutched in one hand.

  He did risk a few minutes to look into his soulspace. It wasn’t strictly necessary—he could feel how much anima he’d absorbed from the monsters they’d killed today—but he wanted to see the progress for himself. The Ice Dart painting’s colors were a bit richer now, merely looking like a dreary watercolor instead of some sun-faded piece that had been neglected for decades. Some of the holes in the frame were gone now, smoothed over and filled in.

  It's still F-ranked, but another day or two like this will bring it up to E. I wonder if it’ll have multiple paths after the transition.

  Not for the first time, Sorin wished he could feed his own anima into a soulprint. Strengthening them would be so much easier that way, but that just wasn’t how things worked. Countless scholars and researchers had tried and failed to find a way to eliminate the need for dangerous monster hunting to gain the anima needed to empower and refine soulprints, but none had succeeded. The only way to grow his soulspace was to defeat portal guardians, and the only way to increase the strength of his soulprints was to harvest anima from monsters.

  The first two hours passed, or something close enough to it. Sorin rose from his spot and approached the small gap in the trees where Rue was sitting. She looked over her shoulder at him and said, “You sleep at all?”

  “No,” he said. “Happens that way sometimes.”

  “It’s hard to tell with you,” Rue said. “Nemari’s easy. Her anima only settles down while she’s asleep. Od’s a bit harder, but I live with him, so I’ve had plenty of time to learn the difference. Not you, though. Your anima is frozen solid no matter what you’re doing.”

  “Yours will be too, if you make it high enough. Certain types of monsters can go directly for your soulspace if you don’t know how to keep them out. Keeping your anima locked up under tight control is the best way to stop them. Eventually, it just becomes a habit.”

  Rue’s soulprint was quite versatile for something that was only F-ranked, but what really surprised him was how good she was at using it. She’s young now, but she’s smart and she’s quick. Her melee skills have already drastically improved since our first spar, just from watching me fight. She’s going to be one of the greats someday, if she lives that long.

  “Sounds awful to always be that tightly in control,” she said. “Don’t you ever want to relax?”

  “Of course. Everybody does. And when I’m somewhere safe, I will.”

  Rue snorted and shook her head. “Even back on Floor 0, you were a block of ice. If that’s not safe, nowhere is.”

  “Maybe we just have different definitions of safe,” Sorin told her, the memory of beating that trio of rank 1s flashing through his mind. “Anyway, tomorrow’s going to be another busy day; you should probably get some sleep.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Their whispered conversation ended there, and he took her spot. Rue didn’t have a cloak, nor did she seem to want one. She simply propped herself up against a tree and closed her eyes. Her hands sat in her lap, close to the hilts of her swords, which were still belted to her hips. Then she pretended to be asleep, but Sorin knew she wasn’t.

  I guess I’m not the only one with a deficit of trust in this group. It’s probably for the best. This way, we can keep each other honest.

  He stared out into the night and pretended he couldn’t tell that Rue’s faked steady breathing didn’t really sound like a sleeping person. After about twenty minutes, the rhythm changed as she fell asleep for real, the exhaustion of a day’s farming finally getting the best of her.

  Sorin was tired, too, but it was a different sort of weariness. He was so used to having dozens of soulprints passively enhancing his body and mind that just existing felt draining now. His limbs were heavy, his mind was slow, and his eyes were dull. The keen edge of wariness that had kept him alive through decades of climbing was gone, leaving him with a body that couldn’t keep up with his thoughts, not that those were going very fast either.

  Everything was sluggish. He could barely react to one thing at a time, let alone two or three. If a horde swarmed their camp tonight, they’d all die. Thankfully, this was Floor 1. He seriously doubted monsters flocked together by the thousands this far down. The tower wasn’t exactly fair, but it did scale its challenges gradually, floor by floor. It was expertly tuned to always give its climbers hope that they could overcome the next challenge.

  Halfway through Sorin’s watch, Odric stirred and sat up. “My turn?” he asked sleepily.

  “Not yet. You’ve got another hour.”

  The big man stretched and climbed to his feet. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  He shuffled past Sorin and into the darkness. A few seconds later, the sound of water hitting the ground came back, and thirty seconds after that, Odric came back into view. He leaned against a nearby tree and said, “You can go to sleep. I’m up now anyway.”

  Sorin shook his head. “I won’t be getting much tonight, anyway. Too much on my mind.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?” Odric asked. He groaned and put a hand on his back, then muttered, “Must have slept on a rock.” A quick surge of anima went through his hand into the muscle, causing the healer to sigh in relief.

  Sorin chuckled and said, “It’s amazing what you can get used to sleeping on with the right soulprints.”

  “I wouldn’t even consider this whole climb without my healing abilities,” Odric said softly. “They could save someone’s life.”

  “True enough,” Sorin agreed. “You know that from personal experience?”

  “Something like that,” Odric said. “I started climbing three years ago.”

  “Three years is a lot of time to still be rank 1,” Sorin said.

  “It is. That’s mostly because I was waiting for Rue, though. I got an opportunity to climb as the healer for a group, some guy whose uncle was carrying him up the tower but who didn’t want to ruin his build with a weak healing soulprint. My family… We weren’t well off. Typical slum dwellers. I knew that team thought of me as disposable, but how could I not take the chance when I knew I’d never get another one?”

  “I understand. I was in a similar situation when I first started,” Sorin said.

  “The group didn’t try to farm anything, they just killed what was in their way and went straight for the Floor 1 portal guardian. I didn’t earn a lick of anima and exhausted myself every day patching up every scrape and bruise anyone else suffered. We got separated in the final stretch; that was when I realized I wasn’t even a person to them. They didn’t come back for me, didn’t even make an attempt. They defeated the guardian, ascended to the next floor, and left me to die.”

  That was similar to the fate Sorin would have suffered as that group of rank 1’s mule. He would have been protected insofar as they were protecting their loot, but they would have left him to die if he became inconvenient or possibly sacrificed to escape from a monster if things went wrong.

  Sorin hated climbers like that. If he could have been sure he’d get away with it, he’d have killed all three of them on the streets instead of leaving them to nurse some bruises. Too bad one of them got away. It might have been worth the risk if there hadn’t been any witnesses. No, that’s the wrong way to think. I’m not the strongest man alive anymore. I don’t get to make the rules here, not yet.

  “It’s impressive that you made it back to safety on your own,” Sorin offered.

  Odric laughed and shook his head. “I got rescued by another group coming by. They took the time to escort me back to the portal hub and taught me a few things about climbing. After I got back to Floor 0, I found the Club House and started hiring on as a healer for teams looking to farm, got some money, bought a few other soulprints to round out what I could do, and when Rue was old enough, we got her a soulprint, too. Our parents weren’t happy about that, but she’s an adult now, so there’s not much anyone can say about it.”

  “Dangerous life, though,” Sorin remarked.

  “It can be. Some groups I worked with were smart. Some weren’t. I started to get a feel for which were which, got picky about who I’d work with. That’s how we met Nemari. She’s got a temper, and sometimes she rushes to a decision, but she’s smart. She’s a good team leader.”

  “She’s just a bit inexperienced. Now that she’s on Floor 1, I’m sure she’ll fix that.”

  “Agreed. And you’re here now.” Odric paused. “I don’t want you to think I’m telling you all this in an attempt to get you to feel like you need to share your own past. If you want to talk, I’m happy to listen, but otherwise your secrets are yours to keep. I won’t pry.”

  “I appreciate that. Maybe someday, but tonight’s not that night,” Sorin said. “I had a feeling about your team when I saw the posting, though. So far, I haven’t regretted signing on with you. Hopefully you feel the same about having me here.”

  “I have no complaints,” the big man said.

  The conversation faded after that, leaving them both to sit there in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, Sorin pushed himself to his feet and said, “If you’re staying up, I think I will go catch a few extra minutes of sleep.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll officially start my watch now.”

  Soon enough, Sorin was settled back into place. With his eyes closed, he dozed for a few hours, opening them only once when Odric woke Nemari for her shift. He watched them through slits as they spoke softly, and she occasionally glanced his way. The trust wasn’t there, not yet, but he thought it was something that could grow in time.