The second day on Floor 1 went much the same as the first. Sorin was hunting for a very specific soulprint, one he knew he could get from a harpy, but his lack of success was making him wonder if these particular harpies even had it. How exactly monsters developed soulprints was widely speculated on, but it was generally agreed that they did it by manually twisting their anima into the shape of a soulprint enough times that it became instinctive to them.

  The theory went that all monsters would eventually develop a soulprint if they lived long enough, but since the tower oftentimes birthed adult monsters, there was no telling how old one was just by looking at it. The odds of a soulprint forming on a monster’s corpse were better with adults since the tower didn’t seem to bother with making children—those being made the old-fashioned way by adult monsters that were magicked into existence—but there was no physical distinction between a monster that had grown up over the years and one that had been produced yesterday.

  Even the more advanced anima sensing soulprints couldn’t tell which monsters had developed their own abilities to the point that they’d materialize once slain, not unless the monster actually used the soulprint while it was being observed. At that point, it didn’t matter much unless the climbers were trying to pick a target out of a horde, but no one was insane enough to be hunting soulprints when faced with a horde. Survival was the only goal there.

  So Sorin’s new team did what every other climber had done since time immemorial: they killed, and killed, and killed some more. Monster anima built up in their soulprints, slowly strengthening their abilities. Rue and Nemari continued to gain confidence in their techniques as they practiced them in live combat, and Sorin and Odric provided them with support.

  They picked up a second Wind Slash a few hours past noon, but otherwise got very little of value. None of them were overly concerned, since even getting a single soulprint a day was a good haul. Getting two on their first day was considered phenomenal by rank 1 standards. It just wasn’t good enough by Sorin’s.

  There wasn’t much he could do about it, though, not unless he wanted to start killing harpies without the rest of the group. When they broke for lunch, he could see that both the women were exhausted. Odric, not having much to do since they’d developed a smooth rhythm that almost always resulted in a clean kill, was still fresh, and Sorin’s new, young body was in excellent shape despite the lack of supporting soulprints.

  “I think I might go hunt a few more harpies while you catch your breath,” he told Nemari.

  She shook her head and said, “Bad idea to split the group for no reason. It’s not safe.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you. In this case, I’m not going any farther than I’ve been for the last two days, and I’ll continue to bring the harpies right back here. Just stay where you are near the back, and I’ll take care of the next few while you recover. If something goes wrong, you’ll all be right here to jump in and save my dumb ass.”

  She glanced over at Odric, who just shrugged back and said, “I’ve got plenty of anima to heal him if he needs it.”

  “Ugh. Fine, I guess. Don’t do anything reckless. Last thing the group needs is our front-liner dying on us.”

  Define ‘reckless.’ This slow speed is killing me here. I’m only taking it easy so you can get into the feel of things.

  While the others ate, Sorin walked out into the open and stared up at the cliffs. They’d relocated every few hours, but even so, a day and a half of constant combat had severely depleted the number of harpies flying around. When the break was over, they’d have to move farther down the cliff face again, or else just give up on getting the soulprint he was looking for.

  On the other hand, he’d been careful to pull only a single harpy at a time for Rue and Nemari to fight. Without that restriction, his options opened up a lot. Sorin sighted down a group of two sharing a nest and shot off dual ice darts. One of them saw the attack coming and flinched back, letting the frozen missile fly past to shatter on the stone above its head. The other one took the attack straight to the chest and tumbled backwards.

  It got tangled up in the branches of the nest for a moment, then fell loose to drop a hundred feet before it managed to right itself. Both harpies flew at Sorin, who stood there and waited while he surveyed the cliff to see if there was a third target nearby. Nothing convenient presented itself, and as the pair closed in on him, he ducked back behind the trees and readied his sword.

  Without Rue standing by for an ambush, there was no real point in timing things so that the harpy was making a strafing run close to the ground. Instead, he just used the tree as visual cover so that when it came winging around, it wasn’t ready for him to attack it again. A shard of ice struck its face, momentarily blinding it and causing it to screech angrily. At the same time, his sword flicked out once, then again, and slashed through the shoulder muscles that worked its wings.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The harpy crashed less than a second after getting within Sorin’s range. That didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous, but it wasn’t going to be flying away. He didn’t have much time to deal with it, but its kicks were rather pathetic now that it was out of the air, and its maw was meant for tearing meat off vanquished foes, not for fighting live ones.

  Sorin killed it with a single smooth lunge that took the harpy through the throat, then he planted a boot on its wrinkled chest and kicked it back off the blade. The second harpy arrived just as the first was falling away, and this time Sorin pivoted on his back foot to dodge away from its raking strike before putting two ice darts into its retreating back as it flew by.

  That wasn’t as good as slashing the muscles it needed to fly, but it was a start. The harpy’s beating wings grew strained as it tried to get higher, but it was too slow to escape. Sorin chased after it and caught it in less than a second, this time with his blade flowing directly up to stab into the monster’s knee just above where its feathered flesh turned to scaled talon.

  The harpy screeched in agony and attempted to lift itself off the blade impaling it, but Sorin twisted it in place and let out another ice dart to strike its wing. Fully overwhelmed now, the harpy collapsed to the ground. Its final act was to twist in the air in an attempt to land on Sorin, but he saw that move coming long before it thought to try.

  He easily danced out of the way, then waded back in to kill the monster with two decisive strikes. Then he took a step back to examine his handiwork as anima flowed into his soulspace. “No soulprint,” he announced.

  “That was reckless,” Nemari scolded him. “I just told you not to do that a few minutes ago.”

  “Didn’t look reckless,” Rue murmured. “Looked pretty fucking awesome to me.”

  “I can handle two just fine. I promise not to grab more than three at a time,” Sorin said.

  “Three! We were only doing one when it was all four of us.”

  “Yeah… About that… You may have noticed that I’ve been holding back a bit so you guys can get some anima, too.”

  Rue snickered. “Ya think?”

  “Not helping, Rue,” Nemari said.

  “Not trying to help.”

  Nemari pinched the bridge of her nose and went silent for a few moments. Then she released a long breath and said, “Please just be careful, Sorin. We’re kind of relying on you as part of the team.”

  “I understand. Don’t worry, I’ve got everything under control.”

  Humming happily to himself, he walked back out into the open and found a group of three harpies. Anima built up in him, then burst into being as ice darts formed and flew to strike them. He immediately followed that up with a steady stream of darts on the closest harpy, buffeting it with a barrage of attacks that quickly knocked it out of the sky. It fell a few hundred feet and hit the ground with a meaty crunch, nowhere close to reaching Sorin.

  That took more anima than he could reasonably sustain, but thinning the numbers down to two was enough. Sorin waited for them to get close, then stepped back behind cover again.

  * * *

  “I think that’s our last group for the night,” Nemari said. “This soulprint you’re looking for is going to have to wait.”

  “I’m starting to think these are the wrong type of harpy anyway,” Sorin said. “For as many as we’ve killed, I was expecting to see a few more soulprints.”

  Is it because this is just Floor 1 and it’s so heavily farmed that monsters don’t have time to form the soulprints? Or is it because the red tower doesn’t play by the same rules the blue one used? Or maybe these harpies are just a shitty monster to farm. Hard to say for sure.

  “Your expectations might need to be recalibrated,” Odric said. “Three soulprints in two days is a good haul.”

  “It’s alright, but I—hold on, what’s this?” Sorin bent close to examine one of the three harpies they’d just killed. Perhaps inspired by Sorin’s ‘reckless’ fighting, the group had moved up to killing two at a time, then eventually three once Rue and Nemari were both confident that they could each fight a single harpy on their own.

  Grinning, he plucked the tailfeather from one of the harpies. “And here it is, on the very last kill. One soulprint.”

  Visible excitement surged through the rest of the team. “What is it?” Rue asked.

  Sorin turned to Nemari and handed it to her. “This one’s for you.”

  “How can you tell what it does?”

  “You can feel the anima patterns if you try,” he explained. “It’s just a matter of doing that and then recognizing what they are.”

  “Wait, are you saying you just walk around with an encyclopedia of anima patterns for various soulprints in your head?”

  Something like that. Sorin just laughed and gestured for her to absorb the soulprint.

  “This better be worth it. I’m going to be pissed if it’s not something useful to me and we could have sold it,” she warned. The tailfeather slowly turned ash gray, then crumbled to nothing in Nemari’s hand. Her eyes unfocused as she looked into her soulspace while the others waited.

  “So what is it?” Rue asked again.

  “You’ll see,” Sorin told her.

  A minute later, Nemari was back. Wide-eyed, she glanced over at Sorin and said, “How did you know the harpies had something like this?”

  “I told you guys, this isn’t my first time doing this. You want to try it out?”

  “Hell yes I want to try it out,” Nemari said. “Stand back a bit.”

  After giving her some room, Nemari lifted her hand and focused. A firebolt whooshed out into the air, aimed at the cliff through a gap in the treeline. The instant it left her hand, it started growing, and growing, and growing. It flew twice as far as any firebolt Sorin had previously seen her throw, only unraveling when it reached the limits of her power.

  “Holy shit,” Rue breathed out.

  “It’s called Flare,” Nemari said. “It feeds air into fire spells, making them grow rapidly and become more powerful.”

  “Now that we have what we came for, we can move on,” Sorin said smugly. “No more harpies tomorrow.”

  Nobody argued with him.