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“It looks like a way out of this craphole,” Jason said without missing a beat. “I could do anything you want me to do. I’ll dig latrines, I’ll set up the tent. I’ll take night watch, I’ll taste food for poison. You can’t leave me here, man. When you’re gone, I’ll be the only boy here.”

“Hey!” Thomas, an eight-year-old boy protested.

“The oldest boy,” Jason hastily corrected.

“Come on, man, I’ll do anything. I’ll…I’ll be your hype man.”

“My what?”

“You know, hype man. When you talk about how great someone is whenever they’re not around so that they have an easier time conning the target or scoring with ladies.”

“Where’d you learn that?!” Will demanded.

“My dad.”

“Was this before he dropped you in an orphanage because he was being chased by the mob, or after?”

“Before, obviously.”

Will thought about it for a moment. “Alright, here’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “Everyone has to go through The Trial by themselves before they can start Climbing. They don’t let twelve year olds in there because it’s pretty dangerous. They don’t let scrawny thirteen year olds in either.”

He could see Jason’s lip trembling in that calculated half-cry meant to evoke pity.

“And you are scrawny as shit,” Will said, poking Jason’s ribs. “So here’s the deal.”

Will flashed his remaining five silver coins, causing Jason’s eyes to glitter with awe.

“You are going to make an investment in yourself. You are going to go to town and order the ‘Will Special’ at Brenda’s.”

“What’s the Will Special?”

“Stew scraped off the bottom of the inn’s cookpot at the end of the night.”

Jason’s face lit up with understanding.

“You are going to pay for a year in advance. You are going to stuff yourself every night, and dedicate yourself to adding as much height and muscle as you possibly can to your frame in the next year.”

“Is that what you did?” Jason asked.

“Why you think they call it the ‘Will Special’?” Will asked with a shrug, holding out the coins.

Jason lunged for them.

“Ah ah,” Will said, pulling the silver back out of the boy’s grasp. “I wanna see five inches of extra height by the next Hunt, and you better talk me up to anyone who’ll listen. That’s your job until you join my party next year. If you do that, I’ll help you get your Sacrifices.”

Jason’s eyes widened with awe as Will pressed the coins into his hand.

Will lowered his voice. “And if I find out you spent them on something stupid like toys, fancy clothes, or candy, I will fong you into a paste.”

Jason nodded enthusiastically. Or perhaps he was simply terrified.

“Alright, get outta here.” Will dismissed him, and Jason sprinted out of the room, nearly hyperventilating.

He gave it a 20% chance that Jason would actually follow through and spend the money on growing up big and strong, but that was a 20% chance of finding a reliable team member.

Plus, who couldn’t use a good hype man? Jason was good with words. He’d gotten five silver out of his fellow orphan, after all. Hopefully he didn’t take too strongly after his father and simply disappear.

A week had gone by and Will’s wounds were still stiff, but it was manageable. He wanted to get back out there, and Ben was already a week ahead of him. The boy might’ve decided to do his Trial already, which would put Will on the back foot, with the lack of a hunting partner.

I might have to rebandage, in case some of the deeper scratches ooze blood while we’re hunting, Will thought, wincing as he poked some of the scabs.

The satchel that bore the Uru Drake scale caught his attention as the candle in his bedroom flickered.

The leather appeared as new as the day it had arrived at the orphanage bearing the Uru Drake scale, with nothing but his name and address on it. Whoever had created it knew what they were doing. The satchel itself was unassuming and plain, but Will had long suspected a subtle enchantment bound into the leather, as it always fit, was never off-balance, and seemed to weigh just a tiny bit less than it should.

And inside the satchel…

Will reached inside and pulled out the glittering scale, holding it up to the candlelight.

Uru Drake

Adds Spacetime abilities to an Aspirant’s Class, and modifies the abilities offered by other Sacrifices. Adds a staggering 5 points of Growth. Favored by…everyone.

2 resistance, 1 focus, 1 acuity, 1 strength

There were subtle variations in the reflection off the polished grey scale, as the natural powers caused the light to bend and shift around it. It caused a faint rainbow to spawn wherever the light hit it.

The Uru Drake, like many other dragon-spawn, had a breath weapon. Many drakes breathed fire, or acid, or poison, or a choking necrotic miasma, but the Uru Drake’s was particularly nasty.

It would warp the space inside and around its victim, crumpling and twisting them up into ghoulish statues before they succumbed to their wounds.

The scale was about as big as his two palms held together, and weighed several pounds. Will’s breath hitched as he imagined his parents fighting something with scales that big. Something that could wring you out like a dirty dishrag with its breath.

Will shook the daydreams off and bent to return the scale to its home.

A jolt of pain through his wounds caused him to hiss and wince. Definitely gotta rebandage. Hopefully wounds become few and far between. With the spirit turtle and the drake, I’ll be quite the tank, huh? Like the guy said, you gotta be alive to be a Lord.

He glanced down at the scale in his hand, a thought occurring to him.

…Paranoia serves a Climber well, does it?

Will finished getting ready for The Hunt, put his ragged, ill-fitting clothes back on and headed out the door, satchel slung over his shoulder.

If everything goes well, I’ll have all the Sacrifices I need by the end of the day.

“Good luck, William!” Gertrude said, kissing him on the cheek.

“Why’re you being so nice?” Will asked. “You sound like you think I’m gonna die.”

“You will, if you don’t come back and tell me before you take The Trial,” Gertrude promised with a wrinkly smile.

“…I love you too,” Will muttered, giving the ancient priestess a hug before setting out for his second day of Hunting.

Maybe since I’m injured I should just do wheat gremlins, save up some cash and buy that Dreamcatcher Vine, Will thought as he walked.

It would take dozens of the gremlins to pay for the Dreamcatcher, but the little creatures were too slow and stupid to add to Will’s wounds, and that was important because he wanted to be in top shape when he took The Trial.

Will hadn’t considered that aiming high and getting injured might slow him down more than playing it safe. Old people knowing what they’re talking about… Who would’ve thought?

There has to be a middle ground between fast and steady. I just have to find it. That was when Will’s thoughts turned back to the Wetlands Gulper.

With the right bait, those things were mind-bogglingly easy to hunt, and lucrative.

I’ll talk with Ben about it. Maybe we can find a good spawn point and set up a method to farm them that doesn’t involve breaking my ribs. A dummy or something.

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Will refined the plan and half a dozen others as he walked out to the town, aiming for Leon’s General, their usual meet-up spot.

Ben wasn’t there when he arrived, so he went inside Leon’s.

It was much less crowded after the crowd of Climbers had died down, and the inventory had swelled drastically as Leon had been fleecing the out-of-town merchants for everything he could, buying up unsold inventory from merchants making the trip back home for coppers on the silver.

“Hey, Leon, you still got those six copper?”

“Nope,” Leon said. The black-haired shopkeep leaned against his countertop. “Spent it.”

Will blinked. “What did you spend it on?”

Leon smiled and leaned under the counter and came back with a pair of fine boots that couldn’t have cost less than a couple silver.

“A kid got an unarmed Class and a Relic to go with it: boots that increase fall damage. Turned out he didn’t need his old boots anymore, so he liquidated them.”

“For six copper?” Will asked, approaching the boots and breathing in their scent. Smelled like luxury and foot odor.

“I didn’t say he was very bright. Thought you’d like a new pair of boots more than six measly copper.”

“You thought correctly,” Will said, taking them off the counter and angling to put his feet in them.

“Socks!” Leon said, tossing them over. “Unless you want rot-foot. No charge.”

“You are a saint among mortals,” Will said, slipping on the socks and then the boots.

They were the tiniest bit too big, but the socks helped with that, and Will figured his feet would grow a bit over the next few years anyway.

“I feel like a human,” Will said, wiggling his toes inside the hardened leather boots.

“Almost look like one too. Just gotta do something about…” Leon gestured to Will’s ragged clothes and face. “All of that.”

“Thanks, Leon.”

“Anytime, Will. Tell Gertrude ‘hi’ for me. I can tell that woman’s falling for my charms. She’s ripe for the—”

“Not listening!” Will said, clapping his hands over his ears and marching out of the general store, his new boots making satisfying ‘clunk’s he could hear even through his palms.

Once Will had safely escaped from Leon’s deranged fantasies, he paused and glanced up at the sky. The blank grey ceiling was studded with glittering reflective surfaces set up there by Climbers thousands of years ago to catch the light of the sun and reflect it back down to the surface.

The first mystery of the Tower: Why is the sky in The Tower so weird?

Maybe Gertrude was right; he could feel the question nagging at him.

“Sup?” Will heard Ben’s voice calling out, strangely tinny.

He turned and found himself face-to-steel with a full helmet, faceplate drawn down. “Uhh…”

“It’s me, dude,” Ben said, pulling off the helmet to reveal a bloody bandage covering one eye.

“Holy cra—did you—”

“Nah, it’s just my eyebrow,” Ben said. “I’ll get to keep the eye. But ever since this happened, I’ve developed an appreciation for helmets.”

“No shit,” Will mused, glancing down at the solid steel helmet. It wasn’t just that: his friend’s cuirass now had sleeves made of chain, and he was wearing some new leather gloves.

The pristine armor he was wearing before now had some scuffs on it that a good cleaning couldn’t completely erase.

He’d seen some action.

Will felt that old caustic fire of envy burning inside him, but he stomped it out before it could make him say or do something stupid. Even his new boots couldn’t make the sting completely go away.

“So hey, I’ve been hunting with Kyle’s team,” Ben said, pointing off to the side, where the group of five Climbers were chatting with each other.

Or…three of them? Will thought, noting that the priestess with the symbol of Granesh and the man with the mud-covered smock were absent.

“Two of their members are injured, so they’re slumming it in the Hunting Grounds until they recover. They’ve been giving me advice and helping me get some pretty sweet kills. I want you to get in on this for as long as it lasts.”

Will thought for a moment. “Alright.” He didn’t trust them completely, but the wheat gremlins hadn’t been a setup, Ben was still fine after being alone with them, and if they were willing to help a couple newbies out, Will needed all the forward momentum he could get.

“Excellent,” Ben said, beaming a smile as he put the helmet back over his head.

Will walked with Ben back to the group.

“Mr. Fontaine, Bess, Roger,” Will said as he reached out and shook their hands. He was calling Kyle ‘Mr. Fontaine’ because he wasn’t interested in earning the ire of the party leader this early in their working relationship.

“Will. We’ve heard a lot about you from your friend. Some of it was pretty good,” Mr. Fontaine said as they shook hands.

“Hah, I imagine,” Will said as he released the stonelike grip.

“Let’s see if we can’t get you a head start. Maybe one of these days, you can fight arkul side by side with us on the eighth floor. So, Aspirant, what archetype are you aiming for?”

“Charge Focus,” Will replied.

“High risk, high reward, huh?” Kyle said, stroking his chin. “Not many magical monsters in the Hunting Grounds, but…”

He snapped his fingers. “Will-o-wisp. I know where we can get some. Bess can bottle them, too.”

The wand-wielding sorceress nodded.

“That would be…fantastic.”

Will-o-wisp

Add illusion and meta abilities. Favored by any Mage archetype Aspirant.

2 focus, 1 acuity

Will-o-wisps weren’t generally considered an option by Aspirants, because while they did exist in the Hunting Grounds, the bottleneck was how insanely difficult it was to preserve a Sacrifice after defeating one. You needed to have a magician with the right build on hand at the exact moment they died. Someone able to stuff their essence inside a bottle. Otherwise, they simply evaporated into nothing.

That being said, they were an excellent choice for someone planning on going with a Mage archetype, as those two Focus per level stacked up to quite a lot of magical endurance, and meta abilities were excellent for casters.

Meta abilities were add-ons to typical Abilities added by a Class, whereby a caster could add effects by spending extra Charge. Make a fireball bigger, make it quieter, add a hypnotic effect to a shield Ability.

The possibilities were literally endless.

Meta abilities on those granted by the Uru Drake would be phenomenal.

“It’s a long hike to their spawn. We’re also gonna have to pull an all-nighter. They only show at dawn and dusk. Think you can handle that?” Kyle asked Will.

“Absolutely,” Will said. He had no idea if he could handle it, but he was going to, because that was what needed to happen.

“Excellent.”

Will told Leon to let Gertrude know he was heading off with some complete strangers to go on an overnight hunting trip, then they set off.

They arrived at the Hunting Ground just as the sun was ‘setting.’ Rather than simply dim down like it should, the sun sank below the horizon, making the shadows grow long and ominous.

They spent the next hour stalking the shadowy woods for sign of the elusive monster, but didn’t catch sight of it.

They bedded down for the night once it was too dark to see, and Kyle took first watch.

Will didn’t think he’d be able to sleep with heavily armed strangers milling around him, but his healing wounds and the all-day trek to reach the hunting spot knocked him out.

The next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake by Ben.

Will pried his eyes open and spotted Ben above him. His friend held a finger over his mouth before pointing.

Blinking, Will glanced that way, and spotted a glowing light drifting through the pre-dawn shadows, weaving around the trees. A strange, tinkling sound seemed to emanate from the light that made him want to follow it…allow it to guide him wherever it led. Something inside Will knew it would be wonderful when he arrived at the destination.

He even began pushing himself to his feet, when a wicked pinch assaulted his side, scattering the Will-o-wisp’s illusion. Will clenched his teeth and choked back the hiss of pain.

‘You good?’ Ben mouthed.

Will nodded, slowly pushing himself up, trying to make as little noise as possible.

He spotted the others, all awake and watching the drifting orb with the silent intensity of professional hunters.

Kyle caught Will’s eye and motioned him over, holding out Will’s sling, already loaded with a bullet.

‘Do the honors?’ he mouthed.

The group’s archer readied his bow, ready to take a follow-up shot if Will missed.

Will nodded, taking the sling.

He studied the ethereal monster’s speed for a moment. Its distance.

The orb went behind a tree.

The sling made a low whistle as he made a single rotation before he whipped the bullet forward, aiming just on the other side of the tree.

The Will-o-wisp appeared on the other side of the obscuring tree trunk, before it jerked and began spinning wildly in place, sinking towards the ground.

“He got it!” Roger said, lowering his bow, jaw slack.

Will was almost as surprised as he was.

The sorceress stepped forward, and with a frown of concentration, an invisible plane of force wrapped around the rapidly dissolving Will-o-wisp, crushing it into a cube the size of Will’s fist.

She cautiously approached and retrieved an empty glass bottle from her belt. She placed the neck of the bottle against one of the corners of the cube. The corner of the invisible cube opened up, shooting the glowing essence of the monster into the glass bottle.

Bess whipped out a cork and forced it into the neck of the bottle, turning to display the glowing wisp inside with a triumphant grin, trotting back and placing it in Mr. Fontaine’s hand.

“Nice shot, kid,” Mr. Fontaine said, handing over the bottle.

Will’s hands trembled as he studied the magical swirling mist inside the bottle.

This is it. This is the last part of my Class.

Will knelt beside his satchel and began looking for a way to secure the bottle so it didn’t rattle around or crack against something in there.

Swaddle it in some spare bandages, maybe? Will thought to himself a moment before a thin beam of yellow light expanded into an opaque doorway of pure yellow light, looming directly in front of him.

“Alright, time to head back?” Will asked, slinging his satchel over his shoulder and turning towards the other four.

“Actually, you’re probably gonna want to take your Trial now,” Mr. Fontaine said, nodding towards the glowing Door.

Will frowned. “Why?”

“We don’t have the proper tools to preserve a Will-o-wisp Sacrifice indefinitely. It’s seeping past the cork as we speak. The stuff is devilishly hard to contain. Probably won’t even last until we get back to town.”

Will frowned, his guts twisting. He wasn’t in the best shape to take The Trial, but Will-o-wisp was insanely difficult to acquire. It would be foolish to pass on this opportunity…wouldn’t it?

Something about this felt wrong, but Will couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Look, you’ve got all your Sacrifices on you,” Ben said, walking up to him. “You’re ready to go. We were lucky to find the Will-o-Wisp we did find. Who knows if we could find another…and it’s not gonna last the day. You gotta do it now.”

He placed a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Wha—”

Ben’s hand grabbed the strap of his satchel while his foot lashed out, kicking Will backwards, towards The Trial.

In that weightless instant of falling, Will reached out and caught the strap of the satchel bearing his Sacrifices, yanking on it with every fiber of muscle he could bring to bear.

The last thing he saw before the yellow doorway swallowed him up was the satchel splitting open, scattering its contents across the forest floor.