Shell fragnts ripped outward like thrown blades. The first stalker’s abdon collapsed inward, then burst, and the blast carried its own pieces into the second creature before it could even fully react. The second stalker jerked back, legs clanging, body twisting as fragnts punched through its brittle structure. It didn’t die clean. It started dying imdiately, and Kael could see green fluid bead along cracks in its shell.
He ignored the list of drops as he took the steps up.
The Tower tried again to shove rewards into his sight, but Kael kept moving. He stepped past broken legs and twitching mandibles, boots landing on concrete slicked with sothing that stead at the edges where heat had kissed it. He didn’t look down long enough to feel disgust. Disgust could wait until he was alive.
"What about this guy?" Peter asked as the second spider had its body torn to pieces by the fragnts of the first one’s tallic shell. But it wasn’t dead, it was dying. Bleeding green.
Peter’s voice trembled between excitent and fear, like he wanted permission to feel proud. The stalker’s body dragged itself in a twitching crawl, legs scraping, mandibles snapping at empty air. It was still dangerous in that slow way, because a dying predator could still bite.
"You can kill it," Kael said.
He didn’t slow down to watch. That was the whole point of bringing Peter. If Kael had to finish every wounded creature himself, the stalkers would eventually catch the rhythm and swarm. Peter’s job was simple. Stay alive, and keep the rear clean.
Peter didn’t hesitate to strike down with his axe, or more like Kael’s loaned Fire-imbued axe.
The axe ca down in a two-handed chop. It wasn’t elegant. It didn’t need to be. The blade t brittle shell and split it with a crunch that made Peter flinch afterward, as if only then realizing what he’d hit. Green fluid sprayed in a thin line and stead where it touched heated fragnts.
The sudden list of materials he obtained was a surprise to him.
"Three cores! For this guy! That’s sick. We can easily get a ticket if we farm the whole place!"
Kael’s eyes flicked to Peter for half a second, long enough to asure what that excitent ant. Peter was thinking of profit now. Profit made people greedy. Greedy people did stupid things. Greedy people also stabbed backs when they thought it earned them a better future.
Kael ran up to the upper floor. There were more spiders here, four. "You can do that if you want. But I’m not interested in cores."
The next floor opened into a wider office stretch, walls mostly gone, beams exposed, cubicles smashed flat. Four red dots sat ahead, positioned like they were guarding a corridor of broken desks. The stalkers were already moving, legs tapping a slow approach, mandibles clicking like teeth.
"Wait, why? Don’t you want cores to leave?" Peter said.
Kael didn’t answer, he couldn’t tell him he already had enough cores to leave and spare. No, he didn’t want to give him another reason to plant that axe in his back.
Kael’s silence was deliberate. Peter didn’t need to know Kael’s pockets. Peter didn’t need to know Kael’s plan beyond the next ten steps. Information was leverage, and Kael wasn’t in the habit of handing leverage to soone who once tried to poison him.
"Just shut up for now, we have more enemies coming up," Kael said as he was waiting for the first spider to fuck up.
He set his feet near the stairwell edge, keeping the open side of the building to his left. If he had to dodge, he needed space. If a stalker tried to lunge, he needed to see its abdon. Kael’s gauntlet stayed forward, palm half-open, fist ready, switching between barrel and hamr depending on what the spiders offered him.
"Better hurry, the ones below are coming up!" Peter said.
Peter’s warning was useless and helpful at the sa ti. Kael already heard the skitter below, a rising tallic storm, but Peter saying it out loud made it real in a way that tightened the air. They didn’t have ti to admire anything. They had ti to move, kill, move again.
Kael didn’t need that information; he already knew it from his mini-map and the sound of skittering on the ground.
"Just keep up with , I’m sprinting now!" Kael said as he noticed that his mini-map showed no enemy activity after this floor. The majority of the spiders had all gone down to intercept and had yet to co back up.
That absence mattered. It ant above them was temporarily clear. It ant the stalkers had committed downward, confident that was where their prey would go. Kael decided to punish that confidence.
Kael charged at the first spider. And just as he was about to be in reach, he stopped and jumped back instead. That sudden shift made one of the spiders hiding in the ceiling make a mistake in its attempted ambush.
The ceiling stalker dropped like a trap being sprung too early. Its legs stabbed down, missing Kael’s skull by a margin that made the air feel cold. It hit the floor with a clanging impact, body angled wrong, head exposed for the briefest mont as it tried to recover its stance.
Kael didn’t hesitate. He didn’t admire the opening. He took it.
The fist landed, and the gauntlet answered with violence. The dead stalker shattered in a spray that slamd into the two nearest, knocking them sideways into broken furniture and beams. Those two didn’t die instantly, but their legs moved wrong after, joints bending at angles that scread "broken." They skittered in place, trying to regain footing, and failing.
With three either dead or immobilized, Kael’s goal of clearing this floor was pretty much done.
The last one held back. It didn’t rush into the chaos like the others. It watched.
"Hurry," Kael shouted to Peter. He already did the bulk of the work; he just needed the minion to finish and clean up.
Peter moved with less hesitation now, taking advantage of what Kael’s explosions left behind. The Fire Imbued Axe rose and fell, chopping through cracked shell, finishing what brittle structure couldn’t hold together. Each kill flashed another reward list in Peter’s vision, and Kael could almost see the greed brightening behind his eyes. Kael pushed that thought away and kept his focus on the one stalker still standing.
Unlike its brethren, this one seed to have a head on its head as it ca to realize that sothing was disgustingly wrong.
The creature’s hiss was low, vibrating through its shell. It wasn’t a goblin screech. It was a warning, a sound that carried intent without panic. The spider’s legs tapped backward carefully, testing the floor like it expected the ground itself to betray it. Its mandibles opened and closed, not biting, not striking, just asuring distance and threat.
It was afraid of death and decided it was better to back away for now. No creature that functions on instinct was foolish enough to engage in a fight where many of its kin died trying to take. And no al in the world, no matter how delicious, was worth paying your life for it.
Kael held his stance, not chasing. Chasing was how you got pulled into a web or ambushed by another drop. He let the stalker retreat a step, then another, while keeping his gauntlet aligned. He could feel the blue bar hovering, still not full, still not generous, reminding him that every punch was a purchase.
Peter killed the last spider and looked at Kael as if he were so savior saint.
Peter’s face was spattered with thin green droplets and dust; his breathing was hard, his shoulders tense from swinging, but his eyes shone.
It wasn’t respect like before. It was sothing closer to worship, and Kael hated it because worship turned into expectations. And expectations ant more work.
"What?"
The word ca out flat, a warning disguised as a question. Kael didn’t like being looked at that way. He didn’t like being made into a story.
"You scared them off! These fuckers are a nightmare for floor 15. Yet you scared them off! This shit is aweso!"
Peter’s voice climbed again, excitent fighting its way out of him. He gestured with the axe, almost careless, like the weapon was now part of him. Like he’d forgotten that a single mistake could still get him paralyzed and eaten.
"Don’t get too happy, we’re still being chased by the ones that didn’t see this murder. Also, it doesn’t matter if it’s floor 15 or floor 50 of the Tower of Trials; we’re in the Reverse Tower, the rules are different here." Kael said.
He made it sharp on purpose. Peter needed to feel the edge of reality. The Reverse Tower wasn’t impressed by past experience. It didn’t care how many floors soone climbed while alive. It rewarded adaptation and punished ego. Kael didn’t say that as wisdom. He said it as a reminder not to die in the next minute.
Peter swallowed, the excitent dimming just enough for fear to creep back in, and that was good. Fear made him listen. Fear made him move.
"Right, I’m right behind you, let’s move." Peter declared.
Kael didn’t answer with reassurance. He simply turned toward the stairs above, gauntlet still warm, runes seated and waiting, Internal Energy bar hovering like a cruel little promise. The skittering below had not stopped. It was only climbing closer.
And they only had one way left, and that was Up.
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