The hub was almost exactly what Sorin had expected. It seemed some things remained the same, regardless of the color of the tower. There was the portal in the center, an opaque disc of swirling red light surrounded by a stone archway. That stood in the intersection of four broad roads, each one nothing more than a worn rut of dirt flanked by ropes looped around wooden poles on either side. There were no homes or permanent buildings. Instead, a series of tents filled the land around the roads. A few were large enough to basically be rough houses, but most could hold two to four people at most and belonged to various climbing teams.

  Four squares had been roped off a few hundred feet from the portal on each road. Those were huge, and all of them were full of climbers buying and selling the tools they needed to practice their trade. Usually, there was some sort of stall set up, even if it was just a table or a blanket spread across the ground. Sometimes, it was just a person standing there, peddling out of a backpack.

  In that one regard, Sorin was surprised. Back in his original tower, the trading hubs on the lower floors had been small things. The inter-floor tax was apparently bad enough that people were trying to unload everything right here just so they could go back out into the field without paying it. That meant the prices were correspondingly high, since the merchants bringing money back down to Floor 0 knew they were going to lose a chunk of it.

  What a joke. I’m glad my old tower didn’t have these kinds of societal systems in place. This one seems to be far more focused on extracting profit from climbers rather than supporting them.

  “This place is amazing,” Rue said, her face lit up with excitement. “Look at all the soulprints that stall has!”

  Sorin followed her eyes to a booth that appeared to have been permanently set up in the corner of the market. It had an actual wooden frame with a counter to separate the merchant from potential customers. Soulprints filled a series of shelves behind the man, who was probably rank 8 or 9, judging by the feel of his soulspace.

  It wasn’t actually that uncommon to see climbers around that rank. If Sorin had to guess, they were probably people who’d gotten stuff off higher floors that would sell better in a market full of weaker climbers. Not wanting to pay any of the Floor 0 tax on it meant that this was as low as they were willing to go. I wonder what the Floor 2 hub looks like. I bet it’s not half the size of this one.

  “How does this work?” Nemari asked, turning to Odric. “Do we have to go sign up somewhere to get a spot, or do we just walk over to wherever’s empty and start selling our loot?”

  Odric shook his head. “We’d be better off haggling with the merchants already set up. We can probably trade directly for some useful soulprints and see about getting a few danirs to resupply with.”

  As a group, they moved into the market square and did a lap around it. Sorin was less than impressed with what was available, but Rue and Nemari seemed almost overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. “Come on, let’s try one of the other squares,” he said. “This one doesn’t have the quality we’re looking for.”

  That got him incredulous looks from the rest of the groups and a few scowls from nearby merchants, but they did a tour of the entire portal hub before finally settling on a stall in the northwest square. The woman was a rank 13, which was probably the highest Sorin had seen in the entire hub. His hope was that she’d be able to appreciate the value of that warbler frog eye and give them a good price for it.

  “Not properly preserved,” she said immediately upon examining the eyeball.

  “I am aware. It was an unexpected acquisition. It’s still good though, and I’m sure there are any number of mid-ranked climbers who’d pay for it today.”

  “That’d force me to pack up early here. It’s not really convenient.”

  But Sorin wasn’t fooled. There was some greed in her voice. She knows how much this will sell for. She’s just trying to get it cheap.

  He scanned through her wares and lit upon a golden eye floating in preserving liquid. “What’s this?”

  “Acuity,” she said immediately. “Moderate increase in visual range and detail. Perfect for scouts and spotters.”

  “We’ll take it as part of a trade, and I’ll use it immediately. You can recycle the container and preserving fluids for the frog eye.”

  “Deal.”

  Sorin held up a hand to stop her from reaching out for the bottle he was holding. “Not so fast. I said, ‘part of a trade.’ Aquatic Vision is worth way more than that. What else do you have here…”

  By the time they were done haggling, Sorin managed to snag a thin claw with a Bloodlet soulprint in it for Rue and a chunk of charred, cracked wood that contained Sear for Nemari. Odric being maxed out with his current set of soulprints, they didn’t worry about finding anything new for him.

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  “God damn, man,” Rue said after they were done. “Was that frog eye really worth three soulprints?”

  “Probably more than that if we’d had preservation fluid for it,” Sorin told her. “She had us over a barrel with that, but I think we all walked away happy. What do we have left to sell?”

  “Wind Slash and Vitality Surge. Some plant cuttings and mushrooms. Supplies we got from those climbers who tried to bait kill us.” Odric paused his list there.

  “I’m going to bow out on that,” Sorin said. “I’d like to get some sort of passive defensive soulprint to round out my kit before we take on the floor guardian, but it’s not an immediate need. More importantly, I want access to the Climber’s Union archives back on Floor 0. If we’ve got the danirs for it now, I wouldn’t mind an advance on my cut so I can get started.”

  “Really? Right now? How long of a break were you planning to take before we go back out?” Nemari asked.

  “I don’t know. A few days, at least. You need to fully recover, and now that we’ve reached the portal hub, we have a choice about where we climb. Some information about Floor 1 would be helpful in deciding our next move.”

  “Okay, when you put it like that, you’ve got a point,” she said. “Hmm. Let’s say… three days? We’ll stay here and tax dodge while you take enough money with you to get a union card with what we’ve got in liquid funds already.”

  Sorin was not unaware of the possibility that he could end up completely screwed here. It would be very easy to pawn the rest of their loot and cut him out completely since he wouldn’t be around to protect his interests. At the same time, it was all Floor 1 garbage, barely worth anything. If they were going to betray him, he’d prefer they do it here and now, especially in a way that hurt his wallet instead of costing him his life.

  But I doubt that’ll happen, and not just because they know I could kill all three of them easily. They’re just not that kind of climber. Hell, I actually got kind of lucky with this team, at least in terms of personality. I’m not sure they’ve got the skills or the drive to go for the long haul, but it’s hard to complain about how our first climb turned out.

  “That’s a great idea and all,” Odric said, “but we’re short on danirs to actually pull it off. I need to unload at least a few things from our stash first.”

  That didn’t actually take all that long to do. They held their soulprints in reserve for some serious haggling, but ditching the loot Sorin had claimed from the trio of murderous climbers was fairly straightforward. Those kinds of supplies actually sold better on Floor 1 anyway, and they quickly built a sizable purse out of it.

  “Thirty-five for the Climber’s Union,” Odric muttered as he counted it out. “Twenty percent tax, so… call it fifty. They’ll take ten off you at the hub, and that’ll leave you with five left over for a meal and a bunk if you end up staying overnight.”

  Sorin accepted the pile of tin coins eagerly and waved goodbye. “Don’t forget, something defensive if you can find it. Passive would be better, but it’s not absolutely necessary. I can handle reactive defenses, as long as it’s something that isn’t conditional to use.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Odric promised.

  “Not like he really needs it,” Rue said. “He’s been hit… What? One time the entire climb?”

  “You’ll be seeing things differently the first time I take a solid hit and you end up dealing with an angry monster in your face for however long it takes Odric to get me back on my feet,” Sorin warned her. “Trust me, everyone has a bad time when the front-liner goes down. It kills whole teams if things go wrong quickly enough. Once we reach Floor 2, or maybe Floor 3, you should look into getting some defensive soulprints yourself.”

  “If we did that, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the damage we’ll need to put out to beat monsters on those floors,” Nemari said. “We’d have to recruit more climbers to compensate, and then we’d be slowed down even more by splitting the loot again.”

  “Better to move a bit slower than to be dead. A dead climber kills no monsters.” Before Nemari could get started again, Sorin poured the handful of danirs into his purse and added, “I’m going to head out now. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  Argument successfully avoided.

  He sped off before any of them could say otherwise, easily slipping between climbers and ignoring the occasional upset, “Hey! Watch it!” calls that chased after him. If they’d known what fighting with Nemari when she’d dug her heels in about something was like, they’d have forgiven him for beating a hasty retreat.

  Once he was free of the market square, it was a straight shot to the portal. Using those took a bit of practice once a climber had options, but when his only choice was to descend to Floor 0, it was as simple as letting the portal’s magic pull him along. Later, he’d have to swim against the currents to choose what floor he wanted to travel to, but for now, it was over in a flash.

  The Floor 0’s hub wasn’t empty, but it didn’t really have any climbers loitering in it. Mostly it was guards, usually somewhere between ranks 1 and 3, all wearing some local rich person’s colors and crest. They were there for a single purpose: to extort money from climbers. That rankled, especially since, as far as Sorin could tell, most of the city was an extended slum. It was beyond obvious that the money was going into the coffers of some rich asshole and staying there.

  But I’m not here to incite societal upheaval, he reminded himself. Gritting his teeth silently and keeping his expression placid, he submitted to a search of his person and let the guards paw through his purse. Once they got their ten—actually eleven, as one of the guards took an extra coin and slipped it into his pocket instead of the lockbox while Sorin silently weighed the merits of fighting off ten former climbers all higher ranked than him—he was released to go on his way.

  It only took a few minutes to arrive in front of the Climber’s Union, where once again, he’d be paying money to people who’d done little to deserve it. No doubt, their archives were filled with information obtained at great risk by previous generations of climbers, but the profits from allowing the current climbers to use it were going into the pockets of people who’d never set foot through a portal.

  Not here for societal upheaval, he mentally chanted as his new personal litany. Just pay them the money, find out what you need to know, and get out of here.