Zuhara smiled at him over her shoulder, and turned around slowly.

  He almost covered his eyes out of respect, but he caught a glimpse of something that made him stop.

  She had a layer of thick orange scales on her breasts. It looked almost like a tube top, covering chest from above her diaphragm. Scales gradated away towards the edges, mixing smoothly with the rest of her skin.

  “Woah,” he exclaimed. This was part of a reptilian mutation. Her breasts remained in shape even when she wasn’t wearing clothes. They didn't move a lot when she turned either. It was as if her mutated skin was a second layer that kept her body in shape like a full-body armor.

  What exact mutation is that? she could be part crocodile?

  “I'll be honest, I haven't seen skin like that before,” he said bluntly, rubbing the back of his head.

  This was a level of mutation that one could only get from direct exposure to Mayday light. He didn't want to ask her what she was doing topless that night in 2017.

  “It's been eight years, So, I got used to being naked like this.” Zuhara smiled as she rubbed luminous green juices on her huge wound. It was much larger than he thought. It started on her ribs and went way down, disappearing below her waistline.

  “I see, you don't feel naked anymore?”

  “Yeah, I stopped feeling that way years ago,” she said, smiling pleasantly. There was no reason why she should feel naked with skin as thick as that on her breasts, and they had no functional parts of breasts either. He'd seen bikinis that covered way less skin than her scales did. His own sister wore those for her beach vacations.

  To be fair, Kysa would never feel naked.

  He didn't know if Zuhara meant it like she'd never been ashamed to be naked. This conversation was heading somewhere he didn't want it to.

  “Understandable, honestly,” he said, nodding at Zuhara. “Live long enough you just get used to anything,” he said, pointing at his own tentacles with a smirk.

  Zuhara laughed.

  “Now, I know I am technically naked. If anyone still jacks off to these, that's their problem,” she said pointing at her chest, “I'll take it as a compliment though.”

  She's thinking too low of herself and too highly about men.

  He found it hard to believe someone with her level of confidence thought of herself that way. It was either self degradation for the jokes or trying to sound humble. Mutation or not, Zuhara wasn't the kind of women that would struggle to find a man. He didn't have a proper reply to it. He was never good at telling the right thing at the right moment.

  “I think you're pretty hot.”

  The words jumped out of his mouth. He was trying to be nice and those were the sounds that he ended up making.

  “There goes. Me and my fucking mouth. Sorry,” he said, averting his eyes.

  “Aw really? Thank you!” she said, winking playfully. Her eyes slowly drifted down his body. Arcen felt red hot. Luckily, he was already purple.

  He'd once again talked himself into a venus fly trap in a single conversation with a woman. This was no Mayday mutation. He had been born cursed in this way.

  “Wait, your hand's cold,” Zuhara said, squinting at him.

  Her flirty smile slowly faded from her lips as her eyes stopped at his hands, slowly replaced with a frown.

  He looked at his hands as if to double check if they're still attached to him. He hadn't touched her. He had no idea what she was saying.

  Hand's cold? Is it like a joke about jerking off?

  “Uhm—”

  “Your right hand, it's cold. Did you get stung?”

  He'd forgotten all about it after seeing Zuhara's scaly breasts.

  “Oh yes, I was going to ask you what to do about that,” he said, flexing his fingers. “Wait, what do you mean cold?”

  “That's what it looks like to me,” Zuhara said, gesturing at her eyes. “So, their needles are nasty. If you don't do anything, You're going to be numb all over. You'll be paralyzed in a few hours. It takes almost twenty hours to go away.”

  “Oh shit!” Arcen shouted. His hand moved whenever he flexed it, but he couldn't feel it anymore. The numbness had spread up to his forearm already. “What do I do!”

  “Jelly,” Zuhara said, reaching over her shoulder. She pulled Jelly off her back.

  “Jelly?” Jelly made a questioning sound, she had been painting shapes on Zuhara's back with insect juice. Impressively, she had put all the juice where there were no wounds. She had been in it for the joy of painting walls.

  They looked at each other for a second and Zuhara pointed her finger at Arcen's arm. Jelly looked at it for a second, gasped and nodded.

  Are they talking with eyes or brain waves? what's going on?

  “Sit down, give her your hand.”

  “She's a doctor?”

  “Oh, she's better than that.”

  Jelly was already at his feet, her hands extended up like a toddler asking for snacks. He sat down and offered her his numb hand.

  “Where did you get stung? I don't see any wounds. Did you try to use Restore?” Zuhara asked, frowning over Jelly's shoulder.

  “Y-yes. It didn't work.”

  “Oh, It can't work! It doesn't work for poison. It only heals skin at lower ranks. It won't do anything about what happened below skin, or if anything mixed with your blood.”

  “Ah, that makes sense!”

  As they talked, Jelly quietly uncurled one of her tiny fingers on he right hand. A sharp ice-like nail slowly popped out from the finger tip. He couldn't tell if her finger itself changed shape or if a nail came out from somewhere within.

  A determined expression fell over her little face.

  “Wait! What are you doing?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

  “Ouch...” Jelly said slowly. It sounded ominous. Without further warning, She stabbed his palm with her finger.

  “Ow!”

  It hurt worse than the firefly needles, even with his high pain tolerance. She didn't let go when he tried to shake her off.

  “What are you doing!”

  “Let her do her thing, please,” Zuhara warned him. He held his numb forearm with his other hand, clenching his teeth.

  In about half a minute, Jelly's transparent blue finger started turning red.

  Is that my blood going in her finger!?

  She was sucking his blood out with her nail like a mosquito. It was all gathering up her finger. The numbness was fading. He felt it crawl back to his palm.

  How is she doing that?!

  It made no sense how Jelly just pulled the bad blood out of him. Vacuuming blood out from a small hole shouldn't have fixed anything. She had somehow pulled out only the poisoned bits out of his body.

  “Woah, that's crazy!” he said as she pulled her finger out of his palm. The fresh wound spurt a bit of blood. This time, he held off on using Restore. It was only good for wounds that cut skin deep as Zuhara said. Jelly had very clearly gone way deeper with her nail.

  “Clean!” Jelly said cheerfully, nail retreating back to her reddened finger. His blood tinted her transparent flesh pink, dissolving inside her transparent body.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Wait! are you going to be okay?” he asked from Jelly. She didn't answer. “I-is she okay?” he asked Zuhara.

  “Just watch.”

  Jelly closed her big eyes, puffed her small cheeks and held her breath. It was just like when she used the shield bubble to protect herself. Suddenly, she started glowing brighter. Tiny glowing dots erupted inside her body and flickered like a faulty lightbulbs for a second.

  At the end of the light show, she went back to being transparent and blue. There was no hint of pink or blood anywhere in her tiny body.

  He wondered if Zuhara kept Jelly as a pet or a child. He couldn't tell what their relationship was. Jelly had somehow also been able to detect Morgav. This little thing was packed with what could only be described as helpful 'tools and features' for tower climbing.

  A swiss army knife baby. Maybe she climbed this far with Jelly's help?!

  “Thank you, Jelly,” he said, patting her head. She seemed to enjoy gestures of affection, almost exactly like a kitten. He felt the tickle at his throat again.

  “I've got to find me a Jelly!”

  “Ah, you're out of luck,” Zuhara laughed. “She's not from this tower. I found her seven years ago in a tower three times bigger.”

  “Really?!”

  Three times this one? I don't even want to imagine.

  “It's a very long story,” Zuhara said unzipping her pants as she spoke, trying to get to the rest of her wound. Arcen tried his best to keep his eyes away but he was too curious. He wondered if she had scales like an inbuilt bikini down there.

  “Now this, you should turn around for. I'm pretty normal down there,” Zuhara said with a smirk.

  “Oh shit, sorry. Didn't mean to stare.”

  Zuhara laughed. “No worries. It's like my Ma says. I can have a baby but I can't feed it.”

  That's a fucked up way to say it.

  It was quite true. She didn't have normal breasts to feed a baby with. That wouldn't be a problem. One could always buy milk. Zuhara had said it more for gallows humor than a point about her self depreciation.

  He sensed some regret in her voice. He knew what hating one's own body was like. She was laughing it off as a joke, but Arcen knew a joke like that could could only come with eight years of pain behind it.

  “Mayday fucked us like that huh... ” Arcen said, opening the tent to go out.

  “It sure did, Mr. Arcen. It sure fucking did.”

  That was the first time she didn't call him an octopus man. He walked out with a smile, closing the tent behind him.

  ╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮

  ╭────────────────────╮

  ︶╯ ATTRIBUTE INCREASED ╰︶

  ????

  LOVE +1

  [9]

  ╰─────────╮╭────────╯

  “Ah shit.” He whispered to himself as his smile faded.

  I forgot to ask her about Morgav.

  Half an hour later, Zuhara grilled drumsticks over the campfire. She had a mixture of herbs in a huge pot buried in the corner of the camp. According to her, that herbal paste could make most things edible when it came to taste—A one stop flavor enhancing solution for any kind of meat.

  She'd put it together with things that she found in the tower during her climb. As she described, it had been a lot of trial and error and every tower had its unique palette of dominant flavors.

  She called the tower Eritheria spicy and sour.

  When the meal was ready, she handed him a huge bowl of meat drowned in a spicy orange broth. The meat tasted like something between chicken and mutton, and the broth was about two thirds spicy and one third sour.

  Jelly got her own little cup filled with more meat than broth. she sat down next to it, took a piece like a raccoon and started nibbling at a constant rate like a squirrel. Her cheeks filled up with brown pieces that faded down her neck into the frosted glass looking parts of her body.

  Arcen didn’t bring up the topic of Morgav during the meal preparation.

  For some reason, Zuhara wasn't very talkative when her attention was divided. This was something he noticed about her. She was the most pleasant person to talk with while maintaining eye contact. She wasn’t good at talking and working at the same time.

  This behavior was likely something to do with her mutation. She could only focus on one thing at a time. He'd seen that with reptilians before.

  “I wanted to talk with you about Morgav, the man without the arm,” Arcen dived into the topic as soon as she stopped messing with the grilled meat and sat down with a juicy piece.

  “What about him?” she asked, shoving a palm sized piece of meat into her mouth.

  “I found his arm. That's where I found the juice for your wounds,” he paused to swallow what he had in his mouth. “I want to make sure he's not around here. How can you be sure?”

  “Jelly here,” Zuhara gulped. “She can sense everyone within three floors of herself. The one above, this one, and the one below. She can sense quite far too, about two kilometers.”

  What the?! this little thing can do all of that?

  “I mean, did she tell you what she saw or how does it work?”

  “I can see exactly what she sees when I want,” Zuhara pointed at her eyes with her thumb. “I saw you when you killed that Screylla that was bothering her, I was half asleep though.”

  “Wait—”

  Screylla must be the hairless bat thing then?!

  He looked down at his bowl of meat. Suddenly he was less enthusiastic about the meal. It made sense. The drumstick was appropriately sized. He never bothered to use Reveal on that thing.

  Come to think of it, I didn't use Reveal on fireflies either.

  “That's why I didn't tie you up and hang you up to die like that Morgav fella. Because you helped Jelly. Well, you tried to at least, there’s nothing in these floors that she’d need help with,” she smiled. “That situation was under control. She's a lot tougher than she looks.”

  How was that under control?!

  “What did Morgav do to get strung up by you?”

  “He tried to catch and eat Jelly! he managed to catch her. That's rare. With you, she let you catch her because she kinda liked you from the beginning. She thinks most climbers are friends. I had to step in before that asshole bothered her too much,” Zuhara clutched her side. “I really hate moving that much with these wounds.”

  Makes sense that asshole would try to eat the first weak looking creature.

  “So that's how he lost his arm?”

  “Oh no, it was half eaten already. Not just the arm, he didn't have that whole shoulder. I think that Tymon played a bit too rough with him. His arm off in our brief little fight, if you can even call it that.”

  So that's what happened!

  “So you're completely sure he left all nearby floors? this tower's bigger than two kilometers, I think.”

  “Jelly takes a walk every day. I get enough range on that. I saw him climbing down. He wouldn't survive if he kept climbing, another day in this floor and he would’ve died to tower sickness. Not like he can do anything in four fifty seven either. A guy like that is nobody’s friend.”

  “I heard Tymon talking about that. Said there was a blockage or something. I don't know towers enough to know what that means.”

  Zuhara's eyes flinched as he spoke. She slurped up some of broth like it was tea. Jelly mimicked her and turned pale orange for a moment as the broth tinted her transparent flesh.

  “It's nothing complex,” Zuhara said, wiping her lips. “Towers need to be challenged. If they're not challenged, the powerful creatures at the top start climbing down. That's how you got the queen down here. She was migrating, because things stronger than her was coming down.”

  What insanity. Does that mean these things can go out of the towers?!

  “The blockage on four fifty seven is three powerful things fighting for control. If you need to climb past them, you've got to make it through them,” Zuhara gestured at her wound with her eyes. “I tried, and this is what happened.”

  “Oh shit, that's how you got wounded?!”

  “I almost died,” she ate a piece of meat. “Those were some goddamn demons. I don't see many people here that can deal with them. Except Rika, she’s always got a plan and the Aura to back it.”

  The second person to talk about this Rika woman. I wonder how powerful she is.

  “She's that powerful?”

  “No one really wants to fight Rika. No one in their right mind that is. That shark boy wants to. He is fucked in the head, by the way,” she laughed. “but, he's always been like that.”

  “Well, If Morgav's gone, I'll be fine.”

  “These floors are kind of empty these days. Everyone's at four fifty seven.”

  “Anyone else nearby? any friends?”

  “All my friends I climbed with died in four fifty seven, so no,” She thought for a second. “Wait, there's this girl. Jelly met them before she met you.”

  What girl?

  “She's young, a high schooler maybe? Bangs, pale skin. Blue eyes, a black dress. She's been around since you came along, now that I think about it.”

  I know that bitch!

  Arcen stood, almost spilling his bowl of meat. He felt like he got tased. “I know her,” he said as Zuhara stared up at him, bewildered.

  “Her name's Isadora. She's from Nostrum. Part of Morgav's team!”

  Plans sparked in his head even as he spoke. Isadora was his ticket out of this tower. She knew about the shortcut. She was the only one that had the contract to traverse it safely.

  “Ah, a friend of yours?” Zuhara asked, an eyebrow raised.

  “Friend? no, not at all,” he gestured at Jelly. “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “Sure,” Zuhara slurped some broth. “If she’s not a friend, she'll probably kill you if you fight her though.”

  “I just want to talk with her,” Arcen said reassuringly.

  and if that fails, I need her bubble contract. One way or another.

  “I don't really see what you want with this girl,” Zuhara looked at him with a frown.

  “She knows the shortcut to the ground floor, it's there. You don't believe it, but it's there. We came here through it.”

  “I don't believe it. It sounds like some bullshit every time I hear it.”

  She was strangely stubborn about it even now. He didn't know what to say to convince her.

  “What's so hard to believe? It's just a shortcut. It's there!”

  “I climbed four hundred floors with these goddamn legs,” She slapped her good thigh. “I'll be damned if there was a shortcut.”

  That's her reason?!

  “What if you just missed it?” He asked, pushing the argument a little further.

  Zuhara dropped the chunk of meat she had in her hand back into her bowl.

  “I don't miss things!”

  Well, you definitely have, lady.

  “Look, You don't believe me, fine,” he frowned at Zuhara.

  She took her fierce amber eyes off him and went back to eating. A new thought occurred to him just then. He didn't even need Isadora if Zuhara had what he needed.

  “Do you have any contract, or any other way to breathe underwater, like, while drowned in gelatin?”

  “What?! I don't think so. Would be a weird contract to have. I'm sure there are some solutions if you find the right plants or animal parts though. It would take a lot of time to get it right.”

  So she can't use that shortcut even if she believed it.

  “That girl has a contract with a bubble that goes over your face. That's how we got up here. She has to use it on us every two minutes, or we drown.”

  “I'll only believe it when I see it.”

  She wasn't going to budge. He needed Isadora no matter what.

  “Fine, I need directions.”

  Zuhara told him where Isadora was. It didn't make any sense to him because he'd never learned how to navigate inside the towers. The words she spoke may as well have been Latin for him. After staring at her dumbfounded for an awkwardly long pause, Zuhara sighed and pointed at Jelly.

  “She'll show you the way,” she said snapping her fingers. “The safe way, that is. My advice is, don't get used to it. It'll make you a worse climber.”

  That's fine. I don't even want to be a climber.

  Zuhara gestured at Jelly and she understood. She spilled all the broth in her little cup into her tiny mouth like chugging down a beer. Her clear flesh tinted orange-brown and she glowed, flickering like a light bulb again. When she stood up, she was clear and blue again.

  “Tassi!” Jelly squeaked and climbed up to his shoulder. Then she pointed her little hand to his right.

  They set off towards Isadora.

  Next chapter on Wednesday.

  Regular reminder to rate/review if you’re enjoying the ride!

  Advance chapters on