White threads burst from the metallic seed-looking thing on Zuhara’s palm, weaving a spherical net around them in a fraction of a second. The net tightened around them as the threads weaved in and out, fitting their forms perfectly.

  “What is—“ Arcen yelled, but his voice stretched before he finished his sentence. The origin point of all the threads grew into a large circle of complete darkness. All light failed around its fringes, black shapes glitching all around it. The threads that wrapped around them formed a tunnel in the shape of their silhouette into the circle.

  In the next second, the threads pulled them into it. It happened faster than he could react. He felt weightless as the tunneling threads blew past him. The ground itself moved beneath his feet. It was like lifting a chess piece and moving the board from underneath it. The threads ended abruptly, putting him firmly back on the ground.

  “—this!” He ended his sentence on the other end of the tunnel as the pitch-black shape of the tunnel shrank and faded behind him.

  He was back in Zuhara’s chamber in a small clearing with a single giant mushroom standing at the center.

  His head was spinning, and he stumbled a step forward, trying to keep himself upright.

  What the fuck was that?!

  He coughed, trying his best to stay on his two feet. He had to keep Isadora safe.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Zuhara said over her shoulder.

  “That’s the tunnel?”

  “Yes. That’s how it works.” She squeezed the ball in her palm. He heard it click back into shape. She showed it to him for a second, and then she went over to the dried mushroom, dug her hand into a hole in its trunk, and pulled out another tunneler. She placed the old one inside the trunk and turned around.

  “Tunneler makes a tunnel towards another tunneler.” She held the new tunneler in her palm. “They only work one way. Jelly can pull me towards her. I can pull myself back here to this one.”

  That's convenient!

  Zuhara activated the second tunneler before he had a chance to speak. They were suddenly in a chamber that had a glowing wall. They were somewhere near the stalk.

  “Wait, you're coming with me?” Arcen asked as soon as he came out of it.

  “I've got to visit the doctor in a few days anyway. Just pushed that forward for you.” Zuhara squeezed the last tunneler in her hand. “You can't use tunnelers without me. They only work with blood. You're not part of our network.” She walked over to a nearby crevice in a boulder, deposited the old tunneler, and pulled out a new one.

  “T-thank you!”

  Two tunnelers later, they arrived at a ramp that led up.

  “Wow, that was fast?” Arcen said, rubbing his forehead. His head was spinning. He'd kept his eyes closed during the last tunnel, and that seemed to help a bit.

  “Tunnelers are useful.” Zuhara put the old tunneler back, but this time, she had no new one in her hand. “But they're limited in range. And they can't tunnel across floors.”

  That seems like a problem.

  “They're floor tunnelers. They can only make horizontal tunnels. So we have to climb to the next floor from here, find the next one, and start the chain again.” Zuhara smiled. “You're lucky I climbed these floors and set things up already!”

  “Are there like tower tunnelers? To go up?” Arcen asked, following her up the ramp.

  “None that I know of. Even if there was, where's the fun in that?” Zuhara giggled.

  “Damn. Fun's that important to you?”

  “Why else would you climb a tower?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Well, I mean right now, I'm climbing one to heal a bitch that I hate.”

  “That's fun! Wait, you're not talking about me, are you?” She asked, a mischievous grin spreading on her lips.

  Me and my fucking mouth.

  He'd forgotten that Zuhara also had injuries that needed healing.

  “You know who I'm talking about.” He said, trying to keep himself upright on the ramp that led to the next floor.

  They continued on the next floor, more tunnelers. Arcen didn’t get much time to look around between stops, but the chambers that he passed through were more lively than the ones he had passed through thus far. Every floor had a chamber layout like a labyrinth of concentric circles. Zuhara, with the aid of Jelly, had chartered the fastest route out of them with the least amount of tunnelers.

  The fact that she had them planted here meant she had climbed beyond it. For some reason, she liked that firefly chamber back in four fifty-one.

  I wonder why that is.

  Arcen couldn’t imagine climbing towers with this attitude of finding prime real estate to relax in.

  There was a method to her madness. The placement of floor tunnelers was carefully thought out, planting them where they were safe, always hidden in nooks and crannies where chamber-dwelling creatures couldn’t mess with them. They didn’t meet any dangers the stops made so far.

  Arcen thought this was always going to be the case, until the fifth and the last floor tunneler opened directly into a complete mess of flesh, blood, and bone. They were immediately soaked from head to toe as they materialized out of the tunnel.

  “What the fuck happened here!” Arcen said, spitting out chunks of pink flesh. This place looked like a cave made of meat. The opening was smoking, the rancid smell of burning flesh crawling up their nostrils.

  Jelly had been taking a nap, and she woke up with a tiny groan. She narrowed her eyes and stared at Arcen with hands over her tiny nose as if all of this was his fault.

  “Well, shit. I've not been here in a while. Things have changed!” Zuhara said, rubbing thick layers of blood and flesh off her shoulders.

  They walked out of the 'cave' only to discover it was a gigantic toad-like thing with a tough shell like a tortoise. The portal had overlapped with it and punched straight through the creature, killing it instantly.

  The ground was rumbling with panicked hops coming at them from all directions. Tree tops moved in the distance, and flying things scattered when the trees they were on fell with the weight of these toads.

  “You've got a plan?” Arcen asked, gulping. The weight of Isadora was too much to run away with, and he couldn't drop her even if he wanted to. Zuhara had basically superglued the dying girl to his back with her highly adhesive spider threads.

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  “Eeek!” Jelly squeaked, pointing towards their right where the biggest creature was coming from.

  “We've got to find the next tunneler. It's around here somewhere.” Zuhara waved her hand at the fallen trees mixed with the dead toad's smoking flesh.

  And find a golf ball-sized thing in that fucking mess there?

  Jelly hopped off and dashed out of view. Zuhara turned to face the toad. Arcen was left in the middle like a child abandoned by both parents at a state fair. He looked in both directions more than four times before deciding to stay with Zuhara. Jelly couldn't do anything to protect him from these creatures.

  They were getting surrounded by toads from three directions. Zuhara raised her hand.

  “I have a contract. If you want me to-”

  “The ball lightning one?” Zuhara asked with a smirk. “Don't waste your Aura on that mr. Arcen.”

  threads burst from her fingers in all directions. Some of her threads met toads. The ones that did burst into large spherical shapes, and her remaining threads consolidated along those lines, making those spheres larger, engulfing the part of the toad that it hit. One had its entire face inside a thread sphere, one had half of its belly, and the third one had it on its shell.

  Zuhara snapped her fingers, cutting the threads off her fingers. The two toads that didn't have their faces inside thread spheres screamed in a guttural voice that shook the chamber walls.

  “What the heck was that?” Arcen asked, looking at the gigantic toads flopping around them, trying to get the thread balls off their bodies.

  “A cheaper alternative to what you were going to use.”

  “Better one too, I mean, they're dying.”

  “That won't kill them.” Zuhara frowned and pointed at the one with its head in a sphere. “Maybe that one, the other two can grow back. These creatures, they have these sounds that they make. If they're making the sound you're hearing right now, others won't attack.”

  “So if you hurt one really badly, others won't bother you?”

  “Yeah. They have a different sound if they're the winning ones. They never join a losing fight. Pretty interesting, huh?”

  She's having too much fun in this hell tower.

  “You think frogs are interesting? Are you like a biologist or something?” Arcen asked, adjusting Isadora's weight on his back. “...But you had a book about Mesopotamia in your tent? I mean, what are you? I never asked.”

  “I did some volunteering at the zoo when I was fifteen. If that's biology or anything!” Zuhara said with a giggle.

  “Doesn't explain you climbing these towers all happy like it's a camping trip.”

  “Well, you're not gonna believe what I used to do before Mayday.”

  “Something crazy?”

  “I was training for my first pro MMA fight in Thailand.”

  Arcen stared at her in utter disbelief. He couldn't have come up with a more random lifepath for her if he tried. It explained neither Mesopotamia nor the frogs.

  “You know what. Sure. I believe every word of that.” Arcen said, nodding wholeheartedly. “Don't beat me up over nothing now.”

  Zuhara laughed, twisting her arm like a cartoon character about to punch another on the chin. Paying attention to her biceps, it made sense. She was in great shape even now.

  Jelly jumped out of a nearby bush, carrying a large flower bud that was almost the same size as her. He had no idea why she ran off to get one of these in the middle of the fight.

  “What's that?” Arcen asked, completely puzzled. He thought Jelly just ran off to safety.

  “Ah, Jelly's found the next tunneler. Good girl!” Zuhara said, rubbing Jelly's squishy head. Jelly smiled widely before she went feral, trying to peel the flower bud open with her tiny hands. Arcen crouched to help her with it as Zuhara kept an eye out on other toads. They found the next tunneler inside the flower bud, wrapped in a bunch of thin petals.

  “We need to relocate this one,” Zuhara said, twirling the blood-soaked tunneler that they came here with. “Need a better spot, or this shit might happen again on the return trip.”

  Zuhara walked around for a bit, looking for a good spot before she concluded there weren't any in this chamber. They walked to the next chamber, where they found a stream of water and salamander-like creatures pretending to be rocks along the banks. Jelly found a hole under a rock, and Zuhara put the old tunneler in there and sealed it shut with a large rock.

  They washed the toad blood off their bodies in the cold water from the stream. Arcen had to stay on the shore, rubbing himself clean carefully because he was carrying Isadora. Jelly made sure to help, bringing exactly three droplets of water on her tiny hands to splash at him now and then.

  Sufficiently cleaned, Zuhara activated the next tunneler and arrived at the chamber with a veiled spot in the ceiling that led to the next floor.

  Jelly took over the job of navigation, which was the best at. Arcen only had the glimpses from other chambers to compare the new one to. This one just felt dangerous from the moment he set foot inside it. The stench of death and decay crawled up their nostrils almost immediately. Gray trees grew as tall as the chamber itself. Pairs of eyes blinked at them from the darkness between the trees.

  Jelly knew a winding path, and they followed her closely, Zuhara holding Arcen's hand so that they could not get separated.

  “Isn't this a bit too far?” Arcen asked, panting. They had walked

  “Hard to find safe places in this chamber. So the next tunnelers' underground,” Zuhara said, gesturing at the ground as she ducked under a branch.

  Jelly had found the tunnel entrance between two trees.

  “What's wrong with his chamber?”

  “There's a tribe here. I've never seen them. I've seen dead climbers hanging from the trees.”

  Oh well, that's just fucking great, isn't it?

  Jelly took the previous tunneler and dove into a hole that only she could crawl into. She went all the way back to the spot that they came into the chamber with and crawled back out with the next tunneler.

  Zuhara wasted no time activating it, and they materialized in a chamber with creatures that looked like flying discs with teeth at the bottom. Zuhara managed to find and activate the next tunneler as one of them started descending towards them. She hurried through three other tunnelers, wasting no time between.

  The 456th floor was different from what Arcen expected. The very first chamber they climbed up to was empty except for a few burnt shapes of what could've been giant snakes. It was hard to tell what they were, but their mangled skeletons were wrapped around each other, charred and blackened. The rest of the chamber was full of ashes and charred debris as well. There was no moisture anywhere. The wet rock walls were covered with dry soot. It looked like the inside of an ancient oven.

  “What the heck happened here?” Arcen asked as he looked around. The skeletons had heads the size of small cars. “Are we in the rim or something?”

  “No, this is Rika's work,” Zuhara said, lifting a flat piece of rock to find the next tunneler. “This is what happens when she gets pissed off in a chamber.”

  A human did all this?!

  This Rika person was clearly something else. He wasn't sure if he could identify as the same species as someone capable of something like this. They used two more tunnelers. The chamber right after the burned one was a swamp with one glowing wall. It had white crocodiles with metallic horns.

  The next chamber was completely unexpected. They materialized in a camp.

  “What the!”

  “This is the supply camp. They always set up a floor below the frontier.” Zuhara said, waving a hand above her head. There was a man wearing a blue tactical uniform. She gestured at a storage cupboard nearby. The man threw a thumbs-up in their direction and walked into a tent.

  “That's the security guy.” She said, opening the cupboard with a key from her pocket.

  “Wait, this is like a service?!”

  “Yeah. This one's affiliated with Skyward. The largest guild. You pay them with Gold. They keep your stuff safe. Everything is fully insured.”

  “I didn't know they had like companies inside the tower!”

  “Lots of ways to earn money in towers, Mr. Arcen,” Zuhara said, pulling out a weird sword with red and blue patterns from her storage cupboard.

  Why does it look like that?

  “What's that?”

  “One of my weapons. This one's really expensive, and I don't need it where I am, so I keep it here.”

  She swung it a couple of times with one hand, groaned, and clutched her side. Arcen knew he wouldn't have been able to swing it with one hand, no matter what. She retrieved a harness and clipped it around her waist. She left all the upper body straps hanging.

  “You need help with that?”

  “No. I can't wear it fully with these wounds.” She rubbed her side. The upper half of the harness would directly tighten above her ribs, where the wound started.

  “Why do we need the sword?” Arcen asked with a frown. “I'm asking because I don't have one.”

  Zuhara laughed. “It's good to be prepared. Never go to the frontier without your best stuff. Anything can happen at any time.”

  Floors below us weren't safe either! Shame I don't even have a fucking pocket knife.

  Jelly disappeared into the cupboard as Zuhara mounted her sword on her back. She came back out, hauling a small box over her head.

  “Whoa, Jelly's got some powerful stuff in there too?!”

  “Jelly!” She said, smiling at him as she opened the box with her tiny hands. He was expecting some sort of weapon. He imagined Jelly strapped with a mini assault rifle. He leaned in just to see what infernal weapon this little thing was going to carry.

  “Ollipo! ollipo!” She shouted excitedly, presenting it like a suitcase full of cash. The box had hundreds of neatly packed candies, specifically, all the flavors of lollipops from one brand.

  “Am I crazy, or is it just candy in there?!”

  “That's what she thinks is most valuable. If I do something, she has to do it too, so here we are, putting candy in the weapon's cupboard,” Zuhara said, helping her unpack one lollipop.

  Jelly started nibbling on its edge immediately, like a manic squirrel. “Not sure about the sugar rush, though. She kinda goes crazy on that.”

  Zuhara packed the candy box into the cupboard and got the next tunneler out of it. She placed the old tunneler in and locked the cupboard.

  They arrived at the veil to the 456th floor.

  “One more tunneler and we're in the doctor's tent,” Zuhara said as they climbed up.

  (Released early because I'm sick and not available on Monday)

  Next chapter on Wednesday.

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