I breathed a sigh of relief at the revelation that there were safe rooms to stop and rest.
Orden continued. “The first thing to discuss is our objective. Corin, what exactly did Katashi ask you to do? Be specific.”
“I need to bring Vera to the room where the two of us met him during my Judgment. He insisted that she be alive, for what it’s worth.”
Vera didn’t seem to relax when she heard that. She just glanced at each of the members of our group, looking nervous. I didn’t blame her.
I scratched an itch on my nose. “Beyond that, he said I had a seven day time limit. I don’t know how deep that room is into the tower, so I’m not sure how difficult that will be. I presume we’re already on the second day.”
Vera chimed in. “The room we found him in was the first floor below ground, or B1 as we’d usually call it.”
I blinked. “The tower goes down? I mean, I knew it felt like I was going down when I went through that grate, but I guess I assumed...”
Derek chuckled. “It’s a common misconception that the tower only goes up. Climbers are trying to get to the top of the tower, after all. But this place goes deep below the surface of the continent, too. The creatures that maintain the tower live down there. Workers and administrators and such. I’m a little surprised you managed to get down there during a Judgment; that’s unusual, but not unheard of.”
I turned back to Vera. “How’d you know what floor we were on? Is there an easy way to tell?”
Vera pointed a finger at the side of her head. “Analyst Attunement. Among other things, I can detect my current altitude. Not all floors are the same height, but we were just about twenty meters below the tower entrance when we were in that room, which was roughly the height of the staircase in the chamber. Thus, we were on B1.”
I nodded. “Okay. How hard is it to get down there?”
“With me? Not bad.” Derek grinned. “Stairs down are harder to find. They’re usually either concealed or protected somehow, but if we only need to go down one level, that should be very doable. Six days is plenty of time. We’ll probably be done in less than six hours.”
Professor Orden shook her head. “I appreciate your confidence, Derek, but we’re not all a bunch of Emeralds like yourself. We will need to proceed slowly and cautiously to ensure the children — and our esteemed guest — remain safe.”
Derek nodded. “’Course, we’ll take it slow. I’m just saying that this doesn’t sound particularly difficult, it’s just important. If we prioritize monster rooms, I should be able to handle the danger by myself for the most part.”
Sera turned to Derek. “Prioritize? Meaning that, much like with a Judgment, we’re going to have a choice of different rooms to proceed?”
“Yep. And one of the options is usually fighting. The tower gets more dangerous as you go further up, both in terms of traps and monsters. I could sleep through fighting most of the things on the first ten levels or so, with the exception of spire guardians. I’d have to be awake for those, but I could be blindfolded and armless.” He winked at Sera. “Not to brag or anything, of course.”
Sera rolled her eyes. “Right. Just like you handled the Survival Match all by yourself.”
Derek gave her a wounded look, putting his hand over his heart. “That was a rare exception, Miss Cadence. I wasn’t able to show my true strength in there. I was suppressing a considerable amount of my shroud to look like a Citrine.”
“Why do that?” Sera folded her arms.
Derek sighed. “We only have a few known Emeralds in all of Valia. Emeralds are tactical assets in warfare, so we try to keep a relatively low profile. No laws about it, just common sense.”
Orden nodded. “Each attunement level is about six times more powerful than the last. Even an E-ranked Emerald is six times more powerful than an E-ranked Citrine and so-on.”
Derek chuckled. “And I’m hardly just E-ranked. Anyway, I’d normally never say this, but enough about me. We should focus on the task at hand.”
Orden pointed at the north east door. “Shall we begin exploring, then? We can look at the two doors that are available and choose a path.”
“I’ll go check the walls for additional passages while you do that,” Vera offered. “And no, I’m not going to try to escape. I know you can teleport.”
Professor Orden nodded. “I appreciate your cooperation.”
Our group headed toward the northwest doorway. Unlike most of the doors in my Judgment, this was a simple wooden door with no visible lock. Standard doorknob. It looked like the type of door you could find just about anywhere.
Derek waved for us to back off a bit, so we all stepped back while he approached the door. “Don’t see a lot of traps on the first floor, but I should always be the one to open the doors just in case.”
I liked the idea of having Derek up front. It made it much harder for him to stab us in the back.
I watched carefully as Derek opened the door.
The next chamber looked pretty similar to the one we were standing in, with the exception of the fact that the floor was missing.
After a few seconds, a single floating tile appeared about a meter from the doorway. Another tile appeared a few seconds later, another meter or so out from the doorway.
Then the first tile disappeared, and a third tile appeared, continuing the path.
The appearing tiles were clearly making a path toward the solitary visible door on the other side of the room: a path that was, if I wasn’t mistaken, meant for us to jump across one tile at a time.
I didn’t like this at all.
Derek reached into a pouch at his side and retrieved the most mundane of tools — a rock. He tossed the rock onto one of the visible tiles. It hit and bounced right into the darkness beyond.
“Looks like they’re solid, at least.” He turned back to the group. “Orden, are the tiles actually discorporating or just turning invisible?”
“They’re discorporating. You’d need to jump across with exactly the right timing, otherwise you’d fall into...whatever that darkness is.”