The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 68

Free casting two soulprints at the same time was possible, but exponentially more difficult than doing one singularly. Added to that was the fact that he was still actively using Living Earth to move and hide himself, which split his concentration even further. Finally, he simply didn’t have the soulspace necessary to do two D-ranks at once, and nothing weaker was going to suffice for this. It was simply too much to juggle without risking something falling.

That meant he couldn’t rely on Soften to give him a strong initial strike. He was going to need an attack so powerful that it broke through the guardian’s armor and killed it, all in a single spell. He’d had plenty of time to mull that little puzzle over on the way down, though, and he thought he had a solution, or at least enough of one that he was willing to risk his life on it.

It would need elements of Pierce for the penetrating power. Pierce merged well with all sorts of offensive soulprints, unlike Soften. Using that as a base, Sorin had considered an elemental aspect like ice or stone, something he could form nice and sharp. Space constraints limited that possibility though. He’d need to make the projectile beforehand, and he lacked the elbow room necessary.

That led him back to force, something he could project straight out and into the guardian. Force Drill had worked extremely well on the smaller beetles, basically shredding them from the inside out. It would probably also work very well here, except that the guardian was so massive that while he could guarantee a hugely debilitating injury, he wasn’t convinced it would be immediately lethal.

And immediate lethality was very much a necessary component of the plan, so he discarded Force Drill and kept thinking. His next idea was a nasty little spell called Pressure Wave, which if unleashed inside the guardian’s body would go from trying to shatter its shell to crushing its internal organs against the inside wall of its own armor. That would be plenty lethal, especially since it would affect the entire inside of the body instead of just a few square feet near the injection point.

Unfortunately, Pressure Wave didn’t play well with Pierce, which brought Sorin back to the initial problem of getting through its armor in the first place. Then he mentally kicked himself for being so dull-witted. He’d just upgraded Warrior’s Vigilance to D-rank not half a day ago.

His own sword would serve as the entry point, and Pressure Wave would be the killer. It wasn’t the conventional use for the spell—usually it was employed to knock down a wall or clear some space in a crowded battlefield by throwing everyone back fifty feet—but for this situation, Sorin felt it was perfect. There’d be a bit of leakage in the seams, but the overwhelming majority of the spell would flatten the guardian from the inside.

Nothing left but to do it, he thought as he drew his sword and started weaving the over-charged D-rank spell. It was no time for frugality, so he poured in as much anima as the structure could take into it. Once it was ready, Sorin took a breath. He blew up the dampening sphere to completely surround the guardian, knowing that as soon as he did, it would see him.

Then he slammed his sword straight down through an inch-thick layer of compacted dirt, triggering Speed Burst as he did for the extra penetrating power the momentum gave him.

Everything happened very quickly from there. The guardian reacted instantly to his presence, shifting in place and reaching out to take control of the earth around it. At the exact same time it moved, Sorin’s sword hit the seam. Its edge scraped against the shell, misaligned by a finger nail’s width now. It caught for an instant, then slipped down, still being fully driven by all the strength Sorin could put into the strike.

He didn’t have Pierce, but he had Blade Work, which was an even better version that aided both thrusts and slashes. Without it, he didn’t think he’d have made it through. With it, there was never a chance that he’d fail. It amplified the penetrating power he’d put into the attack twice over.

The magic of Pressure Wave surged down the length of the sword, into the guardian, and propagated outward from there. Sorin himself was thrown upward to slam into the roof of his tiny little air pocket. Even though it was only a few inches of distance, he hit so hard that Counter Heal triggered.

Ooooh, that’s another concussion, he thought woozily.

He missed the next half a second, but then so much anima hit him that he ranked up again on the spot. That hadn’t been part of the plan, and he normally could have kept moving, but with the head wound already fracturing his focus, it took him a bit to come back to reality.

A free cast healing spell helped clear his head, though it did nothing for the blood matting down his hair. Sorin awkwardly sheathed his sword, struggling just as much as he had when drawing it in the first place, and paused to see if anything had noticed the kill.

Nothing. Excellent. Plenty of time to finish this up.

The most important part was gaining access to the ruin heart and looting the cache. After that, if possible, he was going to loot both soulprints he felt on the corpse, and the only reason there were only two was that he was pretty sure he’d destroyed whatever organs the others would have formed in.

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As expected, the guardian was still curled around the ruin heart. Suddenly realizing that he’d lost the dampening layer when he’d smacked his head and ranked up simultaneously, Sorin pulled that back into existence. His sole saving grace there was that he was far enough away from the beetles and that the guardian had shifted a very small amount. They’d certainly noticed it, but for whatever reason, weren’t coming to investigate.

Maybe they know better. Maybe the guardian likes its privacy. Either way, I’ll take the win.

Then he got to work prying open the stone shell and boring his way through the mess he found inside. Pushing aside legs once he’d reached the ruin heart, he was pleased to see it was a massive boulder seemingly made of fragile, red-pulsing glass. If it was less than four times bigger than the last ruin heart he’d shattered, Sorin would eat his boots.

If anything, he was suddenly worried that his backpack wouldn’t be enough to hold all the loot. He couldn’t tell what was inside just yet, but there was an easy way to find out. He ripped out a jagged piece of shell to use as raw material, then condensed it down to a thick, heavy, piercing spike. It smashed into the ruin heart, shattering a hole big enough for Sorin to stick his upper body into.

Unshouldering his backpack, he leaned in and grabbed the first item—a necklace made of gold that glowed with a soft inner light. It reminded him of firelight, which probably meant it was destined to grace Nemari’s neck, but he didn’t take the time to confirm its abilities. Instead, he unceremoniously shoved it into the pack, then reached back into the ruin heart for the next piece.

A bracelet followed the necklace. It was quickly joined by a trio of dice, a metal ball covered in seams that probably unfolded into some sort of puzzle, a small statue of the ruin guardian itself done in basalt, and a dagger in a silver-filigreed blue sheath. Finally, there was the whole reason he’d come here in the first place: a piece of slate with a symbol etched into one side. It wasn’t the same as Liminal Gateway’s, but that wasn’t unexpected.

The smaller pieces were easily stowed away for closer inspection, but there were several items in the cache more challenging to transport. That left Sorin with the always difficult decision of trying to decide which combination of loot he could carry and whether it was worth the risk.

That mirror is probably valuable, but it’s three feet long without counting the frame. I might be able to carry it out if I leave behind that breastplate with the sapphire embedded in the middle. The broad sword is definitely coming—I can sling the scabbard strap over my shoulder, but unless that spear is collapsable, it’s getting left behind.

He didn’t even consider trying to take the armoire. It probably just did something boring like clean whatever clothes were stored in it anyway, but even if it shat out gold bricks on command, he still had no way of getting it out of the ruin. That left him debating between carrying the mirror or the breastplate, or trying to do both and hope the mirror wasn’t as fragile as it looked.

While he thought on that, he went and harvested the two soulprints from the guardian’s corpse. One was a simple Pierce, obtained by breaking off four inches of the tip of one of the beetle’s horns. The other came from one of the guardian’s legs, which was unfortunately too big and heavy to carry. Sorin wasted a bit of time debating on how best to par the limb down without destroying the soulprint before deciding that Tremor Sense just wasn’t worth it, not even if it was base E-rank instead of the F-rank version he’d used.

Okay, let’s try the mirror and the breastplate. If the mirror breaks, oh well. Now… Can I carve a seven-tower sign into the wall of a ruin heart? Guess there’s one way to find out.

It turned out the answer to that question was a resounding no. Though it looked like glass and was tough as stone, any attempts to damage it were either completely rebuffed or resulted in the wall breaking. There was no in between, and thus no symbol.

Obnoxious, but not unexpected. I’m going to have to go all the way back up to the arena. Damn it. Though… I bet I could take that spear if I run it through the strap of my backpack as long as I go straight up.

Sorin was just about to leave. He glanced back one more time at the armoire, rolling his eyes. Then he froze. A wide grin split his face. “Now that’s an idea,” he whispered. “Bit of work, but the look on their faces…”

Getting the armoire out of the ruin heart was every bit as difficult as he expected, but until the beetles did something to make Sorin think they were on to him, he wasn’t worried about how much time it took. Finally, it was out of the heart and inside the gut-splattered corpse.

From there, Sorin loaded absolutely everything inside it, including the spear—it just barely fit when wedged in at an angle—and the leg with the Tremor Sense soulprint. The mirror went into one of the drawers. The armor and the sword were put in the main closet portion. With the full haul loaded up, Sorin himself climbed inside and closed the door behind him.

Manipulating the stone above to reach down like a rope and wrap itself around the armoire, he used Living Earth to pull himself up out of the corpse. I bet this scratches the hell out of the finish, he thought with no small amount of malicious glee.

It was slower than when it was just him, but he made his way back up to the arena above. While ensconced in the armoire, he no longer had to worry about falling dirt shrinking his air pocket. The only concern was that the beetles would notice a massive piece of furniture slowly rising through the ground, but he was really hoping that the monsters would be a lot more docile now that he’d shattered the ruin heart.

Whether that hope was wishful thinking or not, he got the armoire over to the nearest wall, carved his exit, and then pulled himself and his cargo through the gateway into liminal space. From there, it was a matter of wrestling it five feet to the camp exit and pushing everything back out.

The others were already there, waiting for him to return. Rue and Yoru noticed immediately when he popped out of the seven-tower sign, and the looks on their faces were every bit as satisfying as he’d hoped they would be.

“Hi,” he said. “Got the cache.”

The others turned at that, treating Sorin to a second round of dropped jaws and wide eyes.

Worth every second.