The Tower of Emnu

Melissa woke up with a startled shout. She was sweating, filled with dread, with terror so fierce it clenched her gut and made her cower involuntarily under her thin sheets. In these moments right before she came to herself she remembered his eyes, the cold look as he stood over her and pressed a dagger to her throat. But when she fully woke up, all she could remember was the relief when he had spared her. She hated herself every time she remembered feeling that way, she loathed her own feelings. In those moments the survivors guilt ate her and made her wish she had not been spared. Wish that she had died with her team. But those feelings, the fear, dread and self loathing slowly ebbed away until she was just feeling miserable and alone. The fear never disappeared completely, but it was manageable now.

It had to be.

Slowly she sat up in her bed. The sun broke through her thick curtains and beams of golden sunlight illuminated her otherwise dark chamber. It was a dream, she was okay. It was in the past. She rubbed her eyes, tried to feel normal, tried to feel like it was really all in the past but she still felt sick and miserable.

She stood up and stood on wobbly feet. A sudden wave of nausea hit her, so strong she thought she would puke right there and then, but she made it into her bathroom, before she emptied the content of her stomach into the stinking hole they used as toilets here. She hated it, hated everything, she loathed this place, this tower, this life. She wanted to go back to a time before all this. To her life before this life when her only worry had been paying her taxes or which stupid coworker she was working with this time. She wanted to listen to music, anything from her world really really. It did not even have to be her favorites, it could be some pop songs on the radio. She was so homesick, she started to cry. Melissa wanted nothing more than for all of this to be a dream. But it was not. Her revolting stomach settled slowly and she splashed some water out of a bucket on her face. The ice cold liquid made her shiver, but it felt good on her sweaty skin.

Melissa sighed and waited for her bout of weakness to disappear, then she sat up and eventually stood up. She took deep breaths and waited until the world had stopped swaying and her emotional turmoil had calmed itself to a numb acceptance.

‘Time to be an adult.’ she thought.

She took a change of clothes and went to the baths. The accommodations for Mages were the best for all the Climbers living in the Town of Beginnings. Only permanent residences were fancier than this. But she really wished for some plumbing, some running water, a freaking shower. But all she had was baths, so that was what she did, every day. The mages were housed in two big apartment blocks and each house had its own little bathhouse. It was early in the morning and so there was a queue. Melissa did not feel like socializing with her own neighbors and so she went over to the other bathhouse where there was less traffic today. She got a small room, filled a bathtub with water, mostly cold water and locked her door. She had to go through all of this effort just for a quick scrub and bath. But Melissa took care of herself, mechanically, but she did. She washed her hair and then finally faced herself in a bronze mirror.

She still looked like shit. Deep bags under her eyes and there was sorrow to her whole demeanor. She straightened up and gave the mirror a smile, confident, happy. But it did not work. It looked and felt forced. Melissa cursed and balled her fists, ready to smash the mirror, but she stopped herself. She would have only been able to dent the mirror, but she really did not want the hassle of explaining herself to one of the baths proprietors.

“Focus your anger on training.” she told herself and made sure she was presentable. Today she wore comfortable workout clothes, cotton pants, a linen shirt and a belt for her things, nothing fancy and she chose not to wear a robe today either. Then she walked out of the bath, her head held high. It was time to train. Time to close the gap between her and the Cultivator. She would be his death, she swore that to herself. But she knew she would have to work hard on it.

The streets of the Town were busy at this time of day. Climbers and Residents alike went to work or training, to group up to go hunt and level up. Mages on their way to the small library next to the Town hall to consult some manuals and guides on how to express their magic better. Vessels went to training grounds, honing technique to combine with their skills. Street hawkers lined the road and there was the smell of food in the air. Spicy and fragrant or sweet and substantial. Melissa had no appetite though and she walked looking straight ahead, her head held high. Ignoring the call outs from the merchants or the looks from the men. She may look like shit to herself, but she was still a beautiful woman. But being stared and lusted after did not feel like anything today. Not good as a compliment or bad in a creepy way. It just felt like nothing.

She walked over to the shooting ranges, where she could throw some spells and work off some of her stress and train at the same time. The shooting ranges were of course on the Armies compound and so she had to pass a little checkpoint with bored soldiers. It was probably not what they had in mind when joining Emnu’s Army, standing guard over the gate for no reason other than to show their flag, uniform and good gear.

Things Climbers had to work hard for usually. Clothes were expensive and gear was just straight up too costly for anyone on their own so that groups had to pitch in to get one melee equipped with good plate armor so they could tank some damage. There was also the Town guard, but those were not Climbers, but usually higher leveled people who did not want to go to Ambition for one reason or another. They were this worlds equivalent of Cops, but she still saw some petty crime everywhere and it was an open secret that in the red light district you could gamble, whore and get high if you really wanted to.

Melissa did not want to. Getting high had never been appealing to her, not even now when she was depressed and struggling. In high school one of her friends had overdosed in the schools bathroom. She was dead when Melissa found her in the next break. It had been her first brush with death, but it had not been the only one. Still it had been traumatic and since then she had stopped taking any drugs, not even weed which had been everywhere when she grew up. But on days like this she really wanted to take the edge of sometimes. But the face of her friend always came into her mind when she thought about it. Well she had to get in line now.

Melissa saw many ghosts every day. Her old team, Thorgen and the face of a little boy. She shook her head to banish that image particularly out of her mind and walked over to the shooting range, after passing the guard post. Her eyes grazed the wanted posters and she almost stumbled. A cold shiver ran down her spine and she stared at a brand new wanted poster. The Cultivator stared at her, his cold hard eyes looking through her and to make things worse: This man was smirking at her. Smiling at her misfortune.

Her blood boiled and she tried to suppress the fear she felt, but she could not. Her whole body had gone rigid and she could barely breathe anymore. She was having a full blown panic attack and was close to hyperventilating. But she tried to reign her fear in, tried to focus and instead of totally losing it she slowly read the wanted poster.

“Wanted:

The Cultivator.

Warning: Extremely dangerous, do not approach under level 10 and with a group of less than 10 people.

Wanted for Mass Murder.

Reward: Dead or Alive, 50 mid grade Mana stones.”

The reward offered was nothing short of absurd. That many mid grade mana stones could buy houses, plural, in the Town. It was frankly an absurd amount of wealth, a number that could change a groups fortune entirely. It was a group reward, she knew that, but still her mind could not help but wonder what she could afford to buy with that much cash. But in the end those thoughts only made her more depressed. She really needed to finally look for more people for her group. She had held of on it time and time again, procrastinating for another day. It could wait, it was not time yet, she was not ready. All those thoughts had haunted her, but this wanted poster gave her a real kick in the ass.

If she wanted to kill the Cultivator, she would need help, a lot of help. She needed to become a true group leader, not like she had been in the past. There was no Thorgen to take the brunt of responsibility and tell her what to do next. There was only her left. Melissa balled her fists and her breath slowly evened out, although she still felt shaky. She gave the Cultivator one last hard look and then walked away, deliberately not looking back. But she could feel his gaze in her neck, felt the dagger on her throat and swallowed hard. She hated him so much, hated the hold he had over her. She went into an open firing range and summoned her magic. Casting while angry or occupied or anything really except totally focused was usually a waste of effort. But she could not help herself. Ice crystals formed over her hand slowly and she poured her hatred into them, made them sharp and hard. Then she shot them down range. The Hailburst tore through the wooden targets like shrapnel from a grenade.

Magic needed control and yet it was cathartic to cast, to let her feelings, her fear, her suffering, her hurt go. Let it go with the mana pouring out of her. Her fury went with a cast of Dragon Tongue and seared through the target close to her in a thin stream of bright yellow flame, like a lance of fire that exploded on impact. It felt so good to tear through those targets, imagining it to be the Cultivator. But every time she did so, she knew it would not be enough. She had kept up with the reports, had even talked to some of the people who had taken part in the manhunt, who had fought with him. The Cultivator was faster than a level 15 rogue and much, much more agile. He could leap and soar through the air at will, stop and go in any position. In short he was a nightmare to hit. Which was why she needed a crowd control spell.

But Melissa did not have one. Her only choice was to make Hailburst into something else, to change it to become more. She focused and the spell before her changed slowly. The small kernels of ice forming above her hand for Hailburst thickened and combined. It took her more than 20 minutes but eventually she had something resembling a thin block of ice. If she got it to be sharp on one end this might eventually morph into a new spell that she knew existed. Spear of ice.

But really, this was just training for something else. What she really wanted to do is freeze something solid at range. There were spells like that, she knew, even down here at the Town of Beginnings. But nobody she had asked had been willing to part with it no matter how long she had begged. Having a ranged crowd control spell was worth a lot to their teams. It was a competitive advantage and Melissa did not have the funds to really do anything but ask nicely. So she tried again to freeze something at range and failed miserable for 2 hours.

She could coalesce ice above her hand, so why was it that difficult to do just a few meters from her? Hailburst had a decent amount of range, but then again the ice spawned from close to her and then accelerated towards her target.

Melissa sighed and took a short break, she sat down, sweating and felt for her mana reservoir. It was down to almost 20%, so she still had some ways to go. That was really the problem with magic training. You needed to cast to exhaustion and maintain a steady cast the entire time, so you won’t slip up when it counts. But the time it took to fill her increasingly big mana pool increased just as much as the pool unless she used manastones to replenish it. Which she could not afford, obviously. All of her and her teams funds had been stolen by the cultivator. It also meant that she could and had to train for hours longer every day, unless she learned some more intensive spell of a higher rank.

Not that she had the control or insight into either ice or fire to be able to learn any of those spells. But she had a big mana pool, which meant she had a lot of casts in her and she had learned to be consistent. No matter how tired she was, she could perform her two spells perfectly. The thermodynamics of her magic were still a mystery to her. She had learned ice and fire magic because they were the same to her. Just temperature manipulation and she had been right and wrong at the same time. Mana was given to fire spells like fuel to burn it, while on the opposite side mana was spent to cool down the air to form ice shrapnel. It was similar that way. Both ice and fire magic burned through mana, but it was still not the same on a fundamental level. It was not just exothermic and endothermic chemical reactions they created.

But anything made by magic had intrinsic properties that were different from lets say normal fire or normal ice. Which was also the reason she could not control fire or ice unless it was imbued with her magic. Which meant that it was once more down to her control and range. She had taught herself to freeze hot water and heat it up, but in the end doing the same at range did not work at all. She suspected that range for magic was probably the same as the strength of radiation. It was likely that magic followed the inverse square law and so it took an exponential amount more magic to summon an effect at range compared to right next to her. The thing was, there were exceptions or people had found ways around that. There were powerful crowd control spells that were summoned at range, not close to a person. Which was why she was working on mimicking spells she knew existed and yet she was failing terribly.

Both of her spells also had a kinetic energy component and she had even less knowledge of how that worked at all. Like it did not feel like there was any more energy, any more mana needed to fling a spell at something that she had summoned. Which had to be wrong, right? The energy had to come from somewhere. But that did not seem to be the case. Either the summoned spell had its kinetic energy somehow stored and was willing to obey her orders or the amount needed to send magic around was minuscule.

Either way that part of the spell she basically ignored. She spent an hour more fruitlessly trying to freeze stuff solid until she was out of mana. Tired, frustrated and angry at herself and the world she left the training range. All she wanted now was a meal and to sit brooding in her room, feeling sorry for herself.

But she knew she could not do that tonight. If she wanted to remake her group, then she needed to find people for it. The right people. But most of her generation were already grouped up and those who were not had serious problems. So the only way was to steal some talent away from other groups. She also had her eyes on the next generation, the one that came to the tower with the Cultivator. It was still only later afternoon and so she decided to pay a visit to some of the instructors and get the lay of the land so to say concerning the new talent brought in.

She asked in the base for Chris Balefield, her old [Weapon Master] friend and found him surprisingly in his office. She knocked and her heavy mood evaporated when she saw the aging man buried in paperwork.

“Melissa! Save me, please. They are making me do horrible stuff. I am a [Weapons Master], not a paper pusher. Kill me, anything is better than this.” he said pleading and Melissa actually had to chuckle for a moment. Which felt really good.

“Thanks Chris, I needed that. But if you wanted to do less paperwork then you should not have joined the army.”

“I know, fuck me I guess. I need to make new personalized schedules for like 20 new army recruits and Thresius insisted that I make sure they are ‘integrated into the unit’” Chris made air quotes while saying that and then sighed.

“So now I have to change all of the schedules and to keep it fair I need to give everyone an individualized one. Its a freaking nightmare. But enough about my woes, how are you Melissa?”

“I am...well I am okay for now. I...I want...no I need some help.”

“Well I am here for it, whatever it is, sit down.”

Melissa sat down on the uncomfortable chair in front of Chris desk and she had to actually straighten to look over the mountain of paper.

“You know that paper is freaking expensive right?”

“Eh, not for the army. We have a supplier or something.” Chris waved her concerns away. But then he fell silent and waited for her to talk. Melissa took a deep breath and then came right out with it.

“I want to rebuild my team, which means I will be poaching talent and I don’t just need any team composition, but something solid. Good people with talent and potential, Chris. I know it is a lot to ask for, but you are the only one I know who has that kind of information. I know you are supposed to be neutral too so…” Melissa stopped as Chris handed her a piece of paper. Melissa stared at it for a moment, frowned and took it. There were 6 names on the paper, a small list that only listed their class and time in the tower as well as their names.

“What is this?”

“I knew you would come for that eventually and I also know you are awkward and way too focused on personal growth to cultivate a lot of friendships. Hell I am one of your only friends and that is because you train all day long every day and old codgers like me are the only people you meet. So yeah, these names are on the shortlist for the army, but I doubt they will go that route. You have a much better chance to turn them into something worth while.”

“Thank you so much, Chris.” Melissa said, swallowing hard. She felt herself tear up out of sheer relief and gratitude, but managed to catch herself. If Chris had seen anything he did not say or react in any way and just continued on, while pointing at the list.

“Your welcome, these are all free agents by the way, no poaching required.”

“Really? Why don’t they have a group?” Melissa asked and was instantly suspicious. Usually not having a group showed they were a problem and she was not sure if she wanted to handle that. Then again, she might be judging that too harshly, she herself was without a group basically.

“Well its complicated. Lets start with Vera, she is a talented warrior, uses spear and shield which is unorthodox down here, but quite common higher up in the tower. She comes with her own, good gear and has more experience in the tower than you have. She came two generations before you and should be in her late teens in levels. The only problem with her is that she won’t fight for a male leader anymore.”

Melissa had an inkling as to why that was the case, but she still asked.

“Why?”

“Lets just say her team leader made some unwanted advances on her and got a bit too pushy, so she punched him in the mouth. Bastard told the rest of the team she wanted to lead the team herself and was trying to push him out. Turned the group toxic to her, so she left. She has a bit of a negative reputation hanging over her because of that, the prick told everyone she was insubordinate and as it happens that prick has a lot of friends in his generation and so she can’t find a group with any of them anymore.”

“Huh, you know a lot about her, why?”

“She might be a trainee of mine.” He winked at her. “I take care of my students, you know. Told me the story when I found her crying after a particularly bad week for her. Only time I ever seen that woman show anything but strength and integrity. She is kinda stuck down here unless she finds a team. She does not have the damage to go past the 5th level and yes that means she tried to climb alone. Did not make it past the third floor.”

Melissa nodded there was no shame in not having the damage to pass the 5th level, that was a common problem they shared and she sympathized with Vera a lot. She admired the courage she had shown, although she questioned her sanity a bit. Climbing the tower on your own was suicide for almost anyone. But that was not the only thing she liked instantly. She had her own share of run ins with unsavory people lusting after her in the past. Being a woman with super powers did even the odds a bit, but it still did not stop men from being creeps. So she would definitively approach her.

“What about the rest?”

“Well, Mercucio is a thief. Fairly high leveled rogue. He kind of split from his old team. No idea why. But I do know he is an excellent scout and very fast. He has a bounty on him for theft, but the Town Guard can’t catch him. The reason I put him on that list is that he is unlikely to be connected to the red light district like other criminals. Otherwise his bounty would have been cleared or he would have left for Ambition. But he is still here, training and hiding from the guard. So if you can handle a thief then he is the best candidate for scout and melee damage dealer. He is wicked fast and handles his short sword better than anyone I have seen in 20 years. He is also really good at hiding, must have a high level in some stealth skill, or the Guard would have nabbed him already. He is the same level as Vera I suspect, has been past the 5th level, but their team came back for some reason. Do not ask me why, I don’t know.”

Melissa nodded, but she had her doubts about that one. He did sound strong and fast. That last bit gave her pause and made her consider the man. She needed someone who could give the cultivator a run for his money in speed or he might run circles around her team again. She could not let that happen ever again. But she did not really want to take the chance of waking up without her teams funds one night, because the thief had the brilliant idea to skip on them.

“The other 4 names are from a newbie team, not the latest generation, but close, barely a month in the tower. Their mage got killed during the manhunt and they kinda splintered after that. Those 4, who have not joined up with any other group, hold a real grudge against the cultivator and their fellow teams, who basically killed him. The Cultivator used their mage as a human shield, an experience he did not survive. They are a good bunch, nowhere near as talented as Vera or Mercucio, but they show potential. Rick is their Warrior, no equipment, but he shows solid growth on the training ground. They have a Crossbowman called Marvin, no idea why he chose that weapon, but he is quite good with it, accurate, but slow fire rate as expected. Then there is the two unconventional of the group, but also interesting enough for me to want to recruit them. Jacob uses a staff and has a strange class for curses. Please do not ask me how they work, all I know about the man is that he has some skills that work almost like spells, but he is no mage.” Chris shrugged and then pointed at the last name on the list.

“The groups de facto leader, Gloria is also unorthodox, she is a heavily armored melee, but with barely enough strength to make use of it. She has some team wide buffs that are not potent enough to make up for her reduced stats. She is an oddball, but has also a rare class, just like Jacob, I suspect. So they do have potential, but they are also an odd group. Gloria has tried to become a group leader for them, but you know how that goes. No Vessel makes group leader unless something really unusual happens.”

Melissa nodded and frowned at the same time. She was not sure about this entire group. They hated the cultivator, so that was good, but she could not really see how they would be effective. Their 2 rare classes meant this was a relatively special group, usually there was one rare class every two groups, but they had two. Their effectiveness seemed not to be great though and so far Melissa was not sure she would go for any of them, but Vera who sounded just like what she needed. She pocketed the list of names and stood up.

“Thank you so much, Chris, you would not happen to know where to find these guys?”

“At this hour? If they are in town, probably in one of the taverns. Don’t know exactly which one they frequent, but you probably should start with the Blue Hare, that is where Vera hangs out.”

“Great, thank you, Chris! You are the best!” she said and gave the man a kiss on the cheek. Chris blushed and shooed her off him.

“Its fine, I am just glad you are starting to rebuild. You are one of the few good mages out there. Would be a shame for you to stop climbing. I believe in you!”

Melissa almost had to cry hearing that and managed to get away with a sniff and a hug, before she hurried out of Chris office. The man was married and she did not want to give anyone ideas about their friendship. It was late afternoon and Melissa suddenly realized that she had not eaten anything today. With growling stomach she went for some of the street vendors and bought herself a quick late lunch to go, while she asked for directions to the Blue Hare.