"Wait!" James yelled and stepped in front of Hahn, forcing Adam to stop his barriers.

Gladwyn levelled his sword at him. "Adam is right, move out of the way!"

"Based on what!?" James retorted.

"Based on the fact that the real Hahn lies dead in the room we just came from!" Adam said.

"I'm not a mimic," Hahn protested. "I just got lost in the Tower. I didn't realise you went down instead of up."

Adam shuddered. "Shut up! You're not real!"

"How do we know that the real Hahn is the one we saw die!?" James retorted.

Why is he being so stupid!?

That Cowl must've fucked with the logical part of his brain!

"That makes no sense," Gladwyn replied.

"I'm real," Hahn said, lifting his bow with the Fiendbarb equipped as proof. The Spring Boots and Forlorn Cuirass were equipped to his body as well.

Adam frowned. He has all the same Relics as the real one… If he's able to use that Fiendbarb we might be screwed.

"Emelia told us about this," Gladwyn said calmly, though he kept his sword pointed at Hahn. "If you pick Nharlla, you bring a human mimic into one of the Stages between Five and Ten. You must've seen that the Altar called Nharlla the 'Sire of Mimics'."

James' posture softened as Gladwyn's argument seemed to register in his mind. "Who's Emelia?" he asked.

"She's a time-looper," Adam said. "She's been helping us with the last few Stages. We knew about the lever to the underground prison because of her."

James looked at Hahn and then back at us.

"If she told you about what was going to happen here, then why did you not know about the Warden's arms?" he asked.

Adam frowned. "She didn't mention anything about that fight…"

She might be so strong at this point that she kills the Warden so completely that the arms never get a chance to fight back, he thought. After all, if her weapon combo was as powerful as she claimed, then it would explain why she didn't really know the patterns and special moves of a lot of bosses, like the Nightwing, Ezral, and now the Warden.

Emelia had warned them about the Tower Crawler, saying not to engage it unless they had a full group, but letting them know it would appear if they completed at least two side objectives. Killing the Cell Warden had been one, and Adam suspected more would appear as they climbed higher.

"James, step away from the mimic," Gladwyn said.

"I'm not a mimic," Hahn replied.

The Spellblade still looked torn, but obeyed the order.

Gladwyn wore the Reckless Warlord's Cape, the red fabric of which clashed starkly with the Sanctuary Defender's Robes he wore. Adam was amazed the robes hadn't been destroyed yet, since the Relic could only take two hits before breaking.

He slapped his sword into his shield. "Come on, you freak," he taunted.

The bow in Hahn's hands melted into his body as though being reabsorbed.

"Don't kill me," he whined while stalking down the ramp towards them, his pleading voice and aggressive posture completely at odds. His fingers elongated into claws and everything except his face turned black like tar.

"Fucking hell," James muttered.

Adam shot his barriers forward, each shaped into a simple cone. The wandering eye on his necklace was locked onto the mimic for some reason, making Adam worry the monster had a lot of magical power.

Emelia only warned me about the human mimics. She never actually said how they fight…

The mimic leapt forward with a spin of its body, narrowly passing between the barriers mid-flight and striking Gladwyn's shield.

The effect of his Nose Ring triggered and staggered the mimic, allowing James to surge forward with his magical sword engulfed in flames. The burning blade passed through its right shoulder, separating the black limb from its body.

But the mimic quickly recovered with an acrobatic backwards leap, flinging its left hand out into a whip and grabbing its severed limb, reabsorbing it into itself.

The face still mimicked Hahn's and cried out in his voice, "You're hurting me!"

"Shut up!" James yelled.

The mimic regrew its right arm and swiped its claws at his face, but Adam's barriers quickly lanced through its back, knocking its strike off course and leaving it open for James to decapitate it with his still-burning sword.

The head fell to the floor with a clunk like metal, but the mimic was unfazed and spun around while swinging its left whip arm out, catching James across the cheek and drawing a shallow line of blood.

"I'm okay!" he yelled as he backed away.

"Over here!" Gladwyn taunted, slapping his shield.

Adam kept trying to deal a killing blow to the mimic's body with his barriers, but after only a couple impacts they all cracked and triggered Last Stand's Fervour.

Fortunately, Gladwyn was focusing its attention on him and managing to score quite a few hits every time it was staggered by his successful blocks.

With the added speed and damage from Fervour, Adam was able to dig his barriers into the mimic's body and let them unfurl explosively, creating big craters in its torso. It switched its ire to him for a second, but then Gladwyn taunted it again.

"I don't think fire is effective against it!" Adam called as he backed away and resummoned his barriers.

"I'm gonna try ice," James said, backing off so that he was close to Adam and hopefully preventing the mimic from hearing them.

"Good idea," he replied. "It might slow its transformations and turn its body brittle, like with the Warden."

James performed the invocation and special flourish, coating his blade in frost.

Meanwhile, Adam took the opportunity of the wandering eye's fixation on the mimic and Gladwyn's distraction to attempt to fuse the three barriers.

I need more speed and power to deal enough damage to it, he thought.

He shut out all the sounds of the fight in front of him and carefully fused the first two barriers into one. The midnight-blue colour darkened and it felt way faster than past fusions. He attempted to fuse the stronger barrier with the unfused one, but it didn't work.

Wait, I think I need to do it the other way around, he realised.

Instead of imagining the stronger barrier absorbing the weaker one, he flipped the idea on its head, since the stronger had already used up its fusion while the weaker one hadn't.

It felt like his brain was squeezed inside his cranium by the mental pressure he exerted, but with an echoing slurp the stronger barrier was absorbed by the weaker one, combining to become even stronger.

Holy shit, it worked!

Gladwyn grunted as the mimic, which had at some point regrown its head, smashed into his shield with its arms melded together into a larger hammer. Although his big shield absorbed the blow, he was pushed back from the impact.

Frozen cuts covered the mimic's body, making it clear that James' ice attacks were effective. But the Spellblade wasn't anywhere in sight.

Adam looked around until he found him slumped on his side on the curving ramp, his back to the wall. His right arm and shoulder were a mess, but he was still breathing.

Shit!

Adam ran over to him and pulled a small healing potion from the Potion Belt on his right forearm, pouring it into James' mouth while the triple-fused barrier floated in front of them like an impenetrable wall.

James coughed and sputtered, but the healing quickly took hold.

"Stay here," Adam told him and focused his concentration on the barrier, shaping it into as narrow of a lance as possible, before inducing a spin into it with a command.

"Gladwyn, get down!" he yelled.

The Shield Wall smashed his shield into the mimic and pushed it back, before throwing himself down the ramp, skating a few feet on his Spring Boots.

The barrier lance spun so fast that the high-pitched sound it produced was impossible for Adam's ears to pick up, although he could feel the powerful vibrations it generated in his body.

Fire!

The mimic, perhaps sensing the threat, spun to face him, but even its inhuman reactions were too slow to avoid the barrier.

It crossed the distance between them in an instant, moving so fast that it was impossible to steer and kicking back such a powerful burst of air that Adam was pushed into the wall next to where James lay. The sound was like that of a 50 calibre sniper and made his ears ring painfully.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

The mimic's body was hit almost directly in the middle of its torso and the explosive impact sent its four limbs and head in separate directions.

Adam knew it was dead because the wandering eye lost its fixation and started panning around, focusing mostly on James again. He guessed that the mimic was much like a slime, in the way that the destruction or separation of a large part of its body was sufficient to kill it.

"What the fuck was that, Adam!?" Gladwyn exclaimed, coming over to them. "That felt like heavy ordnance!"

He looked around for his triple-fused barrier, but it had just left a hole in the ramp behind the mimic and was now completely gone from sight.

"Let's just say that the Legendary Relic and Wandering Eye necklace were quite a massive boost in power for me."

"I'll say."

James got back to his feet. "Thanks for saving me. Again…"

"Don't mention it," Adam replied.

"I'm sorry I hesitated," he said. "This place is messing with my head. I kept hearing these strange whispers."

"Whispers?" Gladwyn asked. "Like what?"

"They've been on-and-off since I selected Nharlla as my Patron," he said. "But they got more insistent after we came down into the prison area. I thought maybe it was because the Quest Object I need is here, but I think it was because of the mimic. They've gone quiet again, now that the mimic is dead…"

"That's creepy," Adam remarked. "But it's good to know, since it's kind of like a warning system."

"I guess," he replied vaguely. "They kept saying I couldn't trust you, that you were lying. They said the same about Maggie."

"I mean, I suppose we were lying to you," Gladwyn said. "You asked how we knew about the lever and Adam's answer was basically a lie."

"Are you okay to continue?" Adam asked him.

"I have a medium healing potion that I'll use once the toxicity wears off."

"What do you think happened to Maggie and the kid?" Gladwyn asked. "You think the mimic got to them first?"

"Given that it can transform, it might have been able to get here quickly," Adam theorised, "so it's possible it could've started off in the Sanctuary and then made its way here."

"Should we go back to check?" Gladwyn asked.

I could fly there with my barrier, but unless all three of us go, they would be exposed.

Not to mention, the Bone Creepers might shoot us out of the air…

"I don't think it's worth it. If they're dead, we'd at most get a few hundred Points from their gear," he replied, before realising how messed up that sounded a second later.

"Even if they're alive, they'd probably just start a fight with us, thinking we were forcing them to join us," James said.

"How about this," Gladwyn said, "if we find the Stage Objective with a lot of time to spare, then we could go check on them."

"I'm okay with that," Adam said.

James nodded.

Gladwyn turned to his cube. "How much time is left?"

[18 hours and 6 minutes.]

"Damn, we've already been here 6 hours?" Adam muttered in surprise.

"No time to waste then," Gladwyn said.

They moved up the tower ramp, each atop their own barrier that Adam carefully controlled. It was much faster than walking and more efficient than running. They went past the barracks where they'd fought the Mana Hoarders, before stopping at the next landing. This one had different enemies guarding it and the design was like that of a cave.

Bear-sized bats came out to attack them, each of them with blue-glowing crystals embedded in their foreheads like crude horns. The cube called them Manawings.

James realised he could drain the Mana from their horns, which severely debilitated them and boosted his own reserves, though he used the power of the Aspirant's Cowl sparingly to avoid the Mana Euphoria that had made him charge head-first into the barracks.

With Gladwyn drawing the monster's attention and Adam and James working together to kill them, they were able to quickly work their way through the cave, especially once three Winter Dancers manifested from Adam's lantern and lent their aid. Thanks to Gladwyn, the creatures' natural fixation on magic wielders was greatly mitigated, which made things a lot safer for them and allowed his expert defence to shine.

[Encounter cleared.]

Adam tried to loot the crystals from the bats, but it wasn't possible.

"Whose turn is it?" James asked when they stopped in front of the Upgrade Chest they were rewarded for their efforts.

"Gladwyn's," Adam said. Although he really wanted to evolve his spell-tome to see what the final evolution did now that he had Alepheria's Mandate, he knew it was best to stick to the rotation they had decided upon, especially since he'd already gotten two Relics and the other two had only gotten one each.

They got back on Adam's barriers after quickly looking through the cave and finding nothing, then they continued up along the ramp. As expected, the next landing had yet another encounter for them.

This time they were dealing with slimes, but instead of stones inside their bodies, they had blue crystals. Their jelly bodies were made of translucent grey metal that they could manifest into metallic weapons like swords, spears, claws, shields, hammers, and so on.

[These are elementals called Metal Slimes.]

Gladwyn had trouble defending against them all, but since he focused them all together, Adam and James were able to come at them from the side, striking them before they could harden their bodies to protect their cores. Like with their last two encounters, ice magic was highly effective, but Adam was also able to kill one that got too close by using his Blood Fist Ring, spearing it with a blood spike and destroying its crystal core.

When Adam's Winter Dancers manifested, the horde of metal slimes were quickly turned to popsicles, allowing the three of them to methodically break their bodies into chunks to extract the crystals within.

< < Collectible Relic > >

< Crystallised Mana Core (Uncommon) — Mana condensed into a crystal that can power contraptions and sustain simple lifeforms >

They managed to collect four of them before pushing deeper into the third landing's strange chamber. James held up one of them and sucked the Mana right out of it. The core turned to blue dust in his hand.

"Stop that," Adam told him, "we can sell those to Lucca."

Since three Winter Dancers were still active, Adam sent them into the chamber recessed into the Tower's wall. Then they followed them in.

It was a round room where everything was made from metal like the slimes, but it resembled a miniature version of Stage One, with the walls shaped like the trunks of densely-packed trees and an apple tree in the centre of the chamber. There were four slimes inside with two cores and sixteen of the single core ones they'd already fought.

"Watch out!" Gladwyn said, stepping in front of Adam and James just as the four big ones fired a barrage of metallic projectiles, producing a familiar sound.

Plop-plop-plop!

Thanks to the special effect of the Shield Wall, all of the projectiles found their way to Gladwyn's shield and momentarily staggered the ranged slimes because of his Nose Ring.

Adam sent his dancers through the crowd of slimes hopping towards them, while he and James repeated their manoeuvre from before.

"Focus on me, you brainless pudding wannabes!" Gladwyn taunted and the slimes turned their attention to him.

He needs to work on his insults…

The four in the back launched another barrage, while Adam's dancers tore into them. He sent two of his three barriers to attack their cores, while focusing on using the third to kill the slimes attacking Gladwyn up close.

As soon as the second trio of dancers appeared, the first set expired. Adam sent the new ones towards the four in the back again, but when a third trio was summoned, he used them to tear through the single core slimes, allowing James to extract the cores while he focused on dealing with the ranged ones.

A few minutes later, frozen metallic slime chunks littered the metal floor of the strange chamber and they had extracted eleven more cores successfully.

[Encounter cleared.]

"Since James drained a core, he gets four and we get five," Adam said.

The Spellblade didn't argue about the fairness of that, which Adam appreciated.

"I'll carry them in my Spidersilk Sack," he told them, and they seemed grateful, since they didn't have deep enough pockets for all the baseball-sized cores.

"How do you get a convenient bag like that?" James asked as the three of them were looking around the chamber for clues. Him and Gladwyn were checking the walls, while Adam stood atop a barrier and searched the apple tree's canopy.

"I got it from a secret vendor called Weaver," he replied.

James nodded. "I found her too. I didn't realise she could make bags, but she made my clothes," he said.

"Even the shoes?" Gladwyn asked, tapping the carved tree trunks of the wall with the pommel of his sword.

"Those I already had," James replied, "but my original suit was ruined during Stage One."

"Same thing happened to me," Adam said.

He lowered himself back down and then brought his three barriers out in front of him and focused as he fused them together. Meanwhile the other two continued checking the curving wall for false panels and hidden buttons.

"I've got nothing," Gladwyn said after a minute.

"Me neither," James added.

Adam had managed to triple fuse his barrier again and shaped it into a simple axe.

"Step back," he told them, "it's pretty hard to control the spell when it's like this."

"Don't need to tell me twice," Gladwyn replied as he jogged back out onto the landing. James quickly followed after him.

With a mental nudge, Adam swung the barrier into the metal trunk of the apple tree. It chopped through with ease and continued going, producing a sound like that of a car crash thanks to all the protesting and screeching metal.

James and Gladwyn poked their heads into view behind him.

"Goddamn, Adam," his friend remarked.

He cast them a grin. "Woops."

A massive hole now adorned the wall of the chamber, but instead of showing the world outside, it just showed a star-specked darkness. Cold wind blew in from the hole and Adam was so fascinated with it that he didn't even realise what he had uncovered within the trunk until James said something.

"What is that?"

Adam looked back at the chopped-down metal tree, seeing a blue crystal sword poking out from the severed trunk. It had somehow survived his barrier chopping through it. Its placement was clearly a nod to how Gram was hidden inside the tree in Stage One.

He went up and put his right hand on it, feeling an electrical jolt up through his arm and a strange sense of how many decades the sword had been waiting for someone to find it.

< < Secret Weapon Obtained > >

< Blue Shard (Rare) — Crystallised sword of Mana >

< Unique Skill ( Mana Blade ) | Draw ambient Mana from the environment to perform a slashing strike of pure magic >

James' eyes lit up as he touched it as well and Adam withdrew his hand.

It feels like it would suit him perfectly.

"Can I take it?" he asked them. "I have the Second Sheath already."

Adam nodded.

"Sure," Gladwyn said. "I've been looking for a back-up to my sword and shield, but I think I'd prefer a purely physical weapon."

"You didn't want Solbor from Stage Five?" Adam asked him. Gladwyn had found all the Secrets there, so he would have found the spear as well.

"I tried it out, but it's not really my style. I've been thinking of getting the normal Lancer class, since you can evolve it to have a parry shield."

Adam almost said, "I've tried it and it's not bad." Fortunately, he managed to bite his tongue and stop himself from revealing that he was a time-looper.

But would it really matter if Gladwyn knew?

And besides, at this point I don't really have a leg up on anyone, since I know as much as he does about this Stage.

James swung his new crystal sword through the air, producing a strange hum.

"This feels really good," he muttered.

He swung it a few more times, and suddenly a blue aura appeared around it, making the blade longer and sharper.

"How are you doing that?" Adam asked.

"My Cowl allows me to see the Mana inside the sword," he replied, "and I can apparently manipulate it with my thoughts."

"Sounds similar to my spell-tome," he remarked, surprised at how quickly James had picked up the manipulation skill.

Perhaps it's easier with the Mage Aspirant's Cowl?

"I don't think there's anything else to find here," Gladwyn said. "Let's continue up."

Adam looked around. "I guess we don't get an Upgrade Chest this time?"

"Perhaps the cores and Secret Weapon are meant to be the rewards?" Gladwyn guessed.

"That seems like a hint. Let's keep that in mind if we find other chambers that don't give rewards," he replied. "After all, Emelia said nothing about the Secrets in this Stage."

"I wonder why," Gladwyn said.

"Maybe she didn't know?" Adam speculated.

They left the chamber and Adam resummoned his barriers, since the triple-fused one had been flung into the black void beyond the Tower's inner walls. Then they continued going up for the next few minutes until reaching the fourth landing.

Unlike the previous three, this landing covered the entire floor in a ring, leaving just a hole in the middle, but they were still able to move across the floor and take the ramp up if they wanted.

Several chambers were recessed into the walls and looked like they went quite deep, even though there had been nothing on the outside of the tower indicating these rooms existed, just like the previous chambers.

< < Optional Stage Objective > >

< Destroy the Laboratorium >

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.