"Ah shit, another optional objective," Gladwyn muttered.

"It might be worth skipping it," Adam said.

"Why?" James asked.

"Emelia, the time-looper Gladwyn mentioned, she said that if we complete two optional objectives, then a really difficult and dangerous boss will appear," Adam explained.

"That Tower Crawler thing that was mentioned once we killed the Warden?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"But we get Points for doing this, right?" he continued.

"We do," Adam confirmed.

"You know," Gladwyn said, "I think Emelia underestimates us a lot. I say we do the objective and kill the damn boss. How scary can it really be?"

"Famous last words," Adam joked. "But I agree. I think the three of us can take on pretty much anything."

James looked around. "Where do we start?"

The fourth landing was a ring that hugged the walls of the Tower and had six different chambers embedded into the brickwork. Two of them were rectangular chambers with vats and flesh sacks that wriggled with inner life and which were fed by snaking tubes running along the ceiling, leading deeper into the lab. The next two were operating rooms with simple portcullis gates through which could be seen stone slabs. Creatures and constructs lay atop these slabs, and strange many-limbed humanoids performed vivisections on them and reworked their bodies. The last two chambers were covered by translucent skin on the wall facing them, providing a blurry image of the other side. It seemed like they were used for storage.

Adam flung his barriers into one of the translucent walls, but they broke on impact, just like with the cells in the basement prison.

"We have to go through one of those," Gladwyn said, pointing to the two chambers with the wriggling flesh sacks. "I think they're connected to the rest by tunnels."

"The layout of this tower is quite bizarre," James muttered.

Adam let Gladwyn take the lead while he ordered his three barriers to stab and slash at the vats and flesh sacks, killing the lifeforms within before they could pop out to ambush them. Each kill sent a soul essence into his lantern, and he managed to summon six Winter Dancers before they'd worked their way through the rectangular chamber. The summons floated behind Adam like his entourage until they found an opening that led into one of the operating rooms with a many-limbed surgeon inside. It looked like a man, though he was missing his lower body and ten arms sprouted from his back like the limbs of a messed-up spider, lifting him off the floor. Each of the arms had seven-fingered hands.

[This is an augmented humanoid called a Flesh Smith.]

Adam frowned at the name and sent his dancers to target the vile creature.

"You're disrupting my work!" he screamed with an unnatural voice.

This chamber was full of operating slabs and half-completed constructs similar to the Mana Hoarders, as well as hybrid monstrosities like the animals they'd encountered in the prison. Despite their incomplete states, they charged for Adam and his party.

The enemies themselves weren't dangerous, but it was difficult to fight in a confined space like this. The moment they killed the Flesh Smith, they suddenly had more half-finished surgery experiments coming from the next chamber, as well as half-formed humanoids sneaking up from the way they'd come, dripping with embryonic fluid from the vats and sacks.

Adam sent two of his barriers to guard their back, while James went to town with his new crystal sword, carving through everything in his path.

"Toss me one of my crystal cores!" he yelled as the aura of his blade died down.

When Adam threw one into his awaiting hand, James immediately drained the mana from it using his Cowl. Adam thought it was a waste, but James was free to do whatever he wanted with his share of the cores.

With renewed Mana, James switched to his Spellblade weapon and performed an elaborate flourish, coating the blade in fire before swinging wildly to launch flames at the vat-born humanoids. To their collective surprise, the embryonic fluid dripping off of them was highly flammable, and the malformed creatures quickly succumbed to the fire as it engulfed them.

"Watch out!" Gladwyn exclaimed as one of the burning half-formed humans lunged for Adam.

He quickly shoved a barrier into it and pushed it away before it could grab him, somehow also managing to fuse the fire on its body into the midnight-blue pane of magical glass. The creature was extinguished and crumbled into a heap of foul-stinking burnt meat. Meanwhile the fused barrier lost all physicality and became a square wall of fire.

Adam didn't waste the opportunity and swept it through the other vat creatures, setting them ablaze.

"Push through to the next chamber!" he yelled to Gladwyn.

"You've got it!" he responded and crouched down behind his large shield. It was just barely smaller than the doorway they'd be moving through. On the other side the constructs and surgery patients pounded on the metal.

With the sound of shattering bones and a woosh of air, Gladwyn activated his Spring Boots and launched himself and his shield forward like a semi-truck, absolutely obliterating whatever was unlucky to be trapped between him and where he was going.

The operation chamber was quickly consumed by flames and James and Adam ran through the corridor in the enemies Gladwyn had made, killing every creature still alive and writhing on the floor.

Once the two of them passed through the doorway to the adjoining operating room they quickly pulled a heavy surgery slab in front of it, blocking the remaining vat-born monsters from following them in as the conflagration spread. Meanwhile, Gladwyn kept them safe from the few constructs remaining in the chamber, as well as the Flesh Smith furiously slamming his spidery limbs into his shield while screaming that his research was ruined.

The dancers were already tearing into them, six of the summons having followed Gladwyn without Adam's explicit command.

James switched back to his crystal sword and tore through the unfinished constructs while Adam resummoned his barriers and dispatched the Flesh Smith by driving two lances through his gangly body.

No sooner had they cleared the room than an explosion from behind them rocked the floor.

"Get down," Gladwyn told them and moved between them and the barricade they'd made to the previous room.

Adam manoeuvred his barriers out in front of the Shield Wall just in time to save him from the flames that rolled through the lab and into the operating room they were in. As the fire touched the barriers, Adam fused it all into them, preventing the flames from rolling over Gladwyn's shield and burning him.

Once the threat had passed, they all took a breather and looked around the laboratorium. There was no simple passageway into the remaining two chambers with the strange translucent skin walls, but at the back of the operating room they were in was a hallway leading deeper.

"In hindsight, it was quite dumb of me to step in front of the flames," Gladwyn said.

"Yeah, I don't think you'll block fire anytime soon," Adam replied.

"Never say never," he argued. "Might be my next evolution, who's to say?"

"Good thinking about using your barriers," James praised Adam.

All three of them had turned into burning square panes and were letting off quite a lot of smoke even though they weren't burning anything. Adam resummoned them but had to steady himself against a stone slab as his Mana dipped low again.

"Mind if I take a moment to get my Mana back?" he asked them.

"Sure," Gladwyn replied.

"Is there a way to do it faster without potions?" James asked.

Adam looked around the floor until he found a spot that was relatively clean and sat down. He tapped the floor next to him with his left hand. "If you are sitting, you regenerate 4 points of Mana per second instead of just 1," he explained.

James sat where Adam had indicated. "I had no idea that was a thing," he replied.

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"Isn't it something you learn when you start with a magic-based weapon?" Gladwyn asked.

He probably knows about it because of Beck, Adam realised.

"Maybe it's different because I evolved my weapon into one that's magical?" James replied.

Adam nodded. "That kind of makes sense."

While they sat on the floor of the operation chamber, Gladwyn looked around between the blood-slick stone slabs and dead bodies for secrets. He also kept an eye on the fire raging in the other room, although there wasn't too much stuff that could actually burn, aside from some cabinets and a few of the tools that used wooden handles. The rest was either stone or metal.

With a click, the portcullis to their chamber opened and produced a screech of metal-on-stone.

"I found a button," Gladwyn said.

Adam had almost regenerated all of his Mana and got back to his feet.

The 'button' was actually a small metal lever hidden between the wall of the portcullis and a large cabinet. Inside of the cabinet were glass vials and bottles full of organs and strange alien bits of flesh floating in oily fluid.

"I don't think there are any other ways to go than through that back hallway," Adam pointed out.

"Regardless, it's nice to have somewhere to retreat if we need it," Gladwyn remarked.

"That's true."

"I'm back to full," James said.

He must've been quite low on Mana if it took him this long to refuel.

Maybe he doesn't get affected by Mana Exhaustion as significantly as me, or maybe he just handles it better?

Gladwyn moved in front of them as they followed the stone hallway that went even deeper into the Tower's wall. It was uncomfortably narrow, not allowing them to walk side by side, and instead forcing them to go single file.

I hope we don't have to fight in here…

After a tense minute in the narrow space, they reached a new chamber. It was a square room with the opening for another hallway on the right of where they emerged.

"Shit," Gladwyn muttered.

In the centre of the room was a bizarre and disturbing creature hanging upside-down. It reminded Adam of a spider because of the large abdomen at the top near the ceiling and the many long arms spreading out from a round body below it. The arms were like those of a human, but they had a second joint and were absurdly long. Each one had a seven-fingered hand and was working independently from the rest, moving around above vats, flesh sacks, surgery slabs, and workbenches with disassembled constructs on it. The round body the arms grew from was just like a knot of flesh, and there wasn't any head visible on the creature.

"What the fuck is that?" Adam asked, frowning in disgust.

[This is an augmented humanoid called a Master Flesh Smith.]

"We should target its abdomen, it's full of the same fluid as the flammable vats," James said.

Adam looked at the top of its body and realised he was right. He also noticed that the cables for the flesh sacks and vats in the other chambers all led to this thing.

"If we do that, it'll fill the room with flames," he replied.

"It doesn't seem like its interested in us," Gladwyn remarked. "Let's go through to the next two chambers before we deal with it."

Adam nodded. "I don't think there's an exit in those, so we probably have to set fire to this thing and then run like crazy back the way we came."

"Just say the word," James replied with a glint of arsonistic glee in his eyes.

They spent a few moments looking around the spider's creepy chamber, but aside from the many projects it worked on, there was nothing of interest to them, not even the disturbing thing James had to find for his Patron.

Adam was fairly sure his Quest Object wasn't in the laboratorium either, since they didn't seem to be keeping notes anywhere and also didn't produce chimaera here, not to mention the fact that it was the personal notes of Alepheria.

I'm more likely to find them if we locate her private lab or study.

After all, I'm fairly sure we're still quite far from the top…

They moved through the hallway from the Master Flesh Smith's operating theatre to the last two chambers, but when they reached the end of the tunnel they discovered that the two rooms with the translucent walls were actually joined together, since the wall between them had been knocked down.

The smell in this room was so bad it actually made Adam see stars, almost like his brain was malfunctioning.

"God that's foul," Gladwyn muttered between gasps.

Around them lay the discarded remains of surgery experimentations and there was not a single bit of flesh here that wasn't in some advanced stage of decay. However, there was a chest in the middle of the room.

"It's an Upgrade Chest," James mumbled while covering his nose and mouth with his right arm.

"My turn," Adam said and stepped forward.

The chest was made from bone but was full of holes big enough that he could fit his fingers in them. Somehow, the sight freaked him out a bit, causing a bit of trypophobia.

He kicked it and it sprung open.

< < Upgrades Available > >

< Barrier Efficiency (Rare) — Reduces barrier summoning cost by 15% >

< Manipulation Speed (Rare) — Increases manipulation speed by 35% >

< Mana (Epic) — Increase Mana by 10 >

Hmm, I feel like I can get pretty insane speed with my triple fusion, so I don't think I need that.

The question here is really whether 15% reduced cost is better than 10 extra Mana.

My starting summoning cost for the barriers is 50 Mana. It's already reduced to 40 by the 20% reduction I got from picking two Efficiency upgrades before, but with another 15%, it would be down to 32 or 33, depending on whether it rounds up or not.

With 200 total Mana, I can summon six times in a row at a cost of 33 Mana.

With 210 total Mana, I can only summon five times in a row at a cost of 40 Mana.

The choice was obvious.

< < Upgrade Selected > >

< Barrier Efficiency (Rare) >

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Gladwyn said, dry heaving after inhaling the smell.

Adam followed after them as they returned to the chamber with the spider hanging from the ceiling. As they walked through the narrow tunnel, he pulled up his armament info.

< < Weapon Status > >

< 1 >

< Spell-Tome >

< Rare Quality >

< Level 14 >

< Stat Upgrades >

< Barrier Durability 90% >

< Barrier Efficiency 35% >

< Manipulation Effect 130% >

< Manipulation Speed 55% >

< Manipulation Range 20% >

< 2 >

< Wand & Wraith Lantern >

< Rare Quality >

< Level 8 >

< Stat Upgrades >

< Spell Damage 35% >

< Spell Speed 110% >

< Casting Effect 35% >

Still 4 levels before I can evolve the spell-tome a third time.

After they returned to the chamber with the creepy Master Flesh Smith, James asked, "How do you wanna do this? I can shoot the flame effect from my Spellblade at the sack from about five metres away."

The wandering eye on Adam's necklace tracked the sword in his hand as he gestured with it.

"You'll definitely be too close," Gladwyn said.

"I think you should let my barriers handle it," Adam told him. "I'll use one to puncture the sack and spill the flammable fluid into the chamber and then use a second one to ignite it. And I can be up to 12 metres away while I give the command."

He could technically be further away, but when the barriers left his range he lost control of them, just like what had happened the last two times he triple fused his barriers.

James nodded. "That's a better idea. Do you want me to produce a flame for you to absorb?"

Adam grinned. "Thanks. Beats having to run back out there to get it from the other chambers."

Gladwyn returned through the hallway first while James set fire to his sword and allowed Adam to fuse the magic with one of the three barriers. Although it made his head feel like it was doing cartwheels in his skull, he managed to shape the two normal barriers into lances, while the third flaming one remained in its large square shape.

"Go on, I'll be right behind you," Adam told James.

The Spellblade clapped him on the shoulder and took off running.

As he left, the wandering eye panned around before fixating on one of the operating slabs where a dead woman lay, most of her body flayed of its skin and the spider's arm methodically removing the rest.

Adam commanded the two normal barriers to strike the large pouch of embryonic fluid. They shot through the air of the chamber and easily tore holes into the Master Flesh Smith's abdomen, producing a sound like tearing canvas.

The arms didn't stop what they were doing, even as the oily fluid cascaded out from its body through the holes he'd made and sloshed all over the experiments beneath.

It's like it can't even feel pain or anything… Creepy.

Adam focused on the last barrier.

"Wait 3 seconds and then fly towards where the enemy is tethered."

There was no sense that the barrier understood his command and he was a bit worried it might be too complex, but he didn't waste a second running after James and Gladwyn.

The sound of his boots on the stone floor of the narrow tunnel echoed loudly in his ears.

Fwoosh!

An explosion of wind and warmth brushed past him and he instinctively resummoned his barriers, positioning them behind himself and using them to move his body even faster.

Adam came skating out of the hallway and into James, grabbing him as he flew towards the open portcullis outside of which Gladwyn waited for them.

They both skidded across the landing, while Adam redirected his barriers to cover the open entrance to the operating room, just in time to stem the roaring flames that chased after him.

"That's way worse than I thought it would be," Gladwyn said, holding his shield up in front of them, just in case.

James was breathing heavily.

Adam focused his attention on the barriers blocking the doorway. Since the flames could not push through them, even though they dealt enough damage to crack them and trigger Fervour, the fire moved down the other opening in the room, trailing devastation back into the three chambers that'd already been severely burnt by their previous ignition of the vats and flesh sacks. As the roaring flames reached their finale, a tongue of fire emerged from one of the rectangular chambers where the vats had been, charring part of the landing.

The barriers expired, but the danger had passed, only hot air blowing out through the open portcullis.

"I feel like we were meant to die to that," James said.

Adam nodded. "Definitely a trap."

< < Optional Stage Objective Complete > >

< Destroyed the Laboratorium >

The Tower Crawler has awoken.

A shiver rolled through the Tower's walls and the floor of the landing.

That can't be a good sign…

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