Rise Of The Worthy [LitRPG System Apocalypse]

Chapter 180: Anchorage


Miles and miles of tunnels creep slowly by as Clutter leads us to an end goal that's apparently far further away than I initially thought. The scenery doesn't change at all–square tiles and slightly high ceilings are completely stagnant–and I eventually pull out my Class Card to see if we're even moving at all. A coloured stain traces our path through the walls, but it's so thin and sharp that I have no idea how I'm supposed to map this place out.

Clutter stops on a dime and stares at the wall. "Okay, we're here."

I step hard on a safe tile and grunt at the pain of jamming my leg bones into my waist, then turn to see what's caught his eye. It's nothing. A lot of exactly the same stuff as we've seen for about twenty minutes now, and my awareness isn't feeling anything new. So whatever he's looking at must come from his skill.

"So we go through another wall, then up?"

He nods. "Exactly right. If I haven't messed up, we should be in a straight line with one of the towers I saw earlier. Do you think we should get ready to fight something?"

I shrug. "No idea. I'd bet we're not going to see anything until we get a little further in the quest, but I could be proven wrong in a few seconds. Lead the way."

"Sure." He presses a hand to the wall and steps through, then frowns. "I'm not sure if what you said is a 'yes' or not."

"Neither am I, buddy. But take these just in case." I drop three shield coins in his hands as I walk past, and into–you guessed it–another same-y tunnel. "Man, this place is so weird. It feels like we're in a subway, not an actual city."

Clutter tilts his head to the side as he closes his hand around my coins. "What's a subway?"

"A tunnel for trains to run through." I say as quickly as possible. "Do you know what trains are?"

"I think I do. But I've never been on one–the tracks get attacked too often for anyone but the super rich and powerful to have them." He shoves my coins into his pocket and jogs ahead of me. "Plus, when you've got skills and spells like ours, you don't really need permanent long-range transportation. Just set up a teleporter array and you can have people going wherever they want, whenever they want."

"A teleporter array." I state flatly. "I refuse to believe you have those here."

Clutter raises an eyebrow. "It's not that hard to pay a bunch of people with teleportation spells to stick around specific places. But it is super duper expensive, so Palastia doesn't have one. Heck, I don't think any city on our continent has one."

He considers a teleporter array to be a bunch of random people with teleportation spells. I… guess I had my brain set a little too close to 'sci-fi' for my definition. Honesty, you could probably make some damn good Worth by sending rich people wherever they want to go in the blink of an eye. If I was in a different situation, that could've been a damn good way of making Worth.

"Sounds convenient if you can afford it."

"Oh, it probably is. But I think people would be annoyed if they got my kind of teleportation and they were expecting yours." He laughs to himself and presses his hand against another wall, which opens up to another tunnel. "Most people don't want to do an hour-long walk to get where they're going. Especially if they just paid to be sent there in an instant."

"I can see that. Hey, what if you put a rickshaw in your starway? Then you could advertise it as a faster, safer alternative–not just teleportation."

He scratches his chin in thought. "Hmm. It would probably take more mana to get the rickshaw in and out before the starway collapses, but I guess I could. Um, if you're telling me this because I have to find a new job after this is over…"

I shake my head with a laugh. "Sorry–you're stuck with me now. You know my secrets, you get lifelong employment–whether you like it or not. And hey, soon enough, I might actually be able to pay you for your work."

"Oh. That's great." He sighs with relief. "I thought you were going to let me go after this. Do you want to go up first, or should I?"

We share a look. He sets his mouth in a thin line and bends down with his fingers laced together for me to step on.

"Me first, then?"

He nods. "You're better at protecting yourself. And I'm good at climbing walls. It works out like that."

I shrug; either option works for me. With a nod to confirm that Clutter's ready too, which he returns, I step onto his hand and put my palms on his shoulders.

"On three. One. Two. Three!"

As the last word leaves my mouth, Clutter's body tenses. He stands up with a grunt and pushes my foot as high as he possibly can, which I add to by jumping to the best of my abilities with one leg. Much to my surprise, the roof of the tunnel screams towards my face at a breakneck pace. A surprised yelp scrapes free from my throat, and I throw my hands in front of me to open a door.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Before my skin touches 'stone', the door illuminates and swishes open far faster than any of the others have. I blink as I sail into the next floor, which is nearly as empty as the first, and the floor closes behind me before I can even worry about falling back through it.

"Erk." I grunt as my ass hits solid ground. "Not what I expected, but it worked."

I rub my backside as I stand and look around. Not much seems different–definitely not the apartments Clutter said were in that first tunnel–but there's definitely a few small changes from the tunnel. For one, the ceilings are much lower–only about two feet taller than I am. There are some raised parts in the ground, hollowed out on one side like a permanent desk, and small rectangular protrusions hang from the ceiling above each and every one of them. My awareness doesn't react any more than it did on the previous level, but instead of the tiles feeling trapped, now the 'desks' do.

Actually, now that I take a closer look… the desks are almost evenly laid out in the hallway. I'm not sure exactly how much, and some are further apart than the others, but they're all turned so the hollow sides face the walls with about two feet of clearance between them. If I didn't have my awareness, I definitely would've thought they were solid blocks.

The sound and light of another door opening draws my attention to a spot right close to one of the walls. "Careful, Clutter. The desks are trapped."

"I–grngh, I know." He grunts as he struggles to pull himself through the hole. "This level is where I found the catalyst. It was just sitting on one of the rectangles like someone forgot their lunch at work. At first I thought it was a huge trap, but obviously it wasn't. Unless I actually died there, and I'm hallucinating now?"

I shake my head as I walk over to give him a hand. "Nope–real as can be. You think everywhere has a desk hall with a catalyst in it?"

He accepts my offered hand with a nod of thanks, and I easily pull him free. The door slides shut behind him, and he pants as he dusts off his chest. "I don't know. Maybe? I highly doubt each wall has the exact same makeup as the ones we're in."

"I don't know. The system could've made this place pretty damn symmetrical." I shrug and motion at the ceiling. "Go up again?"

He nods. "Until we reach the top."

A dozen floors later, we emerge through the top of the wall. Chest-high barriers that shimmer further up with magic block us from jumping off, but not the view–which is even stranger from up here. I walk to the edge and rap my knuckles against the face-height shimmering magic, which knocks me back just a little with the smallest amount of force.

It's… weird. Clusters of walls scrape through a seemingly endless cityscape like stone spines of varying sizes, but they're always positioned in the same way–like a sine wave with the bottom chopped off. They start small, get larger, then start getting smaller again until it hits street level. Twists and turns are all taken in groups, and if I could see the city from far up above, I bet it'd look like one giant maze.

Clutter walks up next to me and quietly gasps. "It's like a giant maze."

I grin and gently elbow him in the side. "Just what I was thinking. Sure leaves a lot of room for the quest to get weird, but right now… it still feels like we're missing a huge chunk of everything. Doesn't it?"

"Sure does." He agrees with a nod. "I wonder why. The quest was so cryptic in how we started it, and Stonestep Solutions went straight for it. What do they know about this place that we don't?"

I shrug. "The system said there were supposed to be treasures, so probably that. Hell, maybe we just got put in a safe place because we're low clearance. Whatever it is, standing around and talking about it isn't going to do a damn thing."

With a turn of my heel, I shift to face the tower that's a little further down the wall than Clutter thought. It's blocky, square, and about as big as an apocalypse-watch tower. Or a firewatch tower for the places that still have fires to worry about. I motion at it, and Clutter nods in understanding. We both make our way to the structure, I put my hand on the side, and a circular door pushes outwards at me instead of inwards.

I raise an eyebrow and take a step back. The door slides out of the way to reveal blocky steps spiraling upwards. A little caution seeps into my bones as I carefully creep into the tower, which smells and tastes ever so slightly different than the rest of this place. It reminds me of a hospital–clean but extremely harsh.

Clutter steps back, grimaces, and covers his nose with one hand. "Too strong. Way too strong."

"Want to stay back?"

He silently wars with himself for all of two seconds before shaking his head. "No way. I'll endure it for the sake of the quest."

"Then let's get climbing." I say with a gesture at the rectangular steps that jut straight out of the tower walls. "Watch your head."

I confidently place my foot on the first step. It holds easily, so I bring up my other foot. Nothing so much as a creak meets my ears, and I shift my weight onto the second step. That, too, doesn't react to my presence. I shift my awareness to feel for magic, but aside from something radiating from the top of the tower, it seems completely inert. No traps anywhere to be found.

Clutter follows closely behind as I ascend. He grumbles and whines the entire time, but I'm willing to cut him a little slack, seeing as the smell and general feel of this tower is starting to grate on my nerves. Lights from nowhere flick on at the halfway mark, blazing straight down on us like spotlights in a surgical bay. I sneer at the sensations that seem tailor-made to bother me, summon a purification coin just in case, and soldier on.

Step by step, the sensations grow. Not even close enough to cause harm, or to dissuade us from climbing, but if this was a purely for-fun trip, I would've turned back the second the tower tried to blind us. The unsettling smell of utter cleanliness saturates my nose so thoroughly that I swear I can feel my sinuses getting sanitized, but before I can sneeze out a batch of medical-grade hand sanitizer, my foot touches the top step. I sigh in relief and pull myself up, but obviously, the smell doesn't end here.

It emanates from a set of concentric circles, each stacked on top of each other, until the smallest one reaches up to my belly button. A crackling well of grey magic in the smallest one emits the sanitization stench, and without a second thought, we press the catalyst into the perfectly-sized holster.

Subquest: Welcome to Nowhere.

Objective Complete. 100 Worth granted.

Continuation: The anchor has been activated. Defend it until it integrates with the city.

Reward: Continuation of subquest.

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