Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 161

Ashley

Way back when she’d been a level 1, driven only by her need to put some food on her family’s increasingly barren table, Ashley had earned her class in a trial by fire. Literally.

It had terrified her, and it had scarred her on more than one level. It’d taken her nearly half a year to even consider picking up a sword, then another month before she could be convinced to apply the lightest hints of flame to it.

Lucas had been the one who forced her out of the rut. He’d been a bit of an asshole about it, in all honesty, but looking back on it, Ashley couldn’t really fault him.

That was Lucas. He was brusque without realizing it, and he forgave a few too many enemies for Ashley’s liking, but at his core, he just wanted to help people.

And that, she mused, was exactly why Tuyu’s claims had been so ineffective. Ashley had adventured with Tuyu for almost a year more than she’d spent with Lucas, but it had been the [Healer], now [Tour Guide], who’d saved her life in the beginning, and he’d never shown the slightest hint of turning on his charges.

It spoke volumes about him that although the messages Tuyu sent had sowed seeds of discord, nobody had acted. People were wary when the subject came up, yes, but the sentiment towards the dungeon was still entirely positive. Nobody thought the [Archbishop]’s messages held water.

So why had she sent them?

With quite a bit of power, Thorn had [Locate]d Tuyu, and at some point in the night, it looked like she’d stopped hiding from them, because when they and Starfall split off from the Minus One and Alder Corp conglomerate, he noted with some surprise that he knew exactly where she was.

“It looks like she’s coming from the capital,” he said, frowning. “From the king’s castle.”

“That isn’t concerning,” Ashley said.

“I think that’s concerning,” K’lon replied.

“Yeah, no shit,” Ashley said. “It’s called sarcasm, you big doof.” Her words had no venom in them. This was a conversation they’d had dozens, maybe hundreds of times by now, and she never tired of it.

“Hey,” Charles said, walking next to her. “I’m sorry about the whole, uhhh… you know.”

“I know,” Ashley said. He’d apologized a couple dozen times by now, but he never seemed to get that the Pallbearers had never borne him any ill will for threatening to kill Tuyu. Her sudden outburst had been as much of a surprise to her party as it had been to Starfall. “Let bygones be bygones, okay? It’s water under the bridge.”

“I guess so.” Charles sounded unconvinced. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“Capital, right?” He definitely knew that already, but he was pacing his [Hurricane] to match the speed of Ashley’s [Phoenix Feather], so he was probably here for a conversation. She would oblige him that much, at least.

“What do you think Tuyu wants?” Charles asked. “Seeing as your party spent the most time with her and all.”

“It’s hard to say,” Ashley replied. “She was the last addition to our party, and she was powerful. She’s always been a bit cryptic. For a while, it was just random eccentricities, so we didn’t think too much of it, but now…”

The last part was unspoken, but they all knew it. Given the manner of Tuyu’s disappearance, her messages afterward, and the pure vitriol she’d unleashed upon Centerpoint Dungeon, it was a safe assumption that she’d been working with the king.

That wasn’t the kind of stain that went away.

“You can’t talk to her?” Charles asked. “You don’t have a party messaging system or anything?”

“Do you?” Ashley asked. “We decided we didn’t need one once the ARI started getting big and commonplace. Alder banned her from the ARI interface, though, so we can’t talk to her anymore.”

“Oh. Did she?”

“Why do you think Tuyu stopped sending messages? Anyway, Thorn does have [Sending], but it’s one-way, and we don’t know if the king’s wards block off communication spells alongside long-range teleportation.”

“That’s fair,” Charles said. “What are we going to do when we find her?”

A hint of steel crept into his voice with that last line, so Ashley knew what he was really asking.

Are you going to be able to kill her?

“We’re going to see if she has any relevant information to share,” Ashley said. “We’ll figure it out from there.”

She didn’t miss how the [Storm Sniper] gripped his gun a little tighter. “You do that.”

#

Nora

Nora woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling.

Panic shot through her. I’ve been kidnapped, she thought. I let my guard down and the king took me.

But she hadn’t, she slowly realized. The [Alchemist] was wholly unbound. Her clothes were as dirty as they had been last night. Her alchemy gear was still intact.

She just wasn’t in the same part of the tower anymore.

Yesterday, she remembered seeing dull grey concrete and steel dominate the bulk of the tower. Nora had fallen asleep not too far from the [Alchemist]-sized hole that her [Miner’s Liquification] had created.

Now, it was nowhere to be seen. The machinery glittered like it was made of gold and jewels, and she was at least three stories higher than she had been. Had the tower always been this wide? She remembered it being half a mile long from the outside, but it looked like it stretched far beyond that now.

It was enough to make her wonder if she really had been displaced and sent to another part of the world.

If she had, though, nobody had come to take her. She didn’t have the greatest sense of direction, but if she could check where she was—

[The King’s 1st Production Tower]

Oh! When she looked at the tower and used [Identify], her interface popped up!

It was back. She could see her stats again! She could even try and find where she was, and maybe message everyone else about this weird structure. Even if she got a message out, she knew, they were unlikely to be in the area, so she had to do as much investigating as she could.

She realized the fatal flaw in her initial plan when she opened her system map.

Nora knew where she was, now—just south of the center of the kingdom, maybe a hundred miles from the capital—but she had no idea where anyone else was.

That was something she could fix, though! She opened up the ARI, keen to talk to everyone.

[Due to the effects of a [Message Nullification] spell, you may not use any form of magical communication within this tower.]

[Due to the effects of a [Divine Pact] spell, your access to the interface is limited.]

Huh. Now wasn’t that something.

It was rather concerning, honestly. Those were some hefty spells to place on a tower in the middle of a wasteland populated mostly by shattered corpses, especially one that the interface said belonged to the king.

She had a bad feeling about this.

Nora resolved to steal as much stuff as she could and get out.

Those spheres she’d seen yesterday were one of the few things that were still present in their original form today. There were crates of them being loaded up, dozens upon dozens of them per crate, and there were hundreds of crates in this section of the tower alone. Given how little of it she could actually see, given the cramped machinery and confusing layout, she was sure there would be more.

Lifting a crate on its own didn’t seem to be possible. They were each almost as tall as Nora was, and [Strength] wasn’t her strong suit.

She did, however, have an alchemy kit. Nora wasn’t sure how safe it was to create new solutions in here, but she’d managed to sleep an entire night without being attacked, so she figured a dozen minutes couldn’t hurt.

They didn’t.

Even with her limited access to the interface, Nora knew what she was doing by heart. Size and weight potions had been some of the first ones she’d created, back when the only way she’d been able to earn money was by helping out at the local quarry.

[Splash Potion of Minimization] lowered an item’s size and weight both, and a bog-standard [Potion of Gargantuan Strength] was enough to power her up to carry multiple.

She shrank a dozen crates down to the size of a small cat, doused them with a heavy dose of [Cohesive Sealant] to glue them together into a single Nora-sized brick of crates, and lifted them easily. With her potions combined, it was like she was lifting feathers.

She started making her way out, searching for an exit.

There were crates of the odd spheres everywhere. It was obvious enough—she’d been something like five stories up, and it had been trivial to find a bunch of them just set into massive shelves on the walls.

As she slowly made her way down, though, getting turned around and walking in circles at least twice, she saw that every wall was lined with them. How many crates of these things were there?

Nora had a suspicion as to what they were, and the fact that they were all in the king’s name deepened any suspicions she had.

She didn’t want to stick around for too long. Although no harm had come to her yet, every step set her on edge. That bad feeling from earlier had compounded, and she remembered very clearly what the [Tour Guide] had told her when she’d set out on that fateful mission.

It’s going to be tough, he’d said. The king is human, I think, but he’s as unhinged as the Omen. By all reports, it’s a living hell out there.

Yeah, there was no way she was staying here any longer.

Nora remembered that there was no proper entrance, so she doubted there would be an exit, either. This was clearly a magical building of some kind, though why there would be interference against messaging and not breaking and entering was beyond her.

But it suited Nora, so she took out another vial of [Miner’s Liquification] and smashed a new hole in the wall. It was her last one. She was going to have to restock when she got back to civilization.

Assuming civilization still exists out there.

With that sobering thought on her mind, Nora stepped out through the hole.

[Warning: unauthorized egress detected.]

[Warning: unauthorized transport of Dungeon Cores detected.]

[The king has been notified. Please remain calm.]

[Stay where you are, and you will survive.]

“Aw, fuck,” Nora muttered.

She ran.

#

Tuyu

The [Archbishop] knew that her former party and the one she’d worked with and ultimately attacked were coming for her.

She couldn’t let them catch her. Initially, she had resigned herself to her fate. Though she may have been the righteous hand of the goddess, she was also a person. The hand knew what was just, but Tuyu did not, and that meant that she could no longer be the goddess’ most loyal servant. Death was an acceptable end.

Then, as she’d fled the castle, thoughts of penance on her mind, her [Sight Beyond Sight] caught another person. One she’d worked with before, during the battle against the Omen.

Nora. The [Alchemist]. Tuyu had hurt her, too—the goddess had guided her hand from afar as she used her [Sympathetic Bond] to alter the effects of an ally’s item. She’d been a necessary sacrifice, Tuyu had told herself, but it looked like somehow, the girl had survived.

She’d been disconnected from the goddess’ will, Tuyu realized. That was why the [Archbishop]’s spell, which was otherwise so adept at seeing the world, had failed to notice her until now.

Tuyu had looked closer, realized where Nora was, and then had a revelation as half a dozen puzzle pieces clicked into place.

The king had discarded her once she’d outlived her use, though to her surprise, she had remained alive. He’d ignored her, which Tuyu almost preferred death to. She hadn’t even factored into his calculations. The most she’d heard from him was through her own prying eyes. The king knew that she was listening, Tuyu was sure. Did he think that she was truly on his side, or did he think that she was too weak and stupid to use what he said?

As it was, his plotting had been cryptic. He’d spoken a handful of times, but Tuyu had only caught fragments.

One of them, however, had been about security for that tower in the desert.

A tower that Nora was currently inside.

Tuyu pushed herself to go faster. She was still fifty miles away. Her [Flight] spell wasn’t strong enough—she had fallen into the rut of working with a team that could speed her up.

If Tuyu could save even one of the lives she’d ruined, she had to try.

She had to make it in time. She had to get Nora out of the king’s tower, safely.

Then, once the [Alchemist] was safe, Tuyu could die.

#

Ashley

“Where the fuck is she going?” Ashley asked. This was the third time in two hours they’d changed directions.

“South,” Thorn replied. “She must have seen us coming. Tuyu’s flying in almost a straight line. I do not know where she plans on going, but I doubt it is solely evasive action.”

“Well, shit,” Ashley said. “Let’s catch up to her.”

“Let’s,” Thorn said grimly.

The Pallbearers were all level 20 or higher, now. Starfall was level 23 or higher. Almost all of them had dedicated movement skills.

Tuyu wasn’t going to be able to flee.

Ashley sighed heavily, delving into her [Phoenix Feather], and tried to clear her mind.

It wasn’t every day you set off to kill a person you’d once called a friend.