We walked through the small settlement of the second floor, and as we passed by people I made a note of their equipment. Almost everyone still used a stone or flint weapon, while their armor was predominantly either fur or leather which looked quite thin. It was doubtful that I would find anything worth of trade save for basic necessities until I hit the tenth floor, and even then I didn't even need to bother with trading at that point. A small smile flashed across my face at the thought of reaching that sanctuary.

 

Lucas lead me over to where Alexia had stomped off to, where a new person stood with crossed arms. He had a basic set of clothing along with a bow on his backside, the bow itself one of the worst ones I'd seen in a long time. There was no happiness in his face as he glared at me, clearly unhappy with the choice that Lucas had made. Not far off behind him floated the sphere itself.

 

Alexia opted to remain quiet, though her distaste for a slave had already been laid bare. "Was that all you could really get?" the archer asked, one finger pointed rudely in my direction.

 

A slight incline of my head to the side, I couldn't resist smiling at the man. "Oh, are you that intimidated by me?"

 

"Ivan!" Lucas said as he moved in between us, a response so quick that the archer couldn't even go two steps before being stopped.

 

"Slave dreck," Ivan responded, spitting on the the ground in front of me, before he turned and stomped over toward the sphere. He turned his head to look at us, his next words filled with malice that obviously was directed toward me. "Are we going?"

 

Lucas bent over and whispered into my ear. "Please don't antagonize them, I'd rather not have you die because of your choice in words," he requested. It was a request that I would most likely choose to ignore given how aggravating the others had already proven.

 

Still I nodded to him in an attempt of reassurance before I walked over to the sphere. Rather than standing next to Ivan I opted to go all the way around the sphere and take up the exact opposite side, whereupon I reached up toward the milky object.

 

"Stupid slave," Alexia muttered before she stood next to Ivan and also touched the sphere. Her jaw visibly clenched, while her eyes closed in concentration.

 

My eyes closed while the thoughts started to focus on what was required, the need to move on to the next floor. If one didn't properly concentrate there was a strong chance of an accident happening. Pierre once told me of how he had gone the opposite direction before, and somehow even skipped down an extra floor, because he had been distracted.

---

Floor 3

The Imps Tower

---

There was that slight sensation of a shift, and then all four of us appeared in the middle of a floating island. The island was not altogether large, barely a tenth of the size that Grantis had been. What made it so impressive was the tower that stood slightly offset from where we had arrived, a twenty story tall building designed to kill everyone and anyone.

 

If the first floor was designed to prepare you with basic equipment, and the second was designed to prepare the diver for combat, then what was the third? A death trap that Luticia had handcrafted carefully, literally a building full of traps meant to kill or ensnare. While there were imps that ran about the place the quantity was far too low to be a threat, not to mention that the imps themselves were a minor opponent on the level of the Fuzzies.

 

The funniest part about the tower was that often you could run across dead imps, caught in the traps that divers had to learn how to evade. I had once asked Lute about why that happened and she explained that the tower was a buffer zone, because anything sentient could utilize the portal system. The tower was there to help dissuade anything from going down to the second floor and upsetting the balance, while also serving as a training area for the divers.

 

While the other three of our group stood and began to prepare themselves I had already begun to walk in the direction of the tower. I spun the dagger slowly in my left hand, mostly out of a sense of boredom than anything else, while I called up from my memory everything that I knew about this floor.

 

"Where are you going?" Lucas called out from behind as he watched me walk away, then he hurriedly ran to catch up. Alexia watched the both of us head off and followed suit, although slowly, while Ivan pulled out an arrow from his quiver and placed it at the ready near his bowstring.

 

"Mm? I was heading to the next portal," I gave a shake of my head, since where else would I have gone? While the normal place of a portal was randomized in the Imp Tower it was always located on the top floor.

 

"There are traps inside! A lot, like...an infinite amount that will kill you!" Lucas told me, as he reached out to grip onto my right shoulder. With the slightest of shrugs I avoided being grappled by the oaf.

 

"I know, but the placements don't change," I informed him, as I turned my head slightly to glance behind. A fact that any experienced diver would have known due to passing through this floor multiple times. It was a fact that I hoped was still true given how an unknown amount of time had passed by between my death and rebirth.

 

"Let the slave take the lead, if he dies it's a load off our backs," Alexia chimed in from behind her brother. Her hands were beneath her cloak, and if she had any intelligence most likely right near where she kept her weapons.

 

"We can't simply let him die, and of course we know the placement doesn't change. Everyone knows that, but there really are an infinite amount!" Lucas declared.

 

A shake of the head was the only reply I could muster up to that pitiful complaint. The quality of the divers had apparently dropped during my hiatus, and the fact that this fodder was so hesitant caused a hint of regret to worm into my heart. During the fight in Grantis I had heard a comment about hundreds of years, a comment that meant at least that much time had already gone by with my dead lover cold and exposed in the Garden. If someone had come along since then...I shook with rage at the thought.

 

When I reached the front of the tower I did a quick study of the archway to make sure nothing major had changed, that unknown type of stone used to create the tower as stubbornly existent as always. At one point in the past one man had tried to smash his way through the walls only to discover that the tools he had were incapable of such a feat, and so most gave up on the idea of figuring out a way to cheat through the tower. As it had been ingrained into me from dozens of times passing through I put one foot onto the entrance before I retracted it, a guillotine created entirely from stone slicing down and cutting the air where my foot had been. With a grating noise the guillotine slowly began to rise back up, a slow movement that would be followed by an even slower rearming sequence.

 

"Are you coming or not?" was all I asked, before I continued to walk through the inside of the tower.

 

Lucas gawked at what I had done, perhaps not expecting an Elf to know about the trap, though Ivan and Alexia merely shrugged. Everyone who went to the third floor inherently had to know about the guillotine trap at the start, since anyone who didn't died to it. To me this place was little more than a playground, a fun place where you could pick up some easy imp meat or even some of their equipment if they brought any with them.

 

The other three hurried up to catch up to me as I continued to push onward. Little did they know that, while they hoped to use me for their unknown goal, I had opted to go with them in case I needed a body or two to protect me. While I had confidence I could win in most fights against anything until the tenth floor there was that off chance things had changed, or even that monsters had evolved, and I doubted that I would revive again upon a second death.

 

Our ascent up the tower was draped in silence, it was for the best to make as little noise as possible even on a lower floor. Only the dead marched around making as much commotion as possible, so for a blissful while I didn't have to contend with the silly racial comments. The various traps of the tower that sprung out seemingly at random were easily dodged by me, even the more obscure ones that caused the rest of our group to react with shock. Arrows that shot from the walls, guillotines that fell from above, holes that opened in the ground, a variety of crude yet capable traps that would easily kill the slow-witted newcomers.

 

By the time we first encountered the imps we had already passed by a staggering sum of traps, to the point that the others had started to accept I might not be completely worthless. Though we never spoke hand movements were more than enough to warn each other of potential death, and soon the three were reacting without worry to my own suggestions. When we came across the small black rotound monsters I was almost excited, as dodging the traps I had memorized long ago was more of a chore than anything else.

 

To call one of those extremely short and spherical creatures a threat would be to insult any competent fighter out there. While they could kill novices it was doubtful that anyone in our current group would be in any danger. The wooden spears ended with stone blades that the imps carried were laughably poorly utilized, as they tried to stab at anything they could hope to get to. With weak little balls for hands and almost no arms I once again had to wonder how exactly they held the spears, as there were no visible fingers. It was a question I had never gotten around to asking Lute since it was of such minimal importance in the overall scheme of things.

 

When the imps began their attack I hovered back, leaving the fighting to the others. It was not an act of cowardice but rather a strategic choice on my part. While I could have easily murdered the imps before the three did anything, caution dictated that I should hold back and not show everything to them. So it was that when the imps charged in to attack I took my time, pretending to struggle with my opponent.

 

Though I fought against an imp I still had more than enough time to observe the others and their style of fighting. Ivan was, of course, a user of a bow and although he used a badly crafted one his arrows still had a good degree of accuracy. Each one he fired somehow found either an eyeball or forehead belonging to one of the imps. Alexia preferred to use twin axes, small one-handed ones that surprisingly had iron blades. With quick swings she tried to keep on the move, not giving the imps time to land a single stab. Lucas was the most surprising of the three as he simply used his bare hands, a dizzying display of pugilism that would have made any fist fighter proud to watch.

 

After the fight Ivan glanced at the single dead imp at my feet and sneered, before he laughed and walked over to talk with Alexia. Lucas on the other hand grinned, patting me on the back as though we were good friends. "Good job," he commented, even as I knew that being able to kill a single imp was something even a child could do.

 

As the others walked away I tucked the dagger into my belt, careful to not cut myself in the process. The spears that the imps had used were garbage, but even the scraps from a dog would be useful to me at this moment. I picked up two of the fallen weapons, one for each hand, and then hurried to catch up to the group.

 

☗ ☗ ☗ ☗ ☗

 

It was a while later when we neared the top of the tower that Ivan asked for a pause, his breath ragged as he panted openly like a dog. We had moved at a quick pace, one set by myself, and the archer had spent too little time working on his stamina. I couldn't hide distaste for the break that showed on my face, but I kept quiet and leaned against a nearby pillar and waited.

 

"How the hell do you know where all the traps are?" Alexia finally asked, her face clouded with disgust. "You're a slave, A SLAVE, slaves aren't even good for dying!"

 

Her complaints were for me a background noise, one that I had little interest in. Obviously there was a degree of racial hatred for Elves nowadays. I would have to focus entirely on dodging that as best I could until I pushed up to at least the tenth floor. From that point onward so long as nothing major had changed in the labyrinth I suspected clear sailings. That was if only a couple hundred years had passed...

 

Lucas smiled tolerantly toward Alexia while she ranted. He pulled out a few pieces of bread and some water from a backpack that had been under his cloak and started to eat it. Ivan had pulled out his own waterskin and drank excessively from it. The archer had slumped to the ground unceremoniously and looked far too exhausted for how little work we had put into the dive thus far.

 

"Also where did you learn how to fight? Slaves aren't allowed to touch weapons!" Alexia continued, her light voice making the rage hard to take seriously.

 

Her eyes bothered me far more than her voice. While the others began to eat I did as well, pondering on what it meant to see red irises. Seventy floors too early to see those. It was such a farfetched idea that all I could do was discard it as fanciful thinking. Perhaps the human race had changed while I slumbered between death and life. In either case I didn't respond to her, enjoying the fact that she became more irate the longer I didn't respond.

 

"Tch," Alexia clicked her tongue, before she turned away. Her rage was pitifully amateur, it would get her killed if she didn't learn to control it in the later floors. Neither of the others bothered responding to Alexia and her outcries, nor to my own indifference.

 

"Alright, let's keep going," Lucas commented after thirty minutes had passed.

 

Once again I ended up in the front. Though they probably didn't want to admit to it the Elf in their party had obviously been the sole reason for the quick ascent. Though I had no clue how good they were I doubted they would have gone through the tower anywhere close to as quickly as we had without me. The edge I had of knowing exactly where every trap was and how to counter it was a common occurrence back when I had been active in the lower floors. It was more evidence that there had been a distinct drop in quality during my absence, though what had caused that I wasn't certain.

 

A couple more flights up we reached the top of the tower. Lucas pulled out a small crystal object and glanced at it before he pointed where it told him to go. It was a device that would be useful for any and all people who wandered the labyrinth, and one that I might need to pick up at a later point in order to save time. A few minutes later of walking and we arrived outside of a small room that contained the portal we had sought. I came to a full stop and frowned, pulling up from my memory all the information I had on this rarely seen room.

 

Alexia ignored how I had paused and instead marched right toward the door of the room. "No!" I shouted even as I grabbed her shoulder and yanked the pink-haired girl back. The pull was a bit too strong, so she ended up hitting a nearby wall and having the air knocked out of her.

 

Ivan responded instantly to what I had done, his bow lifted and an arrow notched before Alexia even had a chance to stand back up. Lucas had adopted a fighting stance, fists raised and held up at about chin height. He had been hiding iron gauntlets this entire time and only now did he have them equipped.

 

"Explain," Ivan growled, his eyes narrowed.

 

"Watch," I said, pointing toward the portal. "Just watch."

 

Ivan begrudgingly looked to where I pointed, though the doubt was obvious on his face. For a few seconds there was nothing and I could already anticipate his complaints, but then a flash of movement went through the air between us and the portal. Ivan's eyes widened even as Lucas stepped forward and asked, "what was that?"

 

While Ivan lowered his bow I carefully walked forward, making sure not to cross into the line where the object had appeared. With one of the spears I had taken from the dead imps I extended the shaft out and waited patiently. A tremor ran through it when a metal object thunked directly into the spear. When I retracted the spear a knife could clearly be seen stuck in it, a hint of a liquid oozing out from the hole it had made in the wood.

 

"That's it?" came the comment from Ivan, as he looked at what I had acquired. The knife was very small, small enough that it was difficult to see when in motion.

 

"The tip is poisoned," I explained. Obviously the archer had felt this was in no way a real threat, and if not for me at least one of them would've been hit by it. I plucked the knife from the spear and then discarded the wooden weapon. In my left I grasped the remaining spear, while in the right I casually twirled around the poisonous weapon as though it was a toy. "Don't worry though, it's only instantly lethal if it impales you close to an organ like the heart or the brain."

 

Without explaining further I stepped through the trap line, though new blades whisked by a few seconds after. "All you have to do is wait for them to go, then you have a window to get through," I remarked, before I walked around the sphere and took up a spot on the other side of the room from everyone else.

 

The other three understood, thankfully, and it didn't take much time for them to all pass through and come up to the portal. Alexia had muttered about how her back hurt and made certain to glare at me, but I responded by smiling at her instead. For some odd reason she only became madder, though I clearly had no idea why.

 

"Thanks for saving her," Ivan whispered as he stepped up next to me at the portal. "But who the hell are you?"

 

"Haven't you guys said who I am all along?" I responded, unable to resist smiling. "I'm just a slave."