The nifty things one can find when window shopping really does impress me at times. The EID upgrades I snag today allow me to view Resources, which allows me to put a name to the two distinct sensations I’ve been experiencing. On top of that, the other EID upgrade I grab is Rankings.

The first has nothing to do with managing anything external. It purely focuses on showing me the three types of energies I, apparently, have residing within me: Stamina, Arcana, and… Primessence.

I have no clue what the third may be, but after some digging and a few more Coins, I learn stamina is what’s used to power active skills. Well, most of them, at least. [Suppress] falls outside of that category. For what reason, I’m not too sure myself. Cori may have an answer, but she’s the last person I want to talk to right now.

Arcana is the root of all things the system labels magic, like [Imbue]. Nifty delineation, one that intrigues me. Not much I can do with it immediately, but once I get around to making my way back to my own Tower for the raid on the first floor, I’ll be sure to play around with the two.

But primessence… Just like the mysterious race, there is very little information that doesn’t cost more than I can afford. Worth looking into later, but not at all an immediate concern.

Picking up a new sword feels like overkill, and my armor does what it needs to for the level of opponents I have been and will be facing. With the new fanciful amethyst inlaid necklace dangling around my neck, I hunt down my sister.

Finding her doesn't take too long. With limited funds, she’d find a way to micromanage every Coin to the nth degree of efficiency. Which means I find her in the bundles and deals District. My favorite.

By the time I make my way over, she’s heading my way with a staff, a new robe, some earrings, and a goofy looking hat on her head.

I gesture towards her with a grin. “Cosplay convention somewhere?”

“Laugh it up while you can,” she grumbles, rolling her eyes. “This is the only set of magicwear I could find that didn’t cost more than I wanted to pay for it. The options it gives are pretty neat.” She holds up her staff. “For all ice magic I cast, I get an additional five points of intellect. Picked up some ice magic. Spells are expensive.”

Haven’t looked at many spells myself, since I’ve been wanting to play around with [Shadow Manipulation] and what I learned from Loboden. I’m certain I’m close to some kind of [Double Slash] upgrade, and I already formed [Dash]. Good progress there.

“You’ll have to show me what your magic looks like,” I say, holding my hand up and casting [Imbue]. “This is all I’ve got at the moment.” Not entirely true, but close enough. “What do you think?”

“Looks lame.” She holds her hand up and begins muttering a quiet incantation I can’t quite make out. The air begins to feel dry and cold as an elongated spear of ice manifests before my eyes. When it’s finished, her eyes sparkle. She giggles with a mischievous light in her eyes, then turns to me. “Sorry, not sorry.”

The spear launches through the air, and I only have a fraction of a second to cast [Harden]. The tip of the spear meets the enhanced armor. For a moment, the offensively cold attack and unyielding armor clash.

But the spear shatters into tiny particles of snow as the spell explodes, failing to pierce my [Hardened] platemail.

Pinning her with the force of my gaze, I take one step forward and clench my fist. “Don’t do that again. Ever.”

A tiny shrug is all I get before she goes into a report of what she’s acquired, for how much, and her rationale for each thing. I don’t listen. Her attack truly caught me off guard. I never thought she could be so irresponsible and take all of this so—

“Hey!” Sammy shouts, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “You talked about leaning into endurance and your armor looks sturdy, so I doubted I’d be able to even leave a scratch on you. Don’t make such a fuss about it. If I thought I could actually hurt you, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“And you think that excuses how irresponsible what you did is?” I turn around and look at all the other people meandering around, each one with far less armor, a weapon here and there, and likely very few skills between them. I gesture in their direction. “You would’ve killed someone that wasn’t me, Sammy. Just remember that.”

“Wyatt…” She looks around at the others, then at her staff. Sighing, she nods. “I get what you’re saying.”

“Do you?” Calming down requires a herculean effort, but I stop myself from giving her a tongue lashing. This is a teaching opportunity. “Look, I might have made it seem like what I gave you is a small amount of Coin, but I’m confident that nobody else in the Tower has even half of what you do equipped. Do you even know what tomorrow is?”

“Of c-course I do!” she nearly shouts back, cheeks red. “What about it?”

“Take a second to figure it out.”

“Just tell me what point you’re trying to make, Wyatt. Don’t do that thing dad does where you try to turn everything into a lesson.” She starts to shrug off the robe, but I stop her. “Just take it back if this is how you’re going to be.”

“Quit acting like a brat.” I push the robe and staff back towards her. “You messed up, but I’m not gonna hold it against you. You just have to understand that what you did isn’t even remotely funny. Some things shouldn’t be joked about.”

“Fine! Sorry then!” she shouts, clutching the equipment tighter to her chest. Tears well in the corners of her eyes. “I… didn’t think about it. Sorry.”

My first instinct is to wave away her apology, but instead, I nod. I’ve thought of just the thing. “Come with me.”

Together, we make our way through the marketplace and to the first floor portal. After stepping through, the world comes alive around us. However, neither one is enthused by the view or incredible atmosphere.

With her shadowing behind me, we travel down the path leading to this Tower’s first floor town. It’s a bit different in shape, but all the buildings are, for the most part, the same. Determined focus drives me to the middle of the town, where I gesture to the job board.

“Choose one,” I order, much to the chagrin of the other onlookers.

Shifty eyes look her gear up and down, the robe and staff telling wealth they’ve never been privy to. A small group shifts closer to us, and I equip greatsword, earning a few audible gasps.

With the deadline to pay Yugmuswa his taxes, I’m sure rampant desperation is present in everyone gathered. And if not all, at least more than one. Desperate people did desperate things, that I trust. Glaring daggers at them, my blood rushing through my veins, I silently dare any of them to try me today.

Sammy misses the whole ordeal as she reads over the different job postings. She reaches for a resource collection one, but I stop her.

“Choose a hunt.” That earns more glowering and grumbling from the crowd of onlookers, but I don’t care. They’d get over losing one hunt. Sammy chooses one, and I nod. “Better.”

“Wyatt, I get your point—”

“Enough. Let’s go.”

I don’t mean to be a jerk, but I’m having a hard time thinking straight. First Jack, then Lorain and Dorian, now my own sister. Leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, even if I know she was screwing around. If anything, that makes it worse.

Noticing her standing by the board with no intent to follow and the small crowd looming ever closer to her, I growl, “Come.”

If her face wasn’t red before, it sure is now. As she stomps over, she screams, “You are such an asshole sometimes!”

“Kat would agree with you,” I deadpan, making my way inside the building to get everything registered. Once that’s finished, I glare all the onlookers down as we pass by to head out of the town.

She has the specific instructions, but getting out of the town is good enough for the moment. The crowd watches us while silently murmuring, but nobody moves to confront us about the hunt or anything otherwise.

Good for them, because I’m not feeling as merciful today.

Once we’re outside the town, down the path, and far enough not to be bothered for a moment, I stop. Sammy trails behind, dragging her feet. When she sees I’ve stopped, she looks at me with no small amount of frustration.

“What is your problem?” she asks, slapping the job request. “And what is this all about? Why did you have me pick a hunt?”

“How much Coin does that job earn you?” I ask, ignoring her. She would just argue any answer I give, and I don’t want to deal with it.

Her face gives her away. All expressions, no tact or subtlety. Deciding on diplomacy and to let her unanswered questions remain that way for the moment, she looks over the job request. “Thirty Coins.”

“And what is the hunt?”

“I read it before I grabbed it!” she hisses, waving it around in my face. “I can read!”

“What. Is. The. Hunt?”

“Dickhead,” she grumbles under her breath. “Hunt some monkeys.”

“How many?”

“Five.”

Awful price, that. “Where?” After she points farther along the path towards a forest, I gesture for her to lead the way. “Go on.”

Doesn’t take much to convince her to go stomping off past me. The walk is one full of her quiet grumbling about how it was a mistake to ever come here with me, how I’ve taken after our dad, and so on and so forth, then we make it to the forest in question.

Unlike the winding paths that split through the first floor's northern forest, this area is more like the side forest with the quarry that contains the monkeys from my Tower. If the Towers have different layouts, then it makes sense for the location of the second floor gate to be valuable information.

“We’re here. Now what?” she asks, stuffing the request into her pocket and crossing her arms.

I point her towards the forest. “Go hunt.”

“What?”

“Didn’t stutter.” Rather than sit there and explain things to her, I start to go about my business gathering herbs. “Let me know when you finish.”

She stares at me dumbly. “You can’t be serious? I should go hunt? By myself? In the unknown forest?”

I nod.

“You’re not serious.”

“Dead serious, little sister.”

She looks like she’s about to argue, but then her cheeks turn red as a cherry, and she storms off. Of course I wouldn’t let her actually go off in the forest by herself and follow her, unequipping my armor and sword to reduce the clinking and clanking as I move.

*

Matthew stalked through the forest, armor strapped tight and weapons in hand, every footstep precise and measured. He felt no satisfaction in his perfection of movement, no anticipation for the coming hunt. Only a low perpetual craving for more.

More of what, he couldn’t have defined.

Right now, fighting something sounded less boring than sitting around and waiting to collect the parts of himself he’d loaned out to the bankers, and it aligned with the quest he’d decided to undertake.

Gaining more Coin was important, he knew that, even if having it brought him no pleasure. He could remember making the decisions that guided his steps now, even if the reasoning escaped him at the moment.

He did remember the grief and anguish resulting from more than one of his recent decisions, felt the waves of his unbridled self-hatred’s wrathful heat coursing through him. The depths he’d taken to punish himself for those idiotic lapses in judgment required a painful sacrifice, but pain is the greatest teacher.

Whatever his reasoning at the time, a vague sense of genuine and pure but misguided intent haunted him, but he didn’t want to push himself to that end again. So even if he had no interest in pursuing this hunt, no particular reason to collect everything valuable in sight, it was better than the alternative.

This was what he had made himself into, and it resulted in action. 

Matthew found the bear where he expected it to be, at the end of its tracks, plodding along with a casual content that really ticked him off. What right did a bear have to be so damn content with itself, huh?

He pushed himself into a quick sprint using [Furious Charge] with his studded buckler extended and cast [Shield Bash], slamming into the creature’s face as it turned to look at him.

The bear roared angrily, swatting at him, but Matthew knew how this song and dance went. He was already ducking, sword coming up to intercept the paw, shield braced to take the inevitable followup attack.

Once you learned the patterns, fighting simple monsters like this became so trivial.

Mechanically, Matthew followed the patterns. Slash, block, step back and aside, stab, bash, slice.

The bear managed to nick the edge of his shield, carving another line across its surface and taking a tiny chip out of it. But that was the closest it came to causing any damage before Matthew’s attacks accumulated to the point it collapsed to the ground under its own weight in a limp heap of fur.

Seeing it fall only made him angrier. Couldn’t even put up a proper fight? Who did it think it was messing with, huh? 

He slashed off the required claws, stuffing them into his backpack for the quest. Abandoning any pretense of stealth, he jogged at a steady pace back toward the town. He wasn’t trying to attract attention, nor could he be bothered to avoid doing so.

A couple of those overly-aggressive deer decided to get in his face about it, but they were scrawny and weak and only delayed him as long as it took to bash them in the head and stab them through the eye. A waste of time, sure, but not as much as would be lost if he were trying to sneak around.

Then he saw something that managed to break through the prescribed routine of his day, anger flaring up more sharply from the nuclear reserves nestled in his stomach. Much more intense than any of his usual slow-burning ire and indignation against the world.

First, there was a stranger in his Tower, one of those cocky bastards who walked around without armor thinking their oh-so-perfect muscles would be enough to save them. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t be cause for more than passing scorn, except that this particular idiot was dragging a clearly unwilling Samantha around with him.

Matthew didn’t even try to restrain himself.

After he’d worked so hard to keep her out of this, some pretty boy idiot comes traipsing in and starts pushing her around when she’d clearly rather not be involved? Who did he think he was?

He didn’t bother with words, just led directly in with a classic [Furious Charge] and [Shield Bash] combo. 

The dickhead’s muscles, it turned out, were sturdier than the average bear. Matthew’s skills came up short for the first time since he’d entered the Tower, the recoil vibrating numbingly up his arm.