Chương 43: Chapter 24 – Next ten-pull will surely hit

The dome was quieter than it had any right to be. That was an illusion, mostly, because it most likely meant that everyone was busy working on the analytics of what happened today. Not my stunt, that wasn't all that extraordinary. But the tower having an organization working against the climbers was a problem. We weren't getting anything useful out of the tower if it literally played against us. I walked past the pods. Three were occupied, their tops sealed, holographic vitals humming above each.

Late-night divers, grinding lower floors for a better floor roll. Cassandra stood at the far end, behind her holographic workstation. The interface floated between us like a barricade, dense with data streams and tower schematics. She looked up when my footsteps hit the floor.

"Mr. O'Connor." Hmph. The coldest thing she could call me. Her silver dress caught the moonlight, liquid and luminous. Her blonde hair was pulled back tonight into a much meaner bun.

"Cassandra." I stopped on my side of the holographic barricade.

"The formality is new. Did I drop down too far in the rankings for my first name to be used?"

"That has nothing to do with it." She didn't look up from the interface.

"The shop's been updated. I suppose you're here for that."

"Among other things." She gave nothing. Not a blush, not a tell, not even the tiniest hint that we were kissing this time last night. All right. Two could play this game.

"Let's see the shop," I said. She flicked her wrist. The shop materialized between us. Cassandra's Tower Shop, the familiar title floating above a catalog that had grown considerably since my last visit. My balance read 4, 847 tower coins. Not that much. The loot got probably split among the party members, even when they got zeroed out. The catalog had expanded, though. Uncommon equipment now sat alongside the usual piles of common garbage. Though not a full array.

Commons had full armor sets and all types of weapons. I could see an uncommon bow, four different swords, a spear, a helmet, and two shields. The shop clearly had a preferred type of climber. Funny, as most of us were mages. I scrolled through it. The uncommon leather set caught my eye. Light, flexible, enchanted with minor damage reduction and a passive that regenerated durability over time. But it cost a thousand coins, so buying it meant giving up a ten-pull. Plus, it was a leather cap.

It looked like something I wouldn't equip in a single-player game without having a skin over it. But my summons needed equipment. Peace made it abundantly clear that my dearest succubi weren't tough enough for this. Astarielle would rather get instagibbed a hundred times than wear a leather cap. Fashion couldn't be compromised on in Hell, evidenced by her insistence on wearing dresses even when told we were going to fight. Ashy, on the other hand, had the self-preservation instincts of a golden retriever.

Why wear armor, when she can fly around as a sword shouting wee!. A smirk crept onto Cassandra's face.

"Would you perhaps like to try your luck with the gacha?" I smiled, and she instantly corrected the smirk.

"Yeah. Switch to it." With a wave of her hand, the shop switched to the gacha interface. A bunch of legendary items floated around it, the highest-tier rewards available. Golden, shiny, looking like something even a succubus might wear. Perhaps even Astarielle. I needed the legendaries. Everything else was a placeholder until I got my hands on them.

"Three ten-pulls, please."

"That's almost all your coins. Again."

"I excel at managing my money."

"I can tell." She almost smirked, again. The line came out too fast, too light. She caught herself, pressing her lips together. The professional mask reassembled.

"Shall I proceed?"

"Hit me." She flicked her wrist. The screen spun, the winged goddess descended, and ten stars fell. Common. Common. Common. Common. Uncommon — a throwing knife. Common. Common. Common. Common. Common. I stared at the throwing knife. What in the world would I do with a throwing knife? I didn't throw things. Were there even demons that threw things? Sounded like a much weaker version of using magic. And every demon used magic.

"Shall I continue?" Cassandra asked. Her voice was carefully neutral, but her eyes were not. The sadistic delight in them was unconcealable.

"One more." The goddess dropped her stars. Common. Common. Common. Common. Uncommon – a leather cap. Common. Common. Common. Common. Common. I grunted. What were the odds on this thing, again? Hopefully better than pulling demons from Hell did.

"You have a gift," Cassandra said. The professional tone is crumbling.

"You could have bought out all the commons from the normal store with those coins. One more?" The stars fell once more. One of the stars caught a blue light as it fell. Oooh, a rare. Now we were talking. They unwrapped nine commons and a rare. I instantly focus on that one. A summoning focus materialized. Bone-white, carved with intricate runes, radiating cold energy. The description floated beside it: Skeletal Resonance Focus. Rare. Increases undead summon damage by forty percent.

Increases undead summon speed by twenty percent. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Undead. I glared at it. Demons weren't undead. Cassandra made a sound. A compressed, strangled sound, like someone trying very hard not to laugh and failing at every level. She turned away from me, one hand covering her mouth, shoulders shaking.

"How funny," I said. She turned back. Her face was flushed. Her crimson eyes were bright with barely suppressed tears of laughter. The professional mask had fallen off, hit the floor, and shattered.

"It is objectively, measurably, and in every conceivable way, very funny."

"I don't summon undead."

"Exactly." She was grinning now, open and wide and devastating.

"You summon succubi. And the tower gave you a skeleton wand."

"It's a focus, not a wand."

"I am certain the distinction is of utmost importance." Hmph. Damn it.

"Can I trade items with other players?"

"The ones you find in the tower, yes. Whatever comes from the shop, no. That's bound to you." Awesome. I kept the focus and the cap. Down to 47 coins. Cassandra wiped the corner of her eye with one finger, still grinning. She hadn't stood this close since I'd arrived. At some point during the pulls, she'd drifted around the holographic workstation and now stood at my side, her shoulder almost touching mine. She noticed at the same moment I did. The grin faded.

She stepped back behind the interface, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Back to start, apparently. I let the silence sit for exactly one breath.

"Tariq told me that you handle item collection for the Sands."

"Did he?" She narrowed her eyes.

"I do, yes, in a way. Do you have any absolutely legally obtained items from the tower?"

"For you, I do." I pulled on my soul chamber, summoning the centaur reaper blueprint. It appeared rolled up in my hand. I placed it on the table.

"A complete blueprint of the eleventh floor's boss." Her eyes lit up. She caught the blueprint, stood up, and rolled it out. Her crimson eyes almost flickered with how quickly she moved over it.

"This is a complete construction blueprint. The bio-mechanical integration, the neural-simulation pathways, the power routing." She looked up at me, and for once, there was nothing guarded in her expression. Pure, unfiltered excitement.

"Do you understand what this means?"

"That you'll have a lot of fun with it."

"For several nights, actually." She cradled the schema like it was a firstborn child.

"The drone was interesting, but reverse-engineering effectively alien technology is extremely time-consuming. This is intact. Every specification for how the tower builds its bio-mechanical constructs. The alloy composition, the organic interfaces, the energy conversion matrices." She caught herself, realizing how much of herself she'd just shown. The mask tried to reassemble, but it was fighting a losing battle against the schema in her hands.

"This is… unspeakably valuable."

"I know." I allowed myself a broad smile.

"Is there anything specific you need from future floors? Anything that would help with the research?" She looked at me, emotions mixing all over her face.

"Anything biological. Living samples, tissue, fluid. The mechanical components are readable, and I've got a metal 3D printer inbound, but the organic integration is what I can't replicate without source material."

"I'll see what I can find." Her fingers tightened on the schema. She opened her mouth, closed it, then simply said, "Thank you." I nodded. I could have pushed, but it didn't feel like the correct approach. But the way she held that schema was the most honest I'd seen her.

"One more thing," I said. She looked up.

"Are you a vampire?" The question landed in the silence between us like a brick through a window. Cassandra's expression didn't change. Not immediately. She held perfectly still for one full second, which was one full second too long for someone with nothing to hide. Then she laughed. Light, dismissive, flawless.

"A vampire? What on earth gave you such a ridiculous idea?"

"The turning into mist, predominantly. And then the whole trick of you materializing your phone out of blood. That's very vampire-styled, in retrospect."

"Plenty of mages can manipulate material states. It's basic transmutation." She set the schema down, got up, and stepped toward me.

"Vampires are cold, Damian. Notoriously, legendarily, dead-flesh cold." She placed her palm flat against my chest. The heat hit me like an open furnace. It seared through my shirt, through my skin, and pooled somewhere behind my ribs. Her hand was a branding iron. Her crimson eyes held mine, amused, daring.

"Do I feel cold to you?" My heart rate betrayed me.

"No."

"There you go." She let her hand linger for one breath too long, then pulled it back.

"Mystery solved. Anything else, or are you done interrogating the innocent shopkeeper?"

"Yeah. Prove it by meeting me at dawn. At our spot." Her smile didn't waver.

"Dawn? That's early. I work through the nights."

"As a vampire would. The sunrise will look great over the sea."

"You want to have a sunrise date? How romantic of you, little horn." She tilted her head, and something passed behind her eyes. Fast. Almost imperceptible. A calculation, a weighing. Then it was gone.

"I will think about it."

"I'll be counting on it." I held her gaze for another moment, then turned and walked out. The Pacific night swallowed me the moment I left the dome. Salt wind, construction silence, a sky split between stars and the tower's black void. I didn't go back to the building. Instead, I climbed up to the spot on the roof. I sat down by the little wall, focused, and conjured the System interface. I had ten unallocated levels. Fifty stat points. Ten skill points. Stats were easy. Everything into charisma.

And no, not because Elsha told me to. Now, skills were going to be more difficult. The first one was easy, the level twenty Soulcarver node. That gave me a choice. Stat passive or the skill. The stat passive was plus thirty to two stats, plus fifteen to two others. That was a lot of stats. The skill was named Chain Re-summon. Designate up to X summoned creatures to resummon themselves upon their demise, where X is charisma divided by 100, rounded down.

I had just enough charisma to put this on both Astarielle and Ashy. While I planned to get another demon, a tanky one this time around, mostly to shield Astarielle, I didn't have enough souls for a fishing trip, and I spent too much mana today to use a random hunt. Then again, I would get another tentacle worm, anyway. Both of these options would be useful. Stats never got lost, but a chain resummon was also useful. Both scaled well into potential higher stages of power.

I could put Chain Resummon on the weaker demons so I wouldn't have to micromanage them. Stats would increase the overall scaling, though. I clicked my tongue. Stats could be gained from items, but special abilities could not. I put the point into Chain Resummon. My vision shifted. I floated mid-air, no body, watching an incredibly beautiful, pale woman with blonde hair, who lounged on a few clouds, dressed in a simple white dress, with six wings spreading from her back.

She looked a lot like a blonde version of Elsha. A battle raged ahead. Monsters of various types from our side fought against an army of knights.

"There is virtue in tedious labour," her voice spoke into my mind, not sounding like Elsha's at all. Much lighter and colder.

"But what is virtuous isn't always useful." The knights defeated one of the largest monsters. They cheered, it turned to dust, and they advanced. The monster reappeared in front of them, fully healed.

"The easiest battles are those that fight themselves. Why work when you can rest and still win?" The vision vanished, and I was back on the roof. Interesting. The necromancer skill came with a vision from a different person entirely. Perhaps each specialization had a mentor to it, whose skills the system skills were based on. Now, what to do with the rest of the skill points? I had nine points left, precisely enough to beeline to a level twenty skill at another class.

I would even have enough points to still catch the level twenty-five side skill on the Soulcarver. But that would completely lock me into the build. Skill points were the freedom to pivot. The level gain slowed down, though just a bit. And the fight against Peace punched a rather uncomfortable hole into my build. My power drastically diminished if someone could instantly deal with my summons. One day, I might need to pick up some skills for myself. I left the skill points unallocated and closed the interface.

I relaxed against the wall and soon fell asleep. Dawn cracked the eastern horizon in a line of gold, spilling across the water in a widening road of light, waking me up. The tower's silhouette cut into it like a blade, black against amber. The sky shifted from deep blue to pale orange in the span of a breath. Seabirds wheeled above the pylons, crying into the morning. The rooftop was empty. I looked at every corner, every shadow. Nothing. Just metal, sky, and the ocean. No silver dress. No crimson eyes. No heat.

I sat there for a while, watching the sunrise alone. It was, admittedly, a very nice sunrise. When the gold turned to white and the morning fully committed to being a morning, I stood up, stretched, and climbed back down the ladder. The answer was what I expected. It still stung.