Prologue & Chapter One

Previously

After sneaking, stabbing, and extorting her way to the top, Kat is in the uneasy position of having her role reversed.  She is the target, stationary and unable to fully conceal herself from her enemies.  Millennium, long one of the most powerful mercenary bands in the world, has been driven underground after their collusion with the stallesp has been discovered.

Now, Kat and her friends find themselves struggling against phantoms as the remnants of Millennium strike out at them from the shadows.  Economic sabotage drew Kat out into the open long enough for assassins to make several attempts on her.  During her escape, Kat discovered that far from being defeated, Millennium was using its connections with the stallesp to infiltrate and turn other corporations against her.  They still have technology far beyond anything available on Earth, and worse, Kat doesn’t know what they have or what it can do.  Even with Dorrik’s help, she couldn’t find where Millennium was hiding its stockpiles.

After the attack, Millennium has all but disappeared, fading into rumors and urban legends.  The only thing that Kat knows for sure is that Millennium’s leader, a samurai that goes by Mr. Jackson, is moving as quickly as possible toward level twenty four in the tower, a milestone that would potentially let him control the human race going forward.  He has a huge head start, but she has managed to eliminate one member of his tower climbing team, slowing his ascent long enough that she might be able to catch up.

Now she is stuck raiding the tower again and again, trying to improve the new abilities given to her by her class evolution as she races against time, trying to beat Mr. Jackson to twenty four all while worrying when Millennium decides to move again.

Chapter 1

“This is it,” Kat said, checking her crossbow and knife.  “Are both of you ready?”

Kaleek grunted back.  The big otter’s armor was battered and smoking.  Tufts of fur were missing from his face where acid had managed to slip through his guard, and a couple of the dents on his vambraces went all the way through revealing shiny scar tissue underneath.

“One more moment Miss Kat,” Dorrik replied.  “My stamina is not quite full and I think that it might be best to refresh the defensive spells on the three of us even if it dips into your mana reserves.  After all, this is our first silver tier dungeon and my clan doesn’t exactly have perfect information on it.  I would prefer that we approach the boss cautiously, at least until we’re ready for the increase in difficulty.”

She glanced over at Kaleek, expecting the desoph to argue only to find him nodding instead.

“I need a minute or two as well,” Kaleek said.  “My hit points aren’t quite full and I think it might be time for us to use the extra potions of strength and regeneration that we had saved up for the floor seventeen guardian.  We might not need them, but the marks we’ve been pulling in from this run are more than enough to justify the cost.”

A quick glance at her status confirmed Kaleek’s assertion.

Almost ten thousand marks.  Impressive given how the three of them had started spending more and more on consumables before each dungeon.  She could remember the times when their team could clear pretty much every dungeon without too much trouble.  They might get injured, but that was almost always related to them getting sloppy or diving into a dungeon without enough information.

By the time they’d reached the sixteenth floor, the balance had shifted.  Dungeons became longer, the monsters more vicious, and traps were no longer an exception, but the norm.  Without the Danger Sense perk, the three of them never would’ve survived until the eighteenth floor.

Now, they were in their first silver dungeon.  Kat felt a tingle of nerves as she shifted from one foot to another.  The ramp up in difficulty was intense, but at the same time, the idea of achieving third tier abilities filled her with excitement.  

The seventeenth floor hadn’t exactly been a plateau, the steady grind of gaining more ability points as their team raided dungeon after dungeon had seen to that, but at the same time, almost every ability that she used frequently was already maxed out.  According to Dorrik and Kaleek, their situation wasn’t terribly common because most tower climbers didn’t bother with every dungeon, let alone hitting the maximum difficulty for every dungeon.

Maybe they could stick with it for the first couple of floors but around when someone hit the sixth floor, the enormity of the work they’d put in began to weigh down on most people.  Outside of fringe worlds like Earth, the galaxy was more or less a safe place.  People didn’t have to risk their lives in order to progress in the waking world, so they didn’t bother in the dreamscape.

Climbing was still financially and socially valuable, so the average galactic citizen didn’t stop entirely, but they stopped taking serious risks.  It was incredibly common for a member of the Consensus to work their way up to the thirteenth level and stop, evolving their class before setting up shop in one of the tower’s larger marketplaces.

For folks like that, it might take years of careful delving in order to level up their skills to the point that they capped.  Kat didn’t have years.  Honestly?  She didn’t know how long she had until Mr. Jackson and the rest of Millennium managed to finish off the last couple of floors they needed to hit twenty four.  The entire organization and their stallesp sponsors had been suspiciously quiet in the months following her abduction.  She knew that they were out there biding their time, but no matter how hard Emma and Belle pushed for more information, it was like they were trying to find a wraith in a fogbank.

“I’m as rested as I’m going to be,” Kaleek said, rolling his shoulders in order to loosen up the muscles in his neck and arms.  “Is everyone ready for potions?”

Dorrik nodded, his crest fluttering placidly as his clawed hands clutched the two jet black swords that he’d had custom made for him on the sixteenth floor.

Kat didn’t respond verbally, instead reaching into the bandoleer that crossed her chest and pulling out a vial of sickly green liquid.  That was another improvement.  She still carried a half dozen throwing knives, but the rest of the slots were filled with potions so that she could use them on a moment’s notice.  It wasn’t every dungeon, but more often than she’d like Kat had found herself needing to refill her stamina or add a resistance when fighting a particularly troublesome opponent.

She brought the vial to her lips, tipping it into her mouth and doing her best to try and ignore the overly salty citrus flavor of the drink.  Warmth filled her body as she tucked the empty cylinder of glass back into her bandoleer and pulled out another filled with a thick silver liquid.

Strangely enough it tasted like peaches.  Almost instantly, Kat could feel a rush of energy surge through her body, erasing any remaining fatigue from her long slog through the dungeon.  She jumped up and down twice on the balls of her feet, testing her muscles to make sure that everything was in full working order.  On either side, Dorrik and Kaleek limbered up, preparing themselves for the upcoming boss battle.

“On three?” She asked, and both Dorrik and Kaleek nodded, readying their respective weapons.  Kat took a deep breath before stepping forward and pushing the big set of stone double doors.

With a creak they swung inward revealing the dimly lit boss chamber.  Kat didn’t hesitate, breaking into a sprint and adjusting her personal gravity until she was practically skimming over the ground.

In the center of the room, the dungeon altar sat dormant underneath a floating sphere of dull gray material.  It was about the size of a beach ball, unmoving and vaguely menacing as Kat changed her angle, strafing past it.

She didn’t have any idea what it was or what it could do, but even an iron tiered boss fight wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.  Kat didn’t know what to expect from a silver boss, but there was no way it’d be a pushover.  Every instinct in her body was screaming that the sphere was bait, the bobbing light of an anglerfish trying to lure the foolish or naive into jumping straight into its open jaws.

Kat had always trusted her instincts, but ever since she’d acquired Danger Sense in a dungeon on the sixteenth floor, that trust had blossomed into blind faith.  If she felt even slightly off about the situation, it was almost certainly a trap.

The thought wasn’t even fully processed before Kaleek sprinted into the room, his sword held in a double-handed grip and glowing faintly red.

“It’s just sitting there!” He yelled happily, “not even dodging!  I’ve got this!”

Before she could shout a warning, the sphere blinked out of existence, replaced a heartbeat later by a dozen much smaller balls that formed a hemisphere around Kaleek.  They crackled with latent energy just long enough for Kat’s Danger Sense to scream a warning before discharging.

A dome of electricity appeared around Kaleek, making his hair stand on end and driving him almost immediately to his knees.  Kat didn’t stop or slow, snatching one of her smaller throwing knives from her bandoleer and whipping it with all of her strength at one of the spheres.

Gravity swirled around her, an extension of Kat’s will as grabbed hold of her knife and accelerated it toward the metallic balls.  She kept running, cutting to the left just in case the boss teleported a second time.  About eight paces from her, Kat lost control of her knife as it passed through the edge of her gravity domain, but by that point it was moving faster than most crossbow bolts.

With a flash of silver it zipped through the air with unerring accuracy only for its target to disappear, jumping right in front of Kat.  The crackle of the electric field disappeared along with the boss component, but she didn’t have a chance to worry about that.

The sphere shifted shape, changing from a floating ball into a blade about a half pace long that rushed toward Kat at neck level.

She dropped to the ground, twisting gravity so that it pulled upward on the sphere and dragged her along the floor, accelerating her past her attacker before it could adjust to the sudden change of trajectory.  Near Kaleek, metal clanged into metal as the rest of the balls transformed into blades or awls that bombarded the stunned desoph.  Most deflected off of his heavy armor, but one or two found gaps or weak spots, drawing blood even as they began sawing away at the warrior’s hit points.

A flurry of purple shards blazed through the space above Kaleek.  Most of the spheres managed to teleport to safety in time as Dorrik sprinted into view.  One of the monsters wobbled a bit as it was struck by an Ego Shard, but it still managed to teleport away after a minimal pause.

Kat slapped the ground with her free hand, gravity shifting to send her flying into the air a half second before another three blobs of shapeshifting metal appeared in the air as spikes and rocketed downward, embedding themselves in the floor of the dungeon.

She pressed downward with her domain, crushing the three balls into the floor even as her mana swelled inside her.  Two of them wriggled, and Kat could feel the gravity around them turn inside out as they disappeared.  The sensation made her skin crawl, but the sensation disappeared as she finished casting Gravity Spike.

It was hard to compare the empowered spell to the version she’d been using before the twelfth floor.  The gravity around the ball roiled, twisting, pushing and pulling simultaneously as it tried to shred and compress the monster.

For a fraction of a second, it resisted.  Kat could feel the creature trying to invert its gravity in order to teleport to freedom.  Then, the combined weight of her spell and domain tore it apart.  The sphere seemed to explode into silver tinsel, and the remaining eleven balls all froze for a fraction of a second.

Dorrik leapt toward the nearest one, his eyes blazing with violet fire.  He swung both of his swords toward the sphere.  A handspan below and above each one, the silhouette of an amethyst blade flickered into existence.  Before it could teleport away, all six swords struck the sphere.

The illusory purple swords did much less damage, shaving a bit of the strange metal off of their target but not doing much more.  Dorrik’s actual swords were a different story, tearing through the shapeshifting blob of metal and bisecting the creature.

Dull metal stretched through empty air as the sphere tried to shift and grow back together, but a swift Ego Shard from Dorrik put an end to that, knocking the upper half away.  Both segments persisted for almost a second as Kat and Dorrik dodged and lunged toward additional targets until eventually the life force sustaining the ravaged sphere faded and it splattered helplessly to the ground.

Kaleek staggered to his feet, hair still standing on end as he upended one red potion after another into his mouth.  None of the spheres were attacking him, apparently the monster had decided that Dorrik and Kat were greater threats, so she left him to his healing as she sprang toward another floating ball.

Just before she reached her target, Kat shifted her gravity, jerking herself to the side with enough force to drive the wind from her chest.  A pair of spheres appeared, molding themselves into the shape of blades as they crisscrossed through the space she would’ve occupied without the timely use of her domain.

Once again she activated Gravity Spike and the empowered spell twisted the gravity at the edge of her domain into a destructive maelstrom.  The ball she’d originally tried to attack managed to teleport away, but the two that had tried to ambush her failed to escape in time.  Part of Kat noted that they couldn’t teleport in short succession as she watched the metal twist and shred itself into glittering confetti.

Four down.

A storm of Ego Shards sprayed the air, battering another pair of spheres before they managed to blink away.  Kat could see them, hovering drunkenly near the top of the chamber.  Even if Dorrik’s attack wasn’t enough to kill them outright, it had clearly manage to wound the balls.

For a second, Kat pondered trying to pick off the damaged spheres, but instead she cast Pseudopod, letting the spell draw her backup knife and curl around her torso.

Almost immediately her choice was rewarded as a pair of the monsters popped into existence on either side of her.  In front of Kat was a metal spike rotating rapidly as it zipped toward her chest.  Behind her was something else, visible to Kat only for a fraction of a second as she felt the gravity anomaly that marked its teleportation.

She jumped to the side, swiping with her dagger just enough to deflect the oncoming attack.  The monster behind her wasn’t so lucky.  Her Pseudopod lashed out, using the element of surprise to swing downward with her spare knife and pin the sphere to the ground.  It struggled for a second, wriggling itself free before teleporting up toward the ceiling near its wounded companions.

The three balls touched each other, blurring together for a couple of seconds before separating once again as two spheres, each looking perfectly healthy.

Healthy that was until another storm of Ego Shards battered the all but immobile monsters.  Each sphere was hit almost a half dozen times, losing cohesion and turning liquid as silver rained from the sky.

With a flicker of gravity another four of the orbs appeared around Kat, two about three paces apart at chest level in front of her and and another two around her knees behind her.  Tendrils of metal darted through the space between the spheres she could see, connecting them in a latticework that gleamed dully in the chamber’s dim light. 

The monster darted toward her, the webwork of metal between the two balls angled toward her chest.  With a muffled curse, Kat threw herself to the side, deadening her own gravity so she hung horizontally in the air just beneath the trajectory of the oncoming monster.

A fraction of a second later, her fears were realized.  The second pair whirred through the space under her where her legs would’ve been had Kat stayed still.

The wind of their passage whipped at her hair.  With a twitch of mental energy, Kat’s Pseudopod darted after one of the spheres, knife slashing ineffectually through the air in the monster’s wake.

Near the center of the room, Kaleek finished off his second potion.  His fur was still smoking from the earlier electrical discharge, but the rest of the dungeon boss’ attacks had avoided him, giving the desoph time to recover while Kat and Dorrik struggled with the teleporting balls of metal.

Almost as if on cue, another orb popped into existence directly in front of Kat.  A half dozen blades slid from its sides, turning the monster into something resembling a razor sharp fan or propeller.

She began to gather mana for another Gravity Spike, but the monster moved too quickly.  Its spokes whirred into a spiral of glittering metal as it dove toward her, and Kat abandoned her spell, instead, forcing all of her concentration into her gravity domain with the singular goal of flying away from her oncoming opponent.

Kat almost made it.  Even without touching the ground, her domain let her accelerate with the speed of a sprinter, and her agility potion from earlier allowed her to contort and twist her body with the reflexes of a cat strung out on amphetamines.

Against a wood tier opponent, she would’ve easily dodged and launched a return attack.  Against an iron tier opponent, she would’ve escaped long enough for Dorrik or Kaleek to come to her rescue.

Instead, white hot searing pain filled her mind as the sphere’s spinning blades sliced through her lower calf like a stick of warm butter, sending her foot and ankle flying toward the ceiling atop an arc of red.

She threw a dagger at the orb.  A combination of pain and poor balance from her suddenly missing foot sent it awry, but Kat was able to grab hold of the projectile, curving it back into the orb and knocking it from the air before it could teleport away.

With trembling hands, Kat grabbed hold of one of the healing potions from her bandoleer, pulling the cork free with her teeth.  The spheres moved too quickly for her to spend the time casting Cure Wounds, and the minute the dungeon boss sensed her hesitation, there was no doubt in her mind that she would be surrounded and eviscerated before she could actually manage to finish the spell.

Already the green regeneration potion she’d drank before the battle was staunching the flow of blood from her severed foot.  A tweak of gravity kept her upright as she took her entire health potion in a single shot.  

Tingling warmth ran through her body, fighting the wooziness of Kat’s sudden blood loss.  Her eyes flickered back and forth, gravity domain stretched to its maximum as she strained to pick up the fluctuations that would mark the dungeon boss’ teleportation.

Kaleek was fully back in the fight.  His armor was blackened and his fur was all standing on end, but other than that the desoph looked relatively untouched.  He’d dropped his sword, instead relying on his gauntlets, each covered in a dull red glow as he lunged toward and batted the orbs from the air like they were some sort of malicious miniature beach balls.

At the same time, Dorrik was his usual self, tearing through the room with his swords flicking back and forth almost faster than the eye could follow, purple phantom blades chasing after them as he cut yet another sphere down.

A pulse of gravity warned Kat of another globe teleporting behind her.  She didn’t bother to turn around, instead enacting a Gravity Plane in concert with her domain to shunt the monster toward the ground the moment it tried to attack her.

The orb embedded itself in the floor, twitching once before Kat’s pseudopod buried a knife in its side.

Another popped into existence some ten paces away from her, sharpening itself into a drill head as it homed in on Kat.  Before it could do much more than beginning to spiral, Kaleek pounced on it, both of his hands clasped together and glowing red as he hammered into it with a double-fisted overhand blow that collapsed half of the monster.

It flopped limply to the floor, dissolving into liquid the moment Kaleek’s attack erased whatever cohesion the dungeon boss was exerting over its spheres.  Kat scanned the room, gathering her mana to cast Gravity Spike again only to find that Dorrik had already finished off the remaining orbs.

Adrenaline left her system, leaving her shaking from the after-effects of her potions and the ache of her severed foot.  The pain was duller thanks to the consumables Kat had taken, but it still wasn’t enough to actually regrow the limb or eliminate the pain entirely.  She would need to rely on the Tower resetting her body when she went to sleep the next night.  Until then, Kat was crippled, only able to move properly due to her control over her gravity domain.

“Are you alright?”  Kaleek asked, nodding toward her foot.  “I got zapped pretty hard back there, but Dorrik and I are both a bit more used to taking hits than you are.  Also y’know-”

He took a deep breath before throwing her a sheepish smile.

“I know it’s my job to stand between you and monsters.  You’re good at dodging Kat, but sometimes there are just too many attacks coming in at once and we need your magic to deal with an opponent.  I was out of commission there because I ran off ahead without you.  That isn’t how teams work, and I’ve been taking it for granted that we’re stronger than the monsters in every dungeon we’ve cleared.  It doesn’t look like that will be the case now that we’re starting to hit the silver tier.”

Kat shot him her own smile, lips tight as she struggled with the pain.

“It was a good lesson for me too.  I’m not a frontline combatant, and I’ve been acting like one here or there.  Dodging can negate most attacks, but we’re getting to the stage where one lucky hit can take me out for an entire battle.  I think it’s best for us to just treat this as a learning experience.  Both of us are going to have to be more careful and aware going forward.”

“Good,” Dorrik called out as he walked up to the two of them, his swords already back in their sheathes.  “Both of you realized your shortcomings and addressed them without any need for post-combat reflection.  Jaalin was right about the two of you.  Even if you are raw in some areas of team tactics from not growing up in one of the Clan’s training academies, you can recognize your mistakes and move past them.  The three of us have been rocketing up levels much faster than recommended, but it looks like we haven’t hit our limits yet.”

“Speaking of Jaalin,” Kat said slyly, “how are things going with her?  I heard you recording a pretty in depth message for her yesterday, and it wasn’t entirely about Earth’s development.  Did she get tired of your long talk about strategy and formally begin courting you yet or did you muster up the courage to ask first?”

Dorrik froze, his crest stiffening and standing directly on end.  Kat was pretty sure that scales couldn’t blush, but despite that knowledge, it sure looked like Dorrik was trying.

“Never mind,” the lokkel warrior said quickly.  “The dungeon has been conquered and it is time for us to visit the altar and claim our rewards.  Quickly now.”

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