Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Astrid was already moving when she saw the two people they were looking for. She crossed the distance almost at a run. "What happened?"

Misha looked up beneath the mask. Even from several meters away, she looked exhausted. Her cloak was dark with blood in several places. One arm supported Caius beneath the shoulders while the other remained braced awkwardly around his chest. She looked like she had reached the point where her body should have collapsed and was continuing largely because nobody had formally told it to stop.

"Long story," she said. Even those two words sounded scraped raw. "He’s alive... but we need to get him out of here."

Astrid dropped beside them. Her hands immediately went toward Caius, checking his breathing, his pulse, the visible injuries across his shoulder and sides. She couldn’t stop her mouth from tightening.

Alaric approached more cautiously, his usual shameless ease faded as he took in their condition. "That’s... a lot of blood."

"Yes," Misha replied. "How observant. Now do something about it."

His brows rose. "Huh?"

"Sing." She adjusted Caius against her, immediately regretted the movement when pain pulled across her side, and glared at him before he could pretend not to understand. "I need you to heal him."

Alaric placed one hand against his chest as though she had just asked him to donate an organ instead of using his Class. For a moment, he looked ready to complain, but then his gaze moved over her properly and some of the theatrics faded a little. He still sighed afterward, with the exaggerated suffering of a man personally wronged by the universe. "You’re lucky I have feelings for you."

Astrid looked up, and Hiiro’s head turned so quickly his neck clicked. There was a small, horrible pause between them.

"He is lying," Misha answered immediately.

"Oh, darling." Alaric recoiled as if she had slapped him. "You hurt me. After everything we have been through, after all our shared hardship, the emotional vulnerability, and after spending the night together, how could you–"

"We spent the night separately."

"Did we?" He genuinely looked thoughtful. "I distinctly remember sharing a roof."

"That is called being in the same building."

"Such a cold interpretation of intimacy."

Hiiro slowly looked at Astrid, and she looked back. Misha noticed it.

"Stop doing that."

The boy blinked innocently. "Doing what?"

"The one where both of you are silently deciding whether you should ask questions."

Astrid answered without changing expression. "I wasn’t going to ask."

Hiiro raised a hand. "I was."

"No."

"But–"

"Hiiro."

Alaric chuckled. "She becomes shy when discussing our relationship."

Misha’s head turned toward him with terrifying slowness. "We do not have a relationship."

"See?"

"Alaric."

"I needed motivation... perhaps a kiss?"

She glared daggers at him. "You need survival instincts."

"Those abandoned me around the time I followed a seventeen-year-old princess back toward a Primarch."

Astrid’s eyes narrowed. "You volunteered."

"I was emotionally manipulated by my own consciousness."

Hiiro nodded solemnly. "That happens."

"No one asked you," Misha said.

Alaric finally settled Duet across his lap, though not before giving Misha one last wounded glance. "One day, you will appreciate how much romance I bring into otherwise miserable situations."

"One day, I’m going to throw you into a river."

Something in Misha’s voice finally reached whatever survival instinct kept the man alive. His hand froze above the strings, the offense on his face became genuine. "You wouldn’t."

"I think she would," Hiiro whispered.

Astrid gave the smallest nod. "Immediately."

Alaric clutched Duet protectively to his chest. "You are all terrible people."

"Play," Misha ordered.

He sighed. "Yes, darling."

"Call me darling again and I’ll test whether healing works on blunt-force trauma." She glared at him through the white mask. "We don’t have time for this. It’ll be dark soon."

His posture straightened. "Ah, yes. Of course, sweetheart."

"..."

He sat nearby, positioned Duet across his lap, and began strumming softly. This melody lacked the bright tempo he had used during the fight. It was slower, warmer.

"♪ You look lovely covered in blood, concerning, yes. Still lovely, though. If moonlight learned to wear your face, I think the night would lose its place. ♪"

The notes drifted through the wreckage without demanding attention, slipping around Misha and Caius like warm water. Golden notes began appearing around the instrument and settling gently against bloodied fabric and damaged skin.

"♪ So stay a while, my dear Gravekeeper, let me borrow one small night. You can keep your guarded secrets, I’ll just keep you in my sight. You may not fall for songs like mine, but sweetheart, let me waste my time. ♪"

Misha had no choice but endure the awful lyrics, since his skill was the only thing healing both her and Caius.

Hiiro remained standing several meters away. He exchanged another brief look with Astrid before she turned back. The look said enough and neither commented on Alaric anymore, at least not yet.

Then while Alaric was healing both Misha and Caius with his music, Hiiro’s attention drifted toward the Primarch instead, then he started walking toward it.

Maybe part of him wanted to see the creature up close now that it could no longer move. Maybe he wanted to measure the thing that had nearly killed them against the simple fact that it had failed. Or maybe, standing beside a corpse was easier than squeezing into whatever strange knot of relief and concern had formed around Misha and Caius.

He stopped near the Primarch’s chest and stared down at the smashed remains of the gong. Up close, the wound looked uglier. The smell was foul enough to make Hiiro wrinkle his nose and cover the lower half of his face with one hand.

"Man." He leaned slightly away. "You smelled better while alive."

Ding!

A new System window opened in front of him.

「 〔OBSERVER QUEST REWARD〕

Issuer: ◘◘◘◘

—

«Warhide»

Grade: Ultra Rare (UR)

Type: Stigma

Description: A Stigma that hardens the bearer each time their body endures a meaningful blow.

Effect:

Each significant hit grants 1 stack of Warhide.

Per Stack:

• Damage Reduction +3%

• Vitality +2%

Maximum Stacks: 7

At Maximum Stacks:

• Physical Defense +15%

• Endurance +3%

• Knockback Immunity

—

Warhide stacks are bound to the enemy that generated them.

All accumulated stacks are lost when the bearer disengages or begins combat against a different enemy.」

His grin appeared gradually after he read it once. "Oh."

Then heat touched his face. No, that was too mild a word. It began as pressure beneath the skin of his right cheek, sharp and narrow, as if somebody had pressed the tip of a heated needle just below his right eye and started drawing with absolute confidence. Hiiro hissed and lifted one hand toward his face before stopping himself halfway as he felt the sensation spread like a thin line, then another, branching and curving along the cheekbone.

Behind him, Misha suddenly stiffened as another reward apparently found its own place on her body, but Hiiro barely noticed. His attention had narrowed completely around the strange pressure carving itself into the skin. The heat faded as quickly as it came but Hiiro still felt something on his right cheek.

A broken piece of reflective metal lay near the Primarch’s corpse, probably part of an old lantern fixture shattered during the battle. He crouched, picked it up, wiped ash off the surface with his thumb, then angled it toward himself.

A dark mark now curved across his right cheek like a scar.

It began beneath the outer edge of his eye and swept along the cheekbone in sharp, elegant lines. The shape looked almost like overlapping fragments of black scales reduced into a Stigma, with fine branching edges that followed the natural line of his face instead of sitting on top of it like paint. Faint gold shimmered briefly inside several sections before sinking beneath the surface.

Hiiro stared at his reflection, then grinned. "Oh, that’s sick!" Then he turned toward them. "Look! I got a face mark!"

Astrid blinked once. "That’s the reward?"

"Yeah." He angled the metal again, examining the mark from another direction. "I’m thirty percent cooler now."

Alaric gave a weary laugh without interrupting the healing melody. "He says that while we are sitting beside an unconscious man."

"That unconscious man got first place." Hiiro straightened and swept one arm toward Caius as though announcing the results of a tournament. "Congratulations to Mr. Responsible for winning while unconscious. Congratulations to Ms. Gravekeeper for getting second place while apparently dragging the winner out of another dimension. And congratulations to me for surviving, and contributing. Now I’m becoming more cooler with a single notification."

Even Misha looked as though she might laugh at that beneath her mask. "Your standards for congratulations are unbearable."

"You’re welcome," he said brightly.

Then he looked at Caius, properly this time, and the grin eased into something smaller. Caius looked terrible. It was easy to joke while standing away from him, and at the same time, harder when he remembered the last clear image before losing consciousness: Caius planted between the Primarch, bleeding and refusing to move.

"Seriously though," he added, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand, "good job."

Caius, being unconscious, failed to appreciate the compliment.

Astrid exhaled softly through her nose and returned her focus on checking Caius. Misha muttered something under her breath that was probably either an insult or a prayer, and given her usual style, both remained possible. Alaric continued playing, golden warmth settling over the wounded pair.

Nobody was watching Hiiro anymore. The street had shifted around more urgent things, around relief, around triage, around the very ordinary, deeply human business of making sure somebody who had survived the impossible did not die five minutes afterward because everyone became distracted by celebration.

Hiiro lowered the broken metal and looked at his hands. The scales were gone, but he remembered them clearly. That black armored pattern climbing over his fingers and forearms during the fight, the strange solidity of them, the power. Now, there was nothing, just his hands looked like his hands again. Bruised knuckles, small cuts, and dirt ground into skin. Nothing monstrous, nothing special visible on the surface at all.

He was not angry about it, not yet. Mostly, he was curious about the dragon-like armor and the strange response of his body. He knew with certainty that it had to be a hidden function of his class.

Now [Warhide] sat beneath the skin of his cheek as if the Tower itself had looked at how thoroughly he enjoyed getting hit and decided to encourage the behavior.

That was probably irresponsible, but Hiiro liked it immediately.

He curled them into fists, then opened them again. No one called his name. The dead Primarch did not rise again for dramatic emphasis. The street simply remained what it was: ruined, ashen, half-choked with wreckage and corpses, with his friends alive in the middle of it.

He stared at his palms for one more second, then let them fall to his sides. ’Next time, I’m not going to be the one lying on the ground while everyone else finishes the fight.’