Chapter 235: Aiming for Floor 40

Chapter 235: Chapter 235: Aiming for Floor 40

Rowan stepped out of Eden onto the top terrace at Sunny Vale a little after dusk.

The valley had gone dark and quiet below him. A few lamps burned in the farmhouse windows, and the steadied earth hummed softly under his boots. Somewhere in the kitchen, Maren was arguing with a pot. He sat down on the low stone wall at the terrace’s edge, set his hat beside him, and took out his device.

He had thought about this call for most of the walk back. Level 40 was not a number he could keep to himself. Not with the Tower burning on the horizon, and not when the four people who had climbed twenty-eight floors beside him were still, as far as he knew, standing exactly where he had left them.

He opened a group channel and sent the request. It connected almost at once.

The screen split into four small windows, and each one showed a different corner of Sol Aethel Academy.

Barney’s picture was a blur of orange firelight and sparks. He was in the forge, stripped to a leather apron, with a hammer in one fist and a half-shaped plate of dark metal clamped on the anvil behind him. "Boss!" he bellowed, loud enough that Rowan winced and tilted the device away from his ear. "Twice in one week! Either you missed us, or something’s on fire."

"Nothing’s on fire," said Rowan. "Yet."

Seraphina appeared next, in the alchemy lab, framed by shelves of glittering vials. Her spectacles had slipped down her nose and her sleeves were stained green to the elbow. She did not look up from the flask she was swirling. "I have eleven minutes before this precipitates," she said crisply. "Please say something worth interrupting for."

In the third window, Caelen stood in the combat hall with a practice sword in his hand and his shirt dark with sweat. Beside him, in the fourth, Mirei was leaning against the rail of the archery range with her bow slung over her shoulder and an arrow tucked behind one ear. Neither of them said anything at first. They simply looked at the screen, waiting.

Rowan smiled. Four years together had taught the squad how to listen.

"I wanted to ask you something," he said. "And I’d like an honest answer. What level is everyone at right now?"

A brief silence fell. Barney lowered his hammer.

"That’s a strange thing to open with," said Seraphina, finally setting down her flask. Her eyes had sharpened behind the spectacles.

"It’s a strange week."

"Fair." She tapped something off screen, and a pale pane of light flickered into view beside her face. "Thirty-eight. I gained two on the night of the surge, which I am choosing to regard as an apology from the universe for the eyebrow."

"Thirty-seven," said Barney, squinting at something in the air beside his own screen. "Would’ve been thirty-six if I hadn’t spent the whole night hammering. I leveled twice in the forge. Turns out reforging a whole armory in a mana flood is good for you."

Caelen answered in his usual even voice. "Thirty-nine."

"Thirty-eight," said Mirei, and shrugged one shoulder with a small, bright smile. "He got a head start, because he took more hits than I did. It wasn’t fair."

"It was entirely fair," Caelen said, deadpan.

Rowan listened to the numbers settle into place and felt something warm move in his chest. They were close. Not at his level, but close enough that the gap could be measured in days, not months.

"Forty," he said quietly.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Barney let out a whoop that rattled the speaker. "Forty! I told you! I knew it! I said it to the whole forge, I said, the boss is up there somewhere hoarding experience like a dragon..."

"You did say that," Mirei confirmed. "Loudly. At three in the morning."

Seraphina’s lips twitched. "Level forty. Intriguing. Does the class tier change at that point?"

"It was already Tier Four. But the Breath of Eden hit level ten, and that is the part I’m still getting used to." Rowan turned his hand over in the lamplight, as though he could still feel the ground humming under it. "I’ve started to feel the land differently. Everything around me grows a bit stronger. I’m still learning what that means."

"That’s alarming," said Caelen, "in an encouraging way."

"I’ll take that."

The laughter faded, and the mood shifted, as it always did when Rowan’s voice dropped into its serious register.

"Here is why I called," he said. "The Tower woke up four nights ago. Every floor is lit, and the pulse hasn’t stopped changing things. I don’t know what’s waiting on the upper levels, or what it will want from us. But the squad’s last real push ended at floor twenty-eight, and now I’m at level forty." He paused, choosing the words with care. "I want to go back up. Not alone. And not all the way, not yet. I’d like to reach the fortieth floor, with all of you, when you’re ready."

Nobody spoke.

Barney set his hammer on the anvil with a quiet clank. Seraphina folded her hands. In the third window, Caelen slowly lowered his practice sword, and beside him Mirei straightened off the rail and looked directly into her camera.

"Floor forty," Caelen repeated, almost to himself.

"Twelve floors past where we stopped," said Mirei.

"More like twelve floors past anything we’ve seen." Seraphina’s voice was very even. "The Tower’s structure above twenty-eight was never mapped. We left with data and a fair amount of trauma. And now it has changed."

"I know." Rowan did not look away. "That’s the risk. But I’d rather walk into it with the four people I trust most than wait for someone else to tell me what’s up there."

The silence stretched a little longer. When it broke, it was Barney who spoke first, and the grin had gone from his face, replaced by something sturdier.

"You know my answer," he said. "You’ve known it since floor nine. Give me a week to reforge everything I own at a higher grade, and I’ll carry the anvil up there on my back if I have to." He jabbed a thumb at the dark plate on the anvil behind him. "I’m already working on the vanguard set. It’s not much to look at yet, but it’s going to be good."

"Three days for the elixirs," said Seraphina. "Perhaps four. The surge changed the reagents, which means half my recipes need rewriting, and I refuse to take untested compounds into a tower. I will also need two more levels." She raised an eyebrow. "I’d prefer forty, before I walk through that door. Self-respect, you understand."

"I can get there," said Caelen quietly. "One level. Maybe two days of hard training."

"Same," said Mirei. "And my brother will pretend he wasn’t ahead of me, but I’ll catch him by the weekend." She grinned at the camera, small and sharp. "We’ll be ready, Rowan. Tell us when."

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

"Take the time you need," he said. "There’s no rush. I’d rather go late than go unprepared. But I wanted you to know where I stand, and that the door is open." He smiled, tired and warm and a little shy. "I don’t think I could do it without you."

"Boss," Barney said, with immense dignity, "you’re getting sentimental."

"I am."

"Good. About time." He hefted the hammer again. "Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a vanguard set to finish, and your level forty is making me look bad."

The call ended in a ripple of laughter and overlapping farewells. One by one, the four windows went dark.

Rowan sat for a while in the quiet, with the device warm in his hand and the night wind stirring the edge of his cloak. Far to the south, the Tower still glowed against the stars, a thin column of blue in the dark. It did not look any friendlier than it had before.

But for the first time since the night it woke, he did not feel quite so alone beneath it.