The Fractured Tower

Book 2, Chapter 14

“Back already? I knew you couldn’t stay away from me.”

Sorin paused mid-step, his head turning slowly to regard Lorvaine. Today, she had the entire front side of her pavilion opened up instead of a singular doorway. He’d been walking by, eyes intent on a pair of familiar men he’d noticed in the distance but couldn’t quite place and not planning any shopping until later. He also wasn’t necessarily planning to do it here. Lorvaine had an impressive inventory, but she was exhausting to negotiate with.

“What makes you think I’m here to see you?” he asked.

“Please, like you’d come back here for anyone else.”

“In fact, I did.”

Lorvaine crossed her arms and gave him a speculative look. “And you just so happened to walk past me on the way, did you?”

Sorin could have pointed out that her pavilion was set up on the main road through the portal hub in what was probably a very desirable spot, so going almost anywhere would take him past her. But the truth was that he could have approached the path up the mountain from a different angle if he’d wanted to, so maybe Lorvaine was right.

“Well, unfortunately for you, I don’t have a single danir more than I had last time I saw you. Actually, I’m even poorer.”

“What do you have?” she asked.

“That depends on what you’ve got to trade.”

“Anything your little heart might desire,” Lorvaine cackled. “If you can afford it.”

“I need… area damage, something I can sculpt to avoid hitting specific targets. Or defensive soulprints.”

“Interesting. You already have Heat Resistance, judging by the way you’re not drenched in sweat. Cold Resistance would be the only other thing your tiny little soulspace could even fit.”

Sorin flashed her a grin. “Let’s just say I’m planning for my future.”

“You must be, because E-ranks don’t really do what you want. It’s not a smart move, my handsome young friend. Even if you’ve got something worth trading, you should focus on acquiring things that can help you today. You can’t get by on looks alone, not when the monsters show up.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I know what I’m doing. If you don’t have anything useful for me, though, I really do have to get going,” he said.

“Now hold on there,” she snapped back. “I didn’t say that. If you want to make foolish purchases with your self-admitted limited funds, that’s your business. I’ve still got what you need.”

“Well, let’s see it,” he told her, stepping into the shade.

“First, show me what you brought in to trade, and keep in mind that I am a soulprint dealer. I don’t care if you found some special sand or a glowing rock out in the desert.”

“Oh, I think I know what you’re all about, Lorvaine.”

She leered at him, eyebrows wiggling. “I’m sure I’ve still got a few surprises in store for you.”

Sorin laughed, then pulled out the three soulprints he’d taken from the stone spiders. Odric hadn’t wanted Paralytic Venom, mostly on the logic that almost nothing they fought lasted long enough for it to matter. It was hard to argue with that, so Sorin hadn’t pushed it. Stone Shell and Web Weaver just weren’t that great, though the former wasn’t terrible for an F-rank defensive soulprint.

“Oh my. You went deep into the spider warrens, huh?” the vendor muttered, more to herself than to Sorin. “Killed one of the big ones to get this E-rank. Very bold. Somewhat foolish. But I already knew you were a risk taker the way you flirt with me.”

“Is that what you think is happening here?” he asked. “I’m just trying to save a danir or two.”

Lorvaine looked over the three soulprints, then back to Sorin. While those soulprints probably existed in smaller form on lesser spiders, the sheer size of all three made it obvious where they’d come from. The odds of a single monster dropping three at once were vanishingly low, though not impossible, as he’d already seen.

“You didn’t run into one by accident and get lucky. You went hunting for them. If I couldn’t feel that you’re rank 3, I would suspect you were a climber coming down to a lower floor.”

“Would there be anything wrong with that?” Sorin asked. “You’re here, after all.”

“To buy and sell soulprints, not to clear out the nests of powerful monsters meant to challenge the climbers who are supposed to be here.”

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“Regardless of how strong I am, I have three soulprints I don’t need, and I’m sure you have a few I could use. So, what’ll you trade me for them?”

“Well, since you’re so… ahem… robust… at your current rank, and you’re looking toward the future, perhaps something that’s a little less offense and a bit more utility might interest you. I have a copy of Aura Shock, but it’s worth more than these three combined. I’m sure you must have some money left to make up the difference, though.”

Aura Shock wasn’t a bad bit of utility, but it wasn’t exactly what he was looking for. If he merged it with Radiant Purge, he’d lose almost all the area damage in exchange for greater range. That didn’t really align with his short-term goals, but he was tempted anyway. Aura Shock was fantastic for controlling a fight. It worked in much the same way those hounds on Floor 1 did, disrupting anima and making it harder for others to control their abilities.

Against monsters, it tended to mitigate risk by making it less likely they’d pull out some sort of unanticipated surprise, though it did nothing to diminish their strength, speed, and durability. But against other climbers, inarguably the biggest threat to Sorin right now, it was fantastic for stripping away advantages.

The question is how to get Lorvaine to part with it. What do I have that she wants? Money, soulprints, and… Let’s just say that’s it. The only other soulprint I have is Shadow Infusion, but I wanted to keep that one. I suppose I could free cast it as needed, but that’s not really a great plan.

No matter how good he was at free casting, he was never going to be as efficient as using a soulprint of the same ability. That was bad enough in an active ability like Ice Blade or Speed Burst, but something channeled or passive compounded the difficulties. His reserves wouldn’t last long, and if he was trying to use Shadow Infusion, having it drop at an inopportune time was asking for disaster.

“I don’t have the money, but maybe we can work something else out,” Sorin said.

Lorvaine barked out a sharp laugh. “You’re not that good-looking.”

“You know what kind of monsters I’m killing. I can bring you back things no one else wants to go looking for. You set me up for it, and I’ll go hunt whatever you want in return.”

Her eyes sharpened with greed at the thought, and she glanced down at the three soulprints again. Sorin could practically hear her thinking it over. It wasn’t that she couldn’t go kill those spiders herself; she was rank 12, though with a merchant’s build. But there were other targets, valuable either due to their rarity of the soulprint appearing, the difficulty of the kill, or because the monster was near impossible to find. Sometimes, it was all three.

“I want a basilisk egg,” she said. “Not just any egg, either! A fossilized egg that contains the Blessing of Stone soulprint. Can you kill a basilisk in its nest without destroying the eggs? As many as it takes to find the one I need?”

Eggs were not great soulprint vessels. For one thing, they rarely had anything but baby monsters in them, and that meant no soulprint. A fossilized egg was even harder to find. One that had a soulprint in it was bordering on impossible.

“I can get you plenty of basilisk eggs, as long as you know where to find them,” Sorin said. “Fossilized ones with soulprints in them seems statistically less likely.”

“Yes, that’s what makes them so rare, but Floor 3 is the best place to find them.”

She seems confident about that, which means she knows something I don’t. Okay, let’s break it down. Floor 3 is a desert. Lots of dry heat. Lots of earth and sand manipulation. Elementals galore. Even the monsters tend to have aspects of sand or stone in them. What would increase the likelihood of eggs fossilizing? Ah.

“You know the location of an elemental font on Floor 3?” he asked.

“Keep it down!” she scolded him, though he knew there was nobody within fifty feet.

That’s a yes. What’s guarding it?

Lorvaine was glaring at him now, or at least as much as she could while her eyes darted back and forth to confirm what Sorin already knew. Finally, she said, “Isn’t that why you were going so deep into the warren?”

Sorin wasn’t really surprised, now that he thought about it. There were better explanations for why the spiders had shells of living stone, or at least more common reasons, but an elemental font also explained it. If Lorvaine was telling the truth, there would be all sorts of monsters with incredibly powerful soulprints, probably E-ranked with a smattering of D’s in the mix.

Which means its suicide for a team of genuine rank 3s. Is she trying to get me killed for some reason?

“You must think awful highly of my abilities if you want to send me into a place like that,” he remarked.

“As long as you actually killed the spiders you got these soulprints from, yeah, I do. They’re not the worst thing down there, but they’re near the top of the food chain. Besides, it’s not like you’d be going down there alone.”

“I wouldn’t dare take my team that deep,” Sorin said.

“All the better. I’d be going with you. If I’m going to give you soulprints, then the least I can do is make sure my investment doesn’t run off.”

On the one hand, she was rank 12. On the other, she ran a stall on Floor 3. If Sorin had to guess, she probably wasn’t worth a combat-oriented rank 6. Then again, maybe she’d just decided she was done and wanted to retire. She was about at that age where people figured they’d gained enough and wanted to use the time they had left to spend the money they’d been risking their life for.

“I can do bodyguard work,” he said. “You get us there. I’ll kill anything that gets in the way. Whether there are basilisk eggs or not, we’re square. In exchange, I’m going to pick through your stock and fill up my soulspace.”

“Only what you have room to absorb here and now,” she countered.

Sorin had enough empty space to absorb half a dozen E-ranks, or a D and maybe two E-ranks. It would eat up all the space he had for free casting, but he’d earn that back quickly enough. Just getting up to rank 7 would give him enough space for three more E-ranks, roughly speaking. They weren’t all the exact same size, so it was more of a general guess than a hard limit.

And that wasn’t even factoring in merging soulprints together to save space. If he did that, he’d probably chew through twice again as many soulprints as he might otherwise take. He almost felt bad for Lorvaine, who clearly had no clue how much of her stock he was going to use up.

Then again, what she’s asking for is something a rank 6 or 7 would do, not a rank 3. Best be prepared to compensate me like one.

Sorin held out a hand. “I think we’ve got ourselves a deal.”

“We leave immediately,” she said, not extending her own.

“As soon as I finish filling my soulspace.”

“Agreed.” The two shook on it, and she said, “Let me show you the F’s and E’s I’ve got.”