Andrew Rowe - Sufficiently Advanced Magic

I nodded. “Okay. How hard is it to get down there?”

“With me? Not bad.” Derek grinned. “Stairs down are harder to find. They’re usually either concealed or protected somehow, but if we only need to go down one level, that should be very doable. Six days is plenty of time. We’ll probably be done in less than six hours.”

Professor Orden shook her head. “I appreciate your confidence, Derek, but we’re not all a bunch of Emeralds like yourself. We will need to proceed slowly and cautiously to ensure the children — and our esteemed guest — remain safe.”

Derek nodded. “’Course, we’ll take it slow. I’m just saying that this doesn’t sound particularly difficult, it’s just important. If we prioritize monster rooms, I should be able to handle the danger by myself for the most part.”

Sera turned to Derek. “Prioritize? Meaning that, much like with a Judgment, we’re going to have a choice of different rooms to proceed?”

“Yep. And one of the options is usually fighting. The tower gets more dangerous as you go further up, both in terms of traps and monsters. I could sleep through fighting most of the things on the first ten levels or so, with the exception of spire guardians. I’d have to be awake for those, but I could be blindfolded and armless.” He winked at Sera. “Not to brag or anything, of course.”

Sera rolled her eyes. “Right. Just like you handled the Survival Match all by yourself.”

Derek gave her a wounded look, putting his hand over his heart. “That was a rare exception, Miss Cadence. I wasn’t able to show my true strength in there. I was suppressing a considerable amount of my shroud to look like a Citrine.”

“Why do that?” Sera folded her arms.

Derek sighed. “We only have a few known Emeralds in all of Valia. Emeralds are tactical assets in warfare, so we try to keep a relatively low profile. No laws about it, just common sense.”

Orden nodded. “Each attunement level is about six times more powerful than the last. Even an E-ranked Emerald is six times more powerful than an E-ranked Citrine and so-on.”

Derek chuckled. “And I’m hardly just E-ranked. Anyway, I’d normally never say this, but enough about me. We should focus on the task at hand.”

Orden pointed at the north east door. “Shall we begin exploring, then? We can look at the two doors that are available and choose a path.”

“I’ll go check the walls for additional passages while you do that,” Vera offered. “And no, I’m not going to try to escape. I know you can teleport.”

Professor Orden nodded. “I appreciate your cooperation.”

Our group headed toward the northwest doorway. Unlike most of the doors in my Judgment, this was a simple wooden door with no visible lock. Standard doorknob. It looked like the type of door you could find just about anywhere.

Derek waved for us to back off a bit, so we all stepped back while he approached the door. “Don’t see a lot of traps on the first floor, but I should always be the one to open the doors just in case.”

I liked the idea of having Derek up front. It made it much harder for him to stab us in the back.

I watched carefully as Derek opened the door.

The next chamber looked pretty similar to the one we were standing in, with the exception of the fact that the floor was missing.

After a few seconds, a single floating tile appeared about a meter from the doorway. Another tile appeared a few seconds later, another meter or so out from the doorway.

Then the first tile disappeared, and a third tile appeared, continuing the path.

The appearing tiles were clearly making a path toward the solitary visible door on the other side of the room: a path that was, if I wasn’t mistaken, meant for us to jump across one tile at a time.

I didn’t like this at all.

Derek reached into a pouch at his side and retrieved the most mundane of tools — a rock. He tossed the rock onto one of the visible tiles. It hit and bounced right into the darkness beyond.

“Looks like they’re solid, at least.” He turned back to the group. “Orden, are the tiles actually discorporating or just turning invisible?”

“They’re discorporating. You’d need to jump across with exactly the right timing, otherwise you’d fall into…whatever that darkness is.”

I thought I heard something from the pit, but it was barely audible.

“Silly question,” Sera stepped closer to the doorway, looking down. Just seeing her that close made me uncomfortable. “But if this goes down, would it be a possible shortcut to the floor we’re looking for?”

“Not a bad thought, actually.” Derek peered down into the darkness.

Vera finished her circuit of the room and came to stand by the rest of us. “I heard the rock hit the ground after about five and a half seconds. That means the floor is about a hundred and forty eight meters down. Unlikely we’d survive that fall, and it’s also several floors down.”

Those were some pretty impressive senses.

Sera set down her backpack. “I’ve got rope. Could we lower someone down and break through a wall at the correct altitude?”

Derek scratched his chin. “Maybe if there’s a hollow wall that’s designed for it — and there are a bunch of those in the tower. Have to be careful, though. If you try to break through one of the normal walls, the tower usually sends something to stop you. Even I wouldn’t want to take the risk of fighting one of those guardians if I can avoid it.”

Vera knelt down and pressed a hand against the stone just below the doorway. “I don’t detect any weaknesses in the wall right near us. There are two of them in the chamber we’re currently standing in, though. They’re located directly opposite the two visible doors.”

She gestured to the south side of the chamber. “They’re thinner than the standard wall segments, but I also detected mechanisms on the other sides — meaning I don’t think they’re meant to be smashed open. I think they’re shortcuts back into this room from other parts of the tower.”

Derek nodded. “That’s pretty common. Lots of ways back to the entrance. We could try to bust through one to find a shortcut, but it’s not worth the risk of antagonizing a spire guardian.”

I gestured at the open door. “Do we have any way of knowing if this even leads to a way down?”

Vera stepped away from the doorway and turned to me. “Nope. But most tower paths tend to lead in a big circle, unless they end at a teleporter or a treasure room. If we keep exploring, we’ll hit a way down eventually.”

Derek nodded in agreement and closed the door. “We could probably handle this pretty easily, but the first door usually gives you an idea of the character of a specific route. I’d rather avoid puzzles if we can.”

If I was going it solo, I’d have probably disagreed, although timing-based puzzles weren’t my greatest strength. With this group, though, fighting our way through did seem a lot safer than counting on everyone properly timing their jumps.

We headed over to the other door and Derek opened it without incident.

The next room was a long rectangular one with a single door directly opposite us.

In between us and the door, however, were three titanic green slimes.

Slimes were among the most basic monsters in any of the spires. They weren’t smart or particularly dangerous. They were essentially gelatinous mana with a hint of animal cunning. The most common theory I’d heard was that they were essentially the byproducts of failed spells and magical experiments.

The more solid ones could slam into you to break bones, but most of them just tried to envelop and suffocate people. This wasn’t generally a big threat, since they weren’t very fast or strong, either.