“Bella!” screams Vanessa as Jinlan’s fist hits me.
The blow completely knocks the wind out of me, and my arm feels like it’s on fire, but I grit my teeth through the pain as I let the force of the blow carry me backward. I land in a roll, using my good arm to spring back to my feet and continue my backpedal. Jinlan is still charging forward, trying to take advantage of the damage he’s just done, and I have no intention of letting him.
Fortunately for me, I don’t have far to go. I manage to retreat all the way to the archway, just out of his reach. As with the last time I escaped here, he makes a last second leap, trying to grab me, but he is stopped when the chain on his ankle pulls taught, killing his momentum and sending him falling to the ground.
I take a slow, shaky breath, my ribs damaged from the blow, but I stand tall as he rises back to his feet. A single tear of blood runs down from his eye, and a trickle escapes his mouth as well. He’s burning through his innate core energy trying to kill me, and the effects are showing. Even if he survives, it will take him months to reach a normal state again, and he’ll never be able to regain the innate core ki he lost.
“Why?” I rasp.
He doesn’t respond, instead straining hard against his shackles, trying to reach me. I just take another step back. I no longer need to do anything. As soon as he stops using his innate core energy, he will collapse. If he doesn’t stop, he’ll die. I’ve already won. But he still struggles.
The chain doesn’t budge even a millimeter from where it’s rooted in the floor, and Jinlan realizes this. Rather than giving up though, he only grows more desperate. Coating his hand in a dense layer of ki, he raises it, then brings it down on his own ankle, leaving a deep gash. I waste no time backing up even further, all the way to the first trap in the tunnel behind as he continues hacking at his ankle until the foot is entirely severed.
Why are you going this far? I want to ask, but I know he won’t answer.
At first, I thought he was merely psychotic. A sadistic killer left here as a test for those new to the Tower. But this goes far beyond mere bloodthirst or sadism. It’s pure, utter desperation. To him, this fight is life and death, and he’s willing to go as far as permanently crippling himself just to kill me. I won’t let it happen of course, but I wish I could know what made him so desperate.
He limps toward me, walking on his stump as if it doesn’t bother him, so I retreat further, dodging around the trap. It turns out that I have no need though. He takes one step further, then collapses to the ground. He tries to drag himself closer, but he’s running on fumes. I can hardly feel the ki inside him anymore.
He raises his head to me, bloody tears streaming down his face, then something in his eyes gives out. He makes eye contact for a moment longer, and then, rather than dragging himself closer, he uses what looks to be the last of his strength to roll over so that he’s facing the ceiling. His breathing turns shallow, and his eyes lose focus, but the tears don’t stop.
“I’m- I’m sorry,” he says.
I don’t reply.
“I’m so sorry.”
I’m 90% sure he’s not talking to me.
I watch for another minute as his breaths get weaker and weaker until they finally stop. When I’m sure he’s dead, I look down at my arm. It looks bad, and it hurts like hell, but it’s a clean break. I can still wiggle my fingers. It will heal well, especially once I get my ki center formed. I just need to set it right now. If there are any more trials, I can’t be doing them with my arm like this.
“Bella!” shouts Vanessa.
“I’m fine!” I try to call back, but my voice is weak.
I trudge forward, every step painful on my ribs. I don’t think any are broken, but they’re definitely bruised, and I probably have a bit of internal damage from the ki. Again, nothing that won’t heal with a bit of targeted meditation, but I need to actually have time to meditate to fix it.
As I pass by Jinlan’s bloody corpse though, I hear a sound that makes me freeze in my tracks.
“Mrraw.”
I turn slowly to see the cat stalking out of the tunnel. It looks as friendly as ever, but this time, rather than walking up to me, it stops by the corpse. It opens its mouth, and a spike of pain hits my head as reality seems to break. A split second later, the pain is gone, and so is the body.
“Mrraw!” says the cat happily, walking up and rubbing its body against my leg.
“What the fuck did you just do?” I ask the cat.
It doesn’t respond. Honestly, I would have been more comfortable with this thing if it did. Vanessa looks as shocked as me, and for almost a full minute, the only one moving is the cat. Then, a wave of pain from my arm hits me, and I realize that we don’t have time to waste worrying about the cat. It seems friendly for now, and if it wasn’t, I doubt there’s anything we could do about it. Not in my current state, at least.
“Vanessa,” I say, continuing forward. “I need you to help me set the bones in my arm.”
“Y-your arm? What was-?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “We need to finish this maze. Help me set the bones.”
She stutters for a bit longer before gathering herself and nodding. I gingerly take off my hoodie, then bundle up a second and shove it in my mouth. Setting the bone makes my vision black out, and I bite down so hard on the hoodie that my jaw hurts, but less than a minute later, it’s done. It’s a good thing we’re both med students. Setting it on my own would have been difficult, and walking someone untrained through it even more so. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The whole time, the cat just sits nearby, watching curiously. When we’re done, it walks back up to me as I’m sitting down, breathing as heavily as I can, and it starts rubbing its head against me.
“Is- is that…?” starts Vanessa.
“Yes,” I say. “This is the treasure.”
“What is it?”
“I wish I knew.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, then Vanessa reaches her hand out to pet it. It leans into her hand, and soon, it’s over with her, sitting in her lap as she pets it.
“It’s kind of cute,” she says.
“It just ate a man.”
The cat purrs happily.
“...Yeah, but it seems friendly to us at least,” says Vanessa. “And it’s cute.”
“I’m going to sell it when we get out.”
“What? Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’? It’s dangerous. And also valuable. I don’t think we were actually supposed to get it. Ganyu said there were things here that even he would pay good money for. This is probably one of them.”
“I guess…” says Vanessa, frowning. “But if it’s that valuable, why not keep it? We can just train it not to eat people.”
“If you want to try to train it, be my guest. I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“Really?”
“If you fail though, I’m selling it and keeping all of whatever I get for it.”
“Deal,” says Vanessa instantly.
We sit for a few more minutes before standing up and getting ready to leave. I take my hoodie and try to tie it into a sling, which Vanessa notices and helps me. It’s not perfect, and it would be better if it was splinted first, but as long as I don’t jostle it too much, the pain is bearable.
We start walking back down the tunnel to where we split off from Katherine and Thomas and the others, but after no more than a few dozen feet, we come to a side tunnel that I’m certain didn’t exist before, and down it, I sense something familiar. Vanessa doesn’t realize why I stopped at first, but after a few seconds, she senses it too. It’s the same vibrant ki that the chest with the cat in it held.
As I notice it, I realize I never grabbed the chest from the other room. The cat spooked me so much that I completely forgot about it. It’s not that far back, and I could go get it again, but it’s honestly not worth it anymore.
“Is that another treasure room?” askes Vanessa.
“Probably the real treasure room,” I say. “The one we would have gotten if we had actually just turned around instead of fighting Jinlan.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
We make our way down the tunnel, and a minute later, we’re in another treasure room. It’s identical to the one with the cat, but the chest is much different. It’s about three feet long, and half a foot wide, and only a couple inches deep. I sigh when I see it, and sigh harder when we open it and see what’s inside.
“A sword!” says Vanessa.
It looks like a Chinese jian. It has a simple handle of leather and steel, while the scabbard is black with swirling red patterns.
“This would have been useful a couple minutes ago,” I mutter.
Why did the cat have to be the one in the far room? If it was switched with the sword, I wouldn’t be injured right now. The fight would have been over in seconds. It wouldn’t really have even been a fight, at that point.
Well, too late for regrets now.
I grab the sword with my good hand, feeling the weight. Even in the sheath, it’s quite light, which definitely isn’t a bad thing. My current body is fairly weak, and a heavy sword would be harder to swing around. I set the tip back down in the box and draw the blade from its sheath, and take a moment to marvel at the craftsmanship. Vanessa seems enamored by it as well, and reaches out to touch the blade, but I pull away.
“Careful,” I say. “It’s sharp.”
As she draws her hand back, I do a demonstration swing, cutting through the corner of the stone pedestal with almost no resistance. Vanessa’s face pales and she takes a full step back.
“Sorry,” she says meekly.
Honestly, I’m a little bit scared as well. I didn’t expect it to cut so easily either. I knew the sword was a good one, but I didn’t realize how good. The craftsmanship is beyond what would have been possible on Earth. Perhaps if Ou Yezi lived another century, he could have done it, but that’s it. On top of that, I don’t recognize the metal. It’s too light and too pale to be steel, but it’s definitely not aluminum or anything like that either. And the blade doesn’t look to have dulled in the slightest after cutting through the stone.
As I resheath it, I notice that the interior of the scabbard is lined with the same metal to protect it from the blade. It’s a very well-made sword, and one that will probably serve me for a while. I don’t have a good frame of reference for how difficult each Floor is, and I know the sword will probably prove inadequate eventually, but for now at least, I don’t need to worry about finding a weapon.
“Let’s finish this maze,” I say, lifting the sword up and resting it on my shoulder. “I want a bit of time to rest.”
“Okay,” says Vanessa.
Her eyes linger on the sword as she too turns to leave. She’s a bit apprehensive, but I can also tell she’s interested in it. Understandable, but if she wants a sword like this, she’s going to need to find it herself. I defeated Jinlan, not her. This sword is mine.
At the start of the journey, the cat takes the lead, almost causing Vanessa to die as she nearly follows it over a trap. However, after a few minutes, the cat vanishes again, leaving us alone. Then, later, it reappears. I have no idea where it goes when it does this, and I’m not sure I want to.
After another fifteen minutes of travel, we come across another fork, and sense a familiar ki. The exit is down the middle path, but the rightmost path contains the same vibrant ki as before, though this time it’s muted. We follow that route to check, and though we do find a treasure room, the chest is empty. I’d assume one of the other two pairs took it. Based on the lack of blood in the maze, I’d guess that whoever got it, it was decided peacefully.
We exit the room and return to the main path. There are two more treasure rooms along the way, both already empty, but we check them anyway, and after another half hour or so, we finally arrive at a grand double door, similar to the one we entered in. My entire body is aching at this point, so I’m more than happy to finally be done. It’s getting a bit hard to breathe, and I need to sit down and meditate to heal before any real damage is done.
Vanessa pushes the door open, and as we hoped, we’re greeted by another tunnel, identical to the one where we entered in. A couple dozen of the people who entered before us are already out, resting and talking amongst themselves. On the far side of the tunnel near the exit, Ganyu stands, watching with his same cold expression, and next to him stands someone new. She is one of the odd humanoid races I saw on our way in, with marble skin, great feathered wings, and four golden eyes. Her expression is stern, and I feel like if she wore glasses, she would look a lot like my former calculus teacher.
More importantly, the way she’s standing, and her apparent lack of ki make one thing very clear: she’s on the same level as Ganyu. No, by the way he seems to be deferring to her, she might be a level above. Her level of ki mastery must be at a realm that I cannot even fathom.
As soon as we exit, her gaze meets mine, and Ganyu leans over and nudges her, whispering something I can’t hear. She nods, then starts walking toward me.