Six Soul Points into STR, and a staggering eight into his AGL, Jace had never felt so alive. It was like his Soul had finally served its purpose.
Heather raised his forearm to block the next blow, just to be dragged apart and struck across the face again.
Jace pulled the collar of Heather's shirt, laughing again as he immersed in his own delusion of euphoria.
"What now?! Are you going to ignite your Soul?! Wait—you can't! You ran out of mana!"
Heather widened his swollen eyes and raised his fist again, yelling back:
"Shut up! You don't know anything about me!"
Jace released his grip, weaved through the pathetic, slow attack and countered with a fast uppercut.
"Wrong! I know everything about you!"
In the early stages of a Climber, it was fairly simple to figure out their manifesting Soul.
The reason why Heather couldn't keep up against Jace's attacks was because his Soul Points were invested in INT, instead of the other stats that dealt with physicality. Without his sigil sword, and without his Skills, Heather was nothing spectacular than an ordinary Climber.
And Jace had already had Heather under his palm. Heather had three Skills, one to manipulate fire, one to ignite and empower his stats, and the other to violently explode into flames. He needed mana to use Skills, which right now, as more punches connected across his face, he had nothing to defend himself with.
Jace wanted Heather to feel pain.
His wretched ploy to throw Jace into the Verdant Maw had failed. In the end, it had made the squad's branded loser victorious, and even more stronger.
Then another voice came from the side, casting over Brita's cries and yelled at them:
"What the hell are you two doing?!"
Jace turned his eyes to her as he clutched Heather's collar below him.
Erin's blonde hair was tousled with mud, and her torn leather breastplate had revealed the scars underneath. She had healed from her traumatic injuries.
Klav showed up after, a few feet apart, swigging from a potion as he chuckled:
"I see I'm late to the after-party."
Heather threw off Jace's grip and crawled in the other direction, somewhere towards the gleam of a grimy sigil sword.
Jace immediately burst into a dash, passing Heather in seconds and dove, grabbing the hilt first.
The Soul echoed into his ears.
[Relic Obtained: Heirloom of Grace]
He stood as his eyes glued into the sigil sword.
'What the—'
Heather punched him across the face and yelled sharply:
"Get your dirty hands off my sword!"
But Jace flashed the sigil sword in return, creating immediate distance between them. He said back with his voice even more disappointed and humorous.
"Your sword was a Relic this entire time, seriously?! How miserable do you have to be?!"
He didn't care if he sounded hypocritical. A weapon capable of being a Relic was even more rare in the Tower, especially when it could gap the strength of other Climbers so easily.
And it just so happened to be in the hands that Jace hated most.
'That's…the reason why he had won against me.'
Now that he recalled their duel in Hailfen, Jace's AGL must have been higher than Heather during that time. There were some instances where the way Heather had blocked Jace's attacks seemed artificial, as if his sword had a mind of its own.
As if an active Skill was controlling the defense.
Jace quickly looked into his Soul, magnifying into the Relic as Heather tried to wrestle him for the (Heirloom of Grace).
[Relic: Heirloom of Grace]
[Type: Active]
[MP: 20]
[Description: The sword serves the sole duty of prosperity to the heir.]
Klav shoved them apart, breaking the fight before Jace could retaliate a second later.
If the barbarian didn't intervene, then they would have hoped there were health potions to spare.
Heather continued yelling, trying to push past the meaty arm that was holding him back.
"Give me back my sword! You damned fool! Give it back!"
Klav turned to Jace with a disinterested face.
"Let it go, bread-boy."
Jace pointed with the sigil sword with defiance in his voice.
"This wasn't an expedition, it was an execution. We only ascended to the Verdant Maw because Heather knew a Floor Guardian was still alive. This is exactly what he wanted. He wanted me dead, and guess what—he failed! And I'm still alive!"
"You're out of your mind."
Erin and Brita came into view as they heard the outrageous claim. But looking at the two boys, one holding a stolen sigil sword, and the other with a bloodied face, they didn't know who to believe.
Jace yelled again, gesturing his sword in a rageful manner:
"Tell them, Heather! Tell them how insecure you were about yourself, so much that you decided to force us to ascend into the fifteenth Floor, and face a Floor Guardian!"
Heather coughed back, sharing the same drive in his voice.
"I should have left you in Hailfen! You've contributed nothing to this squad but get in our way!"
Jace cackled and said back:
"Get in your way?! Did you seriously think you all would have lived if I wasn't here?!"
Then Erin shouted, turning their pointless argument to a stop.
"The monster is dead! No matter if Heather tried to kill us all, the monster is dead and our Souls gained experience. Isn't that what we're here for?"
Jace shook his head to himself.
'You bastards are all lucky. A Floor Guardian isn't a being to mess with and yet we somehow escaped without a Climber lost into the Void. It was because of me. I'm the reason why this squad survived.'
Heather pushed off Klav's arm and ordered fiercely:
"Give me back my sword, now!"
But Jace said back, frightening the Climbers with unease.
"Or what? What could you possibly do? I've already beaten you twice, do you really want to try again?"
"You…don't want this—"
"What if I do? Go ahead, tell your squad to fight me, and you'll really see why the Floor Guardian had been slain."
Everyone had frozen, staring into his cold eyes as he basically had threatened their lives. His words had sharpened with contradiction and resolve to sound believable.
But it still sounded impossible, with four aspiring Climbers against one without any promising Skills. Yet, they had a reason to believe the lone Climber was not lying.
Jace had never known fear. In every expedition, they've seen him tread near the Void enough to figure out that he wasn't some ordinary Climber.
He was someone with nothing to lose. In a way, he was the perfect human candidate the Soul could have appointed with.
A few seconds later, and through the silence, Jace offered to Heather with a fair trade.
"You want me out of the squad, fine, I couldn't agree more. Give me a Port Crystal and I'm gone. In return, you'll get your sword back."
Heather gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with frustration about how he felt on the receiving end.
"Do you think I would believe something like that?"
"I'll break your Relic."
"No, you can't, you fool. Relics are indestructible from the Tower."
Klav dragged a groan, rubbing his stubble and agreed with Jace.
"Just give him a Port Crystal, and he's gone from our expedition. Aren't you two tired of each other already?"
Heather grumbled some curses to himself and fished into his pockets, then threw a small shard of crystalized glass at Jace's feet.
Jace tossed back the (Heirloom of Grace), watching the miserable Climber pick up his Relic.
'I'm done with this squad. I'm done with people. Why do I even try anymore?'
He stomped on the Port Crystal, crushing it beneath his boots as the air hummed around him.
'Just get me out of here.'
But as he drifted his eyes back to Heather's squad, there was one person in particular that looked remorseful to see him leave.
[Soul detected.]
[Beginning descent.]
Lights shimmered around him, obscuring the sight of their eyes before he could muster a thought about her.
[Process successful.]
[Climber Jace has descended to the 2nd Floor, Pensula.]
***
Pensula, the Climber's first steps into the vast worlds created by the Tower. For Jace, it somehow became his end.
He sat along the edge of the crystal pedestal, leaning his head forward in a tired sigh. If it made things sound better, he had stuck with Heather's squad for almost two weeks which was a new record for him.
Two weeks, even if that sounded short, he had spent every hour and day with them as they ascended and gained experience in the Tower. But he had barely known Heather, Klav, and Brita and only viewed them like colleagues rather than friends.
Some of them, at least.
And for Erin, she was something else he couldn't figure out yet.
Jace lifted his head, wondering why the people were giving him long stares. Even some of the other Climbers that came out of the Port tried to avoid him.
'Oh, I forgot.'
After fighting with Guardian Lycan, he had grown numb to the smell of mud and rain, so the filth that accumulated on his gear most likely infiltrated into their noses.
He waved, forcing a smiling gesture for the stains he left behind on the Port.
But he pulled back his hand into his eyes, studying the glimmer of the ring on his finger.
'I…forgot about this, too.'
He opened his Soul.
[Name: Jace]
[Rank: Climber]
[Level: 13]
[HP: 73/130]
[MP: 0/20]
[STR: 6]
[END: 2]
[AGL: 5 + 3]
[INT: 0]
[WIS: 0]
[Skills: (Wide Slash - Lv. 1), (Strike - Lv. 1)]
[Blessings: (Blessing of Starch - Lv. 1)]
[Curses: ]
[Relics: (Ring of Haste)]
He magnified into his Relic's lines again.
[Relic: Ring of Haste]
[Type: Passive]
[Description: Simple things bring simple promises.]
Jace stared at the Relic's description for a while, reading it multiple times before he tiredly groaned.
'She's not mad at me, right? I should have given it back to her…whatever, it was a gift. It's not like she even cared about me. None of them did. They're happy that I'm gone.'
He dismissed the transparent window and stood off the crystal pedestal, patting along his belt in the absence of something.
His silver sword was missing.
'I forgot my sword, dammit—this can't get any more embarrassing.'
After letting out another groan, he walked back onto the main street of the Port Town and continued his journey as a lone Climber again.
Just like he had started, and how it had ended.