//------------------------------//
// 81 - Always the Answer 
// Story: Bind on Pickup 
// by David Silver 
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Spike pushed open the door to the boss, only for a great punch to come forth. It didn't strike him, as much a surprise as anything else, though he felt the drag of his martyr's stance drawing some of the pain that had resulted.

Garble slid backwards, decked across the face and sent sprawling and stunned. The fight had already begun, and with that, the tower had sent a clear message. The time for niceties had ended. The boss of that tenth floor was ready to end them.

They rushed into the room around the withdrawing fist. Their challenge was a great six armed gorilla that howled in fury, eyes alight with malignant red energy. "You are almost to the top." It eradicated the floor where Smolder had been standing moments before. "Pathetic. They let anyone up here, I see." With a renewed simian cry, it swept a hand along the floor, knocking Spike and Tabitha aside as if they were nothing but paper dolls.

Smolder ran to their side, serving up some rejuvenating snacks, while Garble pressed the offense, “You think you’ll put us in fear? You won’t stop us here!” He slashed a crackling crescent, smashing into the ape. It didn’t do nothing, but it also didn’t stop the ape, who thrust out an open palm at Garble, crashing into him, sending him back.

“Fear is not my goal,” the ape replied, moving his arms almost hypnotically, covering the attack approaches. “Only the reality of your futility.”

Garble pulled himself up, feeling the familiar pulse of healing from Spike’s heal, as he popped his neck. “So are you just sayin words to hear yourself say them?”

The gorilla charged, three punches coming in quick succession, the last of which was intercepted by a shining shield. “Nah. He’s definitely trying to get in our heads.”

A star lanced down from the heavens, slamming into the ape, once again not causing a flinch, but Sandra and Twilight were far out of range, preparing another starshot. Tabitha let out a cry as she waded back into battle, but how far it had become slanted seemed clear to her. They had went from well-equipped to comically under prepared. The ten floors they had skipped?

They had been a trap. They couldn't farm them, nothing there to farm. They were in a losing fight, but it wasn't one they could lose. They had to reach the top. Her thoughts fizzled as she was bowled over, not by a clenched fist, but the back of a finger, just clipping her as it reared back with the rest of its hand.

"Cheese it," called not Spike or Sandra, but Garble. "Recall!"

They vanished almost instantly, popping away in abject failure.

"Damn it." He punched the wall next to the recall point. "We were nothing compared to that thing. How do we catch up to that?"

The five of them (six, with their quiet unicorn) sat for a moment, before eventually Spike piped up. “There must be… something else we can do to power up our equipment. Tabitha, you’re the one who probably knows the best, what can we do?”

“I’ve been trying to think of it. Problem is I don’t have a good… idea of how to do that. Most of the highest level adventurers who don’t go into a tower spend a lot of time building reputation with organizations, or going into the most dangerous places in the world. None of which are here. Like, there are some decent areas around, but nothing that I think would be that dangerous.”

Smolder was mulling it over. “Do you think that we could just… learn the fight better? Recall repeatedly and treat it like the dance floor where we just figure out exactly how to not take damage?”

“Then what would we do on the next floor?” Sandra piped up. “We’d be up against normal monsters that expect us to be tough enough to beat the boss with only a little difficulty.”

Spike put his hands on either side of his head as if trying to squeeze a migraine before it got too bad. "Alright, alright! Let's calm down… We aren't giving up."

"No way!" barked Garble in agreement. "If we have to go cross-country to find one of those places, we will. This tower ain't winning!" He turned away from the recall point. "Ain't giving it that satisfaction."

“What about Arlien?” Smolder said. “He had some really good gear that could stand up to and then beat Gar Gar here, but he never went up the tower. Unless he had a big adventuring career or went out regularly, he must know something about getting good gear here. And he probably doesn’t hate us anymore…”

Tabitha considered that, but her eyes were on the recall point. "He doesn't hate us. I don't think he ever did? We were teammates… before… Maybe it's time we stopped by and had a chat. Just because he didn't get to the top doesn't mean he can't have some answers."

Sandra nudged her friend. "Arlien," she reminded. "You're thinking of the wrong person we had a fight with recently."

"Huh, did I?" Tabitha seemed a bit distracted. "Either way, yes, let's go back and talk with people who have power, but aren't climbing the tower. We aren't giving up… We can't."





The felisurra man scratched his chin. “I hadn’t talked much to tower climbers. Are the materials really that different?”

“Different how?” Garble asked, talking to his master, or former master, or whatever, on his own.

“Well you are using nothing but tower materials and that is… not quite what kind of materials I use. Materials outside of that can be bartered for, and sometimes I need rare ores, mined and extracted from the mana of the mountains themselves… or wood or herbs.” He turned around. “This is in addition to the materials of powerful monsters, which really sets the power level of the gear.”

“Yeah, but the strong monsters are the problem.” Garble said. “I don’t know if there are any monsters around here that tough. But you have gear at least as good as mine is. Where do you find them?”

The man smiled. “There’s a way to find extremely powerful monsters, and the drops they provide are even stronger than is implied. It is guaranteed something that can do amazing things for your equipment, it is…”





"So…" Sandra walked along with the others, outside of the city, headed away from the tower. "The dragons experienced this once before. You kill enough monsters, close together, quickly, the fleeing energy can get all tangled up, recombine… manamerge." Sandra twirled to face her party, going backwards. "We never finished a fight against a manamerge, but, if Garble's mentor is a good word, it could be the source of even more amazing equipment."

Spike thrust up a finger. "We won against the fire monkey thing, remember? We can handle it!"

"A catch, a big catch," warned Tabitha. "We're not in the tower. There is no recall. We win, or we lose, big time. Keep that in mind, fight like your life depends on it. It does." She hiked a thumb back at the city shrinking behind them. "Good news, all that effort we put in with our smithy will pay off. We bring her better materials, she's ready to work her part of things."

Smolder nudged Tabitha, an elbowing. "Your friend went this way, right? Why are we following them again?"

"Tomás is with a group working to weed out monsters before they become too big a problem." Tabitha pointed ahead in the direction they were going. "But that means they have a lot of monsters in one place, enough to think of bringing it down. We get in there, manamerge them, we get his job done, and get our supplies, at once."


The party ventured onward, into the rocky crevasse ahead, where the monsters were naturally going to be funnelled into a small area, and they looked down and saw them.

It wasn’t so much a group of monsters as a moving mass of magical monster boars, most of which had aquatic features, finned ears, swordfish nose horns, as well as a few overtly throwing some form of water magic around. “Those do not look like they belong here.” Smolder raised an eyebrow.

“Tomás said that these were roaming around. Maybe they all came out of a river or something someday and started tearing up the countryside, and his pick up group was gonna cull them a bit as they went through, and keep at it.”

Garble slammed his fist into his other palm. “But we get to knock em all out at once, then knock em out again.”

The party made their way to the front of the pack, all taking high points above the point of the herd. While the herd was impressively large, the point was not too many monsters. Tabitha looked to Sandra, giving her a nod, and Sandra shouted, “Aiden!” summoning her firebird, which then pelted one of the monsters with a blast of fire, blasting it into steam pretty quickly.

The individual monsters were not difficult. Compared to tower beasts they were, at best, maybe floor 30? Nothing compared to them. But Spike and Smolder had a more important job as the rest destroyed them like angry gods.

Spike waved a tasty dumpling on a stick. "This way!" He danced and capered, leading the herd along towards the waiting ambushers. "Right here!" The less they moved, the easier it would be to make sure all their magic got all gelled together, to start the chain reaction that would result in a manamerge.

Smolder wiped her forehead with an arm, slaving over a big fire as she reduced monsters into more tasty bits for Spike to use in his job. "We got this!"

"What are you doing, chica?" Tomás landed beside Smolder, quiet until then. "It is considered ill sport to steal another adventurer's task from them."

"You can keep the money," assured Smolder. "We're not here for that, promise. We're just making it easier for you."

"Now you are taking pity on me." He looked more curious than outraged. "Tell me, what are you doing?"

“D-did she not tell you about anything about what we’re doing?” Spike looked aghast as he ran by. “Tabitha what the hell!”

“Hey!” Tabitha protested, as she shield bashed a water boar into another. “We didn’t have time to tell him. I can tell him now! Tomás!” She turned around. “We need a huge manamerge monster so we can improve some gear, and a large group of monsters like this is perfect for it.”

Tomás made a flat face. “Tabitha… we were going to whittle down the monster because it would be dangerously strong with all that power.”

“Sure! But we’re at floor 89 and, remember how I said we were struggling for gear.” She dodged out of the way of a swordfish boar. “So uh… there was a good solution! Sorry!”

Smolder lifted her shoulders with a sheepish grin. "Hey, we owe you. You can take all the credit for these things getting bashed to pieces."

"Not enough," he stated simply. "You are making wealth right now, and not offering any?"

Smolder looked towards Tabitha a bit helplessly.

Tabitha threw up her hands, spinning in place to narrowly avoid a thrusting horn. "Do you even have a smithy ready to go? You defaulted the last one to me, remember!"

"I do remember," he assured. "But you obviously have one, or you wouldn't be here, Tabitha. Don't play dumb, I know you are not that, chica. Rude, perhaps at times, but dumb… no."

Tabitha blocked a strike, only for Garble to come in with a spinning strike, taking out a whole group of enemies at once, eliciting a whistle from Tomás. Tabitha grit her teeth. “Fine, but we really need stuff to increase our gear power, we cannot make progress without it.” She slashed at the next monster coming at her. “We can work something out later.”

Tomás grinned the grin of someone who knew exactly what he was doing. “Alright then, chica. I’ll hold you to that.” And he backed up to watch the fireworks from a distance.

Above the party, in between the rocks of the crevasse, monstrous water mana gathered, collecting more stone mana from the environment, growing in size and power…