Deacon sat atop the CFMT Tower, letting the wind blow through his hair and his feet dangle between the gaps of the rails as he waited for the download to finish. His manaphone, in his hands at the moment, was jacked into one of the data terminals that dotted the top platforms of the CFMT Tower, its screen was currently dimmed but with a faintly glowing blue bar in the middle as it ticked away at 94% downloaded.
He was currently downloading the World Map of Floors One and Two onto his manaphone for two reasons: first, so he could locate Meadow's Reach, and second, to identify any cool-looking areas within Floors One and Two's World Map that had abundant resources he and his team could use or might want to explore later.
Deacon leaned forward, resting his head on one of the cool metal rails as his boots were dangling over open air, a comfortable hundred meters above the grassy plains below. And in his opinion, the view was insane from up atop the CFMT Tower; fields stretching endlessly in every direction, the graveyard of Generation One's Climbers casting long shadows under the dying lavender colored sky.
[94.6%]
[94.9%]
This is so damn slow.
His eyes flicked back to the screen before he finally gave in with a sigh and swiped the app's task to the side and pressed the unpause button that appeared in front of him – his manaphone buffered slightly for a couple of seconds before a familiar intro blared softly through his earbuds.
"Previously… on Totally Ordinary…"
A dramatic cut to a pastel-cloaked girl with blood on her cheeks and a crossbow pointed at her fiancé played on his manaphone's screen.
Deacon exhaled a short laugh through his nose. "… Ah, right, they really killed off Cam. Okay, I remember now," he muttered to himself as the twenty-second recap finished.
He hadn't watched this show in almost eight months as he personally put aside to focus on training and honing his skill in order not to die a dog's death while climbing the Tower. And it helped, within those eight months, he was able to get a new spell engraved on his soul with assistance from the academy, and it was by far one of the most useful spells in his arsenal, Flame Armament.
[95.3%]…
[Error – Too Many Accesses At Once]
"C'mon, c'mon," he muttered, pulling his Academy Graduate ID Card from the terminal's side slot and giving it a once-over. The ID was still warm from mana contact. "There's literally no one fucking here around me, so how are there too many accesses happening right this moment?"
He gave the card a light couple of taps on the rails of the platform before slotting it back into the data terminal and seeing the percentage bar resume to tick upwards.
His manaphone chirped once as it announced that Floor One's World Map had officially finished downloading and Floor Two's World Map would need a couple of minutes more before it finished. He leaned his head against the cold rails as a line of dialogue played in his ear.
"Now that that's done, how about I help you join your brother into the afterlife, Sean? You can't leave him all alone up there, could you?"
He cracked an eye open, grimaced, looking away from his manaphone for a bit. "How many times has that line been said throughout the ten seasons of this show?"
From this high up, the world looked like it was still asleep… The CFMT Tower was humming with mana, receiving mana from the devices buried deep into the ground that were currently powering it and the massive protective and obscuring wards that warded off any non-sentient being from being able to attack and see where the tower was.
[99.4%]
"Almost there," Deacon muttered.
[Download 2 of 2 Complete]
Finally, Deacon thought to himself as he opened his Map app and opened Floor Two's World Map and accessed its search bar to look up Meadow's Reach.
[Meadow's Reach]
Generation: Four
Ecological Threat Rating: Lv 3-7
CFMT Connection: Up
Guild Affiliated Area: North of the Floor – The Balros
Resources: Yes – Abundant with Herbs
Warning: Sporewinds detected in high quantities – carry a filtration mask or risk potential lung rupturing.
"That's not good," Deacon muttered, he hadn't bought or purchased any filtration mask with him.
I guess paper masks will have to make a reappearance, he shrugged. It won't be as good as a proper filtration mask, but so long as I don't get the spores into my body its fine – I can wear earphones to protect my ears and the paper mask for my nose and mouth.
He tagged it with a waypoint ping and set it as his destination while setting his current location as the starting point… Thirty-seven kilometers southeast.
Huh, not bad. I thought it would be at least further, but this is good news.
Deacon stood up and rolled his shoulders, the last rays of that lavender sky turning more blue-gray now – night was creeping closer.
He then slipped his Academy Graduate ID Card into his Spatial Sling Bag and placed a singular earphone back into his manaphone in order to be able to hear the directions given to him to reach Meadow's reach while still being able to hear his surroundings.
And for a moment, he just leaned against the rails and spat the last of the trail mix shell over the edge of the railing. However, just as he did so, he took notice of two people emerging from the ground a couple of meters away from the protective fields of the CFMT Tower and slowly began to approach it.
[Human Lv 11]
[Human Lv 12]
This could be dangerous, Deacon remarked to himself just before he put away his other earphone and his manaphone into his Spatial Sling Bag and felt the both of them use Identify on him.
Deacon descended the CFMT Tower's rectangular spiraling stairs, the metal clanging under his boots as the wind whipped around him and the two below.
"You lost, friend?" one of them called, the voice light, and a bit too friendly for his liking. "Need a hand?"
"No," Deacon replied, eyes not leaving them as he hopped off the final stair onto the flattened grass surrounding the base of the tower. "I'm fine."
The two figures casually stepped forward, towards the base of the stairs where Deacon was currently standing in front of. Both were equipped with metal-plated leather armor, It looks like Iron plating, Deacon noted. One of them, the Level 11, had a large two-handed axe across his back, and the other one, the Level 12, was fiddling around with a spellsling ring that rested on his right hand's middle and ring finger.
So, I'm dealing with a warrior who focuses on power and a mage, Deacon noted. And one of them has an Earth Affinity, judging by how they emerged from the ground.
"You sure?" the axe-wielding warrior asked, tilting his head slightly. "It's pretty dangerous being out here alone. We can help you out, it's no problem for us."
"I said," Deacon exhaled, brushing past them as he adjusted the strap of his Spatial Sling Bag, "I'm fine."
The two glanced at one another and shared a smirk as they Identified him and noticed his Spatial Sling Bag and the pack on his back. And they thought, now why would you have a pack on your back but still wear a Spatial Sling Bag.
"Oh," the one with the Spelllock ring said, mock-surprised. "We insist, after all… you're walking on guild land. And we'd be happy to help you off of it."
He took a single step closer, letting the mana core of his ring flicker briefly between his fingers.
"…For a small fee, of course," the glaive user added, lifting a hand in mock diplomacy.
Deacon stopped and turned just slightly. One foot still facing his route southeast, the other now angled toward them.
"There can't be a guild base on the first Floor Two location ever discovered," Deacon said flatly. "It is considered to be off limits because everyone teleports there, and no guild has a right to claim it. Not to mention how stupidly risky it is to build a guild base near an area where everyone and their mother passes by."
"Not to mention this rule is enforced by both the Academy and the top guilds to–"
The warrior barked out a short laugh. "And where are those other guilds now? Where's the Academy enforcer that are supposed to be patrolling the proclaimed, off-limits areas?"
The spellsling wielder held out his arms as if motioning to the quiet fields, now deep in evening hush. "They're not here, boyo."
"We are."
The silence that followed between them was filled with so much tension, Deacon believed that it could have been easily cut with a knife.
Deacon stared at them both for a moment, debating whether it would be worth the risks to fight them both. His agility stat was most definitely lower than the warrior's, so outrunning them was out of the question, especially with nothing around to use as cover, so he was a sitting duck with the mage potentially being a long range one.
"How much is the fee?" Deacon asked, watching them both, and feeling the weight of Echoform Reliquary being absent on his back and hips to be glaringly distressing. I should have taken… no, if they saw I had an Artifact on me and alone, I'd have been attacked straight away, and they wouldn't be toying with me the way they currently are.
"Everything on you," the mage smirked as the warrior casually began to approach Deacon. "And we'll help you leave without being harmed in any physical way."
Deacon's fingers twitched against the strap of his Sling Bag.
"Last chance," the mage offered, his Spelllock Ring already beginning to glimmer with a soft ochre glow. "Hand it over. Or we'll take it from your cold–" was all the mage could say before the warrior lunged at him, with incredible speed, his two-handed axe already in his hands and swinging in a wide arc towards Deacon's side.
Deacon reached across his chest and pulled Echoform Reliquary free in one motion. His mana surged into the artifact the moment it left the bag, seamlessly transforming it from its Dual Short Sword form into its Broadsword one.
The blade caught the fading lavender light as he parried the warrior's swing of his axe, sparks flying where Inconel-Tungsten met steel. Deacon immediately felt his arms begin to shake, abnormally so.
He has some sort of strength-enhancing Class Skill, because no way he has that high of a Strength stat, Deacon thought with clenched teeth. Unless he put all his stat points into Strength, but that would–
Deacon was interrupted from his thoughts by the mage finishing their chant and slamming their spellsling-ringed fist to the floor, "– earth to break and groan – Rend Earth!"
The second the mage's fist hit the ground, cracks tore through the dirt and traveled toward Deacon in jagged, messy lines, splitting the grass apart as the spell took hold.
If he jumped away now, he would be open to an attack from the axe-wielding warrior, but if he didn't and kept exchanging strikes with the warrior, the both of them would get screwed over by the mage's spell.
So, Deacon decided to do the one thing that could get him away from both the spell that was now four meters away from him and gaining, as well as from the manically smiling, axe-wielding warrior.
As Deacon's broadsword met with the steel axe once more, Deacon's face shot closer to the warrior's and spat out a wad of spit into his face, making the warrior flinch back and giving Deacon the opportunity to leap away from the earth spell that was less than a foot away from him, and entrapping the axe-wielding warrior's legs instead.