A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 242: Chapter 242 — Seven Days Outside II

Ten minutes later a woman his own age asked him, perfectly civilly, why the east could not have been saved as well.

James said they had been able to reach one settlement, and she asked who had decided that, and he said the floor had, and she said somebody always says that.

He paid for what he had and went home before either of them said anything worse.

---

The team’s messages that week were about nothing.

**[Ronan]:** Shield’s repairable. He wants four days for the facing and the rim.

**[Ronan]:** He also said, and I quote, ”what were you hitting with it”

**[Cillian]:** a wolf. several wolves. a horse. a wagon

**[Cillian]:** finn’s grip is worse tho

**[Finn]:** It’s fine.

**[Cillian]:** It is held together with wire.

**[Finn]:** Strong wire.

**[Maeve]:** Replace it.

**[Finn]:** This group has become hostile to craftsmanship.

**[Maeve]:** Replace the grip, Finn.

**[Finn]:** ...I’m replacing the grip.

Nobody said one word about Floor 24, because there was nothing to say about Floor 24. There was no preview to argue over, no roads to compare, no map to reconstruct on Finn’s wall. For the first time since Caerleon opened they had a week off with nothing to plan, and the strangest part was how much they all needed it.

Maeve turned down every interview request that came in, and there were a great many of them.

What she released instead was four sentences under the Guild Zero name, on a Wednesday afternoon, saying that Team Zero had made its deployment decision on the basis of the floor’s stated clear condition and the information available at the time, that all five members had fought where they judged they could change the outcome, and that they would not be commenting further.

She did not write that they had known what would happen in the east. James read the draft twice looking for that sentence, and it was not in there, and he told her so.

”Because we didn’t know,” Maeve said. ”And I’m not going to write a line that could be read as if we did.”

The effect over the rest of the week went both ways at once.

Guild Zero’s inbox filled with people asking how to apply, months before there was anything to apply to, and with sponsorship approaches that Kavanagh’s office logged and answered with the same holding letter. It also filled with messages about the east, some of them thoughtful, most of them not, and a few that Maeve forwarded to the Bureau without comment.

---

On the fifth evening, James sat down alone and opened his own panel.

[FREE STAT POINTS: 10]

He thought about it for a while.

Floor 23 had not been a floor that damage solved. What it had wanted was a man who could stand in a field for six hours, raise things faster than they were destroyed, and still be moving at dawn, and the two places he had come closest to losing were both places where his body had run out before his ideas had.

He put six into the thing he was.

[INTELLIGENCE: 143 → 149]

Then four into staying upright.

[AGILITY: 80 → 82]

[ENDURANCE: 84 → 86]

[FREE STAT POINTS: 0]

[LEVEL: 39]

[EXP: 40,705 / 60,000]

He spent the remaining days on maintenance rather than preparation, because preparation required knowing something and he knew nothing. Gear back from the smiths and checked. Consumables restocked. Skills run through until the timing sat right in his hands again, no new combinations, no clever plans built around an enemy he had invented in his own head.

Nine tenths of the ways to be wrong about Floor 24 involved deciding in advance what it was.

---

On the seventh day he said goodbye in the hall.

His mother held on a second longer than usual and let him go without saying anything about it, which was its own kind of statement.

Nyra stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded.

”How long is this one?”

”I don’t know.”

”Do you know what you have to fight?”

”No.”

She stared at him. She was waiting for one thing — any one thing — to be handed to her with a number attached to it, and he could see her waiting, and he did not have a single number to give her.

James crouched down instead, took the sleeve she had folded up crooked over her wrist, and straightened it properly.

”I’ll come back,” he said.

Nyra thought about the size of that, decided it was smaller than she wanted and bigger than nothing, and let him go.

---

The secure chamber under Dublin Tower had five people in it with new equipment and no plan.

Ronan’s shield had come back with a fresh face and a rebuilt rim, and he had been turning it over for ten minutes with the expression of a man who suspected it of something. Maeve had a recut focus. Cillian had a full set of conductors for the first time in three floors.

Finn was working the new grip on his left-hand axe, opening and closing his fingers on it.

”Well?” Cillian said.

”It’s fine.”

”It’s better.”

”It’s fine.”

”Say it’s better.”

Finn rolled the haft over once more, and his hand settled on it in a way it had not settled on the wire in weeks.

”...It’s better.”

”WAIT.” Cillian spun toward the stream console. ”Say it again in about ninety seconds. On the record. For history.”

Finn ignored him entirely.

”No preview,” Maeve said, checking the entry panel one final time. ”Nothing. It’s the first floor since twenty-one that hasn’t shown us anything before we walk in.”

”Everyone ready?” Ronan asked, and got four confirmations, and looked to James.

James started the broadcast.

The viewer count did what it always did now, and the questions arrived faster than they could scroll — what’s on twenty-four, is Raymond alive, is the pass army coming, are you going east, what’s the mission, what’s the mission, what’s the mission.

”We know as much as you do,” James said. ”That’s not a line. There’s no preview on this one.”

He selected the floor.

[FLOOR 24 ENTRY CONFIRMED]

The transport light closed around all five of them before a single word of the mission appeared.