Tower of Souls

After subsuming his clone to get his first look at the next phase of this Floor, then sneaking closer to get another look- Cam still firmly believed that seeing it with his eyes was still better than relying purely on memories transferred from Eron, even if he hadn’t noticed any appreciable difference-, he was more than a little nervous about their plan going forward.

The circle itself wasn’t that large... when compared to Foundation City. It wasn’t even that large when compared to his school, which was basically just a cluster of somewhat run down buildings... Even after circling around it once, using his clone’s position as both start and end point, with there being only ten treehouses, each a couple hundred feet apart...

”I think kind of know the math for this; I remember some of the class complaining that they would never use it in the future... and they pretty much ignored Mrs. Elsbet after that.” He muttered softly, brow furrowed in thought as he tried to call to mind what she had explained- not an easy thing to do, considering how much of the class was busy talking over her at the time. ”The circle is, what? Maybe 2,000 feet around? That’s...”

”Probably like five or six hundred feet across, right?” Eron added, obviously remembering the same day in class. ”I mean, I think? I know we paid attention, but even we never expected the area of a circle to actually be useful someday!”

Cam could only nod in agreement; While he could see some uses for it at the time, it wasn’t something he thought he would ever use!

He didn’t even know of any jobs that required that kind of math...

”So, if the Boss is in the center, then he’s just two or three hundred feet from any of the treehouses... which is only slightly farther away than the treehouses are from each other.” Cam sighed softly. ”If the mobs start screaming, they’ll probably pull everything from the closest treehouses, and possibly the Boss as well...”

”I don’t think we can use the burn strategy anymore...”

”Maybe not...” Eron continued to play Devil’s advocate. ”It’s possible that it won’t pull the others. Maybe it’s the patrols that will try to alert the rest and bring a horde down on us?”

”Could be... but we can’t test it without risking being chased by every monster on the Floor!”

The pair fell silent as they pondered over the situation they were in, unsure of how exactly to approach it. Attacking one of the treehouses risked pulling at least ten more mobs- and potentially the Boss-, to say nothing of the chance that a patrol wanders close... And, if the patrols are the ones to raise an alarm, attacking them ran a similar risk.

”I say we start with a patrol.” Eron said after a minute. ”There are only two mobs in each patrol, they roam out a little ways from the circle, and we can catch them between treehouses, preferably with some of these big ass tree blocking line of sight! With it being two on two, we can probably keep them from running off to alert the others-”

”Assuming their shouts don’t alert them.” Cam pointed out, not as an argument against the plan, but just as a reminder of what could go wrong. ”But this forest seems pretty big, so we could probably finish them before reinforcements arrive anyway, then just... run off and hide until things settle down again.”

”Then just rinse and repeat.” Eron nodded along. ”We should probably push out and see just how big the forest is, so we know how much we have to work with- and probably clear out anymore trash mobs that are out there; The last thing we want is to get bogged down by a bunch of Bunnicorns while trying to escape all of these Kawe...”

”Yeah, they aren’t strong, but just a couple of them could slow us down a little if they got in the way... And I don’t want anything slowing us down if we’re running for our lives.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Without an easy way to calculate how big the forest was on this Floor- and not willing to take the time to try to pace off its exact dimensions and then fumble through the math-, Cam could only say that it was big enough; Just the walk from where he entered the forest to the circle was almost an hour, and the forest spread out in all directions from there...

Of course, taking the time to search- while fighting off the occasional Bunnicorn- provided some unexpected benefits of its own.

The first was seeing the boundary of the Floor.

All Floors, regardless of how large or complex, were still contained within a set area; Lower Floors tended to be smaller than higher Floors- though that wasn’t always the case, as some exceptions had been recorded. Even these ’open’ style Floors still had an end, though the way the boundary was represented was different with each one.

Most Floors had impenetrable walls all around, while some open Floors simply had an invisible barrier that prevented anyone from going further- attacks and Abilities had no effect on them, and it was impossible to push past...

This Floor... had a dense thicket of brambles surrounding it on all sides that reached twenty feet up, completely blocking them off. Fan the Flames couldn’t burn it- it didn’t even smolder or char after several attempts! Their swords wouldn’t cut it, and the one time Eron tried to touch it, he ended up pierced by a handful of the thorns; While the damage wasn’t that high, it was enough they weren’t willing to try pushing through...

Especially when, after climbing one the closest trees, they saw that the thicket extended farther than they could see...

Still, seeing the boundary of an ’open’ Floor was a new experience for them... even if their main objective at the moment was to understand just how much area they had to work with.

Aside from that information, the better benefit they found... was actually in their thinking...

”Why wasn’t there a thicket behind the entrance?”

”What!?”

Grinning at his clone, Cam pointed at the thicket they were leaving. ”If the boundary of the Floor is the thicket- which we’ve seen on three sides so far- then why wasn’t there a thicket behind that hollow tree where we entered? I mean, from the looks of it, this Floor is one big square... So why didn’t we see that side of it at the start?”

”I didn’t think of that...”

Gaping at his clone, Cam stared for several seconds in disbelief. ”We’re the same person! If I thought of it, then you should have, right?”

Eron shrugged, waving off his look. ”I was thinking about where we could potentially hide to escape those bears, not about the boundary... And just because we’re the same person doesn’t mean we’re always focused on the same thing, right? I mean, half the point of you having a clone is so you can do two things at once, right?”

”So, of course we can think of two different things at the same time.” Cam nodded slowly, still puzzling it over. ”It’s still a little weird when we randomly diverge like that, though; We’re usually really in sync...”

”I’m trying something new!” Eron grinned. ”It’s actually your idea, though you didn’t think about it for long. Basically, I’m ignoring the first thing that I start to think about and immediately jumping to the second, leaving that first one for you to ponder over.”

Cam paused, head tilted in thought as he considered that. It had been an idle thought at one point, just a way for him and his clone to cover more ideas when planning so that they weren’t always coming up with the same things at the same time... It was a poor substitute for having other party members with different ideas, but it was a way for them to try to think over more things without overlap...

He just hadn’t thought much more about it since then.

”I’m worried I’m going to develop a split personality at this point.” He joked, grinning at his clone.

”We’re already kinda messed up, so I don’t think it will hurt...” Eron laughed back as he picked up the pace. ”Now come on! Let’s go check behind the entrance! I bet there’s something good!”

But the best benefit they found in their exploring... was actually a monster.