The eastern wastes stretched ahead like a jagged scar across the earth.
The guild transport rumbled heavily over volcanic plains of compacted ash and black rock, the landscape growing increasingly hostile with every mile. Plumes of acrid smoke bled from distant fissures. Above, the sky was a bruised, perpetual grey, as if the rain refused to fall. Even through the transport’s heavy filters, the air tasted of sulfur.
Old Marren was uncharacteristically talkative, though his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel betrayed his nerves. His eyes constantly darted to the horizon. "Drak’thar. Never actually driven a crew out this far. Last expedition was twenty years ago." He swallowed hard. "Didn’t end well."
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to.
Nathan sat near the front, Moonlight resting cool and heavy across his knees. The Mana Capacitor hummed against his wrist, full and ready. Tucked securely into his belt pouch were the compression charms Vex had forged—a faint, rhythmic pulse of mana that felt like a second heartbeat. Behind him, his party was locked into their pre-climb rituals. Garrett meticulously checked Volcan’s leather grip for the third time. Dillon recalibrated the tension on his Storm Striders. Elise reviewed the Drak’thar dossier, her eyes tracing the schematics with silent intensity.
Mirko, currently a small green rabbit on Nathan’s shoulder, kept her pink eyes locked on the horizon. Kuro was a seamless shadow on the empty seat beside him, perfectly still.
Then, the Tower finally crested the horizon, and the entire transport fell dead silent.
The Fallen Piece of Drak’thar didn’t just rise from the volcanic plain; it dominated it like the fossilized corpse of a god. It made the Tower of Ash look like a stepping stone. Its surface was a brutal masterpiece of obsidian and molten gold, carved with sweeping draconic motifs weathered by centuries of abrasive ash. Massive stone wings flared across its flanks; jagged claws gripped deep into the earth. The entrance was a colossal, yawning archway shaped like a dragon’s open maw, its portcullis formed from interlocking stone teeth. Thick, arterial veins of liquid gold pulsed across the monolith’s surface with a slow, agonizing rhythm—an ancient heartbeat that vibrated straight through the transport’s chassis and into Nathan’s bones.
And sprawled around the base of this sleeping god was the staging camp.
It was a small, heavily armed city of canvas and steel. Banners snapped viciously in the hot wind—Silver Drake’s coiled serpent, Golden Hawk’s spread wings, Red Dragon’s roaring flame. Armored supply wagons locked down the perimeter, heavily guarded by Climbers wearing their respective guild colors. Within the camp, training circles were already active, parties drilling formations and summoning their creatures for final calibrations.
Right at the center, flying higher than the rest, was Celestial Peak’s silver mountain-and-star.
Marren ground the transport to a halt at the edge of the ash fields. "Don’t die," he grunted. Two words. A profound display of affection, given the circumstances.
Nathan stepped off the bus, his boots crunching heavily into the volcanic soil. The ambient heat was oppressive, heavy with the suffocating pressure of an Elite Class Tower simply existing.
"Eight parties," Elise murmured, stepping down beside him and sweeping her gaze across the sprawling camp. "Silver Drake, Golden Hawk, Red Dragon, Goldcrest, Celestial Peak, and three independent squads. The TCA has been quietly assembling this for months."
"And not a single one of them is actually thinking about teamwork," Dillon noted, his tone devoid of its usual humor. "Look at the layout. Separate training rings. Isolated supply caches. Everyone is sizing everyone else up."
Nathan followed Dillon’s gaze. He was right. The camp was theoretically united, but the atmosphere was fractured and tense. Climbers from rival guilds bypassed each other with curt, suspicious nods. The Silver Drake vanguard drilled in flawless, isolationist precision. The Red Dragon strike team huddled around a fire, their summons hissing at anyone who walked too close. Off on the far eastern edge, entirely segregated from the main force, was Goldcrest.
Looming over it all was the unspoken variable of the contribution percentage.
Every Climber in the camp knew how Elite Class clears distributed rewards. Loot wasn’t split evenly; it was meted out based on raw contribution—damage dealt, enemies executed, objectives secured. It was the poison pill in every multi-guild alliance. Cooperation was mandatory to survive, but everyone was silently calculating how to carve out the largest slice of the pie for themselves.
Nathan filed the tension away. They would navigate the politics when they had to. Right now, they needed to check in.
✦ ✦ ✦
Marshal Vane looked like a woman who had been awake for three days straight. Her TCA uniform was immaculate, but the dark bags under her eyes betrayed her exhaustion. She stood at the center of the primary command tent, surrounded by a glowing sea of holographic maps, a tablet in one hand and a glowing comm crystal in the other.
"Celestial Peak," she noted flatly, not looking up from her screen as Nathan entered. "You’re the seventh to arrive. Goldcrest touched down yesterday. We’re waiting on one last independent squad, due by nightfall." She finally looked up, her gaze sharp. "You’ve digested the preliminary briefing?"
"We have," Nathan said. "A combined vanguard for the first five floors. Then, we fracture into specialized strike teams at Floor 6. Our party is slotted for the primary central assault."
"Correct. You will push the main artery toward the boss alongside Silver Drake’s vanguard, Red Dragon’s strike team, and Goldcrest’s elites. The remaining support parties will fan out, secure the side chambers, and lock down flanking routes." Vane tapped her tablet. The holographic Tower rotated, highlighting the known pathways. "Estimates place Drak’thar between fifteen and twenty floors. Our records are fragmented; the last expedition twenty years ago suffered catastrophic losses and extracted at Floor 9. We are entirely blind beyond that point."
Nathan studied the glowing blueprint. "And Vorlagrath?"
"Floor 15, assuming the architecture holds to the old research," Vane replied. "A true dragon. Sentient. Apex. He has been caged in that monolith since the Babel system absorbed his kingdom as the case may be. He will be violently powerful, and he will be desperate. The last party to lay eyes on him did not make it back to the portal."
Vane set her tablet down, leaning heavily against the tactical table. "Let’s address the elephant in the room. The contribution system. The Tower tracks your metrics. The higher your numbers, the better your personal payout. It is a system designed to reward excellence, but in a multi-guild operation of this scale, it breeds dangerous friction."
"We understand the mechanics," Nathan said evenly. "We’re here to clear the Tower. The rewards will sort themselves out."
"They better. Because if the primary assault group fractures over loot percentages, Vorlagrath won’t have to lift a claw. You will kill each other for him." Vane’s expression was grim. "All party leaders convene here at sundown. We finalize the breach strategy then."