71 - Out of Touch

With all the Climbers from the new world out on the Starter Quest, the Administrators in charge of them had a lot of free time. Most of them had a class or two that they taught in the afternoons, but aside from that, they had no responsibilities. Most of the Administrators used this time to cultivate or train, or relax. Nadia used it to take care of business.

“Did you give up your brain to get enough power to reach the 100th Floor?”

The other elf trembled in the presence of her aura. He was at the pinnacle of 8 star, one of the most powerful beings in the Tower, but that was nothing when faced against a 9 star. All he could do was hope she would be merciful.

“Answer me!” said Nadia.

“N-no, ma’am!”

“Then why the hell are you acting like such an idiot?!”

“I’m sorry!”

Nadia raised her hand, and a second later, a small beetle appeared on her palm. The other elf’s eyes widened and a bead of sweat formed on his forehead.

“No, please!” he cried. “I’ll do anything!”

“Then you should have done anything else. I told you to recruit that girl and you sent people to kill her. I told you to watch for dangers around my apprentice, and you failed to notice that the Dactid School was sponsoring that other boy. And then you didn’t even have the decency to inform me of any of your failures, making me find out on my own. You’ve had multiple chances. This is it.”

The other elf struggled, but Nadia’s presence washed over him, freezing him in place. She grabbed him by the jaw and forced his mouth open, then tossed the beetle inside. It landed on his tongue and crawled down his throat as tears streamed down his face.

“You are leaving this Floor today,” she said. “You are resigning from your position as an Administrator, and bearing the consequences of ending the contract early. You are going to resume your Climb, and you are not going to show yourself before me and you are going to make sure that the only news I hear about you is good news. If you don’t, you will experience the most painful death imaginable. Do you understand?”

The other elf nodded frantically, and she released him. He vanished right immediately, terminating his Administrator contract on the spot. Nadia sighed and leaned back in her chair. She didn’t feel the least bit guilty about lying to the other Shin family member. The insect she had placed in him was pregnant, and its eggs would hatch in a week, regardless of what he did. He was a dead man walking, and in Nadia’s opinion, the world was better for it. 

The biggest issue was going to be the consequences. He had been one of the most talented Shins in many, many years, and there were some who believed that he would be able to reach the top and become an Ascendant. Clearly, those people had never met the man, because anyone who had would know that could never happen. His talent had been able to carry him to the hundredth Floor, but it was not so heaven-defying that it would let him overcome his own stupidity. 

As the most senior non-Ascendant in the Tower, she was in charge of keeping tabs on all her distant cousins and the Shin family’s other projects to make sure everything went roughly as planned. She was also the direct subordinate to the Silent One, and in charge of furthering his goals within the Tower. The man she had just doomed was another member of their faction, and was one that Nadia had been trying to get demoted for centuries. He had always done them more harm than good, but until now, he had never done anything that the Silent One thought was punishable. They couldn’t ruin their relationship with one of the ones most likely to become an Ascendant. 

She would still get in trouble for what she had just done, but she could talk her way out of it. Probably. After losing Yuri, her position wasn’t the greatest either though. He wasn’t the same as the young Phoenix, but he was in a completely different realm of talent than any other first Floor Climber that Nadia had ever seen. And now he was gone, all because her foolish subordinate failed to notice that he was being lured into a trap.

Of course, Nadia wasn’t blameless. She should have been paying more attention. She shouldn’t have trusted the other man to do his job properly after all his other failures. But she had been distracted, her attention stuck on the young Phoenix instead of her own disciple. 

She put her head in her hands as she thought about what to do next. Realistically, she didn’t need to do anything. She was too valuable to get anything more than a slap on the wrist, after which she could restart the long process of regaining the Silent One’s trust. It would be tedious and take a long time, but it was definitely a viable option.

It would be better if she could skip over all that though, and the only ways to do that would be to overshadow her failures by either clearing the 124th Floor, or recruiting the young Phoenix. The former wasn’t happening. She wasn’t ready yet. The latter though… That might be possible. She just needed a different approach.

***

“I think that about does it,” said Jacob, pulling his spear out of a snake’s head.

Sunset was rapidly approaching on the second to last day of the Starter Quest. They had been slowly making their way back all day, but they would need to pump the gas for the remainder of the available time if they wanted to get there on time. 

“What are the odds Bella is waiting for us when we get back?” asked Kat.

“High,” said Jenny.

“Yeah…” said Vanessa.

That would be the most likely outcome. They had given up on finding Bella. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to, but not only was her name still at the top of their Batch Leaderboard, her overall rank had improved drastically since going missing, so they knew she was alright. Timmy’s rank had gone up as well. They were no longer a concern beyond the fact that Bella and Timmy had a couple of the group’s more valuable trophies. They would just have to trust the other two to make it back safely.

“What’s our current tally at?” asked Jacob.

Jenny had taken on the responsibility of keeping track of their trophies, so she pulled out her notebook and did some quick math before responding.

“18,780 now,” she said. “26,210 if Bella and Timmy have all the same stuff they left with.”

“Good work, team,” said Jacob

He smiled at everyone, and while Kat and Jenny tried to reciprocate, it was obvious that their hearts weren’t in it.

It had been almost a week since the incident, and the group still didn’t know exactly what happened. According to Jacob, they had been ambushed, and one of the enemies had a powerful stealth skill and sleep darts. Jacob had managed to stay awake due to the fact that his sponsor specialized in poisons, so he had resistance to it. He had then fought off the ambushers, and when the others woke up, there were four dead bodies around them. All the bodies had been killed by poisons, allegedly also supplied by Jacob’s sponsor, and those poisons had the effect of speeding up decay, making the corpses unrecognizable.

Of course, no one believed him. It was all far too convenient and suspicious. But he was now a minor cultivation realm ahead of them, and as far as they could tell, still on their side. Probably. With Bella still missing, Vanessa wasn’t willing to challenge him when he wasn’t actively harming the group. She would just have to deal with it. It wasn’t like she didn’t have her own secrets. 

That said, he had completely lost her trust. After apparently killing four people while the rest of them were asleep, he was more cheerful than she had seen him in a while, if ever. Taking those lives didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, and in fact, he looked like he had gotten over some of his issues by killing them. The negativity and minor inferiority complex was gone. Of course, it also helped that he was now at Middle 2 star and inarguably the strongest on the team since Bella was gone, but Vanessa was fairly certain that his lifted spirits ran a bit deeper than that.

With this new development, the cohesion that the team had been developing was lost entirely. June retreated into her own world and rarely talked, Kat, Vanessa, and Jenny formed a mini-clique, Jacob tried to act like nothing had changed, and Al struggled on the sidelines, unsure how to fit in. They still fought alright together, but with Jacob having advanced, the balance of power was broken, so their teamwork wasn’t great.

They made do though. Vanessa was fairly confident that they were in the lead, barring some massive group working together to give all their spoils to one team. If that happened, there wasn’t really anything they could do about it. Jacob had brought up the idea of copying the group they had run into earlier and collecting “fees” from an oasis, but the rest voted against it. Quality trumped quantity in this competition, so rather than go for a higher number of lesser trophies, they went deeper into the desert for the more valuable ones.

“Well, sounds like that’s gonna be about our final tally then,” said Jacob. “I don’t think we’ll find anything else worth hunting on the way back. We’ve already left 2 star territory.”

“Yeah,” said Vanessa. “But every point counts. We shouldn’t pass up easy points just because they’re low.”

“Right you are!” agreed Jacob, trying to keep the mood light. “So, quick meal, then get moving again?”

The others all gave their affirmation, and they went to find a shady spot to sit and rest. They would be travelling through the night in order to make it back on time. It was the strategy they had previously agreed upon to make the most of their time. It would be exhausting, but with their oum cores formed, it would be bearable. Plus, this way, they got to travel when it was cooler out. 

They had a quick meal of meat from the snake they had just killed, then spent an hour or so cultivating before getting up to move. They travelled mostly in silence all through the night and morning, and shortly after noon, they arrived back at the edge of the Outlands where the circular platforms were lined up. Unlike before, there was a decent-sized crowd of other Climbers waiting around nearby, probably hoping to see the results of the Starter Quest.

When they made it to their platform, they found a few other people from their Batch relaxing on it, but there was no sign of Bella. 

“Someone shoulda taken that bet,” remarked Kat.

That earned her a few light chuckles, but they quickly faded and an anxiousness fell over the group. Even the previously high-spirited Jacob couldn’t keep his smile going. The Starter Quest ended at sunset, and while they were confident that they had performed quite well, they saw other Climbers arriving in groups much greater than eight, making them nervous. The quality of their trophies was still much higher, but if they could already see larger groups from where they stood, what did that mean for the Starter Quest as a whole? There was bound to be at least one with a high score.

With an hour before sunset, Bella still hadn’t arrived. Jacob’s leg was bouncing like a piston, and Jenny was biting her nails. June was asleep, and Kat as pretending to be, while Vanessa just stared off into the desert.

Where is she?