Chapter 199 Fulfilled Dreams

As I stare at the monster in the dark, many things happen. The first is that it screams. The girl who is a monster that is made from teeth and ice and rustling leaves and darkness and the cold of death screams in agony as I see it. I feel my eyes bubble and boil at the sight, but I remain calm.

[Annexation 9 > 10]

“See, it’s not nice when people disrespect your boundaries,” I say. “That’s why I asked you not to touch me.”

Then, half a second later, as the little girl who I feel neutral about lunges at me, I let myself fall backwards. The cold of the portal envelops me. My eyes remain open, even as darkness creeps in along the edges and my sight becomes blurry.

My entire vessel’s worth of mana burns through me, all into [Suppression]. I feel my insides burn, just to slow her down.

The girl reaches me, her arms stretched out, trying to hold on. “Please don’t leave me,” she whispers.

“Sleep well,” I reply.

My vision goes black as my eyes are destroyed. Just witnessing the girl’s true form completely incinerated them. With a dull thud, I land on soft sand. There’s warm sunlight on my face, and reflexively, I shade my eyes. 

Then, I chuckle. “No point to that, now, I guess.”

[Annexation 10 > 11]

“You look like shit, Snow,” Opal says, and I feel them casting a shadow over me. 

[Uldeney the Librarian expresses her respect for your dedication. She reports regret that you may struggle to read for a while.]

Mana pulses out of me. My insides heal a bit from the way I just incinerated them. Everything hurts. The rot is still tearing through me. My eyes feel like someone poured magma into them, and still, I laugh. “Worth it.”

“So, do you want us to help you get to the tree?” Sylves asks. There’s a soft noise of wind, and I pulse my mana again, spending it on [Observation] this time. A little bit like echolocation, I feel the outlines of my friends hovering around me. For their sake, I shut my eyes, they probably don’t look amazing.

“I was about to gag,” Thatch says. “Thanks.”

Politely, I nod. “No problem. It’s be super cool if someone could drag me to the tree, though.”

“Gotcha,” Inu says. Her hands pass underneath me, and she easily picks me up. There’s a tentative line of [Empathy] reaching out to me, and I gently accept.

Inu flinches for a moment, before we regulate the amount of pain I send through. I smile at her careful efforts, and then reduce her load, and instead send her my happiness. It arrives right as she gently leans my back against the coconut tree, and the fruit falls into my hand.

“You’re seriously happy right now?!” Inu asks. Her tone is annoyed, but more in a way of

A smile spreads on my lips, even as blood trickles onto them from my closed eyelids, dying them a dark red. “Yeah,” I say. “I always wanted to stare at an incomprehensible horror.”

“You looked?” Inu asks.

“That’s how I lost my eyes,” I nod.

“Why?” Inu asks.

I tilt my head, softly. “I was curious,” I reply simply. “And she stretched my patience. I deserved to be a little rude.”

At that, there’s a long silence. I bite into the coconut, eating it, and feel the healing pour into me. The dark rot finally flows out of my veins, the monolith rewarding me for how I survived. I can feel power pouring into me, and call up my status.

[Your stats have been reinforced!]

Name: Snow Okiyama - Ion

Floor: 5 (Downpour) - 6

Six. Six floors of the monolith cleared. Just four more to go. There’s that tiny reinforcement again - my mana grows. I think it must be… about one percent of my base stat per monolith floor. The healing helps alleviate the pain, too. My vision doesn’t return. My leg doesn’t either. And still, there’s a smile on my lips.

Thatch stands next to me, and I feel a bit of wetness touch my cheek. He’s… crying? I’m confused. “You know, Snow,” he says. “I am really mad at you. I’m so happy you survived. And yet, I’m so sad. You’re so hurt.”

“I do feel pretty bad,” I deadpan, tilting my head. 

Then he frowns. I can hear how unhappy he is. Another wet droplet falls on my face. “It’s okay to cry, damn it,” he says to me. “It’s okay to cry!”

And I smile, raise up a hand, grasping into the air for a moment. Eventually, he gracefully reached out and places it on his cheek. It’s hot and wet, and I smile at him. “I love this, Thatch. I’ve never felt so alive.”

He stutters for a moment. “I’m afraid."

“Me too,” I reply. “Me too. But you know how I am, right?”

There’s a long pause. He swallows heavily. Then, he nods up against my hand, squeezing it with both of his. “I know.”

“It’s okay to cry,” I tell him. “Your care for me means the world. Thank you for crying for me. But truly, I’m happy. I got to find a cursed tome. I stared at an eldritch horror. I even found a shadow orb to find my shadow-cloak. That’s… awesome, isn’t it.”

Thatch snorts in a mix of disbelief and horror. Another tear streaks over my hand, landing on my face. “It’s pretty fucking awesome, yeah,” he says quietly.

“Thank you, Thatch,” I say. Then, before anyone protests, I continue. “Thank you as well, Inu. Thanks, Opal. Thanks, Sylves. Thanks, Kuro, and Richard, too. For caring for me.”

Inu lightly punches my shoulder, and my injured body protests. “We have to, idiot. Not like you’re gonna care for yourself.”

At that, I laugh. Even though it hurts, even though I can barely breathe, even though every single muscle in my body aches and my eyes are destroyed and I can feel myself ready to come apart, I laugh. And the others join in.

For just a moment, we forget how fucked up I am, and we laugh about what silly people we are.

- - - 

We spend two days on the safe floor. Usually, people get thrown out of them faster, but we needed the time, so the monolith lets it go. During the entire time, I heal myself. More runes under my skin, to knit the pathways my mana tore up back together. More runes to contain and pick apart the last bits of the rot. More healing for all the parts of me that are broken.

Sylves weaves me a nice blindfold. I’m excited to meet Delfine now, almost. I want to see what she thinks of our partner-look. Surely she’ll be happy. Or at least find it funny. It’d be pretty awkward if I went through all this effort to fuck up my eyes and don’t even get to tease someone with it.

My tome makes just one escape attempt which I foil. Now that I’m blind, I actually have to let it feed me the information, which is mildly annoying. Luckily for me, the tome is well-made and can transmit info slowly. So, really, it feels like an audiobook, more or less, with some diagrams projecting themselves right into my skull.

Frankly, I’m still happy with and surprised about how many accessibility features the tower has. Ramps, audiobooks, and I’m pretty sure the status sheet even has a font setting to make it easier on people with dyslexia, I guess. Of course, it’s not perfect. The people in the tower are still freely allowed to suck. But magic does kind of act as an equalizer, just a little.

While we rest, Kuro devours the treasure-shadow we found, like the glutton they are. There’s a short moment where the orb phases into them, where a ripple passes through their form. A long, creepy shiver that rolls over Kuro, making my hair stand on end for a moment. Then, that feeling settles.

And then, my cloak feels a little bit darker, a little bit deeper. I tilt my head, curiously, and stash my tome in it. It vanishes into an inner pocket, and its weight disappears. 

Huh.

- - -

After a little more testing, I eventually leave Kuro alone as they get annoyed with my poking and prodding. But I do have some pocket sand stored now, which is nice. And I can count that as another wish fulfilled, I guess. A dimensional storage pocket. Heccing awesome.

When the time comes to leave the safe zone, I rise to my… foot, I guess. Mana swarms and gathers around my other leg, around the stump where there’s still a bit of rot that clings to me. I let it stay, so I can keep deconstructing it, pushing away the poison, and learning. That’s the greatest treasure I’ve found on that floor, at least.

The things I’ve seen still creep in the back of my mind, the kind of information that I should not be able to know, and that still sticks to my mind because of [Annexation]. The skill is working hard to preserve unknowable knowledge - whenever I try to remember it actively, I can feel the way it warps and twists my mind.

But the tower has removed my limits, too. Every time I try to remember it, the thoughts slip away. They’re hard to hold on, impossible to think, and yet, I keep trying. And, bit by bit, they stick around a little longer, even as my brain burns slightly at the ideas.

With my thoughts swarming slightly, I form a mana-prosthesis for my missing leg. It’s crude and unrefined, more of a pegleg than anything proper, but it does let me stand on my own. I also make myself a walking cane, though. A crutch would have been more efficient, but this looks way cooler. I always wanted a cane.

Using my two mana-formed aids, I walk over to the portals that lead to the seventh floor of the monolith. Right now, it’s impossible to know where Delfine is. Maybe they already progressed further than us, or maybe they’re still stuck on that floor? I don’t know. And I can’t know. All I can do is look at the portals.

“Yep,” I say, nodding sagely. “I don’t see anything.”

Inu gives a tiny snort. “Use your perception-skill, you dork.”

“Ah, indeed, an incredible solution, doctor,” I nod. Then, I do as the girl asked me, and pulse my mana. It spreads outwards from me, cascading over the portals to the next floor, and let the impression sweep over me. There are three exits, and this time, I go right to left, just for fun.

On the right, there is a moonlit forest. It whispers of solitary but strong hunters. A low, cold fog hangs over this land where the moon never rests, and where stalkers seek meals.

In the middle, there sits a plain of white salt, under a cloudless blue sky. There are no cracks or crevices in this one, and I can’t spot any creatures there. It’s just vast and empty, with the biggest threat being starvation. I look over at Richard, and find I’d rather not have her regurgitate a meal for me.

So, I turn to the left portal. This one is framed in blocks of sleek stone. It feels… winding, like there could be endless corridors and endless halls, some of them filled with steaming water. There’s a warm humidity in it, and I can’t feel anything distinctly dangerous, but there is a hair of alarm hanging in the air. Traps, maybe?

Tilting my head, I hum. What a troublesome decision.