Chapter 56 – A Hard Road

While his clones worked- Eron scouting downward once more, and Mero going through the apartment the imps were found in, as well as those they had passed by on the way, looking for anything of use-, Cam was busy going through options.

First, he decided not to harvest the imp's Fire Dart; While having a good ranged spell would be useful, the demons already having Fire Resistance limited how good it would be, and he felt it would be better to hold off until he had a better idea of what options were available before he selected one- though he had not doubt Fire Dart would be good to have on future Floors.

Second was the loot from the imps. Surprisingly, three items dropped; Two were trash, though both were useful- one a shield for Eron, a Dusty Iron Shield that looked like it had been roughly beaten and discarded in a corner, but had a solid eight armor, which he desperately needed as their frontliner, and Worn Leather Vambraces that granted five armor, and finally allowed Cam to upgrade from the Crude Hide Bracers he had been wearing since the first Floor...

But the last item... was actually pretty nice, and Mero had already laid claim to it- not that any of them were going to argue, considering its effect.

Blood Goggles

Tower Value=40

Armor = 10

Special Effect: When using a ranged weapon, increases the wearer's critical damage by 50%. On kill, further increase wearer's critical damage by 10% for thirty seconds(stacking).

As the only one with a ranged weapon, it made sense for it to go to Mero- even if Cam knew they could always just swap around their roles, keeping his more vulnerable clone at ranged made more sense to him... but, even then, he was a little tempted; The armor was incredible, and the effect made it even more so! Criticals normally did 50% more damage, and wearing the goggles boosted that to doing double damage!

And the fact that the effect was stacking, with no limit mentioned- meaning that there wasn't a limit, and it could be stacked as high as the wearer could kill mobs within thirty seconds- was enough to make any Archers practically willing to fight over them!

The drawback, of course, being how limited they were on ammo; They were lucky to recover all of her arrows after the fight, but he knew that some would eventually be lost or break... and they only had twenty to start with.

So, despite how great they were, he didn't argue when his clone took them- but damn if they didn't look crazy, with a black leather band holding two half spheres that covered the eyes and appeared to have flowing blood inside them... though, for whatever reason, they appeared perfectly clear to the person wearing them...

Bullshit Tower logic, according to Eron... and they all kind of agreed.

But the most important thing he had to consider... was how to tackle this Floor.

Clearing the building they were already in was the obvious start, even if he had no idea how long that would take, considering just how many floors the building had- and searching the entire thing for useful items would only take longer; While a part of him was tempted to skip the detailed search, another part of him was hung up on the thought that, seeing as it was once a city populated by human like people, that maybe there would be something edible left tucked away somewhere...

Readers should know that the author's official page carries this chapter, while this copy was taken without consent.

He still had plenty of T-Rations... but even with his experience of eating them for years, he was quickly getting tired of them; At least back at his apartment, Davis would occasionally invited him over for real food!

Shaking off thoughts of eating something other than the bland rations, Cam refocused on his plans.

After clearing the building, it would be time to move out and start their search... but, as he had stated to his clones earlier, they didn't want to fight in the open. That meant darting from building to building, staying under cover... and, when forced to, trying to lure monsters into the buildings to fight, preferably laying ambushes for them in the process to make it easier.

"Scurrying around like rats..." He snorted, amused by his own imagery... even if it felt kind of accurate.

"Stop talking to yourself and come give me a hand!" Mero called, interrupting his thoughts. "I think this was the pantry, and it looks like some stuff may still be good!"

"Oh, fuck yes!" Cam exclaimed, hurrying over to her, only to slow as she held out what looked like a metal jar, just... completely sealed. "What the hell is that?"

"I don't know." Mero shrugged, tossing it to him. "But the paper on it says it has corn inside."

"Why would someone seal food inside of metal?"

"You act like I know!"

"And how am I supposed to open it!? Well, the metal does feel kind of thin; I could probably cut it open with a knife."

"Well, why don't you try that and let me know? There are several more in here, though some are a little dented... and what is a 'tuna'?"

While tempted to investigate the different foods, as some were things he had never even heard of, Cam restrained himself to only testing one to see if the food was still good... and, after spending months in the Tower, living entirely off of rations, he nearly cried with joy at seeing the perfectly edible corn in front of him- even if cutting the damn thing open with his knife was annoying as hell!

After Mero insisted on trying to first to be sure it was safe, and then promptly scarfing down some of the tastiest corn he had ever had- or that was how it felt in the moment, at least-, the pair quickly loaded up a backpack they had found with the food from the pantry and continued their search of the remaining apartments- with Cam hopeful of them finding some more to add to their food stash... until Eron came back from his scouting.

Because, apparently, the group of imps they had fought wasn't the only one in the building.

With their first success against the monsters of this Floor behind them, and a plan in place to deal with more imps, the trio moved down through the building, clearing out small groups of the mobs every few floors, with Cam slowly adding details in his mind to help round out their approach; The numbers of imps in each group seemed to ranged slightly, with their earlier fight being on the larger side, and going down to smaller groups of four or five- though, while watching out of a window during a break, they saw one larger group flying further away, with perhaps as many as thirty...

Not something they wanted to deal with while moving between building, that was sure.

Naturally, as they moved through the building, they made a point of searching through more apartments, adding more to Cam's food collection... though little else of use was found, besides a few more pencils and some paper; The demons had clearly done a number on the city, somehow managing to destroy a good bit of the furniture and items they came across, much to Cam's disappointment.

The fact that the imps didn't pay much attention to the small cans of food was a welcome surprise, but it was the only one... Or maybe everything was just arranged this way by the Tower, he had no clue- more likely it was the Tower, as he wasn't sure even an army of demons could be so thorough.

More disappointing, though, was how little XP the imps offered, leaving Cam still a few thousand short of Leveling when they reached the ground floor.

Looking out at the cracked, black surface of the road between towering buildings, with Hellhounds wandering around, sometimes alone and sometimes in small packs, and with flights of imps passing by overhead from time to time, it was obvious that clearing out this building was the easy part of this Floor...

And he had a hard road ahead if he wanted to find the Boss and beat it.