Clutter's tail begins to wag as the sterile stench fades. "Defend? From what? Do I finally get to fight?"

"Can't see why you wouldn't." I wave a visible flare of grey-ish fumes away and turn to look over the city. "My money's on plastic creatures. Maybe even more of those masses I fought at the graveyard."

"Well as long as a tree doesn't appear, you can count on me!" Clutter puffs his chest out with pride. "I might not have much firepower, but I'm sure I can take down at least a dozen of them!"

I raise an eyebrow at his boast. "Sure, Clutter. Sure. The glass up here should stop anything from coming in, so let's get down to the wall and get ready."

He nods eagerly and hurries down the stairs before I can turn to face him. There isn't a single doubt in my mind that he wants to prove himself, but I have absolutely no confidence in his ability to fight. I'll have to keep an eye on him to make sure he can at least stay alive when whatever we're supposed to defend this place from appears.

I summon and drop a relocation coin on the floor, give the strange concentric-circle pillar a quick look to make sure it's actually descending, and make my way down the blocky stairs. My awareness hasn't detected anything that could be dangerous yet, so as long as whatever's coming isn't way too powerful, they haven't breached the tower yet. I trail my fingertips along the 'stone' wall to feel for any changes as I walk, and when I reach the bottom, I'm confident that the quest didn't spawn anything in the tower to mess with us.

Clutter tightens a silky black sash around his hand that pulses with magic, and when he notices my presence, shoots me a brilliant smile. He already wrapped his other hand in the same sash, with a bit of extra fluttering in an invisible breeze as he ties off his other hand, and the spell in it feels exactly the same.

I nod at the fabric. "Is that one of Dell's creations?"

"Yep! Just the fabric, though–the spell is mine. She did something to it so it absorbs spells like sponges absorb water." He flexes his fingers for emphasis, and a thin layer of shadowy magic shimmers over his hand. "I'm going to go completely invisible now. Tell me if you can still sense me."

A shimmering curtain of midnight blue as dark as the ocean depths wipes over Clutter's body. As it moves, Clutter's body simply disappears from view–no shimmers, no distortions. But my awareness still senses his magic like he'd done nothing at all. He raises a hand and waves. I wave right back.

"Okay, so you can still see me. Can you hear me?" His voice appears from everywhere at once, surrounding me in a cacophony of him. "Actually, I mean–"

"No, I can't hear just one voice." I interrupt and put my hand to the wall. "I'm not immune to your spell, I can just see through the invisibility part. Don't assume whatever we're about to fight can't see you until you confirm it for yourself, got it?"

He lowers his hands and nods seriously. "I won't get hurt. You be safe, too–we don't have any health potions to fall back on. And we both know I won't be able to protect you on my own."

I raise an eyebrow and step through the door. "Where's that bravado from a second ago?"

"It's still here. Just being pushed down by realistic worries." He chuckles, and for a second, his everywhere-voice sounds nervous. "You… you'll come help me if I'm in trouble, right?"

What kind of a question is that? "Of course I will. We're in this together."

He sighs in relief. "Thanks. I'm going to go do some actual scouting–are you going to stay here and wait for them?"

I nod. "No reason to run around and put this place in danger."

"Okay. I'll be close-ish." He says, then zips off.

My awareness feels him move further into the distance, and within seconds, he's gone. I crack my knuckles and set a few shield coins in my holster as insurance as I scan the horizon for any signs of enemies. For now, everything seems calm. But that can change at any second, since the floors can easily open up and the 'sky' can do the same. So I need to stay on alert.

I lick my dry lips as the minutes tick by. My mind is constantly on edge, but there's still a confidence behind it that keeps me calm. This is normal. It's a sanctioned quest that the system put in place before I even got my Class Coin. Unless it thought one of the other Worth classes were going to show up, there's absolutely no chance any of these quest indicators can be tricks. Well, not the kind of deadly tricks the system tried to bait me with–just the normal kind.

Like delaying the enemies from spawning so I let my guard down. Or creating a few very stealthy ones instead of an army. Either one's just as likely as the other, and there's a dozen other possibilities that could easily come to pass. They're all normal, though. Hell, maybe the system wants us to defend the tower from the weather. That's completely possible.

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With that thought in mind, I glance up at the sky. One of the circles is in relatively the same position, but the clouds and all the other grey circles have moved significantly. I wonder if there are weather patterns here, or if the thing that pretended to be Ursula just has control over everything. I lean back to rest against the tower, and yelp in surprise as nothing breaks my descent for over a foot.

My head meets stone with a dull thud. I wince and spin around to stare up at the tower, rubbing the back of my head all the while. Did… did the tower just move? Or did the floor move, and I moved with it? My awareness didn't sense anything, so there wasn't any magic in play… and the tower must've shifted slowly enough that I didn't notice it.

"The hell?" I mutter to myself and slowly walk around the tower. "There's no sign of this thing moving. Does that mean I'm the one that got moved? Is this what we're supposed to protect the anchor from?"

I grimace as I summon two projectiles just in case. My awareness still can't feel anything close, and since Clutter hasn't screamed yet, I doubt he's found anything to fight. Whatever's happening is happening here–either on the top of the wall, or on the ceiling beneath us. Question is, can I risk leaving the tower unguarded and check down below?

The tower shifts ever so slightly, bumping into my toes. That settles it; I need to find what's happening before this thing runs away on me. I plant a relocation coin on the side of the tower and cover it with a small shield so it stays in place, then take a few steps away and plant my hand on the ground without taking my eyes off the tower.

Magic gleams under my feet. The tower doesn't react at all. I shake my head and push away the strange feeling that's rolling in my gut, then stick my head through the floor-door so I can get an upside-down look around. At first glance, nothing seems out of place. There are more protrusions and trough-shaped rectangles in this wall-tunnel than the others, but nothing that screams 'enemy' to me.

But my awareness latches onto something else. Something on the ceiling just a few feet away, right underneath where the tower is. I turn and take in the strange, root-like appendages that dangle from the ceiling and thrash violently about as small rivulets of magic trickles into them. Flashes of grey shoot through these 'roots', thin as they are, and then they just… dangle there. Motionless like a jellyfish's tentacles as it hangs in the water.

And before my very eyes, they start to grow. With every droplet of magic that drains into them, the tentacle that absorbs it grows a few inches longer. I stare, mesmerized by the strange display of bizarre magic, as the droplets of magic become increasingly frequent. The tentacles grow at a breakneck pace, scratching and snapping at the ground below like fallen power lines once they're long enough, and then something else falls.

A bead of coloured magic. Thick, slimy blue magic. My mind snaps back into the moment at the sight of the stuff from the catalyst, and as the bead of blue magic trails down, creating a trail of something that looks like a magical combination between spider silk, mycelium, and seafoam, the rest of the tentacles shudder as if a chill just shot through them.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the catalyst is creating the tentacles. But I have absolutely no goddamn idea how that ties into our quest.

I frown and flip back out of the door. The tower's still there, just a few inches further away than before. It feels like someone's messing with me; why the hell is the tower moving, what do the tentacles have to do with anything, and why hasn't anything shown up? We're supposed to be defending this place. But there's nothing to defend it from.

Screw this. Maybe Clutter's had better luck "Clutter! Find anything at all?!"

"Nope!" His voice closes in from all directions. "Nothing at all! Do you want me to come back?!"

"Yeah! You need to see this!" I stick my foot into the door to keep it from closing and lock my eyes on the tower. If that thing gets up and starts running, I'm going to scream. "How far are you–"

His shimmering form creeps into my awareness, and I cut myself off. He tilts his head to the side in question, but doesn't ask anything as he sprints up to the door I'm holding open. Silky strands trail behind his hands as he gestures at the door.

"What's down there?"

I nod down at it. "Take a look for yourself. Seems like the tower's trying to take… root. Ah."

Clutter frowns as I shake my head with a sigh. "What?"

"Anchor. Root. Same thing. Just take a look and you'll see what I mean."

"Um, okay." He gets to his knees, grabs the edge of the door, and swings his head down into it. "Oh! I get it!"

"Yup. We're actually anchoring the tower to the wall. Which would explain why it was further along the wall than you thought it was; it was moving before we even noticed it was."

His eyes shoot open wide. "The tower's moving?!"

"...Right, yeah, forgot that important piece of information." I chuckle to myself. "It's done with the grey magic, and now it's slowly pulling out the blue stuff from the catalyst. No idea how much longer it's going to be, but if we look at how much comes out per minute, we could probably calculate it."

"Or we could just wait." Clutter suggests. "It's not like we're struggling for time. Heck, I couldn't find a single shred of evidence that there's anyone alive here but us. Whatever the system thinks is coming to attack us, it can't be that dangerous."

I feel inclined to agree. With a scan of the horizon yet again, I take my foot out of the door and wait for Clutter to come up. He does so with a shake of his head and his lips pulled into a thoughtful line. After a few moments of silence, he turns to me and motions at the tower.

"Do you think we were supposed to fight other people for this?"

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