“What is it?” Kang asked.

  Tom shook his head. “You’ll find out when I use it.”

  The other reincarnator thought about that answer for a moment. “Fair enough. I trust you.”

  “Why can’t you tell us?” Eloise demanded. “Bri has a right to know.”

  Tom said nothing.

  “Tell us what power you’ve been hiding.”

  “Eloise,” Kang said gently. “Do you know about titles?”

  She nodded, bright eyed and serious.

  “If Tom’s not telling us something, it’s for a similar reason.”

  “But it’s Briana’s life on the line.”

  “No, Eloise, you’re hearing, but not listening. We could tell you about titles, but it would cost you. I’m assuming this is a similar thing.”

  “It is.” Tom volunteered.

  “That’s dragon shit.”

  “Language,” Kang warned her. “And it might very well be. But I trust Tom to have his reasons. We will wait until he is ready to tell us. He has a reason for his silence.”

  Something about his tone shut her up. On the next day, they lined up, Kang and Eloise wearing backpacks filled with food.

  “We’re not exiting once we start,” Tom told them. “We defeat it this run or we die.”

  “That’s a little dramatic.” Kang protested.

  “The only way I leave this floor is dead or victorious.” Tom stated and stared Kang down, making it clear there was no room for compromise.

  “Is this about your trump card?”

  Tom wisely chose not to answer.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  A minute later, they emerged into what they had found was a permanently sunlit valley. The sun never moved, no matter how long a time they spent here.

  “Okay, we’re in, Tom. Can you spill it now?”

  “I got weapons on the previous floors.”

  “That’s it? That’s what you’re being mysterious about?” Kang asked, sounding bemused.

  “It can only be used for one instance of the floor, and, when it’s out of my spatial storage, its durability decays. The moment we start using it, we’re committing to continuing till the end. Because, if we can’t beat a floor with a tier three weapon, we definitely won’t be able to beat it without one.”

  “Weapons?” Kang said dubiously.

  “Yes, two of them, one from each floor,” Tom corrected. “And they’re bound to me.” It was a bald-faced lie, but Kang had neither the identification skill nor the social ability to allow him to expose it. “You’ll see them once I start using them.”

  “Why did you get them instead of me?”

  “I believe that’s obvious. If you want to know, you can ask Adam once we get out of here.”

  “I think I might.” Kang shot back clearly annoyed by the conversation. “I just don’t understand why we wouldn’t get one each.”

  “You don’t have the spatial storage for it.”

  “I’m sure Adam could have worked around that.”

  “Well, I don’t know. You’ll just have to ask him. Now, today we’re going to push faster. I want to beat the boss before dinner.”

  With his intention stated, he set a fast pace. With the first blanket, he didn’t use magic. Instead, he charged it and leapt at it with the tier-three dagger in his hands. He reached it just as it was stopping its mind attack, and, before it could reconfigure into its smaller form to attack effectively, the blade broke the shields. Then a free Bolt, his weakest spell, stunned it.

  “It’s down!” He yelled, and the other two ran to butcher it.

  With the creature dead, they moved forward as fast as Briana could walk. The blankets started coming in pairs, and Tom only paralysed the condensed form one and physically threw himself at the one using mind attacks.

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  Then the duos turned to trios, and Tom forced himself to slow down.

  They still pushed forth. Rock monster types joined the mix they were fighting. They weren’t a danger until they came with other monsters, and even then it wasn’t difficult to bait them to a location so that Briana could splash them. That did sufficient damage to their armour to let Tom or Kang take them down in a few blows.

  The mixed team of attackers slowed them down slightly, but they were still setting a blistering pace.

  The third monster variety was added to the mix. Tom wasn’t concerned - it was something they had fought before, and they knew how to kill it. The creature was of a long-range magical attack variety. These were tricky, but only rank-seven, so easily countered if you had the right skills, and Danger Sense counted as being one of them. By using it or paying attention to the changes in thickness of the air, Tom was able to avoid its vaporising attacks easily, as well as to cross the thirty metres he needed to cross to throw a Lightning Javelin. Then once they were stunned, Tom could keep running or use the physical javelins to kill them from range. He usually went with the remote option, so that he didn’t stray too far from the others. The ranged method worked, because it usually only took two hits to eliminate them.

  They had a break for lunch.

  “How far do you think we’ve got?” Kang asked.

  “Sixty percent.” He guessed - and then focused as he felt a twinge from Danger Sense. He still had time, but something potentially dangerous was coming.

  “Is there going to be a fourth enemy?”

  He bit his sandwich as he experienced a familiar pressure on his mind. When he glanced at Kang, the other boy’s eyes had rolled back, and he had collapsed, unconscious.

  “Yes, there is.” Tom said simply and went to meet the new opponent type. It looked like a greener version of the rock monster. However, the time dilation it gave him had a three times-perception boost instead of two, so it was fifty percent faster than its weaker cousins. With his allies comatose Tom didn’t bother with pretences.

  His spear appeared in his hands.

  Instantly, the lag between him sending commands to his muscles and them obeying him was reduced. If he had to guess, he could move a quarter faster.

  He charged the monster, mainly to keep it away from the others. Apart from its extra speed and its long-distance mind attack, it was no different from its lesser kind. With the tier-three spears in his hand, every blow was like it had a full Power Strike infusing it. His thrusts tore chunks off it, and he concentrated on this left side. In three minutes he had torn through the thinner armour, and yellow blood was streaming toward the sky.

  Tom went and sat next to the others. Three minutes, later they woke up. “Your fourth monster.” Tom nodded at the dead creature about twenty metres away. It was noticeably different from the other rock monsters they had been fighting.

  “Did it get a visual lock?”

  “No.”

  “Damn,” Kang cursed, clearly annoyed at being removed from the fight so casually. “Anything else?”

  “It was about fifty percent faster.”

  “And you were able to fight it?” he asked amazed.

  “My trump card equalised the difference.”

  “The dragon spear,” Kang said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen you use it.”

  “Yep. It gives me a speed boost.”

  They finished their food and pushed on. With the addition of the extra monster type, it was not smooth. Every time one of these appeared, the companions were delayed for at least six minutes and usually for longer, as the other monsters that came with it forced Tom to burn skills to defeat them.

  Everyone was injured. Eloise suffered from a badly-bruised side with broken ribs from when she got grazed by a rock charge. She cried for thirty minutes, which was the time it took for Tom to build up enough mana reserves to fix her.

  The monsters were relentless, and, the closer they got, the greater the challenge they faced. The injuries stacked up.

  Finally, they reached the boss.

  Brianna was near death. For the last three hours, he hadn’t had the mana to spare to heal her, and the lack of maintenance showed. Eloise had lost half of her leg and was walking with a prosthetic cobbled together out of blanket monster parts and a part of the remote spell caster.

  Kang, apart from Tom, was the least injured one, and he was only missing two fingers.

  The girls, even once they were healed physically were never going to be the same again. You didn’t experience the level of trauma they had just gone through without consequences, especially not when you were only six.

  “This is it.” Kang said grimly, looking into the room.

  There was a single enemy waiting for him.

  It was a larger version of the fourth type of monster. While Tom’s analysis ability wasn’t up to the task, there was a lot that he could tell. For instance, he knew it would be fast; a three to four times dilation, based on the other floor bosses. Its mind attack would disable the others instantly, and it would have the two telegraphed major attacks that they knew of, and probably one more beyond that.

  “You know you’re going to be incapacitated.”

  “I know. We know,” Kang agreed. “We’re dependent on you winning.”

  Tom nodded. While a part of him wanted to do a heart to heart, as this was the last opportunity that they would have to speak openly with each other, he knew doing so would be a bad idea. Even with her pain removed, Briana was close to death, Eloise was suffering, and Kang had too many unanswered questions about the tier-three spear. “Well, I guess I’ll see you back in Existentia.” He looked at the girls, and particularly at Briana. “When I finish this fight, you’ll be healed fully. I’m sorry this happened.”

  “So am I.” Briana burst into tears. He gave her a big hug, but only reapplied the free spell to stop her pain rather than correcting any of the other symptoms. All of his magic was needed for the approaching fight. “Thank you for coming for me, Tom. I shouldn’t have accepted. Wanting to know was childish and selfish.”

  “We screwed up first, Briana. This is on Kang and me. We put you in this situation where you felt you had no choice but to ask. The great news is that when we get back to Existentia, you can relax about knowing we’re reincarnators. You won’t be capable of betraying us, and I’m so happy I’ll be able to be myself around you.”

  “Me too.” Kang said quietly.

  “I’m still sorry. We didn’t have to go through this.”

  “I know it’s been painful, but the rewards will be worth it. Now, I have a boss to fight.”

  Brushing away his own tears, he strode into the room. Time slowed as the boss focused on him, and he could feel the three people behind him toppling over from their sitting position. It was time to end this.