Chapter 53 - Choices

I leapt off the wall in one swift bound and threw out my arms to send both blades flying. Both Agos and Belos soared through the air, creating a high-pitched hiss as it closed in on a Howler.

Just before they could reach it, the beast vanished into one of its Shadow steps and appeared even closer to me. With its fangs open and claws driven forward, I had little to no room to move. All I could do was break my way through.

I reached out to the shadowy attacker's open jaw and a flicker of red flames appeared in my hand,

“FLARE!”

A firework of flames shot directly into the Shadow Howler's mouth and lit up its body from the inside. A powerful red light could be seen through its ribs and belly outside of its body, right before puffing up with a sudden pulse.

The beast flew through the air, still dazed from the red-hot flames that ignited within its belly.

On its own, those flames weren't very impressive but even the smallest flame would hurt really bad if it went off inside of a monster. I knew it must have hurt too because the HP above its head dropped to nearly zero after that.

Arga broke past me with her sword raised, I stepped out of her way and watched as she crashed into the monster with her weapon.

A large blow from her two-handed sword and the monster was split in two. The last of the pack dropped down dead and left us with a mess of dead bodies. We had cleared through all of them in a short amount of time. I expected us to take a while but they were pretty keen to dive in most of the time, which made things speed along.

Finally able to rest I hung my mouth open and took in all the air I could. Both Arga and I gasped for massive breaths of air, it sounded like we hadn’t had any in years from the way we went on.

She planted her sword into the stone floor and supported herself on its handle like an overgrown walking stick. Her waist grew and shrunk rapidly as she grasped for breaths.

We’re completely worn out…

I reached out over the spoils of our fight and absorbed the bodies. We couldn't waste a second, so I devoured every last inch of them and stood up to leave. We were still on the sixth floor and crossing over at night would have been dangerous.

Even if there wasn’t a sky to turn black, night-residing monsters still appeared in that area. We weren't used to those surroundings so taking a chance like that would potentially put us at risk.

{Skill Shadow Spike has been unlocked} – {The Users Shadow stretches out into a pool of spikes that deal damage to those caught inside of it}

I levelled up the Shadow Howler skill tree quite a bit from that fight, not to mention the amazing skill I got out of it as well. I just hope it works as well as it did against me.

I looked over to the corner where Alice was hiding, she glanced around the corner to make sure it was safe and met my eyes. After giving her a quick nod she came rushing out and joined up with us again.

It worked pretty well to have her hide for that fight but there’s no telling if we would be able to do it again in the next area. None of us knew the layouts to the next floor and we knew even less about the monsters.

I started to wonder if we had bitten off more than we could chew with this quest…

“—Gah! So bitter…” Arga groaned as she drank up the last of a vial in her hand. It was a healing potion just like the one I had used before, one of low quality.

“How many do you have left?”

She didn’t have to look down, with a nervous glare she stated her response. “Only two more.” She was aware of how fast we were burning through items. There was no telling how long a journey like this would go on, especially one where we weren't sure where we were going.

I was running pretty low myself since I ran through two potions in that fight, so our situation was looking grim.

“We need to avoid fighting, if anyone sees a monster then call it out and run. Got it?”

Both girls nodded firmly and agreed.

““Got it!””

-

Without a sky to look up to, it made it pretty impossible to figure out what time of day it was. We had all been yawning for quite a bit so I figured it must have been night-time outside the Tower.

“We’re going to have to sleep soon…”

The question was where? If we dropped our guard and just picked a spot on the floor then we were at risk of being jumped by some monsters—or even worse would be if some adventurers walked across us and noticed Alice.

My stomach started to churn and my head grew dizzier as we walked. My body wasn’t just tired but nervous as well.

We needed to figure something out but the more I thought of it the more empty-handed I ended up. Sleeping in the Tower was much simpler on the lower floors, all we needed was a fire and most of the monsters wouldn’t come close to us. They feared the light and big groups so it was guaranteed that monsters wouldn’t attack you.

The higher floors were a different deal though, monsters would attack you whether you were awake or asleep. All they wanted was to kill you. To prevent that most adventurers sleep in shifts, so while the others rest there would be one person keeping an eye on things.

That might be our only option at this point.

I balled my hand into a fist and spoke firmly.

“We only have one choice, we’re going to have to sleep in shifts.”

Arga nodded gingerly.

I knew that she understood the situation as well as I did, since there were only two of us able to fight we needed to divide the shifts between the two of us.

The dangerous part was that we weren't sure of this floor, not to mention how the monsters would react during the ‘night’ inside the Tower. While two of us slept, the person awake would need to not only be vigilant of monsters and adventurers but also of the Towers' behaviour.

It was a tough position…

“What if we rest on the next floor?”

“Why would we do that, we would have to walk even further?”

“Yeah, but we’re not exactly sitting pretty right now, are we? If we head over to the next floor we’ll have an easier chance at hiding somewhere out of the way. The door ain't far away so we’re kind of sitting in front of it.”

I wasn’t fond of the idea. I saw where her logic was coming from but the idea of crossing into a whole new area right before sleeping made me want to keel over with anxiety. I wasn’t thrilled about risking it all on a place we weren't certain when we would reach. It was a gamble and a big one too.

We didn’t have time to move back and even sleeping where we were wasn’t the best option either.

Arga could see the conflict rising on my face and waited for my response. Ultimately I needed to come up with something and decided to stick to my gut.

“You’re right…let’s go to the seventh.”

**Author Notes**

Make the right choice and add Dungeon Eater to your library! Thanks for reading everyone. It's been so amazing having my novel on the front page this month, such a dream come true!