***Caddock, level 63 High Paladin***

“Sir, the scouts say William Oh’s caravan is parked in Bakton Keep, and they’ll be there for another two weeks. They took a month off to shore up their levels.”

Caddock digested that. It would be ill-advised to pick a fight in the middle of a Lord’s demesne, so he would simply avoid Bakton Keep altogether.

He never thought he’d be granted the opportunity to pass his target on the way up, but here it was, staring him in the face. The opportunity to claim a Stronghold and fortify his position before the Deceiver even set foot on the 10th Floor.

“Take us to the Key Site,” he said, scanning the surrounding Climbers.

They’d started with a few hundred convicted criminals and their numbers had swelled to the low thousands, attracting hopeful Climbers like lodestone as they swept through the Strongholds on the way up The Tower, drawn in by Caddock’s determination and the paradoxical appeal of a paladin striking out against the church.

None of them really understood that determination had nothing to do with them, nothing to do with breaking the chains of systematic oppression. None of that mattered, in the long run.

The Coil was coming to a close, and Caddock had to kill the seed of destruction and chaos, the scion of ouroboros, the symbol of chaos and rebirth.

Chaos humanity could handle. It was the other part that doomed them.

Rebirth. Starting from nothing. Again. Humanity could not keep getting knocked down to refugees huddled around a fire, barely eking out an existence. They must become powerful as a society and conquer the tower.

So sayeth Granesh, king of the gods.

While Caddok had disobeyed the Church, he still had absolute loyalty to Granesh, and he felt his god guiding him toward the Deceiver’s heart like a loosed arrow.

“But sir, we’re underleveled too.” Albert said.

“Albert.” Caddock said, placing a hand on albert’s shoulder. “No one has died on my watch and no one will.” Caddock lied.

****William Oh***

The days blurred together in a maelstrom of bruises and scrapes, and Will’s understanding improved.

It was like listening with an ear he’d never had before, seeing with eyes he’d never used. Everything was a cacophonous blur, and very occasionally, on a good day, he could read someone’s intentions from the vibration through the Floor’s Debt.

Those good days started coming closer and closer together as Will learned how to narrow in on the sensation.

Bakton slowly ramped up the speed and increased the complexity of their ‘conversations’, adding new sounds, phrases, and meaning by carefully blending in new styles, weapons, and techniques, each of which had its own subtle language.

What was once ‘I’m going left’ or ‘I’m going right’ had evolved to:

‘I’m going to shift my left foot a couple inches closer to the wall so that if you recklessly charge me I can kick off it and get inside your range, overwhelming your defenses.”

Will was talking back, he was sure of it, but he didn’t have any control over what the Debt revealed, so every move was honestly forecasted by the Floor itself.

If anything, Will’s actions were probably still just saying ‘Right! Left! Duck!’

Will was getting a lot less injuries now that he could ‘hear’ what Bakton was saying, so that was good, but even after another ten days, Will hadn’t quite figured out how to speak back intentionally.

Am I going to have to figure out how to lie to Debt itself? Most jokes are built on a lie or a hypothetical situation that never happened…but not all of them? Can I tell a joke with the kernel of truth?

Based on a shared experience?

Will and Bakton didn’t really have much in common:

Bakton knew what organs did what from years of all the finest foods and instruction money could buy from a young age, owing to his noble upbringing.

Will had eaten disgusting burnt stew for a year because he desperately needed the mass, and was currently clawing his way out of illiteracy.

Their backgrounds could not have been more different.

We’re both men, I guess. That’s a shared experience, but what-

Will’s brows twitched as a joke occurred to him:

He and Will had both been present when Bakton displayed shock and a hint of envy when confronted with the army of Anna’s treatment of Will. That was a shared experience with a bit of emotional investment on Bakton’s part.

Now I just need to find a way to set up his expectations…in the next week. Gotta get him thinking about it.

Not wanting to let his plan surface in his behavior, Will discarded the thought, tossing it aside like a stick into a lake. If it was a good plan, it would float back. If not, something better would surface.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Once the sun went down, the sparring shifted to discussion, seeing as Will’s wounds were mostly limited to bruising, or in Bakton’s words: ‘Not bleeding on the furniture.’

“So why teach me this if it only works on this Floor?” Will asked.

“It’s like learning how to read, first with your eyes, enough to know that the words are there and what they mean.” Bakton said. “In my metaphor, this the only floor with any sort of illumination, but the words are still there anywhere fighting exists. Once you go onto another Floor, you’ll have to learn how to read it with your eye closed.”

“…How do you read with your eyes closed?” Will asked the obvious.

“With a great deal of effort.” Bakton said, glancing into the distance. “Only a week left in your stay. Even if you fail to make me laugh, you’ve come a long way, and it’ll serve you well.”

“What, no over-the-top fail condition like ‘I’ll end your ambition here’ if I don’t get it fast enough? You know, to arbitrarily raise the stakes and motivate me to succeed? Akul did that with the whole ‘slavery’ thing.” Will asked.

“Never liked that,” Bakton muttered. “You’re a kid with two hundred Resistance. Barring murder, You’ve got decades to crack this. Maybe centuries. And you’ve gotten pretty fluent in combat, actually.” He glanced over at Will contemplatively.

“…Maybe you’re just bad at humor?”

“That’s what Loth was telling me last week.” Will mused. Decades? Not according to Reese.

According to Reese, every hero at the end of the Coil dies somewhere around the 50th Floor, after about 4 years of climbing.

Naturally, every one of them was supremely talented, and became monsters in their own right. That means the hurdle isn’t something that can be solved with power.

“What are the higher Floors like?” Will asked.

Bakton let out an exhale, shaking his head. “Above the fifteenth floor, logic begins to break down. Things are bathed in so much miasma that they are more magic than meat. Thinking the wrong thing can betray you. Your anxieties can literally rear up to attack you.”

I’ve never been above the seventeeth. I saw my limits and decided I’d rather be alive. We’re still on the edge of civilization, little as it might feel like it, but higher than this? There’s nobody and nothing.”

“…You ever heard anything weird about the 50th Floor or thereabouts?” Will asked, his mind still swirling around Reese’s prophecies. He tried not to think about it but sometimes it just bubbled up.

“Deep Climbers don’t talk about it much,” Bakton said, shaking his head. “They just arrive from the upper floors and silently exchange priceless treasures for mutton, limes and salt then disappear into the upper floors again. It’s outrageous what they manage to do, and why they do it. People need other people around them to survive. That’s a fact of human nature, and there are very few exceptions to the rule. I’m not even convinced they’re human.”

Bakton glanced over, scanning Will. “…Your parents excluded, of course.”

“No, you’re probably right.” Will said with a shrug.

Bakton raised a brow but didn’t comment.

Will yawned and winced as he stretched his bruises coming back to the forefront of his mind.

“Getting a lot less sympathy from Anna now that I’m not getting beat up so hard,” Will mused, poking his own bruised ribs. “Used to be sponge baths while being spoonfed stew every night. Now it’s a bowl of gruel and a change of clothes.”

“And you think I’m spoiled.” Bakton scoffed.

Will flinched. “You can tell that?”

“Like I said, your fluency is getting pretty high. You just don’t have great awareness of what you’re saying. I can tell you think I had it easy.”

“Huh.”

“I did have it easy, in many ways, just like you have it easy in many other. Obviously, you’ve got something in your blood that gives you an edge comparable to mine, or we would not be talking right now.”

“…Fair enough.” Will admitted. “Although I would’ve preferred to be born rich.”

“Yes, I imagine most would.” Lord Bakton said with a small chuckle.

“Does that count as a laugh?” Will asked, pointing at his teacher’s face.

“No, we’re not fighting right now.”

“Are we not?” Will asked. His personal theory on combat was that it was always ongoing and the fighting part was just the result.

Bakton’s face split into a pleased grin. “For the purpose of our arrangement, no. but I see what you’re saying.”

That night, Will went back to a change of clothes, staring into the distance as he sat and pictured how he would tell Bakton his joke.

The camp seemed to fade and flow around him as Will delved into his own mind, mentally rehearsing every detail over and over, refining it down to the most simple, potent form he possibly could.

I got him thinking about me being spoiled by Anna, planting the seed of expectation based on a topic we’re both aware of, and now I’m gonna get a laugh from this sumbitch even if it kills him, Will thought, eyes narrowed, barely noticing as Anna placed a bowl of stew into his palm.

The next day Will showed up to the sparring and jumped in with the practiced routine that they’d developed over the last three weeks. They started slow, like they did every day, warming up to full speed before combat became a blur of sparks and clanging steel.

Will relaxed and let the joke fly out of his mind again, simply waiting and disassociating from his own body, watching himself battle Bakton as through he was an observer, emotionlessly allowing the battle to flow past him.

Bakton would cut in, Will would prance back, using phrases that Bakton himself had taught him, like the wall-kickoff phrase, the sliding lunge, The dirt-kicking, among dozens of others.

Advance, retreat, advance, retreat, ad nauseum, Will’s consciousness of individual attacks seemed to fade away, only focusing on letting the conversation between their weapons flow back and forth until:

There!

Will had just broken off after a furious salvo from Bakton and the two were squaring up against each other again. Will’s back and side were to the wall and he remembered how he had been in this position a few weeks ago and Bakton had thrashed him against the wall mercilessly.

Which resulted in a sponge bath and pity food.

You know…If I got a little more beat up, I could get another sponge bath from Anna, Will thought, deliberately altering his stance and the angle of his tomahawk.

This change in posture created an opening that if the Lord chose to exploit would give Will several artful bruises that would look really impressive to a young girl taking care of a man too battered to feed and bathe himself.

Maybe a bit of bruising on my back, some on the stomach, Will thought, shifting his feet in line with his plan. Gotta make sure my arms aren’t working right either, so definitely some bruises in the shoulder area.

In his current stance, will could see the flow of the fight getting him kicked and tumbling across the wall, acquiring some good bruises. At least, that’s what would happen if Bakton did the exact same thing as last time.

Bakton scowled and charged forward.

Sandbagging this fight to flirt with a girl!? If you’re not going to take this seriously, I will punish you for it! Bakton’s actions spoke loud as he brutally exploited Will’s opening to beat Will’s guard up, using the counterforce to reset his stance before Will could fix his own and coming in with a stab to the guts rather than a swift kick.

Will clenched the ground with his toes and pulled his feet down with Aspect, creating a tiny ripple through his own body that allowed him to whip his tomahawk down an instant faster than Bakton’s thrust.

The tomahawk grazed Bakton’s brow and intersected the lord’s hands, pushing the thrust away just a little too late, resulting in a large gash across Will’s stomach and the lord’s thumb tumbling away into the sand.

For an instant the two just stared at each other in shock.

Will had made something unexpected happen in a fight where every intention was clearly announced to the opponent.

“HAH!” Bakton barked, blood running down his face from his split eyebrow as he clenched a hand over his bleeding stump. “Hahahahaha…AHAHAHAHA! HEALER!”