Kashi’s thod of tracking people wasn’t anything novel to Sorin, but it was sothing that Sorin himself was incapable of replicating. In another three or four ranks, he thought he might be able to pull it off, but even then, it would probably require taking at least one of the three D-rank soulprints Kashi used into his soulspace.
And extrely niche tracking soulprints just weren’t a priority, so it was more likely that Sorin would be closing in on rank 20 before he had enough empty soulspace and spare anima to free cast three simultaneous D-rank abilities. It was therefore a lucky break that Yoru had managed to convince Kashi to put his talents to work for them.
Given a spot to start, Kashi imdiately began channeling anima to peer back through temporal layering. At D-rank, it wasn’t that strong, so rather than actually see into the past, the ability just gave impressions about people or monsters that had passed through the area.
With Sorin’s help narrowing down the window, Kashi quickly found what he was looking for. “Got it. Okay, one person… Now a group. Sothing is weird about it. Hard to sort out so far back, maybe. There’s a person there, I think, but they’re so indistinct that it’s hard to pin any details down. That person leaves, and there are three left.”
“Sounds like you’ve got them,” Sorin said. He didn’t bother ntioning that the one Kashi had found difficult to read was him. The tighter a person kept their anima under control, the less it would show up to a temporal scan.
“Alright, let
skim through this to when they leave. Looks like… two days and so change. No idea why they stayed so long, before you ask.”
“Healing a head injury,” Sorin said quietly. Yoru and Vendis nodded, but Kashi ignored him and walked to the mouth of the cave.
“The desert is both a great place to track people and a shitty one,” the retired bounty hunter said. “Too many people makes it difficult to follow a single thread, but the environnt wipes away all traces of passage so quickly that it’s almost impossible to follow soone without specialized soulprints.”
“Which you have,” Yoru said, a touch impatiently. “Please stop showing off and get on with it.”
Shooting Yoru a dirty look, Kashi started muttering under his breath. “Ungrateful little… things I put up… pin him up by his…”
Yoru ignored Kashi and simply motioned for him to get on with it. Still grumbling, Kashi activated a second soulprint, this one designed to do much the sa thing as the first one, except for environntal disruptions. Generally, it was difficult to rely on, but the desert was mostly empty, so Sorin knew Kashi was almost exclusively going to see the wind blow sand around.
Sorin could have replicated the effect by switching back and forth between the two soulprints, but it wasn’t nearly as effective as combining the two, and besides, the anima drain from looking so far back would be steep. Even if he’d been willing to pay the costs, he still wouldn’t have been nearly as effective without Kashi’s third soulprint.
Hypnotic Drift was what was known as a hyper-specialized soulprint. On its own, it did practically nothing useful. In conjunction with Kashi’s temporal scrying, it let him slip into the role of whoever he was tracking, which was particularly useful against targets who knew how to dodge stubborn bounty hunters.
Sorin had gotten lucky the Black Hellions hadn’t had anyone like Kashi on their payroll, and that by the ti they’d gotten around to placing an actual bounty on his head, he’d been strong enough to defend himself. It would have been far more difficult to track his team across Floor 2, especially with all the fighting they’d done, but it wasn’t impossible.
Samael could probably duplicate what Kashi’s doing. More proof that he doesn’t actually want to find , at least not yet.
Kashi led them out into the desert, first heading back toward the portal hub, then veering away. He had to stop frequently as Sorin’s team hadn’t moved in a straight line. At one point, they’d started running away from sothing, and the anima spillage from that fight had muddled things so bad that it took Kashi ten minutes of circling the area before he finally picked up the trail again.
Whatever they’d tried and failed to run from, it was dead and gone now. The tower had reclaid it days before Sorin had shown up, and the desert had smoothed over any signs that there’d even been a fight. Truthfully, he had only Kashi’s word that anything had attacked them at all, or even that they’d co this way.
Things went like that for a full four hours before the bounty hunter had to take a break. By then, they were out in so crags where the ground was dry and cracked rather than a bed of sand. It was hot enough that everyone could feel it even through the various soulprints protecting them, but there was at least so shade to be had.
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“What’s the plan to get through Floor 0 once we get back?” Sorin asked Yoru.
“What do you an?”
“Well, I can’t really show my face without attracting attention.”
Yoru considered that for a second, perhaps recalling the team Sorin had massacred earlier that sa day. “Yes, I can see why that might be a problem. You could use your… ahem… smuggler’s passage and et us there.”
“Not an option,” Sorin said flatly, not wanting to discuss the details in front of a stranger, even if he was attached to the Telpike family.
“Then I suppose we’ll just go through the portal like usual and do our best to make the trip as swift as possible. I could arrange for an escort, but that would likely draw more attention to us than it’d be worth.”
“There’s also the issue of the taxes,” Sorin said.
“Do you care about money that much?” Yoru asked curiously.
“That will depend entirely on whether your father is willing to sponsor us. I’m less inclined to be frugal with my own money if I’ve got backing, but otherwise, yes, I care a great deal.”
Vendis, normally so quiet, snorted in the background. Everyone paused to look at him, but he just shrugged and remained silent.
“Hmm,” Yoru said, looking askance at his retainer. “I suppose that’s a good point.”
“So… What do we do about it?”
“I have no idea.”
“If I may,” Vendis said. “There are stations you can rent at the portal hub to store anything you don’t want taxed. As long as it doesn’t make it into Floor 0, you don’t have to declare or pay fees on it. Climbers commonly use it to store gear they don’t want to pay taxes on.”
Sorin had to take a mont to boggle at the sheer greed. And so random rank 0 or 1 guards are qualified to determine how much a piece of gear is worth? Are they just making shit up every ti soone walks by? How do they enforce it when a rank 20 cos through and isn’t interested in paying? I’m sure there are stronger climbers who’ve retired to Floor 0, but…
It was like the whole system was designed to be broken, which, once he thought about it, was probably true. Its primary purpose seed to be to encourage climbers not to dump a bunch of stuff from higher floors into Floor 0, where it would wreck the fragile economy of the lower ranks. If climbers were going to do that, then the high families in charge were going to collect their pound of flesh.
Sorin imagined that the truly powerful probably ignored the taxes, and the people in charge probably let them. Truthfully, there weren’t many places on Floor 0 that could afford to buy C-rank soulprints or materials from monsters that hailed from Floor 20. It was almost a self-correcting problem.
ssy as hell though. Our system back ho was much simpler.
Then again, the blue tower had held just as many slums as the red one did. It seed like the systems in place only ever benefited the ones in charge, no matter what they were. As annoying as that was to realize, Sorin wasn’t a crusader for social reform. His only goal was to keep his own advantages intact while passing through the checkpoint.
“I don’t think I’d be comfortable wandering Floor 0 unard, especially when I know my enemies there will be fully equipped,” he said.
“You know you won’t be allowed to et with my father while you’re ard,” Yoru said. “Sooner or later, you’ll have to be vulnerable.”
“Then I guess he doesn’t want to talk to
that badly,” Sorin said. “I’ll make my own way to the top if that’s the case. I’d rather it take
a bit longer than risk getting myself killed in an ambush.”
“I think you’re being a bit overly dramatic,” Yoru told him.
“If he doesn’t trust
enough to et
while I’ve got a sword, then he doesn’t trust
enough to work with . And I don’t want to partner with soone who wants to put
at such a stark disadvantage.”
Kashi looked back and forth between them for a mont, then asked, “Is this deal still happening? Because if we’re calling it off, I’m all for heading ho instead of walking through the desert.”
“No, we still need to find the other three,” Yoru told him without taking his eyes off Sorin. “We’ll figure sothing out. This is too important to let it die without even attempting to find solutions.”
“Suppose I’ll get back to it then,” the tracker said glumly.
They walked in terse silence after that. Sorin completely understood that Yoru’s father was one of the most powerful n in the tower—maybe not in terms of raw personal power, but as the leader of a high family—and generally had enough of an upper hand to force petitioners to co to him on his terms, but that wasn’t going to be how his relationship with the man worked.
It wasn’t even necessarily that he felt he needed his sword to defend himself. It certainly helped, but he was plenty dangerous without it. It was more that under no circumstances could he afford to lose it. Its strange ability to consu void matter was going to be of incalculable value when it was ti to clear the Void Wall.
If the Telpikes could deal with Sorin’s demands and forge an agreent, then that was fantastic. Having their backing would help keep his build up to date and let him avoid making compromising decisions as he progressed higher. It might even keep his gear from stagnating, both because crafters were expensive and because they took ti to make new pieces.
At the rate Sorin planned to move, he’d blow right past the crafters if he had to bring in his own materials. He needed sobody who already had hides and tals from higher floors on hand so that new equipnt could be prepared for him, stuff that would last long enough to justify the cost and ti investnt in creating it.
Yoru was wearing a fully enchanted set of gear, and just eyeballing the quality, he’d say the man had nothing made out of materials from below Floor 5 or 6. They were high-quality, durable, custom-fitted, and built to last him for at least six months of climbing, assuming a normal or even advanced speed. That was what Sorin wanted, both for himself and for the rest of his team.
The unexpected reward of Void Resistance from the last Antechamber had catapulted them in importance to Sorin. Right now, the void was still very much a threat, and it likely would remain that way, but if they could layer that particular ability two or three more tis, they might be able to fight indefinitely on the front lines against the void.
I guess we’d better find them, then, Sorin thought to himself as he watched Kashi work.
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