Broken Tower Saga: The First Swordsman
Chapter 200: Cloud

The music was playing high, while Glinch was working inside his workshop for hours. He had his usual glasses on for this kind of work while the hologram of all kinds of things surrounding him in the room in blue, green, white all types of colour. There were runes in them as well as the strings connecting them, making webs or runes so complicated that could make anyone's brain numb just by glancing at it, literally.

Glinch was creating nothing new, but extracting information from the encoded system. There was a lot of stupid crap in it almost nine third of the encryption was full of crap that he had to delete to get the original info he would need.

He was working on it for a month and failed a couple of times. The progress he made so far was about 32%. Supposedly, in this encryption, the information of thousands of years was coded though he was not sure if it would be any help in their cause. He got to try.

One might think why would they encode just important knowledge in the first place that nobody could not open it? His boss and friend have the same question. All he could tell them was that because this information was not meant to be known to all the people. After all, ignorance is bliss.

Abruptly, one of his omega cubes vibrated out, warping a little rhythmic noise that was hard to follow. Glind sighed and stopped the loud music. The call that came was on the red omega cube—the one that was mostly used for covert conversation or something that needed a long-distance connection.

"Savor," Glinch answered the call. "You should have something important to call me in this hour?"

"Glinch, it's morning now," the voice of Savor warped out of the red cube. "At least the place I am in."

"So where are you?" Glinch asked, putting off most of the web of runes one after another.

"63rd floor," a weary voice came this time.

"Alone? Well, more importantly, how can you get a signal from there?"

"How many people do you think can venture to the 63rd floor?"

"A couple of dozen?" Glinch answered with an uncertain tone.

"Maybe or less, I'm not sure," Savor said. "But I'm sure none of them will come to help me if I ask them."

"Not popular among the people, are we?"

"You know our suicidal plan. They will report it directly to the council before listening to our explanation," Savor chuckled.

"So why did you call?"

"I have a task for you that would require you to leave your workshop for a while."

Glitch sighed. "Just shoot it."

"I want you to deliver the key to my girl."

"Key?" Glinch pondered for a second. "You mean the door will open this time around?"

"Perhaps," Savor said. "Go to my lair on the 36th floor, if you replace Myelin then ask her to open the safe for you, and if she's away, just break it."

"Is it that urgent?" Glinch could not help but ask. To open the safe, they need the biometric spirit signature of Savor, or Meylin, but now he asked him to break it if Myelin was away.

"Just do it as I say," Savor said. "I don't need to tell you how to replace the lass, do I?"

"That's alright, I just wonder how that lass would react seeing me there in her little adventure," Glinch said, laughing.

"She will probably try to run away from you," Savor said. "It has been so long since I have seen her."

"I wonder how she would react if she replaces out the cleaver way she sneaked out of the house was something her dear dad incited," Glinch laughed. "The Lass still thinks she could run away alone from one of the most secure houses in the tower."

"Don't tell her that. Give her my love," Savor said. "After delivering the key to her, hop to the 59th floor. I need to meet you in person to discuss a few things."

"Are you willing to bring me to the above floors?"

"Perhaps," Savor said. "Don't wander around even though they did not have your name on the blacklist, just by associating with me, you might get yourself imprisoned."

"You don't say," Glinch said. "Goodbye then."

.. .

Wrik walked nonchalantly in the full-body suit, impersonating as one of the supervisors of the mining site. He was about 1.2km underground now and needed to go a few hundred metres further down to get to where the item was kept.

"Hey Rudal?" a voice called behind him.

Wrik looked back to notice three people—two in the white full bodysuit while the other person was standing normally, as if the radiation was not harmful to him in the slightest. Technically, a mahasayer with enough control and maha mana could eliminate any type of slight radiation of the body, though it becomes harder with each accumulation.

"What's up?" Wrik said in a gruff voice. The suit filtered out his voice as well, so there was no fear of getting caught.

"Looks like we have to entertain some guests," the frontman in the suit said. "Some unexpected guests have come, wanting to check out the site."

"The owners?" Wrik asked as his interest rose.

"No, they seemed to be members of the council who came for the biannual exploration, but they do have the permission from House Rudyard."

His mind rang hearing that. The council member came just when they were here to steal the item. Coincidence? Perhaps, but he would not like to bet on it. According to Ryat, the thing they were about to steal was something of great interest of the council that they were putting pressure on Lord Rudyard for some time.

Though there really was something like Biannual site exploration to see the well being of the workers as well as the profit, that was still a couple of weeks away. Though the council could send people in advance, he would not like to bet on that.

'Looks like the heist became a little difficult. I wonder if Balat and the others notice it as well,' he thought. He looked at the front men first. "They probably have time, right? After all, they came from a long way away. Give them something of interest and rest and Give me half an hour. I'll finish my checkout by then."

"That seemed feasible, but the people who came this time around seemed to not be so good with House Rudyard," the man said again. "They ask every supervisor or higher post person to meet them in the hall at once. I'm not sure if they would like to wait for half an hour."

Hearing that, Wrik's gut feeling rang. This meant he had to finish his task soon or else the chance might escape from his hand.

"Damn these dogs of the council," he cursed out, replaceing the other three were not so good with the arrival as well. "What do they think they are? I'm going to finish my job first, if they ask, just tell them I ate something bad and shitting from dawn."

Saying that, Wrik stored away downwards, leaving the three startled.

"Since when did Rudal become such rebellious?" the other person asked.

"He really might have eaten something bad," the mahasayer said.

"Well, we completed our job," the front man said, turning. "He will get yelled at or the punishment for it. What does it matter for us."

Wrik sighed in relief at hearing that. Even though he showed the strong front in leaving, his ears were still behind, wondering if they would stop him or alert the higher-ups that came. Since they did nothing of that, all he could do was go back to his business of stealing the item.

His pace rose as he rushed downwards, ignoring the figure that he came across now and then. He got to go a little more until he would arrive before the tunnel to paradise.

After covering some distance, he got to see the path of the tunnels. There were dozens of them, and now he had to replace the one he would need. His eyes inspect the mage of a path made by the tunnels to replace the right one.

'17A, 17C, 18K. . . 28N, 32L,' he read the number on the tunnel. 'Where the heck is 42Q?'

After searching every one of the tunnels he did not replace the 42Q he was looking for. There were 42P, 42S, 42T, but none with the initial of Q. 'Wait, wait, wait, what if they just rename the tunnel?' he thought. The blueprint Ryat got off this site was old, the one when it was first built. These types of small changes were meant to happen if they were considering making a safe for an otherworldly item here.

But even if they made changes, there would always be something left behind. Wrik enabled the [Eye of Insights] and checked out every label on the tunnels. He was looking to see if they repainted some of the tunnels or not.

And he was proven to be right. The tunnel 47X was repainted with a couple of others, but 47X was the only one he was pondering over. After all, this was the one that seemed to have the most complicated path that he was familiar with.

"This should be it."

_______________

The initial scene at the start of the chapter was meant to happen in the undercurrent chapter, but that totally escaped my mind and now had to leave it here where it do not go well. Apologies for that, but the first scene is an important part that would play a big role at the end of volume 1.

Thank you.