Buttopia
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Chapter 81: Blitz Sans Ballroom
🕑 Added 2025-01-13 19:43:16 +0000 UTC“Are you able to share any details of what we are facing Floor Master?” Rabyn said, leaping back to us from the food table. While I was incredibly impressed by his abilities, the idea that he was this powerful and did nothing to stop the slaughter across the planet wasn’t helping my acceptance of him. I wasn’t sure I could order his execution if it came to that, but I doubted I’d ever like him, and once Earth recovers, there’s a real chance he’d face a trial for war crimes. But that was a potential future that required his help in the here and now.
“You know I can’t, but smart to ask anyway. I do know the earliest they could get you scheduled for a third floor is in ten minutes. So if you were to somehow make quick work of what’s behind the door, you could make up the time you need for a break,” Floor Master said as they led us to the door.
“I deeply appreciate you letting me know this,” Rabyn said before we all walked through the door into a featurless hallway, the door closing behind us once we were all through.
“How did you become friends with Floor Master?” I asked, the curiosity finally getting the better of me.
“That is not a story I currently wish to tell,” Rabyn answered.
“And it doesn’t look like we have time anyway!” Elicec yelled as the hall we had all entered into vanished, leaving us standing in a giant empty field.
“Uh, shouldn’t there be something here?” I asked. There was nothing I could see other than fields of grass. Then I heard it before I saw its shadow pass over us. The loud screech of a giant bird somewhere far in the skies.
“There!” Elicec shouted, firing a blast of electricity out of his finger at the monster, managing to strike it on one of its massive wings. It screeched again, now diving in for an attack.
I followed my own order, switching over to my aether orb I tried a quick gravity reversal, not sure how it would apply to something already flying. As soon as my spell touched the creature all of its momentum seemed to cancel itself out, and the bird was slammed hard into the ground below. Corey capitalized on my strike, hitting it in the head several times, soon joined by Cecile and Rabyn. It didn’t stand a chance.
The landscape vanished around us and we were back in the same bland hallway we had started in. “That was impressive, though a shame they had such a magnificent creature used like this,” Elody said.
“I don’t even think they are real, honestly,” Rabyn replied, his knives already gone from his hands.
“Conversation for later. Everyone grab the food. Glorp, Connie, load your storage space with as much food as you can. I’ll explain everything once we are home. Everyone meet me by the green floating cloud,” I said as the hallway door opened, letting us back into the waiting room. Before I could get to the table the others had already picked it clean, so I instead made a beeline for Mel.
“Good choice on the dwarf, but why the Larvin? Looks like a kid, too. Is he some kinda prodigy?” Mel asked the moment I reached him. I already knew he wasn’t going to like this answer.
“Glorp is my fault,” Pryte said before I could answer. “He was the courier I sent to warn Dave.”
“Oh, so he was bait for some trap, and ya managed to get him out anyway?” Mel asked.
“More or less, not really sure what the end goal with him was. We can see what he knows after we finish this place. The problem is most, if not all, of the other squads seemed to be bribed to target us, so even if we hadn’t wanted him, what choice did we have?” I responded.
“Hey, don’t put words in my mouth, ya saved a kid in there. That’s always the right move. I just didn’t know the whole story. We’ve got a bunch of class orbs just lying around gathering dust back in yer garage anyway, so we can make this work. They didn’t fuck us past floor seven, either because they couldn’t or because they assumed this was good enough, but we’re watching now, so it ain’t happening again. Now tell me everything that happened on the first floor quickly,” Mel demanded, and I did, speaking as fast as I could. I managed to get it all covered just before Floor Master appeared next to me.
“Please follow me. Your floor three match is about to begin, and if I may be so bold. Thank you for giving Rabyn a chance. He deserves far better than what was done to him,” Floor Master said.
“You’re welcome, I think,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I wanted to press for answers on what the orc had been through, but I also knew now wasn’t the time as I caught up to the others already standing in front of the usual door.
“Our squad is too empty to play the actual game, I think,” Rabyn said the moment I caught up.
“Oh, I agree entirely. My plan was already the same if I couldn’t find a full group by floor three, and you bunch do seem a notch above the usual first-timers,” Connie said as we entered a familiar hallway.
“Rabyn isn’t technically a first-timer, and neither myself or Elody ever really intended to climb, but you have to accept the reality you are faced with sometimes. So what exactly is this plan you two seem to already be in agreement on?” I asked.
“The moment the floor starts, a signal light goes up, alerting all teams to where everyone else is. Once someone captures a flag and gets it back to their starting zone the color of the light changes, but for the most part, we aren’t going to care about that. We are going to go for squad wipes. Despite the squad lacking in numbers, the collective power of most of us puts us well above what we should be facing until the tenth floor,” Rabyn said.
“How does that work? Couldn’t we just end up fighting one of the powerful squads early?” I asked. It seemed entirely plausible and likely Korl would want that.
“No, well, yes, but it’s pretty unlikely now, we could have on the first floor. They probably even intended us to. Everything after that is going to be System randomized from the near infinite numbers of competing squads throughout the Spiral,” Rabyn explained. That actually made some sense. Considering the size of the Spiral there had to be a near unlimited number of squads wanting to compete. I wasn’t exactly sure why we were so likely to have such an issue on floor ten, though, but that was a question better saved for when it mattered. The hallway way shimmered out of existence and in its place was left a massive forest. Trees the size of redwoods surrounded us, and standing in the center of our group was a flagpole with a bright green flag on it. A blinding yellow light, similar to a spotlight, erupted into the sky from the flag. I looked around, spotting four similar lights. We had our targets.
“Connie, do you have anything that can speed us up, preferably something nice and loud?” Elicec asked. Rabyn nodded at Elicec in what looked like approval.
“I sure do,” Connie answered before she began belting out the most shrill vocals I had ever heard. While the song may not have been pleasant on my ears, I could feel the energy of it deeply in my muscles urging me forward. Rabyn pointed at a light and yelled something, but I couldn’t understand him over the sound of the singing. His meaning became clear when he tossed each of us what looked like a piece of candy and ate the one still in his hand. I did the same, and somehow, the sound of the dwarf’s singing seemed less overwhelming.
“That should let you filter sounds a little better, but it isn’t good for anything else, and I don’t want to waste time on a complex meal preparation, so let’s just make our way through these lights starting clockwise,” the orc said now that we could all hear him. I nodded back at his suggestions, and no one else spoke up to disagree. The scenery never seemed to change as we ran on, it looked like the entire floor was this giant forest. How did they manage to construct these areas? Was it all real and they just had planets sectioned off for the events?
Rabyn threw his hand up as he ground his feet into the dirt, signaling all of us to stop, causing my wandering thoughts to end. “There are at least seven ahead of us. They obviously know where we are,” he said as his knives appeared in his hands. I pulled Corey from my pack just as a group of mantis men came into view, though not exactly like the one I already knew. For one thing, there were no Hawaiian-style shirts. For another, they were all shades of blue and pink, and their arms looked much more like menacing blades than things used to pilot a flying bus.
For whatever reason, the nature in the multiverse seems to favor the sapience and growth of some species over others. Given the idea of infinity, you would expect that, eventually, all types of people would be equally represented in the Spiral, but as of now, that is far from true. On the far end of the most commonly found species are humans, dwarfs, orcs, mantiods, and then on the other end are many different species with a sole representative universe, one of the most famous being the cloudforms of the Floating Empire.
A History of Power, the Rise and Fall of the Floating Empire by Melhelm VII
