Chapter 49: Urban Exploration

  In my experience, the so-called scout drones produced by the purple Over-Surge lived up to their names when it came to excellent senses and speedy reactions. So when I came bursting through a wall and then shouted in surprise at the lack of floor beneath me, I had very much expected to draw a few of the machine beasts.

  When there was no telltale roar or screech of their engines, I was initially pleased, and then almost immediately suspicious. If there was someone in here reducing the number of drones that I could hunt, they might also be looting the ones I had already killed but not yet carried back to my camp in the howler customization store.

  I was more than a little confident that if someone else was in here, my interaction with them would go a lot worse than it had when Fabio was poaching my drones. Alternatively, no one was killing the drones, and they were simply out of my hearing range and probably on their way to my location. Whatever the case was, I had no intention of facing it without my spear, so I quickly picked myself up and headed for the closest stairwell off this floor of the block.

  I hadn't been on this floor yet, but they were laid out identically except for the changes wrought from combat damage and general wear that came from a building being both unoccupied and slowly being stripped to grow metallic grass. For that matter, the Drones themselves might be a result of metals torn from the structure of the block. The idea hadn't occurred to me till that moment, but I found it more than a little unappealing.

  It was an idea that was only reinforced when I strode over the rubble that dotted the street-sized hallway, and through the nearest pair of metal double doors that had a sign above them that my HUD translated as [Exit]. I was almost sent plummeting by a sudden missing floor for the second time that day, but managed to catch myself at the last moment by aborting my step and grabbing hold of the handle of the door I had flung open.

  Below where I had expected to find a grey cement stairwell was, well…a stairwell, but utterly destroyed to the point where I could see at least ten floors down to a collected pile of shattered cement and twisted metal. Above me, six levels worth of stairwells were also missing, no doubt a part of the scrap pile below.

  I had two choices if I wanted to make my way to the roof that held my spear and supplies. I could launch myself into the shaft of the exit stairs, kick off the far wall to twist around mid air and then grasp a pair of jagged iron bars that protruded from the wall, pull myself up with enough force that I would be launched to a section where the cement was broken enough that I could use the holes as handholds, and then scramble another three floors up to where the stairs began again.

  I could do all that, or I could leave and find my way to one of the other exit stairs that would lead me upwards. You and I both know which one I chose, don't we? For the third time that day, I backed up to give myself some space to run. With a short cry of effort, I hurled myself into the shaft holding the collapsed stairwells, impacting the far wall feet first. I kicked off the cement, twisting to face the direction I came from as I did.

  As I had planned, I thrust my arms out and caught myself on a pair of iron struts that extended a couple of handspans from the wall before they ended where the rest had clearly snapped off when the cement set of stairs had fallen. As soon as my fingers closed around the pair of protruding bars, the one on the left side snapped clean off in my grasp.

  Grunting in annoyance more than effort, I quickly switched to a two-handed grip on the one remaining bar, which at least for now seemed steadier than its counterpart. I doubted I would now be able to get the leverage I needed for my plan to launch myself upwards to the next section of wall I could traverse, but I had a backup.

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  I still yanked myself upwards, though not with nearly as much force as I had originally intended to use. Instead, it was just powerful enough of a pull that I was sent high enough to land on the bar with both feet. It briefly shook, and I worried it might snap like the other one. Thankfully, I am talented enough at landing light that such a possibility did not come to pass.

  Balancing on the little metal bar, I was instantly reminded of the times I had ridden a flying sword. I have already explained why I believe true horse cavalry is superior to flight of that nature for an army. However, the ability for one man to fly without burning through his Qi had proven useful to me enough times that I was comfortable with the vehicular weapons.

  With a slight bend of my knees, I tensed before leaping up and forward. As I had moments ago, I kicked off the wall of the stairway shaft. This time, I placed one foot on either side of the corner where two sections of the grey wall met to create the leverage I needed to launch myself upwards and close the last of the distance to the shattered section of wall that I judged myself able to climb.

  I was only going to get one chance at this leap, and if I missed, I was only going to get one chance to grasp the doorway below me as I fell past it. I honestly thought a fall all the way to the pile of shattered stairs wouldn't be enough to kill me, but the chance for injury would be large, and the inconvenience massive.

  Of course, I remained the greatest, most talented warrior of my age and possibly ever, so dealing with high-precision tasks at which I would only get one chance was essentially all I had ever done. Still, I was only able to just barely catch myself by my fingertips as I collided with the fractured wall. It stung, but not nearly enough to cause me to let go.

  Thankfully, no one was around to see me, as the scrambling that I did to scale the wall was so far from dignified that even I would have been embarrassed at the indignity of it were it witnessed. I did make it, though, hand over hand, scrabbling footstep after scrabbling footstep. I needed to plan my route and seek handholds before I moved each time, but soon enough, I was pulling myself over the lip of an edge where the stairs began again.

  Sitting on the edge, I had just climbed with my feet dangling below, I looked down as I shook my hands out and stretched my arms. I should have probably stretched before I climbed the cement walls, but I had done so when I first woke up that morning, and nothing had cramped at an inopportune moment. Still, if I found myself climbing this shaft again or something similar, I would have to make sure I did so.

  With a little sigh, I got to my feet and began climbing up the stairs. It managed to take me another five floors up, but that was where this particular set of stairs ended with a blank grey wall and a door that would take me to floor fifty-nine of the seventy-floor block. Diaochan had informed me that this area was actually home to what were considered small to mid-sized blocks, with the city tiers below this one sporting blocks that were two to three hundred floors tall.

  Given the sheer number of people living in the vertical communities around the abandoned hunting grounds block, I could only imagine the huge populations that must be crammed into a three-hundred-floor building. It also made me curious about what the gangs and clans in those even lower tiers were like.

  Dioachan had been unable to answer that question as the city net only had information on such organizations that had existed in the past, and not those that controlled the criminal element down there now. My A.i had suggested that she could infer things about the modern gangs from information she could glean about the historical ones, but I had told her not to bother.

  I had exited the set of stairs on the fifty-ninth floor and set about searching for another set that would take me higher. There really wasn't anything that differentiated floor fifty-nine from whichever one I had scrambled up the stair shaft from, or the one I had made my little home base on. Sure, the signs on the stores were different, and the silver grass was rarer and growing in different places, but the layout was identical.

  Several of the other floors I had traversed during my hunts within the block were different, so I was starting to think that the design of the block's floors was in some sort of repeating pattern, and I simply hadn't paid enough attention to notice it before.

  "Direct me to a maintenance staircase," I ordered Diaochan, and within a few minutes, I was making my way up a staircase she marked as having roof access on my HUD. It was also identical to the other staircases, well, identical to how they would have looked before their collapse.

  I was on floor sixty-eight when I finally started to hear the telltale shrieking sounds of scout drone engines, and to my utter surprise, they were coming from above me.

  Brother is getting his steps in

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