"Holy mother of fuck," Deacon muttered, his voice low, as the weight of what he was holding finally clicked into place. His hands tightened slightly on the Grimoire's weathered cover, as if afraid it might have just been a figment of his imagination.
This was a bona fide Grimoire generated and kept preserved and protected by the System until this Floor was created. This alone could be sold for hundreds of millions of credits easily on auction. But also, just as that, it was something everyone coveted.
"What?" Bonehead said, squinting at him from his reclined position, one eye half-shut as he was rummaging through his Spatial Satchel. "What's got you acting like you just found out you got a kid?"
Deacon didn't respond right away. He couldn't. He was too busy rereading the System Description as if expecting it to change, but the words didn't change, no matter how many times he reread them.
He slowly looked up, eyes flicking from Sam to Esmerelda, to Jass, to Cabel, each of them wearing matching expressions of curiosity.
"…This is a Grimoire," Deacon said finally, his voice almost hoarse.
The stillness of the five in front of him was immediate.
Then, in perfect unison, the group's mana flared as each of them hastily activated Identify without caring to attempt to mask it.
They all stared at the journal, then as the System Description popped out in front of them, they all read it, and then they all froze in place.
Their faces twisted in synchrony from confusion to realization, and then into varying shades of disbelief.
"I-I thought it was just a cursed journal," Esmerelda said slowly, eyes wide. "When Sam tossed it to me earlier, I got a couple of burns on my fingers just from touching its clasp, but it didn't even show anything when I tried to Identify it back then."
"It didn't," Sam confirmed, arms crossed. "When Deacon and I were found by Esmerelda and Jass, the ritual altar came with us, and after I had awoken and saw it, I went all batshit on it, and I found this in the rubble. But when I tested what would happen when opening it..."
"I got burned, which was weird," Bonehead added, gesturing dramatically at his skeletal fingers as if the phantom burns still ached. "'Cause I shouldn't be feeling temperature… Well, I don't envy you all for being able to feel temperature if this is what you guys could be exposed to in heat."
"But it let you open it," Esmerelda said, her eyes never leaving Deacon. "Which means you fulfilled the requirements; A connection with Huitzilopochtli. Which means the ritual did work… Do you feel any differently?"
"No," Deacon muttered. "I feel perfectly fine."
Sam's expression remained mostly unreadable, but even he seemed affected, his brow furrowing. "And considering that I also got burned from it, that means that only the one who finished the ritual is able to do it."
Deacon's mind was racing; there was too much happening at once, and the implications were staggering. A Grimoire like this wasn't just valuable; it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for some people who messed up in their Class selection options, and the knowledge it could contain could change a person's life and put them on everyone's radar, considering how everyone wants to do rituals and experience the benefits of them without the extreme risks.
And it was his now.
"Holy shit," Jass muttered, still stunned. "You could sell that and retire yesterday. That could at least sell for hundreds of millions of credits."
"More like billions," Sam muttered, staring at the grimoire.
"... I don't think selling it would be worth it," Deacon muttered as he stared at the Grimoire. "Yeah... I don't think I will."
That earned him more stares. "You're not?" Bonehead asked, sitting up fully now. "Buddy, are you dumber than a beakswine? You could auction that thing to the highest bidder and get enough credits to ten top-tier guilds for years."
"I know," Deacon said, then looked down at the Grimoire again. "But the requirement that's that you need a connection with Huitzilopochtli and the altar is broken, so… I don't think someone would purchase it when they read that."
"There are other temples of Huitzilopochtli throughout the island," Cabel interjected, grabbing everyone's attention, both for his piece of knowledge and the fact that he also knew that they had the grimoire. "While the ones I explored weren't as expansive nor did they have you perform a ritual to move around, there were various other areas where you could potentially perform a connection with a couple of the other Aztec gods, including Huitzilopochtli. So, you could still sell it if you so wished, or could attempt to use it for your benefit."
***
Thirty minutes later, the six of them walked in a loose formation, their boots splashing quietly through the ankle-deep blood that blanketed the chamber like a reflective crimson mirror. In front of them, the Huitzilopochtli Ceiba Tree stood like a monument – fifteen meters tall, bark dark as charred obsidian, its crimson sap glinting in the light like liquified rubies, and its limbs draped downward like a willow's.
Bonehead led the group with an enthusiasm that was almost childlike, his bone fingers were twitching with excitement as he carefully held his sap-collecting gear in his hands.
Why he even had sap-collecting gear on him in the first place was a question only Bonehead could truly answer, but the default explanation was simple: he was an alchemist, and real alchemists never left anything potentially valuable uncollected.
Trailing behind him were the rest of the group, Deacon walking a little slower as he turned to Cabel.
"You're sure you don't want a cut from the Grimoire auction?" he asked again, quiet enough that only those nearby would hear. "Like, just as a hush incentive. You are helping us keep this secret."
Cabel gave a slow nod, his eyes half-lidded, almost serene. "I have no need for money, but in return, let me take a few branches from the Huitzilopochtli Ceiba Tree without contest, and I'll consider that my… silence money."
"That's… surprisingly chill of you," Jass said as she cocked her head slightly. "Why?"
"Shh," Deacon hissed at Jass, eyes wide at Jass, who in his mind was trying to lessen everyone else's cut of the auction money.
Cabel didn't answer immediately. His gaze was fixed on the divine tree ahead, the slight breeze tugging at the wings behind him. "Huitzilopochtli was a god, that much is true, considering the amount of worship around him and all the murals I've found of him and several others while exploring various ruins on this Floor. And with that in mind, that means the Huitzilopochtli Ceiba Tree is a divine tree, or at least a tree that was descended from a divine one, which is incredibly useful for my people."
"So, you're saying," Sam cut in, glancing toward Bonehead, who had just finished drilling a small hole into the trunk and was inserting a silver tapping spout with the precision of a surgeon, "we should harvest some branches and toss those up on auction too?"
"It wouldn't be a bad idea," Cabel replied with a soft shrug. "My people would bid aggressively."
"You're weirdly honest," Jass said, narrowing her eyes at him. "You could've said nothing and walked off with half the tree without us ever noticing, especially with how Bonehead would've gotten distracted cataloging flowers or some crap."
"Hey!" Bonehead yelled from ahead, one hand raised as he sealed a jar of sap with a hiss of vacuumed air. "Larkspur is a really good and rare neurotoxin ingredient, thank you very much!"
Esmerelda ignored him. "So why didn't you lie? You don't trust us. Hell, you shouldn't trust us. We literally just met."
Cabel scratched the side of his temple, his expression unreadable as he met her gaze, then looked away toward the tree again. "…There was no harm in it."
"And angels can't lie!" Bonehead added cheerfully, floating another jar mid-air using a thin web of mana strings as it slowly filled with syrupy red sap. Sounding far too pleased with himself.
"Wait, really?" Deacon blinked.
The notion caught the rest of them off guard as well. For a second, nobody spoke.
Back at the Academy of Beginnings, information about the Angels had always been vague by design. The top guilds and the Academy had signed some kind of agreement with the Angel's main faction when they were discovered back on Floor Nineteen, which strictly controlled what could and couldn't be taught about them. The only thing that was ever publicly disclosed was that the Angels were officially considered "allies," and that a "Magical Cultural Exchange Program" existed between the top guilds, the uber-nobles of the Tower, and the angels.
Of course, a cadet without any familial background wouldn't have known this, but Deacon had quite the informant, Sam.
When Sam was ten, his father mentioned it during one of their mandatory nobility and family history lessons. And Sam, being 10, had immediately told the entire friend group the very next day, like it was juicy playground gossip.
Which, to be fair, they were doing field training then.
Still, the idea that Angels literally couldn't lie? That was new. And not something any of them were going to just blindly trust, Cabel could be lying about it as they'd only known him for a few hours tops, and he was clearly outnumbered at the moment, so he could just be lying.
But, none of them really wanted to kill him as he'd healed Sam and Deacon, safe for Jass, who didn't really mind as she had the group's best interest in mind.
Bonehead suddenly straightened up, turning from the sap-dripping trunk with wide sockets. "Oi! Everyone, get over here now! I've collected enough sap so we can remove the Silver Bindings of Huitzilopochtli!"
"Wait, what?" Deacon blinked, already moving toward him instinctively. "I thought we were gonna try and each of us get it straight from the tree?"
"This is straight from the tree," Bonehead snapped, frantically waving the jar of sap at them and showing off his own wrist that was free of the Silver Binding of Huitzilopochtli.
That got them moving fast.
Each of them pulled the glimmering silver bands from their wrists, and one by one, they submerged their arms within the large jar filled with Huitzilopochtli Ceiba Tree sap. The first one, Deacon, submerged his arm in with a wet plop, and within seconds, the silver began to hiss and curl, as if the sap were acid chewing through it.
But he hadn't felt any pain, not even a twinge of it.
They watched, slightly horrified and slightly mesmerized, as the bindings disintegrated entirely.
After they all had their cattle bindings removed, they felt a wave of cooled mana brush over them and felt a sudden urge to urgently leave the temple.
"Now what?" Esmerelda asked, brushing her fingers against the tree one last time before stepping back. "We can leave, but there's no obvious exit."
"We could blow a hole through the roof," she added after a pause.
Everyone turned to look at her.
"…You want to what?" Cabel asked.
"Gigaflame Arrow," she repeated, deadly serious. "Deacon, Sam, you in?"
Deacon hesitated. Just for a second. Then he nodded, rolling his shoulders as his fingers flexed, already pulling mana into his core. "Yeah. It'll work."
Sam gave a small grunt of confirmation. "If we time it right."
Cabel stared between the three of them, visibly unsettled. "Wait, you're serious? That sounds extremely reckless."
"It is," Jass agreed, then clapped a firm hand on Cabel's shoulder. "Which is why you're gonna need to grab your branches quickly, like Bonehead is, and stand far back."
"Yes. Now, actually," Bonehead added, already pulling Cabel by the elbow toward the edge of the chamber. "You got what, fifteen seconds? Maybe less. So, let's hop to it."
Looking thoroughly alarmed but not about to argue with the three clearly insane lunatics channeling their mana, Cabel moved fast as he knew they would not listen to his worries about them causing a cave-in.
Meanwhile, Esmerelda and Sam moved in perfect sync, both drawing massive amounts of mana into their palms. "Arrow of wind, swift and true,
born of sky and sharper than glass," they said in unison as two arrows of wind began to form, their shape growing larger with each passing second. "From storms you fly, pierce my foe and vanish nigh – Wind Arrow!"
Deacon stood in front of them, teeth gritted, sweat already beading on his forehead as he forced his own mana into the shape of an arrow of mana just using Ignis. Heat rolled off him in sheets, the air warping as flame twisted into an unstable spiral in front of his extended hand.
"Hold–" Sam muttered urgently as his eyes locked on Deacon's arrow while both he and Esmerelda held their own arrow back from firing off. "Now!"
Deacon let go.
Ignis shot upward towards the ceiling just as Sam and Esmerelda released their Wind Arrows; they were holding back at the same time, both arrows twisting together mid-flight, and fusing together just before they caught aflame with Deacon's Ignis blast.
A deafening boom roared through the chamber as the fusion of fire and wind became a single, radiant projectile, a Gigaflame Arrow as coined by the trio, colliding with the stone ceiling above them with incredible force.
The Gigaflame Arrow kept going; up through the upper floors, up through debris and sealed stairwells, up, and up, until the dull rumble of its passing faded, and it finally fizzled somewhere in the open sky, leaving only a column of smoke and sunlight in its wake.
Deacon, Sam, and Esmerelda collapsed to their knees as they suddenly felt the full backlash of their attack hit them.
Deacon's face was pale and drawn, his breath coming in shallow gasps, his palms visibly scorched despite his affinity with flame. Sam dropped forward onto both hands, a string of barely-restrained curses hissing out between clenched teeth as his mana core flickered erratically. Esmerelda slumped sideways, catching herself with one hand, blinking sweat out of her eyes, while focusing on keeping her own mana core stable.
Behind them, the echoes of destruction had barely stopped reverberating when Jass stepped forward. With a grunt, she slammed one boot into the blood-slick floor and raised both arms.
The earth obeyed.
A massive pillar of stone and packed blood-soaked earth shot upward beneath them with incredible force, launching the entire group of six toward the opening above them.
Bonehead whooped like it was a carnival ride, as he'd already safely stored the Huitzilopochtli Ceiba Tree sap and branches into his Spatial Satchel. Cabel, still cradling twenty or so branches like precious relics, barely managed to avoid dropping any as he was jerked skyward with the rest of them, as he'd just finished collecting them when Jass began casting Earth Wall.
Wind rushed past them as they ascended, the hole carved by their Gigaflame Arrow expanding around them with each passing second.
"Let's just all go to Floor Four now," Deacon muttered through clenched teeth, eyes half-shut as the wind howled around them. "I'm sick as shit of this Floor."
And nobody argued.