Arvallei whistled. “That fat old man Edwin got two at once?” said Ril’egh, “I’d love to hear how that happened.”

“Mewi—he prefers Mewi—is a somewhat unusual case for the team,” said Bruzigan, “he hasn’t yet cleared a Floor on Extreme difficulty. But I do plan to have him clear the Second Floor on Very High as soon as he is able, and even if we decide not to advance him to Extreme after that, I want him on the floor team.”

I raised my eyebrows. Now it was my turn to be surprised. “It’s true, his class is nothing special, though he’s a skilled fighter and a quick learner, but the real value he brings to the team has to do with his Innate Trait. I gave him certain tests, and it, among other things, makes him the most skillful challenger at interacting with Floor natives that I’ve ever seen. I still had to make sure he’s skilled in battle, but it’s my personal judgment, which if you’ve forgotten, is empowered to override decisions by the factions on matters directly to do with the team, that he’s worth carrying through a difficulty that’s one higher than he’s equipped to handle.”

He looked at Mewi now. “If it even comes to that. The way he’s going, it probably won’t. He’s cool-headed, quick to adapt, and his battle awareness level is impeccable. You’ll all see what I mean when we start the group battles. So starting today, he’s an official member of the team.”

“Do I get one of those cool combat suit things now?” he asked, and Ril’egh barked a laugh.

“After the Second Floor,” said Bruzigan, “for now, Grosstin intends to provide some less valuable equipment that should nevertheless help you overcome your class's difficulties in fighting solo.”

“A Fire/Water combo that’s also damage dealing/control? Now I’m interested to know how that guy managed to hook such a perfect package deal,” said Ril’egh.

“Well, it’s something of a long story,” I said, “but if we have time...”

To my slight chagrin, Bruzigan nodded. “All right,” I said with a sigh, “I guess I was going to have to tell this story sooner or later. So, what you need to understand from the start is, Mewi and I are actually a couple.”

I told them the whole thing. I variously left out and skated around anything that would have needed me to tell them about my Innate Trait to explain, and I was upfront about concealing it even from them. Once I got past the Tutorial in my story, Mewi broke in and told them his part, skipping over most of his own Tutorial and starting with getting picked up by the indenture company that later allowed him to enter the Constant Competition to pay them off. Once he got to the part where he ran into me, he had me pick it back up from there. I rewound a little to bumping into the person, emphasizing that I probably wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for them, and carried on from there.

“So I left the First Floor, and when I got to the Pantheon I was dead on my feet, but I couldn’t afford to let that stop me. And well, Grosstin got its hands on the buzzer first, is the plain truth of it.”

To everyone’s astonishment, except, I briefly noticed, Bruzigan’s, Ril’egh was tearing up. “That...that’s so beautiful,” he said, choking his sobs, “you love him so much that you demanded the Tower itself not keep you apart. And that love was so pure that the Tower agreed!”

He wiped his eyes. The tears stopped. “Or, if I’m being honest, it was probably just a coincidence. But there’s a slight chance the Tower somehow saw something...useful in some way, something with potential, in your resolve, and so put you in the next group to be taken. No one can really say.”

Bruzigan nodded at this. “Not even the highest officials of the Federation are privy to the slightest hint of information as to why the Tower exists, or why it does anything it does. Some say not even those whose statues lie in the Pantheon, those who reached the highest Area of the Tower, ever found out anything. Which is nonsense, of course. There’s no way for any of us to know what lies in Areas that high—not without reaching them ourselves. But one way or another, no such information has ever disseminated here.”

“Love that transcends time and space,” mused Arvallei, “I admit, that has a certain appeal. Either way, you two are probably some of the luckiest challengers I’ve ever met, so I’ll be glad to have that luck on our team.”

That one made me bust a gut laughing. “I guess you have a point, huh? So, shall we get cracking, then?”

“Hold it, hold everything,” said Anna—the first she’d spoken since we’d started. I had no idea why, but she looked furious. “That team of teenagers you mentioned, Lheticus. Did you get their names?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t great with names, but as if I could forget them. “Jeremy, Jason, Jessica, and Elliott.”

Even before Anna burst out, Arvallei, Ril’egh, and even Bruzigan looked shocked. “Son of a bitch. It really was him—the Rainbow Mage!”

“The who now?”

“You didn’t even know? From the description and their names, those four could only be most of the members of the Rainbow Mage’s team,” said Bruzigan, “which means you literally bumped into the Grand Champion of the Constant Competition! He must have been making a quiet exit from the festival...”

“Grand...Champion?” My mind was reeling. “You mean, the top ranker in Class 10, at the end?”

“Actually, the contestants who are at the very top of Rank 10 a week before the end get placed in a final, single elimination tournament to determine the champion. It was in that tournament when it happened.”

“That’s right,” said Ril’egh, “you were watching Mewi fight in lower ranks the whole time, so you wouldn’t have seen it. And I guess you don’t follow Area 1 news much.”

There was silence for a few seconds, while we looked at him. He gave a start as he realized he’d just accidentally volunteered to continue the story. He cleared his throat and continued. “A human named Toto had gotten all the way to the second round of the Championship. The entire time, he’d used nothing but Earth, Wind, and possibly Null spells, and dominated almost every fight he’d been in. But in that round, the Round of 64, he ran into real trouble. But just before the blow that would have ended his tournament was struck...he teleported. As in, he used Space element magic.”

“And he didn’t stop there,” said Bruzigan, bailing out Ril’egh, “he unleashed one surprise after another. Fire spells, Water spells, Dark spells, Light spells—that was one of the first he revealed after he teleported, to heal himself. He was able to cast spells in all 7 elements.”

“But that’s--”

“Impossible?” Bruzigan interrupted me as if I’d cued him to. “Mostly. In fact, in the entire history of the Tower, one single class alone has ever displayed that capability: Rainbow Caster. The class of the Great Mage Ofrand, one of the greatest Tower challengers of all time. One of the most noted figures of the Challenger’s Pantheon.”

“And now, his successor, the next Rainbow Mage, has finally appeared after all these years,” said Ril’egh, “and he’s a man who zealously covets his privacy. The same day you said he sent for you for that sadistic training exercise, he and his entire team left Satslik altogether.”

Bruzigan took over again. “And all 6 of them, and even their hired support personnel have their personal files locked with Security Level 10, which means only the Tower itself can track them. Not even the Federation President can find them, and they’ve been unhappy about it for months. You may have been the last person outside of his team to have seen him in the entire Area.”

“Which begs the question, why?” said Arvallei, “What little is known about his personality was collected by the Shumba Faction...”

“He’s an extremely mercantile person,” said Anna, in the sort of even tone that only people who are making genuine effort for their tone to be even have, “a tough and savvy negotiator, and he has subzero tolerance for anyone or anything who gets in his way even slightly. I certainly can’t imagine he’d do something for nothing for anybody. So Lheticus, tell us. Do you have any idea what the hell that could have been about?”

I chose my words carefully. “I won’t completely answer that question,” I said, “but it has to do with my Innate Trait. When I bumped into him, he somehow accessed my status and discovered it. I went to a lot of trouble to ensure I’d never have to reveal it to anybody, and I’m not going to just throw that away, not even for this. In fact, it’s possible that if I did tell you, the knowledge would be dangerous for you to have. Even with how strong you all are.”

“If it was something that got his attention, I believe you,” said Anna, “so what, he figured your Innate Trait meant you had incredible potential, and he did what he did to make sure you didn’t squander it with overconfidence, or laziness? Probably to call in a favor from you later, or something, once you get stronger and level up your Trait.”

“That’s the only guess I’ve managed to come up with,” I said, leaving out that I didn’t give it enough credence to even call it a conjecture. “Holy shit though. I could tell he was a monster, a monster among monsters, but that’s just...even I couldn’t have imagined his power reached that extent. I told him I hoped I never met him again when he was done with me, and now, that feeling’s doubled.”

“That makes two of us,” said Anna, “I’d be happy if he never shows himself again. I...”

She sighed. “I didn’t want to bring this up...I was trying to forget. I didn’t even want to hear the words Rainbow Mage, ever.

But it’s his fault that I’m wearing this thing.”

She pointed to her collar. My jaw dropped, and I wasn’t the only one shocked. Then, she told us her own story. How she had, in what I called an absolutely breathtaking stroke of bad luck, had emerged in the Extreme exit room of the First Floor at almost the exact same time that Otto’s team, which at that time only consisted of Jessica, Jeremy, and Elliott, had. As a result, she had been snubbed by Shumba, which her family had counted on her joining, to increase the family’s prestige as a direct ally of Shumba.

At that point, like everybody else, she had no idea she was dealing with the Rainbow Mage. She ended up being used as a pretext to insert Otto—or “Toto”, (I had a bad feeling about bringing up his other name right now,) and his team to spy on one of the opposition’s factions. She had retaliated against the incident in the Pantheon by pulling some strings with the Federation to inconvenience Aeselvell, the “personal assistant” I had met, and she’d also had her attacked.

Even though Shumba and Clatenis were as ignorant as everyone else to Toto’s other identity at the time, her family's favor with Shumba had only decreased further, and they’d withdrawn the support. Publicly, her actions were implied to have been carried out with the faction’s approval, but in reality she had been made a pariah.

And her own family had sold Anna outright to Shumba as recompense. They’d been given an astronomical sum of 50,000 Brocks, equal to 5 Gamma 2 Coins in official Tower currency or 500 Gamma 4, as well as a promise to restore the previous support they’d been given in a few years as long as they did nothing more to embarrass Shumba.

Bruzigan was like a deer in headlights. “The Federation refused to give me the details of your situation,” he said, “I can’t believe they turned a blind eye to this. A challenger of your stature, sold up the river overnight...it’s unheard of!”

“Yeah,” I said, now feeling pretty POed myself, “that’s some family you got there.”

“I have no family.”

“Hey, what are you saying?” said Mewi, coming back into the conversation. He went up to her and extended his hand, “You’re on a team now, right? And we’re gonna have to trust each other with our lives. If you can’t call that a family, what can you?”