Floor six of the Eternal Tower took us two hours to finish. It turned out that the Tower didn’t play by the same rules as dungeons did. In a dungeon, nothing new can be added to the floor you’re on. The Tower, however, had locations that you had to destroy to stop the creation of new targets.

For the skeletal lancers, it was a large bone block almost the size of a chest of drawers. Not the long one but the type that stood up. It would open up from the middle with two doors about every thirty seconds. Then the skeleton would step out.

We walked right past it, not knowing what it was. When a lancer grabbed Kasidy. She freaked out, shrieked, and jumped to the other side of the hall. I had to engage that one since Renfry was fighting the moving tide of bones.

The problem was that when Kasidy yelled, she stopped singing. Which caused the easy fight we had been having to turn into a mess fast. Renfry had been building up the souls he was eating. However, he had to use them as we had a mass of over forty that turned and charged him.

I, on the other hand, was only fighting the one which I shattered with a stone sphere. Then I reached out and drained his mana so that he would stop trying to reform. As I was doing that, Kasidy got back into her song and turned the mass around. Then Renfry finished them off with his class devouring their souls as he went.

Breaking the monster generator took time. It wasn’t until we beat the sixth released lancer that we figured out how to end the generator. It was weak to fire and to blunt damage. However, only I had fire damage… So after a few fire strikes, we were able to pull it apart and get a golden sphere about the size of a marble. That sphere was what powered or drove the generator.

So once we dropped the generator on the sixth floor, we headed down to see Irwin. The next four days in the safe room moved quickly for everyone. When we weren’t working on skills, we were getting to know each other. Which in a fight was almost as important.

***

When we got back into the safe room, the first thing I heard was Dave yelling. “Stop trying to burn down my bar!”

Irwin was standing in front of the room, firing his flame jet spell out into the main room. The spell had about a fifteen-foot range. When it got out that far it faded away. The flame had the appearance of what I thought of as a flamethrower. It was about a foot in diameter in the middle with bellowing flame off the edges around another foot or two on each side. When it got to the end of its range, however, it didn’t bellow.

I called out. “Irwin how’s it going?”

He turned and waved, which brought his flaming jet toward us. We all jumped back even though it wouldn’t reach. That said, it was aimed in such a way that it caught the ropes to the lights and dropped one down on a table.

Dave yelled. “I said stop that!”

Kasidy and Renfry started to laugh, and I was right there with them. Seeing Dave lose it for something that was already magically repaired was kind of funny. Irwin got the flame under control and then off.

Our healer came running down the stair and said. “So it turns out that I have to get that flame down to less than an inch in length as one of the requirements for the class. I should be able to do that by the time the spell hits level 10. At least if I keep with the training from the book you gave me.”

Dave walked over. This was one of the first times that I had seen him look unhappy. He had his hands resting on his hips and a big frown. When he got to us, he looked right at me and pointed at Irwin.

Dave almost growled out. “Keeper, this one here has caused more damage in the past two days than even you and Blink combined have.”

I smiled slowly. “Does that mean he has been working on his combat spells?”

Our bartender nodded. “Sadly that’s just what it means. That chandler has dropped about five times now. Worse is that Elemental of his!”

Irwin placed his hand on his chest in mock offense. “He hasn’t done anything wrong!”

Dave shook his head. “You’re right it was you. It’s all been you! Why would you cast an Earth Elemental on my bar! He cracked the thing as soon as he appeared!”

Irwin smiled and started to summon. “He’s not that big! I don’t know what you’re talking about, see!”

An elemental about one foot tall appeared next to Irwin. It looked every bit like a bunch of rocks stacked in a roughly human shape. It looked up at Dave, and I could have sworn it gave a look like, ‘see, I’m not bad.’

Dave glared at Irwin. “You know full well that the first time you summoned it you triggered your All or Nothing and he came out half the size of this room.”

By this point, we were all laughing, and Kasidy had stooped down to the little guy. She asked, “Does he have a name?”

Irwin looked at Kasidy like she was crazy. “Of course he has a name! Every elemental has a name.”

I smirked and asked. “What’s his name?”

Irwin crossed his arms slowly. “We can’t pronounce it as it requires the grinding of rocks to make.”

Kasidy stood up and said. “So you haven’t named him yet?”

Irwin shook his head slowly. That caused Renfry to laugh and walk past him, patting him on the back. I just smiled and pulled Dave away to the bar.

As we were settling down, I heard Kasidy say. “Since you won’t name him! I’m going to call him Sparkles! Because he kind of sparkles in the light.”

With that, she walked away, holding Irwin’s elemental in her arms, talking to him like he was a puppy. She headed over to one of the tables as Irwin just stood there looking between her and us. Finally, Renfry waved him over, and he came to us.

As Irwin got his order, I asked with a slight laugh. “So, how long can Sparkles last before you need to resummon him?”

Irwin answered quickly. “My lord, he’ll be here for four hours or until he takes too much damage.”

I glared at Irwin. “None of that my lord stuff when it’s just us. I need people I can trust more than I need people calling me by my titles. That said when you first summoned him how long did he last?”

Irwin mumbled something, and Dave answered. “Sparkles… lasted right up until I told him to unsummon him. He broke too much in here. You know how I like to keep the place clean. There was glass everywhere.”

Irwin shot Dave a glare. “His name’s not Sparkles! It needs to be something that strikes fear in the hearts of people around him. Not something that makes people laugh!”

Right as Irwin finished, we all heard Kasidy giggling. Turning, we saw the little elemental on the table dancing like a toy robot would. Nothing was moving quite right, but it was trying. Irwin stood up and started to head over when Renfry grabbed his shoulder and hauled him back.

Renfry tried not to sound like he was laughing when he said. “Leave it be, the little guy looks like he is having fun and I doubt that the reason your class has an elemental is for combat.”

Irwin slumped back onto his stool. “You’re right but still I think he needs a more respectable name than Sparkles. I am going to start using him to help care for people I am healing. It turns out that if you do things like setting bones before you heal it takes less mana. So with him helping I can heal more people. Same with the flame jet, I was reading that it is used to seal wounds before healing. That once I get it small enough I can remove the bleed debuff with it which is a major mana sink.”

A few minutes later, we took food over and joined Sparkles and Kasidy. For the next few hours, we just unwound from the Tower. We filled Irwin in on the skeleton generator and the mass of skeletons that we fought.

I clapped my hands together. “Okay so here’s the plan for the next few days. Irwin don’t burn the place down but work on your combat magic the best you can.”

He nodded to me and asked. “Any more mana potions?”

I held up one finger. “I’ll get to that in a moment. Kasidy, can you work on your singing for the next couple of days? I don’t know what all you need to sing longer.”

She pressed her lips tightly and then touched just one nail to them. “There’s not much that I know to do for that. I can’s practice the new song some. I won’t get levels without using it on targets and I can’t do that in here. However, I can work on getting back into the song faster. I also need to catch up on my writing.”

I nodded and then looked over at Renfry. “You got three days in here or three hours out there. Then we go after The Boy Lich. Would it be better for you to be training or fighting?”

Renfry thought for a few moments. “The sixth floor isn’t that hard now that we know what we are facing. I think that I am going to spend a few hours up there in combat. I’ll make sure to come back and get rested.”

I smiled. “Okay I am going to head through the transport back to my first dungeon. I think I might have some equipment there that could be useful to us in the upcoming days.”

With that, we broke up. I knew that I didn’t have any equipment that would be useful. However, I also knew that I could make things that could be useful. I had a ton of already-made items that I could sell to the dungeon to get the money to buy more mana potions and core them. With a real mage, the need for larger and better potions went to the top of the list. Irwin also needed a better staff than the one I gave him. Renfry needed a sword that would help against the undead.

As I walked into the waterfall safe room. I was thinking of everything we needed. The most pressing was better armor for Kasidy and Irwin. We now had two and a half squishies in our group.

* * *