Despite his goal in searching for stone rats, it always seemed to be them finding him, their baritone squeaks preceding their reckless charges. He had killed over ten of them, but he still wasn’t sure where they were coming from. There had to be a nest of some kind but so far he hadn’t had any luck finding it. Perhaps that was a good thing though, as while the rats were rather weak individually, he didn’t have the necessary defensive skills to fully cope with their attacks. When he had faced three at once he had gotten overconfident and taken a glancing blow to his side which sent him spinning. He might have been in real trouble if he hadn’t had Sudden Strike to reorient himself and deal with another rat that had been about to rip his throat out.

From that experience he learned the best way to use his skills: save them. They were powerful, but thanks to the passives such as Bone Breaker and Rupture he was able to kill the rats with normal attacks, meaning he could save the active skills for when he ran into trouble. Using them to strike a killing blow was like using a sledgehammer to hammer in a nail. There was something to be said for overwhelming force, but often using the correct amount of power worked out better in the end.

After some searching, Tormacc found another plateau to climb, quickly ascending up it to get some rest while adding to his map. The stone rats seemed to have some way of sensing him down in the crevices below, as each time he tried to take a break for some food and water they had attacked him. While it was more annoying than anything, he still needed to eat and drink to maintain his optimal combat state, especially considering the dry atmosphere. Pushing your limits and fighting without rest or food was fine if you had a safe zone to fall back to, but he was far behind enemy lines.

After he finished his meal and descended back down it only took a few more hours before he had killed the last rat he needed to accrue twenty Essence. It was also starting to get dark, the depths of the crevices between the plateaus long having fallen into shadow. After climbing back up to a plateau he started to create an impromptu campsite. The area around him was bare stone, so he took out two type of alarm spells to use while he slept.

The first was a general alarm, best used to detect killing intent, while the second specialized in detecting vibrations. The two spells were embedded into three metal discs respectively, and he distributed them around the edges of the plateau. When they went off they let out a loud screeching sound, which should wake him from his slumber at the cost of letting his enemies know they were spotted. He hadn’t had the Coin to buy anything better, as alarm spells were in high demand, but what he had should suffice given his present circumstance. He wasn’t worried about alerting more enemies to his location, only avoiding being ambushed while sleeping.

After setting the alarm spells out he finished setting up the campsite and eating dinner before moving on to his Fate Wheel. There was an argument to be made for saving his Essence for something expensive, but the utility offered by some of the cheaper abilities was too good to pass up. He already had enough raw power to kill the rats, so the extra utility afforded by some of the available options was currently number one on his priority unlock list, as he didn’t want to run into a situation where he was stuck with brute force as his only option. Bigger muscles couldn’t feed an empty stomach.

Out of the tier two abilities he had access to there were three that looked interesting. The one he was leaning towards the most was Energy Sustenance, as it related to his food consumption. He had a huge amount of food in his Spatial Bracelet, Stella had made sure of that. In fact, the Spatial Bracelet had been the most expensive item he bought, requiring the majority of his Coin to make sure he had a big enough space for all the food. But it was a good investment, and a necessary one for the Shard he entered. There was little to no food native to the Shard, so he was reliant on what he brought in with him, which was why he needed such a large spatial storage item. And since it wasn’t uncommon for people to spend years on a single Shard, he needed to stock up.

The food he brought wasn’t infinite though, and Energy Sustenance gave him the ability to supplement his intake of food by circulating energy through his body. It was also possible there would be a synergistic effect with the two rituals he had undergone, especially the one he underwent after first entering The Tower. Because of that ritual his body was more adept at channeling energy internally, and that combined with the small healing ability of the ritual could produce a compounding effect.

The other two he was looking at were Dash and Focus. Dash was on the physical side of the Fate Wheel and, as the name suggested, would allow him to dash a short distance. Before, he had been leery of how it would work, not knowing how the abilities he unlocked would function, but now those worries were assuaged after experimenting with Double Strike and Sudden Strike. A movement skill would be a powerful addition to his kit. Focus was similar to Utilization and Integration since it dealt with allowing him to focus more and use his abilities better. So far he hadn’t been truly tested in battle, but if he were in a life-threatening situation he needed to make sure he could count on his skills activating. He could tell that if his mental state was compromised activating the abilities of his Fate Wheel would be much harder, so he might need Focus to guarantee his safety when under duress.

All three abilities were useful, and since they were only twenty Essence each, he decided to get all three once he had the Essence for them. But just as he was about to select Energy Sustenance, he paused, something nagging at the back of his head. After a few moments thought he remembered what it was. By unlocking Energy Sustenance he would be going down to zero Essence. Thinking back, he recalled something he read in the guidebook about making sure to keep Essence in his Fate Wheel.

With a flip of his hand the guidebook appeared from his Spatial Bracelet. Perusing the table of contents, he quickly found the section about spending Essence. After reading through it once more he realized he had to shelve his plans of using all of his Essence. He had forgotten the reason he was even in The Tower in the first place, and what that actually meant. While gaining more Essence and growing stronger was addictive and a good survival method, the whole reason he was gaining Essence in the first place was for his people back in his home dimension, and as part of that, he had to pay a small Essence tax.

He had forgotten about it because the tax didn’t start immediately. The guidebook said people would start to passively have their Essence drained around their first full year in The Tower or soon after they entered their first Shard. Some experienced it from the starting zone, although this was rare, but soon after they reached their first Shard almost everyone started to have their Essence passively drained, the Essence going to support their home dimension. The drain generally started small, with only one or two Essence per day, but some people had reported a starting drain as high as twenty Essence a day. The amount of Essence drained also went up over time, meaning you could never slack off in The Tower.

The reason for that was what happened if you didn’t have any Essence in your Fate Wheel. If someone didn’t have enough Essence to support the drain, one of the abilities of their Fate Wheel would deactivate, and it was often their most powerful ability. This could start a vicious snowball, as if you didn’t have enough Essence to support the drain it would take it from your abilities, thus making it harder to farm Essence in the future. Unless you could break that cycle and gain enough Essence to maintain your abilities you could be drained dry. The guidebook didn’t specifically mention what that resulted in, but Tormacc could imagine it wasn’t a good way to go.

The drain should start out small, but he didn’t want to be caught off guard. He should make sure to have at least forty or fifty Essence in his pool at all times, just in case. Usually it was the more powerful races that had a higher Essence drain, but he already had a low Essence count for the Shard, and if he started to lose his abilities he might never recover.

Tormacc put the guidebook back into his Spatial Bracelet and with reluctance held off spending his Essence. He could afford to wait, as there was no ability he truly needed, but now that he wasn’t saving his Essence for Beginner’s Gift it felt wrong to just leave it in his pool when there was something useful he could unlock. He would have to get used to the feeling though, at least until he could plan around his Essence drain when it kicked in.

That night he tried once more to meditate. He could feel the Essence around him, but it just refused to enter his Fate Wheel. Halfway through he gave up, opting for sleep. Only when he was absorbing Essence would Meditation help offset his need for sleep. Without actually absorbing Essence he was just taxing his mind for no gain. His inability to activate Meditation made him resolve to get Focus before Dash, as that might help, especially seeing as it came after Meditation on his Fate Wheel, meaning there might be some relation there.

But before he could unlock abilities he needed more Essence. He had only gained eighteen Essence yesterday, and waking up in the morning he resolved to beat that today. And things seemed to be going his way. Whether by chance or some grand design there seemed to be more stone rats in the direction he was heading, and as the sun crested its peak in the sky above he had already slain twelve rats, and it was about to be thirteen as he chased one that had decided to run away, evidently thinking better of the fight once its comrades were killed.

The rat was surprisingly nimble, its stone body barely scraping around corners as its feet pattered along the ground with clicks and clacks. Tormacc knew he could outrun it in a straight race, but he was unfamiliar with the terrain, and the rat was making full use of that, even doubling back at times to try and shake him off by weaving in and out of the rocky protrusions in the crevices. He was gaining on it though, and it was only a matter of time until he could feel the satisfying thunk as his hammer smooshed another rat.

Just as he was about to catch it, he heard a squeak. And then he heard another, the deep baritone sounds starting softly before building, quickly reaching a crescendo and breaking over him, hammering his bones with the vibrations. He skidded to a stop, watching the rat he had been chasing turn to face him with a smirk on its face, its comrades stepping forward to join it, hiding the ground with their press of bodies. Turning around, he watching as the tide of rats seemed to rise from the ground, encircling him with their vicious eyes and scrabbling claws.

He couldn’t remember his childhood, but he could vaguely remember the tales of valor he grew up on; stories such as one woman fending off hundreds of enemies and turning the tides of battle singlehandedly. Those tales had fueled him, providing him the impetus to strive for more in his training, always reaching to put in the little bit more effort to become the hero of those stories. And it was because of that training that he turned and ran, seeking to break out of the encirclement and escape the trap he had blindly walked into.