Four of them were D-rank while the oldest brother, Eli, was C-rank.

“Sorry,” said Big Nose. “You’ll need to get authorization still...”

Eli’s brother Kendrick snapped his fingers and Big Nose’s colleague Frederick was suddenly covered in flames.

Freckles screamed as he was burning alive.

Soon enough, Freckles was a dead crisp on the ground.

“Is that enough authorization to tell us now?” asked Eli.

Big Nose shivered and trembled. Snot leaked out of his large nostrils. He lifted up his hand and pointed north.

Huh? thought Eli. There was nothing but dead space up that way. No one went that way in the endless forest.

“You promise me you’re telling the truth?” said Eli.

The shivering defense climber nodded his head.

“Because you know we’ll kill you like your friend, Freckles, here if it turns out you’ve been lying.”

The defense climber nodded.

“I’m not lying,” he said.

“Good, I believe you,” smiled Eli.

He then turned to his brother, Kendrick, and gave him the go ahead.

Just like he had done before, Kendrick wielded his firebringer trait and set Big Nose aflame.

“Well, I’m sure this will galvanize a whole new realm of bounty hunters coming after us,” said Patrick, the middle Reckless brother.

The boy screamed as the flames blackened and roasted his skin.

“Was this really necessary?”

“Stop arguing,” said Eli. “We’ll make it look like the kid did it all once we’re done. C’mon. Let’s get moving.”

With that, the Reckless Brothers headed north into the endless forest.

48

Max sprinted through the endless forest.

He held up his compass in one hand and held a knife in the other.

He was heading north in a direction he’d never gone before.

He passed by a tree with a “Z” mark on it. The instructor at the academy had explained to them that this specific type of mark meant there were no more signs beyond that point. In other words, Max was entering unexplored territory.

What Max had learned during his research in the library was that in the history of the endless forest, once climbers had found the departure teleporter, they pretty much stopped caring about the floor. The earliest tower climbers were more preoccupied with the pursuit of going higher and higher into the tower. The endless forest did not promise riches or adventure so it was quickly left behind, unexplored.

Max was about to exploit that fact.

As he rushed past the “Z” mark, he held out his knife, chipping away at the trees as he rushed by, leaving himself a trail on how to get back from where he was going.

He kept an eye on his compass and sprinted forward.

He was running fast, but after all of his training over the last two and a half months, he could keep the pace easily.

The forest began to blur together.

Words from his library research came back to him.