44 – That is Not Dead

It seemed that the contract bond was too much of a strain for a person that had no magic of their own. I minimized my draw on her energy, but there was still quite a bit of passive upkeep to maintain my immunity to the corrective force. Aside from the actual cost of any powers I was using, the bond had to pay to block the plane's corrective force, the cost being higher the more power I used and the greater the distortion. Agate was always technically active and consumed quite a lot of mana, so that probably contributed to the strain, even when I was not doing anything else.

Taylor only woke up after Amelia made some brain bugs for her down at the M2B HQ, similar to the type that she used in Brockton Bay to process bug senses.

But she still felt weak and exhausted, even a little dizzy. All the symptoms of mental and physical fatigue were there, but she had been able to offload some of her mental faculties to the brain bugs.

As a temporary measure, I gave her a blood transfusion, which contained my mana and some refined Shinsoo, which restored her to a decent shape.

"I don't think I'll be able to use much of my powers like this, it would be too dangerous for you," I said to her while Amelia was monitoring her vitals and suppressing an immune response to the blood. "But at least it worked."

Taylor nodded weakly.

"I probably shouldn't stay any longer, because just being here is draining your energy. I will hopefully find some way to mitigate the effects on you if we ever need to really rely on the contract," I said. The next time I showed up in Worm, the suppression would have reset and it should be easy to just renew the contract at will if neither of us had broken it.

The main objectives of testing whether the corrective force actually existed on other planes, and whether the ritual itself was a valid defense against it, had been cleared. The test was a success, and additionally showed that the warnings that the Builder gave me were true too. The instant that the contract was formed, the corrective force's attention came to me. And a weak host without enough magic power of their own made for a bad host, since they'd need alternative means to support me, especially if I wanted to use more of my powers.

For now, the only alternative means I knew of was transferring fluids that contained mana, such as my blood which we used to help Taylor. But that was terribly inefficient and giving out my own blood was not something I wanted to be in the habit of doing. Living sacrifices helped the ritual itself but there was no way to transfer that power to the host for continued upkeep. There would probably be methods out there in other magic worlds, but I'd have to find them.

But this meant that in worlds like Worm where magic users and mystical forces were non-existent or extremely rare, I would be better served just doing as I did before and keeping under the notice of the planar corrective force for as long as I could instead of trying to get an invitation right away. As long as I avoided the use of higher end powers–no, even if I did incur the attention of the corrective force, I could assume that as the Builder told me, I wouldn't even necessarily be kicked out in a short period, so it was probably feasible to do whatever I wanted to do on those worlds then leave. After all, there were few reasons to stay for a prolonged period on any one plane, especially after its creation dust supply ran out. Unless there was something special about that plane, like being a continuous source of more creation dust, or having some opportunity to grow my personal power–the type of power I could bring around with me anywhere I went and was universally usable in most planes. And it just so happened that a world without mystical forces was probably not one where I'd be able to grow my personal power that much.

So in the grand scheme of things, a method to make use of non-magical hosts was less interesting from the perspective of merely using this ritual, compared to whatever implications such methods might have for enhancing the magical power of such persons. Because of course, I also lacked much in the way of internally sourced power still, relying on primarily external sources to generate mana, like the hack of draining the Armoriont as if it were my own lifeforce.

After we were sure that Taylor was fine, I thanked everyone for their help, then I dropped Taylor off in Brockton Bay, and went to check in with Offensive Bias.

Accord had refused to sell any vials to us for just cash, and instead demanded an unspecified future favor plus variable cash prices that he would only quote if we specified what strength and type of power we wanted.

Well, I shelved that for now since I didn't want to get entangled or obligate CRUCIBLE to anything at the moment, nor did I have the time to look into alternative sources. I could try and contact Cauldron directly next time, though I suspected that they might also ask for a favor.

But Bias did manage to find twelve pieces of Simurgh flesh of various sizes scattered around the ruins of the old M2 base. Most of those areas we had left untouched and opted to rebuild over a hundred kilometers away, because of the risk that the Simurgh had left hidden traps for us, and because some tactical nukes had been detonated, irradiating the area. However, since the rebuild was going smoothly, Offensive Bias was able to spare some droids and drones to carefully scavenge the area for my request.

Some pieces had feathers still, suggesting that these were from the wings. Others it was impossible to tell where it came from, just lumps of uniformly pale flesh. The largest of which seemed to be an entire section of wing over two meters long and half a meter wide.

Despite extraordinary density of the material, it apparently weighed only about as much as organic flesh did for the same volume.

"Is it just me, or does that look crystalline?" Derf asked while we examined it.

"It is. It's some sort of living crystal material, I think. Based on the fact that biotinkers can work with it. The shards are also said to be crystalline in nature too."

"Can we make a sword out of it before we leave?" asked Derf.

"I'll ask Amelia to see if she can reshape it, but if she can't then we're probably out of luck," I said.

"Hmmm…" Derflinger said. "Touch me to that big long piece."

I obliged.

"I think I can actually just transfer directly into this thing," said Derf. "It seems to qualify as a weapon as it is already? And it doesn't seem really alive either…at least not in a way that would stop me from moving in..."

"I can't really swing this around though. And didn't you say swords were the best shape for you?"

The wing piece seemed to have been sliced off cleanly near the base, with many feathers still protruding from it. There was no good place to grip it though to use as a weapon.

"Yeah but there's something really odd about this thing, like it has parts that are there but aren't at the same time," said Derf.

"That would be the dimensional warping effects, I assume," I said.

"I want to at least try it out. It shouldn't take long, and I'll get back after," said Derf.

"I thought you needed at least a day to move vessels?"

"Nah that's only when I have no energy. I've got loads right now so this should be fast. And keep me tight against it, that'll make it much faster than if I have to jump over. Ten minutes, tops," said Derf.

"Well, in that case, here you go," I said, putting the Armoriont nanocrystal sword flat against the Simurgh flesh.

I waited patiently while Derf moved over, and true to his words he finished in nine minutes.

"Whuuah…this is really weird. I'm not sure what's going in here, but I feel stretched," said Derf.

"Did you bring over all your mana? I can't seem to feel any from the sword anymore," I said.

"Most, used up a bit to move, but there's enough room in here for all of it. Give me a few more minutes though, all of me is in here, but I'm not all over this thing yet," he said.

While he did so, I used some of my own mana to analyze the different pieces of flesh. The information I got was not very clear, but I had the sense that the surface protruding feathers were harder than steel, and most of the other pieces were actually softer.

"Ooooo…"

Comparatively speaking, the Armoriont's cellulose nanocrystals were actually quite a lot stronger in terms of hardness, but they lacked the same material density. These crystals instead just compressed in on themselves without any clear molecular pattern.

"Aaaaaa…"

The piece that Derflinger now occupied was simultaneously the largest and had the densest parts close to what appeared to be the base side of the wing. No other pieces had any parts that indicated it came from an organ of any sort, or even muscle rather than skin.

"Ehhh?" Derflinger made a surprised noise.

Suddenly the whole wing began to compress, feathers slowly retracting into the wing base.

"Huaaa! I…can…transform!" Derflinger shouted.

"What is going on?" I asked.

"This crystal is like a single living thing with no cells, and it's both dead and alive. Dead enough for me to take it over, but alive enough to reconfigure itself using the energy I'm giving to it," said Derf.

"That's wild." I said, while watching the process of the flesh slowly morphing into an undefined blob. It seemed to speed up as Derf learned to how to manipulate it. "Can you create more of it?"

"No idea how. Maybe I can integrate the other pieces though. Quick, bring them over," said Derf.

I did as he asked, but held back a few smaller pieces since I was still planning to bring some to the Builder.

"Sweet, it's working," said Derf, as he absorbed the rest of the pieces into the blob. "It burns a lot of energy to control this though."

"Do you really need to turn into a sword? I remember we talked about this before. If you could transform, wouldn't it be better to turn into armor?"

"What are you saying Partner? The great Derflinger will always be a sword!"

As if to emphasize the point, he quickly condensed then stretched horizontally into a pole, before flattening a blade out of one end, and a thicker round section on the other hand to be the handle, as a simple guardless sword in the eastern single-edge straight saber shape that he had back in Halkegenia before he moved to the Armoriont-grown sword.

As the original Simurgh flesh, the sword was pure white, but much thinner and sleeker than Derf's previous forms. I had the notion that it seemed somewhat reminiscent of what an elven sword would look like, light, graceful, and elegant. The end of the hilt curved and widened a bit to hold the hand, and the handle itself was just long enough for two hands but the overall size of the sword suggested it was intended primarily for one-handed use.

"You can add a crossguard and grip to me yourself. I'm balancing the weight so we don't need a separate pommel," said Derflinger.

With a little bit of work, I repurposed the guard of the old Armoriont sword and installed a smaller one onto the Endbringer sword.

And then we had the bright idea to turn the entire Armoriont blade into a hollow sheath which still looked like a larger sword body, and fit onto the new guard but could be unhooked and slid off at will.

So now it looked mostly like the original sword, with a bit of adjusted coloring so that it was no longer fully transparent, hiding the real sword inside.

But since it was all connected, Derf could still channel his powers through the outer layer, so I could use it normally, or unleash his true form and bring despair to our opponents.

After the whole process, Derf had spent nearly all of the MP we had gathered earlier from the Armoriont farm, but the rate of consumption was still potentially tolerable if used in combat.

Overall, I couldn't be dissatisfied with it, even though we'd used up all the densest pieces of the Endbringer flesh, so I had little hope that the remaining pieces would be worth anything with the Builder. They were probably better used this way anyway though, since I had no urgency to acquire more creation dust now that I had confirmed that the threshold invitation worked.

Afterwards, I took it back to Earth M2B and gave a piece of the Simurgh flesh to Amelia to study, along with the White Steel Eel sample from the Tower. That left me with two small pieces to show the Builder.

When I finally left, I counted nineteen hours that had passed while I was in Worm.

O O O

"Hmm…" The Builder's spirit examined the piece of Simurgh flesh I'd offered. "A living crystal, although rare, is not unheard of. That it seems to have a natural dimensional folding property is curious, but not altogether unheard of either for natural magical species. It is the fact that it appears to be artificially designed that makes it more interesting, if only as testament to the ingenuity of whichever race designed it. But this piece does not contain enough material to really showcase the true potential of this lifeform. I'll offer you one unit of creation dust for this, if only for your effort. If you bring me denser pieces I will trade you a higher quantity."

I considered the offer for a moment. It was more than I'd hoped, and gave me additional insight into what types of things the Builder liked. I had the option now of acquiring more Endbringer flesh to trade him, although it was a tough call as to whether that would be better used to enhance Derflinger's sword instead, or for me to experiment upon myself.

For now, there was something else I was interested in. "If you don't mind, I'd like to trade you for the answer to a question instead. Last time you mentioned that the Beacons of my spell are unreliable in multiple ways. Can you explain how?"

"I would say that the analysis you want is more valuable than one unit of creation dust, and that is already stretching the value of this," he gestured to the Simurgh flesh. "However, on this question I will humor you because I would rather you did not die or get lost from some foolish mistake."

Then he held out his other hand, and manifested a hologram of sorts.

"Listen carefully. The first flaw is that your anchors have no interaction with reality, which means they have no ties to it either and are not themselves anchored to the creation zone."

An opaque white rectangular prism appeared, denoting the creation zone. Two multicolored balls of light hovered just above and touching it, inside a translucent layer that seemed to have dark murky waves going through it. Then the white prism shot a beam of light at one ball, dispelling it. The other ball was seemingly shoved by a violent wave and destabilized, then disappeared.

"While this makes them less noticeable to the plane's corrective force, they are still easily erased with enough time, or eroded by random Chaos fluctuations outside of the plane. The second flaw you are already aware of—although I do not know the specific calculations behind it, it clearly uses some frame of reference that is artificial, using assumptions about the creation zone that are not consistently true."

The prism changed shape from rectangular to spherical to a curved helix.

"But the greatest flaw is less specific to the anchors rather than the way the spell works as a whole."

Then he created an image of lines connecting a series of white colored nodes, on a chaotically moving background of static.

"The Harmonic Corridors are not always available to every plane, and their flows are not always at the same intensity. This has many implications. You may find that your Beacon cannot pull you strongly enough in the right direction, causing you to land elsewhere."

A strong light emitted from one of the nodes, signaling the Beacon, while a blue dot exited from another. A line connecting them flashed, and the blue dot moved, but then the line was overrun by smaller black dots and shook, before the blue dot fell onto a different line at an intersection, towards a different node.

Then he showed a side by side comparison of four enlarged columns of greyish energy.

"The flows might be too turbulent to traverse at all, or the concentration of creation or chaos energies is too high. You must be careful to observe and adjust, or avoid it altogether. When there is too much creation energy, you need more creation dust to keep control of yourself. When there is too much chaos, you should condense the bubble and add creation dust to reinforce it."

One column turned white, one stayed grey, one a mix of red and black, and the last a violently shaking mix of white, red, and black. The grey one had one dot denoting a single unit of grain at the top, and a small bubble of light representing the bubble I traveled in. The white column's bubble was brighter, and had two smaller dots attached. The black and red column had a smaller but equally bright bubble as the white, with two smaller dots attached. The last one had no bubble displayed, but instead showed a ghostly face with a stretched and warped screaming expression.

"Finally—you must never attempt to bring another independent soul, or any uncooperative spirits, with you. The integrity of your bubble depends on the synchronization of your soul with it, and a uniform intent to control it. Interference from another soul that is incapable of sublimating its consciousness with yours will cause it to collapse."

Then there was a miniature version of me, linked to two other lights, and they started to move around in perfect formation, together inside a bubble. A third light appeared, linked to me, but it moved out of formation with the rest of the group and the bubble. The bubble then collapsed and everything burst.

"Now I have more than answered your question. I have told you how to handle different conditions of the Corridors, but you will have to figure out how to improve your anchoring method yourself. In this plane, it is not necessary because I am here, but you already have a hint as to how one might go about accomplishing it—I did speak at length to you about the concept of ties and bonds to the world last time."

There was a lot to go through here, but it really answered some of my long standing questions since I first got the Kaleidostick, and helped me understand the limits of my planeshifting.

I thanked him for his help, and got back inside the unformed creation bubble I was still controlling and rode here in, then asked the Builder to send me back into the Tower to see Headon.

At the First Floor, there were no strange remarks from Headon this time. He merely welcomed me back and then handed me the Pocket again, before wishing me luck and teleporting me back to the Second Floor.

I checked my Pocket. To my great shock, less than two days had passed in the Tower. What was going on here? When I had been in the Tower last, time moved so fast relative to Worm, but when I was on Worm, the time here didn't seem to move anywhere near as fast?

I racked my brain and could not think of anything that would account for this. Was this just complete randomness or was there actually something affecting the way that time flowed? But I could not do anything about it now, it was just something I might need to ask the Builder the next time I had something worthwhile to trade, I supposed.

It was at least convenient for me that I now had an extra week more than I thought I would before the final test, which meant I could try to fill up Derf some more.

Then I saw a series of messages from Androssi asking me where I was, threatening to bust down my door if I didn't show up for training, and then finally telling me where to find her—she'd agreed to help Baam with training for a bit because we were going to participate in his test, same as she did in canon.

There was a message from Baam, saying that he'd heard from Androssi I was sick after the last test and that he wished me a fast recovery.

A message from Hwa Ryun, telling me that she would not participate in the final test and would be leaving the Regulars' dorms, so I would have to contact her via Pocket if I needed anything. She would still be around, though I'd missed their strategy session, so the strategy for the final test would be explained to me by Rachel.

The last was a message from Rachel, asking me to visit so she could tell me the strategy for the final test.

O O O

I leaned back against the wall arms crossed, while Rachel sat on her bed, and explained the Guardian's test. It seemed to be the exact same one that they used in canon, with an ecosystem of strange aquatic and amphibious organisms that we'd have to navigate and fight to keep everything away from Rachel and Baam who'd be taking a route through the inside of an ultra large fish called the Dolphin Madame.

"…it might be possible for us to win the test normally, but we can't do that for a couple of reasons. One, Baam already announced that he's an Irregular and if we win that way, the whole Tower will know that an Irregular is climbing. When they come for us, they'll kill everyone on the team, whether they know we're Irregulars or not."

"But wasn't that also part of the plan? To intentionally push Baam into revealing his status, according to what Hwa Ryun and Yu Hansung told us before? That's why you let yourself get temporarily crippled," I said.

"It is. But that was their plan, not mine. This is the only way we can have a non-standard test from the Guardian, which is what they need to do the next part, and achieve their goal in all this, the reason they're helping us," she said.

"Oh, so they finally told you? What do they want?" I asked.

"They are part of an organization called FUG, and whose goal is to overthrow the ruling power of the Tower. In order to do that, they need to kill Zahard. But a long time ago, Zahard made a contract with the Guardians of the Tower that gives him Immortality and makes it impossible for a resident of the Tower to kill him, because every one of them receive their permission to use Shinsoo from the Guardians."

"So they need an Irregular," I said. "One of us."

She nodded. "Yes, but Baam is the one with the best potential, so they want him."

"How do they figure that? Why not you or me?"

She laughed. "Me? I don't have that kind of potential. But it's not like they're just going to forget us either. They want to train Baam up to become one of their Slayers to kill Zahard, but we don't need to be a Slayer to be useful to them, and it'll be easier to move around if people don't know that we're Irregulars or with FUG."

"I see. Why should we work with them though, if nobody knows that we're Irregulars? Aside from them blackmailing us about revealing that little secret, that is," I said.

"We don't have to, but they've proven that they can be useful, haven't they? With information and other resources. They can't blackmail us either, because like I said, they don't want anyone to know about us. Even if Baam is the most promising, they would be idiots to discard other options, and they really don't have many to choose from. Irregulars are so rare that they can't afford to lose us," said Rachel. "If they really did that, we could just find other supporters within FUG besides them."

This time it was my turn to nod. "Good, so you realized that. I wondered if you might have felt compelled to work for them."

"I might be weak but I'm not stupid. They need me, even if it's just as a hidden dagger to hold in reserve."

"Are you actually going to try and kill Zahard?"

She shrugged. "I might think about it eventually. For now, I just want to climb and I'll make use of FUG if it helps me."

"Fair enough. Back to the test though, so they want Baam—I assume there is a plan to make him disappear then?"

"Exactly. Because Baam and I are the only ones that would be in the bubble that needs to go through the Dolphin Madame, nobody else will see what happens with us. And then we can take advantage of the other victory condition Baam asked the Guardian for to perfectly fake his death and leave no doubts. If he dies during the test, all other Regulars that participated will pass. So I'll push him out of the bubble, and if we still pass then he must have died, and it won't matter if they can't find a body after our sponsors grab him."

"But if he doesn't actually die, how would the Regulars pass? Wouldn't everyone just fail because the condition wasn't met, and you didn't both exit safely? And if he does die, how is our FUG faction going to recruit him? Don't they need him alive?"

She smirked. "That's exactly how we're going to trick everyone. I didn't die in the Hide and Seek test, so I still have my one-time revive from Headon. I'll use that on Baam instead, so he'll die to meet the pass condition, and then he'll revive and FUG can take him. But just in case, I also made another secret deal with the second Floor Guardian myself—if Baam falls out of the bubble, and I return alone, even if Baam doesn't die, everyone will also pass. So no matter what, as long as Baam falls from the bubble, everyone will pass, and the test director will tell them that it's because Baam died, and nobody can dispute it."

"I see. You sure you can pull it off though? Baam can be surprisingly strong."

"I'll have help. There's going to be a member of RED—that's the Royal Enforcement Division—secretly interfering in the test, who's going to send the Bull to kill Baam. Baam will definitely have a hard time with that, so I'll just push him out once he's injured or distracted."

"The Royal Enforcement Division?" I asked. "Why would they help you? What if the Bull kills you too?"

"Yu Hansung already found and made a deal with him to kill just Baam, in exchange for helping him get to Anak Zahard, who's a fake princess, and retrieve the Thirteen Month Series weapons. He told the RED that the Guardian considers it part of Baam's test, so that will be allowed, but Regulars other than Baam and his target Anak Zahard are off limits. So he won't risk angering the Guardian by killing me, because I'm supposed to be just a Regular. Actually, it's you that should be careful. The Guide thinks that the RED is going to try and kill you too anyways," said Rachel, face turning into a frown at the end.

"Oh? What for?"

That wasn't entirely unexpected, given that I thought Yuga might have concluded I was an Irregular after the barrier absorption in class, but it was still surprising that Hwa Ryun thought he would come after me, after encouraging me to show that power anyways.

But then, Rachel's explanation went in a completely different direction.

"The RED is actually the Wave Controller instructor, Yuga, but his real name is Lo Po Bia Ren. Apparently, The Lightbearer instructor Lero Ro has been spreading a conspiracy theory among the instructors that you're a Ranker smuggled in to help princess Androssi, and if he actually believes that, then you wouldn't be a Regular that's off limits, and it'd be a good chance to damage the competition in the War of the Princesses, to help the Lo Po Bia family princesses who are still Regulars."

"…" Lero Ro, seriously? Now I understood how Yu Hansung felt about him. The idiot was too damn nosy for his own good and had no sense of self-preservation. What if I really was secretly a Ranker with an organization behind me, that would silence him?

Rachel looked worried at my silence. "Do you think you can handle him?"

I shook my head. "I can't be certain, I don't know how powerful he is. And even if I could, I don't think it would be wise to have a battle of that scale during the test. Unlike with Quant, he won't be restricted, and he's a Wave Controller."

Although I acted as if I might have a chance, I knew I was outclassed here. There was no way I could win or "handle" an elite Ranker assassin at this point, but if it was just a matter of surviving, it was not that bad, given that I could flee to the Ring of Deterrence in the worst case, I'd just need to buy a minimum of ten seconds. That was a long time in a high level battle, but I had a number of tricks up my sleeve that should give even Rankers pause for a while.

The real question was this: Should I simply try to avoid him entirely and stay away from Androssi and the Green April, but risk Lo Po Bia Ren finding me by my lonesome? Or stick close to the fighting where Yuri Zahard would show up eventually and save us?

Rachel frowned even more deeply.

O O O

[Mini-Interlude]

Rachel looked down after her teammate left and seemed to think for a while. "Then…just in case, if he's really in trouble…I'll have to rely on you…"

A tremendously large and tall shadow slid into view beside her bed. A deep chuckling noise echoing through metal could be heard.

O O O

Very Long A/N:

There are important revelations here, and here are some notes about potential changes from the canon, which includes spoilers for ToG:

In the webtoon, Lero Ro actually knew that Rachel was an Irregular, but in this story when he checked their status it had already been tampered with. In the original timeline, Rachel was weak and insignificant aside from being able to command Akryung, so nobody would pay much attention to her. Yu Hansung knew that Quant already saw her status during the survival test, so he didn't tamper with it immediately; instead, he probably dealt with it later on; Lero Ro found out when he checked on them after the Crown game, curious about why the boy with a dangerous talent defended her.

Here, MC absorbing Lero Ro's barrier was secretly seen by Yu Hansung, and alarmed him because he is a genius Wave Controller, and like Yuga, he immediately understood the implications. He acted immediately to tamper with the records, then swore Quant to secrecy under the guise of covering up his mistake in the survival test.

In regards to Rachel's motivations and knowing that Baam would survive—there is some conflicting evidence, but this is also my interpretation of the available evidence, combining what we know from the anime and the webtoon—especially the contradiction that MC pointed out with regards to the Guardian's pass condition. Rachel's special revive is only in the anime and possibly not webtoon canon, but many things make sense this way.

Initially, when Headon made the deal with FUG, the Irregular he sent was Rachel, not Baam, and Rachel was given the perfect tool to fake her death. But whether because Hwa Ryun and Yu Hansung recognized Baam from the prophecy, or they saw his potential with Shinsoo, they wanted him and not Rachel, thus leading Rachel to negotiate a deal where she'd help fake his death instead in exchange for helping her climb. This guarantees that FUG would continue to help her beyond the initial deal with Headon, because she knows that the lure of chasing her is the only way for FUG to motivate Baam into climbing. She didn't mention this to MC because that quid pro quo only applies to her and not the MC.

We also see her getting upset at Hwaryun on the Hell Train later, because Hwaryun told her she would make Rachel the heroine but ended up staying with Baam instead. Rachel didn't get the help she expected from Hwaryun, so she started to work with other factions in FUG instead. So this part is somewhat odd, because if they weren't helping her anymore, why bother leading Baam up still? Why do other factions in FUG support her? Are they even different factions, or can she also get into contact with the higher ups among Arlen's supporters?

The strongest evidence we see that Rachel is deliberately leading Baam up the Tower, and knew that he was alive, came when she privately told Yura about Baam being a clingy guy chasing her up the Tower, before anybody else knew that Baam was alive. In fact, the ? who told Emile that Baam was alive was very likely to be her as well because of the way Emile answered Khun's question about who told her. Emile didn't say that she didn't know who it was. Instead, she actually refused to answer, by joking that it would cost one dollar, and immediately after…Khun is caught in a trap set by Rachel with Cassano and Xia Xia to lure Baam into killing Khun as Jyu Viole Grace. And Rachel is the only person who is known to be able to control/has Emile's loyalty in that way. All this happened before Rachel confronted Baam and asked him why isn't he dead, indicating that her question was more rhetorical, to make him think she prefers him to be dead. Finally, much later she reveals her knowledge of Arlen in order to keep Baam chasing once he decided not to chase her anymore.

In Season 1, chapter 1, there is a panel in which Rachel is shown to be smirking after Baam says "I'll follow you until I die!" This same sequence of panels is shown in chapter 76, as the epilogue after Baam "dies", except there are some subtle but major differences. The panels were completely redrawn, angles different, rather than copy/pasted. The first set has brighter light yet sharper contrast and Baam's facial expressions are wilder, more frantic. The second set is darker and Baam looks more tragic. By context, it is clear that the first was Baam's POV, while the second was Rachel's. She even says that she is "sick of living in this dark world", while Baam thought of Rachel as his only light, which is why the brightness changes.

Finally, we see that Baam was carrying a butcher's knife while chasing Rachel through the tunnel. Where did he get this knife, when there was nothing but rocks in that place where he was born? Obviously, the answer is Rachel. The same person who gave him clothes and taught him everything he knew.

In 313 Rachel says to Baam: "You really are glowing. You've always told me I was like a shining star to you… But I knew. You're the one destined to shine like a star someday, not me. I was just destined to look at you shining from a place in the dark forever. I was afraid of that 'destiny'"

She was always aware of his destiny, and of Arlen. She knows that he possesses the destiny (probably of killing Zahard, hence teaching him about the knife), but for whatever reason she wants to play that role herself instead (she anticipated confronting Zahard herself on the Hidden floor, but decided she needed her companions first), even though it might be necessary for her to lead him down that destiny (perhaps so she can usurp it at the very end).

To me, this shows that there is actually some other personal motivation for Rachel to lead Baam up the Tower, but that is not something she will reveal or hint to MC. Thus, she only describes the basic deal she made with FUG.

If it turns out wrong then this is just AU. It'll be too late to change it by the time ToG comes close to revealing the truth.