Tower of God

Time seemed to stop for everyone participating in the war, with the energies revolving around the battlefield coming to a sudden stop. Everyone was unable to move anymore, everyone besides Seth.

Not long after the time stopped, an illusionary tower appeared right in front of Seth, its doors wide open as if inviting him inside.

Seth looked around the battlegrounds before glancing down at his cracked hands and proceeding to stroll toward the Tower.

He barely managed to take two steps when the noise of something cracking behind him made Seth stop and turn around.

With the sound of glass shattering, Elise broke out of her time cage, supporting herself with her hands so she won’t fall forward. Lifting her head, she looked straight at Seth and asked: “Is it here? The Tower?”

Seth nodded and pointed towards his back with his hand: “It’s right behind me. You can’t see it because your race is not allowed entry.”

Elise took a deep breath, her eyes sparking as she looked toward where the Tower was supposed to be.

“I know we’re not allowed inside; I just hoped I would get a chance to look at it...”

“Never mind that; there’s something more important you need to know. Something you told me before your disappearance. You wanted to reach demigod level again to summon the Tower. Since your wishes were not fulfilled, you believed you would get a chance to have the Tower pay you back.”

Seth smiled wryly before turning around with a long sigh.

“I already know that, but it’s never so easy with this thing. Remember what I asked you to do and stop using the sun’s energy recklessly. You might need every last bit of it to make it.”

Elise nodded and watched with mixed emotions as Seth’s body got sucked into nothingness, disappearing before her eyes.

The force keeping the entire fight paused also went away with him, the shouts and sounds of explosion entering her ears again.

Pulling herself off the ground, the bloodstains on her cheeks got sucked back inside her skin, and her emotionless expression returned.

“Hold nothing back. Strike at the enemy while they are confused.”

After changing her body to look the same as Seth’s, she removed the air barrier she had created and started commanding the troops again.

———

Seth had just passed by the open doors of the Tower and found himself in a small round room with a strange pillar at the center and surrounded by a flight of stairs leading upwards.

“I know you are listening, you old bastard. Any chances you will fulfill the wishes you owe me?”

The Tower remained silent for a good second before the same mechanical voice Seth hadn’t heard in years resounded throughout the small room.

“Negative. The wishes had been already fulfilled, and the Tower is not responsible for assuring the challengers can keep those wishes. Challenger Seth, former god of destruction, you are also not allowed to retake the Tower’s trials.”

Seth smiled at the Tower’s words, completely disregarding them as he said: “Then why did you come? You wouldn’t have shown yourself to me to tell me that.”

With the Tower remaining silent, Seth continued: “Cut the crap, old man; I know something changed after you linked to the outside. I also know you are not completely impartial to the world order. You and the World Sovereign are acting towards your own goals. So what do you two bastards want? I am willing to cut a deal.”

The Tower fell silent again, remaining like this for two minutes until a laugh resounded in the small room.

“Haha, The Infamous God of Destruction, an entity that had the entire simulation tremble in fear at the simple mention of its title, coming back to the Tower to beg for a favor. This simulation is indeed getting more and more interesting. Haha.”

The owner of the new voice had nothing of the mechanical tone the previous one had, instead resembling that of a cynical man.

Seth frowned at the words of the new voice and asked: “Are you the World Sovereign?”

“Do you think His Excellency has nothing better to do than to check on poor little ants like you, struggling for a small part of his strength? Know your place, human.”

“Sad, I hoped to have a world with that bastard...” muttered Seth, asking loudly: “So, who are you?”

“Bastard?..” - the voice asked, puzzlement and anger clear in its tone.

Not long after Seth finished asking his question, the sound of the wind resounded by his ear, and he found himself held high in the air by the neck, a pair of vicious red eyes looking straight into his.

“Say that again. I’ll be more than happy to drag your feeble existence and throw it straight into Epheotus. Let you experience horrors as you’ve never experienced before.”

Seth felt his soul trembling in terror by simply looking into the eyes of the being before him. A being like nothing he had ever seen before.

Red pupils, surrounded by a black iris and a golden sclera. Short and spiky red hair, a stout face, and not two, not four, but six hands.

His initial thoughts to taunt the Tower and the entity known as the World Sovereign so that he might find a way to climb the Tower again went out the window; all he wanted to do now was to run away, not be in sight of the being in front of him for a single second longer. He was terrified for the first time in who knows how many eons.

Seth had no idea what the place mentioned by the man in front of him was, but every fiber of his being told him that he didn’t want to ever take a single step in there.

After Seth remained silent with a terror-stricken face, the man released him from his hold, throwing him to the side like a dirty rag.

“You’re lucky His Excellency still has a purpose for you. You can try to climb The Tower again, and if you succeed, I’ll let you return to your world and heal your body and source, but there’s a catch this time, little ant, no more free meals for you.”

“If you fail to break out of this simulation before I get bored of managing it, I’ll convince His Excellency to abandon this world and make a new one.”

After the man told his piece, he turned around and was about to leave when Seth gathered enough courage to speak again: “Who are you?”

“Krum, Warrior in the Service of the World Sovereign.” Replied the man in indifference, his body disappearing from before Seth.

It took Seth a good half an hour to gather enough strength to pull himself from the ground and stop his legs from shaking. He didn’t know what that man was, but there was no energy or anything involved when he both appeared and disappeared before his eyes. As someone who has come into contact with most energies, he was sure he would have at least felt it if he had used any.

He knew that it was nothing but physical strength and speed. An entity so fast and strong using only its physical body was terrifying. There was also a strange aura around him, an aura that made him freeze in terror.

“What in the world was that thing?” muttered Seth, dragging his exhausted body up the flight of stairs. “Krum…”

In the end, despite everything, Seth was happy to have been given the chance he wanted. He hoped to squeeze a wish or something out of the Tower, but after meeting with Krum, he didn’t want to push it anymore.

After reaching the end of the flight of stairs, the size of the Tower suddenly increased, becoming as large as the entire Plains of Famine, a place that could easily house over 3000 ascended.

Wild beasts roamed the plateau, beasts Seth had not seen before in his very life. They looked like wild boars, with big black tusks, but what set them apart the most from usual boars was the black mist they seemed to breathe out.

Seth had seen that foul-looking breath come into contact with a small part of the floor, and a hole appeared not long after in the tower floor. The Tower regenerated itself immediately, but the simple fact that just the breath of those beasts dug a hole through a tower was terrifying.

Back when he had first come into contact with the tower and still had his divinity, he had used his full strength to try and attack it but was unable to leave a single mark. There was always the possibility that the inside was weaker than the outside, but Seth doubted that would be the case.

“Haha, you are right to be afraid. I made sure to simulate these beasts from back home. One of these once melted two of my arms away. I hope you’ll appreciate my effort in making this trial special for you, human.”

Seth cursed under his breath and took another good look at the vast plateau. He could see the flight of stairs leading to the second floor back into the distance, but he had no idea if he could even take on one of those beasts, not to mention the more than a thousand sitting between him and his goal.

Looking at his still cracked hands, he knew that his time was stopped by the tower, allowing him to survive his decaying source and body, but that also meant his power was not even close to an early seventh shell.

Sitting down just at the entrance of the stairs, where he knew the beasts wouldn’t attack, Seth began considering how he could make it through the horde in front of him.

He spent hours just watching the beasts’ behavior, carefully trying to find an opening to run for the stairs in the distance, but even after hours, there was nothing for him to see.

The beasts roamed randomly, not needing to drink water, eat food, or sleep. They also didn’t fight one another, thus making the first trial a lot harder than what he had to go through the last time he was there.

The essence of the first trail had not changed, its only purpose being to weed out weaker contestants, but the beasts he had to face the last time were not that much stronger than an early ninth shell ascended and were not even close to melting holes through the tower.

“Melt the tower?” muttered Seth, a crazy idea popping into his mind as he stood up from the stairs and finally started to make his way forward.

“Let’s test the strength of these beasts first.”