Adrian shuttles through consciousness. Times when he will wake up feel more and more like a dream, or a suggestion to his mind. Perhaps a self inflicted illusion to save himself.

  He sees himself going through the church people, there are so many of them. All dressed in white, roaming around like ghosts. Perhaps there are ghosts, and he convinces them to be the church. There are also times when he is left alone in a dark room, and the monsters come then.

  They dig out of his ears with a needle and thread in their hand, enter through his eyeballs and stitch his heart. Adrian yells in his mind, his mouth too sewn tight by the monsters. Someone speaks to him at this moment. They ask him what he was doing in the base, and who did he talk, and what kind of deal he made. The reward is getting the monster out of him.

  The whole of him is ready to pounce on the chance, to save him, and take him away from this torture. But a part of him, a single small part realises the deception. Perhaps it realises it before he can even understand it. It stops him, focusing more on the yelling.

  The voices go away after a while, and the monster still thrashes in his heart. Adrian thrashes for a long time, but eventually he loses even that strength, and darkness appears.

  The next thing he remembers is moving through space. It’s like a cataclysm to your eyes. The fast moving colours and the infinite possibilities within each space digs into your mind, and brings out a fear that you can never imagine. Even in space, you can feel claustrophobic.

  Then the experience fades away and the world darkens once again.

  The next time Adrian wakes up, he feels an unimaginable amount of clarity. The stabbing pain in his body from the soul damage too is almost gone, leaving behind a dull ache, one reminiscing of pain after a long day of exercise.

  He sits up and looks around himself. He’s trapped in an underground bunker it seems. The room is a small one with bars locking him inside. There is a basin to the side, and a bed on which he sits. A valve on the side of the wall lights up the bulb.

  Adrian can feel the mana flow within him naturally. This means that he isn’t really being detained here in all seriousness. If he was, then there’d be nothing these metal bars could do.

  Where am I?

  He tries to que the Tower about it, but it strangely is silent. Usually it would have given him a short answer, or perhaps even the long one. But right now it is completely silent. A little panicked, he quickly brings up his Status sheet.

  Name: Adrian Alphona

  Class: Manifold Warden lvl 24

  Body: 35

  Kinesthetics: 72

  Resistance: 8

  Mind: 83

  Mystics: 138

  Mana: 1320

  Free Points: 0

  Primary Abilities: Avatar*, Timer, Prison

  You have three Upgrades pending!

  The Status comes naturally. Adrian sighs with relief. He had been worried that somehow he had lost connection with the Tower just because he learnt its truths.

  I don’t have my gear. I guess they took it off of me. How much time has passed since that meeting with the revolution?

  A thundering pain courses through his veins at that moment as the mana moves into the Timer ability engraved upon his soul. The answer comes, but it brings more agony than he wished.

  22 days 5 hrs

  Right. Soul damage. No abilities for a while. Gosh this is gonna suck.

  Adrian lies down again, waiting for the remnant pain to go away as he thinks back to everything that has happened. A lot is the answer, but there are still a lot of layers. So much so that he hasn’t had enough time to think over it all.

  So a High Ranker steals all the stars on the 2nd floor–who may or may not be the church’s High Ranker or the revolutionaries–and so to cover up the black holes, the church moves the next instant to kill climbers and shove them in there.

  How did they know it was gonna happen at that instant though? Unless there was some level of cooperation? Let’s not rush right now. One by one.

  So the church puts the blame on the revolutionaries, calling them terrorists, and then mobilizing the whole floor to kill them. Then comes the execution, where the revolutionary High Ranker, someone who can throw meteors and such comes in and they fight.

  Am I missing something? No. Okay. Then we move to the next floor, where the two factions are already fighting. It makes sense they can move on to the next floor directly if they had already been there once.

  Then I went unconscious because a piece of my soul was missing. It is possible that when I left the floor, I left an avatar behind, and that somehow got so destroyed that it took my soul too. Yea, this makes sense. This is the kind of stupid shit I can expect myself to do.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  So now we know that the Tower has all along been manipulating everyone to act the way they do, but some of us are exempted from it. Gosh everything makes so much fucking sense now. I also learned the name of my talent, so that’s a plus at least.

  I’m also kinda sure that the church drugged me and interrogated me earlier. So hopefully I should be in the clear.

  Also I have a ‘mission’ now. To find whatever it is that has pushed the two factions to come in the forefront and fight in the light. I have never even heard of the revolutionaries before entering the Tower. Although I suppose I didn’t have enough status back then to come across something like it.

  What is it though? Is it something the other High Ranker left? Is it from the cooperation of them and the church? But maybe the other person betrayed the church, so now they’re looking for it. Maybe they’re looking for the High Ranker? Wouldn’t that be a death sentence for me then?

  No, they won’t give me such a mission. If the High Ranker can run and hide away from both factions, then there’s nothing anyone else can do. It must be something else. Part of the treasure? Maybe they had a fight and part of it fell down somewhere?

  That could be possible. Hmmm. Adrian thinks, sitting propped against the wall.

  All that apart, where am I right now?

  His Mind isn’t telling him anything, so there shouldn’t be any prisoners nearby. Even the wall beside him feels solid. Not how you’d expect if there is another cell on either side of him.

  Adrian decides to sit still and focus on recuperating right now. This jail isn’t here to hold him, but to see that he can be trusted, so he’ll play the little game for a while. If nothing happens after his soul recovers, then he can always escape.

  #

  Adrian has been in the middle of a mediation session, trying to feel his own soul, when they appeared.

  It happens after about 2 or so hours, when Adrian’s meditation is disrupted by the sound of footsteps, and a subtle hint of change in the airflow outside. By his estimation, there are at least 4 people.

  Adrian flows the mana inside of him, ready to cast a series of Prison at the first sign of aggression, the pain be damned. The mana flow suddenly crashes and fails when the figure of the Head Priest comes into view. He still wears the headgear, but instead of the scant clothes like earlier, he is now dressed in a clean white robe now, the same ones of Clarity.

  Behind him follows another priest that he does not recognise, but the latter two makes him sigh. It’s his parents. They follow him with their faces looking down and shoulders stiffened. Adrian can guess his mother’s thoughts from behind the bars. She’s either thinking of how to sacrifice him for their family’s safety, or how to salvage this situation to gain a better position in the church. I guess I’m outside the Tower now.

  Adrian stands up to greet the High Priest.

  “You’ve come quite far, child,” The High Priest says. Adrian bows in appreciation of the compliment. “It’s all due to your blessings, High Priest.”

  “Blessings only bless those who actively seek strength. Relying on the blessings to do your bidding is a fool’s mindset. But you are no fool, are you boy?”

  “No sir. I’d like to think I’m of sound mind.”

  “Then you must know why we are here.”

  “It is to test me for corruption by the terrorists. The main branch told me so, and I have already been tested by them, but I can understand that the clan would like to test it for themselves once again,” Adrian says.

  “I admire your understanding of the situation. Now I understand that you’ve incurred some soul injury in your battles, am I right?” The High Priest asks, as his assistant opens the gate of the cell.

  “That is right, High Priest. I do not remember what I could’ve done to have one, but apparently I did something pretty idiotic.”

  “Our battles are not always our most intellectual times. We have all done some stupid things in the midst of it. The only important thing is we survive, am I right?” High Priest says as he walks in the cell. The others remain outside. “There is a simple ritual I wish to use. It’ll send a soft probe on your soul. It’ll still hurt, like a lot, but I want you to be strong for me, okay? Can you do that?”

  “Of course High Priest,” Adrian says with full devotion.

  “Good lad. Lie down on the bed, and stay still,” The High Priest says, pale blue mana extending out of his fingertips and forming a circle above the bed. Then the runes come in, formed in between the circle they connect unnaturally, yet forming a bizarre circle.

  Adrian prepares for the pain as he watches the last of the runes connect together. Then without any preamble, the ritual takes effect.

  The feeling starts with a creep, like a tentacle, or a hair strand moving through his body, searching for something. And then it finds it.

  Adrian grits his teeth until his gums bleed and his teeth creak. The pain continues. It’s an indescribable amount of pain, and yet after going through the past few days, Adrian has started to realise his own pain tolerance.

  Instead of focusing on the pain, he tries to focus on his soul and feel its structure. Only a few abilities grant vision to a soul, and even few people can feel it even without them. Adrian wants to be one of them, and yet it is extremely hard. He searches and searches through the haze of pain, but he cannot seem to find it at all.

  It’s very hard though, when it feels like the pain in itself is coming from everywhere. Every nook and cranny of his body seems on fire.

  The pain lasts for a long time in his mind, although only a few seconds have passed outside. The pain fades away, but the aches remain. Adrian sits up tenderly, huffing and panting in stress. The pain has passed, but the real challenge has not.

  He looks at the High Priest with innocent, tired eyes. The church hasn’t been able to find him, and even earlier, he has never been found, so the chances are low. But the things he knows are much different from back then. His Status too shows it now. What if…

  “It seems you are still you,” the High Priest says with a smile. It’s a fake smile. “Your damaged soul might have saved you from the worst. Clarity has blessed you,”

  “Thank you, High Priest,” Adrian bows, even though it hurts him more.

  “After the 2nd floor disaster, you are one of the few top talents in our clan. We have lost many good kids, and the clan is still in mourning. It’s good to finally receive some good news in the form of you.”

  “Now I shall leave you with your parents to rest. Keep climbing young one, the clan has their eyes on you,” The High Priest says, moving out of the cell. Just as he is about to go, Adrian calls.

  “Excuse me, High Priest. If it’s not too presumptuous of me, then I’d like to ask you something.” The High Priest turns to look at him.

  “Go ahead.”

  “What happened to my party?”

  “Sadly, they weren’t as lucky as you, and have been corrupted. But don’t you worry. We are trying our best to purify them. They’ll be a strong force of our clan in no time,” He says before walking out with his assistant.

  His parents, now free, quickly enter the cell, bombarding him with questions.

  Adrian answers them as well as he could, but his mind wanders somewhere else. His party probably won’t be sacrificed, but they will definitely go through a strict session to ensure their loyalty.

  A few weeks ago he’d have probably felt that they deserved it. But the current him can only feel pity.

  Pity at everyone in the world, who has to live in such a twisted reality.

  Once again, it reinforces his drive. The Tower has to go. And he’ll make sure it happens by his hands.

  #