Tower Story -- Chapter 11

Chapter 11

4,442 years, 10 months, and 18 days later

“Hold the line!” Ariadelle shouted, standing along the ramparts of the wall surrounding the enormous portal only a half mile in the distance.  Putting action to her own words, she pulled back the golden string of her Energetic Siege Bow, using her Mana to form a glowing projectile, which she aimed at one of the recently arrived Level 541 Gargantuan Behemoth that was heading toward her section of the wall.  She released her breath at the same time that she let go of her bow’s string, and the Detonating Shot VII-imbued projectile crossed the distance in the blink of an eye. 

Even with its speed, the Behemoth seemed to sense it coming and attempted to use its 8 legs holding up its massive, scaly bulk to the side, but its weight and devastating charge worked against it.  Ariadelle grimaced in annoyance when her shot didn’t hit the eye she was aiming at as the monster shifted slightly, but when it impacted the side of its head, the detonation caused by the projectile ended up blasting apart about a third of its grotesque face.  Unfortunately, other than a slight stumble and bellow of pain that hurt her sensitive Elven ears, the attack didn’t stop the overall charging attack of the creature heading toward the walls.

Fortunately, Ariadelle wasn’t alone.  A giant boulder suddenly shot at the stumbling Behemoth and clipped one of its forelegs before exploding into a hundreds of pieces of sharp stone shrapnel.  This was followed by a bright, directed, and disorienting light that flashed in front of the monster, blinding it temporarily, which meant it was unable to see the next barrage of defensive attacks that slammed into it from the wall.

Concentrated flame attacks burrowed into the wound in the Behemoth’s face, so intense in terms of temperature that it almost looked as if the monster began to melt like a wax candle subjected to a Fireball.  Roots erupted from the ground, entangling the legs enough that the Behemoth was forced to slow down as it broke away from them, and then an acidic wave of greenish liquid fell from up above, coating the slowed monster from head to spiked tail; she watched as the acid hissed and ate away at the protective scales of the Behemoth, exposing its softer, more vulnerable skin underneath.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched as 4 separate Mana Cannons operated by Magitech Engineers expelled their payloads, and the vibrant blue, slow-moving blobs of concentrated energy lobbed toward the monster, who was now screaming in pain so loudly that Ariadelle had to heal her ears, as they were starting to bleed.  All of that was done unconsciously as she deliberately watched as the Cannon payloads flew through the air; she immediately saw that one of them had overshot, and she shook her head as it landed behind the Behemoth, where it exploded in a shower of dirt that created an enormous divot in the landscape. 

The 3 other payloads from the Mana Cannons, however, were direct hits.  Slowed, blinded, and with its scaly armor now reduced in effectiveness by the Acid Wave one of the other defenders on the wall had cast, the explosions caused by the vibrant blue orbs ripped the monster apart.

There was no cheering, however, as the Gargantuan Behemoth that they’d just killed was only one of many that were streaming out of the portal.  Most of them were exhausted, so cheering was too much to ask for them; Ariadelle was also nearly out of Mana, even though she had been fairly conservative in its use, so she knew that everyone else was probably in the same situation.  Her Mana Regeneration just wasn’t high enough at Level 462 to handle hours of the constant battle against the invasion at the portal.  And it wasn’t the only portal that was being assaulted at the moment, as there were 9 others all around the world of Derelya that were in similar situation as they were near the city of Vigil’s Hope. 

Come on, it has to be at any time now, right?

If their records were correct, then the next cycle of the Retrogression System should be occurring that day – at some point.  For millions of years, it had always been exactly 4,444 years between cycles, and everyone was waiting for it to happen with an urgency that likely hadn’t been seen since the System was established.  Ariadelle had been an Adventurer for the last 542 years, working to preserve what was left of their people, and she was tired enough from the constant vigilance that she – and everyone else – was looking forward to the time when all the energy in the universe was absorbed by the System, and the monsters would go back to being Level 1 nuisances rather than the city-destroying creatures they currently were. 

Of course, she and everyone else defending their world would also be Level 1, most of the energy-imbued materials used in the construction of their cities and walls would crumble apart, and life would be a little more primitive than it currently was… but they would be alive.  At the current rate of the monster assaults through the portals from other worlds, she didn’t think they would last another few days, let alone weeks if the next cycle didn’t trigger soon.

As she shot another devastating Detonating Shot VII at another Gargantuan Behemoth charging toward her portion of the wall, Ariadelle could only hope that this next cycle would go back to the way her history books had indicated it had been for millions of years.  For some reason, the current cycle had been different, and it had caused so much suffering that she wasn’t sure they would survive the next one if it didn’t change.

While she hadn’t been alive at the time, everything had been dutifully recorded throughout all 3,549 worlds that were connected through the Retrogression System – and it had all begun when the Keepers didn’t show up after their expected arrival time at 50 years following the start of the cycle.  The Keepers were supposedly the worlds caretakers, elite individuals who were able to eliminate any threats like Remnants or Aberrations, and were also assigned to handle the toughest dungeons that spawned around the world, as well as keeping the towers in check.  While there had been difficulties in the past where some Keepers had fallen or slightly failed in the fulfilment of their duty, 99% of the time the Keepers were able to protect the majority of their worlds’ people on a day-to-day, year-to-year, and cycle-to-cycle basis.

But never had they not shown up.  When not a single Keeper had appeared 100 years after the beginning of the cycle, the longest it had ever taken Keepers to arrive, each worlds’ leadership began to panic, calling on an Adventurer recruiting drive that was still in effect to this day.

It hadn’t been enough.  As Remnants and Aberrations, which were much stronger than normal monsters than could be normally found within the world, began to wake up or appear, the Adventurers in each world – despite diligently working to strengthen themselves as much as possible – were unable to easily kill these monsters.  Through the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Adventurers, they were able to stay ahead of complete annihilation for a time, but that all changed when dungeons began to appear all over their worlds.  Unable to send many Adventurers to eliminate them when they randomly popped up, as they were too busy defending their own lands from increasingly stronger monsters, the dungeons overflowed and hordes of weaker monsters began roaming the countryside, killing everything in their way.

This was simply the beginning of the end for most of these worlds.  As the people had been relying on the Keepers for so long to protect them from such great threats, the societal culture wasn’t flexible enough to adapt to the changes that were forced upon them, and while many great Adventurers stepped up and had some minor successes, the worlds’ leadership knew that this was only a stopgap measure and that their time was limited without outside assistance. Almost all of them made plans to ask for help from other worlds as soon as the Portal Connection phase of the cycle commenced, each believing that their world had been unfortunate enough not to have any Keepers assigned to protect them.

When the Portals connecting each world with a limited number of others were finally established, they quickly discovered that every other world was suffering from the same situation that they were in.  Taking longer than Ariadelle thought was smart, but was actually fairly fast because of the nature of the decision, it was finally decided that the only way they could survive was if they worked together, pooling their resources to defend themselves from monster threat that would otherwise wipe them all out.  Over the next thousand years, amidst more and more dungeons emerging and even towers beginning to show up, hundreds of worlds were simply abandoned as 3 or 4 worlds pooled their Adventurers together to combat the threats from the monsters on a single world.  This worked for a while, as they had more than enough people at that point who were strong enough to do so, but those original worlds that were abandoned began to fill up with monsters left unchecked – and they started to spill over into these cooperative worlds. 

It wasn’t a lot of monsters, at least at first, and they were of the weaker variety.  However, those in charge at the time right assumed that these minor invasions from other worlds would only increase in severity, and that they would eventually be overrun from the monsters from multiple directions.  It took another thousand years before every world had seen the inevitable end awaiting them, and the delay cost billions of lives as these cooperative worlds slowly merged together, until the only choice they had left was to push themselves toward one singular world where they could pool all of their resources together to make a final stand. 

That world was Derelya.

At first, with literally billions of people spreading throughout the enormous world, inhabiting every land and populating it with civilians and veteran Adventurers from throughout the universe, life had been fairly peaceful because they were able to overwhelm any threats – until they weren’t threats any longer.  They survived and thrived on this singular world, including the brand-new arrival of a new race of Humans, who had just recently been added to the System during the cycle.  At first, many blamed the Humans for their unfortunate circumstances, figuring that the System adding these people had caused them to lose the protection of the Keepers, but seeing how magically and physically weak they were compared to every other race, most couldn’t justify how that could possibly be the case. 

In fact, the way that fewer than 5 million people had survived the coming of the System – despite not having to worry about Remnants and a smaller number of Aberrations that appeared – when they originally had a population of billions on their world, made the majority of those who took refuge in Derelya take pity on them and welcomed them into the last bastion of safety within the universe.  Ever since then, with a safer period of time when they were able to stabilize the world against the monster threat, their population recovered significantly, along with the populations of every other race, meaning that there were even more help in the form of Adventurers rising through the ranks.

Eventually, though, something had to give.  Towers in Derelya, which had originally been handled by the most elite Adventurers that had come together to save what was left of their people, had become too dangerous to completely clear approximately 100 years ago.  This led to increased monster breakages, and while they were easily put down by the large number of Adventurers they had available, things got complicated when the portals to the other worlds started spewing out monsters.

It had taken thousands of years, but eventually every single world in the System had finally filled up with monsters, and they were spilling over into Derelya.  At first, just like when happened when the cooperative worlds had attempted to stave off the threat, the monsters had been relatively weak – but everyone knew that this wouldn’t last long.  Thankfully, it was only within the last 5 years that they really began to become a danger, for which they were prepared; the walls that Ariadelle stood upon were proof of that.  Built of the strongest stone and imbued with so much energy that they were nearly impervious to damage, that assumption had been tested multiple times already when some of the stronger monsters managed to make it to the walls and cracked it when they slammed into its façade. 

Those had only been around Level 500, as well.  With the current monsters streaming through, she didn’t doubt that some of them could actually collapse the wall if they actually reached it.  What all of them knew from the history books, however, was that the monsters coming through were only the start, as they were some of the weakest from the other worlds; the stronger ones maintained their territories in those worlds and pushed the weaker ones out.  Eventually, they would be facing monsters that even their combined power couldn’t kill very easily – which would spell the end of everything.

With having to continue eliminating dungeons that still popped up around the world, to containing the monster breakouts from towers, and stationing themselves around all the portals, the once-plentiful Adventurers throughout the world were stretched to their breaking point.  The only thing that could stop a world-wide collapse of their defenses at this point was if the cycle began anew—

Just as Ariadelle released another projectile, nearly wiping out her Mana reserves once again, she was shocked to see it suddenly freeze in the middle of the air, halfway to its target.  Before she could wonder what had happened, she suddenly realized that she couldn’t move, and that everything else in the world had also frozen to a standstill.

It’s happening!

Her relief was interrupted by all the energy being sucked out of her body, and while she couldn’t move at that point, she could feel herself become weaker in the process.  Much weaker.  Ariadelle also hadn’t realized how painful the retrogression of the cycle would be, as it felt like her body was being ripped apart from the inside by someone wielding a thousand sharp knives, and what was left in its wake was a devastated body that didn’t feel like it could even hold itself up, let alone function properly.  It had been so long since she’d been Level 1 that the difference was so significant that it was hard to fathom how she’d survived back then. 

As she felt the stone wall underneath her feet crumbling away as all the energy was pulled out of it, she felt herself being gently lowered to the ground along with everyone else that had been defending against the monsters of the portal.  Fortunately, they had planned for this to happen eventually, and extremely mundane weapons – such as sharpened wooden sticks that could be used as spears and stone-tipped wooden clubs – had been arranged behind the walls, giving them a chance to fight back against the monsters once the cycle began again.  Even her bow, which she’d had for years and had been imbued with so much of her own energy that it was like a child or a sibling to her, had disintegrated in her hands, along with much of the armor she was wearing.  There were a few simple bows back with the mundane weapons, but she hadn’t used one that required their own arrows in so long that she thought she’d be out of practice.  That, and with her Dexterity having been reduced back down to a Level 1 state, she doubted she could hit a monster accurately if it was more than 30 feet from her.  She planned to grab a spear, instead.

Just as she was gently set down on piles of stone dust, which was essentially what the powerful wall had become after the energy was pulled from it, a notification splashed across her vision.

Congratulations!  Because of your exceptional leadership and performance during the past cycle, you have been chosen to become a Keeper for the current cycle!  Once your training is complete, you will return to an assigned world and help protect it from any and all threats until the end of the current cycle.

Do you accept this responsibility?  Yes/No

Ariadelle was so shocked that she could only stare at the notification while she processed what it was saying.  Fortunately, she wasn’t so flustered that she didn’t understand its importance, and she quickly accepted the responsibility to become a Keeper for the next cycle.  With this, we might just be able to survive the next cycle!  I wonder if they will have more Keepers because we’ve all been consolidated into a single world—

Response accepted.  Prepare for transport to the Keeper Recruit Cooperative…

With a smile, as she was finally getting an opportunity to contribute more than what she’d been able to toward the end of the last cycle, she looked toward the field where the massive Gargantuan Behemoths had been charging the wall as she felt her body start to dematerialize.  The previous monsters had not only dropped back to Level 1, but they had devolved from what they had been before, now appearing as large, snake-like creatures that were only 5 feet long and no more than 5 inches around.  Her Identification ability had gone away with the rest of her energy, so she couldn’t see what it was called now, but she was sure that the veteran Adventurers all around her, despite being much weaker than moments before, could wipe them out within minutes.  With the portals also closing with the start of the new cycle, they fortunately wouldn’t have to worry about any other monsters coming through to reinforce the hundreds that had devolved.

A split-second before she faded from the world completely, she felt a lurch go through her body, and she was suddenly fully materialized and present.  The sudden lack of a transition caused her to fall to her knees into the gritty dust under her legs, scraping them up a bit, but she could only think about one thing.

What happened?

Unfortunately, she was answered not a few seconds later by a second notification.

Transfer of Keeper recruit interrupted…

Energy levels in the Keeper Recruit Cooperative and the Keepers’ Tower are unstable…

Preparing to reroute sapient energy storage from System worlds…

Energy storage is missing…

Unable to establish connection to sapient energy storage…

Until the time sapient energy storage connections are reestablished, the shutdown of the Keeper Recruit Cooperative and Keepers’ Tower will be necessary…

What?  It took her a minute or so of kneeling in the stone dust for her to fully comprehend the devastating news that had just been delivered to her.  She was so out of it that she didn’t even notice Jansen come up next to her and put his hand on her shoulder.  “Are you hurt?  What’s wrong?”

Looking up at the large Anjelou, she shook her head at the first question – before realizing she wasn’t sure how to answer the second.  After a few seconds, as tears started to track down her face, she finally said, “We’re all doomed.  The Keepers are coming to help us this cycle, either.”

“What?  How could you possibly know that?” he asked, taking a step back in confusion at her words.

The words didn’t want to come out, but she forced them from her lips.  “Because I was just accepted as a Keeper for this cycle, but the System just informed me that the Co-op is essentially no longer operational.

“In other words… we’re on our own.  Again.  And this time, I’m not sure that any of us will survive what is coming.”