Chapter 167: Tales of a King (7)

Misha felt something cold crawl through her.

These were not creatures from Nareth. That place had been horrific, but it had belonged to Russel’s world. Its forest grew from soil, its monsters bled, and its magic followed some kind of rule.

These things felt different. They looked like something forced into a world that had never been designed to contain them.

A knight struck at one, his blade severed an arm, and no blood came out. The limb dissolved into black threads and reattached itself to the shoulder before the knight finished recoiling.

Then the creature folded around him.

"Protect the procession!"

The command cut through the panic.

People moved, soldiers first, then civilians followed.

DUM

A creature touched the side of a house, and a wall vanished. Another dropped into a fountain, and the water suddenly streamed upward, flowing into the rupture overhead until the basin below stood dry.

The city was not being conquered, since the Conquerors wanted something left afterward. This was purely erasure.

DUM

And still the procession moved.

That was the part Misha could not stop watching. People knew something impossible had entered their world, watched buildings disappear, watched soldiers die against creatures whose bodies refused to remain damaged, and still, hundreds of hands stayed beneath Russel.

Somewhere inside all that terror, a kingdom kept carrying its dead king home.

Then something enormous emerged above the Bell House.

Misha tried to focus on it, but her eyes refused. The shape seemed different whenever she blinked, as though her mind could only understand pieces at a time.

"No..." Someone spoke.

The voice was not loud, it did not need to be. The grief packed into that single word seemed to move through the dream itself.

Misha turned, and for one second, something stood beyond the broken sky. A figure, vast, though not merely in size. She saw the impression of pale robes or wings spreading through the clouds, hands reaching toward the black rupture as if trying to close the wound in reality.

Another pale presence appeared beside it.

The second figure struck the creature descending above the Bell House before it could reach the first.

Misha stared with her brows furrowed together. "Who the hell...?"

The funeral road became a battlefield.

Soldiers died, civilians died, and still, hands remained beneath their king.

DUM

One creature slammed into the procession. Bodies flew, the bier tilted, and dozens lunged toward it.

A man caught one pole across his shoulder and fell to his knee under the weight while a woman beside him pushed both hands upward until another bearer reached them.

DUM

Whenever a bearer died, another person took the weight before Russel’s body could fall. And still, the drum continued despite the fear growing strong around them.

The drummer glanced toward the Bell House, and the next creature struck him from behind. The drum rolled across white flowers, and the rhythm stopped.

The Bell House stood close enough that Misha could see the rope hanging beneath the Bell of Homecoming, but they never reached it.

The world fractured, and Misha saw pieces instead of moments.

People kneeling in the streets, hands clasping, eyes closing with tears streaming down their cheeks. A mother lowering herself beside her child, and soldiers trying to stand before whatever had taken hold of them forced their bodies down instead.

The living became still.

The things beyond Creation remained only a little longer, fighting the pale presences above the dying city while black fractures spread through the sky.

Then everything disappeared.

==

Misha expected to return to the ruined road, she did not.

There was no ground beneath her feet, no sky above, only darkness scattered with lights.

At first, she thought they were stars, then the closer she got a look, she realized they were worlds, thousands of them.

Blue worlds, red worlds, worlds with rings, worlds covered in oceans, worlds with cities visible even from impossible distances, then one went dark.

A black fracture appeared beside it, the same kinds of beings that had destroyed Russel’s kingdom moved through.

Another light vanished, then another.

"Great... I’m inside a lore Chapter."

This was starting to look way too much like one of those cosmic-apocalypse manhwa Misha used to read at three in the morning.

Then she noticed two figures standing somewhere ahead.

She had not seen them arrive, neither looked entirely human.

The first wore something resembling a pale mantle, although its texture shifted whenever Misha looked directly at it. His face remained indistinct, but for some reason, she recognized the voice when it spoke.

It was the figure from above Russel’s world, the one who had said no.

Another figure stood opposite him, a woman, perhaps.

Her silhouette shimmered as though seen through heat, with branching shapes rising behind her head before disappearing whenever Misha tried to focus on them.

Neither acknowledged Misha since they could not see her.

It was another memory... but whose?

The pale figure looked toward the darkness where Russel’s world had once existed.

"It is gone..."

The other figure remained quiet for several seconds.

"So is mine."

The pale figure’s hand tightened. "I was entrusted with a seed of Creation."

"As was I."

"I tended it from its first dawn."

The woman looked toward him. "I know."

"I watched mountains rise where there had been nothing but sea." His voice remained controlled, but grief sat beneath every word. "I watched them discover fire, language, war, mercy..."

His haze returned to the empty place.

"And I watched it die... I failed to protect what was entrusted to me, Witness..."

’Witness?’ Misha’s brow twitched upon hearing the way he addressed the woman.

The woman did not comfort him. Perhaps there was nothing useful she could say.

Misha found herself strangely grateful for that. What exactly was she supposed to say to someone who had watched an entire world die? Sorry for your planetary loss?

Something moved behind them, and a Tower rose through the darkness.

It had no visible foundation, no summit, only floors of pale light climbed until perspective stopped making sense.

Another Tower appeared farther away, then another.

The pale figure watched them. "So this is His answer."

"Part of it."

The nearest Tower changed, and images moved through its wall. Destroyed cities, forests, battlefields, fragments of broken worlds being drawn inside.

"My people..." The woman’s jaw tightened. "Preserved so they may repeat their death?"

"No." The man’s gaze remained on the Tower. "Preserved so something may survive it."

More images appeared.

People entered Towers, some being close enough to humans that Misha could understand them. Others, she could not.

They fought, awakened, skills formed, classes evolved, people died, and those who survived climbed.

Misha saw one man enter weak enough to struggle against a single monster. Much later, that same man stood beneath a torn sky and drove a weapon through one of the creatures from beyond Creation.

The woman stared. "The Towers are making them into weapons."

The pale figure shook his head. "No... they are giving them time."

Misha slowly held her breath.

The pieces aligned when she heard those words. All those comics she had read before the Tower appeared, tutorial zones, dungeons, leveling systems, humans dropped into impossible trials because some conveniently mysterious cosmic system wanted them stronger for an even bigger war later. She had always thought those plots were ridiculous.

’Of course it’s real.’ Her mouth twisted. ’Of fucking course my life turns into one of those stories after I spend years complaining the protagonists are idiots.’

But this was worse. The Tower was not creating random trials from nothing. It was preserving pieces of dead worlds. Those Floors had once been real. The Tower had taken the wreckage and kept it not as a museum, but as a lesson, as a battlefield, as–

Misha’s stomach dropped. ’Training.’

No, that word felt too small.

’Preparation.’

The pale figure continued speaking.

"Our worlds were struck before our people understood there was anything outside them capable of doing such a thing," he continued. "They died learning what the enemy was."

The woman looked toward the climbing mortals. "And those who chose to climb?"

"If they become strong enough..." He paused. "Perhaps survival is what He requires before anything can be reclaimed."

Misha frowned. ’He?’

So there was someone above even these beings. That someone had decided that preserving fragments was better than losing everything, that someone had decided humans needed time to become strong enough to fight back.

The whole Tower suddenly looked different in Misha’s mind. All of it had seemed arbitrary before, cruel. But underneath the bullshit was a purpose. Not kindness, definitely not kindness.

The Tower killed too many people for Misha to romanticize it that easily. It was more like someone had looked at civilization being erased one after another and built the most brutal survival course imaginable because gentle preparation had stopped being an option.

Level up or die. Reach the top or stay weak. Learn how these dead worlds fell before the same thing reaches yours.

If this was really what the Towers were for... then eventually, something was supposed to happen once they reached the top.

Her thoughts stopped there.

The pale figure turned slightly, and the woman said something Misha could no longer hear.

The rest disappeared, and darkness swallowed everything.