Tower Story -- Chapter 12

Chapter 12

418 years, 7 months, and 25 days later

Bax jerked instantly awake, a slight headache quickly fading as he sat up.  Springing to his feet off his bed, he looked around to see if the System was about to try to send him into this Stasis thing again, but apparently after failing the first time, it wasn’t going to try again.  From what he’d experienced, he figured he had been sent into unconsciousness for a few seconds before being released by whatever the System was trying to do to him.

“What the hell was that?  You’re not going to send me to a world until I can join a Party?  I’m sure that you have to know by now that there aren’t any left!” he shouted to the empty room, confident that the System could hear him.  Frustrated when he didn’t get a response, he looked around for something to throw, but his room was so sparse that the only thing he had at hand were the blankets on his bed – which wasn’t quite the satisfying destruction he was hoping for.

Sighing as his anger flowed away from him, realizing that acting out wouldn’t really do him any good, it was at that point that he noticed that he was still slightly wounded from his fight with the Tower Guardian; it was still healing, fortunately, but his hands and his torso were still tender and in need of more time for his Health Regeneration to patch him up completely.  It was actually amazing that he felt as good as he did, considering that he’d nearly died – but he wasn’t going to complain about that.

What he was going to complain about was the fact that, unlike what he’d expected once he cleared the Tower, he was still trapped in the Co-op without any way to get out. He’d finished the Tasks he was given, but some stupid rule within the System was preventing him from leaving.

“Wait a minute,” he mused, thinking about potential solutions to his problem.  “If I’m officially a Keeper now, instead of simply a recruit, do I have enough authority to use that command tablet?”  He had replaced the inoperable tablet inside the Restricted room in the Archives after he couldn’t get it to even turn on, but now that he was more “official,” he hoped that it would actually work for him now. 

Tempted to go running for it immediately, Bax decided to hold off for a few minutes until his wounds had healed completely.  Moving around was a bit painful still, he’d rather be fresh and have fewer distractions while he sought after a way for the command tablet to order his release.  He snorted at that thought.  “Release, ha!  Sounds like I’m a prisoner.”  To be fair, that was essentially what he was until he figured out a way to leave, even if he wasn’t confined to a prison cell and had basically free rein to go and do whatever he wanted inside the Co-op.  “Heck, maybe I’ll even start a riot and raid the Armory if I can’t find a way out of here; what’s the worst that could happen?”  He’d prefer going down fighting his captivity than stay trapped in there for thousands of years, after all.

One other thing other than being injured bothered him – he was thirsty.  He’d barely stopped to rehydrate during his wandering around the final Floor of the Keeper’s Tower, so he was feeling a bit parched and hungry by this point. Taking a few steps up to the crystalline box that he’d learned through his research in the Archives were called Energy Reconstitution Units, or ECUs, and were only available in the Co-op because they were apparently designed by the same, now-extinct Ascendale who created the Retrogression System, he placed his hand on its side.  Thinking, “water,” he automatically reached for the stone cup of water that would appear…

…but nothing happened. 

“What the—?  Did I lose access or something?”

He tried again, but after the same non-result in delivery of water, he was about to turn away so that he could head toward the Meal Hall, but was stopped by a notification.  Wary of the System trying to put him into that Stasis thing again, he looked at it with a bit of trepidation.

It turned out that he hadn’t lost access to the ECU; instead, it was something else entirely.

And it was much, much worse than he expected.

Warning!

Sapient energy reserves have reached critical levels!

Seeking alternative sources…

Area: Keepers’ Tower has already been suspended from operation…

Area: Keeper Recruit Cooperative is currently running at minimum operational levels…

Shutting down Keeper Recruit Co—

Error!  Keeper Baxtonille (Bax) has been identified as a current resident in Stasis…

Removing Stasis…

Sapient energy reserves continue to exist at critical levels!

The drain on reserves from the presence of Keeper Baxtonille (Bax) conflicting with primary directive…

Collapse of extradimensional space is eminent if Keeper Baxtonille (Bax) continues to reside in the Keeper Recruit Cooperative…

Searching for an acceptable world for transport—Error!

3,549/3,550 of worlds in the Retrogression System compromised…

Selecting remaining world…

Prepare for transport to World 1,534D – Designation: Derelya

Bax stood in shock as he felt a tingly sensation spread through his body.  On the one hand, he was getting what he wanted, which was to be sent to a world where he could actually help out instead of being trapped in the Co-op.  On the other, the notification said something about almost all of the worlds being “compromised,” which – while he didn’t understand exactly what that meant – he figured probably wasn’t good. 

The tingling stopped for a moment before he was hit by another notification.

Transport interrupted…

Internal dimensional space of Keeper Baxtonille (Bax) too saturated for available transport reserves…

Purging internal dimensional space and absorbing their energy to compensate for high-Level sapient transport…

“Wait—” he began to say, before his room seemed to explode with hundreds of different kinds of crafting materials, weapons, and armor that he’d collected from the Tower.  Even as they appeared, they seemed to crumble into dust, as if their molecular bonds had suddenly been shattered. 

“No!  That was my stuff—!”

Warning!  Detected Level of Keeper Baxtonille (Bax) exceeds safe transport protocol…

Requesting protocol override…

Unable to connect with Keeper Recruit Cooperative administrators…

Forced automatic override approved…

Please be advised that Keeper Baxtonille (Bax) may encounter abnormal effects from the upcoming transport…

“Abnormal effects?” he asked, his anger over all the stuff he’d collected being ripped away from him and destroyed now replaced by worry.  He didn’t get a chance to worry about it long, however, as the tingling began again.

Transport resumed…

Unable to move, all Bax could do was endure the increasingly powerful tingling that spread throughout his body.  Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see his body starting to disappear, and all he could do was watch as the light in his room flickered, as if there was an interruption in the power, before everything went black. 

It was at that point that it felt like his entire being was being ripped apart, similar to when he’d Leveled-up so many times over a year ago.  Even as his mind was undergoing the same process, he couldn’t help but notice how different this transport was compared to when he first arrived; at that time, he hadn’t even felt anything as he suddenly appeared somewhere else.

If anything, his current experience was worse than when he’d Leveled-up, if only because there were so many unknowns; he had no idea where he’d end up or what the System meant by “abnormal effects” when he got there. If there was a positive side to it all, the pain was so great and the strain on his mind so extensive that his consciousness broke apart, forcing him to black out and stop actually experiencing it all, and he happily descended into the forced darkness of nothingness that greeted him.

                    *

Bax awoke a split-second before he slammed into the top branches of a tree that looked like a hybrid of a pine tree and a maple tree, with thousands of red, pine needle-like leaves poking into him as he broke through the weakest of the topmost branches, before hitting the more robust lower branches, which he cracked and then bounced off of on his way down to the ground.  As he got closer to the ground, large, razor-sharp maple leaves brushed up against his naked skin, quite a change from the needles on top.  With each impact, his side hurt worse than before, which told him that he was aggravating his injury that still had yet to be healed completely, but he didn’t feel like he incurred any additional wounds or injuries.

Falling the last 20 feet or so free of any branches, he landed on his back with a heavy thud, which threatened to knock the wind out of him – but his body was thankfully too sturdy for that.  Groaning in pain as his torso injury throbbed from the further abuse it had suffered, he rejected the idea of getting up until his Health Regeneration fixed him up back to normal. 

As he stared up through the cracked branches of the tree that he’d unceremoniously just tore through, as if he’d been dropped from a great height by the System’s transport, he breathed deeply with a twinge of pain as he realized he was looking at a blue sky above him that was real – and not a creation of the Keepers’ Tower.  To the left side of his vision, he could see a singular sun high in the sky, and it looked so similar to Earth that he thought he actually might be back home.

However, the sight of three moons of similar size in a triangular formation in the sky when he looked to his right disabused him of that notion; unless Earth had suddenly obtained two additional moons in the year or so he was gone, then he definitely wasn’t on his home planet again.  When he added in the strange tree he’d fallen through, as well as the notification stating that he’d been sent to a world called Derelya, all of those things convinced him that he was well and truly somewhere else – and that he was essentially an alien in a strange land.  The same could be said of his experience in the Co-op, but in that situation, all of the Keeper recruits had been brought together from thousands of different worlds, and while they all shared similar backgrounds, most of them had been strangers going into it.  Here, though, everyone was already established there on the world, and as likely the only Human they’d ever seen before, he wasn’t sure what kind of reaction his appearance would have.

As he lay there, not wanting to get up until he was free from pain, he began to think about what the notifications had told him.  First, there was the whole thing about “sapient energy reserves,” which he figured was what kept the Co-op and the Tower running; why it ran out was a mystery, but he could only guess that it was due to so many people dying and therefore weren’t there to provide energy?  Unfortunately, he didn’t know enough about the inner workings of the Co-op and the Tower, as that kind of information wasn’t even in the Restricted section of the Archives. 

Secondly, he thought about the other worlds in the System being supposedly compromised.  Was it due to the deaths of the Keeper recruits and Guides from those worlds?  He wasn’t sure why that would be, but again, he wasn’t knowledgeable about that kind of stuff – much to his frustration.  After learning so much other stuff from the Archives, he was surprised that they didn’t have the stuff that would’ve made understanding this situation a bit easier – but he supposed that those who made the System hadn’t needed to provide instruction manuals on its inner workings, except to perhaps whoever was in charge.  It was entirely possible that the information had been on the command tablet that he couldn’t access, but now there was a possibility that he’d never know.

Last, and most importantly, he considered what the System meant by “abnormal effects” that he might experience due to the transport.  Mentally feeling his body, he was fairly sure that he was still as durable as he had been before, as aside from the injury he had aggravated in his side, none of the needles, leaves, or branches had even left a scratch on him.  He also didn’t feel any different, as if he had mutated to have an extra head or set of legs.  Reaching up to his face, he worried for a moment that he was disfigured or something; but a quick perusal of his face, head, and even his hair didn’t show anything that seemed out of place.  Of course, he could have purple, polka-dotted skin on his face or something, but a glance out the extremity of his eyes didn’t seem to show anything to him.  Plus, the rest of his body – which was still primarily naked with just a loincloth – appeared as normal as he could tell, so he didn’t think the “abnormal effects” had to do with something physical.

Unless I’m really tiny now, and that tree I fell through was actually the size of a small bush.  Again, he doubted this was the case, as everything he could see appeared to be sized correctly, but until he had another sense of his scale, he wasn’t dismissing it.

With a physical change largely discarded, he figured that he might have been mentally altered somehow.  A few mental exercises, as well recalling everything he’d learned in the Archives, proved to him that if it was something to do with his mind or mental faculties, then it wasn’t anything obvious.  Neither did it seem to have anything to do with his senses, as he could see, hear, touch, and smell just as well as before.  He’d have to see about taste later, as he was still very hungry and thirsty, but he doubted that a simple change in how he tasted things was the abnormal effect he was looking for.

All of which left a magical change in him.  Mentally reaching inside of himself for his Mana pool, it didn’t feel too much different than before; the only thing he noticed, once he was paying attention to it, was that the energy density all around him was far less than what he was used to in the Co-op and the Keepers’ Tower.  While he didn’t think that it would affect his Mana pool all that much, he was fairly certain that his Mana Regeneration would likely suffer as a result.  To check to see if he was right, he opened his APPS – and quickly discovered the “abnormal effect” that had been mentioned to him by the System.

Advancement Progress and Performance Sheet (APPS)

Name: Baxtonille (Bax)

Race: Human

Overall Level: ###2

Experience: 742,196/15,200,000

Health: 24,257/31,790

Health Regeneration: 2,625/min

Mana: 100/100

Mana Regeneration: 4,343/hour

Strength {2,682}

Endurance {3,179}

Dexterity {2,525}

Intellect {4,343}

Unity {10}

Class: (Pending)

Class Level: —

Threshold: 0/5

(see more)

The first thing he noticed was that his Mana Regeneration had gone from 4,343 a minute to the same amount in an hour; that coincided with what he figured might happen with the energy density in the environment being so low, which was due to the cycle recently beginning.  Fortunately for Bax, that didn’t affect his Health Regeneration, as he was fairly certain it used the energy within his own body to heal him instead of the environment, which could also explain why he was so hungry and thirsty at the moment. 

Secondly, under his Class heading, instead of it usually being blank, it said (Pending) – which was an encouraging change.  However, when he tried to do something with it, he was hit with another notification that wasn’t as encouraging – but there was some hope within it, nonetheless.

For Guide candidates, future Class selection is pending until your first Party is established.

Ah.  I read about that.

Apparently, all it required for most people to acquire a Class was to become associated within a Party – even if it wasn’t one that was actually going to go out and fight.  It was thought that this was required because it gave people a chance to select a Class that would be the most beneficial to the overall Party instead of whatever they might like to choose on a whim.  Regardless of the reason, it meant that he couldn’t yet select a Class until he joined a Party – but it was encouraging because the option hadn’t been there before.  In addition, it didn’t specifically state that his Party had to be a Keeper Party, so he hoped that it meant that he would be able to join any Party and finally get a Class.

But the most impactful of all the changes on his APPS was the appearance of his Level.  Instead of it saying that he was Level 1,302, it instead read as ###2 to him.  It was confusing at first, because it didn’t make any sense, but then something that had been bugging him suddenly made sense.  He’d been wondering why, if the Keepers’ Tower had been able to make a Tower Guardian that designed to be more of a match for him, it hadn’t made it the same Level – instead of Level 999.  He thought that it was just happenstance, but what if it was simply a limitation of the System?  What if it couldn’t create anything of a higher Level because it had never considered it to be necessary?  If he was correct, then it was entirely possible that anything over Level 999 – which was incredibly power all by itself – hadn’t ever existed before or when the System was active, so anything Level 1,000 or above wasn’t properly defined.

He thought about the whole Y2K crisis that had hit the world around the turn of the millennium, when computer systems were thought to crash because they had dates that were hard-coded to start with 19; when the year 2000 arrived, they would be unable to process it correctly or would simply see it as the year 1900.  This led to a panic and a frantic updating of computer systems to handle the changes, and it turned out to be less of a worldwide crisis than a temporary hiccup, but the principle behind of the whole situation could be what was happening with his Level.

In other words, since it couldn’t process that he was over Level 1,000, his Level displayed as only Level ###2 – or possibly just Level 2.  Why it hadn’t done it back in the Co-op, he didn’t know, but he could only assume that when transporting between the extradimensional space where it was located and back into the universe at large, this was one of the “abnormal effects” that he had been warned about.  In addition, why it didn’t simply cut off the thousands place and set him at Level 302 was also a mystery; he could only assume that the error in the System evaluating his Level had worse consequences than he could fathom, and he was worried about what it could ultimately mean in the end.  Would there by any other abnormal effects that might pop up eventually?  He had no way of knowing until something showed up, he supposed.

After another few minutes, he felt the last of the pain in his torso disappear, and checking his APPS once again, he saw that his Health had returned to full.  With a push against the real, honest-to-goodness dirt and fallen leaves underneath his hands, he stood up quickly, looking around him for the first time since he’d arrived.