The sound of hastily turning pages was heard as Ta’ir, with a borderline maniac expression, devoured the book before him.

  “That interesting, huh?” Ondal asked, sarcastically.

  Ta’ir paused as he was turning a page and turned to look Ondal in the eyes. “This book talks about the benefits of those that aren’t connected to fate. Their actions are obscured and can’t be predicted.” A smile appeared on his face. “Don’t you see?” he asked, pointing at the book. “This is the reason that the gods couldn’t plan for him. He was probably just an annoyance to work around, and they decided to remove him because of it.”

  “Doesn’t explain the System breach,” Ondal commentated.

  “Doesn’t explain the system breach…” Ta’ir repeated, having lost a bit of wind. “It doesn’t, does it? Hmm… Maybe it’s only part of it.”

  “What about the benefits of being unconnected to the heavens?”

  Ta’ir shook his head, the answer clear. “There are basically no benefits to being unconnected to the heavens.”

  “But there are some?” Ondal asked.

  “Let me rephrase that. There are no benefits that could outweigh a connection to the heavens," Ta'ir said. "At least nothing on the level as evading fate and obscuring your actions.” Ta’ir let out a deep sigh and looked at Ondal once more. “What benefits do you remember having when you were unconnected to the heavens?”

  Ondal, furrowed his brow and looked at the counter. “I don’t have a lot of memories of that time. I was more about instinct during those times.”

  Ta’ir nodded along.

  “Where do you think he is, anyway?” Ondal asked, shifting the topic.

  As if his mind was somewhere else, Ta’ir answered. “It’s been a couple of days… he should be entering the real tower by now,” he answered.

  Ondal narrowed his eyes and shook his head lightly. “Do you think he have enough time to catch up? Even with the strange passage of time?”

  “Yes,” Ta’ir answered briefly, feeling caught.

  “I never got the reason behind that. I mean, what’s the problem with just taking years to clear a floor? If that’s how long it takes, then that's that,” Ondal commented, curious.

  “Hmm.” Ta’ir contemplated his answer. “How do I explain this? The tower itself isn’t distorting time to for its own uses. It’s merely leveraging the time of other places in order to achieve it purposes. That being said,” Ta’ir lifted his finger, tinged with gold. “There are places that the tower uses that have their own time manipulation factor that allow for a longer stay without risking your actual total time inside.”

  “Like the 15th floor?” Ondal asked.

  “Is that the one with the prison?”

  “Yes," Ondal confirmed.

  “Then yes,” Ta’ir confirmed. “From what I remember the point of that prison was to punish some of the worst people across a part of the multiverse. And their sentences were based on time outside that universe, not on the prison’s.”

  “What was the lightest sentence?” Ondal asked, his eyes glued to Ta’ir.

  “From what I read, they started with lifetime sentences, but not many lived that long. And before you answer the obvious question, the longest sentence is also lifetime. There are still prisoners in there,” Ta’ir explained.

  ----------

  The area that Eric had found himself in that was engulfed in a bright white, began to recede as soon as he decided to continue, revealing a poorly lit alleyway. The alley was full of small piles of trash and debris.

  “This seems familiar,” Eric muttered, remembering how he appeared similarly on the previous floor.

  Taking a quick look around, Eric immediately noticed a difference, and it was a pretty noticeable one at that. Moving toward one of the trash piles, he lifted something up with some familiarity.

  “This looks like a phone.” He turned his head to face toward the alley entrance. “And that’s very clearly a neon billboard,” he said, making his way toward said entrance.

  Directly in front of the alley where he had appeared, there was a bright neon light. Eric couldn’t make out the exact meaning of the characters, but he could make out the general context from its design.

  It was a bright neon pink sign with some big lips beside it. But that wasn’t enough for Eric to fully grasp the meaning of the sign that he was looking at, no, the meaning fully came to him with what was under the lips. One of the characters extended itself and made two round circles, with a little dot in the middle.

  Eric was only amused at the sign and thought nothing of it.

  When he was only a step or two away from exiting the alley, the System made an appearance.

  Congratulations on completing the tenth floor of the Tower of Revelation.

  You have entered the eleventh floor.

  New quest!

  Quest: Rampant tests.

  Objective: Find and kill all the escaped test subjects. Test Subjects 0/3.

  Rewards: Access to next floor, +10 Reward points.

  Suddenly, the phone-like device he had picked up from the ground came to life. It turned on by itself and it showed a red dot within a grid map.

  Eric, using his 21st century touchscreen muscle memory, moved to zoom the grip map out, to his mild surprise, it worked just as he intended. When he zoomed out some more, he found another dot, this one was blue.

  “It doesn’t zoom out any further,” he muttered, trying to zoom out some more. “That means that at least one of these dots is me. It would be dumb to center the map on something or someone other than the one who is looking at it.”

  Having settled all of the immediate matters that came his way, Eric left the alley and entered the street proper.

  It was a thin street, in fact, Eric was sure that this was just another alleyway, one that just happened to be more transited.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The moisture in the air was heavy, water puddles riddled the larger alley. Looking at some of the people that he walked by, Eric noticed a heavy amount of physical modifications, specifically, robotic modifications.

  Some walked with entire limbs replaced by a robotic one. A kid that looked no older than ten, who was playing in front of a small food stand, had an entire eye missing, replaced entirely by a heavy piece of technology.

  A robot dog was basically begging for food to some mechanic, whose entire arm was an assortment of tools.

  “I’ve done two medieval worlds, one more magical than the other, and now I’m in a… I guess its cyberpunk—Oh!” he exclaimed with surprise, cutting off his own train of thought. “The red dot is me.”

  While Eric walked through the more visited alley, he kept glancing toward the device in his hands, keeping an eye out for any changes.

  When he was contemplating how indifferent people were to his attire, the red dot updated. It now signaled that it was near the end of a street or alley, while the blue one remained in the same position that it had been in before.

  “If I continue this way I’ll only get further away. I need to turn around if I want to reach the other dot.”

  Without thinking about anything else, Eric began to make his way toward the blue dot on the map.

  ----------

  When the commotion that occurred because of what happened in one of the other pagodas was settled, the three friends made their way back to each other.

  Stella and Anna walked back toward the middle room where Alex was already sitting. However, nothing changed, their attitudes were still somewhat hostile, at least in appearance. Alex refused to intervene, so they sat in silence for as long as needed.

  Luckily for them, the time was fast approaching for the tournament to begin. It was so close in fact, that most of the contestants were only looking at the timer go down, their eagerness preventing them from doing anything else, not that there was much to do at this point.

  While the tournament timer counted down, many of the attendants began to increase in activity, as did the various shops that were yet to open.

  Most of them were basically already ready for business, the only thing that kept them closed was the timer. Even the scent of delicious and otherworldly food was already emanating from some of the restaurants.

  Tournament of the Strong: 1:24:07

  When less than two hours remained, all the established forces, including Solace, called back all their members. They all stayed in their respective rooms, or in the case of Solace’s participants, the entire floor.

  Most of those who remained roaming freely and without a real purpose, were those that joined independently. Though there were some who were ordered to stay outside or simply refused to follow commands and remained outside, enjoying the view.

  Tournament of the Strong: 1:00:00

  Prepare yourselves, for the tournament is about to commence. Remember, a battle is not only about what you can do, but also about what your opponent can or can’t do… Even before the battle…

  As soon as the countdown hit one hour, a message that stirred the already anxiety filled people appeared, stirring them even further.

  The very walls suddenly appeared to be smaller, as if they were closing in on the participants. Many speculated what the meaning behind the words was.

  “It’s obvious that information is important. What can this message be about?” someone asked, biting their nails.

  “Do they want us to investigate every possible opponent that can come our way?” another proposed.

  “No,” someone said definitively. “Look at the last part of the message. ‘Even before the battle,’ they definitely want us to do something before the beginning of the tournament.”

  The doubts and questions piled up with each second that passed. After a couple of minutes, the tensions eased as if nothing of note had happened.

  There were occasional bursts of mania within some groups, but they were quickly dulled by the people that surrounded those that started said bursts. Regardless, their questions were answered by the next message.

  Tournament of the Strong: 30:00

  When only thirty minutes were left before the tournament began, everyone’s first match was announced.

  Blade of Solace vs. Thrifty87

  BlazeHunter77 vs. NightShade_47

  Iron TempestX vs. Silent Edge

  Wall of Solace vs. Redlight on8

  CryoFang Zero vs. Void Strider

  Aegis Gold12 vs. Ember Vortex88

  Scarlet Wolf 13 vs. Frost Shadow7

  Flame of Solace vs. Archon of heaven

  StormWarden1 vs. Obsidian Flame

  Silver Whisper vs. TitanWrath42

  “This is what the previous statement was about,” Anna said, her instincts flaring to life and quickly grasping what the intentions by those who organized the tournament were. “They want us to fight.”

  “How? The attendants would just stop us if we tried to do anything, wouldn’t they?” Alex asked, some worry in his face.

  “No,” Stella said definitively. “They allowed that commotion at the other pagoda. There are some things that they will allow.” She suddenly turned her head. “Alex.”

  Alex understood immediately and rushed to the hallway as he moved mana toward his vocal cords. He quickly reached the hallway and spoke. “Lockdown! No one goes in or out. Effective immediately!”

  The Solace forces weren’t the only ones that decided to follow such a course of action. Every force or organization that was solid in any way possible began to take similar decisions.

  Those that weren’t so solid began to shatter when they realized that some of them were their enemies. Others shattered when they remembered that they had the Inspect skill, seeing how they could get an advantage with it and disregarded orders.

  Tournament of the Strong: 26:17

  Within a few minutes of the thirty-minute announcement going up, various battles began to break out. They were small, limited in scope and collateral damage so that they didn’t trigger a response from the attendants.

  Tournament of the Strong: 25:45

  A few seconds later, the first one to wield a weapon appeared. He had punched his target so hard that his jaw was dislocated. Out of fear, his eyes darted toward the nearest attendant, full of fear of the consequences. To his surprise, nothing happened, the attendant only looked, completely undisturbed.

  Feeling lucky and somewhat brave, he reached for his weapon slowly, all the while he kept an eye on the attendant. Even when he finally stabbed his target, killing him, the attendant never reacted.

  Tournament of the Strong: 24:41

  Few noticed what had happened, but they hesitated little to follow behind and also brandish their weapons.

  This, however, only made the fights last longer. No one was willing to face an armed opponent while they themselves were unarmed. So very few had the luck of quickly dispatching their target quickly.

  Tournament of the Strong: 24:02

  A few more seconds passed, and another brave soul appeared, this time, they wielded their skills to their full might.

  Whether it was intentional or simply something that they did in the heat of battle was irrelevant, it had happened, and others had seen it. Inspired by this brave soul, a magician wielded his magic and a priest his miracles.

  Various powers flared to life, making the human courtyard nothing but an elaborate fireworks show. When the chaos and destruction they were causing reached a certain threshold, the attendants finally began to move, making everyone freeze.

  But unlike what they feared, they only moved to block attacks that targeted the buildings.

  Tournament of the Strong: 20:18

  Entire minutes passed as everyone stood in silence, fearful of further action from the attendants, but there was none. One by one, everyone resumed their fights, feeling that their actions were approved of.

  But they did eventually discover that the attendants had a limit. A certain explosion skill user used his skill near a building one too many times and before they knew it, their headless body was being carried by an attendant and the head by another.

  This did cause the battles to scale down somewhat, but they were still intense.

  Approaching a window, Stella looked toward the other species’ courtyards, wondering if she would see similar events happening.

  Two of the three are completely silent, Stella realized.

  “Alex, Anna,” she said, calling them over. “Look, those two are completely still. Nothing is happening there,” she continued, pointing at the pagoda from which three humans emerged earlier in the day and the one directly opposite of them. “Do you know what that means?”

  “That two entire species are united,” Alex answered softly.

  “Fuck,” Anna muttered, completely unaffected by the carnage that was happening around her.

  In fact, none of those from Solace really reacted. They remained unfazed by what was going on, their sights set on the tournament itself.

  Most of those that had been allowed to come were those that had been there since before Eric left or shortly after.

  That wasn’t to say that they purposefully blocked anyone that didn’t meet a similar criteria from coming, but more that they were the only ones willing to risk coming.

  The only others that also agreed to the tournament were children that didn’t know better.

  So, everyone from Solace that was currently on the tournament grounds were those that were most affected by whatever effect Eric provided.