After disposing of the goblins, Kai trekked the way through the remainder of the forest. The pests had cried for him to give them mercy, but there was none to give.

Especially for the likes of goblins. As fairies of decay, they tormented others quite literally as nourishment. People that first came to the Tower had the misconception that fairies were insect-winged little people with a small streak of innocent mischief, and there were plenty of fairies like that, but they were a minority.

Fairies were spirits of nature, and nature could be cold and cruel and unforgiving just as much as it could be beautiful and sunny. Just look at any prey animal slowly dying from getting its guts scooped out bite by bite by a predator.

For most goblins, they represented the brutal part of nature that fairy tales all too often tended to forget about. They innately sought to kill and destroy, to reset life to a state of decay.

Kai thought them better off dead than alive.

After a few hours, Kai found himself in a clearing. The forests ended, revealing a sandy shore where a wooden bridge led out to a lake of water. The moon shone bright and high in the air, causing silvery light to reflect off the lake’s surface in a sparkling sheen.

Kai took a breather, admiring the scenery. His legs ached like hell despite the fact that he had scarfed down as many green blossoms - stamina-recovering flowers - he could find on the way here. He had gathered a ton more too, packing as many as he could into his baggy pockets.

Even now, the all too nasty bitter taste of the herb sat pungent in his mouth.

It made sense though. If agility was a multi-layered stat that governed reflexes on top of speed, then strength was much the same, encompassing raw muscular power as well as endurance.

Unfortunately, Kai had not put any stats into strength yet.

After catching his breath, Kai strolled over to the bridge. It was a simple wooden bridge comprised of logs lashed together with rope, big enough for maybe three people to stand side-by-side.

The bridge had a solid, rustic solidity to it, one that made sure to soothe any concerns about it breaking apart.

The end of the bridge fed into the center of the lake. There, mystical blue light overpowered the silver shine from the water reflecting moonlight. This arcane shine was much brighter than the moonlight, almost overpowering in its brightness. It illuminated the other three bridges, one for each of the other cardinal directions.

Kai stood now on the western bridge. The others led by the Superior were probably coming from the eastern bridge, directly opposite of Kai if his prior experiences with party spawning mechanics in the Tower were to be trusted.

As Kai gazed at the lake center, messages appeared in his vision.

[Quest: Wealth of the Lake initiated]

[Difficulty: 1]

[Description: Congratulations on reaching the Lake of Plenty, Ascender! You have fought through many a trial and beast to reach the center of this Tutorial, and now, as a reward, you shall be allowed to enter the Lake of Plenty. Here, you will be showered with incredible wealth to line your pockets for the many journeys ahead.]

‘Technically, I didn’t fight through much of anything to get here. I can thank my experience for that,’ thought Kai. He looked across the lake at the noticeably empty eastern bridge. ‘Though I can’t say the same for everyone else.’

Kai rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, getting ready to submerge himself into what was very obviously a trap. If something seemed too good to be true in the Tower, then it probably was too good to be true. He, however, would make use of this trap handsomely.

That said, most of the Ascenders coming in probably would fall for it. The whole thing was just way too good to pass up, not to mention that so far, they hadn’t yet had any reason not to trust what their System told them. Granted, there were definitely going to be a few, maybe more than a few people suspicious of this, but if their leader - the Superior - wanted to dive in, then they would probably follow.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

That was the weakness of a rigid command structure with one authoritarian at the top. If the leader made a mistake, the consequences echoed down and smacked everyone else in the face too.

If hypothetically, all 98 remaining Ascenders followed the Superior into the lake, Kai guessed about 90 would die. And that was an optimistic estimate.

But that was their mistake to learn. Their danger to face. Anyone worth their mettle in the Tower had to learn from experiences like this. It was how Kai had learned.

In the Tower, you either learned or you died.

Kai put his foot out, ready to step into the azure-lit water. He hesitated as his dirt-caked sneakers broke the water’s surface. A memory from the future hit him.

A memory in a smoke-filled cave that stank of burning human flesh. A nauseating smell that was putrid in its essence but laced with hints of savoriness that just made it that much more disgusting. It was a scent that Kai had grown very accustomed to, not just with fire-breathing monsters killing people he knew, but also in the many men and women he had struck down in flame as well.

“Why does everyone have to suffer as you did?” said Ren, standing atop a pile of smoke-blackened rubble that had once been a terrifying infernal golem. A dozen charred human corpses lay scattered around the stone creature, frozen in varying poses of agony from being flash fried by the golem’s core beam.

Ren shook his head at the corpses. “When you said you had a plan…I didn’t think you meant this.”

“They wanted to challenge this cave for its rewards just like us. They weren’t equipped for it. They died. It’s just the way these things go, Ren,” said Kai, his tone almost dismissively didactic. He knelt by a corpse, inspecting a dagger gripped in its blackened hand to see whether it was worth looting.

“But you knew. You could have told them.”

“In the Tower, you either-,”

“Yeah, you either learn or you die.” Ren sighed. “You’ve told me that about a hundred times already. But why does it have to be that way? I get that they were from a different guild and they weren’t the nicest to us, but still, in the end, aren’t we all in this together? Every single one of us?”

“Yes. Every single one of us.” Kai pointed at a charred corpse with his glaive spell staff. “Not them. They threatened us to get ahead. I only let them have what they wanted. And I got us through this because I learned firsthand that these caves lead to golems. They never learned that. So, they died. But their deaths weren’t meaningless. They softened the golem up for us.”

“It still isn’t right.” Ren slid off the golem’s rubble and knelt by a corpse. A corpse that was barely a teenager judging by its size, though it was impossible to deal anything else about it because of how terribly burned it was. “Remember dad?”

“Yes.” Kai stopped inspecting the dagger.

“He said the same thing. Not about golems, of course, but about, well, basically everything. Everytime he raised his voice at us. Or hit us. He told us we had to learn just like him. Because he learned by flinching at the crack of a belt, so why the hell shouldn’t we?” Ren touched the corpse’s hand, and it broke apart into ashes. He frowned. “I don’t know. It just feels like…just because you had to learn the hard way, doesn’t mean everyone else has to either.”

“Hm.” Kai looked at Ren. His little brother had full black hair and a face bereft of wrinkles. Courtesy of coming into the Tower during the fifth wave. Ren was in his late twenties, but the way he carried himself, you would be hard-pressed to tell he was older than twenty-one.

Kai’s hair was salt and pepper - more salt than pepper - by now after over 90 years of fighting in the Tower. He looked pretty good for his ripe old age of 112, more like someone in their mid-fifties than a centenarian. Courtesy of the golden apples from both the Aesir and the Olympians. Without those, Kai would have been a doddering old man by now.

Kai looked more like Ren's dad than his brother. And, perhaps, in many ways, he was.

“You’re looking at me like you usually do. A grumpy frown of disapproval and all,” said Ren. “I understand we need to think about survival, but you have the strength to think about more than that, don’t you think? Back on Earth, when you took me and Lin from our old man, even when you basically had nothing, you decided that we didn’t have to learn the hard way anymore. Isn’t that better? That we learn the hard lessons so that the people that come after us don’t have to?”

“Enough.” Kai stood, sensing movement further in the cavern. Danger incoming. “We’ll talk about this later.”

...

Kai stared down at the water in the present, his foot half submerged. He withdrew his foot and took a seat by the edge of the bridge. He sighed. A deep sigh which heaved his shoulders up and down, stirring up years of memories like dust shaking off a waking sleeping giant.

“Save them all, huh?” said Kai, looking at the empty eastern bridge. “I guess I'll try."