Twelve years after that horrid day when we found that the world was fake, the world descended into endless war we began to explore. The governments of the world had known and yet didn’t tell anyone. For our own safety they had said, yet that did not protect us when the denizens of the upper floors also discovered they weren’t at the bottom of the structure which could be referred to as a tower. How they found out about us is still a mystery, but when they came down to earth they had no intention for peace. War broke out between humanity and the strange visitors, thankfully our weapons worked on them, but as time went on stronger and stronger being came out and the technology of the modern world stopped being as effective.

When bullets, our own swords and tanks stopped being effective, people began to pick up the weapons of the fallen visitors, the weapons consisting of basic swords, axes and arrows worked better than any of the modern weapons, allowing for humanity to survive this cataclysmic event. However, losses were severe as most countries lost twenty to thirty percent of their populations.

During a long respite from the constant war, countries began pointing fingers at each other accusing the other of unleashing the apocalypse upon the world. Another world war broke out but was quickly stopped by another invasion by the denizens of the upper floors. Focusing on protecting what was left of humanity a new power began to awaken in humans, some realized that they now had the power to contend with the strange creatures, using a combination of their enhanced strength and speed, along with the weapons of the defeated creature’s humanity was able to seal the entry way for the upper floors to enter earth.

However, the damage had already been done, even as I write all this out to reflect on what happened during those first few years of fighting, humanity strived to survive. We have now been able to figure out how to use our new abilities. Along with finally reverse engineering the weapons of the invaders. Each country strived to become the first nation to send a team to the floors above. The fact that we succeeded despite the many failures scared many people, including myself. Who would have thought that we would want to go up the floors if we had finally staved off those creatures that almost drove us to extinction?

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Year one was a failure, no one returned. Year two also a failure and then on the third year of trying to send people up, we succeeded. Kuwait had won that race. Although at that point there were enough countries sending people up the floors that some of us were bound to be lucky. New Zealand was next to be able to send people up that returned, then Nigeria, Singapore, Canada, Germany, China, and then the US.

Looking back at it, it seems like humanity should of just unify under the idea of sending people to their deaths. However, what that original team from Kuwait found made it so no country would want to work together. Treasure beyond our wildest dreams, the resources that now was confirmed to be on the floors was too good to pass up. That is when people started forming their own teams to ascend the floors. How stupid was I to think that I could be one of those who would bring home riches for my family?

The other members of my exploration group all thought the same things when we first started our ascent, the thrill of adventure that we got standing at that portal. The powers that we had gained not even a few months before that we trained, were going to be all that got us through. We were not the first group to go up to the higher floors, nor were we going to be the first to make it back alive. We were just going to be some people to try and collect as much riches as we could and come back.

In hindsight we should have stayed back with our families and cultivated our powers a lot more. Now like the many of groups that came before us, we were stuck. I am the last of my group. I lie here with my right leg missing writing a diary mere minutes or seconds before my death. I don’t even know how I have been able to be conscious this long to reflect. Maybe this is mistress fate or death’s way of giving me comfort before I die. Knowing I know leave my wife behind with 3 kids that will never know their father.

I wonder what she will tell the children. Will she tell them that their father abandoned them to go thrill seeking? Or went to save the world. I’m old enough that I remember the first invasions, but not old enough to have fought in them. I just hope those kids never come up here. We made it 4 floors up thinking that we would be able to become even richer, but this floor… they didn’t originally invade us. We now know that it was only the first two floors that were able to descend originally.

We had been fools to think that we could scale this huge structure. I hope that this finds one of my brethren that seek adventure from humanity. To you who reads this, I don’t know how long it will be by the time you finally read this but, Welcome to the tower. Don’t be an idiot and just focus on survival!