Blue and I kept walking away from the giant red sword as he waved goodbye to us, with me trying my best to ignore him and Blue waving back after I repeatedly tried to hold his arm down to get him to stop. There just didn't seem to be anything to stop Blue from interacting with other stories, maybe this was how he got so high in the rankings before he was shelved.

"I think he might have a chance in the upper levels." Blue started, "Just tweak with some of the ways the protagonist interacts with the side characters, add some more dialogue and less fighting, and he'll easily make it to at least the hundreds."

"So why isn't he up there by now? If his author really cared wouldn't have he already made the adjustments?" It was a harsh response, but all this talk of getting higher up in the rankings was making me anxious about the admins reviewing my story. They still haven't gotten back about that and it's been a whole 5 hours! Shouldn't they have already seen it by now? What if they know about me but are just biding their time till they find a hole deep enough to bury me in?!

Feeling a poke on my arm I turned my head to see Blue looking at me with a mix of confusion and concern. "You okay? You look like your dog just died."

Staring at him with an incredulous look on my face I told him "If I'm going to have a pet it's gonna be a cat. Why would I get a dog?"

"I don't know, it's only an expression. But you looked worried about something, are you seriously alright?"

"I'm fine! It's just that... I don't know where I'll be going after I get my chapter published. Will I be up there at the very top? Or down here where I'll be thrown away and forgotten. What if the admins try to stop me from going up the levels?"

"Well, it's not like we can do anything about it anyway right?" Blue's face looked content, almost comforting, he looked towards of the stories around us "It all depends on our authors and if they decide to take care of us." He looked to me "If your author is as caring and dedicated as you are, you'll definitely make it, okay?"

I looked down at my feet on the cold dark stone, moving one of them to kick a stone a small distance "Okay..."

He's right, I have to be dedicated to making it. Not moping around and wondering if I'll ever make it or not. It's not a possibility for me, it's only a matter of when.

Looking ahead with a little warmth in my cheeks I turned to Blue "Your right, let's keep going! Those CatGirls won't find themselves!" I grabbed Blue by the hand and ran toward the nearest stairwell, an idea forming in my head.

---

"I thought we were avoiding the stairwells," Blue whispered as he looked around us, he even looked up occasionally.

"We are, but if CatGirls only usually hang out on the upper levels, like you said, how're we gonna get them?" I asked while scouting ahead to make sure we didn't get too close.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The stairwells could've been as bright as a star in the night sky, but as far away as a mountain. Whenever you see it you think 'Oh! It's so close! It can't take longer than an hour to get there right?' Wrong. Then after moving in the same direction for 3 hours and the sun is already setting, that mountain still looks just as far away.

It's the same with the stairs, except if you think Mountains are big, the zero-one stairwell is bigGER. It's like a giant incline going straight up with the Gate Keepers occasionally flipping a switch that makes all the steps flat. Sending you AAAAaaaallllll the way down to the bottom, just for shits n' giggles. In summary, you have a bad time. According to Blue, on some of the higher floors, the stairs are moving on their own called escalators. Lucky.

The Gate Keepers are giant humanoids with glowing white skin but no face. They usually hold something super medieval, like a spear or a bow. Also, did I forget to mention the Gate Keepers have WINGS, how convenient.

Especially when they sometimes fly down to observe the fictions surrounding the stairs. They do this to see if any of the stories are conspiring to protest or rebel and block the entrance. We learned this from a fiction that was hiding on the outskirts of the stair's influence after the last "rebellion".

Apparently, some of the stories approved to go up the stairs -they were notified by a messenger birb sent by the Gate Keepers- decided not to go and refused to leave the entrance. After being down here for so long, the stories down here had grown attached to each other and didn't want to leave.

This didn't sit well with the admins...

...not one bit.

From what the old timer told us, they sent the Gate Keepers to take any story approved to go to the upper levels and forced them by carrying them up the stairs. Keeping the facade that everything was all right with their authors and moving smoothly.

As for the rest of the stories, the Keepers asked them to leave. When they didn't, the remaining ones were "Corrupted from a storage malfunction and were not able to recover any save files." or that was what their authors were told. The fiction telling us this story was one of the last ones to walk away before it all went downhill.

Blue, now understandably terrified, shook and looked like he was about to fall to his knees right then and there. I on the other hand,

was also terrified.

BUT! I didn't show it in front of the rebel or Blue because we still had to find some CatGirls and the only way to do that. Was to get closer to the stairwell and hope that one of them somehow fell down a hole or something. My future readers demanded it of course. If that didn't go to plan, well, we can always wait for the next rebellion to sneak past the Keepers right?

"Where did they all go?" Blue asked after a second of stunned silence, "ALL of them couldn't have been deleted, right? I mean if they didn't then what are the Gate Keepers still looking for?"

"If there was any son, I never saw em again after the attack." The rebel responded, a slight coldness in his voice "They just went POOF! 'N before I knew what I was seeing, all of em were gone." He threw some black dirt into the air.

"Please don't do anything stupid lads and go near the stairwell. All that's waiting there for you is a swift deletion to meet the others." With that being said, he stood up from the campfire that suddenly materialized when he started his story and walked off.

I turned to a wide-eyed Blue, a mischievous glint in my eyes "No please don't say what I think you're gonna say." he begged.

"Ready to head to the stairwell?"