For the next four days, they ran as fast and for as long as they could, only stopping when Cen or Tuk, who had the lowest stamina, could run no longer.

Nothing came out to bar their path. There were no obstacles, and no mysteriously broken parts in their path either. The yellow arrows stretched before them, uninterrupted, steadily guiding them towards the end.

Rel hung in there, from Kur’s back, sleeping for the most part. Not even her nightmares kept her awake for long now.

Her HP was full, but it was helpless against whatever the Yearning was doing to her.

Nobody said anything, but Nar was beginning to fear the worst.

“Wait!” Jul suddenly said. “Stop!”

They came to a halt, gasping and sputtering for air.

“What’s wrong?” Kur asked her.

“I sense something!” Jul said. “Someone. People I think.”

“Climbers or…”

“I don’t know,” Jul said. “But I think they can sense us too. They’ve stopped.”

“Please don’t be cannibals,” Mul said, putting on his knuckle dusters.

“Are they coming towards us?” Gad asked.

“No. They’re slowly moving away from us, I think.”

“Could be Climbers,” Viy said. “We’re all going to the same place, aren’t we?”

Kur nodded. “We have to keep going forward. Weapons out.”

With their weapons at the ready, they continued at a light jog.

“Jul, how far are we?” Kur asked.

“At this speed, we’ll get there in about ten minutes,” she said.

“Okay.”

They ran in a tense silence, following along the path that had been their near constant lifeline towards the surface.

“Almost there!” Jul said. “And they’ve stopped now!”

“Slow down! Into formation!”

They slowed down to a quick walk, closing ranks and ready for anything.

A few seconds later, a voice shouted from the darkness.

“Stop!” it said.

“We don’t want any trouble!” Kur shouted back.

“Then why are you chasing us?”

“We’re not! One of us is injured! We just want to reach the Gates as fast as possible and that path takes us this way!”

There was a moment of silence.

“If you let us be, we’ll let you be. We’ve never harmed any Climbers!” Kur said.

Nar fidgeted from foot to foot, preparing himself to dash forward and for the moment his [NPC] switched on.

“Fine! You walk by us though!” the person said.

“Okay! We’re coming! We just want to get through!” Kur said.

He motioned to the rest of them, and Gad took them onwards.

Slowly, the path pushed back the darkness, until another path was revealed beyond it. The two paths joined together, and they stared at the party that awaited them.

“You go through, and we’ll wait until you’re gone,” their party leader, a female morsvar, said.

Kur shook his head. “No need for that. We’re all on a time limit here. Just keep going as you were.”

The morsvar nodded and gestured for her people to open up a path for them.

Gad started forward, her shield and mace ready, but not raised high enough to appear threatening.

“Nice and easy,” Kur said.

They walked into their midst.

A human brawler. A morsvar tank. An altei two handed warrior. A caster which had a pinkish, shining skin. Two quams, one using daggers like Jul and one using short swords, like Teb, from Row’s party, had done. Another morsvar, the leader, and behind her, another pink skinned sentient and a human, both with bows at the ready.

“An alfin,” their leader suddenly said.

Kur looked at her in surprise. “You know about them?”

“There are alfin in our cubeplant,” she said, and grimaced “I hope she makes it.”

Kur nodded and Gad kept walking.

Nar glanced back towards them, as they slowly faded into the darkness behind them. They never dropped their guard, and neither did Nar, keeping his eyes on them till they were fully gone.

“They are coming after us, slowly,” Jul informed them.

“Keep an eye on them, but I think we’re okay,” Kur said. “As for us, we’re running. Go!!”

They didn’t have to be told twice, and sped forward, ever onwards, towards the end.

Soon enough however, Jul called out again.

“There’s another party up ahead. Maybe more than one.”

“Maybe we’re almost there!” Tuk said.

“Maybe!” Kur said.

“I don’t think we can avoid them,” Gad said. “There will probably be more and more of them as we get closer.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“I know… We’ll keep going. Just be careful everyone.”

They kept going and soon met another group of people. Turned out that these were three parties Climbing together.

They repeated the same stare off while Kur explained what they were doing, and then they walked through the three parties. The experience was much more unnerving considering how many more Climbers were surrounding them this time.

However, they managed to go on without issue.

Another while later though, they found another group of people. And then another. More and more of them they found until suddenly, they found themselves facing a massive queue of slow-moving Climbers.

The light of the path stretched onwards and backwards, as far as Nar could see. The arrows there were triple their usual size and bathed everyone in a brilliant yellow light from below.

“What do we do?” Cen asked, stunned by the amount of people that walked past them.

“We go on,” Kur said. “And we find out where everyone is going.”

They joined the queue without any trouble. In fact, they were politely called forward, told to join the queue by a party that stopped to let them in. The Climbers even smiled at them.

Nar was shocked. He had forgotten that Climbers were people and that people could and were, generally, nice to each other.

Maybe we really are at the end, he thought.

The Climbers around him talked and joked. The air was filled with the same sort of light atmosphere that precluded the season end celebration back at the cubeplant. The Unclean weren’t invited of course, but they always made do with their own little celebration. And it felt just like this.

As they walked, Nar found himself relaxing too, and conversations broke out across their party.

“Their clothes are all orange,” Tuk observed.

“Like the poor bastards we found in that broken place,” Mul said.

“Orange. Maybe like the Pressure?” Cen mused.

“Maybe,” Tuk said. “But then, why are ours purple? Did we skip something?”

“More like we had to fight our way out of a certain something,” Mul muttered. “Remember, they really seemed to like purple? Purple fire. Purple light. Purple eyes…”

“Oh… Is that why?” Tuk wondered.

Nar nodded to himself. That’s what he had always thought as well.

“Let’s not talk about that,” Kur told them.

Nar made a face and realized that Viy had gone quiet. The other three realized the same thing and Tuk quickly changed the subject.

“Anyways, this is really a lot of people! I expected to see some Climbers at the end, but never this many!”

As they walked slowly forward, they found more and more Climbers coming in from side corridors, which formed separate queues that joined into theirs. And they quickly realized that a system was in place. You let someone in, and then you went, and the party behind you would let someone in again, and so on and so on.

In this manner, they slowly progressed over the course of nearly three hours.

“This is worse than running,” Mul said.

“It is!” Cen said. “And I hate running.”

“I-I hear something!” Jul said.

“What?” Nar asked her.

“It’s… I think it’s a lot of people. Like a lot a lot. Coming from a big room.”

“Crystal. How many people are there?” Tuk asked.

Another while went by and Nar was suddenly able to hear it as well, his [Hearing] picking up on the sounds of a truly immense crowd.

“That’s a lot of people…” he whispered.

Next to him, Jul nodded with a serious look. “Why are there so many?”

“We’ll find out soon,” Kur told them.

Nar could barely contain his excitement and the murmur of the crowd continued to grow.

Around them, the walls of the corridor grew farther and farther apart, to accommodate the growing number of Climbers. The ceiling grew taller and taller, until it was just a distant darkness above them.

“I see the end!” Jul shouted.

And there it was, a large opening towering above them, spilling a bright white light over the gathered heads.

Crystal Almighty! Is this it! Is this finally the end?

At long last, it was their turn, and they made it through the tall, rectangular opening.

“My Crystal…” Tuk whispered.

At their feet was a wide set of stairs, maybe a hundred steps of them, heading down to the floor of an enormous open space. It was probably about 1000-feet wide on the side of the wall they had emerged from, and it opened up until it was well over 2000-feet, with a 1000-feet high ceiling above them. The ceiling seemed to be all one giant light, and diffuse, bright white shone down from it, and onto the scene below.

And what a scene it was!

Below them, the room was completely filled with thousands upon thousands of Climbers.

Beyond it, there was only an empty void.

“Where’s the exit?” Mul asked.

“Don’t stop!” Kur told them. “Let’s keep going. I’m sure the System will tell us something.”

Numb, Nar followed after the others, descending the steps to the crowd below.

He stared wide eyed at the immenseness of that crowd. There were probably as many people here as half of his entire plant. Except these were all Climbers.

A window startled him.

Quest, The Final Stretch, completed!

Well done, you have reached the exit within the time limit.

You are granted participation in the Ceremony of Final Atonement.

The ceremony will take place in 3 days, 19 hours, 47 minutes and 04 seconds.

Rewards:

1. Right to participate in the Ceremony of Final Atonement.

2. Experience and attributes gains are being calculated.

3. Facilities are available. Food and consumable equipment dispensers are available.

4. All recovery skills boosted by 200%. All stamina and HP recovery boosted by 300% during sleep.

Rest and recuperate before the Ceremony.

You have done well in reaching here.

Warning: This is a sacred no-combat area. Any attempts to infringe upon this rule will be punished with immediate death.

“Holy Crystal! Immediate death?” Mul said. “Damn. The System’s not messing around.”

“Come on, let’s go find a spot to rest in,” Kur said. “We can talk about everything once we’re settled down somewhere.”

“And at least that means we’re safe here,” Tuk told Mul. “Don’t think anyone is going to be stupid enough to attack anyone.”

They made it to the end of the stairs and were soon swallowed by the crowd. Climbers were everywhere, going and coming and doing Crystal knew what.

Nar noticed that the majority of them wore orange colors, though he noticed some purples, like them, and even an even lesser presence of blues and greens and even one red. Though that could have just been a very dirty and stained orange. The party in question looked absolutely battered, and its members leaned on each other for support, as bleeding, they walked on to find a resting spot of their own.

“This is crazy,” Jul said.

Nar nodded. “I never dreamed of anything like this. Until we got the notification, I always thought it was just going to be us, going out through a really big door.”

“Yes! Like the Doors of the plant,” Jul said, looking around her with wide eyes.

Nar kept to himself that, in plenty of his imaginations and plans, he had expected to have made it there alone, his party either dead or useless.

Now, walking amongst all these Climbers, he once again breathed a happy, relieved sigh. Thank the Crystal that his dad had been right, and that he had come to that amazing party. He couldn’t have hoped for any better. Nor could he have hoped to have met and come to care for such incredible people.

Like Gad said, it felt like they had all found their new family.

“Holy shit!” someone said nearby. “It’s Kur’s party!”

They stopped, surprised to hear someone who apparently knew them.

“Jaz?” Tuk said. “My Crystal… Is that you?”

Jaz, Row’s archer, laughed and spread his arms wide. “The one and only!”

Tuk and Jaz hugged, laughing and slapping each other's backs.

“I can’t believe it’s you!” Tuk said.

“Me neither! But wait! Did you just arrive?” he asked. “Damn! You must be wrecked! Come on! You guys need to stay next to our party! There is still space there, by the edge!”

Kur nodded tiredly. “That would be nice, Jaz.”

“I’ll take you guys there! Come on! The others are going to love this!”

Tuk and Jaz took the lead., and the rest of them followed after.

“There’s a lot of aura everywhere,” Jul said, looking around.

Nar nodded. He had noticed it too.

Almost everywhere they went, it was easy to spot the tell-tale gray hazy and swirling glow of someone’s aura, or please sitting or lying down and using their [Meditation] skill.

What they both left unsaid, however, was what was lacking. Anywhere he looked he found aura. Being used, practiced, recharged. Anything. But there wasn’t a single hint of light blue electricity, nor of fire, nor of ice.

If even there, at the very end, amongst thousands and thousands of Climbers, with casters, with tanks, with ranged and melee DPS of all sorts and kinds, with many, many weapons he had never before seen all around him… If even now there was no hint of magic, then perhaps, it had truly never been within their grasp. Not in their whole Climb.

It filled him with a bitterness that twisted his lips.

It was a good thing he had used his aura after all. From the looks of it, he had agonized for months over nothing. There had never been any aether for them in the end.