Once was enough

Somehow I made it to the top of the Tower.

Not because I was one of the best, but because I didn't die like the rest of humanity and I still cared enough to take my shot at the Tower Master who was responsible for killing everyone I ever cared about.

Or more realistically, take the hit for someone else that might end him.

There were three hundred and eight of us left when our time ran out and it was necessary to climb past the last floor and face off against Baal.

The three hundred and eight people that were left of human race that is.

After the Tower came, Earth began to fall apart. Not just the environment, but the whole thing was slowly torn apart until no one could go back at all.

You were either in the Tower or dead.

After that, the same pattern began in the world that made up the first floor. It was climb or die.

And each floor was tougher than the last.

Several groups numbering in the thousands made their way to the top floor, and we, the last handful that was left trained for years before we headed for the top.

Not alone. There were followers recruited from the many races of the tower. Along with mercenaries, constructs, pets, and others. But the three hundred and eight were the last of humanity.

The best and brightest, the champions of an entire race. The strongest, smartest, and most determined humanity had the offer.

And somehow me. Your basic meat shield.

Now, Baal is dead.

And it’s down to six of us still breathing.

I finished using up some runic healing scrolls on to stabilize Maui, the big Polynesian martial artist, and looked around the battlefield.

Kimodo, a young looking woman in red robes finished stabilizing Yanda, and Emile Snapshot.

Then she looked up at me for a moment, before dropping her head to look at her brother’s corpse lying next to his wife's remains.

A short distance away, Ellington, our leader, dropped to his knees.

Six of us.

That all the survived of the human race.

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At least we killed the tower’s master. All that he had taken from Earth and from all the people who died in his tower didn’t do him a damned bit of good in the end. We offed the mother fucker.

“Now what?”

Kimono looked up at me and scrunched up her face in confusion. "Who are you?"

I shrugged. “Klevenger. I focused on a meat shield build and just never died. So I made it here, to the end, and for some reason once again I didn’t die.”

“Sorry about your brother.”

She stared at me for a moment before Ellington spoke up. “We go back.”

We both looked over at him. “Huh?”

He stood and gave us a haunted look. “I got a special drop for making the finishing blow on Baal. I can send seven people back in time to the day before the Tower rose. We can do things better the second time around. Warn people, save more of them, do it better the second time.”

Kimono looked down at her dead brother with hope in her eyes.

“No thanks.”

They both looked at me in shock.

"This sucked the first time around. I've gotten hurt so many times and suffered so much. I don't know why I kept going this long, but I'm tired of it all. Good luck, but I'm going to pass."

They tried to talk me out of it, but they had three other people to go with them. Special people. Famous people. Powerfull people. They didn't need me.

Ellington pulled me aside to try to talk me into joining them one last time before they left. “We need you.”

I looked him in the eye, then turned and began running for it. “I said no. Good luck through.”

He sighed and walked over to the other four, taking out a cube the size of an egg covered in shimmering colors.

At least he didn't try to knock me out and just drag me along. From the distance, I could see the burst of whirling bands of light twisting all around for a moment before they all vanished.

Cast back in time to change history, so that this fight and everything that led up to it would have a different outcome.

...and I was still here.

I waited for the change in the timeline to catch up with me.

…and nothing.

It took me a couple of years, but I figured out that the top of the tower was outside of the universe that Earth and the tower itself were in. Changing history in that universe did nothing to affect what had happened here.

It was my theory anyways.

The dead all around me had storage devices filled with time stopped stored food and drinks, and I had taken an upgrade once not to need to eat or drink anymore since the other options hadn't been any better.

Most of the storage devices had been left unlocked for anyone who survived the last fight to have access to their contents, the rest were permanently beyond my reach.

So I ate and drank every now a then as a way to pass the time.

Roast Baal wasn't too bad either. Fair was fair, he had been feasting on our deaths for decades.

Nothing rotted up here. Which was good since there were bodies everywhere.

Eventually, I picked up the artifact blade Carver of Fate and used it to start cutting stone blocks out of ten mile or so across top of the tower.

The blade wasn't happy about this since it didn't consider me worthy of wielding it. But since I agreed with it on that and just wanted to use it to make some tombs, starting with its last wielder, it reluctanly agreed.

Plus, it was pretty bored too.

Some people had tablets and other electronics loaded up with books, movies, and games in their storage. While I had only learned basic magic, stuff anyone could learn regardless of their class, it was enough to keep the tablets charged, and myself supplied with magical shower spells.

I also found some repair magic for some of the constructs, so I had some company over the years while I waited...

Ellington, Kimono, her brother and the others showed up two years earlier than the first time, right in the middle of a game.

Red Razor, the seventeen foot tall war golem, was playing Filbert the Paladin. And he wasn’t happy about the interruption since Carver had taken forever to figure out what spell his wizard was casting. “I rolled a twenty, somebody look so it still counts.”

I waved at Ellington, who stood shocked at the head of several thousand or so people standing behind him, all of them looking at the stack of bones that had been Baal. With his twelve horned skull sitting on top.

It had taken over twenty years to finish him off, but it wasn't like he was going to go bad up here.

“Hi guys, glad to see everybody on their feet. So let me fill you in.”

The people in the raid party, were not the last of humanity, just the best of them. Not that we didn't lose a lot of people the second time around. But the five people who had gone back had done a great job.

As people began to mill about with Kimono gleefully pointing out the gravestone for her brother and his wife I had made with their names on it, Razor called me back to the table to finish the Dungeon.

I waved him off for a moment, I had to talk to one last person.

I looked at me, a younger looking, less haunted looking version of me, who had once again made it to the top.

He looked back. “So, you got room for one more at your table?”