This cycle of the Tower of Transcendence, there had been a few standouts. Every year was counted as a cycle for the up and coming E Rankers of the Multiverse, and was a way of cataloging the great talents of the lower ranks. Many factions recruited from the Tower, depending on how far one got. This year, most challengers had been unable to get to the fiftieth floor, which corresponded with a C Rank level of potential. Of course, this said nothing about how far one would actually reach in their life, just how far they could in an ideal scenario. Still, among trillions of challengers, there were a few million who reached that level. The Tower already weeded out those who were destined to achieve little in their lives, leaving the talented behind.

Past that though, the rates were vanishingly small, and most who reached that level climbed under an alias, making it very hard for any potential benefactors, or malefactors, to know who they were. Before the fiftieth floor, powerful factions could pay to watch challengers fight under their real identities, but afterwards, they were barred from doing so.

Petitions were often made to those who reached high levels, but they were not always accepted, out of paranoia. No sect leader wanted someone with higher potential than them. As a result, only the B Rank factions regularly reached out to those who climbed beyond the fiftieth floor.

There had only been three people to reach the sixtieth level, each of whom were snapped up instantly by B Rank factions, who extended offers that could not be ignored. Each of them were true prodigies, able to fight up dozens of levels against other E Rankers. However, other than that, the crop was sparse.

All of the factions past a certain level watched the Tower, as they wanted to get an idea of up and comers in the Multiverse. The viewing service was highly limited, only showing what the Tower allowed, so as to preserve privacy, but one could still see how strong a person was from it. It also gave a list of titles, except for those that might get the climber in trouble. Save for the most vaunted of prodigies though, almost nobody was watched until at least the thirtieth floor.

It was highly unusual then, that two newly ascended, both from a universe that had been barely part of the System for a few months, were the subject of heated debate among the various factions. They were, of course, Sam Atlas and the Overlord. They were in the unique position of being the property of Tantalos Veruvax, but if they made a good enough showing, that would hardly matter. Already heavily accoladed, credited with the deaths of E Rankers, multiple in Sam’s case, before actually reaching that rank, they were rich prizes indeed for any faction that could snap them up.

The Adventurers’ Guild was starting to regret snubbing Sam before, now that they could see his true potential. However, it was unlikely now that he would join them, and publicly changing their offer for an E Ranker, no matter how powerful, would be akin to baring their honor before the whims of an ant. In other words, unacceptable.

Meanwhile, the Overlord was under the eye of the Isolationists, who rarely extended offers to anyone. However, his Dao and temperament were well suited to their modus operandi. At this point, both men were quite well known among those who tended to watch the newly initialized universes, as some of the peak prodigies of the age.

All of this attention was beginning to become a thorn in the side of Tantalos Veruvax, who, while powerful, could not stand up against a B Rank faction. He would not go to war against a superior force over the fate of two of his slaves, no matter how promising they were. However, he was willing to sell them off. Nobody could have anticipated the spate of talent that the universe, let alone a single planet, contained. A dozen Dao Seeds within a few months, and dozens more ready to ascend to E Rank. Even more surprising, two that were already there.

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The universe was quickly proving to be a goldmine, and Tantalos was ready to eke out every last bit of value that he could from it.

He sat in the throne room of his capital planet, poring over the hundreds of requests that he had received from other factions to buy the most promising of his universe’s crop from him. Ranging from Manarox and Elvaron of the Grakoth, to the three Warrior Kings of the Dougon, there were many fine specimens under his control, more than in any other universe he had ruled before. Of course, there was one planet that had received the highest number of petitions by far. That of Earth.

Tantalos smiled as he saw the ridiculous sums being offered to him for possession of Sam Atlas, the man who had caught his eye during the very first day of initialization. Somehow, he had already made it to the Tower of Transcendence, and the values offered were all given with a modifier depending on how far he reached. The common consensus was that he would make it to the sixtieth floor, at the very least. While the factions of the wider Multiverse witnessed F Rankers killing E Rankers at a much higher rate than out in the Rim, it was rare enough to be a near mythical feat, at least relative to how many F Rankers there really were.

It was because of achievements like this that Sam was worth more than entire solar systems to some of the factions offering. However, when a man owned entire universes, such petty value was nothing. Tantalos mentally filtered out all of the offers that were anything less than what he considered Sam to be worth. He was nothing if not ambitious.

In a distant Multiverse

Isabella Dantorian smiled as she reclined on a couch made out of the pure concept of the Dao of Clouds, mingled with the Dao of Comfort. Her little investment in the boy known as Sam Atlas was starting to bear fruit. Although he possessed great potential, all of the causal forecasts she had made upon his birth ended in death. All save for the one in which he was left to grow up by himself, developing the will that he would need later on. Even better, the man who now called himself the Overlord was developing at a far greater speed than she had thought possible. It seemed that at least for now, Sam and his father had created enough of an alliance to fight together.

“I wonder how long that alliance will last once they get a taste of true power,” she mused, watching as the two men started their journey into the Tower of Transcendence.

She swiped her fingers across the air, and the arrangement of stars making up the pixels of the image shifted. An entire galaxy’s worth of celestial bodies had been arranged to create a screen in the sky above her, the ultimate viewing experience for what she was sure to be a highly entertaining spectacle.

Whatever was to come, it would spell the beginning to a new chapter in the annals of the Dao. The alliance of two Dao Heritage bearers, both of incredibly powerful Daos, could provide the boost that Isabella’s faction needed to finally return to primacy. They were already upon a path nearly untraveled.

Out of the billions of similar beings throughout the history of the Boundless Expanse, only a few hundred had ever made it past E Rank. Isabella could tell that these two were different. In the coming decades and centuries, it would become apparent whether they would rise to the apogee, or sink beneath the weight of untold trillions of years of failure. That was an outcome entirely up to them.