Seth was alone on a dark road.
As he looked around, Seth found that he was back home, right outside his old childhood house that he used to share with his parents. For some reason, this sight didn’t comfort him.
The house was… off.
A gnawing feeling began to grow in Seth’s gut as he felt a foreign pressure in the back of his head. The picture in front of him looked exactly that, a picture. The surroundings were all blurry, but the building was also tarnished. Inconsistencies marred the surface of his old home. The window to his dad’s office was odd as well. Inside of the normal rectangle like the rest of the house, it was oblong and misshapen. Cracks stretched from the front door, oddly enough reaching towards the office as well.
As Seth’s eyes continued to roam over the eerie memory, his body began to drift forward. He looked down at himself, perplexed at what met his gaze. His body also looked blurry, just like the road and landscape. The hand he had lost before was gone yet again, but there was a haze of black around his stub. Seth examined his body while he got closer and closer to the front door. When he reached the top step of the porch, something else caught eye.
His shadow was wrong.
Despite the area not having any source of light, there were two shadows at his feet. One, to his right, was the familiar, black outline that followed Seth his whole life. The other, to his left, was foreign. Its shape was identical to the other, yet it was distorted, like a TV losing signal. The part that unnerved Seth the most was how the left shadow moved.
The hallmark of a shadow was its reflective properties. As you moved, it moved the same way, at the same time. It seemed the distorted shadow never got this memo. The left shadow moved before Seth. It was like it knew every move he was going to make and executed it just a second before he did.
He was about to continue experimenting with it when he finally reached his old front door. His movement did not stop as his body phased through the door.
A new picture graced his vision as he drifted into the dark entryway of his house. Static flashed in and out while he gazed into the hallway. Someone was there. A piercing screech raked across the vision and Seth screwed his eyes shut while attempting to cover his ears. Suddenly, the sound stopped, and he tentatively opened his eyes. Light was now returned to the picture and the figure was finally visible.
It was his mother.
Old memories arose as Seth stared at his deceased mother. She looked… worried? It looked like she was about to say something…
“Good morning Shnookums!”
Huh?
A cascade of darkness swept through the dream and destroyed the memory of his mother. Seth tried to halt whatever was happening, but it was to no avail as the dream faded into nothing.
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“Don’t make me start tickling you!”
Seth’s eyes opened groggily to find Will’s goofy face hovering above him.
“Whaaa?” he mumbled.
Will put on a look of mock hurt.
“Did you seriously forget? We all agreed to hang out today man! So get up sleepy head! Time to head out!”
Recollection filled Seth as he rolled off his bed. He turned around to berate Will when he noticed Sydney standing behind him.
“Why are you both in my room?”
Sydney gave an uninterested shrug while Will piped up.
“You weren’t answering the door bro, and we’re hungry.”
Seth rubbed his eyes as he waved them off.
“Lemme take a shower real quick.”
Will shot him a thumbs up while Sydney started for the door.
“Need me to wash your back brotha?”
Seth snorted while looking at the goofy grin plastered on Will’s face.
“Shut up and get out.”
Will busted out laughing as Seth herded him out of the door, the laughter drowning out the memory of his dream.
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“Well gang, where to?”
The three stood outside of the apartment building, deciding the next course of action.
“I don’t know, just pick a direction and we’ll go that way.” Sydney suggested.
Seth looked around, “How about right?”
The three all looked at each other, agreeing.
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“Right it is.” Will confirmed.
So right is where they went.
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“Holy shit guys, look at that!”
For the fortieth time in the last five hours, Will was pointing at something that caught his eye, just like a toddler. This time, he was luckily not pointing at another new species he thought looked funny.
The last couple times that occurred, Will got an unhealthy dose of Anima Influence that almost knocked him out. Thankfully, it seemed he finally learned that that was a bad idea. Seth wasn’t even going to look, until Sydney also spoke up.
“Wow.”
Seth turned to check out whatever had drew their interest.
“Oh crap.”
It was definitely something to behold. The three were now in awe over a ginormous shining building that towered over its neighbors. It took a moment for Seth to realize what he was looking at.
“Holy shit, is that the ladder?”
Both Will and Sydney turned to look at him with confusion as he analyzed the tower. It consisted of different tiers of pulsing glass. Take a skyscraper from Earth, mixed with a DNA strand, then multiply it by one thousand, and you would probably have something resembling the tower. The thing was, it didn’t even look like it was a building you could enter.
From the distance they were, it appeared that the periodically pulsing tower had walls that could be no thicker than a glass pane. They were so thin that the words on the walls appeared to be hanging in midair around the two “strands” that spiraled into the sky. What further confirmed Seth’s suspicions was the fact that names were scrawled all over the walls. They all stretched from the lowest wall that they could see from their spot on the street, to what would’ve been the atmosphere on Earth. Seth found that even though he should not have been able to see that far under any circumstances and still read legibly, he could still clearly make out each and every name.
He also found that only the top one thousand floors had numbers next to each name, and were significantly larger than the rest.
“DUDE!”
Seth’s train of thought was interrupted as he realized Will was yelling at him.
“Huh?” Will looked at him incredulously.
“The fuck you mean ‘huh’? What is the ladder you are talking about? You mumbled that and then didn’t talk for like five minutes there man.”
Seth waved him off apologetically, “My bad, was lost in thought. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about the ladder, it seems pretty popular. I don’t know all the details but I guess they have a ‘galactic plane ladder’ that measures people’s strength I think? You guys wanna go check it out? I admit I’m pretty interested in it.”
Sydney looked interested as well after his explanation, but Will didn’t seem convinced.
“I guess we can go check it out, but where’d you even hear about that? No one at The Chrome mentioned it to me.”
Seth shrugged.
“I just heard it mentioned at the Daemon Contest.”
Will’s expression just became even more lost.
“Dude, we haven’t even been here for a one week and you are already going to social events? Who are you and where did you take Seth?”
Seth scowled at Will and was about to deliver a killer comeback when Sydney shoved Will to the side while grabbing Seth rather painfully on the shoulder.
“You got to see the Daemon Contest?! I got turned away because they said I had to have been a higher rank in The Chrome?!”
Seth winced and tried to calm her rage.
“I didn’t know that! I was with a dude I met recently; he owns a place on the eastside of the city!”
Sydney stared at him until she seemed to accept his answer and begrudgingly let him go. Seth made sure to tread lightly around her while she cooled off.
“How about we head over there?” he suggested.
Will got up and started heading the way of the ladder, smart enough not to try and get back at Sydney for the time being. Seth followed him while Sydney trailed lazily behind, looking pissed.
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“Holy shit! This thing has gotta be HUGE!”
The three had finally arrived at the base of the ladder, or as most apparently referred to it as: The GP Ladder.
Currently, they were checking out one of the many consoles that were lining the outside of the tower. Each one contained a list of all participants of the GP Ladder, as well as a small summary of its details and a registration tab. Will was beaming at the number of people listed on the console. Apparently, literal billions of people were participating in the competition. According to the summary, whatever your placement was, decided all kinds of things about your way of life.
For example, those nearing the top would receive all kinds of benefits, as well as opportunities to gain sponsors to fuel your power growth. Also, those in the top thousand were hailed as incredible talents and were basically guaranteed to make huge waves on the galactic plane. On the other hand, those at the bottom were basically treated like trash. In the eyes of the people, if you have enough balls to register, you should have no reason for being near the bottom.
Obviously, there were people who never even registered, but were still incredibly powerful, but it seemed like this society branded those kinds of people as fools. If you have power, what’s the point of hiding it right?
I could think of a few. Seth thought.
“Wow this is actually pretty cool. Imagine being at the top of this thing, you would be seen as a god!” Sydney said with a hungry look in her eye.
“I’m honestly more impressed by the grading system.” Seth blurted out, causing the other two to look at him with a weird look again.
“I mean, look at this thing!” he pointed at the console.
“They have all sorts of categories that they file each participant into. Other than by tier, they have raw power, best fighting style, best strategies, and even a category for each combatant type; fire, water, light, dark, summoner, pugilist, the list doesn’t stop! How do they even document all of this crap?”
Seth delved deeper into the terms of registering.
“Holy shit, check this out! It says if you agree, you are documented under the watchlist of some Umbra name Centrin. That’s how they gauge your power level and all that other crap.”
Seth turned back to his friends, about to continue ranting when he noticed the look on their faces. They both looked awestruck.
“Are you guys seriously buying into this?!” he inquired incredulously.
“Come on dude, you have to admit that sounds cool! And who gives a shit if some rando Umbra is watching us? Any of them can watch you at any time! Not to mention, there are BILLIONS of people on this list! It’s not like millions of weirdos are watching your every move, its one dude, and he’s only watching you fight it looks like.” Will argued while Sydney nodded in agreement.
Seth couldn’t help but feel betrayed.
“What the hell man? I thought you didn’t care about all of the fighting stuff. You said you wanted to find treasure!”
Will looked a bit guilty after Seth’s accusation.
“I can still do that man, but how could I pass something like this up? It’s not like it’s a big deal, and the pluses outweigh the negatives. I wanna be a bigshot on the big leaderboard man! Don’t lie, you want to be up there too don’t cha?” Seth attempted to hold eye contact but couldn’t.
“That’s beside the point dude.”
Will slapped his wristband onto the console with a defiant look, automatically registering for the ladder.
“Whoops.”
Sydney smirked at the exasperated look on Seth’s face and signed up as well.
“One of us…one of us…” She began chanting until Will caught on and started grinning.
“One of us! One of us! ONE OF US!” Will began yelling.
Seth sighed with embarrassment as he noticed the people around them start to look at the group, annoyed.
“Christ dude, shut up before you pop a lung.”
He hesitated before slapping his band on the console, defeated. He looked dejectedly at the console, confirming his receipt and labeling him as Anonymous #875034669.
“You win, but because you made me do this, I vote its time to head back. I’m starting to get a headache from all your whining.”
Will took on another stupid grin as the group headed out, ready to turn in for the night.
They had to wake up early after all, tomorrow marked the end of the week they were given by Origin.