The memories washed over Tormacc, making him feel like a boat bobbing in a storm at sea. The feelings he was getting were slightly foreign, and it took a little while for him to adjust, the senses of the race the memories belonged to not as Humen as he was. But as they kept pouring in as he slowly acclimated to the thoughts and feelings that weren’t his own. It helped that it seemed like the memories were actually meant to be absorbed, which felt strange to him. But as the flow slowed to a trickle he finally began to make sense of the knowledge that was forcefully shoved into his head.
First, it wasn’t complete. It seems whatever the milky white gemstone was it had been damaged along with its host, meaning Tormacc wasn’t able to get the complete picture. But he was able to get enough, and after he unscrambled the things that were in the wrong order he was stunned by what the memories contained.
Opening his eyes and sitting up he stared at the partial skeleton lying on the bedframe, an awkward expression on his face. The skeleton belonged to a race called Inerra, easily recognizable when they were alive by their fiery eyes and watery hair, and by that he meant their eyes were literally made of fire and their hair was literally made out of water. They were naturally dual-element aligned, and that was what had been attributed as the cause of them being listed as one of the small number of races among the Godlings.
But Tormacc now knew differently. Sure, they were naturally powerful, and if they came into The Tower as-is they would likely have a high survival rate. But they didn’t enter in their normal state. Like him, they cheated, except they did it much better than he did.
Tormacc had a ritual engraved in him from a very young age before entering The Tower. But even though the ritual was engraved in his very bones, there was only so much the ritual could do. Too much, and The Tower would recognize it as an enhancement and it would all be for naught. The kind of ritual Tormacc used was also limited by the material, as any sort of ritual that was enacted internally like that could only be so powerful. What made rituals work was the reagents they used, but the only reagent Tormacc had was his own body, and there was only so much power that could be gained from that.
The Inerra took a different path. The milky white gemstone that was in the skeleton’s head was a special material. It could hold a great deal of power, but, more importantly, it could also seamlessly be absorbed and assimilated into someone’s body, bypassing the restrictions that The Tower imposed.
Something like that should have been impossible; the ritual Tormacc used about as far as you could go. The gemstone, it was called Liera, should have been seen as a foreign substance by The Tower and removed on entry, but somehow it bypassed that, coming along with its host into the starting zone and giving not only a huge power boost but also a whole swathe of memories.
Much of the memories were garbled or indecipherable, but he guessed that the Inerra started with more information about The Tower than he had now, meaning there would be no pitfalls like missing out on resources in the starting zone due to lack of knowledge.
Perhaps even bigger than the knowledge the Liera included was the Essence it could gain for its host. After activating his ritual Tormacc gained less than forty Essence, but when the Liera was first activated it would suck in over a thousand Essence for its host. That wasn’t all though, as it would passively continue to syphon Essence from the surroundings, giving its host a passive Essence gain of around twenty Essence per day. The Inerra could have just lounged around in the starting zone and passively earned more Essence per day than Tormacc had been able to do by risking his life.
It was a shocking piece of knowledge, and Tormacc knew that if it became known that he knew about Liera he would be hunted to the ends of time. But the Liera wasn’t even the most shocking knowledge he gained. The most shocking thing was the scope of cheating that was involved with The Tower.
The Tower had been created countless years ago, an answer to the terrible Dimension Wars that had threated to end all life in the multiverse. Hundreds of races and dimensions had banded together to create The Tower, using it to allocate resources to each race based on how their champion did inside The Tower. As The Tower grew more and more races joined in, until now billions of races and dimensions had champions in The Tower, each one sending Essence back to increase the resources of their people back home.
As with all things, there had been some races, like the Inerra, that had been leading the project to build The Tower. Perhaps it only made sense, but there was still a part of Tormacc that was stunned to realize they had left in a backdoor. Or maybe they just knew exactly how the rules in The Tower worked, but whatever the reason, they were able to cheat, and the cheating they were doing wasn’t small ball either. There was a reason they were known as Godlings.
He wasn’t sure if the other Godling races were also using Liera to bypass the restrictions on sending people into The Tower with enhancements, but he was sure they had a similar cheat. The memories didn’t state it outright, but they did allude to other races getting a head start as well. There might have been more information about it in the part that was scrambled, but the information he received was already enough to be truly damning.
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It took him a while to digest all of it, but a few hours later he had worked through his future plans. No longer was he working just to earn Essence for his people back home. He now had a purpose, and that purpose was to climb The Tower and eventually reach the end, returning to his home so he could let everyone outside The Tower know what was going on. Or at least his people. He wasn’t above monopolizing the benefits the Godlings had and extending them only to his race.
Among the information he had received from the piece of Liera was more information about The Tower, or more specifically, about its end. It turned out there were three sections in The Tower, corresponding to the First City, the Second City, and the Third City. He had to make his way through each of them, each one progressively harder than the last, until he was finally able to reach the final Shard and return home. That should have been a straight forward proposition except for the major fuckup the original builders made when creating The Tower.
Perhaps it was unfair to criticize them for messing up something as monumental as The Tower, but they certainly had messed up. The Tower, like the name suggested, was originally supposed to be a literal tower, one where you moved through each Shard in order, taking breaks between Shards in the cities before you would finally reach the last Shard and the exit portal to return home. Somewhere along the way that disappeared, and instead they were left with hundreds of Shards that were only loosely connected to the cities, people in The Tower forced to enter random Shards, sometimes much sooner than they should have, like Tormacc had with the first Shard he entered.
The Tower was originally supposed to entail steady progression with a smooth difficulty curve. Instead, everything was a mess, the Shards all out of order and mixed up. The most important part of that though was that the transition point from the First City to the Second City and the Second City to the Third City were Shard-specific. That meant that if you weren’t in the right Shard you were stuck in your current city, unable to progress.
With a setup like that it was no wonder people gave up and formed retirement communities on more hospitable Shards. Without the knowledge of the Godlings on which Shard to enter it would be impossible to actually climb The Tower without insane luck or somehow hearing about the specific Shard you needed to enter; something that didn’t seem to be that common. And then even if you knew which Shard you needed to enter you still had to wait for it to appear, a wait which Tormacc suspected could easily take multiple years or even decades.
The difficulty didn’t dissuade him though. He finally felt like he had a concrete goal. Before, he had fought both for honor and glory and also just to survive, but just staying alive couldn’t make someone actually live. There needed to be more for that, and for him, that something was a goal; and as goals went, escaping The Tower and carrying the secret he possessed back home to his people was a worthy one indeed.
He had been feeling a little disillusioned with The Tower as of late; the process of growing stronger was valuable in and of itself, but sometimes it was hard to see that value. What use was risking your life when you were just going to die of old age in some retirement community anyway? He had been trapped; his sole purpose in life to slave away and earn Essence for a people he would never know. He didn’t resent his task, but knowing there was an eventual end and that he could actually succeed gave him a renewed purpose.
Getting up from where he had fallen down when the memories assaulted him he walked over to the skeleton and careful broke away the bone surrounding the Liera, gently unearthing the milky white glow until it was revealed in its entirety. Carefully scooping it up, he held it up to his forehead, concentrating on the smooth sensation of the gemstone touching his head.
It took a few seconds, but soon the Liera transformed, becoming liquid as it was absorbed into his forehead right above his eyebrows, soon his bare skin once more becoming the only thing visible, no sign left of the gemstone he had held there moments before.
While externally there was no sign of the Liera, internally he was able to feel it, the memory bank it contained still there for easy access should he need a refresher on the memories it contained. If it were just that he might not have absorbed it, as once it was absorbed it could only be removed with his death, so no one else could peruse the memories it contained while he was alive. But while the memories were slightly jumbled from the previous owner perishing, the Essence absorption feature was still fully-functioning, and Tormacc could feel Essence slowly start to be drawn towards him.
Twenty Essence a day wasn’t a huge amount, but over time it would add up. It also meant he had no need to worry about the Essence tax, the gains from the Liera more than able to offset it for the immediate future. Perhaps there would come a time when he would have to pay more than twenty Essence for the tax, but until then instead of passively losing Essence he was gaining it.
Glancing around the room he shook his head as he eyed the open chest. This room had been left by a previous champion of the Inerra for a new generation, many powerful treasures and artifacts hidden away for the new champion to find. It was unfortunate that the dead Inerra had a spatial storage skill and not a storage artifact, as it meant that anything in that storage disappeared upon their death. He wasn’t too sad about missing out on the treasures though, as the Liera and the knowledge it contained were reward enough.
Exiting out of the cave, Tormacc made his way to the large island, nothing of interest left for him here. It had been pure luck that he had entered the Shard on this island, as normally it was protected by a powerful formation, the island invisible to the surroundings unless you knew the correct way to bypass the formation.
As he crossed over, the island disappeared behind him, the secrets it held now only existing within his forehead. Perhaps someone would discover the island in the future, but if they did, it would only be an empty shell, devoid of both monsters and treasure, nothing of interest for the treasure hunters to find: Tormacc taking the last thing of value.