James hadn't considered the idea that a quest would be sent out without him at least being able to confirm the details first. It'll be difficult to communicate to people through the quest system if quests can be sent out without being able to review anything. Even if a quest requires something drastic, being able to at least edit the text to sound more sympathetic would do a lot to help them see the quests as more benevolent than malevolent.

"Tower, could I see a copy of the quest that was just sent out?" James asked, and waited for a brief moment as the tower took longer to respond than normal.

[Affirmative. Displaying the details of the latest quest.]

{Complete the Tutorial! (Tier 1)

Quest Type: Mandatory Single-Participant

Quest Recipient(s): All Climbers of wave 1

Description: You have survived the First Battle and your first day within the tower has now concluded. Don't get too comfortable, however, you aren't meant to enjoy your time here, you're meant to grow strong enough to leave! Defeat the Boss of Floor 3 within three weeks, or else!

Current Progress: Floor 1/3

Time Remaining: 503:59

Reward(s): Escape from the Tower.

WARNING: Failure to complete this quest may result in termination. Good luck!}

James was shocked. A time limit AND a mocking tone?! This could ruin everything! If it sounds like most quests are given to taunt or lure the climber into danger, then I can't count on climbers listening when I try to give them a quest that will help them! James sighed.

"Are there more mandatory quests above my admin tier that haven't been released yet?" James asked.

[Affirmative. Every climber wave will receive this quest after their first day on floor 1. In addition, high tier Administrators can create and issue quests without informing Administrators of a lower tier.]

"Oh. Dang. Thanks for letting me know now, Tower, or, wait, 61-3, I mean. Sorry." Did I really ask it what it wanted to be called just to ignore it right after? I was so surprised by the new quest being sent out without warning that I forgot what we were talking about mere seconds before!

[You are forgiven, Administrator James Wise.]

"Thank you." James said quietly. That's a relief to hear, I'd hate to have sabotaged my attempts to befriend the tower, or 61-3, so early. Back to the task at hand, it sounds like I'll have to watch out for other admins creating quests going forward.

"How likely is it that another admin will create quests for the climbers in this tower? Can you inform me if such quests have been created?" James asked. I need to know how likely it is for someone to try and cause trouble, and if they can do so without me knowing.

[Unknown. Having been built for the current round of the Struggle of Souls I do not have any prior experiences to draw from to calculate the likelihood of interference from other Administrators. Additionally, as a tier zero Administrator, it is possible to have the content and creation of quests hidden from you.]

"Damn it. Thanks for the heads up at least, Tow-, erm, 61-3."

[You are welcome, Administrator James. I shall notify you if I receive any quests from another Administrator that they have allowed me to inform you of.]

"Thank you, I appreciate that."

[First battle complete. Moving remaining climbers to floor 1. Tallying rewards.]

James balked at the reminder that he had completely missed his chance to observe the second set of climbers go through their first battle. As the results screen appeared before him, he felt a wave of guilt at the results.

{First Battle Statistics:

Climbers Survived: 41/100

Groups Wiped Out: 6/20}

James didn't read the rest of the list, or rather, he didn't retain any of the information. He had hoped more climbers would survive the battle this time, but instead two more groups had been completely wiped out, and 16 less climbers survived overall. And I don't even know why.

{You have earned 58 Tower Points through Viewer acquisition and retention!}

The prompt discussing his rewards did little to assuage James's sorrow. Damn it, there has to be a way to help more people survive the first battle. James thought to himself. Hold on, didn't I get another skill point when I reached level 3? Between the new tower modifier and everything that happened after, I never spent it! James realized, and pulled up his status with a thought, eventually finding where it said 'new skill available' and summoning the corresponding prompt.

{Choose your new Management Skill! Available Skill Points: 1

-Control Weather: Alter the weather of any Floor within environment related options.

-Create Challenge: Generate a Quest for Climbers that can only be completed by a portion of all Climbers involved in the Challenge. Degree of Reward is dependent on how many accept the Challenge, the ratio of potential winners and losers, and the degree of penalty applied to those who fail it.

-Create Event: Generate a Quest that can create a dramatic change to a Floor. Changes can include the redistribution of monster Spawn Points and Safe Zones, changes to available monsters and resources, landscape alterations, and even changes in the type of environment. Certain changes require the Management Skill "Floor Editor" to be accessible, and all changes require the Management Skill "Floor Editor" to become permanent.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

-Create Poll: Create a poll with options to be chosen by viewers of your Tower. Includes options such as allowing viewers to add their own choices, voting on multiple choices at once, and allowing the results to use an available Management Skill to a higher degree than what is otherwise possible.

-Floor Editor: Allows you to freely alter the landscape and monster Spawn Points of a Floor prior to its initialization. Combine with the skill Create Event to create Events that can cause permanent changes to an established Floor.

-Outside Broadcast: Create a projection outside of the Tower. The projection can display the list of surviving and/or dead Climbers, or display the feed from the most popular Observer. If you have access to the Management Skill Recorded Viewing, you may also display a chosen recording. If you have the Management Skill Spawn Observer, you may display the feed from a personal Observer in place of the most popular one.

-Recorded Viewing: Allows you access to the full recording of any Observer, letting you see scenes that have already transpired, and edit clips together with other recordings to create your own videos, which can be saved to a personal database, or broadcast through the Management Skill Outside Broadcast.

-Spawn Observer: Adds a function to the Observer Menu that allows you to purchase personal Observers with Tower Points. Personal Observers can be assigned to track a particular Climber or patrol a particular location, in addition to being moved manually. Anything seen through a personal Observer is hidden from Viewers and other Administrators of the same Administrator Tier, and access to it can be sold to others, whether Administrator, Viewer, or Climber, in exchange for various currencies. You can also set custom triggers to receive a notification when requirements are met, so that you can continue Tower management without worry of missing out on the action.

-Alternative Requirements: Allows you to change the requirements of preset Quests and create alternative prices for items and services of Tower managed Stores. A base cost is spent to edit the requirements to an equivalent cost, but more Tower Points can be used to increase or decrease the overall cost of a Quest or item in accordance to the difficulty deviation parameters determined by the user's Administrator Tier. This Management Skill does not work on Quests made by an Administrator of a higher Tier than the user.}

I don't remember any alternative requirements skill, it must be new like the tower bound modifier. The ability to change the requirements of a quest could be useful even without changing the exact value, if the quest is asking for something rare or scarce on a particular floor. But with the backtracking modifier already active, how often is something like that going to happen? The main benefit of the skill is being able to reduce quest requirements, especially for quests involving killing monsters, like the first battle, but if the degree of reduction is dependent on my admin tier and the tier of the quest..

"61-3, if I took the Alternative Requirements skill, would I be able to reduce the requirements of a quest at my current admin tier?"

"Affirmative. At its base, the Alternative Requirements skill allows a difficulty deviation of up to 5% on any quest or item."

"And would I be able to use it to affect the number of monsters in the first battle quest?"

[Negative. An Admin tier of 1 or higher is required to use the alternative requirements skill on the first battle.]

"Damn. Thanks anyway." Back to the drawing board then. As useful as alternative requirements could be, a reduction of only 5% on things isn't significant enough to do much, especially as I'd likely have to spend Tower Points to edit the price of items or the requirements of quests anyway. I'll pick this once I've obtained control weather for my island village idea, as it's still useful, but not enough to be an immediate priority. What I want to pick right now is something that could help more people survive the tutorial. Create poll is still useless, and create challenge still just looks like a skill meant to provoke climbers into fighting each other...

"61-3, would any of these skills be able to effect the first battle or the area where it takes place, such as create event or floor editor?" If either of those skills can effect the first battle, then I'd be able to make dramatic changes as I get ideas for ways to help them. I'll need to see more battles from beginning to end to get more ideas, but at the very least maybe I could use floor editor to build a fortified place for people to start from.

[Affirmative, however, Administrator James would not be able to do so with an Admin tier of 0. While environmental changes could be made by a tier 1 Administrator with the floor editor skill, an Admin tier of 2 would be required to use the create event skill on the first battle, or make specific changes to the landscape with the floor editor skill.]

"Right. Thank you for the heads up." Damn. I can't think of anything that could help. "Any ideas on a way I could help more climbers survive the first battle?"

[Negative. Tower made changes to the first battle and other mandatory quests can only be implemented when the rate of climber survival differs from acceptable parameters. In the absence of an Administrator, the difficulty parameters of individual quests are adjusted when the rate of successful climbers drops below 25% or rises higher than 75% of the total number of quest participants. When an Administrator is present, an alert is sent to Administrative Command any time more than 90% or less than 10% of any wave of climbers after wave five completes the tower. These rules are set so that Viewers of the Game continue to enjoy watching the players, as it has been noted that the number of Viewers drops significantly should too many climbers survive, and that the game ends too quickly if too many climbers die.]

James was stunned by the flood of information, and took a moment to respond.

"I-I see. Thank you for the lesson, To- 61-3." James said absently, nearly slipping up once more on the Tower's preferred name as he continued running through the information it had provided. So no, 61-3 doesn't have any ideas, and likely won't come up with any on their own. Considering they helped with that leave the village quest before, a request like 'a way to help more climbers survive' must have been too vague. More alarming is that mention of Administrative Command. It's... Disheartening to know that should I manage to get over 90 people from any wave to survive the tower that I could get penalized in some way, but it was already clear to me that humanity's survival wasn't a priority to the people in charge of this game, and saving that many people feels like more of a pipe dream than anything achievable at the moment. James attempted to take a deep breath, remembered he didn't have lungs, and promptly attempted to make a sound that mimicked the sound of a deep breath. I can make a sound like a sigh without any trouble, why is this so hard? Whatever, I was trying to focus myself, not get distracted on something else. I still want to save as many people as possible, I can worry about a possible penalty if I ever get close to reaching a 90% survival rate. Until then, I'm back at square one trying to get more people to survive the first battle.

The only skills I haven't gone over are recorded viewing, spawn observer, and outside broadcast. None of them do anything to help survival beyond helping me gather information. Well, except for outside broadcast, that lets me... broadcast... information... James felt his train of thought slow as an idea was born, and he quickly scrolled through the list of potential skills to reread descriptions. I hadn't thought of it as being useful for more than showing the world who all had been taken by the tower and which of them were still alive, especially as I can't control what scenes are broadcast by the skill without first buying recorded viewing or spawn observer. I don't know how much it would really help, but giving people outside of the tower a glimpse at how many are being taken, when they’re taken, and what to expect once within the tower could help them survive once they're here. Showing them how the first battle works and more details about the village and the floors within the tower will have to wait for me to unlock one of the other skills after, but even following the most popular climber should still give some information on what's going on in here, and if I make a quest encouraging everyone to fight goblins, then the people outside might learn more about them before the next wave of climbers appears.

James sighed. It doesn't do anything to help the people currently in the tower, but outside broadcast is the only way I can help people with the first battle. Every other skill would only be useful for those on floor one or higher, at least for as long as I'm at admin tier zero. With any luck, outside broadcast will help more people survive the first battle, and that in turn will give others in the tower more allies to work with in getting village quests completed and the floors explored.

I'll be delaying more useful skills like alternative requirements and control weather until level five, if I pick outside broadcast now and then recorded viewing on my next level, but I have two floors between now and climbers defeating the first boss the system has mentioned, and I doubt a second village will be unlocked before then. As for alternative requirements, until I can buy that skill I'll keep an eye out for what people are wanting to buy the most, and try to create quests that drop gold as a reward.

Alright, I've convinced myself.

{Skill: “Outside Broadcast” has been acquired. You have no more Skill Points remaining.}