“Kanna! Grab hold of my hand and don’t let go!”
Liam’s father was still holding him up ever since he was trying to show him the heroes that descended from the Ivory Tower.
Turning Liam around, Leon wrapped his arm around his son’s waist tightly. He grabbed his wife’s hand and sprinted to an alleyway between the buildings nearby. He rushed to get ahead of the oncoming stampede.
There was no hesitation.
Leon was not a summoner, but he was a seasoned and an experienced hunter. His instincts were built and tested from the encounters with danger from his excursions outside of the walls. He knew the psychopathic ruthlessness of the Dungeon Heathens.
Clutching tightly on his father’s wide back, Liam peeked over his father’s shoulder as they made their escape. He would have nightmares from the scene.
He witnessed the descending wave of molten fire reflected off the walls of the Ivory Tower. The tower was unphased, however, the people panicked as the molten fire reflected and blasted back in their direction.
The screams and frantic attempts of people running, trying to put out the fire from their melting bodies was engraved into his mind. Liam helplessly watched as they desperately failed to extinguish the flames. Bodies of charcoal collapsed on the melted stone ground.
Suddenly, the emergency flares launched into the sky, exploding in colorful lights.
Liam flinched from the thundering bellow of the Hero Kai in bronze armor. Suddenly, a monstrous tiger taller and larger than the platform of the stage appeared. It somehow sniffed out the perpetrator and launched off to a nearby building to kill the Heathen.
The other heroes summoned their creatures and began to calm the crowd.
Right when the situation was starting to seemingly settle, more figures in black hooded cloaks appeared. One by one, they appeared on the roofs of the buildings surrounding the Ivory Tower.
All of the hooded figures oozed with a dark aura as they chanted loudly in unison.
“COME FORTH FROM THE DEPTHS! GALDALGUS! WREAK HAVOC AND KILL EVERYONE!”
The Dungeon Heathens ushered forth a forbidden summoning technique, using their lives to pay the price.
“AAAAAHHH!!!”
They screamed in horror, pained from agony and despair from the twisting of the upper half of their bodies. Their bodies soon contorted and their blood splattered as their insides were ripped out from an invisible force.
The screaming stopped as their dead bodies were ripped apart into unidentifiable pieces. The pieces emulsified and congealed into a slushy black liquid. Suddenly the stream of liquid was sucked into the air. It began flying to a single floating point. The liquid of human flesh accumulated and gathered.
“Everyone! Attack the point where that substance is converging! We must weaken that summon or destroy it. If we don’t we’re all dead!” The heroic man who had summoned the large tiger shouted out to the other 8 heroes.
He had seen the forbidden summoning ritual before at another tower of a nearby kingdom. He could not stop the summoning, but he had to reduce the devastation as much as possible. He summoned forth all his large and powerful creatures under his command. They appeared from cracks in space one after the other.
“Blast that point with all of your attacks!”
All of his creatures complied and beams and balls of powerful energy blasted the spot accumulating with the emulsified dead bodies. Explosions blasted out and the smoke covered and hid the point in the air.
Cheers rang out from the crowds, but the man silenced them.
“Evacuate! You fools! This is merely the beginning!”
The comment struck terror into the citizens, and they continued their stampede as they fled.
He looked around at his fellow summoners. “Everyone merge or attack with your summons! We must hold off the forbidden summon until it consumes all of the dead bodies!”
A deep bellow echoed out, shaking the surroundings.
“HAHAHA! YOUR EFFORTS ARE USELESS! FEEL MY WRATH, FOLLOWERS OF THE TOWERS! YOU SHALL ALL BE DESTROYED! YOU HAVE THE HONOR TO WITNESS THE POWER OF THE GREAT GALDALGUS!”
A giant behemoth taller than the surrounding buildings ripped through the spot where emulsified dead bodies accumulated. The entire plaza shook as the gigantic demon creature descended. Its body was covered by a giant exoskeleton of fortified bone wrapped around the thick folds of red and purple skin. A pair of horns curled to the side of its inverted skull, jerking from its boisterous laughter.
“By the gods of the tower! Those dirty Heathen bastards summoned a creature from the lower floors of the dungeons! This is madness!”
Kai led the other heroes, and had them focus on their task to delay more destruction.
“Reinforcements have arrived!!! Focus and Attack!!! Waste away its energy! It can’t stay summoned for too long. The more it has to defend itself, the less destruction it can do!”
A flood of attacks rained down on the monstrous demon creature from all sides. The barrage of attacks were relentless. It tried to shield itself as it was slowly pushed around.
A fearsome bellow from the creature roared out, blasting past the walls of the kingdom. The deafening noise at point blank momentarily had its attackers cowering, covering their ears. The giant creature was angry and out for vengeance. With full fury, it returned their attacks, blasting out rays of condensed black fire from its mouth.
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The attack collapsed buildings, ripped the earth, and tore through the flesh of the heroes’ and their summons.
Liam looked with fright at the devastating power of the behemoth, but he was pulled away by his father as they hid in the depths of the sewers.
The sounds of destruction and loud explosions seemed to last forever.
Screams and shouts from escaping citizens, like themselves, were heard running above them. The fight raged on and the family of three held each other praying to survive the ordeal.
A last deafening scream from Galdalgus ended the fight.
“I SHALL HAVE MY REVENGE, FOLLOWERS OF THE TOWER! WE SHALL MEET AGAIN! NEXT TIME IN THE DUNGEONS! I’LL KILL YOU ALL THEN!!!”
The screech left a chill in Liam’s soul. His family had lived through a disaster never seen since the Age of the Apocalypse.
The family of three made their way out of the sewers to a foreign place.
Their kingdom was unrecognizable.
The immediate area was in ruins and shambles. Everything in the vicinity of the tower was destroyed. Only the Ivory Tower stayed standing, undamaged without a scratch.
Liam’s family and the other survivors came out of hiding.
Debris and pieces of the destroyed buildings lay strewn about. Splattered blood from the dead bodies washed the ground red. Countless dead bodies of children laid stiff, frozen in the moments of their painful death. The stampede had killed more than the actual destruction from the demon behemoth.
Making their way to the epicenter, the mourning crowd was surprised at the 9 heroes and the guild members. They were almost all still alive. There were actually so few casualties amongst the summoners.
Common folk didn’t know that summoners couldn’t die if they still had a summon creature still left alive, but there were exceptions to the rule.
The battle still left the guild members in bad shape. All of them had some of their creatures die. The summoners faced mental backlashes, but they were alive. Over a long period of time they could re-summon another creature to take the place of their fallen brethren. It would take time, but the heroes and guild members would recover to their full power.
Seeing the horrified crowd, Kai, who led the heroes, slowly spoke out, defeated by the heavy losses and casualties.
“The Dungeon Heathens have been pushed back… however… we have suffered terrible losses… Many future climbers of the tower have been lost. We mourn for our fallen citizens. It is a sad day... A dark day marred into the history of the great Lazar Kingdom.”
The survivors who lost someone broke down crying. Sobs and distraught weeping and mourning rang out amongst the crowd of remaining citizens.
Rage suddenly warped Kai’s face and he shouted out to the crowd from the depths of his being.
“HOWEVER!!! WE WILL NOT STOP!!! WE WILL NOT GIVE IN TO THE TREACHERY OF THE HEATHENS!!! Our fallen brethren will not be by themselves! WE WILL HAVE REVENGE! We will take our revenge and bring our fallen company with the dead bodies of the Dungeon Heathens! We will mourn! But only after we bring forth the next era of tower climbers! We will proceed with the selection of chosen ones! PROCEED WITH THE SELECTION!”
There was a thirst for blood sparked by the Hero Kai and his words. The crowd shifted into an angry mob, shouting and demanding for war and vengeance.
Looking around at the guilds and their members, Kai ordered them, “take care of the bodies of our deceased and those of the citizens! All members in leadership positions follow me and bring the remaining children to be selected!”
One by one the remaining children who turned 10 that year went up to the tower and placed both hands on it.
If the area where their hands touched the tower glowed, the child was chosen as a future tower climber. If not, the child would be a normal citizen, toiling their life away for the benefit of the climbers.
Rarely, did the benefits brought by the climbers trickle down to the powerless.
Liam was next in line. He walked to the cool and smooth white marble slab and placed his hands on them. He felt a warmth on the palm of his hands as the marble glowed in a green light.
The guild staff held a stone plate and record his information.
“Liam Tarliot. Medium grade talent. Accepted to the Lazar Institute. Report tomorrow at 8 AM for your class orientation. Next!”
Liam was shocked and excited. Both his parents had not been chosen and his chances were lower, but his wish came true. He was officially chosen as a future climber. Liam’s path was now solidified, and he was determined to give his parents a comfortable new life.
Enthusiastically running back to his parents, he saw the deaths and destruction, and it killed his excitement.
“How’d you do honey? It’s okay if you didn’t get chosen. We can show you how to live a decent life. We are doing so even right now.” Kanna tried to let her son down easily.
“That’s right son. We have each other. We love you no matter what.” Leon gently stated.
“No. I got it. I was chosen.”
Both his parents were ecstatic. “That’s great honey! Right? Isn’t that great?” Kanna noticed the odd response of her son.
“Yes son. Aren’t you excited?”
Liam put on a partial smile. “Of course! It’s just… there’s so many that died. I don’t know what to think or feel right now.”
His parents looked at each other, now understanding Liam. They understood more of their cruel world than their son. Soon the fallen would be forgotten, only more deaths were to come. But Liam was still pure hearted, innocent from the realities of the world.
“It’s terrible what just happened. None of the people deserved to die. It was a horrible thing done by the Dungeon Hetheans.”
“Your mother is right, son. It’s such a terrible loss. Still you have a bright future ahead of you. Don’t forget that too. Mourn if you need to. But don’t forget who you are. The Hero Kai vowed to get revenge for them, and those who passed will get vengeance. But I want you to think and act for yourself. Ok?”
Liam slowly nodded, thinking about his father’s words.
“Let’s offer a prayer and head back home.” Liam’s father motioned to his son.
Liam folded his hands together in prayer. He still wasn’t sure about how to feel about everything. But he did feel the need to mourn.
He didn’t know many of the people here, nor could he recognize the dead bodies. However, the scene of the disaster and the heart breaking wails of all those who lost someone made him sad.
After their prayer, they walked back to their home at the edge of the slums. Liam kept thinking about his father’s words. He had a whole future ahead of him. His path for his hopes for a better life for his parents were now possible.
He would do all he could to reach his goal. Even if he had to kill.
Liam’s mother winked at her husband. Leo understood and shocked Liam with a shout as he entered their home.
“SURPRISE!”