Author's Note: Hey everyone! I just wanted to thank you for reading my story! It means a lot to me and gives me motivation to write! I'm just giving a heads up that this is the last pre-written chapter that I have. Each chapter takes at most two days to type, but now that I'll be getting into the meat of the story, it could take longer. Just bear with me and I'll keep writing :) If anyone has suggestions or comments I'm always open to listen. Once again, thank you so much!
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I perked my ears for this part. The figure in the hood was finally going to tell us what we’d be doing here and I wouldn’t miss a single piece of information.
“Well…” The figure laughed coldly. “I cannot tell you why you were chosen or even the why for what you all will be doing here.”
I internally groaned. ‘Of course. I don’t know why I even expected to get any sort of answers from the freaking aliens that would send monsters down here just to prove how strong they are.’ I heard sharp intakes of breaths all around the room and realized that I wasn’t alone in my thoughts.
The hooded figure, despite only being a projection, seemed to sense the frustration in the room and smiled revealing razor sharp teeth behind its lips. A lot of groups in the room involuntarily cringed from the surprising sight and then the smile was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
“It is obvious that you will need to ascend the tower, humans…but allow me to explain more of the…finer details. You’ve all been divided into groups of eight. Believe me when I say the same thing has happened to every tower found not only on this planet, but the others that my race has occupied as well.”
‘How are there magically eight people…or extraterrestrials for each group? That’s just too weird.’ However, I was only getting more questions than answers and decided to put it on hold, but the hooded figure surprised me with its next words.
“Some of you may be wondering…how are there groups of eight in every single tower out there?” Upon hearing this question, my eyes opened wide and I tuned my ears to listen to his next words. “I propose that those people focus on more important things like survival rather than questions you’ll never get the answers to.”
I stared blankly at the figure for five whole seconds and then decided to stop asking myself little questions until I had time to think alone.
“Now, where was I? Ah, yes. The finer details. There are ten planets under our control, including Earth. There are eight hundred organisms from each planet that will represent their race. For the slower ones, this means that there are one thousand groups in total. Each planet has one hundred groups as their representatives. When you ascend the stairs to the next floor, you will be randomly transported to one of four hundred other towers that have been dropped on various planets. This means that two groups will find themselves pitted against one another on each floor of the tower and the only way to advance is…to completely annihilate the opposing group!” There were many confused murmurs echoing throughout the room at that point and the hooded figure savagely smiled at us all, once more showing its razor sharp teeth
And finally some tall guy across the room decided to speak his mind. “That’s complete bullshit! I refuse to be a killer!” Murmurs of agreement rang throughout the room. My group, as well as about half of the others in the room, kept their silence. The hooded figure kept its silence and moments later, the noise in the room finally died back down.
The hooded figure turned its head in the direction of the boy who’d spoken. “It’s kill or be killed, human. I can assure you that other races will not have any qualms about ending your life so that they may live theirs.” Once more, the room became filled with the noise of people whispering and this time, the hooded figure’s words caused everyone in my group to turn back and look at me.
I looked back at all of them gauging their reactions. Jessica and Pixie’s eyes were filled with a little fear. Kyra and Akito seemed to take it all in stride and had impassive looks on their faces. Kualin, Milik, and Izzy’s eyes all had turned serious. As for me…I was more worried about the rest of what the hooded figure had to say instead of addressing any of my friends’ looks.
The hooded figure waited for the noise to die down once more before speaking. “It goes without saying that groups from the same planet will not be pitted against one another.” Hearing that, I breathed a sigh of relief. Killing other aliens is one thing, but killing humans? I don’t think I could’ve done that.
“What you all must understand is that each floor you visit is a world of its own. Do not allow the exterior size of this tower to fool you. And most importantly, do not mindlessly believe that the other group on your floor is the greatest threat to your lives. I suggest you all do three things: become strong, remember what you’re fighting for, and never give up.”
As soon as the hooded figure had finished speaking, the blood red color of the ceiling began drawing in from its edges towards the center of the ceiling leaving behind the customary white of the rest of the walls. The red color formed into a large hanging ball of liquid similar to a drop of water at the end of a spout.
Then it fell.
The people in the center of the room backed away as quickly as possible, but what we’d all expected to happen didn’t. When the liquid ball hit the ground, it didn’t splash anywhere. It only vibrated upon landing and expanded into an oval.
As we all looked at the object, the hooded figure began speaking. “You will all soon enter the second floor group by group, but first…” It pointed to a group nearest to the oval. “You all…stand in front of it.” The group of people, five guys and three girls looked apprehensive about approaching the liquid oval, but still obeyed the hooded figure. The oval vibrated at a slightly higher frequency and split off into eight separate liquid balls levitating to a distance of about a foot in front of each person’s face.
Then, the liquid balls morphed into numbers.
“These liquid balls calculate your affinity with your element on a scale from 1-100.” The hooded figure was speaking in its cold voice devoid of emotion. “It is for you to understand how much you can expect from your powers. It goes without saying, but the higher the number, the higher your affinity with your element is and the more powerful you’ll be.”
I strained my eyes to take a good look at the numbers displayed in front of the first group and saw that their lowest number was in the high fifties and their highest number was in the high seventies. The rest of their numbers were split between low seventies and high sixties.
‘That’s decent. I’ll be happy if I get anything over a seventy.’ I thought to myself. I viewed this as a test and, like every other test I’ve had in my life, I wanted to ace it. Unlike other tests, I could only hope I was innately talented enough to produce good results and couldn’t study for the grade I wanted.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The hooded figure began nodding to itself and gestured towards the obsidian colored stairs. “Now you all will go up to the second floor…Oh, and one more thing. Each floor has the stairway to the next floor in a hidden location, but it is not accessible until you kill the other group.” The group stood there for a moment and checking the straps of their packs began walking towards the obsidian stairway. As soon as they moved away from the red numbers, the liquid came together and formed the vibrating oval once more.
The group reached the steps and once the first person’s foot hit the first step, a white light shone dimly, but as they climbed together the light grew stronger until all of a sudden it completely disappeared and just like that there was no longer anyone on the stairway anymore.
I couldn’t help but think the whole disappearing act was cool and seeing the shine in Kualin’s and Milik’s eyes, I knew I wasn’t the only one. Looking over towards Jessica, I saw less fear in her eyes and more worry. I lightly placed my hand on her shoulder and whispered, “I’m sure we’ll all be fine.”
I didn’t know how much truth, if any, were in my words but I just wanted to see her smile instead of being afraid or worried. It worked. She smiled one of those amazing smiles she has at me. My heart thumped a little harder in my chest and we watched more groups go ahead in front of us to check their affinity levels and disappear in a flash of blinding light on the stairway.
Four groups later, I had seen quite a few high levels of affinities displayed with ninety-four being the highest. Unfortunately, the one who’d had that affinity level was the spiky black haired kid from earlier. His whole group was actually high-level. There were five high eighties and two others in the low nineties with him. I was impressed.
That was when I saw a familiar mop of blonde hair walking up to the red liquid oval. It was Bryce, and following him were a lot of other kids from my original barrack as well as a couple others that I didn’t recognize. Bryce was settled at a nice ninety-five to which he seemed pleasantly surprised. The rest of his team had three low nineties and four spread out through the eighties.
‘I suppose he’ll be alright.’ I thought to myself. I was about to shout good luck to him, but saw a focused look on his face. ‘I’d better not disturb him.’ Instead. I ended up cheering him on silently in my head and watched him and his group disappear in a flash of light.
After watching Bryce go, I couldn’t wait any longer and began moving slowly to let everyone else in my group know we were going. They caught on quickly and soon, we were all standing in front of the liquid oval. Akito was standing at the left end of the group.
‘He probably didn’t want to try and squeeze himself in the middle of everyone. He’s just a mass of muscle. I don’t understand!’ I lamented at my lack of large muscles.
To Akito’s right stood the short girl, Izzy. Her doll like face looking curiously at the red oval liquid and with the red of it illuminating her face, I remembered back to how she’d looked arguing with the spiky black haired dude and almost died laughing right there.
The new girl, Kyra, was standing next to Izzy looking like nothing could shake her. Milik stood next to her gazing at the red liquid like it held the answer to the meaning of life. Kualin was gazing into the red liquid with a faraway look in his eyes. Pixie stood to Kualin’s right looking at him worriedly. Jessica stood to my right and she was looking…
“Hi.” I immediately said. She had been watching me as I looked at everyone else and without saying anything, she lightly smiled and looked towards the red oval.
The liquid began vibrating and unlike the other times it had split up peacefully, the oval was elongating and compressing at a high frequency. It looked as though a wave was ripping through the liquid.
After a moment, it tore itself into eight pieces and moved faster than my eye could see to a foot in front of my face. I unwillingly flinched at its sudden arrival and fixed my eyesight on the number in front of my face.
“Hello, my new lucky number.” I had the biggest smile on my face as I stared at the ninety-nine in front of my eyes. Looking down the line, I could easily guess why the red liquid had acted as crazily as it had with my group.
Akito had a ninety-three in front of his eyes and was intently staring at it. In front of Izzy’s small stature, stood a proud ninety and her ocean blue eyes gleamed with happiness. I could see a hint of a smile playing around at the corner of Kyra’s lips as she looked at a ninety-one in front her shining green eyes. Milik looked as if he was about to whip his blonde dreads back and forth due to the solid ninety staring him in the face. Kualin, the faraway look in his eyes gone, smiled helplessly as he saw the ninety-six in front of his eyes. Pixie still looked worried, but her face turned into a smile once she looked at the ninety-two in front of her. I looked at Jessica and her beautiful hazel eyes were gleaming with happiness as a blood red ninety-five stood a foot away from her face.
‘Wow…my group is so amazing. I can’t believe we were all in the nineties’ I thought to myself. I had no idea what was going to be on the second floor or what to do once we got there, but I figured if we learned how to use our elemental affinities, then everything would be just fine and we’d…kill the enemies.
Realizing that this is what Bryce must’ve been thinking about as he headed to the stairway, my brow furrowed and I began stroking the stubble of hair on my chin thinking about the other team.
‘…I guess it just depends on how they react to us.’ I nodded to myself. Taking the lead, I began walking towards the obsidian stairway and everyone fell in step behind me. I walked onto the first step and a dim light shone under my foot. I kept walking and soon there was light all around me. We walked further up the stairs and I passed through something…it felt like a thick liquid and then all I saw was a bright white light.
Shielding my eyes with my right arm, I kept walking and as the light dimmed down I dropped my arm and found myself in a wide plain of yellow grass. I looked up to the sky and saw a new source of light in the form of a purple sun brilliantly shining on the land. The landscape was shrouded in a light purple color because of it. Trees with yellow and green leaves were sparsely scattered about the landscape and animals, the likes of which I’d never seen before were scurrying, sleeping, or just walking about. Looking at the nearest large creature, I realized it was a weird mix between a giraffe and hippo. Its large gray body was lying down on the ground, but its long neck stretched up to a nearby tree where it nibbled on the leaves of the tree.
‘Well, this is different.’ I thought to myself.