Author's Note: Hey all! I finished this last night, but wasn't sure if anyone would be on right at midnight haha. I liked writing this chapter. It put a lot of things into focus for me and hopefully it'll do the same for you all! Thanks for reading!

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‘Ouch. Ouch. Ouch…’ We’d been traveling on the back of the mounts of the Kaiser Kingdom’s warriors for nearly twelve hours and I’d be surprised if my butt was still intact after this ride because apparently, Kaiser Kingdom doesn’t believe in saddles.

I looked around and saw that Izzy and Jessica were napping on the back of their rider’s mounts and I could only sigh in amazement at how they could nap while all I could think of was the pain. Everyone else was still awake, but looked just as ragged and in pain as I did.

‘Guess we know which of us are from the city then.’ I inwardly groaned. I removed one of my arms from around the waist of the red-scaled person I was riding with and tapped on his shoulder. He grunted in response and I asked, “Hey, how much longer until we reach your capital? I’m literally dying back here.”

He was silent for a moment and I thought he wouldn’t respond, but just as I was about to attempt to fall asleep he said, “You should be able to see the city in at least half an hour.”

I didn’t say anything after that and instead marveled at the fact that this scaled person had used a time scale that I was familiar with. I still wasn’t quite confident that these floors weren’t just virtual constructs and that the aliens who’d sent us into the tower hadn’t instantly drugged us the moment we entered the tower. We could be experiencing all this in our mind…but then I thought to the pain in my posterior and came to the conclusion that it was real enough for pain. There was also the fact that the aliens would’ve had to set up some sort of impossibly complex connection between our minds and our opponents’ minds through space and what would’ve been the point for all that, really?

So, the only thing that could explain our situation is that we were in fact teleported to a whole other world and led to believe we were still in the tower. Or to let everyone outside the tower believe that we were still in the tower—

‘But what’s the point of it all?’ I silently questioned myself. Then it came to me; if there are in fact other planets that we, as in humans and our opponents from the nine other planets, can survive in, then why haven’t they been included in this little competition as well?

‘Is there more to this, than just taking over inhabitable worlds then?’ I felt like the only way I’d be able to get the answer to any of my questions was to survive the tower. I quickly ran the numbers in my head and grimaced.

‘If we’re to make it out of here at all, we’re going to have to survive at most three floors before they even start throwing curveballs at us. There are one thousand groups total, so at the fourth round, there can only be one hundred and twenty-five groups left. This introduces an odd number of groups into the system, so what will they do then? I guess it depends on how many groups from each planet would even have survived up to that point. What if one planet clearly dominated over all the others and keeps all one hundred of their groups alive? There’s too many variables to this. Maybe they did it this way so we won’t be able to figure anything out and they’d catch us by surprise once we got there?’ I ran all sorts of thoughts through my mind in the half hour it took to begin catching a glimpse of the city and once I saw the lights off in the distance, I had to admit that I was pleasantly surprised and excited to be here.

The city was huge. I couldn’t even see all of it from where we were, but from what I saw, I realized that most of the architecture was something I’d see in twelfth or thirteenth century Western Europe. It was straight up like the medieval age here. There were a multitude of dark-colored castles, spires, and even a giant wall that I could bet stretched all the way around the city. In the direction we were coming from, there were a pair of gates set in the wall that were half as tall as the wall itself, but it didn’t look like it was controlled by any chains. I thought back to the red-scaled riders’ weapons that I’d seen earlier that day and came to the conclusion that those gates were probably opened and closed with the same sort of technology. I shrugged with a smile on my face just happy to finally be there.

I’d always thought that technology mixed with a medieval architecture would be a cool thing and regretted not having had the chance to travel overseas in all my years to see some of Earth’s greatest sites, but now I was in a whole new world so score for me.

I looked around at my group and they were all wide awake and staring in wonder at the city we’d arrived at. I was glad we’d get to spend our second night on this floor or world in a city. Less threats from monsters and I’m sure they’d have beds that were more comfortable than my sleeping bag. Not to mention a shower would be nice since killing those monsters hadn’t left me smelling too great.

We neared the city gates under the moonlight and before we were even close, the gates opened. I assumed it was probably from having three white-scaled people here if the white-scales were related to the position of elder in this kingdom. Just that thought frightened me though because if they’d sent three elders and an army to deal with us, what kind of danger had they gone through from the other group to have prepared this heavily for our arrival?

We walked through the gates and into the city. I saw brown-scaled guards posted up on the wall and others strictly patrolling the streets. There weren’t any people out that seemed to just be regular civilians.

‘Are they in a time of war?’ I started to think maybe we weren’t as safe here as I’d thought we would be.

Elder Frey and the other two white-scaled people led us deeper into the city through a series of twists and turns until it was just my group and a couple more red-scaled warriors who I assumed were assigned the task of bodyguards for the white-scaled people. The streets were cemented and it was a little disorienting moving from the rubbery grass we’d been traveling on to this, but we readjusted fairly quickly.

After twenty minutes of straight walking through the city, we finally broke out of the alleys and small streets onto a much broader and extravagant street. I looked at well-adorned booths and into many windows as we moved down the street and I even saw people without scales drinking and laughing in what may have been an inn. As we walked further down the road, I saw inside many store windows that showed off groceries, jewelry, weaponry, and a multitude of exotic objects which I’d never seen before. At the end of the road was an elaborate mansion with metal gates in front of it. It didn’t look that different from what I’d always imagined a small castle would look like.

We approached the gate and the brown-scaled guards in front of it. Upon seeing the white-scaled people walking in their direction, the guards politely opened the gates and moved out of our way as we passed through them. We passed through the gates into an extravagant garden. There were vibrant colors all around me and I wasn’t a florist, but I was fairly sure that mostly all of these plants couldn’t be found outside of the tower. The only flowers I even recognized were daisies and roses.

After another minute of walking through the garden, we finally passed through ornately decorated double doors made out of some expensive looking wood. After passing through the doors, we entered a large atrium that was lined with elegantly carved statues and marble pillars.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

At the far end of the atrium were seven high-backed chairs which were currently occupied by four people. The chairs were comparable in grandeur and design to thrones I’d imagined a king would use. The armrests were inlaid with jewels, the color of the thrones were golden and the cushions were all white. My group and I stopped a good distance off from the thrones and the people sitting in them, but Elder Frey and the other two white-scaled people kept walking until they reached the empty three chairs and took their seats.

Once they were seated, the other two white-scaled people, who I now knew for sure were elders, allowed their scales to be absorbed into their bodies and I once again was able to watch as their oval-shaped visors transformed into white liquids and collected themselves in the middle of the elders’ foreheads as circles.

The red-scaled guards that had escorted us through the city must have stopped before entering the mansion because now I didn’t see any of them anywhere.

It was just my group and the seven elders sitting in their thrones. I wasn’t sure if I should bow or show respect in any way, so I just kind of stood there while the elders sized us all up with their eyes.

After ten seconds of silence, an elder on the right, a stern looking man with a head of slicked back blonde hair spoke with incredulity in his voice. “Elder Frey, what are these things that you’ve brought into the council room? Your orders, along with Elder Grey and Elder Weiss, were to destroy the source of light, but instead you’ve brought strangers into our city.” I could almost taste the disdain and disappointment his body radiated outwards as his white eyes pierced through me. I stood my ground and unflinchingly looked him back in the eyes.

Before Elder Frey could answer I heard Izzy speak in a barely restrained tone of anger. “Things? We are not Things.”

“You will not use that tone of voice when speaking to Elder Cullen, little girl.” A female elder sitting next to Elder Cullen spoke out in an admonishing tone. Before Izzy could launch into a tirade, Akito put his hand on her shoulder and slowly shook his head. She huffed and looked away from the elders.

Elder Frey cleared her throat and said, “These people were found a ways down Kaiser River from the anomaly. They have admitted to being the origin of the light. As to why they have not been destroyed, Elder Cullen, is because they pose no threat to us—”

“Yet!” Elder Cullen spat out with venom in his voice. “They pose no threat to us yet! These ones may be innocent and harmless now, but you know just as well as everyone else what happened all those years ago once those things became strong!”

“Well, you see…” I broke into the conversation at that point to lay down some logic. “I assume that the first group of things that came out of that light probably screwed you over in a bad way. Am I right?” The female elder that had yelled at Izzy was about to do the same to me before Elder Cullen raised his hand to stop her. His eyes were intently looking at me as he paid attention.

Seeing that I wasn’t going to be interrupted, I began to speak again. “I’ll take your silence as a yes. So, yes. We are from the light that you saw, but we don’t intend to do any of you or your people harm. With that being said, I…implore that you don’t kill us all.”

A tired looking male elder sitting next to Elder Frey looked up at me and asked, “And why should we believe that you aren’t a threat to our people? Why shouldn’t we kill you all now and nip a potential threat in the bud?”

I looked at the elder and said, “Well that would be because it appears that we have a mutually beneficial goal.”

Elder Cullen had a smirk on his face as he spoke in a cold voice. “I’m not seeing how any of you could be of benefit us.”

I looked him in the eye and put on a smile of my own. “From what I’ve heard and seen, it seems like you’re all afraid of those that came from the light. It’s because of their strength isn’t it?”

Elder Cullen had nothing to say about that and instead Elder Frey spoke for him. “We knew nothing about the first light until a couple months after the fact, but by then it was too late to investigate. We received reports from our intelligence network in Basar Kingdom that the ruling monarch, Rhaz Cur, took in a wandering group of strange looking creatures, but he did not attempt to kill them because they were intelligent and useful. A year after the anomaly, we received reports on a Basarian assassin squad that were using…well, less than normal means to kill high ranked officials across various kingdoms.”

“Wait, you make this sound like it happened a long time ago…?” I trailed off to get the point that I was confused across.

“These events happened six years ago.” Elder Frey promptly answered me and my eyes shot open in surprise.

I looked around at the rest of my group and saw the same surprise mirrored on all their faces.

‘But just any group being taken in at that time doesn’t mean that they’re the ones we have to kill to go to the next floor.’ I silently thought and then decided to ask Elder Frey a question.

“Elder Frey, you said that this assassination squad uses ‘less than normal means’ to kill; what did you mean by that?”

Elder Frey seemed to think on the matter for a moment before answering. “Well one of the stranger reports say that one of the assassins funneled a lightning bolt from the sky through their weapon and it didn’t seem to affect them at all; blew a hole right through an official in Denton Kingdom from fifty yards away. The most bizarre one happened in Candor Kingdom right in their capital. Their council was having a closed-door session and when enough time had passed to make people worry, they entered the room only to find twelve bodies burnt to a crisp. How the guards didn’t hear anything, I’ve no clue.”

‘So maybe the council room incident could be done by regular assassins…scratch that; highly trained assassins, but funneling a lightning bolt through a weapon?’ I glanced over at Pixie who looked nervous from being scrutinized by the elders. ‘That’s definitely the lightning element affinity at play, so this assassin squad is who we’re after…but how in the hell did they get here six years before us? That’s ridiculous.’

“Elder Frey, what did they do to make you feel so threatened by us that you’d send an army to kill us?”

“The assassin squad is undoubtedly from Basar Kingdom as that particular kingdom has suffered no casualties and the places that they have done missions in were forced to remold their entire governments and their economies due to the actions of this Basarian assassin squad. It was utter chaos.” She replied as if the answer were obvious, which it actually kind of was now that I thought about it.

“What do you mean it was chaos? Is it not still?” I asked, unsure of whether I wanted to hear the answer.

She carried on speaking to answer my question. “It’s not only that. The Basar Kingdom began to conquer the places they’d affected one by one and before countermeasures could be taken, they had forcefully conquered more than half the land. The assassin squad played a huge role in the destabilization of many kingdoms over these last six years. They essentially paved the way for the Basar Kingdom’s attempt at conquest and to be honest, their attempt may end in success. So seeing the light, we rushed over in the belief that you may be either the assassin squad or their reinforcements, but that doesn’t seem to be the case?”

I figured at this point that being frank and straightforward was the best move in this case so I took a deep breath and said, “We’re not reinforcements for them. We’re here to kill the assassin squad…will you help us?”