The cloaked pervert waved his? hands quickly. “I really don’t have much time. Most of the tower stuff is pretty self explanatory. Explore and you will figure everything out. There are monsters outside. Don’t worry about what they are called, their backstory, any of that.”

“I doesn’t matter?”

“It’s vitally important! I’m just in a rush. Key loop- send Awakened Spirits to kill monsters, get loot, upgrade, rinse and repeat. Best loot is Resonance Crystals. Get one hundred Resonance Crystals and you get one chance to summon a random Awakened Spirit at the Spirit Heart Pool.”

“You ChatGPT’ed the names for all these, didn’t you?”

“NO! The names are super cool, and my hot cousin’s awesome OC. DO. NOT. COPY!”

“I pinky promise.”

“Good. You better.” The hood looked away, arms crossed. I waited. And waited.

“Not in that much of a rush, huh?”

“DAMN! Resonance crystals can get you up to a five star AS. Six stars is the highest rating! Six stars get the relationship system and highest intelligence. You want the six star AS, but every star rank can be useful if used well.”

“And how do I get them, if Resonance Crystals can’t do it?”

“Events, quests, progression through the storyline and special in-game drops. You can also build sets to get them.”

“There is a set system?”

“Yes, no time to explain. You can craft gear or buy it from a merchant or get it through drops, you will figure it out.”

“How do I upgrade myself?”

“Relationship system. Crap, I’m out of time. Look, here is a thousand Resonance Crystals and one Iridescent Clarion Stone, to even things out for you. Plus the usual starting package, don’t say the Devs didn’t look out for noobs.” Black Robe was racing now, trying to get all the words out as fast as he could.

“Don’t let the monsters in, ‘cause they will violate you horribly as they kill you. They do awful… just… awful things. I don’t know what the hell Rosalia was thinking when she designed them. Bottom line is- do your best. Fight hard! Remember, while you may die horribly, your ruined, defiled, body will pave the way for the Hero!”

I decided it was time to try violence again, but the swine vanished in a burst of green light. “At least tell me your name, coward!”

My voice echoed off the stone walls. There was no further reply.

Well. Not ideal. Not how I thought this morning would go. I was headed uptown to a very discreet cafe, one with a members only invite system, for a very special lunch.

Look, sometimes a man just wants a plate of omurice with a heart drawn on it in ketchup without any judgment from the uncultured, okay? It’s not weird. Those maid costumes are tasteful, and everyone is very respectful.

I looked around at the bare stone room. There was a pile of growing crystals on the floor where the hooded person had been hovering. Big suckers. Most of them were hexagonal, milky white and about as long as my hand. Maybe two inches across. The one fancy crystal, clearly the Iridescent Clarion Stone, was three times that size in every direction. It was humming. A faint, haunting tune.

I picked one of the white ones up. Heavy sucker too. How was I going to carry all of ‘em?

As soon as I thought that, they transformed into a cloud of golden light and swirled up at me. They rushed me! The cloud smashed into my hip and, in a second flash of golden light, turned into a pouch. Small pouch, the size of my fist and weighed less than my headphones. The whole process was impressively painless. I touched the pouch and immediately knew it was filled with a thousand Resonance Crystals and one Iridescent Clarion Stone. Useful.

Whelp. No need to question any of that. Or any of this. I have read enough Isekai to know how this goes, not to mention played enough gacha. Time to find a pond to chuck ‘em into.

Anything else in the room? I blinked. Tacked to the wall was a notice board, with a calendar, some fliers, and even a little pouch with scrolls sticking out of it.

This… was not there five minutes ago. I would demand to know what the actual expletive was going on here, but… I knew. Gacha. Gacha was going on.

I sighed. Then trotted over. Time to take a loot bath! Oh, but where to begin?

I rubbed my hands. Then glared at my hands. They were rough. Not at all the pillowy, soft, lotion-soaked hands I had before. I tried not to feel crushed. More than ten years of development, lost. Back to chafing palms and misery. Curse that black robe!

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. It’s fine. There will be some magical nonsense to fix this. Maybe even in the free welcome gifts. Positive thinking. Positive thinking. I picked a scroll.

Thank you for playing Dream of Eternal Sky! To celebrate our 523rd year, we are giving new players an exciting new feature- hats! Yes, what you all have been demanding- Hettie’s Hat Shop is now available full time, and best of all, she WILL be taking Runed Bones for the Common hats. If you are brave enough to turn up looking for something crude, anyway. To celebrate, we are giving all new players their very own hat. Open the hatbox and see what’s in store!

Hats? Equipment for stat boosts, cosmetics, both? Fingers crossed- both. I mimed opening the hatbox on the scroll and nearly dropped the thing when the box slid open and an actual, real life, 3D hat popped out. It was a Robin Hood hat. Green, pointed, kind of triangular with a red feather sticking out. No stat boost that I could see. Damn. Next letter.

In response to repeated messages from players, we are pinning this note-

No, we will not be changing the balance. Yes, we are aware of the K/D ratio. Yes, it is higher than comparable games. We would remind you, however, that Dream of Eternal Sky is a skills based game. The game is carefully calibrated to be accessible while challenging, and without requiring PTW. We would remind you that abusing the Devs or community mods is grounds for instant defeat…

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Yikes. Never reassuring to hear the Devs say “Git Gud.” Onward. I opened the rest of the letters, not bothering to read all the nonsense. As a result, I became the proud owner of five hundred and twenty Runed Bones, two hundred Fragments of Remembrance in a variety of colors, and a small stack of Tower Furniture Coupons, Millinery Orders and Made to Measure Receipts. All of which were for specified rooms or characters, and the shop was closed too.

I checked the calendar.

Log-In Bonus, Day 1: 10 Remembrance Crystals.

Oh, nifty. I checked the rest of the calendar. Yep. First nine days were Remembrance Crystals with twenty on the last day, bringing the total up to 100. On the tenth day, you got a smiling girl with a giant ax and an iridescent, shimmering border around her picture. No idea what that meant, but I was sure it was good.

I looked at the other sheets. Aha! Daily missions. Only today’s missions were available, and they were pretty clearly tutorial type missions. Mission 1- summon your first Awakened Soul.

Yeah. I could just about manage that. I took a look at the fliers and only just restrained myself from flipping out. Sales for in game resource packs. Requiring “Frozen Diamond Star Shards.” I recognized a premium currency when I saw it. I resolutely spun on my heel and strode off. Anything else of note in this otherwise empty room? No. Just windows. Well, giant empty holes in the walls where windows should be.

Plenty of ‘windows,’ though, some almost floor to ceiling. I looked outside, staying well back from the ledge. Forest. Deep forest, with huge trees. I could just about make out a shimmer of what looked like a river, maybe a lake, and there were mountains on the edge of the horizon. But everywhere around the tower seemed to be primeval forest.

Looked pretty nice, actually. Monsters though. Did not trust the forest. Did… hood guy say how long until horrible monster violation and death? The last item on the daily missions was to defend the Tower, so I should have some time. Shouldn’t I?

I spun towards the door. If I had abs and I could do a pushup, then by GOD I could jog. I leaned forward, lifted my leg and set off.

It was effortless. I was moving like I never had before. Like a ghost. Like a cheetah! Easily three miles an hour. Maybe even four. I would have to test this further. No stairs up, so I guess this is the top of the tower. Spiral stairs headed down. I kept right on jogging.

The next floor down was… beautiful. I don’t have the right words. Like the ruin of a church or a temple. The ceiling was higher than it ought to have been, two, three stories tall, with brilliant light shining through the frames where windows should have been. The stained glass replaced with patterns of light and shadow over the floor and pools under that vast arched ceiling.

Most of the room was filled with a single long, rectangular pool. Dozens of feet long, maybe fifteen feet across, it ran most of the length of the room. The pool itself seemed to be white marble, the water shatteringly clear, and yet, you couldn’t see the bottom of it. I walked along the edge of it, admiring the way the water bounced the daylight around the room. Making the gray stones seem to dance and flicker with life.

The second, smaller, pool was at the very back of the hall. It was tucked into its own little alcove, the back of it touching the far wall of the room. About six feet in diameter, also marble but with faint gold veins running through it. A high window was above it, looking out over the forest, and up at the blue sky. Faint wisps of white mist rose off it. It felt holy.

Not a word I use much. Not seriously. But this felt holy. This world, this place, was supposed to be some cursed gacha game, but it felt… real. The pool was the realist thing I had ever felt, in either world. Like I was in the presence of something much greater than myself. Ancient, mysterious, and wonderful.

I could imagine splashing around and having fun in the rectangular pool. I would feel wrong touching this one.

I touched the pouch and summoned a regular resonance crystal. It popped into my hand. Smooth, with sharp angles and painfully pointy edges. I tossed it at the round pool. A glowing wall of swirling starlight bounced it right back at me. Not permitted. My reflexes were now good enough to snag the flying crystal out of the air.

I might change my mind later, but Robe Guy was currently getting a pass in my book. This new body was pretty great.

Well. I could more or less guess how this went. Some gacha games had special recruitment screens for higher level draws. I looked back at the long pool. You could fit a lot of people in that. Probably not more than one at a time in the smaller pool.

Save the best for last? Let’s not pretend I could ever have passed the marshmallow test. I dug the Iridescent Clarion Crystal out of the sack and offered it to the pool.

The sunlight through the window caught the rippling colors trapped inside the thick crystal rod. Like the shimmer of mother-of-pearl. The holy music coming from the crystal seemed to be drawn to the curved alcove and amplified. The crystal was lifted by some magic of the pool and drawn over the water. It slowly spun in a sunbeam, picking up speed until it burst into a shattered rainbow of light.

There was a moment, like the world was holding its breath. With an ecstatic release- she was born.

Ethereal choirs sang as the sunlight picked out the gold of her hair. It cascaded down over the polished silver of her armor, a knight, with a longsword in one hand and a shield in the other. Six purple stars drifted down and circled her head like a halo. She walked across the water, steel shod foot silent as she stepped on the marble. With a grace I could hardly imagine, she took a knee and lay her sword and shield in front of her.

“In this life, and every life, I, Versai, shall serve the Tower Master. May the Heavens witness my oath!”

There was a golden chime in the air. I felt something change. I was no longer just… me. There was me, and Versai. There would be others, I knew. But whoever I was before died when she was born. I could feel my thoughts wrenched around. A new priority. A new identity weaseling its way in, next to who I was. Not replacing it, adding to it.

I was the Tower Master. And this beauty, this warrior spirit, was the first Awakened Soul under my command.

A… very real girl. Woman, actually. Strong, capable woman. Competent. And so staggeringly, shockingly beautiful, she was hard to look straight at. And I was now attached to her. Forever, apparently.

I… am… not really okay with this. This is not good. When I say I’m 2-D for life, I’m not playing. I could feel my skin start to crawl.

There was a moment, a sense of gathering energy and awareness. Then awkwardness.

“Tower Master?”

“Sorry! I’m new to this. Please, stand up.” I flapped a bit. Damn! My first words were an apology. Very not alpha. Very beta behavior. Weak. I had already made myself the submissive, when I was supposed to be the Tower Master. Self loathing twisted my guts.

She pretended not to notice.

Versai stood up, belted on her sword and slung her shield behind her. It turned into a flowing red cape. Apparently attached by magic. Because sure, why not. It looked killer on her. But she would have looked killer in a cardboard box. Ideally one with a plastic cover, on a shelf.

The armor was not cut to flatter. Excessively, brutally practical. It might as well have been a man’s armor, without the faintest hint of boob plate. No ornamentation at all, beyond the red cape. No points for guessing it would get more elaborate with time.

I would make a crack about being robbed, but… she made it hard to breathe.

Blond, blue eyed, skin so white it was almost translucent. She had a pointy but not too long nose- I’ll stop. Any list of Versai’s parts would be worthless. Her eyes weren’t almond shaped. Almonds are the shape of Versai’s eyes. She was the measure other things were compared to.

Only the very best of the 2D girls I adored were on her level. Only the very, very best. And she had the immense handicap of being 3-D and worst of all, IRL.

“I’m your first Awakened Soul?” She smiled.

My heart must have been upgraded along with everything else, as it didn’t explode on the spot. It shouldn’t be legal to be that pretty. Oh God! A smile that would have a dentist weeping for joy, and their accountant snapping their calculator in rage.

When I regained the ability to form coherent thoughts, I nodded. “Yes. My name is-” I glitched. I don’t have a better word for it. I glitched.

I couldn’t remember my name. I felt panic trying to pour in. I was missing my name. My name. I had a name. A life in another world. I could remember my life in the other world. I could-

“Liam.” I smiled. Wow, that was weird huh? How could I possibly have forgotten that my name was Liam, and always had been? “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Versai.”

She nodded, her face becoming serious. “Tower Master, the situation is dire. The tower is entirely without defenses, we have no equipment, you have neither weapons or magic at your disposal, and I, alone cannot stop the endless hordes of monsters. We need more help, more awakened souls. By any chance do you have more Resonance Crystals?”

I smiled. Now I can flex a little, recover some of that Alpha energy. “I do. A full thousand of them.” Well, and a bit. Not enough for another summons.

“Great! To use them, throw them in the Spirit Heart Pool and you can get the dollies to work.” She nodded decisively.

I did, but as I did so, my ear snagged on a word.

“Sorry, did you say ‘dollies?’”

“Five stars and under get progressively dumber and more obviously artificial. It helps if you don’t think of them as people.”

“What?!”

“Oh, you get used to it.” She waved an exquisite hand dismissively. The long pool was lighting up with a gentle white glow, blinding mist rising up out of it. Holy music again, but significantly less impressive than Versai’s summoning. “But hey, it’s nice that you have an extra. Most of the other Tower Masters only got nine.”

“Err… how long did they last?”

“The record is three waves.” She smiled at me “warmly.” “I’m sure you will beat that record. You have the skills to make the kills, right?”