Stage 3
Society Standard Year 558, Month 9
My new Tier credentials didn’t just let me go further afield on a whim than many in the Society in the real world. At E Tier and below, the possible Global Server planets I could access weren’t much more lucrative or interesting than the Player Territory Planets. D Tier, however, gave me access to a greater number of these worlds, each containing PvE content that was both more challenging and more rewarding than servers anyone at all could transfer to. After that final stocking up of Leyline’s Circle Five and Six scrolls, I’d let it be known that I’d be leaving the shop to Wiriliin for a while until I managed to reach Level 100. By then, I’d have enough Power to craft scrolls in the Seventh and Eighth Circles as well, the highest they could go—then I’d really be able to make bank.
Before starting that, I had gone ahead with my idea to tour the Society. I meant for it to last about 2 months, but after only 2 weeks I was so eager to return to the Game that I came back. I still visited other nearby Districts and spent my whole second week in Griyag City, trying all the luxuries I could. When I got back, I transferred my character to the Global Server that seemed like it would be the most fun for me, and I’d been questing there ever since. Now, I had finally reached Level 99, and I was after a quest to give me a final massive push before the Assessment.
In Masters of the Multiverse, reaching any level that was a multiple of 10 was a big deal. Every 10th level gave your character a massive boost in stats compared to the nine previous levels. And leveling up to that level required a great deal more EXP than before, either. The game was balanced so that after you reached a 10th level, you could face enemies challenging enough so that the level after it, while still requiring more EXP than the one before, wasn’t nearly as hard to reach. Trying to face those enemies before their corresponding 10th level was extremely risky and time consuming.
So, there weren’t many ways to quickly gain a 10th level. That was true even at the lowest levels—Masters of the Multiverse was not designed to be a game that was easy to quickly advance in, and Level 100 was particularly significant even among 10th levels. But if I succeeded in what I was trying to do, I’d get a big jump up, enough to cut my time grinding for it by at least a month. I was trying to discover a Blue Wellspring. The Wellsprings were an absolutely integral part of even the midgame of Masters of the Multiverse. While Crystals were the highest denomination of currency to drop in combat, the Wellsprings were used to fuse advanced Colored Crystals that were used as even more advanced forms of currency, but even more often were used as crafting materials for magic equipment whether to forge or improve it. There were six colors from Red to Violet, and each Wellspring required 5 Crystals of the previous color to produce one Crystal of its own color—a Red Wellspring took 5 normal Crystals, an Orange Wellspring took 5 Red Crystals, and so on.
And not only were the more advanced Wellspring colors more uncommon, those that did exist were progressively harder to reach. Red Wellsprings could be found in most royal cities, but the rest had to be found in the wild. Green and above required traversing entire dungeons to reach, and Blue and Violet couldn’t even be found on Player Territory planets. As far as anyone knew, there weren’t any Violet Wellsprings on this world either. But clearing a dungeon to reach a Blue Wellspring for the first time carried a sizeable Achievement EXP bonus, equal to a significant percentage of what it would take to go from Level 99 to 100, and save me a lot of time.
Unfortunately, the dungeon that protected the only Blue Wellspring on this world was in a PvP zone. But I had ways of avoiding confrontation. I managed to reach the dungeon, then retreated a good ways off and used a special spell—a 6th Circle Cosmic spell known as Haven that created a pocket dimension where I could safely rest and log off even in a PvP zone. If I had placed it closer to the dungeon, some chancer PKer could have put a blanket effect over the area near the dungeon that disrupted all such efforts to hide, but I was too far from anything major to center on for that to work on me, so as long as no one had seen where I’d camped down, I’d be okay—and I’d had Invisibility and See Invisibility active from the moment I entered the zone, so I knew no one had tailed me, no one had seen. And once I started into the dungeon, I’d prepared even more scrolls of Invisibility, See Invisibility, and Great Detect Player. No one was going to get a whiff of me, and if a large group or a PKer who might have had See Invisibility was in danger of catching up to me, after a few practice attempts I’d managed to create a scroll of Greater Return, my first scroll of an Eighth Circle spell that would warp me not just outside of the dungeon, but to a town I had designated as my return destination that wasn’t even in the same zone, and certainly wasn’t in a PvP zone. Technically, that spell could be used to transport me to a location that wasn’t even on the same server-planet. I had never made so many scrolls intending to use instead of sell them before.
Yeah. There was no way in hell I was going to die to a player.
I had gone deep into the dungeon without running into anyone at all. I had to be close to the Blue Wellspring now! Well, as it happened, I was right. In fact, I was just one floor out judging by the fact that I was in a boss arena. Boss arenas didn’t need to have anyone in them cast a spell to stop you from teleporting to escape, they had natural Universal Lock fields. I knew this was going to happen. Green Wellspring dungeons also had boss floors, though their bosses were much weaker than this one would be. I had gotten all the information on this boss that I could, but I hadn’t honestly thought that I’d have to face it. Even if you didn’t want to use the Blue Wellspring, dungeon bosses were primo sources of EXP, and had strict respawn timers. As it turned out though, I did have to face it. And immediately, it was obvious that something was very wrong. Everything I’d found indicated that the boss’ level was in the 90s, usually 99 but slightly randomized, and it summoned minions that were 5 levels lower than it. A foe like that would be difficult for me, but not impossible.
But that wasn’t what was happening. The boss was level 100. And after its first few attacks, its flunkies were level 100 too. Not in any walkthrough, not in any video guide, not in any anecdote on a forum, not in anything I had researched not just in preparing for this dungeon run, but in trying to learn all I could about the Game, had something like this happened, had a boss appeared at a ten-level higher than it was supposed to let alone generate minions equal to its level. I was too shell-shocked to even offer token resistance as eldritch energies from the incoming attacks tore Veralix to shreds. As I was ZOed, the game automatically switched to a 3rd person view of my character, leaving me helpless to act. A moment later, I was treated to a special boss coup-de-grace animation quite unlike deaths that I had suffered before I made Veralix. I had activated feed recording as soon as I saw the boss was at Level 100 though, so I at least had this unique footage as consolation. A very small consolation. Because now that I had died, it was going to be very, very difficult to get back.
Even with all the Crystals I’d built up since last year’s Assessment, a True Resurrection would have been way too rich for my blood, especially as I was now—had been Level 99. And there was no way I was willing to start Veralix over from Level 1 and start my MS Card collection from scratch. That left just one option, and there was a very real danger that I’d miss the Assessment in the process of pursuing it and get stuck all the way down at H Tier for an entire year. It involved navigating a very special Universal Server World, one that, at least in recent years, had maintained the highest player traffic in the Game. Because of that, and because of the fact my interface would have to connect across light-years to it, it would take time to reenter the Game. So, I had some phone calls to make—some awkward ones.
At least since I’d still be considered Adjusted B Tier until the Assessment, the machine produced rations I’d be ordering for now were really good. The Society ensured that even H-Rations were nutritious, made from quality ingredients, and portioned so that absolutely no one went hungry. Where the Tiers came in was in customization options. The higher your Tier, the more the machine produced free meal menu expanded for you. H-Rations offered the fewest choices, though even then, the machine produced rations program ensured that everyone in the Society had enough to eat and that it was nutritious. I’d definitely miss being able to eat my favorites whenever I wanted, so I resolved to do my best to clear this challenge before the Assessment started.
That night, the connection process was still queueing, though enough progress had been made that I’d be able to begin to tackle it by morning. I’d passed the time by playing some other games—non-VR console games. Not everyone in the Society went for these as entertainment, which I thought really lost them an edge. Some of the games in my collection predated VR as we knew it, and it was always fascinating to both play and study them. It’s a good thing I had so many, because if I needed to take a break from the Game, I sure wasn’t going to ride over to the local H-Level Entertainment Center. There were many more that were freely available but most of these were less interesting than Games that were being Made lately and thus carried price tags.
That morning, I logged into the Game and was greeted with a black screen. Then, slowly, shining golden letters in a flowing cursive script wrote themselves across my vision:
After the final blow, you drift in oblivion for what seems like years. You feel your strength ebb away, though not entirely. When you wake up, you are in a strange place. A place not of the world you knew…not of the world of the living.
A pale white light appeared in the exact center of my vision. Slowly, it spread and spread, consuming the black void and the golden letters. In its place was an eerie white plain, with no visible topographical features, such that it was hard to even make out a horizon. Perhaps there wasn’t one. Well, no topographical features save one—a black tower, stretching off into the sky, until the top disappeared beyond what my interface’s view could perceive. This was the Tower of the Underworld, and if I wanted to reclaim everything that I had lost, I’d have to reach the very top. To be more accurate, the area I was in was a sort of starting-point entry to the Underworld Tower Server World. You couldn’t avoid going into the Tower once you’d reached this point; if you tried to go in any direction but toward it, it never got further away.
That was nearly where my knowledge ended, and the same went for everyone else in the Game save those who had experienced it for themselves. Spreading information about the Underworld Tower was harshly punished by the Game itself. Anyone who had revealed anything about what went on in the Tower in any way—message boards, word of mouth, writing messages in real life, anything—had a permanent negative status ailment, “Curse of the Underworld” applied to their character that ensured that anything in the Game that involved RNG resulted in the worst outcome possible for that character. Even if you made a new character, the Curse of the Underworld would follow you. According to rumor, the last people of the Society to receive the Curse had received special dispensation to emigrate from the Society to live on Sol Prime, and had never played Masters of the Multiverse again. No one was quite sure how this was managed, but the threat was very real.
There were a few other things known about the Tower, from a certain tome, copies of which could be found in most Royal Libraries: The curse only applied to “revealing the Tower’s secrets,” which is to say anything to do with the nature of the challenges within the Tower, and those currently in the Tower were exempt from its rule—it was only after you returned that discussing the challenges within was forbidden. And once you were inside it, there were only two ways to leave: through the Gate of Rebirth at the ground floor, and the Gate of True Return at the very top. The Gate of Rebirth would instantly return you to the town nearest the place you had died, and you could ignore all of the Tower’s challenges, but it came at a high price: All of your in-game possessions, money, and levels would be wiped away. You’d start from scratch, retaining only your achievements and anything else that transferred between characters. It’d taken me years to get as far as I had, so there was no way I was taking that door unless I had no choice.
The other option was known as the Gate of True Return. If you surmounted everything the Tower could throw at you, you could then reach its very top and enter it. This gave you the effect of a Supreme Resurrection—you were back, restored to what your full strength had been before you died, your inventory and possessions were restored and you regained all the currency you’d had upon death. But it wasn’t easy. And in fact, in the past fifty years or so, it had become even harder. Before, at least a handful of players had managed to use the Gate of True Return every year. But for all this time, the achievement for doing so, “Hell Itself Spat Them Back Out” had never been awarded again, and as far as anyone knew no one who had done it before had used it a second time, and in fact several who tried were known to have eventually admitted defeat and used the Gate of Rebirth.
After a few minutes, I stood just before the entrance of the Tower. Before entering, I brought up the menus I could access one by one. As expected, my inventory was empty, and nearly all of my equip slots were as well, though my main body had equipped a “Cloak of the Condemned.” The stat boosts it gave were mediocre, but the good news was it enhanced every stat armor equipment possibly could, even if it was by a small amount. Equipped in my main hand was a “Rod of the Condemned” which gave a slightly better boost to my magic attack. My Spellbook was still present, which was a relief, and curiously, my Combat Deck was fully intact, containing the ten MS cards I’d equipped to it. On my status screen, I saw that my Level had been reduced to 50, and skills I had acquired had been adjusted accordingly, almost like being in an L50 Arena match.
Ready as I was ever going to be, I entered the Tower. Of course, there was no chance I was really going to be ready for this. Shortly after I entered, the way I came in vanished behind me, leaving me in total blackness once again—but only for a moment. After that moment, I was standing in a town square, in what would have looked like a modest town in the Multiverse except for the fact that everything was colorized to be washed out and pale, as though to purposely give the impression of an imitation of a town. At least that’s what I figured the idea was, given that this was the Game’s land of the dead. After looking around for a while, I heard a voice. I tried to find its source, and finally saw another character—a gnome-sized one displaying no name data and wearing a robe similar to mine, one that covered him so much that only a cartoonishly large white walrus mustache that extended at least a foot to either side of his body was visible. “This your first time in the Under World, sonny? You have that look about you.”
“Yes, that’s right. A few other characters I’ve had died, but I made new ones.”
“Well, if you’re more attached to who you are now, take my advice: You see the fountain in the exact center of town?” I did see it. It was the most vibrant thing in the immediate environs, somehow lacking the washed-out palette of the rest of the town, and sporting exquisitely carved cherubic designs. Repeating several times around the edge of its large basin was the inscribed phrase “ABANDON ALL THAT IS WORLDLY, YE WHO ENTER.” “That there’s the Gate of Rebirth. Just plunge into that pool, and you’re back in the world of the living. Of course, this is Respec Town, so if you want to make any changes before you do, changes you might not be able to make once you’re back, like your race and class, go right ahead. Whatever you do, though, don’t try to climb the Tower. It’s not worth it. It just ain’t possible no more.”
“And why not? Look, I have a lot to come back to. If I’m going to give up on that, I at least need to know why no one’s made it to the top in 50 years.”
“Gah, it’s not my place to say about that. Besides, the next batch of no-hopers from higher up will be back soon, and other folks dyin’ all the time, and either way if they come in here they’ll need me to guide ‘em…I got no more time to spare on another fool. I’ll say this though. If you just have to see what things further above are like for yourself, you’ll need Crimson Spheres. Ain’t got no Coppers, Blins, Aurings, or Crystals down here, only Crimson Spheres. So the first thing you’ll need to do is get outta town and get some.”
He vanished. He did so in a completely unceremonious way. He didn’t fade away like a ghost, he didn’t disappear in a flash of light like in a teleport, he was simply there one moment and gone the next. So, first up was more grinding. Yaaaaay. Well, at least it was a new area. And the monsters were weird, different from any I’d found in my home server and the server I’d travelled to. Respec Town was more than it appeared as well. It was styled after a smaller town in the game, but it covered quite a lot of area that was absolutely packed with lodging houses, with all the special respec shops concentrated on the perimeter of the central plaza. Just as the old man had said, they all took Crimson Spheres as payment.
The battles themselves were interesting too. They had sophisticated tactical AIs that I could tell would have required some actual skill to harm with melee combat, and did take skill for me to avoid. Each enemy I dispatched dropped exactly one Crimson Sphere, a glowing clear orb with a red pulsing light in the center, about at a size where I could put two of them in my palm at once without trouble. By about 20 of them, I returned to town. I still had a lot of questions that needed answering, and my Power was running low. On my way out, I had tried to talk to a few other players that I’d seen around, but they were too engrossed in their own attempts to acquire more Crimson Spheres to answer any questions. Luckily, there was plenty of vacant lodging in Respec Town, and all of it priced at just 1 Crimson Sphere per rest. Even more luckily, I managed to find a particularly vacant place called Redemption with a proprietress I finally managed to get answers out of. “Well. I know this town isn’t exactly a welcoming place, but the Keeper didn’t need to treat you like that. Still, he’s been dissatisfied with his job, not wrongly so, since the Demons took over.”
“The Demons?” At last, I could start getting to the bottom of things.
“That’s what they call themselves, the Underworld Demons. It started, oh, I’m not sure when. But how it started was, there was someone who made it all the way to the top of the Tower…and never left. He refused to use the Gate of True Return, as was his right. The Underworld has always had a large share of folks who choose to harass and harry those who seek to return, instead of trying to return themselves. But this guy, somehow he organized them. Spent years and years, dedicating himself to winning more and more of ‘em over to his plan to make it so the Gate of True Return was never used again. His group became the Underworld Demons, a clan with no headquarters and no sanction, because those don’t exist down here, but a clan nonetheless. And they’ve been the dominant power in the Underworld near-on fifty years now.
This place ain’t like the rest of the Multiverse. Not even the Masters can intervene if things get out of hand. And not even their power is immune to the Level 50 Limit that keeps all people equal in death. And someone took advantage of that situation to create chaos beyond anything that’s happened in the world of the living. Now, for all the Multiverse, True Return has become an impossible dream.”
“But I hear there are those who still chase it. And, wouldn’t it be possible for everyone else to band together against the Demons?”
“You’d think that, being new around here, but not with how the Underworld works. Really the Keeper should have explained this stuff to you. See, to reach the Gate of True Return, you have to pass through four other Gates first. The Gate of Resolve, the Gate of Diligence, the Gate of Wisdom, and finally, the Gate of Victory. And each gate takes five times more Crimson Spheres to open than the last. But there are more challenges beyond the Gate of Victory, challenges to help folks collect the greatest number of Crimson Spheres needed to activate the Gate of True Return itself. That place isn’t easy to reach either, not everyone who takes up the challenge can even manage to win through the Gate of Victory. And when someone does, thousands of Demons hunt them down before they can collect enough Crimson Spheres, let alone reach the dungeon that leads to the Gate of True Return. Someone has to be able to win their way through the Gate of Victory before they can join up with the Demons, you see, so they all have free run of wherever they wanna go.”
“And even then,” I said, “if you managed to get past all of them and reach the dungeon, I bet you’d have to deal with the guy who somehow managed to bring so many strong griefers under his thumb.”
“Exactly. There are those who are banding together to try and change the situation, but the Demons also keep getting people willing to join them, so their forces keep staying stronger than anyone wanting to challenge ‘em.”
“That does sound grim…but I have too much to lose to not even try. I certainly won’t give up until I run out of ideas, at least.”
“Good on ya. I’ll be rootin’ for ya to get out there and kick some Demon tail. The first thing you’ll need to do is gather a hundred Crimson Spheres. Then, the way to the Gate of Resolve will become clear. Through there is the next challenge.”
“Thank you. For now, I’ll rest so I can get back out there.” I handed over a Crimson Sphere, and a room key appeared in my inventory. I went to the room it unlocked, then set my avatar to rest. Once I’d logged out, I started to try and formulate a plan. Well, that was a lie. I more just wracked my brain trying to think if I really had a chance to pull this off before the next Assessment ended. Of course, I failed to even make a guess. There were still way too many unknowns. I went to sleep, for the first time in a long while, worried and unsatisfied.
