White Tower, if the name wasn’t transparently clear, was a white singular column erected toward the sky. Strangely, such a ritual-site wasn’t a humongous sky-scrapper, but a modest tower the size of a church from a scenic Italian town. To make up for its length — and girth — the architecture compensated with the maximum stat-point in history. Aged sigils of the Ancient decorated every inch of the stone’s surface. Age and time had eroded the surrounding area into piles of pale rubble, but this tower remained in excellent condition. Phantasian researchers proposed the countless carvings of the tower aided its preservation, but no Ancient came forward to confirm said hypothesis — because they all died.
Yuri believed the White Tower was a very fancy piece of art. A tinier, upright, fantastical version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was majestic, unlike the regular shirt and jeans and trusty sneakers he wore. In his backpack were the supplies. The bag was heavy, but in a depressing fact of Yuri’s life, he was used to this.
Shyme was beside him, putting multiple magical staffs into a strange magical storage device on her wrist — a kind of bracelet decorated with hexagonal crystal.
“Am I needed here with that around?” Yuri asked.
“This is the newest Isle of Knowledge’s Quick-Equip system,” Shyme said. “Yes, it is possible to store supplies into an Item Box, but each box was an isolated space that could contain only one type of supply.” Shyme showed Yuri a card detailing her staffs. “The Quick-Equip allowed a much cheaper and flexible storage in form of an Item Cards. However, it only worked on weapons.”
Charon agreed, packing her hexagon-tech, “Actually, it can store quite a few things aside from weapons too, but foods and camping supplies are still out of options. That means you are still needed, Yuri.”
Yuri glanced at Shyme, “Does Charon have to be here?”
Shyme seemed nervous, “We need her. Charon is much smarter than she looks—way smarter. She is a genius mechanic. A must-have to explore any mechanism underpinning this place.”
It was then Yuri heard a mature, graceful voice with the tint of cheeriness. It was the voice of a seasoned socialite.
“I can’t believe I live to see Shyme actually taking care of her underling?” Serenade Asmodella said slyly and hit the inexperienced Yuri where it hurt the most — his resistance to women. “Getting softer? You would normally opt for something much sturdier than a mere human in the past.”
Unlike Shyme and Charon, the Serenade’s fashion perfectly combined the art of concealed bazooka. Her clothes have several cleavage windows, emphasizing every curve, while keeping much to the imagination. Yuri would realize it must be custom-made eye-candy if he got over the fact her clothing revealing back made it clear the elf didn’t wear a bra.
“Shut up, Serenade,” Shyme growled.
“Oh, I know.” The Elf bashed Shyme’s trigger, “It must be that guy, right? Shyme’s mysterious hero.” Serenade gave the wolf-girl a pitiful look, “How embarrassing it must be to get saved like a damsel?” Serenade giggled. “I wouldn’t dare come out of the house if I fell for that classic rescue romance.”
Shyme cracked her fingers for a throw down, and Yuri promptly vacated from her warpath.
But Serenade didn’t grant the boy his wish, snatching Yuri by the arm with a smile.
“I heard Shyme asked for you specifically,” Serenade said into his ears, further provoking Shyme’s intense anger.
Instead, it was Charon who intervened, “Lady Serenade,” flames licked the helms of her maid dress, “a little teasing is fine, but we are here on an international investigation. Please pay heed to your station.”
Serenade cheekily complied. “I know,” the Elf said. “But I doubt it would be anything serious. Legend says the Ancient seal something here — a treasure.” She shrugged. “But people have been searching this tower from top to bottom, and they found nothing. If there is something interesting here, I doubt we will find anything new.”
It was then a new woman emerged to greet the group, a tanned girl dressed in breastplate, greaves and skirt protected by an extra armor similar to the Ancient Greek pteruges. She appeared much tougher than Serenade, with the muscle that could break Yuri’s spine in half. The young man knew if this woman ran for President of the Amazonian, she would be the landslide winner for certain.
“Stop getting chummy with the new meat,” the Amazonian said to Serenade. “We have work to do. Let's get this over with.”
“Someone doesn’t know how to enjoy herself,” Serenade grumbled, and winked at Yuri. “The little grumpy over there is Sonovia, and my name is Serenade.” She smiled, and waved, at Yuri. “Be sure to call us if Shyme broke you with her workload, we could use a cutie like you.”
Yuri subconsciously waved back and realized Charon and Shyme were glaring at him with a thirst for murder.
Their expedition sure started on an encouraging note.
…
The tower’s interior was something out of the ancient blend of Greek and Egypt. A towering stack of columns stood at each corner of the room in an octagon. An aged mural stood between each column, depicting a story. It was an image of the army of light clashing against the force of the darkness. Of three grotesque beasts led the dark army to hound civilization. Finally, at the mural directly opposite the entrance, the first thing the expedition team found was the mural of a golden giant, wielding a sword which extinguished the black sky and spraying the land with light.
At the center of the tower stood the towering marble statue, showing the hero holding a sword cracked by age and time. The monument towered over them like a giant — a larger-than-life hero from the by-gone era.
Yuri guessed this was where heroes ended in real-life, forgotten inside the archaeological ruin with no one knowing for sure he existed.
Sonovia produced a monocle lens of glass and put it on.
Shyme saw the device, “Is that Isle of Knowledge’s newest Spiral-Eye?”
“Yes,” Sonovia’s answer in an uncharacteristically cordial tone.
“Spiral-Eye?” Yuri asked Charon.
“It’s a device to read a person's Information Card,” Charon answered. “To be honest, it isn’t perfect. The system could only read the target’s Rank and Stat-Spread barring MAS. I heard the Skill’s database is improving, but still limited.”
Information Card, Info-Card, or IC was the special rectangular card that contained the summary of a person’s power and history. Everyone exposed to Mana could produce this card, as a detailed appraisal of their ability. No one knew where these cards came from. Even Phantasian couldn’t explain what it was.
Each card contained Name, Rank, Abilities, Active Skills, Passive Skills and Stat-Spread. Yuri’s card, for example, looked like this.
…
Yuri Ushakov
Rank: E
Abilities:
Active Skills:
Passive Skills: Musician [D]
Stat-Spread: STR 1/5, END 1/5, MAG 1/5, DEX 1/5, MAS 1/5
…
Name’s meaning was obvious.
Below it, Rank represented the league of the person. How much mystical might the user possessed on the cosmic scale. The known Rank went from F (baseline humans) to SS (King of the gods). C-Rank and D-Rank were Phantasian civilians. B-Rank was the average for the Phantasian military. A-Rank meant the person was an elite. S-Rankers were god-likes. There were rumored the likes of Zeus and Ra were chasing the mythical SSS-Rank, but no one achieved it so far.
Abilities were the person’s mystical abilities, the bread and butter power possessed the mage. Most Phantasian Abilities centered around a Mystic Core, which housed the innate Mana to fuel their Skills. Part of why gods and demigods, like Shyme, held such power was because they possessed a high-grade natural core—a [Divine Core]—that was the original blueprint for all the Mystic Core.
Active and Passive Skills were additional specializations accessible by the mage, representing their talent and trait. Active Skills were specializations that activated under a condition, while Passive Skills were constantly active powers.
Stat-Spread was the quantitative detail of the physical and magical specialization of the person comparative to their Rank, on the 1-5 scale. STR was the physical strength. END was the ability to take hits. MAG was the magical output. DEX was the speed and reflexes. No one knew what MAS was. As for the scale, 1 and 2 were comparable to the average and peak of the lower Rank, 3 were the average, 4 and 5 were the monsters comparable to the rank above.
Yuri knew the universe agreed he was the loser. His blank IC was the perfect evidence.
Want to see what the born-winner looked like? Phantasia had a collection of youth called the 33 Stars, who were pretty much guaranteed to hit S-Rank before finishing puberty. Shyme, Sonovia and Serenade were all members of this elite club. They were talented, connected and world-class superstars which all the youths of the current generation were measured by.
Yuri’s IC was a permanent reminder. Hope was a pipe dream. Shyme probably surely had a [Divine Core] backed by tons of high-grade supplement skills. Compared to her, the Earth’s year-worth of efforts to produce three B-ranks was pathetic.
“Nothing,” Shyme put away her own Spiral-Eye. “There is nothing here.”
Suddenly, the Spiral-Eye in Shyme’s hand cracked as noise assaulted them.
Yuri fell to his knee, screaming in pain. It was like someone was amplifying the noise of a scratching chalkboard next to his soul. Beside him, Charon clutched her head, sweating in agony.
Shyme, Serenade and Charon produced their respective weapons. They immediately realized something went wrong.
A tear appeared in the space, revealing the hazy flood of darkness, and a creature walked out.
It resembled a slender man in an insect-like armor, featureless and seamless. The curved, blanked helmet reflected the room like a mirror. The entity had three fingers each on its armored hands and feet. A purplish beetle wing unfurled from its back. Finally, that featureless face cracked, revealing a beastly fang and serpentine tongue.
“A Reverse Beast!” Serenade shouted and let loose a pink, glowing arrow on the monster.
The mysterious RB brushed the attack away like an annoying fly, blowing a massive hole in the mural. Before Sonovia and Shyme unleashed their attacks, the monsters slammed into the aged floor of the White Tower, blasting a hole right through. The floor crumbled from the attack, falling away to reveal a gaping chasm beneath the team.
Yuri felt the footing beneath him crumbled.
The entire expedition, numbering fifteen, fell into the hole below.
…
From the outside, the White Tower collapsed, breaking apart and smashing into the earth. A cloud of dust rose as gravity and the damage reduced the ancient structure into the page of history books.
Watching the destruction was a woman in a stylistic, magenta lab-coat, munching on her grape-flavored chewing-gum like the sudden archeological demolition was nothing new to her.
The woman popped her chewing gum and reached into her pocket, “Drat.” She grabbed a communicator and spoke, “Ruine, we have a problem. The White Tower just fell over.” She listened to the replies. “No, I did not blow it up,” said the woman. “Yes, I know. Trust me, I understand this throws a wrench into our schedule.”
The woman switched off the communicator and spoke her mind.
“Good for you, Orwell. Guess you are in for a surprise reunion.”
