CHAPTER 107: APPROACHING CHALLENGES

[Outside the tower, an unknown area...]

Individuals in dark robes were standing all around an open plaza where the soil was stained dark.

A dark energy was oozing out from this soil. There was darkness all around them including the very atmosphere.

-Zaaaaaa...

A black fog covered the area, dark like the miasma found in the depths of hell. There were dark grains of sand in the air, crystals of darkness that should not have been present on earth.

In the distance, the Tower of Cessation was visible, however, the entire sky around it had been turned dark, a spiraling cloud tornado sucking in all the Mana that oozed out of it.

There used to be some buildings in this vicinity but there was nothing more than their debris left here, there was nothing more than a few traces of any human civilization left in this place.

Here, the individuals in dark robes were praying on their knees, their hands straight open and raised in the air above.

If one looked closely, the skin of these hooded individuals was pitch black. If one looked closely, they would realise their skin was rough and cracked, with their teeth being distorted and enlarged.

They perhaps used to be something human, but now every single one of them was a monster, a monster with long faces and hollow eyes.

-Swiiiiiiiiiiiiiish!

When winds blew and the robes fluttered, their slender hands with long fingers, their muscular dark legs were made visible.

When one looked even closer, and beyond the usual bunch standing– praying– in this room, they would spot a certain hooded figure that had red skin, someone who clearly seemed different from the rest of them.

Perhaps this one was their leader, perhaps it was a priest of these praying monsters.

There were possibilities, but just looking at these beings wasn’t enough for one to come to any conclusions.

They weren’t demons, that much was sure since they did not possess any horns or traditional demonic characteristics.

They weren’t monsters from the tower seeing how they were worshipping a phenomenon happening to the tower.

They seemed to be a force that belonged to the tower but wasn’t directly connected to it.

From the looks of it, the presence of these monsters meant something unforeseen, something that would bring chaos to this world.

{ "You miserable souls fallen to the wretched tricks of the darkness..." }

However, after the incident in the tower a few days ago, the association’s top power, the President, had been looking out for exactly things like these.

{ "Rest in peace. Let the purest of light cleanse the darkness..." }

Out of nowhere, a fountain of white light descended upon the corrupted land, washing it white and overwhelming the darkness that had rooted in the soil.

The light cleansed the place, and then it purified it completely.

"Ghhhhhhhh!"

When the light touched the dark creatures in robes, it melted down the robes around them and passed right through their bodies, incinerating every single one of them completely...

At the same time, the light burned everything around the vicinity including the dark air saturating with greater darkness.

The light purified the soil, the air, the Mana and lastly, when the light had cleansed everything in this place, the light stopped spreading and instead started condensing in one place.

-Oooooooooooooooooong!

It took the shape of a ball, a sphere that hovered like the very sun they could not see in the darkened sky.

{ "May the maidens of salvation greet you with open arms." }

The last prayers from the voice that was resonating throughout this place like the words of the god gave their prayers to the ones who did not deserve this outcome.

The voice prayed to the ones who weren’t supposed to die in the tower, the ones who were killed in the massacre on the 2nd floor.

The voice was gentle and harmonious. It spoke for the people, but there was a unique rage hidden within that voice.

A rage that was directed not towards the people who fell victim to the ploys of the darkness, but towards the darkness that caused the chaos.

-Oooooooooooooooooooong!!!

The ball of pure light was shot upwards at the spiral that sucked the tower’s Mana and pulled it away into a different dimension.

-Booooooooom!

An explosion so massive it could have been visible from the space took place in the vicinity, and at the same time, the pure white light destroyed the wormhole, piercing through it and bringing the original sunlight that this place had not seen in a long time back...

{ "For the families and the mourning ones." }

The voice spoke one last time... before it vanished once again.

As if a biblical angel that had eyes everywhere, the voice seemed to be aware of everything happening in this area.

It fixed everything around it before vanishing. It brought life back to the soil and invited the living that had forsaken these lands once again.

The voice crowned a deer baby with flowers and refreshed the air to make this place more livable.

After doing all of this, however, the voice was still aware it would not be able to achieve what it truly wanted.

The voice, the president was not omnipotent nor was she omniscient. She had powers, she was strong, she was different from the other players, but she was still merely an individual.

She wasn’t right to lead those inside the tower as well as the players who did not know anything about the tower of the darkness.

It was for the best that she did not get involved in the player matters directly.

The sole reason she had created the association was also because of her restrictions, but then again, she wasn’t worried about the matters of the tower.

"He has already made the captain submit to him." She was keeping a close eye on all the special players.

She was keeping an eye on everyone that would matter to this story, to the tower, to this game.

’Haaa...’

The stakes were low and yet the challenges were so great.

She did not want to imagine how worse these challenges would become.

But she wasn’t the one that was worrying about these matters the most.

It was him.

It was the person who had cleared a different tower in the time she wasn’t around...