Chapter 45
I stood before the statues of my wives and smiled. Today would be the last day I looked upon these statues. When this was done, I was never coming back to this room. I wished that I had the ability to forget all of the frustration I had experienced here. It was shameful.
When I woke in the bunkhouse, I went right to the Northern Rangers guild hall. I burst into the room.
“I figured out the lesson,” I said aloud to the tower. Spreading my arms, I announced, “I am Byron of fucking Zaglis, the greatest adventurer who ever lived, the founder of the Order of the Silk, the king of Sanctuary South, and the husband to Purity, Solara, Podni, and Invia.”
Mirko was speechless. Brenin, sitting at his table, was stunned.
The guild master cleared his throat. “Good morning to you too, Byron. I think you’re still riding a dreamdust cloud. Maybe get a bit more sleep.”
He stiffly turned away from me, inventing a reason to suddenly have to bury his face in a ledger. Brenin was still too flabbergasted to speak. Eventually, though, he recovered and returned to his soup.
Nothing happened. The tower didn’t recognize my declaration of self-realization.
Purity was one of the statues, I remembered.
Of course, I needed to show her who I was.
Every other time I visited, I was gentle, focused on convincing her.
But Byron of Zaglis didn’t need to convince a woman.
She would see him and hope for the chance to be beneath him.
I charged out of the guild hall and ventured to the library. With the cold winter wind whipping in from behind me, I held out my hand.
“Purity, I’m in love with you. Your place is by my side.”
The priestess didn’t move. I reached for her wrist, and she yanked her arm away from me.
“I’m Byron of Zaglis,” I said, but my confidence waned. “Your future awaits.”
Maybe I was being too cheesy? What was I doing wrong? I was so certain I had the solution. I knew that I did, deep in my bones.
“Is this guy bothering you?” a whiny little voice asked.
“Brenin!” Purity exclaimed. “I don’t think I want to read today.”
“I was thinking the same, actually. Hot cocoa?”
Purity smiled. “I love that idea.”
“Fuck you, Brenin,” I said as Purity walked right by me.
He didn’t have the courage to even look at me. He kept his head down and hurried Purity along. Some hero he was.
I was so fucking pissed that I followed them to the bar.
I came in a few minutes after they did and slaughtered every non-person in sight.
The tower made it feel like the real thing.
The vibration of a sword gliding through meat, the squelching noise blood makes when it squirts from an artery, the way my victims either looked at me, dumbfounded or terrified, right before they died–it was as if I was back in Lopav again, the real one.
The only part that didn’t feel like fantasy was a part of my mind insisting over and over that this was just a floor in the tower.
When I stepped through the tavern doorway to leave, I entered the Flowst chapter of the Dungeon Brawlers.
Cutting up imaginary people didn’t change my mood in Lopav, so I knew it wouldn’t here. I pushed past Bitch Boy Brenin on his way to meet Solara.
Screw this. I marched to the Flowst dungeon to auto-fail this portion of the floor.
Then I got to see Brenin again, attempting to reassure Podni.
The amount of hate I felt for him was more intense than any hatred that I had carried before.
The slavers who kidnapped and killed my father had not angered me this much.
Brenin of Borja. Every single problem in my life traced back to him.
If he had been stronger, everything would have been different, but he wasn’t capable.
He squandered a lifetime of opportunity and, frankly, deserved to die for how pathetically he walked right into his own murder.
He didn’t need to be the specimen that I was now.
A little bit of confidence, the tiniest amount, might have been enough to change the course of his life.
I went to the guard station to fail the Invia section and get out of this nightmare.
Massacring a town of villagers brought me no joy or feelings of any kind, for that matter.
But Brenin? He had gotten mixed up in the wholesale slaughter runs and died before.
I had never ended him slowly. I never stopped to savor the moment of his dying.
For all the distress he caused me, I was going to kill Byron that way today.
Having done this loop a hundred times before, I knew where to find him. He was on his knees eating Invia out like she was the Goddess incarnate. I stepped into the office and grabbed the back of Brenin’s neck.
I braced for Invia to attack me, but she had no interest in helping Brenin. She rolled off the desk and ran out of the room. When I thought about it, that reaction made sense. Why would she risk anything for the piece of shit Brenin from Borja?
With a flick of my knife, I severed the base of Brenin’s spine and dropped him on the floor.
His legs limp, he dragged himself on his elbows toward the exit. I grabbed his ankle, pulled him back, and flipped him over.
“I hate you,” I told him. “You wasted your life, and your failures were so spectacularly abysmal that they’re fucking with me in a second life.”
“What are you talking about?” he cried. “Please, let me go. You don’t have to do this. Please, please, let me live.”
I waited. After a minute, I shook my head with disappointment. “See, if I were in your position, I would at least keep trying to run. No, that’s not right. I’d like to think I’d look for a weapon rather than run. But you… Why aren’t you doing anything? Why are you just lying there waiting to die?”
“Please. I don’t know what I did. I’m sorry for it. So sorry. Just don’t kill me.”
I palmed the top of his skull and squeezed. My strength versus his constitution. An apple would have given me more resistance.
Oh, that felt kind of good, actually. Cathartic. A form of closure, perhaps?
Brenin of Borja found a way to be useful after all.
I was so tired of this place. As soon as I had a new solution to try, I would be back. For now, I couldn’t wait to leave it behind.
When I exited Invia’s office, I appeared in the teleporter room. The heavens were right there. One fucking floor away, and I couldn’t reach them.
I froze.
Invia’s statue was no longer upright. She was on her knees.
Byron couldn’t move forward while Brenin still lived. That was the lesson. To beat the puzzle, I had to murder Brenin of Borja in every section. Nothing elaborate. I slit his throat the moment I saw him, and then moved on to the next version to kill that one too.
The previous idea I had to assert myself was heading in the right direction, but it wasn’t extreme enough.
I needed to think more like Invia. If I were more sadistic, I would have singled out Brenin of Borja dozens of attempts back, and not because I figured out that was the solution.
I would have done it because I knew I would enjoy it.
Advancing beyond the 100th floor would have simply been a nice bonus.
I had to kill him and only him. If I murdered anyone else, the tower deemed it a failure.
When I reappeared, all four of my statue wives knelt.
The wall behind them fell, revealing a grand staircase.
I stepped over my wives and climbed the steps to a lobby-like room that was more or less identical to the first floor of the tower.
A statue of the Goddess stood at the top of the stairs, as if to greet me.
No enemies appeared. I was alone with a dozen waterfalls, thousands of flowers in bloom, and shimmering white walls, pathways, and columns.
I should have saved the good-aligned levels and gone back for Byron bots, but I was too curious.
I used Corpse Builder and summoned 20 skeletons.
They crossed the indoor garden without incident.
No traps. No enemies lying in wait. Like the lobby at the bottom of the tower, the 101st floor was more ceremonial than anything else.
I approached a set of white double doors at the far edge of the room, and like the doors at the base of the tower, these opened for me automatically.
-11 Progress to Your Fall.
Progress to Your Fall: 81 / 100 (Abaddon, King of the Abyss)
Gold light poured in through the door, blinding me.
When my eyes adjusted, I looked out over rolling green fields.
In the distance, a city of brilliant white rose out of the plains.
Surrounded by farmland, the city had tall quartz walls and large pillars that rose above them, holding up a whole second level of beautiful stone buildings.
What was floor 101 of a tower to me was the base of a mountain in this world.
The plane of the angeli. How many humans had seen this?
I was tempted to explore, to step outside and feel the heat of a different sun, but I didn’t dare exit the tower.
On the material plane, celestials could sense when demons left dungeons, so I had to assume I would be discovered the moment I ventured through this door.
For now, I would have to appreciate the sublime view from within the tower. This world might be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
I couldn’t wait to watch it burn.