Chapter 1 - Drowned....

Chapter 1 - Drowned

Ah shit…. I didn't make it in the end…. My body lay broken on the steppes as the titan approached. Everything came to a slow motion as I saw the hulking 200 meter tall Titan raise his fist up. Then it quickly came closer and soon I could see the cracks on the stones fingers.

I'm pissed, after all this struggling. I failed climbing the stupid tower. 

I closed my eyes and I cried at the futility of all these. Then I felt the wind pressure squeezing my broken body against the broken rocks and I could feel my blood and life gushing out from the hundreds of open wounds across my body. 

It's the end. I felt my body being crushed so quickly that everything went black before I could even register the pain.

'Hex Hourglass(S) consumed. User will revert back in time. ….

….

….

All the best."

Wait… what the…?

I recalled the unassuming hourglass I picked up after killing that disgusting slime monster final boss on level 70. No one has ever known what it does. Until one day Rayden was playing it and discovered that the hourglass could actually give the exact time for cooking the best boiled egg.

We were all shocked.

After killing the final boss, all we got was an "S ranked"... egg timer??

Then everything was bright again. I found myself leaning against a pillar, all my equipment was gone.

I was barely able to feel mana, and I was weak again. The burnt scars on my body and face were gone. 

The pain of the curse I was suffering was also missing. I never felt so light yet so weak. 

What a weird feeling. 

I looked up and saw absurdly massive dome-like structures with people everywhere. 

7.8 billion, to be exact.

Every single human being has been brought together into a single space. 

It was a feat possible only for the Gods! 

The visual impact of standing on a higher ground and seeing everyone was staggering. 

I was back to 30 years ago when I was 16 years old. 

Day one when it all began.

Just as the past was coming back to me…

A huge beautiful angelic face showed up on the roof of the dome. It then opened its eyes and her face was expressionless. 

Then everyone heard the same message:

"Welcome to the Tower of Extinction, Humans. 

Our Universe is facing invasion from the Apocalypse. 

All worlds must contribute to survive. 

But your species are pitifully weak. 

So the gods will give you a chance to gain power.

Fight . Clear the tower. You live. 

Fail. Die. Extinction.

Only the worthy will survive.."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to collect myself. 

This time, I promise, I will clear every damn level perfectly. I'll clear this damn Tower. Wipe out the Apocalype and then the Fucking GODS.

"Level One trial will begin in

Ten 

Nine

…

Three

Two

One.

Level One begins"

Everything went white and I felt the world spinning.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The 16-year old Kiel Sinclair, an orphan who used to work as a fast food kitchen boy in an Eastern European country dominated by immigrants, opened his eyes as he recovered his senses to find himself in a black blank space.

Then the Operator Prompts.

"Please Choose a Weapon"

A massive selection of weapons was displayed in front of him. He laughed as he recalled he had accidentally chosen a torch because he foolishly believed he had enough time to fashion some weapons out of rocks and sticks, and that getting fire was more important. 

Pushing away unnecessary thoughts, he started to look for a weapon he was most familiar with. A little known Miao Dao. A Chinese equivalent of the famous Japanese Katana, but straighter and longer and arguably better for stabbing bigger enemies.

Once he held the sword, the world flashed again.

As his eyes adjusted to the bright green sunlight, Kiel lowered his body down to enter his fighting state with his hands on the sword hilt. A habit he picked up after decades of killing and fighting.

He noticed he was standing at the bottom of a cliff facing a vast grassland. As he sniffed the air, he smelled faint traces of blood that only someone who had experienced loads of bloodshed would notice.

Recalling the past. He remembered he was now in the feeding ground of a pack of Gharls, a sort of hybrid between an alligator and a bull that lived in a pack on this level. 

Its body was covered in spiked armors and rippled with muscles. Alligator-like head with massive mouth lined with dagger-like teeth the size of a steak knife, long tails with spikes that can easily split a bull into two. With four muscular long legs, normal humans would have zero chance of outrunning it.

In the past to survive this level. He would climb halfway up the cliff and set the whole grassland on fire the next day as the weather was very dry and hot. Barely surviving with burn scars all over his body as he was almost roasted alive.

He shivered as he thought about the pain of being roasted on the side of the cliff for almost a whole day before he managed to clear the level. Surviving a 3rd degree burn and living with pain throughout the 92 levels he had survived was miserable.

Then he recalled the story of an African madman who actually covered himself in the beast smelly, slimy and sticky dung to fool the beasts. He then discovered a special zone the beast would not or could not enter no matter what happened. 

One could stay in a level within a specified time period allocated by the system. And that African spent 2 months in these grasslands to kill the Gharls one by one and managed to level up enough to get a massive head start in the earlier levels before his own ego killed him.

What the African did was vastly more preferable to his method of burning the whole level to the ground to kill everything inside, as it did not get him any experience points to level up. 

The failure to gain any levels in that first level caused him untold misery in the next few levels.

Gritting his teeth, Kiel decided to start searching for the bone pit nest to find himself the 'Level One best camouflage". It did not take long for him to find it. 

He was lucky, the Gharls were out hunting or hiding from the hot sun. As he neared the pit the smell was even worse than wet cow manure on a hot day. 

Even his vast experience did not prepare him for this. Holding back his urge to puke, he dived into the dung pool and climbed out covered in green sludge so pungent and potent it made him question his life choices.

As he was regretting and feeling miserable, two little Gharls crawled out from under a bone pile. 

Their body was still covered in slimes, it turns out they had just hatched from the eggs buried under bones in the middle of the bone pit 3 meters away. 

His instinct developed over the decades took over and his body acted before he had even thought it through. Keeping in mind to try to avoid spilling blood as it will draw the attention of the pack. He rushed into the bone pit and gave 2 hard stomp to break the neck of the 2 Garl newborns the size of a cattle. 

But he forgot he no longer had the strength he used to have. Fortunately the stomp at least managed to stun the 2 beasts for a moment.

Kiel immediately straddled one of the Gharl, hugged its neck and and managed to break it, killing it.

"Newborn Gharl killed, 5 Experience gained"

By then the other newborn had turned and bit his left leg. 

The feeling of the rows of needle-like teeth sinking into his leg was inhumanly painful and he bendover trying to choke or break the neck of the baby beast, it was futile, the bite grip was too strong and he could not get the beast to let go or reach its neck. 

Even pummeling its snout or eyes could not make the beast let go. Its survival instinct must have made it recognised that if it let go, it would be finished. So it bit down for dear life. Hard.

So, both human and beast struggled in the bone pit. One was desperately biting down, not letting go, and the other was trying his best to get away. 

Kiel was getting nowhere, as both human and beast laid panting and exhausted after 15 minutes of intense struggle Kiel started to panic, he knew he can't last much longer and if the Gharl pack returns, he would have zero chance of surviving and he will be ripped to pieces. 

He looked around desperate to find a way out to think of a solution, his eyes landed on the dung pool a meter away. Cursing and knowing he could not wait any longer he rolled both himself and the baby into the vile dung pool trying to stay on top of the beast and drown it in its parents dung. 

How ironic. Not even 5 minutes later. 

"Newborn Gharl killed, 5 Experience gained"