1 Guide
Alec started to focus intensely on his goal: This time he would be the winner of the ascension cometition. Not because he was the competitive type trying to outwit them all or the type to seek our glory. But because he had to. It was his last chance at ascending. And he had to ascend in order to save his race from extinction. That was why he made the 'servant contract' with the one who claimed to be god in the first place.
Alec's sprit dashed of to the 'platform' where he would meet his partner in the competition.
It was the starting line of his adventure.
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Even if he knew back then that he must never forget who he was and what his goals were. He just couldn't do anything against the effects of returning to the 'central core'. A place where the 'servants' gathered and lived. Whenever anyone entered the central core one had to lose something as a passage fee. What that was didn't really matter as long as it was of value for the one seeking entrance. The process of selecting that precious thing was completely automatically computed by the 'system'.
A giant support engine that god used to supervice his palace and manage the servants.
But what could a spirit servant give as a sacrifice? A servant only had a carrier the 'pocket' - as the senior servants called it, which was used by spirits without a body to travel all sorts of dimensions in a stable form. But apart from that no servant had any possessions.
Except for one thing: Memories.
'The system in itself is a damn scam. One day I'm going to make that despicable bastard pay.'
That was his conclusion after the 2nd attempt failed and Alec could only think of that god with contempt and disgust.
Everyone who came to this place to become a servant had a wish and this 'god' laid our the perfect trap for people like him. The one who answered his call - the wish to save his dying race presented him a contract a long time ago. It was very simple He would sacrifice his body and become god's servant in his palace. In exchange for that the god would give him the the chance to save his race. But even after goint to that length it apparently wasn't enough. This chance meant that he had to prove whether he was worth having his wish granted or not.
That worth was determined by a competition set up by that god.
The winner of that competition had his wish granted.
And more - the winner also received the blessing of the god and would become an exalted existence that would be allowed rule alongside him.
Only contractors that served god could participate in that competition. It would take place at set intervalls and each servant could participate as often as they wanted in order to get their wish granted. But in reality 'as often as one wanted' was replaced by 'as often as one was able to'.
Since the servants had to leave the central core to participate in the ascension competition.
And every time they failed and returned to the central core they had to pay the entrance fee!
After each attempt one lost a substantial amount of one's memories. Some servants whose determination wasn't very strong stuck faithfully to their servant roles because of that instead of participating for as long as they could.
Could being the operative word here.
After 5 circles of the competition taking place every a servant that didn't participate in any of the 5 previous competition was forced to do it. That was supposed to keep them focused on fulfulling their wishes.
But they feared to lose themselves. They feared to become 'elders'.
After the 1st attempt one lost minor details of his life like what one ate at the last birthday party. Nothing really important. But after the second attempt already the memories of lovers, family or friends start to become hazy. After the 4th attempt, all that would be left of a servant's past life would be their wish and if they were really lucky they could still remember the face of their lovers or their name. But only in rare cases. That wasn't the norm. After that they would lose even that.
Until they wouldn't even remember even their name.
All that would be left were nameless servants that served their god for eternity.
Why should they participate in any contest? What for? Their ony purpose in life would be to serve.
A servant in that state of mind would be referred to as elder by the other servants.
Which was for the bodiless spirit servants who still stived to have their wishes fulfilled the equivalent to death.
'At least I still remember my real name.'
He was Alec Conner a frost elve from the Republic of Allathas. Back in his home dimension he lived on a statistically large planet when compared to the other planets surrounding their star in a couple of parsec radius. One which had the perfect condition for life. Even if a little on the colder side.
His race - the frost elves - became the dominant race of their planet after countless millenia of evolution. To the point where nothing could threaten them in the near future. With perfect control of their environment and implemented defensive mechanisms for emergencies like otherworldly invasions or meteor crashes.
Yet when Alec turned 212 years old - a teenager by their standards - that facade of invulnerability started to crumble again. His entire race was confronted with a problem they did not expect.
A fast rotating black hole in a distant starsystem was slowly approaching a mass with which it was starting to influence their planet. And it kept growing without end. In approximately 1000 years it's influence would have grown strong enough for the black hole disrupt the balance their starsystem had. That disruption could throw whole planets out of the starssystem or have other fatal consequences. It would basically result in a cataclysm for every living being on their planet.
Alec and a lot of other youths of his generation who were heavily influenced by the shocking news at that time fervently started to study in order to become the ones that were able to resolve the approaching calamity that would destroy their entire species. The only choice they had left was to leave their home planet and colonize new worlds. That was the conclusion they reached after a relatively short span of time. The problem was that they lacked the necessary technology to travel between the stars and even if they had, they wouldn't be able to colonize without terraforming a more or less suitable planet since there were no planets in their vicinity that fulfilled the necessary requirements their race needed to live.
Alec became the most prominent resercher of his race after centuries of studying.
But his race failed to develop the necessary technology even with combined effort.
They were able to send small colonist groups around and created hope for a tiny amount of population but in the end they were prepared for 99% of the population to die. And the black hole wouldn't stop at that because in the future even the colonies they created would be threatened by the ever growing black hole sooner or later.
Later Alec not only turned 800 years old but also despererate. He had no wife and no children since he focused on his studies. The general life expectancy was 1200 years but he would only life for another 200 years if he couldn't leave his planet. So he didn't want to waste his time.
Doomsday was approaching slowly. At some point his only wish became to save his race from destruction. And one day after Alec drowned in depression a 'god' appeared in front of him presenting him a way to save his race. In exchange for his services of course. Alec who had nothing to lose accepted without a second thought.
Was that a mistake in the end? Would it have been better if he relaxed in his remaining lifetime?
Alec didn't know. And right now it didn't matter.
Since he forgot all of that anyways. He lost.
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A small white marble with the size of 2 cm diameter was floating through distorted space.
Torrents of flashing light of varying color squirming around the marble at an incredible speed. It's destination was... Well of course the 'platform'.
That was a tiny space created for each new 'player' in the upcoming competition.
'Hmm last time I had to do this job it all ended in a bloodbath on the 7th floor, huh. My 'partner' back then was- hmm let's see I guess it was that lizard boy if I remember correctly Gilbert? No Gira?... Yeah the guy that got the <trait> 'Fast thinking' and received the <skill> 'Ultra-rapid regeneration' back then. Heh. Fucking retard. I'm glad he died fast because the time we spend was horrific. I knew that he had no chance of winning from the very start. He did not have what it takes to win a battle royale. But the worst was what he wouldn't stop talking about being scared here, and there and over there. About how much he missed his girlfriend back home. I'm really glad he died fast.
In the end he only made it to the 2nd floor. Despite having recieved a tier 1 trait and a tier 2 skill he died at the hands of only a mid-level demon, while searching for clues to save some 'friend'. How lame. This was so embarrassing that I got laughend at back at the central core after returning!'
The space around the marble seemed to bend even more, until the the moving light patterns came to an abrupt halt and the marble started to slowly float through a dark space towards a dimm lightsource in the distance.
'This time it's gonna be different!'
He mentally nodded.
'Well let's see what I got this time. System. Retrieve basic information of participant id #442711009.'
His new partner.
A mental window popped up, as the system responded.
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Participant-id: #442711009
Race: Human
Name: Ithron Minya
Gender: Male
Age: 19
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'tsk. Some human again.'
Mentally clicking his tongue even if he knew that humans were the most likely partners since they were the most widespread race across the universe present in a lot of different dimensions.
He mentally voiced another command.
'System. Retrieve attributes of participant id #442711009 sort by value descending.'
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Intelligence: 25
Agility: 15
Magic: 10
Perception: 10
Endurance: 5
Vitality: 5
Strenght: 4
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'Whoah.'
As soon as he finished inspecting the mental screen black flames started to spread out around the marble.
'Oh well, this guy is trash beyond trash.'
Now this was his 9th attempt. He was an 'elder'. But not any elder. He was an extremely rare case in which he was able to keep remembering his real name, which made him famous even among the vast number of servants.
'Sigh.'
A human player would be the weakest race a 'guide' like him coud get teamed up with.
Every servant would have to participate as a guide for a selected player.
And the attributes of Alec's player 'Ithron Minya' were bad even for human standards.
The better the player the higher the chances of winning the competition for the guide.
The competition was rather simple.
A 'guide' - a servant of god was paired with a 'player'.
This player was a random individual from a dimension selected by their god who was then transported to the stage of the competition -the tower-
Though he wasn't entirely sure whether the player selection was really random or not but a simple sevant such as himself wasn't privileged to know such details.
The tower consistet of 10 floors in total. Every floor had it's own ecosystem and the average area of each floor was 10.100.000 km². With the first floor being extremely vast and the 10th floor having
only a 100 km² area. The tower had a humongous size and was a construct their god created specially for the competition. He even completely remodelled every floor of the tower after every competiton, so that no guide could make up incompetence with experience.
The core of the competition was a battle royal between all the players.
The average participation of servants was around 2 Trillion. So there would be 2 Trillon guide-player pairings participating in each ascension competition.
A player's goal was to climb the floors of the tower and be first to arrive at the top floor and activate the hidden artifact the <Cross of Ascension>, while it was the guides goal to support their player and make them the winner. Only when a servant succeeded in his role as a guide would they get their wish granted and ascend.
The problem were the differences of the races that lived across the universe.
Since a player was seemingly picked randomly a lucky guide could be paired up with a dragon,
one of the strongest races that Alec had come into contact with. Although he never had been paired with one he saw them in action in past competitions, while they were wreaking havoc wherever they went because of their overwhelming physical attibutes and talent in using magic.
The competition was never fair. And never intendet to be so.
Because the one that set it up, the god that attacted people with the bait of fulfilling their wishes as many things but one thing stood out especially.
He was incredibly cruel.
It all started with the simple desire of helping everyone. But problems occured.
What if some people's wishes couldn't coexist?
Easy example. 2 different people wish to win the full prize in a lottery and they would only play once wishing that they would win. You couldn't grant both wishes. Only 1 person can receive the full prize at a time.
Problems like these but for far more extreme cases that decided the life and death of Quadrillions slowly drove the god mad.
After a long time the god became corrupt, to the point where even his thoughts changed.
Why would he help others anyways? He could just help everyone but where would be the fun of that? If they didn't even struggle to get to their goal where would be the point?
The competition had no other purpose than serve for a way of entertainment for the old bored god.
Seeing his servants struggle with all of their might in order to get a wish granted which looked pathetic in the eyes of the god brought an odd feeling of satisfaction. That combined with the helpless struggle and slowly disappearing hope of survival he could see from the players he threw into the competition became the god's way of enjoying himself. Seeing others struggle and suffer became one of the favorite sights of the god. That was also the reason for establishing a fee to enter the central core. Was it necessary?
No way. It was just funny.
