The Tower From Space

The Eternal Tower's domain formed around Ignatius. He was overcome with a wave of nostalgia as he looked up at the 800-meter monument at its center.

It lay in a gigantic, hollow, crystalline sphere far under the bed of the virtual planet's deepest sea. The Brightlords had combined their strength, long, long ago, in order to banish it from the surface.

The Eternal Tower had once sailed through the vastness of outer space, coming from an unknown galaxy as it hurtled toward the planet Eta. Upon arrival, it had hung in the atmosphere, a titanic cylinder of seamless stone, for twenty-one years.

During all this time, it never moved a centimeter. Because of its vast distance from the ground, only powerful spellcasters could reach it.

When their weaker forms of magic proved useless to penetrate the cylinder's stone surface, these spellcasters decided that the cylinder must have been created by a force so powerful that using more aggressive forms of magic might prompt a retaliation which they were not prepared to face.

And so, though astrologers, maguses, and sorcerers alike all studied the looming object which remained far above the planet Eta, they never again dared to touch it.

So it came as an utter shock when, after exactly twenty-one years had passed since its appearance, the tower launched a beam of deadly radiation at the ground directly below it, a beam with a diameter precisely equal to that of its circular bottom face—175 meters.

This energy blast wiped out the research and observation station, which several magic schools had collaborated to build underneath.

Not only that, but the immense amount of heat and air pressure created by this overflowing of energy wiped out the small town which had risen around the observation station, as well as killing all living creatures within five kilometers.

In the brief moment before they died, the only thing the poor victims below would've seen was an overwhelming white light.

Then the stone column had descended to the ground, coming to rest gently upon the scorched earth. It didn't sink even a centimeter into the ground below, as though it weighed nothing at all.

A door had opened in its previously seamless side, a hole just large enough for two adults to walk side by side through it.

Last of all, stone pylons rose from the earth around it for miles, each bearing the same message in a different language, most of which were foreign to those who lived on the planet Eta:

"Reach my apex, 100 floors toward heaven, and your wish will be granted."

Each pylon, no wider than an old man's clenched fist, was drilled with thousands of tiny holes. When the wind passed through these holes, a voice whispered the same message in the same language to anyone close enough to hear.

It was as though, having created a graveyard of wasted potential below it, the tower had raised those dead souls as ghosts who haunted their own gravestones.

Nobody ever learned the truth of who sent the Eternal Tower. Deadly monsters and traps lay within its floors, floors which seemed to obey different laws of reality than the rest of the world. When a person ascended the stairs to a new floor, it was completely different from what they had seen the last time they stepped onto that floor.

The Eternal Tower was an unsolvable puzzle, one which devoured thousands of young, adventurous lives over the course of a few years. Nobody doubted that its promise was true: whoever could reach Floor 100 would have their deepest wish granted.

To prevent any more eager, foolish youths from throwing their lives away, the Brightlords, who were the mightiest heroes of that age, combined all their power to craft a spell which would teleport the Eternal Tower as far from the surface as possible.

It had created a protective sphere of crystal around itself as they cast this spell, causing it to manifest in a vast cavern under the ground of the planet Eta's deepest sea, rather than being sealed harmlessly in stone.

And therefore, it could be reached again… particularly by those who attained Immortal blood, for they had a strange and inexplicable ability to teleport to and from the Eternal Tower at will.

It was seen as the destiny of the Immortals to reach Floor 100 and seize the wish at its apex…

A destiny which Brightlord Temporix desired only for himself.

And that was why he had killed all the other Brightlords and tried to kill every Immortal on Eta, and why the Monastery of the Mirror Cage had sacrificed the lives of ten thousand of its members to seal him away.

But now, in the current state of Path of the Immortal's story, the Immortals were returning to the world. The Eternal Tower, which had been sealed away from humanity for as long as Brightlord Temporix had been caged—except to the very few NPCs with just a little Immortal blood in their veins—was open once more to the challenge of brave adventurers.

And so, Ignatius stood in the deep, dark, mossy field of whispering pylons, looking up at the featureless stone column before him.

Magical lanterns hung high in the air, casting patches of green and blue light on its smooth surface, and the few strains of insect life which could feed on the presence of ambient magical energy flitted in this light above. Through the crystal walls of the cavernous sphere, only the darkness of subterranean stone was visible.

A few dozen other players were also in the area, either walking in through the Eternal Tower's door and up the stairs to Floor 1, or standing around and gawking at the mystical, eerie environment around them.

Ignatius pulled Siegmund's whistle from his inventory and blew it, since the Onion Knight had been banished by default when Ignatius traveled to the multiplayer version of the City of Stomrus.

Siegmund appeared, still unarmored after their last mission, even though Ignatius had already removed the Onion Knight armor from his own body. He looked around himself in amazement. "Oh! I've heard legends of this place, my friend. The Eternal Tower… the titanic artifact from outer space which can grant any wish!"

"Yep," said Ignatius. "Come on, get armored up again and we'll go inside."

Siegmund threw him a look of courageous stoicism. "I suppose, since you are now Immortal, my friend, you have nothing to fear from the horrors within. Though I am only mortal, and a single stroke of the sword might end my life forever… I swore I would follow you to the ends of the earth, and so I shall follow you even here."

Ignatius gave a smirk, remembering Siegmund had already died—twice—and then had come back to life without realizing it. "I appreciate it, Siegmund. Here's your armor back. I'll watch for attackers while you put it on."

He dropped the armor at his feet, and Siegmund quickly equipped it. Though it took hardly any time, being a simple game process, his AI interpreted the action as a realistic one, a tedious process of strapping each piece of bulky armor on.

"Thank you!" the Onion Knight said once it was done, his voice filled with fatigue. Now that he wore the huge, round helmet again, his voice boomed out from within it. "I feel quite secure now, my friend. I'm ready to take on any challenger!"

No players were paying much attention to them, since they were surrounded by so many more interesting things. From this distance, Siegmund probably just looked like another player, perhaps one who had bought a set of cosmetic armor from the Crystal Coin shop. Ignatius doubted any of them realized Siegmund was actually an NPC companion.

So Ignatius nodded, then walked to the door of the Eternal Tower.

All around him, the stone pylons whispered their multilingual invitations, their voices fading into silence only a few steps from their pockmarked surfaces.

Despite himself, an uncanny chill went down Ignatius's back. Though he'd been playing for all these years, somehow the stone pylons surrounded the Eternal Tower always felt otherworldly to him in a way nothing else in the game managed to be.

Then he reached the door. Three players had just disappeared into it in front of him, their character models vanishing as they stepped onto the stairs which were just inside the doorway.

Only darkness could be seen up those stairs, darkness which held a mysterious and ever-shifting dungeon floor.

Ignatius stepped onto the bottom stair and was transported to Floor 1 of the Eternal Tower, with Siegmund close behind him.