Catching Up With the Past

PATH OF THE IMMORTAL—2062

Ignatius was beginning to feel mentally fatigued.

He'd been playing intensely for quite a while now. Roughly an hour had passed since he and Siegmund first stepped foot into the Eternal Tower, and he'd only had a few short breaks during this time. Every other moment had been spent in full concentration. One important mistake, after all, could result in him dying and returning to the very first floor.

Over the past year in the real world, Ignatius hadn't spent much time in Path of the Immortal. He'd been instead helping the Chinese doctor (whose name he still couldn't remember) test his theories, as well as creating the plans for what he'd do upon returning to the past.

Ignatius couldn't quite remember all the details of how he'd been dragged into helping the scientist, but he had the strong impression of being filled with a new kind of hope that he'd never experienced before. This hope had been enough to convince him—back when he called himself Alexei, rather than Ignatius—to abandon his last ambitions of finding fame and fortune in Path of the Immortal.

Alexei had known, back then, that there was no chance of him returning to his old standard of living. Though he'd once earned a decent amount of real-world money by selling items and Essence in the Auction House, the rise of pay-to-win tryhards had long since raised the standard of efficiency far above poor Alexei's head.

If he'd made better decisions in the early game, Alexei had known, he could have risen alongside even the richest P2W fools. But he'd simply not known how all the complex game systems worked back then.

And so Alexei became poorer and poorer, unable to afford as much food or even heat for his tiny shack as at the height of his career. Eventually, after years of slaving away in Path of the Immortal, the evolution of the game had forced Alexei back into the miserable life he'd once been forced to endure.

It was worse the second time around. By then, Alexei had gained the tiniest taste of heaven. He'd known what it was like to be comfortable because of the fruits of one's labor.

Then it was all taken away again and he was forced to realize that a pathetic man-child like himself would always be subservient to those born into better circumstances.

And so Alexei had lived as much as possible within Path of the Immortal, leaving his body to almost wither away completely. The real world held nothing for him except for the reality of being alive. Even the few people he could perhaps call his friends and family had all died or left the village, seeking better lives in the real world, even as the AI which called itself God warped the real world beyond recognition.

At least God had left Path of the Immortal alone, except for the usual tasks it had always performed as an AI. Perhaps it had a soft spot in its heart for the reality which it had maintained like a garden back when it merely cultivated the MMO.

Looking back on these memories, which were becoming somewhat clearer as his mind adjusted to its new reality, Ignatius-who-had-once-been-Alexei wondered if he had indeed made a mistake by choosing to kill his body in this new past existence. He couldn't remember having ever felt this mentally fatigued in his first life. The whole year spent outside the game had drained him of quite a lot of his mental stamina.

But perhaps this was actually a result of his existence within the game's code. Was this truly the effect of no longer being bound to a real human brain? But then, how was it possible for a mind to even 'feel' fatigue when there was no physical brain or body involved?

Once more, Ignatius simply had to sigh, shake his head, and focus on the reality before him. No matter what reason there was for his thoughts, feelings, and very existence, no amount of questioning and worrying could change it. Instead, he'd keep marching on and overcome Floor 5.

At that point, having reached the Eternal Tower's first major checkpoint, he could have a bit of rest.

Assuming that was possible in his current existence.

At Ignatius's side, Siegmund looked warily around from underneath his gigantic, face-obscuring helmet. "I don't care much for this silence, my friend. Somehow, I don't feel that all the citizens have died. There would be a certain malevolence in the air, were that the case, like we experienced in that hell-jungle place. Yet, I find it impossible that the whole city could have escaped without leaving a trace of themselves."

Ignatius nodded. "You're right. The people have been… changed. Some of them. They're lurking and waiting for us to come near. Most of them have been pulled into the Eternal Tower and are 'being' changed inside it. Unless we save them."

Siegmund rubbed the side of his helmet with a gauntleted hand, as though he were confusedly scratching his head. "Hmmm. But we are still in the Eternal Tower ourselves. How can this be? No matter how much you try to explain this, I can never wrap my mind around it."

They passed completely through the huge hole that had been smashed into the wall protecting the City of Stomrus. "Infinity goes on forever," said Ignatius. "Eternity is just another name for it. The tower is inside the tower, because a place without beginning or end can even have itself inside itself."

He shot an amused glance at the Onion Knight. He'd just more or less made that up to sound wise and confusing. The reality of the situation was that a hand-crafted "dungeon" made of instanced environments could be whatever the devs wanted it to be.

Though, the "wisdom" Ignatius had given was fairly close to the lore explanation.

As Ignatius had expected, his companion just gave a long sigh and shook his head. "You're the wise Monk, my friend. I'll leave all the philosophizing to you. I'm only your humble companion, here to—"

The Onion Knight's voice cut off with a gurgle of pain and surprise as a streak of glittering light smashed into him and sent him flying into a nearby brick building within the city walls!

Ignatius spun, eyebrows raised in surprise and gauntleted fists pulled into a fighting stance! There weren't supposed to be enemies this close to the outer wall. What was happening?

There sat a figure Ignatius had seen once before, a figure he wasn't expecting to see again for several days.

Ozyrus, the player who called himself a Revenant, sat casually on an overturned boulder. His left hand was extended, and a sphere of radiant light shone around it. "I've been doing a bit of research on you," he said. "Or, I've been trying to."

He hopped down off the rock. He didn't freeze the world around them this time, as he had during their last encounter. "I'll skip most of the boring details. I dug up all the chat logs attached to your account and found something extremely peculiar about your first moments in the game."

Ozyrus made a gesture in the air, and a translucent text document flickered into existence between them. Even though, on his side, Ignatius could only see the writing in reverse, the text itself was unmistakable.

It was code which Ignatius had memorized in the future and which had killed his body in the past.