Goblin?

『Chronicles of the Blood Tower』

43rd Floor : Floor of Fate

"Haaa...Haaaaa....Huuuu", Sistine gasped for breath as she woke up in a cold sweat, awakened by another one of her vivid dreams.

Sistine looked outside the window of her room inside her bedroom. It was still dark out.

"Again….haaa…..haaaa", Sistine muttered to herself as she brushed her drenched platinum blonde hair back and tied it into a ponytail, rising herself up from her bed.

Sistine had been having more and more of these vivid dreams that felt incredibly real. In these dreams, she wasn't in control of the dream, but rather watched a boy grow up painfully on a planet outside the Tower. The boy lost his mother when he was young, and was bullied constantly in and out of school with an alcoholic father to boot. She felt as if she could feel the intensity of confusion, sadness and anger in the boy as she watched him helplessly live a terrible life. But, the boy's life was rather odd in several ways when she started to observe the dreams further and further. His mother looked like one of the pictures of the 9 Great Sovereigns, the missing Sovereign of Corruption, Lenoah Trostas.

"Lady Sistine!", A voice full of worry barged into Sistine's resting quarters.

Her maid Elaine had been the victim to her waking up from these vivid dreams, constantly panicking if Sistine's health was deteriorating from the fragmented sleep.

"It's fine, don't worry Elaine. It's about time to wake up anyways", Sistine spoke as she sat at the edge of the bed looking at the artificial sun creeping up upon sunrise on the 42nd Floor.

"..Ar...Are you sure?", Elaine stuttered in anxiety as she could not believe the beautiful lady she served from the Great Evergreen Family, one of the 9 Great Families, that ruled their territory on this floor, could possibly be alright with these constant and more frequent nightmares.

"Yes Elaine", Sistine replied curtly as she did not want to cause this maid any more trouble than she already had.

Sistine then raised herself up from her bed and stripped her nightgown and walked over towards the shower room.

Elaine blushed and covered her eyes from Sistine's pristine model-like body figure as she walked over towards the shower naked.

'It just doesn't make any sense… Who are you?', Sistine thought to herself as she turned the shower on and the water dripped down from the shower head.

Her curvaceous body figure was still outlined visibly even with the misty water vapor making her body difficult to see. She looked down at her trembling hands confusedly. Sistine was a 'Fate Reader', a class that was a descendant type class from her Everdeen Family, that specialized in reading fates, and in some cases, the future. Thus making them absolute monsters in the battlefield that could read the opponents moves before they were even made. But, Fate Readers, the class almost everyone in the Everdeen Family had, only allowed them to read their own fates. This was the first time Sistine felt a part of something much bigger than her own fate, as even though you might think she was reading someone else's fate; in her last dream she saw that very boy, grown up and in front of what looked to be the Tower…. But this time it was from the outside of the Tower. And nobody had ever seen the Tower from the outside aside from the irregulars of the Tower.

'I'll have to find him… if he's really in the Tower… I'll have to find him to know more…'

Sistine looked at the clear glass walls of the shower and looked at her reflection. Her pale skin and platinum blonde hair was the same. But her eyes weren't the normal hazy blue color that was distinct to the Everdeen Family. They were still blue, but had golden rings around the irises, a temporary side effect of Fate reading. But this time, the golden rings had not been disappearing since her first visions of the boy, Rasmus.

---

Rasmus woke up with a long yawn in his comfortable bedding at the inn. He stretched out his arms in relaxation to get his stiff muscles loosened up.

'Ah… Quite a lot to do today.', Rasmus thought to himself as he had made plans for his day last night after reading the books he bought and looking more thoroughly at his Tol's panel screens only he could see.

Last night he realized what the ??? marks were for his abilities and had the option to name the skills, as they were marked down as question marks because they were unique skills not recorded in any of the Tol's databases.

---

Name : Rasmus Trostas

Age : 16 (real age not identifiable due to distortion in time axis in host's prior location)

Class : Caster - Apostle of Annihilation

Level : 0

Attributes -

Strength : 132

Speed : 157

Mana : 1,972 (Blood Core synchronized successfully)

Dexterity : 201

Stamina : 425

Status : Healthy, Holder of Key Fragment, Blood Core (unique power source), Lenoah's seal (weakening), Reverse Mana Flow Technique

Skills -

1) Basic Mana Strengthening - B+

2) Tower Language - Passive

3) High speed Body Regeneration - Grade A-

4) Mana Perception - Grade S

5) Blood Resonance (unique skill)

6) Draconic Hellfire (unique skill)

---

Rasmus was slightly pleased that he could identify and rename his skills only he knew of. The only sad thing about it was that the Tol could not grade the skill until further analyzing was done on it. He could have it analyzed further through combat, if he wanted to explore the distinct characteristics of his skills, and the good thing was the information would only be registered to his Tol, and not put into the database in case others wanted to get a hold of his unique powers.

Nonetheless, there was a lot of information he was able to dig out last night regarding the Tower history and cultivating mana.

Though the information on his mother was very little because of some unique circumstances he was able to find out she too was an irregular, one of the first 9 people to climb to unforeseen heights in the Tower and was one of the 9 sovereigns before she went missing.

The book gave no details on how she went missing but described her as a person who was very secretive and that she was known as the Witch of Corruption, specializing in debuff spells and poison magic.

Rasmus was actually very disturbed when he started to read up on more of the personal information on her as the book gave evidence to a personality she had that Rasmus had never seen. She had many children and was known to be very promiscuous with other men, having scandals with the other men she traveled with that were known as the sovereigns. She also conducted questionable human experiments and was looked at as a sinner in the Tower.

Rasmus naturally didn't want to believe it at first, but saw the pictures of her in the book and immediately recognized her. Not only that, the last name he inherited from her, 'Trostas', was one of the 9 Great Family names, and he was bound to have siblings as it was still a Family prominent in the Tower. It also explained Herbert's blatant brown-nosing at the commercial press building.

He came to a few conclusions and decided not to reveal his last name anymore unless absolutely needed, and also decided not to get entangled with his family in the Tower as he didn't find anything about key fragments in the book regarding the 9 Greta families, most likely indicating it was something incredibly private and should not be found out to the public.

The good news on the other hand was that he figured out the way to raise mana without needing to level, also giving reason as to why Mana crystals were the main currency in the Tower. Every Tower resident needed mana crystals to absorb the ambient mana from them and circulate to their own mana through a mana technique. High level Mana techniques were hard to come by, and a lot of mana was lost through the process of absorption through the poor efficiency from people's mana cultivation techniques.

Rasmus had a good knowledge of human biology from school back on Earth, and had experimented with the circuitry and inner workings of his body with the numerous years on the abandoned planet with the blood core. Last night, before going to bed he took out one high-grade mana crystal and meditated, absorbing the ambient mana inside of it.

High-Grade mana crystals had a total amount of ownerless mana that came out to 500 units. Rasmus' reverse flow mana technique had absorbed nearly all of that. The highest level technique known in the Tower could only absorb roughly 200 units from a high-grade crystal whereas he absorbed over double that.

Rasmus was inwardly pleased with his sleep and findings from last night as he turned over to the side of the bed and put on his clothes from yesterday. He had put them on the cleaning rack in his room, which used cleaning magic to clean the clothes.

As Rasmus was putting on the clothes, he went through his mental checklist of things to do today.

'First let's get some food and talk with Melody, the Innkeeper, about hunting. And second we'll go around looking for a good temporary spear to use as I need to hide the Dragon Bone Spear. 3rd and last but not least, I need to experiment with the new skill I acquired from experimenting last night, The Draconic Hellfire.'

Rasmus slipped on his tight boots and gloves on as he gathered his belongings into the spatial ring and headed downstairs for breakfast.

As he came to the end of the staircase, reaching the ground floor where the bar was located, he heard several loud conversations and bustling movements. The Bar was much rowdier than the nearly empty place last night, as many guests were grabbing a bite to eat before shopping, looking for new party members, or hunting for practice.

Rasmus quietly waded through the busy crowd and found an empty seat at the bar. He saw Melody running back and forth with a couple other waiters getting food orders for the hungry guests.

He placed his hands and fidgeted with them on the bar counter, as he had never been in a bar nor sat at one. Not only that, he was incredibly socially awkward still as he had a bit of anxiety being in a crowded place. He looked down at his trembling hands and closed his eyes to take a deep breath.

"Ah! Heya there Rasmus. Slept well last night I presume?", Rasmus opened his eyes hearing the familiar voice that offered him a room last night.

"Oh… Hey Melody.", Rasmus responded slowly, anxiety written all over his face.

Melody looked at Rasmus with a strange expression, as the calm and aloof expression from yesterday as nowhere to be seen. She quickly realized that this teenager probably had never eaten or drank at a bar and understood his demeanor immediately.

"Ya know, you don't look old enough to be sittin here, but I have a break in about 5 minutes and we can grab a bite to eat outside and chat like I promised yesterday. Waddayasay?" Melody spoke in a thick countryside accent and smiled wide at Rasmus trying to get him to loosen up.

Rasmus naturally did his best to focus on Melody's words through all the loud commotion around him and nodded lightly. Melody then turned around and grabbed the next tray of food and walked off to tend to the next customer.

5 Minutes later, Melody grabbed Rasmus' hand and brought him towards the staff dining area in the back, where the staff ate on their breaks. She grabbed a hearty soup and piece of warm bread for the two of them and sat down with Rasmus.

"You know, I didn't expect you to honestly take my advice and listen to me before going out to hunt… Most overambitious fools looking for some kind of false glory tend to have their brains inside their own ass.", Melody spoke up as she lifted the spoon of the creamy soup for a sip.

Rasmus naturally had finally calmed down and his anxiety suppressed as it was a quiet atmosphere. He looked at Melody and took a bite of the bread he dipped in his own soup and spoke, "Yeah… Well, I think having information is the basics to survival."

Rasmus lowered the bread and picked up his spoon, his eyes focused on the food. Melody's expression looked confused but then broke out into a smile.

"Haaaa… it's been a long time since I heard someone treat the Tower how it's supposed to be.", She sighed out and looked at Rasmus with warm eyes.

"What do you mean by that?", Rasmus asked inquisitively.

"Well, most people these days just try to climb the Tower to gain honor for their small families or treat it like some kind of wild adventure thinking it's all just a game. Nobody has truly treated it like survival for a long time. At least not here on the trial floor. The ones who do, end up passing the test, and the ones who don't… well let's just say the monsters need some kind of food to eat.", Melody spoke in a nostalgic tone as her eyes looked up to the ceiling.

"Hm… Well I was wondering if you could tell me about a few things regarding the types of monsters out in the practice fields for hunting, and if possible the type of test this floor will have and a good weapon smithy so I can get myself a new spear.", Rasmus looked at Melody with a faint smile hoping she had some answers for him.

"Well I got one question for you Rasmus", She replied back to him with a toothy grin.

"Ya ever met a goblin?", Melody spoke jovially.

Chapter 9 - Fin