Chapter 240: Revelations (II)

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"So you don’t just punch things; you’re attentive, too. Good for you," the king sighed.

Ren just chuckled. Stereotyping him based on appearance wasn’t really a new experience for him.

The king cleared his throat and said:

"Let’s get the Old Ones out of the way, because not even I—maybe not even the Emperors themselves or the Martial Gods themselves—could confirm whether they actually exist or not."

"We can’t really gleam more information from the Sky Archons since, well, they’re gone."

Ren stayed silent in agreement. He didn’t insist on the truth to others. That would do nothing but expose that he knew more than he appears, and that would invite even more suspicion on him. He’s already strange to their eyes for knowing the terms he just revealed.

The King waved his hand, changing the projection before them. Now, instead of the hologram displaying the continent, it zoomed out further and revealed a large and very archaic-looking spire...one that is tapered and inverted.

"We call this the East Victory Spire..." The king sighed, sounding a bit out of depth when he talked about it.

"Don’t look at this and think that this is exactly what it looks like. It’s not. In fact, nobody—not even the Martial Gods themselves—knows just what the spire looks like simply because no human has ever gotten to the very bottom of the spire, left, inspected it from the outside, and returned to tell the tale."

"This design came from visions of ancient oracles, prophets, seers, etc., collected throughout history, debated, updated, and passed down from one generation to the next."

"This spire—the East Victory Spire—is where we, humans, live," the king revealed, making the other finalists gasp in shock.

"More specifically, our world—the Pangea Continent, where billions of humans live—is right here." The king manipulated the hologram and zoomed at the very top of the spire. Or in this case, since it’s inverted, the bottom.

"This is the basement floor. Not the 1st floor, basement—the distinction is crucial and on purpose." He then looked at Ren and continued, "This is what they’re talking about."

"This is where we live, and most of us die. Our struggles, our politics, our world...it’s all here, just in one single floor of this very large, very old, and very archaic spire. We’ve been here since our creation...or at least, that’s what historians said. I’m inclined to believe it, but you’re free to have your own thoughts."

"That’s..." Sieg muttered loudly before he could catch himself.

Nobody blamed him. They know he’s overwhelmed, and honestly, who wouldn’t be? This was huge!

Even with the king himself revealing this to them, it’s not sinking in fully to them just yet. It may take even longer for it to truly do so, and even then, it still feels overwhelming.

The truth of their world—the scale on which it operates—makes everybody feel so small and trivial, and it’s not even funny.

"Each floor of this inverted spire is a world on its own. That is a confirmed fact. That doesn’t mean that it’s friendly, though. As a matter of fact, I don’t want any of you to think that getting to lower floors would be a novel experience. It will not. The lower floors...I will not call them hostile; I’d say that they’re a trial. Each one is designed to forge us into something more, something beyond any of us could comprehend. By no means is it a friend; it’s more like a teacher."

"But don’t listen to my ramblings," the king snorted at himself. "Those are just my musings. I have never even been to the first floor; clearly, I have no idea what I’m talking about."

Ren heard that loaded statement and heard resentment in it, meaning that there’s a deeper story behind it. He doesn’t know what, because it has never been told in the canon story, and he can’t exactly point it out now.

He then saw the King’s eyes meeting his.

"The reason why I set aside the matter of the Old Ones is because throughout our history, the furthest floor our kind had explored so far was the 6th floor."

As he said this, the hologram switched and highlighted the floor he’s talking about.

"We only reached halfway through this floor and not a single step further. The martial gods of today are stuck in their progress, trapped on the 5th floor. Nobody has ever reached the 6th floor again after that. As for why, sadly, even I can’t tell you because I don’t know."

"So you see? I can’t really confirm whether they existed or not—the Old Ones, I mean. Not even the Martial Gods can. We can’t rely on the Sky Archons’ words because they had a spire on their own, which may not necessarily work like ours."

"Hell! You see this image before you? It might not even be accurate! Nobody knows how many floors East Victory Spire actually has. This image has seven because it’s based on speculations of our historians. It is a theory, a guess. Not a fact!"

The room went silent for a bit. It was an uncomfortable and loaded silence, too. Everybody’s mind was reeling over this fact.

Ren kept his expression disciplined. He can’t show any signs that he knows things they don’t. There are too many eyes here. This includes one of his biggest secrets, something that he’s not even willing to tell Lily about or another soul for that matter.

"But yeah, enough about this depressing thing," the king dismissed the hologram of the spire.

"Don’t think too much about it. However far you reach in the future, just keep this in mind—the world is much, much bigger than you think. Never think that you’re the strongest or the best. There will always be someone better than you out there."

"Anyway, now that you guys know that, we can return to our original topic...the tournaments," the king sounded cheerful again.

The finalists felt like groaning. Unlike him, they can’t simply just move on after that mind-blowing reveal! It’s worse because they’ve signed an NDA!

"So basically...the Kingdom vs. Kingdom portion is cancelled. We’re going straight to the Empire vs. Empire portion," the king stated. "And the setting would be different because something happened, the thing that caused our plans to derail."

He projected another hologram again. It was of the spire at first, but it quickly zoomed in to the basement floor and the 1st floor. More specifically, what’s in between.

What’s highlighted was a pocket space between the basement floor and the 1st floor. It looked hazy and unstable, yet it had some populated areas.

"This is a secret realm we call ’The Stairs.’ Don’t think it’s literal; it’s figurative. We call it that because it is a place we can use to go from the Basement up to the 1st Floor."

"Don’t look at me that way; I wasn’t the one who named it. They’ve been calling it that before I was even born," the king snorted.

Some of the finalists had the decency to look ashamed, at least.

"Anyway, the gist is that ’The Stairs’ is a secret realm that is filled with dangers and opportunities."

"It only appears once every 100 years, and whenever it does, it becomes both a problem and a lucky chance for us."

"The thing is, it appeared two years earlier than we expected," the king sighed as he explained. "We organized the tournament, thinking that it wouldn’t appear until after it."

"But the World System notified us of its emergence and forcibly changed how the tournaments should play out."

"Instead of you competing against representatives of other kingdoms to figure out who could best represent the empire, now, you’ll have to work together."

"All fifty of you will soon go to this secret realm and are expected to work together to bring glory to the Heavenly Bronze Empire."

"You will be competing against representatives of other empires."

"For all intents and purposes, you might even say that you’re going to war with them...because the empire at the bottom of the final rankings will experience punishments, and you can already imagine how much impact that would have for everybody involved."

The finalists felt overwhelmed again.

Yeah, this was war, alright. Calling it other names would just be pretense or lies.

"One thing I’ll tell you is that this string of tournaments that happened regularly, including this one that’s forced to change due to circumstances, isn’t our idea."

"Not mine, not other kings’, not any emperor’s...nobody."

"It was a tradition that began with the World System." The king’s expression hardened when he revealed this.

"This was the World System’s idea of testing us as a race, a way to check if we’re being lazy or not."

"Our only options are to either participate or be punished as an entire race. It offers nothing in between, and it cannot be swayed otherwise. We either obey or we don’t."

"That’s the thing about the World System. It has been here, watching over us, since the very beginning of our conception. But that doesn’t mean that it’s on our side."

"Its main purpose has always been to evaluate us—an examiner, if you will."