Chapter 29: Chapter 29 - Falco 2
Chapter 29 - Falco 2
At the beginning there were minor concerns: the guides did not know where to turn between different cultures, housing problems, violence and insults, and theft. The guards were overwhelmed and a lot of things went wrong. If I had to take a simple example, imagine having only a handful of people to take care of tens of thousands of babies in a day care center. That's about what it must have looked like for the people of the tower. It's not as if the tower was not ready to welcome us, but there were holes in the rules to be respected and in the operation that made the situation unlivable.
Now there are many more rules to prevent misbehavior like intimidation, murder, bodies left lying on the pavement and bathing in puddles of blood for mouthfuls of bread or water.
It all happened, I'm not making it up, it might seem strange when you see the tower now, but at the time this place looked like a war zone, or a refugee camp. The two examples are equal.
For my part, I did my class in the priests' tower without really taking care of it. Once I finally understood how the tower worked and had decent accommodation, I didn't want to be involved in it all. Let's say I closed my eyes, I had the impression at the time that all this did not concern me and I spent most of my time making alleys between the house of my guide and the tower of the priests while avoiding as much as possible the problems. I told myself that once I got in the tower, I wouldn't see this stuff anymore and that everything would be fine.
It was around this time that guides and guards began to show signs of moral and physical weakness. The people of the tower normally don't need to eat and sleep, even if they can, but after several months of seeing a steady stream of people arriving and the situation not changing they finally let go. some.
Whatever you may think of them now, the people of the tower are not Terrans, but they are made up of humans like the others and they have their faults. One of the flaws is that by never stopping, they couldn't keep up this pace without taking rest day and night and having to deal with new problems all the time. Class teachers, vendors, guards, guides. Those who were most in touch were those who suffered the most from the situation.
I only wanted one thing anyway, to get away from these people who displayed a violence that I couldn't stand, but once I got into the first floor, it became worse.
The base of the tower has rules even if imperfect at the time and which were already not respected, but there are none in the floors and since the tower had just opened, the first world is without doubt most marked by the stupidity of the first climbers. If I'm not stupid, the world population on this floor has shrunk by two-thirds and I believe it's still shrinking between poverty, starvation, and the rest. Climbers don't just complete the quest given to them, some loot and kill for riches without ever asking themselves the slightest question and when they do, they realize the horror of what they are doing. did. I spent my first world with a group of friends and half of them decided to take refuge in a hermitage in remote areas of the floor where they would no longer see all these scenes of violence. Like me, they expected an adventure, not massacres and violent deaths.
When I got back to the base of the tower a few months later, things had worsened into sort of gang wars where people were killing guild leaders openly. The management of the influx of climbers seems to have been resolved with the appearance of more guards and guides. Some climbers who arrived at the same time had barely found accommodation while I had had time to finish my first world and my apprenticeship as a priest. The violence did not abate and began to become more serious as people organized themselves into gangs to take advantage of others who were lost and did not understand how the system worked. People have found themselves without money or enlisted in gangs to kill for them without ever understanding the class system and skills or how to get into the floors of the tower.
Until then, the tower had never acted or taken sides personally, but trust me when she started doing it people started to be afraid of what she was capable of. The day she did so, about fifteen thunderclaps rang out between the towers. Every spot lightning struck was the charred body of a climber who had no doubt deserved it. There were more thunderclaps unfortunately, but there were always more the next day until the lightning became a sign of doom.
There were many ploys to avoid getting struck by lightning and things didn't stabilize right away.
The keepers of the side towers then gained more power and the guides became untouchable by anyone. From then on the thunderclaps ceased and became occasional.
What was important for those people who had turned the base of the tower into a disgraceful neighborhood was not to climb the tower, it was to take power and use it on others.
In a system imperfect because of its utopian side which valued the freedom of everyone at the time, each new weakness in the new rules was a breach in which everyone rushed. It took a lot of rules and a long time to achieve the balance that you see now. In any case, the tower managed to achieve a certain stability, but it was already too late since some were able to accumulate fortunes and leave thousands of climbers penniless who got lost in the crowd.
Ah, and no matter how much I tell you about the tower as if it were alive, it's not something I can assure you. As far as I know, there could very well be a Central Tower Guardian who is the one making the rules and blasting people down that no one has ever seen.
Among the organizations that emerged during this period of chaos, there were first the guilds that sought to bring together the most people to get them to gather resources more quickly to forge weapons or be able to buy them. There were wars that took place and still take place in the tower between the different guilds that ended up being played out to the greatest number. Back then, they were pretty damn murderous, I don't know if that is still the case.
There has also been the emergence of groups of religious fanatics, who see the tower as "the" answer to all questions. At first nobody took them seriously until the massacres took place in the streets.
Anytime there was friction, it bound to lead to open conflict between the factions. The groups of ground soldiers supposed to represent the order were the worst in my opinion, taking the new arrivals under their wings and bringing them directly to the first floor and training them to slaughter anyone who obstructed their path with a machine gun. I'm not talking to you about all the guides who passed for impostors according to the military when they came to get their climbers, all that to be able to make soldiers easily. There are still many more that I won't tell you about, but I think you get the idea. Everything that man could do that was wrong overwhelmed the Tower of the Worlds for a long time.
I returned to the tower afterwards, far too disgusted to really want to stay in this chaos any longer, but it was worse without the rules. I have seen villages on fire and scenes of looting not to mention the public executions made by inhabitants of these floors / worlds on climbers or by climbers on inhabitants or by climbers on other climbers. It all depended on the location. I did my best to help people, but it was not enough.
While trying to flee the scenes of barbarism, I ended up abandoning the members of my group who began to be indoctrinated by other adventurers who encouraged them to join them to fight against other climbers who were "real". monsters ".
I never killed a human being compared to others, I never could. I finished my quest, alone, and when I got back to the base of the tower, I started wanting to take care of people in the hospital. I wanted to do what I had learned to do without anyone trying to kill me. Most of the patients needed to talk about what they had seen and done and I listened for a very long time.
Back then there was no five-year rule and there was no place for them other than the street once they were tidied up. Most of them stayed there, staring blank and sitting on the floor. The influx of climbers at the start was over, but the streets did not empty out.
They didn't even stay there for a room since the guides pay for the food and take care of the accommodation. For some the suicide was the easiest when they saw a return to the earth and even the priests who had the miracle of resurrection ended up stopping saving people by dint of seeing them jump again from the top of the towers. The fanatics also took the opportunity to recruit, as well as the guilds and the military in these vagabonds. Everyone ended up using them while they were still usable.
My nerves broke at that time. Wherever I went I felt like I found only misfortune, deception and cruelty and I decided to climb the floors without asking myself any questions and without asking anything of anyone. At the foot of the tower, it was difficult to put things into perspective and inside depending on where you are you can get there. You can find happy people, parties, and life in a more earthly sense. This is what pushed me to stay there and not to approach the other climbers.
One by one I passed the floors and I ended up reaching the rank of Seraphim, I also believe that I was the first at the time, I do not know if this is still the case. I stopped at floor 10, tired. In a decade or so, I had only made ten floors, but at least no one had manipulated me or made me do anything.
Which brings us back to my age and when I came down to the foot of the tower. I wanted to know and curiosity in addition to fatigue prevailed over reason. Fortunately things had changed and calmed down, at least in appearance. No more murders and corruption in front of everyone. No more beggars are shown openly since now they are all sequestered under the hospital in a wing specially designed for them.
The guardians turned into deities for some while before they roamed freely among the climbers. This is the case of the three guardians of the tower of the priests. I had already had the opportunity to speak to some forwards and they were rather mundane and far from divine. But when I learned what was going on in the basements of the tower of the priests that I heard about this "prison" from a friend, I could not accept it. Despite everything that had happened, the Priests' Tower made sense to me. She was there to help anyone who needed it and I was one of those who believed in the idea. She wasn't meant for the guards to turn into a lie or to… Let go. I won't tell you what's going on in the basement, chances are you'll never see a priest the same way again if I do. I went to see it to make sure it wasn't a lie and it wasn't.
When I returned to the great hall after that, the three tower keepers were waiting for me and wanted to bless me by telling me that I was an example for others. Finally all the ceremonial blah that they had invented in the meantime. They told me about creating a group of priests that I would be the leader of to keep climbing the tower, but I wasn't really listening from there. I started to remember what I had seen for the first few years and what I had just seen.
I couldn't stand the idea of having to participate in this masquerade by being considered a hero by them, acquaintances turned monsters. I spat in the face of the first guard who made this proposal to me like the last of the scoundrels and the second I slapped him so hard that he lost his "divine aura" and collapsed on the ground with it. his human body. The third stepped back when he realized he was next to lose face publicly. In ten years the divinity side had time to settle firmly and I questioned all of this in front of the people present in the tower.
You should have seen the faces of the other climbers and the guards who tried to come between me and the keepers when I went into angelic form. No one stepped in my direction, no one could, they all froze when they saw me reach for something that they will never have as long as they are under the control of the guards. Seraph's form is not powerful, but is very impressive to see because of the wings and aura and I reached this stage almost by accident, but let's move on. That day anyway I didn't change out of vanity or to show what I was capable of, but out of anger. What I had achieved was not a lie and had nothing wrong with them compared to them, and I wanted to show it to everyone at the time that they were nothing but men dressed as saints. whereas deep down under all these layers of lies they were just monsters.
I never killed anyone, ever. This is also why I became a priest, I did not want to have blood on my hands, but that does not mean that I cannot be violent. I am not by nature, but I was that day.
Nothing could stop me from bringing out all these negative feelings I had inside of me being violent towards the guards, I hit them several times after that and no one succeeded in me. 'Stop.
When I got out of the tower when I was done, the bondage mark I have on my hand started to form and I gradually lost most of my powers along with my status as a free man. It turns out that the keepers are now like the guides, untouchables and although a slap or two might not have been that bad I went too far.
What I had just done was to make me lose my freedom. Since everyone knew me after that I used a potion of youth that I found on the tenth floor to disappear into the crowd and lose a few years physically. I was doomed and everyone knew that, but once I changed my appearance, I melted into the crowd of convicts. I think some priests wouldn't hesitate to put pressure on me to find out how I became Seraphim if they could and that's why you shouldn't talk about it.
After that I ended up here as a cook and I think I'm doing pretty well considering what happened. Over time, I realized that the tower had changed and was modernized. The new rules ended up calming everyone down. Of course, since then, less things are allowed, it is in the tower that it must happen, but I prefer not to be in the know. "
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