Chương 30: “Into the Dog House”

The next day, the Tower was visible long before Celestia reached it. It rose from the ground, a vertical black spire so tall that its peak vanished beyond the clouds with no indication of stopping. Its surface was featureless and dark, almost like a dark line embedding itself in everyone's view should they look to the horizon. Its base had embedded itself into the ground, covering a wide area of roughly five kilometers in every direction.

Summit had, of course, built walls around the perimeter and erected several controlled entrances manned by guild officials and city personnel alike. Security was tight and efficient; thousands of tower climbers passed through these gates every week, and the process had been refined over five years of operation. The normal process for entering the Tower was straightforward: register at Summit's main guild of operations, the Adventurer's Guild, and complete their check-in procedure at the official entrance.

Now, standing in the queue at one of the gates, she took a look at her surroundings. She wasn't the only academy student here. Several first-years were scattered throughout the crowd, identifiable by, for some reason, them wearing their uniform. Celestia understood that it gave certain benefits, but why not spend a bit more time on your gear? A few second-years were present as well, wearing the academy's outer jacket. Thankfully, beneath that, they were decked out in proper gear.

Beyond the students, the crowd was a cross-section of the continent's climbing population. Veteran tower climbers stood in loose groups, their armor bearing the insignias of their respective guilds, some etched into breastplates, while others were displayed as badges pinned to cloaks or bracelets wrapped around wrists.

The variety of guild marks reflected the variety of guilds themselves; each organization had its own preference for how to brand its members, and the result was a patchwork of symbols and colors spread across the queue. Celestia observed them all with quiet interest but did not linger on any one group. She had other things to think about. From the books she had read in this world, Floors 1 through 4 were deliberately vague in their documentation.

Authors and veteran climbers alike avoided specifics, and not out of secrecy, but the consensus was that directly preparing yourself for these floors would actually be detrimental to your growth. The Tower used those first four floors to assess a climber's raw potential. That was probably why Professor Griffin hadn't gone into in-depth detail during his lecture.

He had told them the floors were solo, that they functioned as a beginner's course, and that the Tower would tailor a path of growth based on its assessment. Beyond that, he had offered nothing. At the very least, Celestia's gear was not a concern. The dress-armor she wore was top-of-the-line, as was normal for the only daughter of House Reingarde. It was a practical yet elegant piece, fitted close to her body's frame without restricting movement.

The metal was a malleable alloy that boasted top-tier defensive ratings despite its deceptively light weight. The design was distinctly feminine without sacrificing function, which Celestia suspected had been a deliberate choice by whoever her father had commissioned to forge it. For weapons, she carried her main spear, secured at her back, and two prototype baton-spears clipped to her belt as backups. And then there were the trinkets.

Her father had sent a small parcel to her office earlier that week, accompanied by a long letter that when shortened, could just be read:"For your safety." Inside were several life-saving trinkets. Any single one of them could be considered an heirloom treasure for a minor noble house. Celestia took a few with her today. She shifted her weight and let her gaze drift back toward the Tower. In the days since the demon attack and the start of the academy term, something had been nagging at her.

She hypothesized that the plot was trying to fix itself. And then this only raised another question that had been bothering her. In the story, after Celestia Von Reingarde was publicly humiliated by Arthur at the academy, she slowly faded away after a few more appearances. The author had written it as though the villainess had simply accepted her role and stepped offstage. But that didn't make sense. The original Celestia was many things.

She was petty, proud, vindictive, and she was definitley not the type to quietly disappear. A girl backed by the Reingarde name, with the resources of a ducal house and a temperament that ran hot, would not have simply accepted humiliation and retreated into irrelevance. Something must have happened. Something away from the main story's focus, something the author hadn't bothered to show because it didn't involve Arthur or his harem. Something that forced the original Celestia to step back.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

'The third arc.' She didn't have enough information yet, and the third arc of the original novel was still some distance away in the story's timeline. The queue moved forward. The process of entering the Tower was anticlimactic. One only needed to touch the Tower's surface and express the intent to enter it. Celestia placed her palm flat against the black wall.

'I will climb.' And then she sunk within. You ■■■ w■lk■■g ■■ ■■■ ■■■ ■■■ ■■■■■■ ■■■■ ■u■ged. ■■ h■■■ loo■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■ ruin ■■■ ■■■■■■ ■■ ■■ ■■■■■ i■compl■te'What?' The sentence tore through her mind; it was language, she was certain of that, but fractured beyond comprehension, words with their centers carved out and replaced with static. She could feel the shape of meaning pressing against the inside of her skull, trying to deliver itself, and failing.

And then, she hit the ground hard, palms scraping against rough stone. A high-pitched ringing flooded her ears. She had heard it and not heard it simultaneously. Information that was there and wasn't. It felt like an incomplete piece. After a few seconds, the ringing faded. Celestia lifted her head and found that she was in a cell. It was small and dirty. The walls were stone with no embellishments. The ground beneath her wasstone scattered with dead leaves and the faint trails of insects.

Water dripped somewhere in the far corner, a slow, rhythmic sound. Drip.

'What was that? Did the Tower try to talk to me?' The voice, if it could be called one, had been impossible to remember. It wasn't female, nor was it male, nor was it even human. It was as though her brain lacked the capacity to categorize it at all, like trying to recall a sound she had never evolved to hear. And there was another factor, one far more troubling.

In every record she had ever read, every account from veteran climbers and scholars, and even through reading the original story, there had never been a single documented case of the Tower explicitly communicating with anyone outside of system messages. The Tower presented trials and issued notifications. Celestia sighed, and the headache spiked again. She pressed her fingers to her temple and waited for it to pass. Then, a system window materialized in front of her.

[Floor 1] Time Ratio: X: 1 In the karmic wheel that turns without ceasing, all beings are bound to the eternal procession of life and dissolution. As the lotus is born from mud and returns to mud, so too must the soul pass through suffering to know itself. You who have entered the cycle shall not transcend it through luck. Endure, and be made worthy. Endure for 14 days. We look forward to your endeavors and wish for your success. Celestia read it twice.

"The fuck?" Her voice bounced off the stone walls and echoed back at her. She stood up and took a proper look at her surroundings. The cell was exactly as grim as her first impression suggested. The ceiling was high enough that she couldn't touch it even if she raised her spear, and the only source of light was a small window high in the wall, its opening crosshatched with iron bars. Through them, she could barely make out the pale glow of a moon hanging in what appeared to be a night sky. Drip.

There was no bed nor any food around. In fact, there was no indication that anything in this room was meant to properly sustain a person for fourteen days.

'This is wrong.' Celestia actually knew a fair amount about the first four floors from reading the original story. The trials were supposed to be combat-based; fight after fight, each one designed to push the climber's limits while the Tower assessed their capabilities. Between floors, the Tower provided food and a brief rest period. That was the established pattern. That was why she hadn't packed any rations; there was simply no need for that kind of preparation this early on. Drip. And yet here she was.

In a cell. Why was her trial so different? The stress coiled tighter in her brain. There were too many discrepancies. The Tower speaking to her in broken fragments. A trial that bore no resemblance to any documented first-floor experience. The system message written like scripture rather than a standard notification. None of it aligned with anything she knew from the original novel or from Summit's resources. There were too many things she didn't understand, stacking on top of each other with no answers in sight.

Drip. Celestia looked up at the barred window. The moonlight was cloaked thin by clouds. She grabbed her main spear. The first swing was a horizontal strike aimed at the window's iron bars. Clang! The blade connected and bounced off without leaving so much as a scratch. The impact hurt her wrist. She adjusted her grip and tried again, harder this time, angling the edge to catch the gap between bar and stone. And yet, the only result was her wrist hurting worse than before. Next, she turned to the wall.

Drove the spear's tip into the stone with as much force as she could generate in the cramped space. The point skidded across the surface, not even a chip. Drip. The cell's black door this time; she struck it, and still nothing. She looked below her and attempted to dig into the ground, hoping that the ground was weaker than the wall, but her spear couldn't do anything. Every surface in this cell was immutable. The Tower had built her a box and sealed it shut. Fourteen days…

The frustration that had been building for the past few weeks had finally reached its peak. It surged upward from her chest, past her throat, and out of her mouth in a single, raw, unfiltered scream.

"AHHHHHH!" Drip. Water continued to drip somewhere in the cell.