Chapter 4: Chapter 4 – Zaladar’s Flame 

“You’ll just have to help me not die then,” Zack replied. He realized that the more that he put Clarice into debt, the more motivated she was to help him since she’d invested so much into him. 

If he could align this female devil hiding behind a pretty face’s interests with his own, his chance of survival would definitely rise, and the more likely he could get out of this strange place and back to reality. 

Reality needed him. His mom’s surgery couldn’t wait until the end of the month, and on another note, he didn’t spend the last ten years plotting against the Cullen family and studying to enter Vermillion University just to have it all stripped away in some strange survival game like this. 

I must survive, no matter what. I have a whole life ahead of me, and those bastard Cullens will pay for what they did to my family. 

He said that, but something itched inside his head as if to tell him something more. Suddenly, a voice spoke to him. The same voice from earlier.

Page thirty two. Wait until she is gone. Never speak of this to anyone. 

It was the same voice that told him to ask for coconut milk. The voice of authority, if what Clarice said was true. 

Zack was never a superstitious person, nor particularly religious, but he had a strong feeling that he should take that advice said seriously. For some reason, Zack felt a sense of fatherly familiarity from it. But that made no sense. He didn’t know his dad that well since he was only six when dad passed away, but mom told him all sorts of stories throughout the years about how his father was an honest man, and a good man. He didn’t sound like someone involved in survival games, that was for sure. 

What page thirty two is the voice talking about? Some kind of book I read? Oh… the passport. 

He glanced at Clarice, whose presence was still in his face. She stood less than two feet away from him, her crossed arms intruding into his personal space without care while waiting rather impatiently for him to finish staring into space. 

“You done, birdbrain?” she asked, annoyed.

Zack almost didn’t want to respond to her rude response, but then remembered that his survival came before his pride, at least until he figured out the situation more thoroughly. “Yeah.” 

Clarice cleared her throat, then pulled out an antique watch from her breast pocket. “You have twelve minutes left before your time is up. Then it’s bedtime for you.” 

“I’m sorry, what?” Zack replied, unsure of if he heard her correctly. 

“The Judges enforce the tower’s Rules, and one of these Rules is that each climber has a set amount of time to converse with their Guide before entering the Initial Evaluation Stage. Oh, and we can’t talk about what’s in that stage– it’s meant to evaluate your base status before you enter the tower. You’ll have an evaluation every so often to track your progress, and those are mandatory… well, with one exception.”

“What’s the exception?”

“Death of the climber. It’s an old rule of the tower.” 

Zack made an oh face, not knowing why he expected otherwise. 

The gorgeous blonde server looked at her antique watch again. “Nine minutes left. Any other questions?” 

He quickly racked his brain for the most important questions to ask that she’d still be able to answer. “Yeah. Who is evaluating us? Are you allowed to answer that?”

Clarice nodded. “The organizations have their own proctors for evaluation early on. Later, as you grow further, the Tower itself may choose to evaluate you. But that rarely ever happens, even for climbers sponsored by Zaladar himself, so don’t get your hopes up.”

“Speaking of which, you’ll want to perform well during your evaluation and during the rounds so that you catch the eye of a sponsor soon. Very few people can proceed onward without a sponsor, and those that do are quite exceptional to say the least.”

She looked him up and down, just like that doctor had looked at him before deciding that he was useless. “You don’t look very exceptional, so best keep your head down and find a sponsor as soon as possible. Most climbers find one, even if it is just a minor one, by the end of their third evaluation.” 

The blonde server snapped open her stopwatch, raising an eyebrow. “Aaand it looks like our time is up. Please, do your best to survive, alright? And don’t you dare die on the evaluation round–that one has difficulty adjusted to the caliber of the climber, so even the elderly can pass it without much prob–Hey! Are you kidding me right now? Another two hundred points just for telling him that??”

Clarice Roseline looked up angrily at what appeared to be some kind of visual display in front of her, but Zack couldn’t see anything. Maybe she was hallucinating, he thought. Or maybe there really was something there, and he just couldn’t see it.

“Ugh… fine,” Clarice said, spinning back to look at Zack. She looked at him as if he was some sickly puppy that had just cost his mommy several thousand dollars in veterinarian bills. “Bedtime. Good night. You better get out there and work it, you hear me? Once you make your first pay, I’m going to make sure you pay me back for every single little shitty thing that you cost…”

Zack blinked heavily, his vision fading as he continued to listen to the beautiful server lecture him angrily about all the slavework that she had in store for him for when he got back, before he finally closed his eyes.

A blue screen filled with floating runic text appeared before him in the darkness, but he had lost consciousness and was not aware of it. 

[Waiting room for evaluation…]

[Anomaly detected…]

[Climber’s records have already been created in the Tower.]

A ghostly figure descended towards Zack’s floating body. The figure’s face was shrouded by a hood, but it lowered its hood slowly. It was an older, weathered version of Zack, smiling slickly. 

“It’s been ten years, huh?” the older Zack said. “And here we are, back at the very beginning. But things will be different this time around.”

[Do you wish to override climber’s records with the existing records?]

“Nah. Get rid of all that.”

[Are you sure you wish to do this? The existing climber’s records are of stellar quality.]

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The figure laughed. “Whether it was in the tower or on sweet earth soil, my entire life was spent in servitude working for those more powerful than me. Zaladar, Majiya… the Cullens, Hoarsten Friedman, and all those fucking corporations… what difference does it make?” 

“Even as I made a name for myself and grew more powerful, those more fortunate than me were one step ahead of me, or perhaps even lifetimes ahead of me as their filthy parents and their bloodsucking grandparents had already paved the way for them in gilded bloodshed and corruption, stepping on the heads of the weak so that they can selfishly grow their wealth and power without a single shred of shame.” 

“Why do you think I persevered for so long, knowing that I had to bow my head for the rest of my life to monsters regardless of the achievements I made? That I had to say yes please and not ask questions when they secretly slaughtered my family and friends?”

“Just so I could have records of stellar quality?”

He spat on the ground, then stomped on it with his boot. A strange sight, since there was no ground to speak of in the eternal darkness that stretched in every direction illuminated by only distant starlight, and yet the action appeared to be so fluid and natural. The figure moved quickly and lithe in the gravity defiant space, as if he had grown accustomed to such a thing. 

“No. It was so I could reach the Obelisk of Renewal, to come here. That’s not all I did this for. In fact, I am going to burn my own Records.”

He produced a thick, glowing scroll from within his cloak. 

[That does not belong to you.] 

The message was presented within the same blue screen as usual, but the runic font appeared to be destandardized, almost… personal. It was clear that it was no longer the system speaking, but rather an individual entity of unimaginable power. 

“So the silent masters do start to bark when one of their slaves gets gets his hands on their meat, eh? Seems like you’re not so different from my masters back on home soil.”

“You probably know that the only thing that can destroy a Record is Zaladar’s Flames. Luckily, I learned a thing or two from Master.” 

[Impossible!]

A powerful swell of blue flames appeared in the figure’s hand, burning with a heat so palpable that it distorted the space around it. The figure’s face immediately began to lose color, as if the flame burned his life energy. 

[Cease this petulant nonsense immediately! You will hang for eternity in the Pits of Tartarus if you dare to do this!] 

“Hahahaha!” the figure laughed even as his face and body withered with every passing second. He held the blue flames to the golden aura of the scroll, and the scroll immediately caught on fire, bursting into light as the runes on the page began to transform even as the scroll continued to be destroyed. 

“You don’t realize yet? The thing is–I am already dead. You would have noticed that earlier if you actually comprehended. Someone like you, who only values their continued existence, would never understand that some things are worth dying for.” 

A gargantuan eldritch tentacle burst from seemingly nothingness, as if in response to the figure’s continual impertinence in the face of a god. The tentacle reached towards the figure, but the figure simply redirected his hand holding Zaladar’s Flame towards it, and the tentacle recoiled backwards, clearly frightened of the power that the figure wielded. 

It then redirected itself, shooting towards the unconscious body of the younger version of the figure. 

[I may not be able to kill you, but I will kill your spawn and snuff your second chance!] 

The figure rose, floating up as the flames were beginning to travel down his own arm, consuming his body. “Evoking the Ancient Rule! Evaluations may not be carried out in the event of death of the climber!”

Right as the tentacle would have crashed into the hovering young man’s body, it was stopped by a sudden eruption of a golden shield matrix. The tentacle attempted again, but was blocked yet again by the golden matrix. 

[This is impossible! You are clearly here… how can death of the climber be fulfilled?] 

The figure smiled. “The caster gives up his life to use Zaladar’s Flame. The moment that I ignited it, I was a dead man walking.” 

He raised the burnt scroll into the air, its contents now glowing with white severity. “Seems like even Zaladar keeps his secrets. This isn’t destroyed… it’s something else… it has changed. Perhaps for the better. So this was the power that Zaladar kept to himself through all this time. He didn’t even tell you, did he?” 

[Do not speak of this blasphemy!]

“It appears not. Anyway, my time is up.” 

The blue flames had enveloped more than half of the figure’s body now. “With the record gone, nobody will remember this. Not even you, Baduruu.” 

[Your blasphemy will not be forgotten. I will punish your younger self in your stead.]

“We will see about that. I couldn’t give him much, but I could guide him just a little bit. The rest will be up to him. And there is no one in this world that I could count on more than him.” 

[System is now resetting.]

The figure laughed. “Looks like it’s begun. Until next time, Baduruu.”

…

Zack blinked, opening his eyes to rather intense sunlight. He was laying on the ground against a castle wall, a sword in his hand and heavy plate armor resting on his body. 

“What are you dozing off for, boy? The corporal asked to see you ten minutes ago!”

[A special evaluation has begun.] 

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