"WHAT IS THAT THING AND WHY DID IT ONLY LAUGHED UPON SEEING ? WHY AM I IN A DESERT?"
As the Tower Master's hands trembled, he read the words etched in blood, desperation and hopelessness dripping from each line. The mage's initial confusion now gave way to grim realization:
"THAT THING WAS UNDEFEATABLE. I DIDN'T EVEN MANAGE TO GET A LOOK AT THE FULL FORM OF THAT THING. JUST HOW AM I SUPPOSE TO DEFEAT IT."
"I GAVE IT MY ALL, EVERY SINGLE SPELL I KNEW, YET EVERYTHING DISAPPEARED WITHIN A MONT."
"WHAT IS THAT THING? A GOD. TO THAT BEING LOOKED LIKE…"
The abrupt ending of the sentence hung heavy on the page, leaving a foreboding void. The Tower Master's gaze shifted down to the next few words—or rather, where words had once been.
Amid the shredded remnants of his writing, the Tower Master noticed a broken fingernail lodged between the pages. Nobody could understand what was on the mind of the mage as he scratched the paper till even his finger nail's broke.
The atmosphere in the room grew heavier as the Tower Master continued to hold the journal, the discovery of the broken nail unsettling everyone present. The sight struck an unexpected blow to the mages standing behind him.
These were individuals who had devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge, their bodies frail from years of neglecting physical strength in favor of mastering their magical craft.
Yet none of them, for all their strength of will and depth of intellect, could fathom the sheer level of terror and despair required for soone to claw at paper until their nail snapped.
As the Tower Master turned the journal's pages, the new entries sent a chilling wave through him and the gathered mages. Written in the faint, trembling scrawl of blood, the lone mage revealed a haunting realization:
"THAT THING DIDN'T WANT TO KILL OR MY TWO BROTHERS. IT WAS OBSERVING US THE ENTIRE TI. I CAN SAY WITH CERTAINTY THAT THING IS THE ONLY BEING THAT EXISTS WITHIN THIS PLACE."
"THE BEING WANTED TO SEE WHAT THE THREE OF US WOULD DO WHEN LEFT ALONE IN THAT GREENERY. TO THAT THING, WE WERE JUST RE EXPERINTS.
THAT THING NEVER INTERFERED ONCE. AND SINCE I MANAGED TO FIND OUT ABOUT THAT BEING, IT LEFT IN THIS NEVER-ENDING DESERT."
The words were stark and ominous, weaving a grim tapestry of their entrapnt. The entity, distant and omnipotent, had reduced them to re subjects in an experint of endurance and despair.
Its disinterest in their plight, save for silent observation, was almost more terrifying than open hostility. And now, having uncovered its existence, the mage had been cast into a different tornt—an endless, barren desert.
The suffocating greenery was no longer his prison, but the desert brought no reprieve, only a new chapter of suffering.
The Tower Master hesitated before flipping another page, knowing the journal's story was drawing closer to its devastating conclusion. By the ti he reached the next entry, two hundred and fifty years had elapsed.
The words were faint, shaky, and written with an increasingly weak hand. The blood used to write them had thinned, a testant to the mage's deteriorating state. His body, sustained for centuries by the life force of his fallen comrades, had grown frail and old.
"I can feel my death is coming. I have lived more than twice my natural age and am dying of aging, but I don't feel happy. I don't know what would happen to this journal after my death. Maybe that being will erase this journal, or it will be left inside the storage ring."
The haunting resignation of the mage's words was clear. Even in his final monts, his thoughts were consud by the futility of his plight and the uncertainty of whether his legacy would survive.
The Tower Master, gripping the journal with a mix of dread and urgency, turned to the next page. His breath caught as he read what seed to be the beginning of a last will:
"My death is near, but still I will leave my last will. If sobody receives this journal, I have written a way to escape this hell on the last page, a spell that I…"
And there it ended. The sentence trailed off into nothingness, as if the mage had been unable to finish his final words before succumbing to his fate. The remaining space on the page bore faint streaks of blood, but no further writing followed.
Finally, he reached the last page, and the anticipation in the chamber condensed into an oppressive weight. What he found there, instead of a promised spell or hope, was a ssage written with jagged intensity:
"WHOSOEVER IS CURRENTLY READING THIS JOURNAL IS A FOOL. DO YOU THINK IF I CREATED SUCH A SPELL I WOULDN'T HAVE USED IT ALREADY? MY LAST WORDS TO YOU ARE: 'THAT THING IS COMING FOR YOU. NO ONE WILL ESCAPE.'"
The Head Butler's voice echoed softly through the chamber, each word lingering in the heavy silence that followed. His recounting of the final ssage in the mage's journal had gripped every listener, the weight of its warning suffocating the room.
The Head Butler reached for his glass of water with a hand that trembled slightly. He took a deliberate sip, the faint sound reverberating unnaturally in the tense stillness.
Slowly, he set the glass back down, his gaze distant and shadowed by the weight of the mory. His voice, when it ca, was quiet yet filled with a foreboding that sent shivers through the room.
"Like the mage's words," he began, his tone deliberate, "that thing attacked."
The Head Butler started speaking about the end.
"The fissure, which we had ticulously contained for so long, began to shift the mont the Tower Master read the final page of the journal. It was as if… sothing on the other side beca aware of us, watching and waiting for the exact mont to act.
With the last words spoken aloud, the fissure pulsed violently, its glow deepening into an ominous crimson. It began expanding rapidly, as though sothing was trying to break through to our side, sothing we could not comprehend.
Every Space Mage we had at our disposal stepped forward, pooling their strength in a desperate attempt to suppress the fissure. Their spells—layered, intricate, and mighty—should have been enough to contain even the most volatile dinsional tear. But none of it worked.
The fissure consud their magic effortlessly, as if it mocked our efforts to contain it. It beca clear that this was no ordinary anomaly. It was alive, intelligent, and far beyond our understanding.
Before it was too late, the Tower Master intervened. He stepped forward, calm amidst the chaos, radiating the authority of soone who had faced the unimaginable before. As an Ascended, his mastery over Domains was unparalleled, and he knew that nothing less would suffice.
And he suppressed that fissure inside his domain."
As the Head Butler's tale ca to a close, the room remained silent, but Ashok's mind raced with frustration. His sharp gaze flickered toward the older man, his thoughts thick with suspicion and resentnt.
'This old bastard,' Ashok thought, his jaw tightening. 'He's left out the most critical details and turned this into a glorified sermon for the Tower Master. Sure, he works for the Duke, but his loyalty? It's still shackled to the Tower.'
Ashok's mind churned as the Head Butler concluded his tale, leaving out the essential, unsettling truths.
'The three millennia-old bodies... they weren't re remnants of the past. They were traps, set deliberately by that thing. Each corpse beca a catalyst for chaos, creating small warp holes—miniature rifts that tore through space itself. And this old man just sweeps it under the rug as if it never happened.
'This old man has painted the Tower Master as so infallible savior, but the truth? The truth is far grimr.
Ashok's thoughts churned with calculated disdain, his sharp mind cutting through the exaggerated tale spun by the Head Butler. 'The Tower Master, this so-called invincible force, wasn't nearly as glorious as this old man makes him out to be,' he mused.
'Even within his Domain, the Tower Master barely managed to shut the fissure. And it wasn't as though that thing inside was passively waiting. No, it fought back. It attacked relentlessly, tearing into him.
Every second of that battle carved new injuries into his body—injuries no mage, not even an Ascended, could withstand. The result was inevitable.'
'By the ti he sealed the fissure, he had burned through the last Domain of his life. His body was shattered, his mana reserves exhausted, and the cost was steep. The Tower Master fell, his rank reduced from an Ascended to a re SSS Ranker. Fitting, really. That arrogant, greedy bastard deserved it.'
'This is why the Tower is so quiet now. Once one of the strongest powers in the world, they're now a wounded beast. A major faction without an Ascended is nothing more than prey, vulnerable to the ambitions of its rivals. And those rivals will co for them, sooner or later.
Of course, the old man conveniently leaves all of this out. He's still loyal to the Tower, even now, desperate to protect its reputation. But no amount of storytelling will change the truth. The Tower is weak, and the world will not wait to exploit that weakness.' Thought Ashok.
Ashok's sharp mind worked thodically, weighing the options that lay before him. 'If I wanted to, I could destroy the Tower's fragile facade right now,' he mused, his cold, calculating thoughts veiled behind an expression of indifference.
'This entire charade, this crumbling sandcastle of illusion, could be exposed with just a few words. The truth would scatter them like leaves in a storm.'
But he wouldn't. Not now.
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