She checked to see if any of the servants were hurt by the earlier burst of energy and after confirming they were all fine, she turned back to the knights and concluded.
"Just report to the Emperor as Evan said to, and tell him this from me. Trying to bind Evan down to one area is not gonna end well.
Let's go Kuro."
The black cat that had stayed behind jumped into her arms and she entered into the spatial gate while patting his head.
Right after she entered, the light of the gate went out and it shut down, awaiting the return of the Reincarnated Hero System's host.
ꕥ ꕥ ꕥ
Upon entering the portal, Eliza was met with a very fantastical scene.
'This is way different from a dimensional realm…'
It was as though she was staring at a strange mix between an ocean, and some large swirling mass of interstellar gas, dust and dark matter.
The layout of stars around her reshuffled every few seconds, never staying the same while some sort of force pulled her towards a certain direction.
The pulling force got stronger after a while, allowing her to infer that she was closer to her target location, and that's when everything around her suddenly went still.
'Huh?'
The world around her turned monochrome and the magnificent view of stars shuffling about came to a stop.
Warning bells rang out in Eliza's head as the essence of life in her energy core erupted wildly, trying to wrap around her body to protect her but even that went still after a moment.
Kuro who was waving his tail in her arms had also gone still, and it only took her a moment to realise she was the only entity around who was still in motion.
|You have an equivalent of ten minutes. |
A young male voice rang out across the monochrome world, followed by a female voice that Eliza found familiar.
"I do not need that long…"
Turning around, Eliza's eyes widened in shock as she came face to face with the woman whom she only saw in her history books or in Temple buildings, depicted via statues and paintings.
"…goddess Artemisia."
"Not really. This is merely an avatar I'm controlling remotely and not the actual me."
The goddess replied to Eliza, her golden eyes twinkling with the light of stars and a light smile adorning her beautiful face.
Her gaze went down as if trying to confirm how she looked before she shrugged her shoulders and then moved to tie up her hair into a ponytail.
Afterwards, she looked straight into Eliza's sapphire eyes and spoke.
"Now then, Eliza.
We…need to talk."
◇ ◇ ◇
Tower of Trials
Nameless Island >> Cloud Piercing Isle
Divider Ocean
July 17th
Year 1052
"What took you so long?"
"Hmm? Oh. I was talking to the knights. Told them to pass on a message for me to the Emperor."
"Ohh…No problem.
Anyway, how did you like the view?"
Hearing Evan's question, Eliza placed a hand on her chin for a moment before replying.
"I honestly could not grasp half the things I saw there."
"Figured.
You're not supposed to even see that in a simple spatial gate. That was probably Artemisia showing off."
[The goddess 'Artemisia' expresses her desire to knock the head of a certain hero.]
Evan ignored the notification that appeared before his eyes and instead turned his attention towards the massive structure in front of him.
Doing the same, Eliza looked forward and the sight she was met with rendered her speechless.
As if boldly grasping for the heavens, a massive circular tower stood merely a hundred metres away from her, reaching brazenly into the sky.
"That's…the 'Tower of Trials'…?"
"Yep."
'It's exactly the same as I remember it. You really just pulled out Aidos Online's endgame content, didn't you, Artemisia?'
[The goddess 'Artemisia' advises you not to be complacent as not all the monsters within the 'Tower of Trials' are monsters native to the planet: Aidos.]
'Wait…you brought monsters from other worlds too?!'
[The goddess 'Artemisia' questions that if she did not do that, how did you expect the Tower to serve its function without heavily upsetting the monster ecosystem of Aidos?]
'Oh…. that makes sense.'
"Just where is this anyway?"
Greed's question brought Evan out of his thoughts, turning to the high demon who was glancing at the garden surrounding them.
"Somewhere on the Divider Ocean.
This island Is apparently called the 'Cloud Piercing Isle'."
[I can certainly see where that name came from.]
Milena spoke as she flew towards a nearby lake and touched the water in it, confirming the presence of aquatic life in its depths.
"How do we enter this 'Tower of Trials'? From what I see, there's no visible door."
"Enter?"
Evan walked up to the centre of the garden they were in and spread out his both arms as he continued.
"We're already inside the 'Tower of Trials'."
["What?"]
The human, spirits and demons all let out voices of confusion as they really did not understand how Evan could say they were already inside the tower when they could clearly see the tower right in front of them.
"We're currently in the rest area of the Tower's first floor. Somewhere you can consider to be the 'Outer Tower'.
What you see behind me is the 'Inner Tower'.
If you would look up, you would see multiple large balcony-like floors with glass floors that cantilever out of the tower at regular intervals, kinda like observation decks.
Those are the 'Rest Areas' after every ten floors, where we can basically do whatever we want.
They have all the basic necessities, we need; kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, even air conditioning and stuff."
Evan explained the Rest Areas of the tower to them while he walked towards the Inner Tower. Then as if having forgotten something, he slammed his fist on his palm and spoke.
"Oh…this 'dome' we're currently in is kinda transparent, hence the reason you can see what's outside and you'd think we are not in the tower.
But if you walk in the opposite direction, you're eventually gonna hit a wall after like 500 metres or so?"
Snapping his fingers, the walls and ceilings of the tower instantly turned dark, like someone closed all the window blinds simultaneously.
"You can also do this to the upper floors if the thought of seeing the ground form so high up isn't appealing to you.
There's also this too."
He snapped his fingers again and a live video of the group began playing on the dome walls and ceiling all around them.
"Cool, right? We can make it display whatever we want as far as we can clearly picture it."
Evan snapped his fingers a few more times and changed up the images, showing random things from both Aidos and his home world, Earth V.
"Anyway, that's enough.
You guys get the basic gist of things, right?"
"I have so many questions I don't even know where to start asking from…"
"Well, I can tell you when and where you can start asking them.
When we enter the Inner tower, and somewhere within the first ten floors."