“I know I can’t perfectly see in the dark, but it’s still funny to think of you as ‘decent physical appearance.’ I guess our good ‘ol Master Linley’s sense of humor is still there.” Muttered Aria as he tried to change the topic from his Weeb Cultivator class.

“Are you calling me pretty, Mr. Smooth-Talking Weeb?” Laughed Kara as the somewhat blushed but mainly teased Aria. However, she soon realized the situation was feeling a bit awkward and stuttered, “a-a-anyways, just grab your finger so you can get your gift. Once you pick it up, It’ll change to something else and you’ll get this odd feeling like you already know something about it. Super weird, anyways, here’s mine,” Kara spoke as she lightly shook her left hand and a shortbow appeared. “Basically it’s an upgradable bow, called something like a soul weapon. If I think about it while holding it then it’s stats will appear in front of me like my own stats do.”

As Aria uncomfortably held his own finger, it started burning his left-hand but he found that no matter how much he tried dropping it his hand wouldn’t unclench. Eventually that pain travelled up his arm, to his head, and then he once again felt a souldrenching pain, one that quickly disappeared this time. Once the pain disappeared, Aria opened his hand to find that the finger was gone, however, he had a feeling that he knew what it became but couldn’t remember as if it was an old memory. Trying to recall the memory, his left hand heated up as a Desert Eagle appeared in it. Opening his tablet, he saw an app on the second screen labeled Deagle. Opening it, he saw the stats screen for the soul weapon. Once he saw the stats he was truly excited.

Weapon Type: Soul Weapon (System Upgradable)

Strengthens along with a minor cultivation level increase and has a chance to

Upgrade with the entrance to a new cultivation realm.

Binded User: Aria White

Details: .5 Caliber, 7 bullets per magazine. Ability to create magazines by spending 10 qi and

Magazines are able to be stored in spaces unable to store living beings.

Level: 0

Stats:

Accuracy Adjustment: 10

Piercing: 13

Speed: 35

Element: Unassigned

“Woah! Way cooler than mine, no fair!” Complained Kara as she compared her shortbow to his Deagle.

“I know right? The stats screen nicknamed it ‘Deagle’. How cool?” Aria was truly excited, he never used a gun but was obsessed with Deagles in FPS video games.

“Dammit, this is so unfair. Linley basically called me average looking, I got a secondary class that requires me to touch you for benefits, and now your soul weapon is even cooler than mine….” As she spoke, she started to blush when she realized the implications of what she said and, to try and cover it up, change the conversation. “Alright, alright. I’m really hungry and we are still stuck in this cave. Let’s eat as we explore. I have about meals worth of snacks and lunches for school, don’t laugh, I get hungry. Hmph!!” Snorting, she tossed a peanut butter sandwich and granola bar at Aria as she stormed off through the tunnel while also eating a sandwich.

About three hours later they could finally see a big light source ahead, like the mouth of a cave. A bit panicked, Aria whispered, “Kara wait. We need to be very careful. Just after I woke up in the forest, I saw the ruins of a small village where I was attacked and, as I escaped, I heard gunshots followed by… screaming.” Hesitating, he continued, “Please, we need to be careful. There might be more killers in this ‘Banished Realm’.” Aria was truly terrified. Other than financial and social difficulties he never really had a hard life, however, as soon as he came to this world he was attacked, heard a murder, fell into a cave, and then found out his mother might be dead. Aria had distracted his mind with the whole ‘stats’ thing and the ‘gift’ but now that he’s exiting the isolation of the cave, his previous fear from when he fled the ruins returned.

“Aria, it’s okay. Look, we can’t stay here because we need to find water. I mean, we only have one more small plastic bottle left.... Besides, there’s only one meal worth of food left but two of us. How about this, let’s take out our soul weapons. I might not be great with a bow and I’m sure you’ve never used a gun before but, I’m sure you can hit the target up-close and my bow gives me a visual accuracy bonus, almost like those aim assist things in nerdy video games or whatever.”

Now out of the dark with a source of light, he got his first clear look at Kara. She’s about his height with long, creamy blond hair and emerald green eyes. Quite petite too. Aria felt that she looks just like a model and was quite embarrassed.

“Yeah… Okay. Let’s, Let’s go. I’ll follow you.” Aria blushed as they walked out of the cave and into the forest.

__________

Aria and Kara were walking north through the forest. Upon exiting the cave, they both noticed a large gothic-medieval style tower. In fact, this tower was so tall that it seemed to pierce even the sky, almost as if the top didn’t exist or maybe it just never ended. Now, although they got that message from Linley, neither of them truly understood the situation and, without any specific destination, they decided on the tower. Hoping that there would be a group of people at the tower and they might be safer in a group. But perhaps what they both subconsciously wished for wasn't a group of people just answers, answers to what exactly is going to happen to them because if their world truly is gone, where do they belong? But sometimes answers come sooner than expected.

It took them about a day of traveling before they were within eyesight of the tower and as they approached they realized it was much more massive than they initially thought. Not only was it just insanely tall, it appeared to be nearly 2,000 feet in diameter. However, there was something odd about the tower. Although it was just huge, the door, which was opened, looked to only be around seven or eight feet tall which is standard for that style of building but just seemed out of place considering the tower’s size and that this is the only door.

“Umm…” hesitated Kara, ”Aria do we enter? I don’t see anyone around and other than the village you mentioned, we don’t know of any other structures but that village probably isn’t safe with the murderer around.”

“Yeah, okay. We need answers but most importantly food and water. Maybe this building will have something we can eat and drink.” Without hesitating they walked to the door and entered at the same time, side by side.

Oddly enough, it didn’t feel like walking through a doorway. Instead, as he proceeded forwards, Aria’s body felt heavy and sticky like he was wading through a pool of syrup. Everything just felt heavy and restrictive, even breathing was hard. Yet this strange feeling ended almost as quickly as it began and he appeared in the center of a medieval city. Looking to his right he saw that Kara was still with him, but before he could even feel relief, he noticed a change in her expression yet before he could ask what was wrong, she spoke.

“Aria, quickly! Check for another message, this is bad. This is really, really bad. I mean really, really, really, bad. Oh god.” She was truly panicking and Aria, as a social outcast, just didn’t know what to do but he had to do something.

Seeing that people were starting to stare at them, he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards what looks like a tea house, “Kara. Listen to me, I haven’t read it yet but it will be okay. I might not really know you well but the past day or so we’ve been through so much and you even saved my life. No matter what it is, we can handle it together. Just sit and hang out, I’ll read the message and then we can talk.” However, shortly after speaking he went completely silent at the contents of the message.

Mortal! Congratulations on being part of a truly idiotic species! The moment you all appeared in a strange environment, before even my first message was sent, you guys went from 5,000 to 4,800 alive with 500 of them seriously injured. I even had to use some of my cultivation to heal everyone as they opened the messages. Not only did many of you resort to killing nearly immediately for food and water but 500 of you were so weak that before even a few hours had passed they were seriously injured from merely taking a short fall, drinking water that clearly wasn’t safe, etc.

Let me make this very clear to you all. I only saved some of your species out of respect for my master okay? Hell, I healed you and gave you each a special gift. That’s it, this message is the last form of help you’ll receive from the great me. So, let me explain the situation you’re now in. First of all, welcome to the Tower of Divinity. It’s not truly a tower but more of a port. This universe has three realms and an infinite amount of worlds and every world has a Tower of Divinity, or an entrance to it I guess, most of the worlds are in the lower realms though. The Tower has many cities inside of it and each city acts as a port or entrance to the tower for about a hundred worlds. Each of you were assigned a world, consider that to be your new Earth. When you leave the Tower, you’ll be teleported to the tower in the world you were assigned too and the only way to enter a different world from the tower is to either exit the tower with a guide from that world or to reach the peak of cultivation in the Lower Realms and ascend to the Mid Realms. All 5,000 of you have been spread throughout these infinite worlds so it’s not likely you’ll ever meet, even in the tower, unless you ascend to a higher realm.

Now that we have cleared that up, this next bit might upset some of you. Yes, all of your families have died. This is a fact. They are gone and their souls were destroyed to power the Tower. A mystifying artifact such as this one requires a massive amount of power and souls are the best form of power. So, as a world collapses, the tower collects all of the souls of those dying in the world as power. This can be considered a form of payment for the benefits of the Tower that the world had access to for the existence of their world. In order to save 5,000 of you I had to burn the souls of the rest of your realm. Your realm was truly unique as it wasn’t connected to the tower at all and I had to manually do so. I’m sure many of you are upset so, here is the answer: Come to the highest realm, find me and fight me. I’ll fight any of you who can reach my height and, if you’re lucky, you might just be able to kill me and obtain revenge. However, that’s not really the most severe news. Although I sent you to the Banished Realm so you could join the Tower and have a chance to survive, you’re not yet truly a part of the Tower. You’re souls have yet to connect to it. So, you have 1 year from the time you entered the tower to pass through the first level and once you do so the Tower will acknowledge your existence so you may live. The way to progress is to leave the city you are in and head in any direction. Once you reach another city, you’ve made it to the second level of the Tower. Basically each lower realm level has a higher density of worldly qi (Figure out what that is yourself) and you only need to reach it once. Then if you leave and reenter the tower you can choose which level to enter into from the levels you reached previously.

Now that the bad news is out of the way, here’s the good and final piece of news you’ll ever receive from me. That’s right, after this I’m wiping my hands from the matter and moving on. Anyways, now that you’ve entered the city and received this message, I’m giving you 100 low-quality divinity jade (Also referred to as ‘Low-Jade’), 5 mid-quality divinity jade or ‘Mid-Jade’, and a translation stone. Just eat the translation stone and whenever you speak to someone that also communicates in a biologically similar manner as yourself it translates your words to their language and their words to yours.

Good luck mortals! From your favorite immortal, Linley.

Sighing, Aria looked at Kara and then to the low quality leather bag in his hand. So his mom really is dead. He wasn’t quite sure what to do but he knew that he had to confront Linley, he needed to know if his world was truly on the verge of destruction, which meant she would die either way, or if this was simply a game to him. To do this, Aria first needed to survive the next year and reach the second level.

“Kara, you’re right. This is really bad, however, I need to find Linley. I need to know if the world's destruction is true or if he was just screwing with us for a game. Because if he was, I need to kill him.” Sighing and shaking his head, “Kara, do you want to journey together? I don’t know what to do with my life and I don’t know anything or anyone here except you but I do know that I trust you and I owe you a lot. So, tell me, what can I do to help you? No matter what it is, I’m here.”

Looking at Aria, eyes glistening with tears and hands clenched, Kara nods her head. “Alright, you’re right. Let’s work hard to go to this so-called ‘highest realm’ and kick the living shit out of Linley. I think we should eat the translation stones first and then explore the city since we don’t even know what these divinity jades are or what the currency is.”

Both of their eyes lit up as they opened their bags. The moment they touched them, some of their qi entered the bag and they could sense everything in it, all one hundred low-jades, 5 mid-jades, and an odd looking pearl. It felt like with a thought they could take anything out of the bag. They took out the pearl and swallowed it without hesitation. Immediately after they felt the pearl settle down in their gut, the area novels referred to as a dantian, and that was it. There weren't any side effects, no pain, nothing, so they assumed things would be fine and exited the tea shop. Time to explore this new world and the city was their starting place.