In a sea of trees there stood a single lofty tower a 100 meters wide that extended far into the sky, easily over a kilometer off the ground. If you were to look up at this tower you’d be hard pressed to even see its upper half, let alone the peak. Only if you were to fly into the sky, up until the ground turned a pure white and the sky above a pitch black no longer filled with clouds scattered about but stars, then and only then would you be able to see the towers lofty peak seemingly chained to the ground by several floating islands.

This tower was too frighteningly tall, and over the ages it’s come to inspire both fear and reverence from locals and foreigners alike hailing it as a sacred ground, worshipping it as if it were one of the Temples of the Gods.

But naturally this tower was no temple, nor was it even a place of worship. It was merely the home of one secluded and extremely powerful wizard, a wizard so unimaginably powerful he dared to construct a tower whose existence was essentially heresy before the Gods.

But perhaps his confidence was a given, because in this tower of his this wizard sat above all else, looking down seeing everything, hearing everything, knowing everything like an omniscient God. And it was this god-like knowledge, this omniscience of his that caused countless figures to brave the forest, climb the tower, and seek his guidance just like several figures in this forest long since abandoned by man were doing.

At the base of the wizard’s tower stood a young man in his twenties with long white hair and dark blue eyes. He donned a silver plate armor with a cross engraved into the center, a golden circlet with a diamond shaped blue jewel in the middle, and a white cape with golden trimmings that fluttered in the wind. In his hands was a beautiful golden long sword stained with blood, and a silver shield with golden wings decorating it.

He stared at the tower from below, breathing heavily. He turned around to look at the massive corpse behind him. It was a wolf about twenty meters tall completely covered in arrows, small wounds, and all sorts of lacerations. Then he looked back at his companions.

Atop of the wolf was an old gray-haired knight in his fifties, covered almost entirely in a dark gray plate armor who was busy pulling out a massive black greatsword that was lodged between the wolf’s ribs. Then there was a blond female mage behind the wolf in a slightly torn red robe who was keeping herself propped up with her large wooden staff with a large red sphere in inlaid into it. And finally on top of a tree was a brown haired young rogue who wore a green hood and a brown mask over his mouth. In his hands was a short bow, while on his back were two crossbows, and below those two was a quiver of arrows and several small bags. His body was also covered in all sorts of leather straps holding bottles, daggers, darts, rope, throwing knives, and all sorts of other miscellaneous goods.

The silver armored Hero asked the others, “Ya reckon I can fly up there?”

The female mage catching her breath looked up and said, “Hero...don’t...the tower has...a defense system…”

“Even on the outside?”

“Especially on the outside,” the rogue replied, “This tower’s no dungeon, but from what I’ve heard it was designed to withstand even a Dragon’s assault and those things can supposedly level mountains. Let me repeat that, MOUNTAINS! As in more than one mountain.”

“But it’s not like we’re picking a fight.” The hero sheathed his golden sword into the shield in his left arm, and the shield began to glow before fusing into the Heroes brown gloves forming a crest reminiscent of the sword and shields previous appearance.

He raised his hand and tapped the gem on his golden circlet and his white cape fluttering through the wings suddenly grew stiff. The cape suddenly split in the middle and formed the shape of wings. While the circlet on his head began to rise into the air, spinning over his head like a halo.

“Well let’s give it a shot!” The shot into the air his cape flapping furiously as he sped forward.

The rogue shook his head, and then looked at the old knight, “Aren’t you going to try and stop him?”

“Can you fly?”

The rogue paused, “Point taken.”

The Hero laughed, “Don’t worry it’s just a tower!”

And as the Hero continued flying upwards the tower’s wall suddenly began to distort, and tens of stone snakes began to shoot towards the Hero. The Hero was surprised, “Well isn’t that something.”

The Hero smiled and easily flew past the stone snakes, and when the stone snakes fell far enough they’d just fuse back into the tower. But as he climbed higher and higher the tower began to spawn more and more stone snakes until eventually the very bricks themselves began shooting out of the walls.

These bricks began to fly through the sky shooting all sorts of spells at the Hero. Some bricks shot fireballs, others shot powerful gusts of wind that would disrupt his balance, a few would shoot icicles, and some even began charging straight towards him before self-detonating.

But the Hero managed to dodge the towers relentless assault until finally, the Hero climbed past the clouds. The hero grinned, “Is that all you got?”

The Hero laughed as his wings continued to beat and the peak became visible. But as he continued flying upward the Hero noticed that the several massive chains anchoring the floating islands nearby to the tower began sprouting massive red eyes as if answering the earlier question. From these eyes, several hundreds of crows, whose bodies were covered entirely in red eyes, began spawning.

The Hero felt a sudden sense of danger and immediately sped up. All of the eyes landed on the Hero and tens of hundreds of red lights shot out of these eyes all towards the Hero. Some of these lights missed and hit the tower causing them to reflect outwards as if they had hit a mirror, but dozens of lights were quickly approaching the Hero forcing him to pull out his sword and shield.

The Hero furiously shouted, “Cross Slash! Cross Slash! Cross Slash! Cross Slash!”

The Hero frantically swung his holy sword releasing a cross-shaped silver ray that would cut apart the red lights. While his shield began to emit a golden glow that would block the lights he couldn’t cut apart. But as soon as he thought he cleared the first volley of lights, the eyes shot another volley of light towards him, and then a third volley, a fourth volley, and the crows and chains just kept repeatedly shooting an endless stream of lasers towards the hero turning the sky from a light blue to a crimson red.

The Hero having been unable to keep up with the towers continuous attacks had portions of his silver armor destroyed, or burnt a pitch black. The Hero cursed, “God damn it!”

He raised his shield over his head to block the lasers, while his wings expanded several meters to his side. He drew his holy sword back and shouted fiercely, “Cross Infinity!”

The Hero’s wings shined brilliantly with a white light as the Hero swung his holy sword releasing hundreds of rays of silver light cutting apart the endless stream of red light, as well as the crows in the sky. The Hero paused for a minute in the air, pale faced. He couldn’t help but think he really underestimated this damnable tower.

He had to use one of his trump cards [Cross Infinity] to take care of all those pesky crows. This was a secret technique of his wings which were, in fact, the Kingdom of Lor’s Sacred Item known as the, [Silver Cross Banner].

This banner would typically be held by an army commander when leading troops to bestow each soldier the [Silver Ray] which would not only increase each soldier's defense by cladding their armor in a silver light, but it could even be used to coat their weapons to enhance their sharpness, durability, and allow them to use the technique [Silver Ray] without training.

[Cross Infinity] was merely another application of the banner’s [Silver Ray] wherein he would store a vast quantity of silver rays before instantly releasing them all in a powerful attack. But naturally, there’s a limit to how many [Silver Rays] the banner could produce so the Hero was rather hesitant to use this technique here.

But as the Hero was catching his breath, the Hero heard something behind him, and the blood drained from his face as he found a massive red eye right behind him. The eye began to light up, and the Hero swung his shield in front of him shouting, “Guardian Angel!”

The shield instantly expanded into several meters in diameter and began exuding a brilliant golden light as it floated in front of the eye. The eye shot out a massive laser striking the shield turning a large portion of the shield black.

The shield having seemingly lost all its power turned into a small ball of golden light that shot into the Hero’s glove. Whilst the hero charged forward and swung his holy sword at the eye destroying it.

But as the Hero turned around, he noticed the chains were once more producing those damnable black crows. The Hero sighed, the holy sword in his hand turned into a ball of light and entered his glove like his shield, and he raised his hand yelling, “I surrender!”

The eyes stared at him momentarily, their eyes glowing a bright red when suddenly they all vanished into thin air. Those hundreds of crows and thousands upon thousands of eyes just up and vanished.

The Hero sighed once more, “Couldn’t you have done this from the beginning? Geez, what a waste... “

The Hero finally flew to the top of the tower and landed, he pulled out a scroll from a bag on his waist, and tore off the red seal in the front opening it. “Mass Teleportation”

The scroll in his hands instantly ignited, and a magic circle formed in the air transporting everyone at the base of the tower to the top. The old man was the first to speak, “Well I’ll be damned, I didn’t think you’d actually make it up here.”

The Hero laughed wearily, “Yeah, at one point me neither.”

The Hero looked at the shield on his glove, it was burnt black and faded. To get all the way up here he’d used two of his trump cards, and in the end, he still had to surrender. If in the end, it was all for nothing, then it would be extremely depressing.

The Hero and his party climbed down from the peak, which was an observatory, and down some stairs. They wandered around the tower going through some empty rooms before reaching a large pair of wooden doors.

The hero asked, “Do you suppose he’s here?”

The female mage nodded, “This room has the highest concentration of mana, he has to be here.”

The Hero looked to his left, and then his right, before nodding, “Let’s go.”

He pushed the double doors open with both hands and walked light filled the dark hallways from the room within. And as the Hero walked in his eyes widened, as he stared at a massive bulky green man in purple robes and a wizard hat reading a book.

The green man turned his head and looked at the Hero’s party staring at him in shock. This man was one of the most powerful wizards, one of the wisest sages, a man who’d defy even the Gods, or rather should I say an Orc.