1 The Return

"It's over." Kai looked down from the peak of New Olympus, a grand mountain overlooking Newerth – the name christened to the enormous city that humanity settled in on the first floor of the Tower.

Newerth was filled with guilds backed by patron deities from all across humanity's history and lands.

Pyramids, a colosseum, shrine gates, pagodas, castles – all of it used to stand side by side with each other, showing that humanity a whole had banded together to fight against their extinction.

Now, everything was burning rubble drenched with the blood of fallen ascenders. Their staffs and blades and shields – everything they wielded in the name of a futile resistance – burned with them.

Clumps of writhing tendrils slithered about in this carnage, eyeing the destruction they wrought with crimson red, eerie three lobed eyes.

Pitch black trailed wherever their wriggling appendages touched, as if their entire bodies were brushes dipped in in impossibly dark ink.

Darkness comprised of countless pixel like squares all shimmering erratically like a glitch in a game.

These tentacled beasts were Virals.

Nightmarish creatures under the control of the Administrator – the supreme entity that governed this damned Tower, forcing its inhabitants to climb it or perish.

Virals showed up whenever the Administrator wanted to get rid of someone or something, and due to them being direct subordinates of the highest power here, nothing, no divine weapon or even the mighty gods themselves, could resist.

Kai looked away from the unending destruction.

A Viral trampled over a mother shaking over her child, reducing them both into bulldozed pulp. The husband, an armor-clad warrior, swat at the Viral's hulking tentacled form to no avail with a blade.

Tendrils from the Viral's back lashed out, entangling tightly around the warrior's limbs before popping them off like he was just some cheaply made action figure.

This was just one of many similar scenes of horror.

Kai watched mutely. He was hardened to suffering by now. Or he was tired of it. At this point, he hardly knew the difference.

He looked up.

The skies were haunted with the same shade of crimson that reflected from the Virals' uncaring eyes.

From black clouds fell thick flakes of ash – tears spilled for mankind's end.

New Olympus was soon to be next, and there was no hope here either.

The Olympians, among the strongest of the gods that championed humanity, were already long dead.

All the gods were.

They were the first that the Administrator wiped out, toppling their godly power with all the ease of an angry child flipping over a chessboard, except here all the falling pieces were literal deities.

The Archetypes, humanity's greatest heroes that each represented the pinnacle of the six classes that the System of Power granted, had fallen right after.

They always fought and bickered with each other over who was the best, who deserved what, and on and on, but for once, they formed a party - perhaps the strongest ever seen in humanity's history - and challenged the Administrator.

Too little, too late.

They were wiped out with a single blast from the Administrator's infernal three-lobed eye.

Now, humanity was reduced to mere cinders. Refugees. And even they were not long for this godforsaken world either.

Only a few ragtag survivors had managed to make their way here led by Kai and Ren, his little brother.

But it was futile.

They were like passengers on a capsizing boat scrambling atop the mast just so they could enjoy a few spare breaths before the tides of the end inevitably drowned them.

"I can tell what you're thinking with that old scowl of yours." Ren put a hand on Kai's shoulder. "And you're wrong. We still got a chance."

"Optimistic, even now?" Kai shook his head and shrugged his brother's hand off his char-stained pauldron. "Ren, it's over."

"Like I said, not yet," said Ren.

Unlike Kai who donned plate armor that had a sort of monster truck weight to it, Ren wore a much more modern outfit. Just a casual two-piece grey suit, though said suit was now thoroughly tattered and burned from battle wear.

Kai's armor was all domineering spikes and angry red, molten lines. Courtesy of being harvested from quite the enraged fire dragon. And he looked just as threatening as the dragon he slew.

In contrast, Ren looked like a friendly bartender. Someone you could sit down with and spill all your life problems to.

But it wasn't just in clothing that they clashed.

Kai's face was grim. Jaw hard set and eyes narrowed in a leer.

A face that chose to say little and show even less.

At most, he revealed a large, jagged scar that ran diagonally from his brow down to his chin, and for many, that was more than enough to stop any casual attempts at conversation.

Ren presented himself with a smile, even now. A smile made gentler by his soft, untouched features – courtesy of his potent passive healing skill.

It was a smile to comfort his brother who he knew, underneath that craggy frown of his, was a man that was hurting.

Hurting at the loss of everything that they had fought for.

"Do you have a plan for this?" said Kai. His voice was more tired than anything else. He was not tired of fighting.

No, fight, he had plenty left in him.

He was tired of losing.

Losing friends. Losing those he loved. Kai and Ren had already lost their little sister to the Tower many years ago.

It was something Kai had never forgiven himself for. A weight strapped to the back of his shoulder with all the finality of a cinderblock tied to a drowned corpse's ankles.

And now, his younger brother – the only family he had left in this world – was next. At least with the world ending, he would not have to bear the weight of that loss for long.

"I know you were the best out of us all," continued Kai. "Stronger than even the Archetypes with that special class of yours. It's the only reason we've survived this long in the first place.

But we've lost.

And even if we do manage to win, to survive another day, there's nothing left.

Nobody left to rebuild with.

Humanity as we know it is gone.

At best, we'll be like the other races in the Tower. Leftovers."

"That might be true. Humanity HAS lost," said Ren, and Kai perked his head up. "But you haven't."

Ren opened his hand and materialized a large black tome. It was a nondescript book that not many would have given more than a glance to. He flipped through its many pages until he got all the way to the very end.

From there, he tore off a page.

"A spare page? If this is some kind of skill or spell that'll turn the tides of a fight this hopeless, I'm going to be asking you why you didn't use it before 99% of humanity died," said Kai.

He said this, but he knew Ren better than anyone else.

Ren had a heart that wept and bled for others. He gave out the skills he collected in his book to those that needed them without a second thought. He never held back on extending a hand to those that reached for it, even if, later on, those same people would try and kick him down after he raised them up.

He tried to see through the eyes of everyone with a kind of empathy that Kai sorely lacked.

To Kai, an enemy was an enemy. The moment they raised a sword or staff, they were a target to take down.

It was this cutthroat mentality that had let him survive so long, and he trusted it more than anything.

Almost anything. He trusted his brother even more.

The difference in mindset between Kai and Ren was probably because of how different humanity was when they got to the Tower.

Kai had come to the Tower during the second wave. Early, when there was more chaos.

Ren was luckier. He had come during the fifth and final wave.

When the Administrator took humanity, it settled them all on floor zero of the Tower. That floor zero became humanity's base of operations. It was where Newerth was now. But Newerth had not always been a grand city packed with colosseums and pyramids and skyward-reaching shrines.

When the first wave came, they had nothing. Floor zero was a harsh wasteland infested with monsters.

For one hundred years - though it felt like just ten on Earth - the first wave had to deal with not just climbing the Tower's deadly floors but also building itself up. Not to mention attacks from other inhabitants like elves, dwarves, giants, and even dragons that settled in other areas of the Tower.

This wasn't even beginning to mention the sheer amount of civil conflicts that sprouted from the chaos.

Between fellow Ascenders, between guilds, between gods - too many to count.

The anarchy of the first wave made it so that the survivors were focused on just that: survival. It did not help that only the Aesir - the most warlike of the gods - were the only pantheon there at the time to help them.

First wavers adopted a mindset of trampling others to ascend the Tower.

Either that or you were trampled down upon instead.

The second wave - Kai's wave - was not much better.

The first wave lasted 50 years in the Tower, though it was just 10 years on Earth. The strongest Ascenders from the first wave, sponsored by the Aesir gods, took this time to establish guilds and created the foundations of Newerth in the image of Asgard, the walled city the Norse gods once called home.

It was nothing compared to the great, unified city it was now, but at least there were homes to sleep in and walls that protected them.

In practicality, though, the guilds were little more than gatherings of thugs interested in keeping their power above anything, even potentially ascending the Tower.

They were more organized gangs ordained by divine backing than anything else. There was still plenty of conflict to be had.

The second wave's constant hardships had shaped Kai into what he was now: a fighter with solidified scar tissue over both his mind and his heart.

The next waves made Newerth better bit by bit.

The second wave lasted 30 years in Tower time. 10 years in Earth time.

The third wave lasted 20 years in Tower time. 5 years in Earth time.

The Fourth wave lasted 10 years in Tower time. 3 years in Earth time.

And finally, the fifth and final wave lasted 5 years in Tower time and just 1 year in Earth time. The Tower at first took the most able-bodied men and women, but after each wave, it got increasingly less picky because there just were not enough people left.

The fifth wave was when the last meager bits of Earth's population was taken. But thankfully, they came into the Tower with more support.

By the time of the fifth wave, 60 years after Kai entered the Tower, things were considerably different. Every wave did not just introduce more people, it introduced more gods too.

And most of these gods were more order oriented than the Aesir.

Throughout these six decades, Newerth became a place where you did not have to make sure you had to have eyes behind your head to prevent backstabbings and robberies.

Even then, that was no guarantee of survival.

You had to make it to Newerth first, and that meant getting through the Tutorial.

The idea of a Tutorial, something safe to introduce beginners to, might have sounded harmless, but it was anything but.

It killed at least half of every single wave coming into the Tower.

Ren managed to survive the Tutorial and even come out of it with a powerful unique class.

But Lin, their little sister, did not.

Where Kai let Lin's death turn into dead weight, Ren used it as fuel, inspiring him to make sure that nobody around him faced the loss of a loved one like he did.

There was a time that Kai envied Ren, even looking down on his little brother for being soft and upholding lofty ideals like that.

But now, with everything ending, Kai felt thankful for his brother.

Deep down, Kai had always cherished Ren and never wanted him to change, never wanted the Tower to mark its ugly scars on his little brother's innocent heart.

That was why no matter what, even if Kai was in many ways a polar opposite to Ren, even if many times they disagreed, he protected his brother with everything he had.

It was why Kai knew that if Ren had a way to fix this before lives were lost, his dear little brother would have done that without a single moment of hesitation.

Ren was never the type to sit back and let others suffer if he could help it.

"Here." Ren held the page out to Kai.

Kai took it, scanning its contents. His face, stone set with the will to fight one last time before dying, cracked in its grim resolve.

A single one of his brows rose up in surprise – about the best his face could muster after two decades of fighting and fighting.

Upon the page were words that seemingly promised the impossible -

[Gift of Return]

[Rank: ???]

[Description: This ability allows you to return another to the beginning. Once utilized, it is consumed. This skill must be gifted and cannot be used on its original owner under any condition.

A warning: there is no greater gift than time. But make no mistake: there is no greater cost either. Know this should you decide to break the chains of fate.]

"This…when did you get this?" said Kai.

"I dunno." Ren shrugged. "I've tried to remember, but whenever I do, my memory gets all foggy. Almost like the skill wants to be hidden.

Either way, what matters is that we have it now, right? I tried to hold out as long as we could before using this, but now, it looks like we need a second chance."

"You can't use this skill," said Kai. "It has to be gifted…you can't be suggesting…?"

"Yes, you bonehead. That's exactly what I'm suggesting." Ren pointed at the page. "We tried out damned best, but we still lost. But we still got a round 2 in us.

You go. Back to the past. Where it all began, when humanity got shoveled into this Tower. And this time, make sure we win, Kai."

"Are you sure? That I'm the right person for this?" said Kai.

"Unless you, the dude with a title as menacing as the 'Corpse Pyre', decide one of the few dozen refugees back there is better." Ren's smile faded when he saw Kai's serious expression. "Kai, I know we've had our disagreements.

Our different ways of approaching problems, you with your sword drawn and staff blasting first and me with the talk first fight second path – caused a hell of a lot of arguments between us.

But in the end, we always stuck by each other, didn't we?

We picked each other up when we were down.

Even if our words clashed, when it came down to it, our backs were always together."

"Yes," said Kai.

Ren put both hands on Kai's shoulders. "Then I want you to have my back, brother, just one last time. Nobody else."

Kai's gauntlet faintly trembled as he held the page in his hand. A second chance. He would have never dreamed in a million years that this was possible. Time travel was possible on a small scale in the Tower, but nothing like this.

"The warning - there must be a cost to this spell," said Kai.

"Maybe, maybe not. Not much choice now, is there?" said Ren.

"No." Kai paused. "If I do this, all the memories we made together, all the fights we've had - they'll all be gone.'

"Not true. Because you'll still remember me," said Ren. "You'll remember all the times we had together, good and bad.

Every single time I stumbled and you helped me up. And occasionally, the times you tripped up and I had to hold out a helping hand.

And to me, honestly, that's all that matters. As long as it all has a place in your mind-," Ren fist-bumped Kai's chest plate. "In your heart - I'm happy knowing that this life I led wasn't for nothing."

"Ren…" Kai did not know what to say. Expressing his emotions was something he always struggled to do. Even before life in the Tower, he had been closed off. It was just the way he had been raised.

A single, alcoholic father who preferred a belt over talk made sure of that.

Kai had worked hard to take his little brother and sister away from his monster of a father, but just when their lives looked like it was getting better, the Tower took Kai.

The page in Kai's hand started to glow, indicating activation.

"It's time," said Ren. He drew back from Kai.

Kai's body began to color in with bright white as if he was turning into pure light.

"Save humanity, Kai. Protect everyone like you protected me," said Ren. Finally, in this last moment, his front of strength was cracking, and tears flowed through those cracks, welling up in the corners of Ren's eyes. "And, most importantly, try to smile a little more, yeah?"

"I-," Kai tried to reach out to his brother again, his hand stretching forward, pleading for just a little more time.

Blinding light filled Kai's vision.

"I'll try." Kai finished his sentence before blinking in surprise.

Kai found himself in a massive white space surrounded by huge crowds of people. They were men and women from across the world, rich and poor, young and old, healthy and weak – the Tower did not discriminate much.

The people were like little stipple dots marked across a vast white canvas.

Insignificant little things, most of which were soon to die in the incoming Tutorial.

Kai looked down at himself. He was dressed in a plain white T-shirt and track pants. Clothes from Earth he had almost forgotten about.

What he wore on rare Friday nights when he had the time to game with his siblings.

His hands were fairly soft. Calloused from some manual labor, but nothing too insane.

Nothing like how brick-like his hands had ended up after decades of wielding weapons. His skin was pale, untouched by the scorching heat that so many floors on the Tower promised.

He touched his face. The massive scar running across his face was gone. As were all the other scars that distorted his body.

He had Returned.