2 The White Room - Order or Chaos?

Update (18/04/2024): I have recently edited this chapter, combining chapter 2 and 3. However, I also lost close to 150 comments because it. Anyway, guys, I want those 150 comments back. My comments :( So, please Comment!!!!!!!!!

*************

In a white room with no doors, two laser-like beams met each other.

One was deep red, not unlike blood, but more dreadful and devious. The other was pale blue, like a colored mist, and more streamlined than its counterpart.

At the point of their contact, a figure began to take shape. The two beams kept tracing the insides and the outsides of this figure as if it was printing it in solid form. It was certain by then that these beams had a certain blueprint to follow.

Only a moment had passed after the two beams had completed the figure when it exploded with a booming sound. Blood, flesh, and even bones splattered around the room, reaching to the furthest corners of the roof.

The two beams died away as the white walls absorbed the filth. Soon the room with no doors was empty again. Four more beams came out of nowhere and made contact with each other. Two red and two blue.

The process of creation had slowed down with the increase in the number of colored beams. But the figure was the same, and unfortunately, so was the result.

The explosion came out at the same time as the last. Almost waiting to ruin the art for the beams to see before they faded away.

More beams came, more blasts shook the room, more time passed with every turn…

100 years passed, but there was no one to appreciate the efforts of the creator. The numbers of the different colored beams had risen to over ten thousand combined.

Soon, cracks began originating from the others as well. A black slimy liquid came out of the cracks as if the walls were bleeding. They seemed to scream this was the last figure; this was the last try; no more.

The red room shook, chunks of walls fell into the blood puddle along with the slimy black liquid.

Just as the time came for the figure to explode, the beams didn't fade away but went inside the puddle. With an unseen ferocity, it condensed, forming a nail-sized object in no time.

More solid than a liquid, but not solid enough either.

All the laser beams fumed with exhaustion and pushed the queer object into the figure's chest.

Cracks appeared on the boy's figure, and the time of the explosion had come and gone. They kept appearing and disappearing, and the object embedded in the figure's chest kept losing its size. The beams could take it no longer and disappeared, with no sign of coming again. The room had regained its whiteness, but the cracks in its walls stood out.

The price had been paid.

When the object had all but vanished, the widening cracks in the figure paused. Then they started to close up. The bones mended, the flesh sewed, and fresh skin formed. When the last crack over the chest was getting closed, a grain-sized thing could be seen churning by the figure's heart.

Whatever the object had meant to do, it did and still survived. Only time would tell if it was intended or not, but the beams did not come back.

Finally, the figure was complete. A wave of freshness filled the room. It was like a sudden gust of wind, which comes and goes as it pleases. It engulfed the figure, filling its lungs, and all the organs, veins, and every other part of the body.

The chest rose and fell.

Once more.

Then the eyes snapped open and Kai's pupils narrowed from the sudden whiteness. He had to close them for not to get overwhelmed by the blinding color. When he opened them again, it was much clearer.

'What is this? Where am I? I… Didn't I die?' Questions bombarded Kai's mind. The moment he realized he could think, his eyes went down to his body. He was shocked. There were no injuries, only a phantom pain squirmed in his chest.

Kai touched his chest, and the last scene of his death came back to him. Suddenly, his mind spun, and he snapped his head left, right, and back. But aside from the cracked walls, he could find nothing.

'He isn't here,' Kai told himself. 'He is dead.'

"Hello," Kai could do nothing but say out his thoughts aloud. "Is anyone…"

The white room had no doors, and Kai found himself unable to decide whether to use "here" or "there". But as if waiting for him to say anything, a reply came to him.

[[Welcome to the Primordial Tower, Kai Stormborn.]]

The voices echoed within the room, for voices they were. Kai could distinctly hear two different voices saying the same sentence. The strange thing was that he didn't find it odd. It seemed perfectly natural for these voices to be together, as if they were meant to be like this.

"Who is this?" Kai shouted, now warily. "Where am I?"

Trust was a word Kai had erased from his mind long ago. He certainly had died. But the condition of his body told a different tale. He had revived, in a condition he could scarcely remember himself to ever in the last two years. He could feel the strength, for the first time, his peak.

All the more reason to be cautious,' Kai told himself. 'Is it the fabled Resurrection?'

Kai waited, remembering what he could about a senseless topic he had never cared about, and the voices replied.

[[Kai Stormborn, you have been found worthy to be a Contestant of the Primordial Tower.]]

'Worthy?' Kai already doubted whatever was coming next. He had heard such tones and words many times.

[[The Primordial Tower is a battlefield where men and women put their lives on the line to use the benefits of the Systems. It is also the means to gain unmeasurable power and strength. In Primordial Tower, either you die a cruel death or get to live and become an overlord. There are only two paths. And it will be YOU who decide which path to choose.]]

'Two paths,' Kai wondered if it was really so. But he restrained himself from voicing out his doubts.

"System? Unmeasurable Power? I don't understand any of it," Kai said. The big words sounded cool to him, and the prospects of gaining power which solely belonged to him were mouth-watering. But Kai had learned that every rise in strength comes with a price.

'What price will I have to pay this time?' Kai remembered his sweet mother and asked to himself.

As if answering his thoughts, the space in front of him twisted and a hologram appeared. It was an immense tower, more like a spire than a cylinder. It hovered there, rotating on its axis, shining brilliantly in red and blue like an exquisite gemstone.

Kai couldn't take his eyes off it. Something about made him uneasy, but not in a bad way. The feeling leaned more towards the expectancy than the fear of the unknown.

[[The Primordial Tower has 7 sets of 3 floors each, every 3rd floor is a roadblock filtering out the worthless, who were once worthy for them to become Contestants. The Contestants of the two Systems battle each other on each floor from time to time. They are given their individual Kill Count per floor to be completed before they can ascend to a higher floor which can be done in many sub-Kill Counts.

Contestants can gain Mission Credits for completing a mission and Attribute Points to increase their strength along with many Skills and Items in the Random Worlds. If the mission is not completed in the specified time limit, then the Contestant will be judged unworthy.]]

Kai needed not to be told what the voices meant by the word "judged." From the example and the emphasis on the random World, Kai could tell that the only way to become stronger was to complete the missions in the random World. The battle within the tower was nothing but the price for that power.

'A world where strong becomes stronger, and weak becomes weaker,' Kai thought, his expectancy turning in elation. 'I like it.'

He didn't understand the idea of random worlds, and credits and attribute points, but he was sure when it came to killing, he could hold his own no matter where he was to go.

When he was young, Kai had believed knowledge was supreme. Seeing his mother and father, whose face he didn't even remember, surrounded by people with happy faces, he could see himself as a scientist then. But the coming years had brought him to reality.

'Those who only seek knowledge will be slaughtered like animals,' Kai told himself. 'Power, it is power that rules the world, and I will have it.'

Kai looked at the tower, like a precious treasure made only for him, when he noticed something odd. '7 sets of 3 floors each', Kai counted, 'but there are 22 floors on it.'

Before Kai could ask about the 22nd floor, the voices spoke again.

[[All Contestants are divided among the two Systems of the Primordial Tower.

Now you must choose, to which System you will give the authority to judge you, Kai Stormborn.

Order or Chaos.]]

*********

AN:

1. Two Voices - belongs to two systems

2. Don't worry about 22nd floor. You may not necessarily come in contact with this plot for a long time

3. For those considering if MC's arch-rival Brock Valeheart will come back in the Primordial Tower as an arch-rival again. HE WON'T. I am quite fed up from all the random threats and curses.

4. Thank you for reading these points. :)