A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 209: Chapter 209 — The Broken Crown II

The last drill ended at six. The stream conversation happened over the equipment cases.

"We broadcast Floor 21," James said. "I’ll say why plainly, and I want objections plainly."

He gave his reasons without padding.

First time the complete five climbed past 20. No reliable information about Floor 21 existed anywhere on Earth — whatever record got made, better they made it than rumour did. The revenue would matter to a guild quietly bleeding startup capital. And after Floor 20 and the campaign, the audience had stopped being a number James could picture as people in a room.

"No objection," Finn said. "Conditions."

"Maeve has them," James said.

Maeve had them written.

"Nobody says Guild Zero. Nobody mentions a building. James — Grave Step gets used, not explained. The world sees a teleport; it doesn’t get the rulebook." She looked around the circle. "Alice does not exist. Personal contracts and sponsorship money stay off-stream. The broadcast is about Floor 21 and nothing else we own."

"You’re very good at this," Cillian said.

"I’m aware. Confirm, all of you."

Five confirmations. It wasn’t control, and everyone knew it. Every rule on the list was a wall around something that could hurt one of them.

The secure entry room under Dublin Tower, three days later.

The broadcast page went live an hour before the stream, and the waiting-room chat was already moving too fast to read comfortably.

[ClontarfClimber]: RONAN AND CILLIAN BACK. full squad. FULL SQUAD

[TowerWatchKR]: the other two cleared the reconstruction right? can they keep pace with the original three though

[ShieldMainSiobhan]: "the original three" the DISRESPECT. ronan cleary held the second raid’s whole line, read the debrief summary

[DripAnalyst]: james is wearing the sponsor gear from the campaign. mana-weave underlayer. that’s not cosmetic btw

[BladeNerd_04]: NEW SWORD. hold on. zoom in. that’s not shop gear

[BladeNerd_04]: DURENDAL??? if the registry name is real that’s an S-RANK

[FloorTheoryPod]: reminder: nobody on earth knows what comes after a Main Story floor. we’re all finding out live. insane

[SaoPauloTowerFan]: entire planet watching one irish stream because they’re the only ones past 20 lmaooo

[QuietWatcher_Tallaght]: heard team zero is registering a guild. anyone confirm?

Nobody in the entry room answered that one.

James stood at the gate and ran the roster one last time.

[TEAM ZERO]

[JAMES GANNER]

[FINN HALE]

[MAEVE CALLAHAN]

[RONAN CLEARY]

[CILLIAN WARD]

[ALL PARTY MEMBERS HAVE CLEARED FLOOR 20]

[FLOOR 21 ACCESS CONFIRMED]

He started the stream.

The viewer counter did something violent and vertical. The chat hit a speed where individual messages became weather, but the shape of it was legible — five names getting cheered, not three. Ronan’s name in capitals. Cillian’s name buried under a wall of lightning emotes.

Cillian watched his own name scroll past, stood a little straighter, and pretended he hadn’t.

"Team Zero," James said, to the gate and the world at once. "Floor 21."

He confirmed entry.

The white light took them.

It did not put them down anywhere.

The five of them hung in darkness. No floor under their boots, no walls, no horizon. Only each other, standing on nothing.

"Formation," Ronan said quietly, and they closed up back-to-back out of pure reflex, before anyone knew whether there was anything to form against.

The stream stayed live. James’s private windows — stats, skills, everything — stayed sealed from the broadcast, the way they always had.

But what came next wasn’t a private window.

It was the floor itself, and the floor began to speak in pictures.

The darkness opened into a projection that surrounded them on every side, vast as a sky.

A kingdom.

Walled cities under green hills. A capital of pale stone with a palace at its crown. Banners everywhere — a silver stag on deep blue.

Then the sequence began, and nobody in the party said anything for a long time.

A king lay dead beneath the stag banner — grey-bearded, not old enough for it — while palace officials drew a shroud over him with careful hands. The knowledge of his name simply arrived, unspoken: Alaric.

A crown came down onto a younger head in a torchlit hall. A tall man, composed, dressed in court black. Baldwin. Elder prince. Lawful heir.

And far to the north, another man got the news on a frozen road — armoured, wind-burned, monster blood dried black on his gear, exhausted soldiers strung out behind him. Raymond. Younger prince. Frontier commander. He read the letter twice, looked south for a long moment, and the column turned.

Then the kingdom came apart, and the projection made them watch all of it.

Soldiers wearing the same stag crest faced each other across courtyards and divided — some kneeling to the crown, some marching north.

Watchfires burned along a frontier wall with no reinforcements coming, because the reinforcements were being recalled south to stand in a succession line.

Goblins came first, through a breach nobody repaired.

Then orcs, in numbers that made the goblins look like weather.

An ogre the size of a gatehouse tore a frontier gate off its hinges while wyverns crossed the sky above the fighting like migrating birds.

Baldwin’s forces pulled back — abandoning the small settlements, closing city gates on refugee columns, holding the larger walls because the arithmetic said the villages couldn’t be held.

Raymond’s legion seized a royal supply depot at sword-point and turned south, toward the capital, away from the frontier he’d bled for.

Towns burned. Two princes in two halls received the same reports and said each other’s names like curses.

And then the armies met — royal banners and northern banners on one field outside the capital, stag against stag. The projection didn’t linger on the details, and didn’t need to. When it finished, both armies were carrion, and the field belonged to nobody.

The monsters entered Caerleon through gates no one was left to hold.

And beneath the palace, in the last frame, a red light began to spread — up through the foundation stones, through the floors, behind the windows — until both princes’ fallen banners glowed the color of an open wound.

The projection held there for one heartbeat.

Then everything ran backward.

The dead rose. Flames poured back into rooftops and went out. Armies unmarched. Broken walls rebuilt themselves, the red light drained down into the earth and vanished, and the whole ruin of a kingdom rewound, faster and faster, until it stopped.

A quiet morning. Banners at half-mast. A city in mourning, but standing whole.

[FLOOR 21]

[STORY WORLD: CAERLEON]

[SCENARIO: THE BROKEN CROWN]

[KING ALARIC IS DEAD]

[TWO PRINCES CLAIM HIS THRONE]

[THE KINGDOM’S ARMIES HAVE DIVIDED]

[MONSTER FORCES ARE ADVANCING]

"Thirty days after the king dies," Maeve said quietly, reading the mourning banners. "That’s where it’s put us. Everything we just watched hasn’t happened yet."

Two panels bloomed in the dark, side by side, like doors.

[SELECT THE CLAIMANT YOUR PARTY WILL SUPPORT]

[PRINCE BALDWIN]

[ELDER PRINCE — LAWFUL HEIR]

[FACTION: CROWN ARMY]

[STARTING REGION: CAERLEON]

[PRINCE RAYMOND]

[YOUNGER PRINCE — FRONTIER COMMANDER]

[FACTION: NORTHERN LEGION]

[STARTING REGION: NORTHERN FRONTIER]

[THE PARTY LEADER’S SELECTION WILL APPLY TO THE ENTIRE PARTY]

Nobody chose.

"Baldwin," Finn said first. "And I’ll defend it. He’s the lawful heir. He holds the capital, the treasury, the council, the central army. Everything we just watched fail, failed because command split in two. One crown, one command — that’s the only structure that survives an invasion that size."

"The structure that abandoned the frontier," Ronan said. "His arithmetic closed the gates on the villages. Raymond stayed where the monsters were. I know which prince I’d want holding the wall my family lived behind."

"And he’s fought the tide already." Cillian had no joke in him at all now. "His men have monster blood on them in the first frame. Baldwin’s army has never seen an orc. The war that matters is the northern one, and Raymond’s already standing in it."

"You’re all doing the thing," Maeve said.

They looked at her.

"You’re trusting the trailer." She nodded at the dark where the projection had been. "The Tower showed us an ending. It showed us nothing about how either man got there — what Baldwin knew when he pulled back, what Raymond did to feed that legion, who moved first and why. Floors lie. Edited history is the easiest lie there is. I don’t trust either description, and neither should any of you."

"Agreed," James said. "So we ask for more."

He put the request to the interface. An audience with the claimants. Envoys. Records. Anything.

The panels didn’t move. The two doors hung in the dark, and offered not one word more than they’d offered.

Below the stream, the audience had already picked its princes.

[CrownLoyal_Kev]: BALDWIN. lawful heir, central command, it’s not complicated. split kingdoms die

[FrontierWife]: baldwin abandoned the villages in the vision??? did we watch the same thing. RAYMOND

[FloorTheoryPod]: faction-select floors usually punish surface reads. both bios are missing the important part, guaranteed

[TowerWatchKR]: we know NOTHING about these men and chat has already started a civil war. very on theme

[ShieldMainSiobhan]: the party leader picks for all five. glad it’s not me lol

James didn’t look at the chat. None of them did.

[SELECTION REQUIRED]

[TIME REMAINING: 60 SECONDS]

"There it is," Finn muttered.

James watched the number start to fall, and set the two risks side by side one last time.

Baldwin had the structure. The treasury, the walls, the unified command — the machine a kingdom needs to survive a war this size. And that machine had already, in the only future they’d been shown, chosen to spend the frontier to buy time.

Raymond might make the succession war worse. Probably would. But his legion was the only force standing where the actual threat was walking in — and every day the throne argument continued, the breach in the north got wider.

I’m not choosing a king, James thought. I’m choosing which fire gets fought first. If the north falls in the first month, there’s no kingdom left for either of them to rule.

[TIME REMAINING: 20 SECONDS]

"Raymond," James said. "Not because he should be king. Because if the frontier goes, the question of who’s king answers itself. Objections on record."

"On record — Baldwin was the right call," Finn said. "And you’re the leader. Go."

"Raymond," Ronan said.

"Raymond," Cillian said.

"No endorsement," Maeve said. "Of either. But not choosing isn’t on the menu. Choose."

[TIME REMAINING: 10 SECONDS]

The chat was a war in two colors now, scrolling too fast to read.

James didn’t read it.

He reached for the right-hand door.

[TIME REMAINING: 5 SECONDS]

His hand stopped over the panel.

[CONFIRM SUPPORT FOR PRINCE RAYMOND?]

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