Global PvP Tower: I Can Infinitely Merge My Units

They settled onto the stone benches around Rishin’s hut. Isolde summoned Baldrun Ironhearth a moment later. The dwarven chef bowed once, then got straight to work at a second stove nearby.

"Elder Rishin." Garen gestured toward Logan. "This is Logan Wolf. A promising young player."

Logan stepped forward and bowed properly, the same way his father had taught him to greet anyone who’d earned real respect. "It’s an honor to meet you, Elder Rishin."

Daniel and Helen echoed the sentiment a beat behind him, equally careful with it.

Rishin didn’t answer right away. He filled four small stone bowls from the pot he’d been heating and passed one to each of them without a word.

Logan took a careful sip, more out of politeness than actual thirst. Warmth spread through his whole body in an instant.

Helen and Daniel also felt comfort wash over their body as soon as they took a sip.

"We came for a reason beyond the view." Isolde set her own empty bowl down. "We’d like you to evaluate Logan. And if you’re willing, teach him."

Rishin’s eyes settled on Logan properly for the first time, serene and unreadable both at once. "Do you know why they want me to teach you?"

Logan shook his head.

Instead of answering, Rishin glanced at Garen, who promptly summoned a small black cat as it tumbled out onto the stone ground, fluffy and impossibly cute, a gold-white symbol marked plain across its forehead.

"Lisbell." Garen crouched down to scratch behind one ear. "Take Vina to play for a bit, would you?"

The cat looked like nothing more than a pet. It was, in truth, a Tier-9 powerhouse folded down into something small enough to fit in a child’s arms.

Vina’s whole face lit up. The cat then scooped her up with some magical golden waves, causing her to giggle, and took off toward a cluster of smaller animals gathered near the treeline, already chattering away at her new companion like they’d known each other for years.

Once she was well out of earshot, Rishin continued.

"They want you strong," he said, "because once a planet’s strongest players reach Tier-10, the Tower unlocks its tenth floor. And with it, a new phase begins."

"A single game. Advent of Abyss. Rules and difficulty unlike anything that comes before it." His voice stayed level, but something underneath it had gone very still. "A wonderful adventure. And an utterly heartless one. Curses and blessings, hand in hand, all the way down."

"Once you enter, you don’t leave. Not until someone, you or another player, reaches the deepest layer of the Abyss before the global time limit runs out." He paused. "Fail that, and the Abyss overflows. Into the planet itself. There’s no surviving that."

"That’s how I lost my own world." He said it plain, no drama attached to the words at all, which somehow made it worse. "Those who survived scattered. Those who didn’t crumbled into dust, right alongside the planet itself."

Logan felt the words land somewhere cold in his own chest. His parents had both gone very quiet beside him.

"There’s one more thing about the Advent of Abyss." Isolde’s voice had lost all its earlier warmth. "You never enter it alone. Not even if you want to."

Daniel frowned. "Meaning?"

"Love," Rishin said the word as it tasted of something bitter, and far more painful. "That’s the emotion the Abyss wants most. If you enter, it pulls in everyone you love, everyone you care for, right along with you. Player or not." He paused. "Half my own planet’s population died inside that game within the first six months."

"What?" Logan’s own voice came out thinner than he meant it to. He looked at his parents. He looked past them, toward Vina, still laughing somewhere near the treeline with Lisbell and a small cluster of curious animals.

"That’s... even if we’re not players ourselves, we’d still be pulled in?" Helen’s voice had gone small.

"That’s correct." Rishin nodded once.

For the first time since they’d arrived, something in his eyes actually trembled. A pain too deep for any of them to fully understand was visible for just a moment, before the usual stillness closed back over it.

"Love itself is a curse in the Abyss, but it’s also a blessing. How to overcome it...I still don’t know." His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. "I failed, after all. I reached the deepest layer, but not in time, and not with my loved ones. They paid the price for my success."

Garen’s fists had curled tight at his sides sometime during the last few minutes, worry for his own planet written plain across his face. Isolde looked much the same.

Logan understood, in that moment, exactly how dire Earth’s own situation was about to become.

"We can’t just delay people from reaching Tier-10?" He looked between Garen and Isolde.

"Even if we told the whole world to hold back, some wouldn’t listen." Garen let out a rueful breath. "Some people are good. Some love their families. Some have already lost theirs. Some take real delight in other people’s misfortune. Some enjoy causing it themselves. Every kind of person you can imagine has already reached Tier-9 on our planet. We can’t stop any of them from climbing further. All we can do is brace for what happens when someone does."

"That’s why we want to help you. And as many others as we can reach." Isolde reached into her storage ring. "Strong people can save a lot of others, when it actually comes down to it."

She held out something small, a thin cylinder of crystal, gold motes drifting slowly inside it like captured light.

"This cost fifty thousand Tier Points, from the Ninth Floor’s shop. Too expensive to hand out to everyone. But you can buy them from us, at least."

Logan looked at the crystal, inspected it, and his eyes went wide with shock.

An Awakening Pill!

"This..."

It could take an ordinary person, someone who’d failed to awaken, and grant them a Class and a Talent of their own, entirely at random.

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