[Name: Daniel Brown]
[Race: Homo sapiens]
[Level: 9999999999999999999999999]
[Class: Multi-class (MAX)]
[Skills: MAX]
[Spells: MAX]
[Traits: MAX]
[Stats:
VIT: 9999999999999999999999999
STR: 9999999999999999999999999
DEX: 9999999999999999999999999
MANA: 9999999999999999999999999]
I shook my head. A disbelieving chuckle escaped me. I couldn't help it. Now that I wasn't dealing with the insanity of flying through the air at who knows how many miles per hour, my mind was free to properly comprehend the insanity of this instead.
It went without saying that things definitely weren't supposed to be this way. That much was obvious. The distant possibility that these stats were actually average was immediately countered by the fact that I dimly recalled some mention of every newcomer to the Tower receiving 100 points to spend as we wished.
One hundred. One singular hundred.
My stats were a number I didn't even know the name of. Twenty-five nines. That was, like, a million-million-million-million, or something. Quite a bit higher than one hundred.
So yeah, it was safe to say I'd thoroughly broken that part of things. But what about the other stuff? Classes, Skills, Spells, Traits. They were simply labelled MAX, with no numerical value for me to extrapolate from. What did that mean? All of a sudden, a part of me wished I hadn't spammed my way through the tutorial. It had probably explained what this all meant.
Oh well. This was fine, too, honestly. If anything, I preferred figuring it all out for myself. Where was the adventure in reading an instruction manual? I couldn't imagine anything more fundamentally unexciting.
Either way, it should be able to show me what the actual classes are, right? That stuff would have no reason to be hidden from me.
I turned out to be right on that front. Focusing on Classes opened up a new window adjacent to the first, both of them automatically minimising a bit so they didn't take up too much of my vision.
The new window contained a list. A very long one. It started with Level 1000 SSS-Rank Aahing Grandmaster, followed by Level 1000 SSS-Rank Aardvark Deity Channeller, then Level 1000 SSS-Rank Aardwolf Deity Channeller, leading to a few dozen more entries crammed onto the screen, all Level 1000 SSS-Rank, all of them starting with aa. Only the last entry at the bottom started with ab: Level 1000 SSS-Rank Aba Weaver.
Huh. What's Aba? Some kind of thread, I guess, since I'm apparently level 1000 SSS-rank at weaving it now.
Responding to my thoughts and startling me halfway out of my skin, a new, smaller window opened up, focusing on the Class I'd mentally questioned.
Aba Weaver [Level 1000 SSS-Rank]
Denotes a Climber's expertise in the art of weaving fabric from the hair of camels or goats.
"What the fuck?" I muttered, both of my eyebrows climbing my forehead. "That's so specific. Who the hell would even put points into that?"
Intrigued to learn more, I found that I could scroll down the page of Classes by swiping up on it, much like a smartphone screen. Let me tell you, it took a very long time to get down to the next letter of the alphabet (Level 1000 SSS-Rank Baaing Grandmaster—evidently I was the god-king of impersonating sheep now?), and I got bored long before I got anywhere near C.
Backing out of the Classes screen, I opened up new windows for Skills, Spells, and Traits, and found a similar story there, too. A truly absurd number of Level 1000 SSS-rank entries, sorted by alphabetical order, too many to even scroll down to B in a reasonable time frame. The system covered absolutely everything.
There was at least a little bit of difference to break up the monotony, though. A small bit of intrigue to tide me over. Skills and Spells, it seemed, had types. Elemental, physical, spiritual, martial, and a bunch of other stuff that didn't end in -al.
I accidentally found I could sort the list by type, which led to me speculating if I could sort the list in other ways. I quickly found that I could, though the full range of options was beyond me, but I dismissed that pretty quickly when it became clear I could essentially use it as a search function, narrowing down my list of Spells and Skills by basically unlimited criteria.
(This all turned out to be the work of a few "Meta"-type Skills working in concert, all Level 1000 SSS-Rank: Search, System Organisation, Type Label, and some more. It wasn't actually a built-in function native to the System.)
This, of course, led to a merry old time as I sought out the most powerful abilities in my arsenal, which quickly became a more harrowing than exciting experience.
For example:
Omnicide [Level 1000 SSS-Rank]
End all life within a range of Climber's position, based on Climber's choosing.
Ravaging Plague [Level 1000 SSS-Rank]
Creates an incurable plague with specifications of Climber's choosing.
Mind Flay [Level 1000 SSS-Rank]
Climber can decimate the psyche of any target within visual range.
So, yeah. Not entirely pleasant to know you had supervillain-tier shit like that in your back pocket.
That wasn't to say it was all bad. There was more awesome shit than I could possibly hope to list if you gave me years to go through it. I could turn into a dragon at will. I could be invisible. I could speak any language. I could do a pretty good impression of Superman or Iron Man or Captain America. I had crafting abilities. Alchemy, weaving, blacksmithing. And that wasn't even talking about the various disciplines of magic I was now apparently a grandmaster of.
Yeah, there was some scary stuff, but I simply had to not use any of it and everything would be fine. There was more than enough cool stuff to keep me occupied anyway.
The only thing missing, funnily enough, were abilities that made me better at using my abilities, so to speak. I'd had a thought that Traits might cover that, but it seemed like they were really just a bunch of passives meant to buff my Skills and Spells. Generally, the System was giving the vibe that you were meant to figure out how to use Spells and Skills and whatever for yourself.
The only question was: What was I meant to do with all this power? Like, in terms of purpose.
I placed my hands on my hips and turned my gaze towards the vast sky. Ribbons of purple, blue, green, red, and yellow danced around each other. I'd seen the aurora borealis a few times back home, but it couldn't compare to this. It was a sight that thoroughly underlined that this was not Earth.
The Eternal Tower's intro thingie, as previously noted, had talked about Trials and Tribulations. Defying fate and the will of the Heavens was, apparently, the name of the game. This place was built to be climbed, to be challenged, to be conquered. Why, and by whom, remained to be seen.
My grin was back. Any morose mood that had crept in at seeing some freaky powers in my repertoire fell away as anticipation took centre stage and refused to share even a single photon of the spotlight. My hands trembled. I felt giddy, ready to burst out laughing. I bounced in my toes, shook out my arms to limber them up.
All that movement sent another part of me flopping around with an awfully embarrassing little slapping sound. Looking down took the wind out of my sails rather thoroughly.
Ah. Still naked. Should probably do something about that.
While I wasn't one to care too much what people thought of me, I had my limits. Walking around naked stepped thoroughly over that line. And I was pretty sure climbing the tower starkers would be against Climber etiquette or something. They'd make fun of me, at the very least. If I was going to be in pole position among humanity, I didn't want the aliens or whatever who were already occupying the upper floors of this place to think we were a race of nudist weirdos.
Luckily, my menus had a solution to the problem. At first, I'd simply gone looking for some way to spawn an outfit for myself via some Spell or other. Given the versatility listed so far, I was confident I had something like that available.
However, my search just led me to another function of the System: I had an Inventory.
As previously stated, I was far from a hardcore gamer, but even the most casual player would recognise what that meant. The precise mechanics of how it worked were beyond me, but when I tapped on its entry in my search, it brought up a new window, a bit bigger than the others, crowding them out a bit. This one showed a list that was much more like a database, giving me pertinent info like weight, condition, value, etc, alongside a brief description.
And if I was reading it right, there were over fifty billion entries in my Inventory.
Sweating a little at the daunting prospect, I decided I wasn't going to think about that too hard, instead using the mentally-commanded search function to track down a simple shirt, trousers, underpants, socks, and boots. They were all simple, utilitarian. No different from what you'd get from the clothing aisle at a supermarket. I was sure there'd be more flashy stuff in there, but I wanted to keep things relatively simple for now. I got the feeling I wasn't going to need anything too elaborate.
Conveniently, the clothes spawned straight onto my body, with no need to faff about putting them on. They fit perfectly, of course. The fabric was just-washed smooth, and the boots were snug to my feet without being uncomfortable, like I'd already spent weeks breaking them in.
Right then.
Now that I wasn't going to look like a raving lunatic to anyone I encountered or run afoul of the Tower's equivalent of the police for public indecency, I placed my hands on my hips and stared up at the sky once more. I adopted a thoughtful expression as well, just for good measure.
Anticipation started to build once again. Somewhere up there, beyond that sky, adventure awaited me. I strongly suspected the floor I was on was going to be far below my level. No challenge at all, no danger. Without danger, there was no excitement. No rush. And what was the point of any endeavour if there was no thrill to it?
But this was the Eternal Tower. It had spoken of quadrillions of souls. Something of that scale had to be truly enormous, beyond even the 10,000 plus miles I'd travelled without, as far as I knew, seeing another living soul.
It was time to see what trials and tribulations this tower had for me.
I bent my legs, crouching down, then, with all my strength, exploded upwards.