PANDORA. Hope Dies Last: ToG

Play with Fire

Chapter 13

POV Lero-Ro

If there was anything like 'supremacy', he was sure it belonged to him. Lero-Ro. He was the sole son of a man who had given up his climb on the tower and made his life in the middle area.

It was...a rather boring place and perhaps that was why he had let his supremacy get to his head. In his neighborhood, he was the strongest among the children, smarter than the adults, and...well, he wasn't exactly bad looking, was he?

Growing up with his father, he heard the stories and horrors of climbing the tower. His initial hopes and dreams only to be replaced by loss and blood. His father's desire for whatever was at the top left him the moment his last companion died...after his failure on the 34th floor, he officially gave up and left the inner tower.

Perhaps it was because he was still a child, or maybe because he was living in a pond too small for him...he wished to see the greater world. The Tower.

He trained his body for the tower as he picked up a needle. He remembers taking his first life, an annoying mindless monster, before being praised as the savior of the village. It was a small village...a rather safe one that had no need or supply of rankers. Having never seen such power, he let it get to his head.

Stealing his father's pocket, he formed the contract with the Administrator and met a being he could call a god for the first time. Interacting with shinsu, learning about the legends of the tower, an omnipotent King and his princesses, an infinite tower, the tale of a wish being granted...it was all enough to call for the tower.

As he was finishing up his book on Lighthouses, the tower came for him. The Fairy introduced himself as Headon as he welcomed him into the greater world. He thought himself a whale entering the ocean at last...how wrong he was. Perhaps he should have listened to his father who called out behind him as he tried to stop him from entering. It was too late.

It was only after arriving at the Floor of Tests did he realize the true nature of the tower. Blood and Loss...blood and loss on repeat. Screams sounded as the smell of blood permeated through the air, causing him to cough.

He gripped his needle tight as he instinctively sent a contract form to the administrator of the floor. If he was going to survive this test...he would need all the tools he brought (stole) from his father.

*ding* Contract formed

As his Lighthouses whirred to life as he could finally use shinsu, it was just in time as he saw the others began to choke, turn sick, and die from unknown means. Whatever it was, he wasn't risking anything.

"Quarantine Barrier!"

A layer of shinsu formed separating him from all others as he watched the contestants outside die one by one. The number that showed on his pocket was decreasing way too quickly to be the work of a person...it was whatever was let loose outside. Was this a survival game?

*shiver* *shiver* He was already regretting not listening to his father...if he had not made the contract any sooner...if he didn't bring the lighthouses with him or didn't know how to use it...he would be like the other 300+ contestants who died moments after setting foot into the tower.

'How was I to know such a difference in power existed??!' He complained...but in truth he did know...he simply refused to listen. He did know that the tower was a feast for the strong to kill the weak...all he didn't know was his misconception of his belief that he belonged to the strong.