Project Keymaster
Let me tell you about the Tower.
I am an honorable commander of the Tau.
I was born twice the size of an ordinary Tau, and from childhood I never once lost a fistfight. Even after I enlisted in the proud Tau barracks, the exploits never stopped. Kill, smash, plunder, crush, burst, subdue—and kill again.
This is my life: born a warrior, to fight, and to die on the battlefield.
But after that woman captured me, my life changed completely.
A collar of obedience that dominated the mind. That cursed item robbed me of my will.
"Steak, shake."
When the woman told me to hold out my hand, I held out my hand.
"Stay."
When she ordered me to wait in front of food, I waited obediently.
"Okay. You may eat."
Only after permission was granted did I devour my meal like a starving beast.
"Aww. Good boy."
And when she reached out and scratched under my chin, I felt a happiness far greater than anything I had known tearing enemies apart on the battlefield.
"Well? He should be trained by now, shouldn't he?"
When the woman lifted the curse of bondage from my neck, I brought my fist down on her with everything I had. She was a third my height, and she could not have weighed a tenth of what I did. She blocked my punch as if it were nothing, then threw me to the ground and knocked me out cold.
"Still hasn't learned his manners."
While the collar held dominion over me, I could not defy a single word she said. She spoke to me in clumsy Orcish and learned the Tau tongue from me in turn. And I, to my utter despair, found myself seized by an elation even greater than when I had first been named commander of the Tau—simply because I had made her happy.
I had gone mad. It was because of this collar. I knew that—and still I could not take it off. Because the only reason I had left to live was to wear this collar and wag my tail before her.
"That's impossible..."
I am an honorable commander of the Tau. My joy is crushing enemies on the battlefield, tearing flesh and shattering bone until nothing remains but corpses...
Or it should have been. Now I wanted her praise more than any of that. When she stroked my chin or my head, a pleasure greater than having every Tau legion gazing up at me, awaiting my command, wrapped itself around my body. The thought came to me that, for the sake of this pleasure, betraying my own kind and siding with the humans was something I could do without a second thought.
"That's impossible... it can't be!"
Betray the Tau race. Betray my people. Betray my own kind—!
My own kind...
"KUOOOOOOOH!"
"There, there. Good boy. That's my Steak."
"KUOOOOOOOOOH!"
"Does it feel good when I scratch right here? Hmm? Want it harder?"
"KUOOOOOOOH!"
"Honestly, what a high-maintenance pet you are."
Fighting for my own kind could never be more important than being loved by my master.
Unless you had awakened a special ability the way Bada had, climbing the Tower only made your body stronger. Hunters with tough, fast, powerful physiques took up the martial traditions humanity had spent centuries developing, seeking combat techniques worthy of those enhanced bodies.
Martial arts had originally been created so the weak could overcome the strong—and so the strong could gently subdue the weak and set the order of the world to rights.
Nine-tenths of China's hunters practiced martial arts. The Nine Dragons Alliance was a coalition of the nine largest sects among them.
The World Community floors, shared by the entire globe. China had begun its assault on the 40th floor—the highest of the shared floors humanity had reached. The world watched the campaign with rapt attention.
The force that ruled the 40th floor was the Living Armor. They were divided among seven lord-castles, locked in endless war with one another. The hunters of the Nine Dragons Alliance picked a fight with every last one of them.
Bada's conquest of the 5th floor had been a secret, clandestine affair, and the fact that she had absorbed the entire goblin faction had never come to light.
Even the common soldiers wore full plate armor—an absurdity in itself. Inside the Living Armor lived a black, writhing, liquid-like monster. That was the true body.
China's hunters cut the Living Armor down with raw power, with martial arts, with techniques honed through relentless training. China had people—a vast land overflowing with population. That enormous population produced a proportional number of climbers, which meant an enormous number of hunters. Enough of them had reached even the 40th floor. With that overwhelming mass of attackers, the Living Armor fortresses fell one after another.
"The enemy commander has been defeated!"
"The castle is ours!"
"The spirit of Great China astonishes the world once more!"
"Their triumphant return is as proud and magnificent as the legendary generals Wei Qing and Huo Qubing!"
They were certain of victory. They simply hadn't understood why anyone would wage a war on that scale—but once the fighting started, losing seemed impossible. They had been carrying that hope when the anomaly occurred.
"What's that?"
"Has the sun itself fallen before our momentum?"
"No! It's a sky island!"
"A castle is descending from the heavens!"
The Nine Dragons Alliance had conquered seven castles. And then an eighth descended from the sky. A castle of brick, perched upon a massive chunk of earth. As it drew near the ground, winged Living Armor poured from within.
The armor had not fallen. The monsters had attacked.
"They're just suits of armor with chicken wings slapped on!"
"Catch them and deep-fry them!"
The commanders shouted, trying to raise morale. But the closer one was to the front line—the more one had already fought the winged Living Armor—the more clearly one understood. Those winged ones were on a completely different level from ordinary Living Armor. That's right. The gap was as wide as the one between angels and humans, or demons and humans.
"Aaaaah!"
A female swordsman's scream, torn from her at a comrade's death, ripped through the sky as if to split it open. A slaughter followed. A one-sided massacre. Elite hunters who had surpassed the 40th floor were being annihilated in the blink of an eye.
"Retreat!"
"The operation has failed!"
"Escape through the portals!"
The commanders all reached the same conclusion. Run from these monsters. But the winged pursuers had no intention of graciously letting the fleeing humans go.
They hurled spears. They swung swords. They loosed arrows. It was a human hunt.
In a single day, China's Nine Dragons Alliance lost thousands of its precious high-ranking hunters of the 40th floor and above. The damage was so severe that no one could even begin to calculate how long recovery would take. The survivors, too, suffered from severe PTSD.
"Judgment comes from the sky!"
"Angel, demon, angel, demon, angel, demon!"
And that news spread across the entire world at once.
The European Union's planned assault on the 20th floor was postponed as well. For the time being, they would watch and wait.
Kim Bada, grilling pork belly in her studio apartment as she watched the news, clicked her tongue.
"What kind of confidence made them ram themselves into the 40th floor? Did they think numbers would be enough?"
That's not how you clear a Tower.
Phase One of Kim Bada's grand plan to conquer the Tower—the 5th Floor Academy—was finally open.
Newbies on the 5th floor had nothing worth stripping them of, so the idea was to train them, send them to the higher floors, and then harvest them up there. The name of the operation: Project Carry.
Thanks to the advance notice, a crowd of several hundred packed the academy's opening ceremony. Bada appeared once more in that enigmatic boss-monster outfit of hers and delivered a speech to everyone assembled.
"The Tower is a kind of exam sheet. It presents you with a problem—here's a situation, how will you solve it?—and asks for your answer."
Thanks to a perception-blocking curse, a strange, compelling voice rang out—one that no one could have identified as belonging to a young girl.
"And on every last one of those exam sheets, you have been filling in the same answer: A. Attack the monster."
To offer choices beyond killing, hiding, or running away. That was the academy's founding purpose. Of course, a baseline of combat ability was still a given.
"Allow me to introduce my new colleague: Steak, of the Tau."
As a demonstration, Kim Bada presented her Tau pet before the crowd.
"She tamed a Tau that proud? How?"
"I heard Taus captured by humans all commit suicide."
"As expected of a boss monster."
"Is that even human? Take off the robe and there's either nothing underneath, or a monster inside, right?"
Everyone was stunned at the sight of a Tau meekly performing tricks at Kim Bada's hand.
"The language curriculum consists of three courses—Goblin Language, Orcish, and Tau—and for combat, we have prepared the basics of swordsmanship, spearmanship, archery, and shield technique."
A course in mana-wielding shamanism had originally been part of the plan, but the hobgoblin shaman Shauta had become far too busy with the enhancement workshop, so it was dropped.
And so the 5th Floor Academy opened, and people wanted to learn the languages of other races.
"The registration fee is two thousand points."
"Excuse me? You said the person next to me gets in free."
"That person is a hunter who just arrived on the 5th floor. You came down from the 20th."
Two thousand points could be exchanged for about fifteen thousand dollars outside the Tower. A steep price to pay for a single language.
There's nowhere else I can learn this.
The male hunter had no choice. He transferred the points and enrolled in the academy's Goblin Language course.
Kim Bada had planned to raise the 5th-floor newbies and harvest them later, but she was not about to sit by and watch people who'd already passed the 20th floor ride for free.
She would collect what she was owed.