Chapter 193 - [Tower Master] Aphrodite and Freyja, a Meeting with the Two Goddesses
A round of casual small talk passed between us first—about the project Ian was driving forward, how things were progressing, and what kind of outcome it would likely produce, all of which I relayed to the Tower Master.
"So she's paying money to recruit men who'll offer their semen to the lewd mares... She really is up to quite a lot, isn't she—as you'd expect from the girl who jumps straight to the conclusion of screwing her own mother..."
"That decisiveness must be her strong suit. She's doing remarkably well for someone so young."
The two of them took quite a liking to Ian(?). Perhaps because she'd arrived at the conclusion that Ms. Lee Soyeon was fair game to rape—the only flaw being that they'd apparently pegged her as something of a crazy bitch.
Even so, leading a tower at her age and negotiating her way all the way to this table was an impressive feat in its own right.
"In that spirit, there's a proposal I'd like to make on our side."
"Let's hear it."
"We've conquered the tower up to the fiftieth floor. If the reason you invaded the surface was to harvest essence, then you've no reason to keep fighting us. How about calling it quits around here?"
"You're proposing we get along nicely?"
"Yes."
"Not happening."
The answer came instantly, without a moment's thought. She'd replied before I'd even asked why.
"I explained it poorly the first time. It's true that our tower invades the surface for essence. But in my case, there's another reason on top of that."
"Another reason?"
"Because this is my marriage hunt."
"...?"
So then... a marriage hunt meant...
Marriage... activities...?
"I told you just now, didn't I? That looking at her, I was filled with jealousy because she can't land a man?"
"You did."
"That's what that meant."
Even after hearing Freyja's explanation, I tilted my head. Even with her saying it out loud, this wasn't the kind of thing I could grasp in one go.
"You don't understand? I'm looking for a hero. I'm searching for someone who will conquer the tower I built, fair and square, and become my husband."
"Huh...?"
"It never once occurred to you? Even though the theme is lust, even though it draws in men and women alike—didn't the conquest itself feel like it was testing the men?"
"No. I can't say it did."
There had been far more bizarre gimmicks than I could wrap my head around, and those were what had hogged my attention. That floor-forty mechanic that had tried to destroy my balls, for one.
"Really? Well, regardless—the tower is a kind of cutoff line. Any hero capable of clearing this place has earned the right to receive my love."
With that, she gave her colossal tits a jiggle.
Just like Ms. Lee Soyeon, a woman starved for men gives off an erotic scent that starts at the skin.
"And that's why you've been so cold to Seongyeon."
"Of course. She's been wrecking my marriage hunt out of nowhere, all in the name of giving her boyfriend a gift? Of course that'd piss me off as a fellow woman."
"Ah—"
So that was it. Something in my chest finally came loose. Meeting the two goddesses was unraveling information I'd never known, smooth as silk.
If the reason Aphrodite drove her tower into the surface was her marriage hunt...
I stole a glance.
"Is it the same for you, Lady Freyja?"
She shook her head.
"In my case, it genuinely was a matter of resources. The children dwelling in my tower survive by converting the mental energy of humans into mana."
"Then you could simply have made contact with high-ranking human officials from the start. If you never truly intended to invade, and you'd just asked us to help with this and that—"
"—Besides, this is our play as well. Our own private amusement, watching humans challenge the domain of gods. So please don't labor under any misunderstanding that we're actually in dire straits or anything of the sort~♪"
Her hohoho laughter, pleasant enough before, was distinctly unpleasant this time. And Aphrodite laid bare exactly why.
"Don't let Freyja's looks fool you. She seems good-natured at a glance, but she's a god all the same. She regards most humans as playthings—give her your heart and you'll end up badly hurt, you know?"
"Playthings, is it. Then the skills the towers scatter around are feed and prize money handed down to the livestock, in other words?"
Hohoho.
"Of course it's fun—dicing divine authority into little pieces, scattering them about, and telling you all to hurry up and clear the tower. You people do the same, don't you? You release brightly colored koi into a big pond, toss them feed, and enjoy watching them open their mouths wide and gobble it all down."
The metaphor landed perfectly, and with it I understood the standard by which gods measured humans. The reason towers had sprouted across the surface was, at its root, part 'play' and part 'survival.' The other Tower Masters, the ones absent from this room, had to be the same. Every tower scattered across the world wielded divine authority for its own amusement, each with its own circumstances—or so it appeared.
"So even if your tower gets conquered, it's no loss to you?"
"Conquering the tower is the cutoff line we built into it. Once it's cleared, we simply lock the 'most important floor' and live quietly, siphoning energy from the weak hunters who trickle in to grind out their skills."
"And this 'most important floor' would be?"
"Oh, you know the one. Not the mindless 'monsters'—those who truly reside in the tower. It's the floor where our families, the ones we gods watch over, make their home."
The safe floors, she meant. In other words, the tower's residents were being kept isolated up there out of concern for them.
"It's the same with the chambers where we dwell. The safe zones, our chambers—every last corner is divine territory, so they're shown to humans exceedingly rarely."
This "chamber" was new to me, too. I wondered what sort of place it might be, and debated whether to ask. Given what the word implied, it was essentially a goddess's bedchamber, and I was afraid of rubbing her the wrong way.
"There's nothing to agonize over. The place you're sitting in right now is my chamber."
"...This is?"
No, hold on. When I'd glanced out the window earlier, an entire kingdom had been spread out below. That was her chamber?
"We call the entire final floor where the gods reside the 'chamber.' So there's no need to take the word quite so literally, you see?"
I see. Well, that settled it—I now knew things that would make anyone on the surface faint dead away.
- The towers are playthings for the gods' amusement—and harvesting machines for drawing resources out of the surface.
- The skills doled out to humans are bait to lure us into the towers, and fragments of the gods themselves.
- Each god has their own circumstances and their pride runs deep, so they almost never cooperate with humans. Apparently.
So that explained why the surface ends up invaded whenever the tower is left unattended, too.
The kind of story that would get laughed out of the room, really. The Tower of Lust especially—a tower raised for nothing more than a marriage hunt? Absurdity had to have its limits.
"Anything else you're curious about? It's a rare occasion for us to meet like this, so consider it a service—whatever it is, just name it."
Was I supposed to call that kindness? Or was I supposed to be insulted at being treated as evening entertainment?
No. There's no reason to pick a fight here.
She'd already promised leniency where Seongyeon was concerned, so I let myself be satisfied with that and moved on to a different subject.
"We've cleared the fiftieth floor as well, so I'd like to move on to the matter of our reward, if we may."
"You did clear it, so a reward you'll get—but don't expect much. My mistake this time or not, the difficulty ran low, and we both know it."
"One wrong step and we'd have dropped dead on the spot, though?"
"The hero has a point, you know. Honestly, you're far too harsh even by my standards. Never mind how easily your brainwashing came undone—why be so pettily spiteful as to plant a mechanic that kills anyone who doesn't know what they're up against?"
"...Ghk!"
With Freyja laying down covering fire from the side, Aphrodite's face contorted.
"Dozens of instant-kill weapons mounted on eyeballs alone. Even granting that the first attack goes easy depending on a person's tastes, anyone who doesn't know the gimmick can't even dodge the petrification."
"That's an SSS-rank skill I granted, no less. By all rights, the instant you're caught in its gaze, you're out."
She agreed with me wholeheartedly.
"Handing something like that down to a human—doesn't that put a strain on you as well, Lady Freyja?"
"Of course it does. An SSS-rank skill is, in effect, one of a Tower Master's principal authorities. That's precisely why I granted it solely to her—the tower's conqueror."
That was how insane the difficulty had been—mad enough to earn Freyja's acknowledgment. Thank goodness Ian and I knew that woman inside and out; for anyone else, it would have been an unsolvable riddle.
"Agh, fine, I get it! Here! You insufferable wretches, the pair of you!"
Apparently we'd won her over, because three piercings came rolling across the tea table toward us. Black, purple, pink... judging by color alone, there was no telling whose they were.
"The memories, right? Whose are they this time?"
"Haven't the faintest idea."
"...I'm sorry?"
Wondering what on earth that meant, I goggled at her, eyes stretched wide.
"Lady Tower Master, you watched Seongyeon's regressions from start to finish, didn't you? Then surely you know perfectly well who I dated?"
"Oh, come now~! Honestly, think it through. Every time that blasted girl regresses, do you really believe my mind tags along every single time? That I'd sit and watch every little thing she gets up to after each reset? Do I honestly strike you as the type?"
No, she didn't. One look was enough to tell she tired of things quickly—there was no way she'd bother with drudgery like that. If she'd truly watched it all, she'd have either forgiven Seongyeon far sooner or grown bored and cut her loose.
"As a god, I'm aware she's been regressing. But no, I don't retain every one of those timelines."
"Then how do you remember?"
"The tower remembers on my behalf. You picked up a memory terminal my tower had put in storage not long ago—fortieth floor, wasn't it? And through it, you downloaded your old memories via our [Tower Archive]."
The system window had definitely used the word [Archive] when I had Seres's and Brigitte's memories restored. Translated plainly, it meant [data repository].
"So these piercings are terminals connected to the tower, and the tower itself is an all-purpose computer-cum-vault that transcends space and time?"
"Good, you've got it. I'm relieved I didn't have to run through a pointless explanation twice."
So that was how the two goddesses knew about Seongyeon's past and her loops. Seongyeon came out of every cycle hollowed out, while the Tower Master looked perfectly fine—not because she was a god, but because she simply downloaded her memories from an outside source.
"Still, to hand out memories I don't even recognize as my 'reward'..."
"Complain all you like—what am I supposed to do if I genuinely don't know? I couldn't tell you why, but the folders are supposed to be sorted by whose memories they are, and this time the whole lot had been lumped together and saved under 'your girlfriend's memories'?"
In other words, it was like downloading a pile of porn and, instead of sorting it by catalog number, shoving the entire thing into one [Big Tits] folder. Even for a goddess, that was some remarkably sloppy housekeeping.
"If you don't like it, then demand something else! Is there anything you need? Or a skill? The memories are already returned, so don't expect anything good on top!?"
"That's quite all right. Having come this far, there's one more favor I'd like to ask."
"What is it?"
"I'm looking for someone inside the tower."
"What, one of the rankers I kidnapped?"
"No. A comrade of mine. I hear she entered the tower three or four days ago. Might you be able to look for her?"
"...Hmm?"
Perhaps it struck her as too easy for a reward, because she eyed me with suspicion and asked for the name.
"What, that one you two were so suspicious of?"
"Yes."
"Wait just a moment."
She set her index and middle fingers against her forehead and sank into quiet meditation. So that's the pose a Tower Master strikes when sweeping the tower, I thought, filing the useless bit of trivia away—when her eyes snapped open almost at once.
"...Hm?"
"Did you find her?"
"I found her, but..."
So she was in the tower after all—I'd just started to feel relieved when the goddess let the end of her sentence trail off.
She'd climbed the tower without telling a soul and hadn't come out for days. I'd half suspected she was off committing some crime behind our backs. It took me less than five seconds to remember why that suspicion meant nothing at all.
"What's the matter?"
"The one you're looking for? She's dead."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"The current world rank five, yes? The one they call the [Vagabond]."
"Yes."
"Er..."
She said it again, flat and certain.
"She's dead."
The conference with the two goddesses, opening on the news of her death, now hurtled toward its end.