Wilhelm
The Tower of the War God.
When Swordmaster Laktusha cleared Phase One's Four Calamities beast Baal, and Phase Two's Blade Dragon God was somehow driven off by an unknown cause, people clung to hope and grew giddy with excitement.
One after another, everyone poured into the Tower of the War God.
Of course, it wasn't simply for the challenge itself. If it had been nothing but hardship and suffering, hundreds of thousands of people would never have scaled the tower all at once.
What you could gain from the Tower of the War God had no ceiling. A tower that, in proportion to its trials, offered quite literally everything.
And the moment word spread that you could obtain special Mysteries no human should ever be able to touch, an enormous throng flooded in. There was not a single reason not to climb. If anything, everyone around you was actively urging you to go.
Those whose growth had stalled threw themselves at the tower with particular desperation — people whose level caps had risen but who couldn't farm the experience to match, people short on SP who couldn't advance their talent trees, and so on. Even the Constellations of the Hall of One Hundred Constellations were leading the charge, practically ordering people to ascend. Not climbing was pure loss.
But then.
The strongest climbers who had reached the twenty-fifth floor. Every last one of them had fallen under Eternal Randolph's domination. It was almost certainly tied to the tower's anomaly — the look of people seized and controlled as if fleeing from the black hand that had wrapped the entire tower.
Over five hundred thousand challengers. If they and the strongest fighters had all been dominated at once, the situation was even more hopeless than when they had faced the Blade Dragon God. There was simply no one left to challenge.
The moment that thought landed, everyone recoiled in horror. It was far worse than the tower simply collapsing and a cursed Randolph bursting free.
It could not be stopped. No one would be able to stop it — because every person who should have been stopping it had already turned into the enemy.
And as if to confirm exactly what they were thinking—
Time remaining: 47 hours 43 minutes.
When the time is fully consumed, the tower will collapse to the ground and the curse will be released.
When the tower falls, every being within it who has been cloaked in the curse will assault both Pangenia and Earth.
Less than two days remaining.
Every eye filled with despair. The tower's collapse was a foregone conclusion. Challenge was impossible. And even if someone did challenge it — who could possibly defeat that coalition of the strongest, plus Randolph?
Then it happened.
Rules have been modified due to the tower's anomaly.
From this moment, the Boss Room will be broadcast in real time.
You may use a held Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule, or a Complete Golden Rule, to cheer for a challenger — or for Eternal Randolph.
The greater the scale of the cheer, the more powerful the blessing granted to its target.
Before every Awakener's eyes, a transparent screen rose all at once. And like a live television feed, the broadcast began in vivid detail.
At a glance, a staggering tide of hundreds of thousands. Two forces facing each other across a vast plain. Awakeners who had not yet climbed the tower swallowed hard and fixed their eyes on the screen.
Across Player Talk and countless other Awakener communities, arguments flew back and forth. But no consensus formed. There was simply no clear figure to rally behind.
Time was too short. The two camps were steadily closing the distance. Once they collided, there would be no reining it in.
...And in that exact instant.
The moment his name appeared, both charging camps stopped dead, as if the whole thing had been a lie. Then, staring at the man who had manifested in the center between them, every single person could only float question marks.
......Because something that should have been impossible was happening.
If they had only seen the name, they never would have believed it. They would have written it off as a namesake. But the man standing vividly before their eyes was, without question, Knight King Wilhelm.
Wilhelm was dead. On the Great Expedition. It had not been long since Serengeti had publicly confirmed Wilhelm's true story — and now he had appeared as if resurrected.
But Wilhelm had been the one everyone assumed was Phantom's main character. The condition for being summoned into Pangenia was the death of a gamer's strongest character — their main — and when Wilhelm died, Randolph had appeared. Every piece of Wilhelm's equipment had shown up dismantled in the Golden Rule Shop. By any reasonable measure, Wilhelm had clearly been Phantom's main.
...Or so it had seemed certain.
Chaos. Confusion. Every concept they had held, every fact they thought they knew, had tangled into a knot. But one clear truth still stood: Wilhelm had appeared, and he was challenging Randolph.
And in the scene that followed immediately after—
—they stopped being confused. They could not stay confused. Every doubt, every tangled thought, settled in an instant.
...Because someone had begun hurtling straight toward Wilhelm.
"G-go on. Keep going forward. I will offer my life to bless you!"
"But—!"
"You must not stop! You must never look back! This stretch is the Fly Hell — where the Demon King's miasma is at its most ferocious! Anyone who turns around will rot!"
It was the final, eighth hell. The last scene Saintess Seia remembered — the very place where she had last guided Knight King Wilhelm.
"Ah······."
Memories she had forgotten — that she had been made to forget — poured over her like a flood. Saintess Seia had lost her memories. The Demon King had forced her to forget. But the moment she saw him — from the instant Wilhelm appeared—
"Aaaah······."
......They were coming back. The expedition she had shared with Wilhelm. Its beginning, its end, and everything in between. All of it rising at once.
In that place, I······.
She had kept chanting the Sacrifice Mantra so the knights would not fall under the miasma's influence. On a face and body that had once been pure and beautiful, sores swollen with every kind of demonic energy had grown, and both her eyes were turning black like a demon's. Saintess Seia had not cared that her body was rotting. She had thrown everything away for the sole purpose of defeating the Demon King.
But that was not what she had truly wanted. The real reason she had despaired — the reason everything had been taken from her memory—
"Knight King Wilhelm······."
......had been Wilhelm's death. The moment she realized his body had been seized by the Demon King, she had given up on everything.
So this was impossible. That body had clearly been stolen by the Demon King.
"Is it truly him?"
"······It is. It is him."
Serengeti nodded, her whole body trembling. That arrogant presence. The ease, even the expression — it was the man she had watched from his side for so long. It was Wilhelm. No one else in the world could imitate him. The atmosphere unique to Wilhelm alone was something no one dared to copy.
And so Serengeti slowly dropped to one knee.
"I present myself before the Knight King."
"···My one and only."
Saintess Seia was the same. She soon recognized that the body itself was not Wilhelm's — but what was certain was that Wilhelm had descended. That soul, that stature, was unmistakably his. The flesh had been taken by the Demon King, but that radiant soul had never been stolen.
"WIL! HELM!!"
In that moment, someone roared Wilhelm's name and charged. Former Champion Sancha — the strongest who had reigned over the Tower of the War God for so long!
"I have waited for this moment alone! For a duel with you!!"
Wilhelm. He had climbed the Tower of the War God once before. But a duel with Sancha had never come to pass. Sancha had waited and waited, yet Wilhelm had never reached the tower's summit — because the Demon of Jealousy had never permitted their match.
And now that chance had arrived out of nowhere.
"You too must have longed and longed for a duel with me!"
Wilhelm. Had you not also been waiting for a fight against me? He had once taken Randolph for Wilhelm's predecessor, or for Wilhelm himself — but that had been wrong. The real Wilhelm was here. There was no more interference. Only a pure duel between the two of them remained.
Shiiing!
Sancha gripped his sword. At the same time, aura surged across his entire body. And he unleashed every unique technique he possessed.
Azure Dragon Kick. Serpent Dragon Sword. Divine Sword Unity. Final Strike. Heaven-Cleaving Dance. Storm Wind. Blood Slaughterer······.
A single unique technique forged from a hundred skills combined. The perfected attack, sublimated into Sancha's skill.
The Perfect!
Sssssssssss!
Aura condensed into one and formed a blue ring. The aura rings that beaded along Sancha's blade shifted into different colors, taking in every element. Water, wind, earth, and fire — the four elements — gathered and fused into one again.
Guoooooooooh!
With a thunderous roar, the form of a colossal golden dragon was complete.
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
The moment it touched, an explosion erupted. A fatal, unavoidable attack swallowed Wilhelm whole.
Then, as the thick smoke slowly cleared—
"······!!!"
"······!!!"
—only one man was still standing there.
It was not Sancha. The Sancha who had launched the attack was already tumbling across the ground with his head severed. And the man — Wilhelm — without so much as glancing at him, spoke toward the rest of them.