Chapter 194: Last Minute Change
"Uhh..." Handler Roy’s eyes went slightly out of focus, as though he was looking at a private System screen. "Oh! Would you look at that? There’s just a minute left."
He waved his white paw dismissively, as if the remaining sixty seconds were an inconsequential afterthought.
"Wha—?!" Hassan Al-Malik nearly choked. And it wasn’t just him alone. King Alexei, Black Sun, Isolde, and even Uhtred had shocked looks on their faces.
The brief, competitive fire that had lit up inside them just seconds prior dulled under the absurdity of Handler Roy’s casual revelation.
"Hey! Hey! Hey! Roy!! What the fuck do you mean by one minute?!" Black Sun Mateo stepped forward, his non-chalant composure breaking as his expression turned livid. "There was a time limit and you were yapping about useless stuff for so long?!"
"I thought you wanted us to go far in this Tower!" Hassan yelled too, striding directly toward the cat man’s unbothered, hovering figure. "What the fuck do we need to know about the Tower?! Tell us quickly now!"
Handler Roy merely floated backward, waving a paw in a lazy circle. He asked a different question entirely, as if he hadn’t heard Hassan or Black Sun at all.
"Yeah, yeah. So everyone’s on board, right? Is there anyone who doesn’t want to participate? Time’s ticking..."
"Roy!!" Hassan’s voice boomed, his knuckles turning white as he balled his fists. "What are we entering into?! What’s the first floor going to be about?!"
"Hahaha! You don’t need to worry about that!" Roy purred brightly. "You guys can handle it! Telling you now will only ruin the surprise!"
"You’ve gotta be kidding me!" Hassan shouted, nearly pulling his hair out. "One minute you claim you have our best interests at heart, and the next you’re right back to your usual deranged state! If this is how you’re going to run things, aren’t we all just completely fucked?!"
"I don’t mind the challenge," King Alexei interjected with a shrug, a smile still on his face as he crossed his large arms. "Do not listen to him, Roy. This King can handle anything the Tower throws at us. You are right. It will be much more interesting this way."
"Hahaha! Alexei gets it!" Roy guffawed, playfully dodging a strike aimed at him by Hassan Al-Malik.
There was no ill intent behind the attempt. Hassan Al-Malik, despite his fiery personality and sharp tongue, was well aware of the terrifying aura the cat man had casually flexed moments ago.
He wasn’t stupid enough to actually assault such a silent powerhouse. Roy clearly recognized this, which was why he merely chuckled and dodged instead of taking offense.
As more of the ten champions began to crowd around Roy, pressing him for more details on the impending trial, a calm, measured voice cut through the noise:
"This old man would like to decline."
Every head in the room snapped toward the speaker immediately.
It was Quiet Daoist. The bald-headed monk stood near the edge of the hall, his hands tucked neatly inside the sleeves of his simple robes, a pleasant, serene smile on his face.
"Now?!" Hassan spun on his heel, glaring at the monk in disbelief. "You want to leave now?! There are literally just seconds left! Who the fuck is going to replace you?!"
Handler Roy didn’t wait for Quiet Daoist to offer a lengthy explanation. The moment the words of decline left the monk’s lips, Roy snapped his fingers. Spatial magic enveloped his body in an instant, and he vanished from the room, returned instantly back to his territory.
Without wasting a single moment, Roy snapped his fingers a second time. Another blinding pillar of light flashed in the center of the meeting hall, depositing a new figure directly into the space Quiet Daoist had just vacated.
"Isolde?" King Alexei blurted, caught completely off guard.
Isolde Castiglione staggered as she appeared. Before she could even take in her surroundings, an instinctive defense mechanism triggered: a freezing gust of frost element surged out of her body, threatening to flash-freeze the air around her.
All she knew was that one moment she had been within her territory, and the next, she was suddenly in a room filled with the aura of nine of the most powerful ascenders on the planet.
Thankfully, her mind caught up to reality before she could do anything dangerous. She reined in her essence, quickly dispelling the frost spell as she realized where she was.
"Alexei?" Isolde’s confused gaze swept across the room, taking in Uhtred, Zara, Diya, and the rest. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she recognized the gathering. "I see..."
Before she could ask a single question, Handler Roy blurred across the hall like a ghost, appearing directly in front of her face.
He reached out and tapped his finger against her forehead, and immediately, a flood of information rushed into her head, stunning her rigid in place for a couple of seconds. Then, her eyes cleared.
"Yes," Isolde said suddenly. "I will join."
"...So you could have done that the whole fucking time?" Hassan Al-Malik rubbed a palm across his face in exasperation. Handler Roy had just compressed everything he’d explained so far and dumped it straight into Isolde’s head in barely two or three seconds.
Why he had chosen to waste their time until now puzzled everyone. But as they looked at him, they realized there was a reason behind it.
"There are only twenty seconds left," Handler Roy announced, his tone sharpening as he checked his private System interface. "And as you just saw, that is still more than enough time for me to dump all the details of the First Floor straight into your minds... if you all insist. But as your Handler, I strongly advise against it."
He landed gracefully on the center of the table, spreading his furry white arms wide.
"The show has already begun, my dear champions! It began the very second I appeared in the sky above your planet. If you check your individual multiversal streams right now, you will notice a rather interesting change..."
His chat had been very active over the past few days, even though he had done nothing of note except prepare and wait for this Tower trial.
Looking at it now, they most definitely already knew that the Tower Trial was imminent, but they couldn’t explicitly talk about it. Perhaps that was why Uhtred was taken aback by what he saw once he opened his panel...