Chapter 203: A Scenario (II)
The others nodded in agreement, looking toward Handler Roy.
"That’s what I’m getting to," Roy nodded. "The Floor 2 scenario puts you in the shoes of someone of your race, but from an entirely different world and time."
"Wait..." Antoine Blanc raised a hand, looking confused. "So you’re saying there are humans living inside this tower? Or is it just some kind of made-up world? Like a game or something?"
"Oh, scenarios are not games," Handler Roy’s tone turned ominous. "In fact, you would do well to treat every single being you meet inside this tower as very, very real. That’s the rule of thumb if you want to survive here..."
He paused.
"However, as for whether they are truly real in the traditional sense... Well, no one really knows. There are probably billions of races living within the tower right now, many of which have yet to be discovered. No one knows who created them or what keeps them running. Because of that, many ascenders assume they are just artificial constructs summoned by the Tower... but I strongly advise against that line of thinking. If you take a scenario with levity, you will be caught blindsided and die a stupid death."
Silence reigned for a few beats, each of the human champions pondering Roy’s words and keeping it at the back of their minds.
"Well, this isn’t what I expected," Uhtred muttered, rubbing his chin.
Roy chuckled, his long rat tail swaying behind him. "And what did you expect, Uhtred?"
"A straightforward combat trial, honestly," Uhtred shrugged. "Pitting our squad against alien teams in a direct fight... solving a floor puzzle, finding rare resources, all while the multiversal audience tries to screw us over by amping up the difficulty."
Handler Roy grinned, his whiskers twitching with amusement.
"And who says all of that won’t happen?" he asked. "A scenario contains everything you mentioned... and then some."
"Roy," Hassan spoke up, keeping his voice carefully level. "Can you just tell us what this specific scenario actually requires without the dramatic buildup? Or is this like the First Floor where knowing the details gives us a penalty?"
"I mean... it’s you guys stopping me at every point," Roy shrugged playfully.
This time, though, no one spoke. They’d all understood now that humoring Roy at every turn was only going to make him waste more time.
Seeing no one saying anything, the rat man sighed dramatically, then began to explain in full.
He explained that they would still enter the Second Floor as a team. Everything Uhtred had mentioned would still occur.... but with a few caveats.
First was that contrary to Uhtred’s assumption, they weren’t directly competing against other aliens in this floor.
They would all be thrown into a scenario which could literally be anything: a spacefaring cultivator civilization, a prehistoric age cultivator civilization... it could be anything at all. But they were still going to be of the human race.
They would all land in different bodies, scattered across the world of this scenario. Every scenario world possessed a major ongoing crisis or central conflict. The only way to clear Floor 2 and move onward was to resolve that core conflict.
"I don’t get it," King Alexei grunted, frowning. "What’s the point of a test like this? We’re meant to what? Be a hero party and save this world from their great villain?"
"Caution, Alexei..." Roy warned. "Like I said. Take the scenario with levity, and you would be caught blindsided."
"But he is right, Roy," Uhtred spoke up, looking at the rat man. "You’re our Handler, so give it to us straight... What’s the goal of this trial?"
Roy said nothing, but his gaze became conflicted as if wondering whether to say what he wanted to or not.
"If it’s gonna give us a penalty, then don’t say it," Uhtred added quickly, noticing the look.
"No... There’s no penalty... but I’d rather not tell you for a different reason..."
"Okay, no problem. Let’s leave it at that then."
"—But I will offer one piece of advice, though..."
Roy paused and looked at every one of them individually.
"...Be mindful of secrets hidden in plain sight."
His words were surprisingly direct, yet at the same time vague. It seemed like something that would reveal itself only when they arrived in the scenario.
Uhtred noted the words carefully and kept them at the back of his mind.
"Now," Handler Roy clapped. "For the other details..."
He explained the rest of what they needed to know, particularly about the Multiversal audience watching their streams.
Nearly all of the ten champions’ streams were full, or at least almost full.
Uhtred was a no-brainer. After the Host’s excited hype on the previous floor, lots of the audience flocked to his stream, filling it to the brim in an instant.
Right now he had his streaming panel open permanently on the right side of his vision, and the string of chats pouring in was so rapid that his eyes could barely keep up.
The others were nearly the same. Hassan Al-Malik had been an interesting figure that several eyes had fallen on to. His fiery nature and how he had latched on to someone to climb his way to the top had been interesting enough to earn him about six thousand subscribers.
Zara, despite how low-key she had been during her ascent, had surprisingly gotten her entire stream full to the brim. Ten thousand subscribers!
Uhtred raised a brow in surprise when he heard her say it.
Handler Roy explained that it was most definitely due to her spatial attunement. Even across the multiverse, people with affinity for space were not as plentiful compared to the rest of the attunement types.
Aside from Zara, Diya, due to her brutal biological wing transformation, had also been popular, though her stream didn’t rack up as many subscribers as Uhtred and Zara. She only got about seven thousand subscribers.
It seemed small, but compared to the others, like King Alexei, Isolde Castiglione, Black Sun, Antoine Blanc, White Raven... whose streams had no more than three thousand each, it was a lot.
Perfection, predictably, had not revealed his. He simply remained silent, and Handler Roy was happy to let him remain so, as if he knew some inside knowledge about why the white-clad man chose to remain so mysterious.
Roy went on to explain that being on the good side of the audience was going to be very vital because they literally could make or break how difficult the scenario would be for every one of them.
Particularly, he told Uhtred to brace himself, as eyes were on him already. A lot of people would want to see whether he lived up to the hype that the Host had given him on the previous floor.
"Don’t worry. I’m also going to be in the scenario every now and then to check up on you guys," Roy said reassuringly. "I will take on different forms to blend in, but you’ll immediately know it’s me when you see me."
Roy gave them all a last pep talk as the last few seconds ticked down.
And then finally, a bright light flashed again, and in an instant all ten ascenders disappeared from the simple room.