After reaching a tentative agreement, we prepared to head out. This was a welcome arrangement for me, as I would be able to recover some of my mana while we walked, and traveling with a group was safer than stumbling through the forest alone.
Rhea took the lead, walking through the thick forests with precision that spoke of years of experience in the wild. Finn and Kael flanked us, their eyes scanning the thick swathes of grass for hidden threats while Doran took the rear. I found myself in the middle, not quite protected, but not imprisoned either.
We walked for a while before I paused. The sun was at our backs.
I frowned. The Sanctuary was west. Every map I'd ever studied, every guide I'd ever read, and every hour I spent grinding and dying on the route to the sanctuary pointed west. This was the lore in Tower of Babel!
"Where are we going?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral.
Rhea glanced back at me, a flicker of confusion crossing her face.
"The Sanctuary."
I waited for more explanation, but it didn't come. Instead, she just kept walking.
"We're going east." I said.
"Yes."
I stared at her pointedly.
"The Sanctuary is east?" I asked, and I heard the edge in my own voice.
Now she stopped, and so did the others. Four pairs of eyes instantly turned to me, and the expression on their faces was one of incredulity.
"Of course it's east," Doran said, his voice dripping with contempt. "It has always been east. The gates open to the rising sun. Even a child would know that."
I could feel a cold pit of dread pooling in my stomach. Something so fundamental that I could bet my life on was wrong. The game's knowledge wasn't just incomplete, it was actively misleading me!
If the map was wrong, what else was different? Monster spawns? Weaknesses? The class system?
"Why did you think it was west?" Rhea asked warily, the atmosphere slowly uncoiling the spring of tension that was suppressed.
I forced myself to breathe. Panic wouldn't help me here. I needed to adapt, as that was what I'd always done, and how I became Zero. Learn the patterns, adjust and survive.
"Does it matter?" I said, forcing my voice to remain cool.
Rhea studied me for a moment longer, something unreadable in her eyes, then nodded and turned back to the trail. The others followed, but Doran lingered for a beat, his gaze heavy on my back before he fell into position behind me.
I walked in silence, my mind churning and recalculating things.
The Sanctuary was east, and this was extremely troubling to me.
My in-game knowledge and my status as someone who'd spent hours on my gaming PC playing this game was supposed to be my advantage. It was supposed to be the edge I had over other challengers who walked into the Tower blind, and I just found out that it was wrong.
I'd built the entire framework of my survival with information gotten from my in-game knowledge, and it was wrong.
The realization of this hit me like a physical blow, and it was a forceful eye-opener.
What would have happened if I didn't meet Rhea and her companions and continued heading west alone?
I could have died.
I shook my head slowly and took a slow deep breath, then gathered my thoughts.
I needed to be more careful. There were no restarts in this world. Once you died, it was game over.
*
We traveled through the afternoon, the thick forest giving way to rolling hills, dotted with towering strange trees I didn't recognize. The terrain was unfamiliar, and I could see fewer and fewer landmarks I could recognize. I found myself relying on Rhea's lead more than I wanted to admit, and soon enough, it was night.
Then the monsters came.
The first set of monsters to appear were the Redmane wolves. They were a pack of servant rank wolf-like creatures, lean and grey, and were usually faster than their size suggested. Their eyes gleamed from the towering trees in the now dark forest.
I counted eight of them and instantly tensed, already prepared to activate my skill and summon Horus, but before I could react, they moved.
The pack sprang at us in an orderly rush. Two went straight for Doran, three targeted the flanks, and the rest attacked the center with insane agility.
"Break!" Rhea shouted, and Doran braced himself, his shield up just in time as one slammed into it hard enough to drive him back several steps. The other stealthily slipped past his side, its gaping jaws snapping for his legs, but Kael intercepted it mid-lunge, his axe finding the beast's neck.
Finn's spear flashed, taking one through the throat, but he didn't pull it out fast enough and another wolf crashed into him from the side, sending him stumbling several steps back and crashing into a tree.
"Finn!" Rhea moved instantly. Her blades spun at quick speeds, forcing the beast off him, but that split-second gap was enough for another to close in, its fangs bared.
It was about to deliver a fatal blow when the wolf yelped in pain, a hunting knife stuck in its eye. Doran had recovered and hurled his knife in the nick of time.
The small window was enough for the three of them to recover and get into formation, and a tense standoff ensued.
The alpha of the pack, a head larger than the rest of the pack snarled angrily at Rhea, then with a loud howl, the rest of the pack scattered into the thick trees, and the fight was over before I knew it.
It was only then the standoff melted. Doran exhaled heavily and lowered his shield. His arm was shaking, not from injury, but from the force of the alpha's charge. Kael wiped the blood from his axe, while Finn was already wiping his spear clean, his breathing rough from the collision earlier, but his eyes still tracking the thick forest.
"It's barely night, and we've already faced a pack of Redmane wolves. That's not good. We all know their retreat was temporary. We need to make camp as soon as possible." Rhea said.
We walked a little bit further before finding a decent spot to camp. It was a deep hollow underneath a rocky cliff. It was well hidden by towering trees, making it difficult to be spotted by troubling monsters.
It was a space large enough to fit all of us if we didn't mind close quarters, so we settled in. I took a spot near the entrance, my back to the stone as the adrenaline from the day's event faded.
Finn was on night duty, and I was already about to doze off when I heard a bitter voice.
"I don't like it." Doran muttered, and it was clear that he didn't care if I heard him or not.
Rhea sighed.
"We've been over this."
"No we haven't. You've just been pretending like this isn't a problem." Doran snapped. "Didn't you see his face when he didn't know where the Sanctuary was? Who doesn't know that? What kind of person crawls out of the woods with no idea where they're going?"
"He's not a threat, Doran." Rhea countered exasperatedly, but that only made Doran flare up even more.
"Not a threat? Do you not see his eyes, Rhea?!" Doran snarled.
"I'm not blind, Doran." Rhea spat back.
"Then why are we doing this? Why are we letting him walk beside us like—" Doran's voice cracked, and when he spoke again, it was raw. "You weren't there. You didn't see what they can do."
Kael shifted, his voice quiet. "Doran, maybe this isn't—"
"10 million." Doran said emotionlessly. "That was the number of people that lost their lives to a monster with the same eyes as his."
"An entire city wiped off the map. I only survived because—" Doran paused, then scoffed coldly.
"It's late." Rhea said after a tense silence, her voice low.
I didn't respond. I simply maintained my aloof bearing, because what could I say?
That I wasn't one of them?
I didn't know that. I didn't know what this body was capable of, what my eyes looked like, or what power slept in the blood I'd inherited. I didn't know if I was dangerous, or if I was just wearing a face that terrified people for reasons I didn't know.
Rhea glanced at me, but I ignored her. There was nothing I could say.
It wasn't long before I fell asleep.
*
The next two days passed uneventfully.
We moved through hills, forests, and open plains where the grass swayed like water in the wind. The monsters that crossed our path were quite troublesome, but Rhea and her group were experienced, so we were able to manage.
I kept to myself, staying at the center of their formation, watching and learning as Rhea navigated by landmarks I didn't recognize; and then, on the morning of the third day, we crossed a canyon and the sight before us was a glorious city.
Words couldn't begin to describe the grandeur of the city. Massive walls of spotless white stones encircled it, rising high enough to rival mountains, and several ginormous magic circles were inscribed on the walls.
The inside of the city was just as glorious, with stone-paved roads branching in various directions and towering buildings scraping the skies. Banners of different colours and symbols hung from the balconies and rooftops, swaying sharply in the wind, each one representing a guild, a faction, a kingdom or an empire I knew nothing about.
The gates were towering doors of pitch-black metal that stood open, and they were large enough to fit a hundred men side by side. Hordes of challengers—armored warriors, robed figures and tightly knit groups—flowed in and out, all moving with purpose.
This was The Sanctuary.
It was absolutely glorious, even more than the game depicted; and above it all, I saw it.
The Tower.
It stood proudly in the distance, rising from the center of the Sanctuary. Its base alone dwarfed the entirety of the city, disappearing into thick clouds that made it impossible to judge its true scale.
The edifice stretched upward endlessly, piercing through the clouds like a divine pillar connecting the earth to the heavens.
No—beyond the heavens.
Its surface wasn't made of any material I recognized. It shimmered faintly, like glass and stone fused together, and strange symbols drifted across it, appearing and disappearing as if reality itself couldn't fully grasp it.
It was extremely imposing, and just looking at it made my chest tighten.
That was it.
That was the Tower of Babel.
It was the place where people from all corners of the world came to gamble everything—their power, achievements, even their existence—for a wish.