Chương 72: Chapter 65 - Tower of Paradise

It took a day before they let me out of the medical station. The severity of getting zeroed out apparently scaled with how sudden it was. Slowly bleeding out on the floor was pretty fine. Getting obliterated, together with all my mana, in a split second by a newborn goddess, was not. The earthquake didn't help either. Or at least that was what it felt like from where I lay, delirious, while the whole building did its best impression of a ship in a storm. The vision spooked me a little too.

Once I lay down, I saw the tower, except it bore the symbol of the tower goddess, who was now a lot less of a concept and a lot more of a person wearing Sarah's body. I wasn't even sure what to call her. Sarah? Mefista? Something else? It showed the tower with a massive circular platform around it, and roads hundreds of yards wide snaking over the oceans to every continent, all of it wrapped in one subconscious message, to come climb the tower. Weird. But I was busy being delirious, so I chalked it up to the drugs.

The nurse finally released me after the evening checkup of the second day, still high on morphine and whatever else they'd pumped into me. The sun was starting to set outside the window. The building had a tilt to it, more noticeable once I left the medical rooms. Cracks ran through the walls, and the staircase that used to lead down to the ground now ended on bare stone. What the hell? I walked outside and couldn't believe my eyes.

A ring of stone the size of a city district circled the tower, cutting the entire island complex off from the sea below. The buildings had settled onto it, cracked and leaning like bad teeth, but standing. And from the ring's edge, bridges of that same stone stretched over the Pacific toward every horizon at once. I turned. The tower had changed. The whole exterior had gone to polished stone, and across its face stretched a colossal carved likeness of Mefista. Less holy icon, more caricature.

So the weird vision hadn't been the drugs after all. And I did feel a pull toward the tower. Faint, patient, like my subconscious had already packed its bags for the climb and was just waiting for my brain to catch up. Hundreds of dried-out fish husks now floated in the sea. The mana in the air also felt lacking. By a layman's estimate, the tower drained both life force and mana from the world when I slept, and used it to build the roads. Well, the new goddess sure didn't slack. But I could solve that tomorrow.

I headed for my spot with Cassandra. On the way, I passed the dome. Its windows glowed with nothing. Every pod inside sat dark, dead screens and all, a couple of techs orbiting them the way people orbit a coffin. Cassandra sure wasn't around here. I didn't know if she was in the tower or dead. She didn't look too good when Gilgamesh sealed her into the gold. But the goddess she made probably handled that for her.

I also spotted Gilgamesh, standing at the ring's edge, visibly diminished and doing a professional job of pretending otherwise. He was staring at the tower as it owed him money. If he'd carried a golden bubble with a vampire in it out of that place, he wasn't carrying it now. He didn't notice me, and I left it that way. As I approached the ladder to our spot, I brushed my pocket and noticed something that shouldn't have been there. I reached in and pulled out a little badge with a pin.

A text on it read: I beat Peace once. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. A snort escaped my lips. She must have slipped it into my pocket literally in the same second I was piercing her chest with a sword. With a sigh, I put it back in. I climbed the ladder to our spot. A man was already sitting on the low wall, watching the tower. Hutriel. One bottle of vodka in his hand, another lying dead by the wall.

I recognized him instantly, blurted, "Sorry," and started backing down.

"Don't worry," he said without looking at me.

"There's enough space here for two. Or ten." This wasn't going to be a fun conversation. But we had to have it, I realized. I owed him that much. So, I climbed the rest of the way up and sat on the wall next to him. Well outside of arm's reach. Just in case. He looked rough. Dark rings under his eyes, stubble a few days past charming, the smell of alcohol cutting through even the ocean wind. I said nothing for a while. We both watched the tower, as if it might move. Given the last two days, it honestly might have.

He took another swig. I said, "I'm sorry about Cassandra."

"So am I." He sighed.

"I always knew she had a darkness in her heart. A hunger for something I never understood. For... I don't even know what. She never spoke of it. Never acted on it. It just sat there in the back of her eyes. A thin, permanent disappointment in the world around her." I let him talk. He needed to, and it wasn't like I had anything better to offer.

"But not even in my wildest dreams did I think it would be... this." He motioned at the tower and let his arm fall slack.

"All she left me was a note. I'm sorry. And signed divorce papers. No explanation, so if I want the why, I guess I have to climb to the top of the tower to ask her." He laughed, short and ugly.

"Fourteen years of marriage, and that's all I get." With a long exhale, I braced for the part that was mine to say.

"She cheated on you." The wind kept blowing. The ocean kept oceaning.

"You can't know that," he said, turning slightly toward me. Quiet. His eyes were watering, and under the grief in his voice sat an edge that hadn't been there before.

"I do." I made myself hold his gaze.

"She hid from me that she was a vampire. She hid that she was married. I only found out when I ran into you at the pods, when she thought I'd be knocked out cold from being zeroed out." The temperature on the roof dropped. Mist bled off his shoulders in slow feathers, and the low sun caught it like the edge of a blade. For a heartbeat, the air went heavy enough to chew. His knuckles whitened around the bottle. I kept my hand loose at my side. The sleep had given me enough mana for a snap-summon of Siegfried.

Hutriel closed his eyes. The light under his skin guttered out. The danger drained from him all at once, and what remained sitting on the wall was just a big, tired man with a bottle.

"I appreciate you telling me." I nodded slightly. Nothing to be happy about. He drained the vodka and tossed the bottle to join its fallen comrade. Then he stood, and misty wings burst from his back.

"She's your problem now." Hutriel hopped off the wall, and with a boom, bolted into the sky, away from the tower. I stayed. The sunset really did look great from here. It always had. I pulled out my phone. The How Much I Owe to Cassandra app sat where it always had, patient as a tax office. No new messages. So that was where we stood. No notes for me. The relief and the sting showed up holding hands, and refused to tell me which was which. I summoned Yushi and Siegfried. She arrived in a burst of icy mist.

He arrived out of nowhere, as usual. Yushi covered her face with her fan and, visibly straining, didn't laugh. Siegfried looked around, at the ring, the roads, the ocean.

"So, this is Earth."

"Yep. I'll be recovering for a while, so you're free to search for your VIP. Who is it, by the way?" I motioned at the tower.

"I don't think it matters if you tell me anymore." He looked up at the tower.

"No, I don't think it does. Kallisto, our goddess, has gotten lost on your world. I need to find her and help her return to her duties toward her followers." He bowed slightly at me.

"I will see you later, Summoner." I nodded back. Yushi held out for four whole seconds.

"Ku ku ku... Damian-sama is so honorable that Yushi barely recognizes him." I spared her a glare. With a giggle, she vanished. Siegfried stepped off the roof and dropped like a verdict. He landed on the platform, walked a few steps, and drew his greatsword. He flipped it over, lowered the point to the stone, and the blade flowed. Within a moment, the sword transformed into a motorbike. Black, chromed, and entirely too pleased with itself. Ha, so he did have some tricks.

He mounted, the engine roared, his horns vanished, and he bolted down one of the goddess's brand-new roads, shrinking toward the horizon until the dark took him. After that, I finally climbed down. The kebab stand was gone. The ring had formed straight through the spot where it used to stand, leaving half a counter and the lingering ghost of garlic sauce. My building still stood, tilted a few degrees. Did I even have food in the fridge? Probably not, after Ashy had guarded the place for multiple nights.

I walked in, flipped the lights on, and went to wash two days of medical station off my face. Written on the bathroom mirror, in red lipstick, was: See you tonight. And wear something tight, finished with a winking vampire emoji.