Chương 444: Interlude - Third Ascent (II)

Siddharth closed the last few metres and stopped before them, his gaze moving across the group with measured calm.

"I did not expect to find you all here in the Oasis," he said.

"Neither did we," Arjun replied. He held Siddharth's gaze steadily, none of the deference that might have been there back then, just the clean acknowledgement of one fighter to another.

"But it seems The Tower had other plans." Siddharth's eyes moved across them once more, settling briefly on each before returning to Arjun.

"From your bearing, I would assume your SP has been reduced." Arjun paused for a fraction of a second, mildly surprised the tell had been that obvious, then nodded.

"Yes. All of us reset to the ceiling of this stage—3. 095%."

"Interesting," Siddharth said. Ishaam stood quietly to the side, watching Siddharth with an expression he wasn't entirely managing to keep neutral. He had spoken with Siddharth a few times back on Earth and had known he was another of Alonso's chosen, but standing here in the Oasis with him again felt… strange in a way he couldn't quite shake. He was a different person now, he had grown, matured, saw life very differently compared to a year ago.

And while there were things that, in hindsight, could be criticised about how it all unfolded back then, he felt the same could be said of all of them, thrown into something so harsh and alien without direction. So while that near-fanatical fixation of his younger self was long gone, and he now stood as a warrior in his own right, he still valued Siddharth deeply, and had always felt it was a shame how things had ended. The man had the potential to become so much more.

And apparently, and despite everything, Alonso himself had felt the same… which said a lot. Amidst those thoughts, Siddharth turned toward him, as if catching the weight of his gaze, and offered a small smile. Ishaam returned it with a firm nod. Off to the side, Camila hung slightly back, arms loosely crossed, her boomerangs resting at her sides. Mei said nothing, her eyes sliding briefly toward Siddharth every few seconds before finding somewhere else to land.

"So what's the plan?" Camila said eventually, the silence having clearly run its course for her.

"We need at least seven to activate the timer for the next stage," Mei said, her eyes still on the ground, though her focus was clearly elsewhere.

"Given the circumstances, waiting for Viktor and Alonso's friend, Jack, makes the most sense."

"So we're forming a team of Alonso's chosen, basically?" Camila grinned.

"That's kind of rad!"

"Well, more than that," Mei continued, looking up now, the particular energy she got when she had information worth sharing starting to surface.

"ASCENT's current recommended strategy has moved away from the old groups of 49. The new meta is to cap each instance at the minimum of seven. That way every member benefits fully from boss orbs, equipment drops, and mutation development. When teams eventually merge for the Xok'al floor, each individual is significantly stronger than they would have been spread thin across a larger group." Arjun's brow furrowed slightly.

He had never been particularly diligent about reading ASCENT's general guides, relying instead on Viktor's personal briefings for anything essential.

"All seven get mutations… is that confirmed?"

"The data is consistent," Mei said.

"Across every known parallel instance of the Pangea stage, without exception, seven members acquire mutations before the stage ends. The pattern holds every time, so we have strong reason to expect it continues."

"So by sending teams of seven, you guarantee everyone earns the best the stage can offer," Arjun said, more to himself than the group.

"Basically, no freeloaders," Camila said with a grin.

"Everyone has to pull their weight." She tilted her head, clearly enjoying the thought.

"And imagine it, thousands of Climbers all coming out with different Awakenings. That's gonna be wild!" Mei turned to look at her with a calm, knowing smile.

"I think you are underestimating the number by a couple of orders of magnitude, Camila." Camila blinked.

"Huh?"

"The First Ascent brought 1 million Climbers into The Tower," Mei said, slipping into the measured cadence she used when laying out data.

"The Second brought 7 million. Following that progression, we have reasonable grounds to predict approximately 49 million will be chosen for this Third Ascent. Assuming just a 10% pass rate through the white rooms, we are looking at close to 5 million Climbers arriving on the Island." Ishaam's eyes widened.

"Five… five million? Mei, are you serious?"

"The numbers are what they are," she said simply.

"Okay but…" Camila looked out across the Oasis, at the lake and the palms and the open stretch of grass.

"From what I heard from Gen-2, this place held maybe a few thousand people comfortably last time. Five million is just…" she laughed quietly, shaking her head.

"Are we building skyscrapers now or what?"

"The Oasis is 77 kilometres in radius," Mei pointed out.

"The lakeside view will be competitive, yes, but there is plenty of space further out if people are willing to move a bit." She paused, her expression shifting into something more serious.

"However, the more pressing issue is the flow toward the next stage. As we all know, every day a rocky path opens across the lake toward the hole at the centre. In the window it remains open, roughly fifty to seventy average Climbers at this point can cross. Taking a generous estimate of a hundred per day, it would still take ten thousand days to move just one million people through." Arjun went quiet.

"Thirty years…" he said, the weight of it landing differently for him than it would for anyone else in the group.

"Which is why we believe there has to be a cap on how many Climbers can exist within a single instance of The Island at any given time," Mei continued, "just like every other stage, only set much higher. The Tower would not design a bottleneck that severe without some kind of release valve." This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. She glanced around briefly.

"That said, it remains a hypothesis. For Gen-2 there was only one instance of The Island, so we have no data to work from."

"Wise to prepare for the worst case regardless," Siddharth said, his voice drawing attention without needing to raise it.

"Things seldom go as planned, and I doubt The Tower has any particular interest in making life comfortable for the unproven." Arjun's brow shifted slightly.

"Are you suggesting we move now, then? Find two people from whatever Gen-2 stragglers are around and push forward before it gets crowded?"

"No," Siddharth said, with the same calm.

"I agree with Mei's suggestion. Viktor and Alonso's friend should not be left behind." A brief pause.

"I am simply saying we should operate based on what can go wrong, rather than what we hope will go right." Camila glanced at him sideways.

"That's… actually pretty reasonable." Everyone looked at her.

"What?" She shrugged.

"I'm just saying." Arjun turned back to Siddharth.

"So how do we prepare?" Siddharth considered it for a moment.

"The flow to the next stage is not the only bottleneck worth thinking about. The creatures around us are another. The sharks in the lake could sustain maybe 10-20 thousand Climbers at a stretch, far less a million. That pushes everything toward the scorpions and birds in the desert, or the spiders in the tunnel once those run dry." He glanced at the lake.

"The orbs compound the problem. Each creature needs to be killed 49 times for someone to max from it, and with millions of people competing for the same spawns, the early arrivals will strip everything clean." He looked at the group.

"My proposal is simple. We stockpile orbs for Jack and Viktor, and build a raft to cross the lake, clearing or dodging sharks on the way. When they arrive, even if the Oasis is packed, we hand them the orbs and use the raft to cross to the centre outside the timed window for the rocky path, avoiding the competition." He glanced at Mei.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but after a timer starts in a waiting room, only those who enter within seven minutes are selected in the same batch."

"Yes, that's what the data suggests," Mei confirmed.

"Then that handles most of it," Siddharth said.

"As for what everyone else does with themselves…" a brief pause, "that's their path to walk." Arjun studied him for a moment. The Siddharth of back then would have already been thinking three moves ahead about the wider population, about order, control, structure. The man standing here now had clearly drawn his circle much smaller. Whether that was growth or simply a different kind of ambition channeled inward, Arjun wasn't entirely sure.

"The raft idea has circulated through ASCENT for a while actually," Mei said, a quiet confidence in her voice.

"Simulations show it's viable, though it carries some risk." She smiled slightly.

"But we have the right team. And I know exactly how to design it."

"Good," Siddharth said, his eyes moving to the lake.

"Shall we start the hunt then?"

The last white abomination had barely finished dissolving when Jack felt the other Climber move. He was already turning. His EM waves caught the displacement before it fully committed, the faint signature of a blade shifting weight onto the forward foot. The strike came fast, a clean diagonal aimed at his shoulder, invisible in the dark, silent, and telegraphed entirely through the air pressure preceding it.

Jack dropped his weight and let it pass over him, the edge cutting through the space where his neck had been, and came up inside the reach. His right fist drove hard into the ribcage. The crack was immediate. He felt the bone give under the knuckle protrusions, the resistance folding inward as the figure buckled around the impact and went down without a sound. Jack stood over what remained as the lights came back on, shaking the blood from his knuckles. He had run this floor in simulation thousands of times.

The real thing was not much different. The only genuine variable was the opponent, since you could face anyone at all, and some were very skilled. But Jack knew well enough where he sat relative to the average person on Earth, and the odds of losing here had never kept him up at night. He crouched calmly and touched the red orb. It dissolved into his skin. Stage Progress wouldn't show for this one, but he knew. SP 1%.

He clenched his fist slowly, waves extending outward, feeling the difference settle through him like a current finding its ground. So this is what it feels like, huh. He held it for a moment, then stood and walked toward the next floor. The last one of the white rooms.

Viktor moved through the desert at a steady pace, boots pressing into the sand with clean, even strides. Scorpions lunged from the sides, birds dropped from above. He shifted fractionally each time, minimal movement, letting each attack miss by the margin it needed to and nothing more. The scenery was changing ahead. He was close. Siddharth should be in the Oasis. As he approached the divider he noticed two Climbers nearby who had spotted him and turned. One sent a pulse." Hey old man, heads up.

Several attack at once right at the divider. Want a hand?" Viktor raised an eyebrow, amused. Friendly sort." I appreciate the warning, young man," he sent back." But I should be able to manage it."" Well, suit yourself." Viktor pushed forward, hitting the divider point at pace. Seven birds dropped on him simultaneously from different angles, wings cutting the air in tight converging arcs. His frame blurred.

He threaded through all seven without drawing the Zweihänder from his back, each movement compact and precisely timed, his body finding the gaps between the attacks as if he had already mapped them before they formed. The birds dissolved behind him.

One of the Climbers stood very still, blinking at the space where the old man had just been. Viktor gave him a short nod as he passed and kept walking, completely unbothered. He looked around, taking in the Oasis for the first time with the mild curiosity of someone who had studied a place extensively without ever setting foot in it. A few faces here and there, most of them likely Gen-2 reselects, given he doubted anyone had made it from the shoreline faster than him.

The Oasis was going to get very congested once the white rooms started emptying out. Might as well find Siddharth, claim a decent spot, and scout a reasonable four while they waited for Jack. Simple enough plan. Yet, like most things in life, man proposes, but God disposes—" Viktor!" A flicker of surprise crossed his face before the smile arrived. He turned, and sent her a pulse back." Can't believe they dumped you down here with the rest of us poor souls…

"he sent warmly, eyes crinkling at the corners." How's it being… Mei?"