Chương 35: "What Remains (1)"

The boss trial. Floor 5 was described as the first real barrier of the tower. Climbers, the academy instructor, and adventurers all agreed on this point: the Tutorial Boss was the moment where the Tower stopped helping with the fundamentals and started its true test. Celestia found herself in a dark room, quite similar to the cell in Floor 1, but there were varying differences; it was cramped, the ceiling low enough that she could reach up and touch damp stone with her good hand.

The ground beneath her was slick with dirty water that pooled in the uneven grooves. The air smelled foul with the stench of something rotting. And in front of her, the black door was gone. In its place was a wooden one, old and warped, and it was already open. A system window materialized. [Floor 5] Time Ratio: 1: 1 Among the forgotten, there are those who were made in the image of something once loved. You who have climbed this far shall now be observed on what you are willing to choose.

Seek the ones who have been left behind. Find the dolls. We look forward to your decision and wish for your success.

'Find the dolls.' She read it multiple times, because surely she was missing something. Floors 1 through 4 had each tried to kill her in different, creative ways. Starvation, arrows, collapsing floors, and carnivorous plants. Through it all, she persevered and now had a ruined hand and a knee that barely functioned. And the Tower's boss trial, the supposed crucible of merit, wanted her to find dolls.

'Is this a joke?' She dismissed the system and surveyed the room again. The darkness made it difficult, but her eyes had adjusted enough. The walls were bare stone, wet in patches. In the far corner, partially submerged in the shallow water that covered the ground, she spotted something. Two small shapes propped against the wall where it met the floor. She limped over, using her spear as a crutch, and crouched down carefully.

Her right knee protested even the slow bend, and she had to shift most of her weight onto the spear to keep from toppling over. They were dolls. About the size of a small teddy bear, each one stitched from cloth that might have once been white or cream-colored. Now they were filthy, soaked through with the dirty water, their fabric frayed and darkened with age. One had buttons for eyes, though the left button hung by a single thread.

The other was missing an arm entirely, the seam where it had been attached pulled open and trailing loose stuffing. They were children's toys. Or they had been, at some point. Celestia picked them both up with her left hand. They were light and soft despite the grime. She tucked them against her side, securing them between her arm and her torso, and adjusted her grip on the spear.

'Two dolls. The window said "dolls," plural. Are there more?' She looked around the rest of the small room but there was nothing. Celestia turned toward the open wooden door and limped through it. She'd braced herself for another endless stretch, Floor 2's arrow corridor made her cautious, but the hallway she entered was surprisingly ordinary. It was longer than a normal corridor, perhaps twice the length of the one in the Reingarde estate, but she could see at least see where it ended.

A simple stone corridor with a low ceiling and the quiet sound of water dripping in the roof where she had just left. She moved forward, each step with her left leg carried her weight, and the right dragged behind, the knee bending only enough to keep her foot from catching on the uneven stone. The spear's butt tapped against the floor in rhythm with her steps. Halfway down the corridor, she spotted it—a third doll lying on its side against the base of the wall.

This one was smaller than the first two, no bigger than her hand. Its cloth was the same faded, dirty material, and one of its button eyes was missing entirely, leaving a small hole throught it as if it had been pierced by something. She bent down, picked it up, and added it to the others.

'What kind of boss trial is this?' Celestia's mind had already started working before she reached the staircase. The system window's phrasing circled back through her thoughts, made in the image of something once loved, the ones who have been left behind, what you are willing to choose. She turned those words over against what she was seeing: the small, dark cell. The dirty water. The wooden door instead of a black one. Dolls stitched with care and left to rot in the damp.

Her previous life had given her a library's worth of myths, fairy tales, horror games, and webnovels to draw from. Patterns she recognized from stories that blended the mundane with something far worse. A hypothesis began to take shape, connecting the dolls, the setting, and the system window's oddly gentle language. She stopped it there.

'No.' If she was right, this floor was something else entirely. And she wasn't prepared to sit with that conclusion yet, not when it was still just a guess. Stolen novel; please report. She reached the end of the corridor. A staircase led upward, narrow and steep, the stone steps worn smooth in the center from use that must have been frequent at some point. Where the black door should have been, there was nothing, just the base of the stairs and the wall beside it.

And sitting on the bottom step, leaning against the wall as if someone had placed it there deliberately, was a fourth doll. This one was in slightly better condition than the others. Both button eyes were intact, and its cloth, while dirty, wasn't as frayed. It had been stitched to look like it was wearing a small dress, the thread forming a simple pattern across its torso. Celestia picked it up.

She looked down at the collection of four dolls pressed between her left arm and her side, and the problem was immediately obvious. Her right hand was useless, her left was occupied with the spear, and the crook of her arm could only hold so much before something slipped. She considered her options and then wedged two of the dolls into the front of her dress-armor, tucking them against her chest where the reinforced fabric held them snug. The other two she shifted into the inner pocket at her hip.

She adjusted her grip on the spear and looked up the staircase. The steps were narrow enough that she had to angle her body slightly to climb them. Each one required her to plant the spear on the step above, pull her weight forward with her left leg, and then drag her right up after it. When Celestia eventually reached the top of the stairs, a doorframe stood in front of her, but the door itself was gone. Only the hinges remained, rusted and bent, still bolted to the frame.

Beyond it, she could see a hallway extending in both directions, with several doorways branching off on each side. Before stepping through, she stopped.

'Floor 3's trial… If her hypothesis was right…' She shifted the spear in her grip and brought the butt down hard against the floor just past the door. Thump. The sound and feel felt hollow with a faint reverberation underneath. As far she knew, stone didn't sound like that. So she hit it again. Thump. For some reason, the floor was made of wood, or something close to it, laid and painted to look like stone. She pressed the butt of the spear down harder, applying her weight gradually.

The area she was pressing on then gave way with a dry creak. A trapdoor, roughly two feet across, swinging downward on a hidden hinge. Celestia leaned forward carefully and looked down. The space beneath was no more than two meters. And inside, lying on the actual stone foundation below, were three more dolls. They were all huddled together. In order to reach the dolls without entering the trapdoor, she used the spear, carefully using it to nudge the doll toward the blade to catch it.

It took longer than it should have. Celestia was worried about ripping the doll or piercing it outright, so she kept using the flat of the blade to push the doll sideways instead of forward, and she had to readjust her angle multiple times before she managed to get the doll to hang on to the spear's flat side. The second was easier now that she learned from the first. The third, though, required her to lean further than her balance wanted to allow.

Her right knee buckled slightly, and she caught herself on the doorframe with her elbow, the impact sending a dull ache through her arm that Pain Resistance quickly muted. She finally got them all out. Seven dolls. One in her left hand, three stuffed into the hip pocket of her dress-armor, and three wedged against her chest. She must have looked absurd right now. Celestia stepped around the open trapdoor and into the hallway beyond. Doors lined both sides, some still on their hinges, others missing entirely.

She glanced into the first room on her left. It was small, barely large enough for a bed and a wardrobe, though both were long gone. Only the outlines remained, rectangular patches on the floor and screw holes in the walls where fixtures had been mounted. The next room was the same. And the one after that. She counted them as she passed. Ten rooms branching off this singular hallway, three on each side, all roughly the same size.

The hallway itself turned at sharp right angles before connecting back to another set of stairs.

'To a child, this really would seem like a maze.' She continued forward, through the turns, past more empty rooms, until the hallway opened into a wider space. The ceiling was higher here, and the surrounding walls were much farther away now. A staircase, much broader than the one she'd climbed, descended to what she could now see was a ground floor. Celestia looked down and saw what looked to be the place's lounge area.

Cracked tile flooring, a front entrance with double doors hanging off their hinges, and the remains of furniture. Cobwebs stretched between the handrails, a chandelier, or what was left of one, hung from the ceiling by a single chain, its candle holders empty. It was a mansion. Small by any standard she was familiar with, nothing like the Reingarde estate, and a far cry from the modern penthouse she'd owned in her previous life. But it was still a mansion.

Celestia descended the stairs carefully, one slow step at a time. Celestia's eyes lingered on the front door for only a moment before she dismissed it. If she was right about what this place was, the children wouldn't have gone for the front. The door would have been locked, barred, or watched. And even if it wasn't, it led to whatever lay beyond, a road or a path that their captors controlled. If the escape happened at night, they would have gone for the windows.

Somewhere at the back where small hands could unlatch a window without making noise. Which meant there wouldn't be anymore dolls near the front. Celestia turned away from the lounge and went deeper into the mansion. The layout became more recognizable as she moved. Despite its size, the mansion followed the same structural logic as any noble household. A receiving hall branching into a main corridor, with functional rooms on the ground floor and private quarters above.

She passed a sitting room stripped bare of everything except a stone hearth. The next room might have been a study; the walls had built-in shelves, all empty, and the floor had deep scratches where a heavy desk had been dragged out. Then she reached what looked to be the kitchen. The kitchen was built to serve a household with staff. A large stone hearth dominated the back wall, its grate rusted and collapsed inward. Iron hooks hung from a ceiling beam where pots would have been suspended over the fire.

The counters along the side walls were thick slabs of scarred wood, stained and grooved from years of use. A basin sat beneath a pipe that came through the wall, though whatever water source it connected to was long dry. Shelves above held nothing but dust and the faint outlines of where jars had once stood. In the center, a long wooden table with bench seating on either side. A servants' table. The wood was warped from moisture, and one of the benches had partially collapsed. But the table itself still stood.

Sitting on top of it, right in the middle, was a single doll. It was propped upright, its button eyes facing the doorway. Celestia's stomach lurched at the thought of this. She limped forward and picked it up. There were now eight dolls. She set her spear against the table's edge and began taking the others out. One by one, from her hip pocket, from against her chest, and placed them on the table.

She arranged them in a line along one side of the bench, sitting upright, shoulder to shoulder, each one facing the same direction. Some wouldn't stay upright on their own and she had to lean them against each other. The one missing an arm kept tipping sideways until she wedged it between two of the sturdier ones. As she was still positioning the dolls, she understood now what the trial was showing her. What she didn't understand was why. Why was the Tower making her experience what they felt?

Why make her walk through this? When she finished, the eight small dolls sat nearly in a row.