When I entered the Crimson Tower, it felt weird, and I knew something was wrong.
It's hard to explain what happened, as from my perspective (and I assumed everybody's perspectives), it felt like it was just like we all collectively blinked and found ourselves transported into a different place. The tower's dimensions from the outside, though massive, were nothing compared to the location where we were transported.
From the way that the scrapes of the stone walls of the massive maze against other stone structures echoed through the location, to the fact that we couldn't comprehend exactly how far the opposite wall was, it was obvious that the System had created a Dungeon that was not constrained by the limitations of the real world, like the Solo Dungeon that I went through.
Before I could take note of any more details, a big Message Window popped up and blocked most of my vision:
[WARNING!
DUE TO THE DETECTION OF A FOREIGN ELEMENT, THE SYSTEM HAS MODIFIED THE PARAMETERS OF THE CRIMSON TOWER QUEST LINE.]
I stared at the vague words in the Window and questioned what it had meant when I heard a familiar dissatisfied grunt from my favourite bald adventurer. I turned to my right and saw him as he swiped away a Window, with what I assumed was the same message.
"Nato, it seems like we were transported to the same place," I said as I walked up to him.
He looked at me and then looked around, "where'd the girl go?"
I was so enraptured with the location change that I completely forgot to check on Katsumi. I looked around and realised that she was gone. I remembered that she had run ahead of me with Saizo and hoped that the System had decided to transport her with him rather than all by herself.
"She was with Saizo," I said absent-mindedly.
"Well, let's hope she's still with him then."
I turned back to the man, "did you get the same message as I did? Something about the changed parameters?"
He nodded.
"What does that mean?"
He shrugged, "who knows? I've never seen that kinda warning message before."
The walls of the maze seemed to be on some sort of complex system of timers, as the wall nearest us started to disappear into the ground as a new configuration of walls take its place, the noise echoed through the room as I imagined the walls changing throughout the whole location of the first task.
As the new configuration slowed to completion, both Nato and I received another Message Window from Paradigm.
[WARNING!
DUE TO AN UNPRECEDENTED NUMBER OF PLAYERS ENTERING, THE SYSTEM HAS MODIFIED THE PARAMETERS OF THE CRIMSON TOWER QUEST LINE.]
"What the hell?" Nato murmured.
The configuration was finally completed and we looked up and saw Maru, the head pastor with a group of her warrior Churchgoers standing a few metres away from us. They also had read the new Message on their own Windows.
She looked up and recognised me specifically before screaming, "there they are! Capture them!"
"Run kid, there're too many of them for us to take on!" Nato yelled as he started to run the opposite way. I followed quickly after him.
We ran down one straight corridor, turned left, and then right. I couldn't keep track of how many turns we made in the end; my mind was racing through all the implications of what had happened. I was worried for Katsumi's safety, and when I opened the map Window, a message saying "UNKNOWN LOCATION" greeted my eyes.
When it felt like we had made sufficient enough distance between us and our pursuers, Nato and I slowed down to catch our breaths. My stamina bar was still a quarter filled, so I could run for a bit longer, but I appreciated the opportunity to recover some of it. Nato wheezed in oxygen though.
"Weird," he gasped in between breaths, "we should be getting notifications from the System by now if we're getting closer or further away from the exit."
"Is there a way to contact the others?" I asked him.
He shook his head as he continued to catch his breath.
"The map's not working," I mentioned.
"No, the map function doesn't work inside the Tower. That's why we rely on the notifications." Nato groaned as he stretched up after he was hunched over for so long.
"The most important question is," Nato paused to gulp one last gulp of air, "how did the head bitch and her goons get inside the tower with us?"
"Are they not supposed to be able to?" I asked.
He shook his head, "even if they entered in the same split second as we did, they would have been placed in a different "batch" than us because they were not part of our party."
"Wait, that means that Katsumi would have been placed with their batch since she wasn't officially part of our party!" I came to a terrible realisation.
"Oh?" Nato grunted nonchalantly, "I didn't realise she wasn't part of our party."
Before I could swear at him, he motioned for me to calm down, "well, since something changed in the System and they are with us, then that means the kid is too."
He had a point, but I was starting to get really annoyed by the way he was treating Katsumi. The warm sensation that came from my arm started to creep through my body again. The instinctive wrath made me want to hurt the man, but I knew that right now was not a good time to do so, especially with the complications that had come up.
The walls started to reconfigure themselves again, and we waited while we kept our guards up just in case another search party from the Church camp crossed our paths again, but it was clear. We found ourselves in a four-way intersection of stone paths as the echoes of stones scraping against one another quietened down.
"Which way?" Nato asked me out of nowhere
"Why are you asking me?" I said to him incredulously.
"It's your doing that we're doing this Quest, so you get to be responsible for getting us out," Nato grumbled. He jutted his chin at me and shuffled, "which way?"
I glared at him and then took a look down each of the four paths that had opened up to us. I said out loud without turning to the man, "it doesn't matter which way we go as long as the notifications aren't coming, is it?"
"Nah, not really," Nato's indifferent answer came from behind me.
Without knowing what made my decision, I picked one of the paths to my right and walked ahead without saying anything. I could hear the shuffle of Nato's footsteps behind me which gave me a weird sort of comfort.
***
I don't know how long we walked, but it wasn't a short stroll. Soon, the stress from the situation and the tension that hung in the air every time the maze shifted, took its toll on Nato and me. Even though I had refilled both my canteens before we exited the forest, I was already running quite low on water.
Worst of all, spending so much time around Nato without Saizo's interference has not helped with my attempts at settling down the whirlwind of warmth that stemmed from my left arm.
I was only half-listening to Nato's ramblings during another shift in the walls, but something he said made me snap to attention.
"If only we didn't come across that Religion-whore of a girl, then all this wouldn't have happened," Nato rambled on. He had run out of water and was especially starting to delirious from the dehydration.
The spark of wrath that had been hard to control up till that point in my left arm broke free and as I was about to lunge at the man, we both heard a chilling roar and a group of voices screaming in fear.
"That roar..." I mumbled.
Nato had snapped out of his rambling, "that must be the monster. I never thought there was actually a monster in these Quests."
"What? You said that being an adventurer is dangerous!" I snapped at him.
"Yeah, it is," the man replied, "but Mobito and I always finished this first task so quickly and easily that we never encountered the monster."
I watched him while he explained and saw that he was being genuine. Something had gone terribly wrong with the Quest, and that had changed everything that the experienced adventurer had expected of such a "boring" Quest.
Another roar echoed through the air. Because of all the walls that surrounded us and how expansive the location is, it was hard to really pinpoint where the roar came from, but it was slightly closer.
We could now hear more screams, male and female. Less terrified than the first group we heard, more like war screams and just flitting through the air were squeals of weaponry clashing with something hard and dense. It sounded like people — probably a Churchgoer group — were fighting the monster.
Then, it was silent. The walls had stopped shifting, there were no more voices yelling, and Nato and I found ourselves in the middle of a single pathway. In front of us, was a long walkway that looked like it turned at a corner to the left, while behind us, the path also turned to the right. We still didn't get any notifications from Paradigm when a third roar came ever clearer from behind us.
That was when our first Paradigm Window popped up ever since the first two warning Windows.
The message that this one showed made the colour of Nato's face pale, and I could imagine the same thing happened to me too.
[WARNING!
A NUMBER OF USERS HAVE FAILED THE FIRST TASK.
18/26 USERS REMAIN.
REMINDER, TASK ONE: FINDER'S KEEPERS.
A LOCKED EXIT HAS BEEN CREATED. FIND THE KEY, LOCATE THE EXIT AND LEAVE THE AREA TO PASS THE TASK.
NOTE: THE EXIT WILL BE UNLOCKED FOR A SHORT TIME AFTER THE KEY IS USED BEFORE DISAPPEARING. IF USERS DO NOT LEAVE AT THE ALLOTTED TIME, THEY FAIL THE FIRST TASK.
NOTE: THE BEAST ROAMING THE AREA WILL ACTIVELY HUNT USERS DOWN DURING THE FIRST TASK. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DEFEAT IT. YOU WILL FAIL.]