Ignatius and Ozyrus were silent as they walked through the wreckage of the City of Stomrus. The patches of shimmering black-gold glass which lay here and there on the shattered city streets were reminders of the reason the place was empty—many of the inhabitants had fled, but many more had been transformed by bolts of heavenly lightning from the Eternal Tower which loomed in the sky, ringed with light.
The lore of Path of the Immortal was not, for the most part, available to players at this time. Most players would likely assume that Brightlord Temporix, the crystalline, skeletal dragon who was nowhere in sight at the moment, was simply an evil monster who craved the power of the gods, or something similar. After all, they would have already learned in the story that he'd killed the other Brightlords a long time ago and was trying to take the power of the Eternal Tower for himself. That sounded like a simple lust for power.
But Ignatius knew more about the story from his nine years in the game. Brightlord Temporix didn't crave power for his own sake at all. In fact, he considered his art of turning humans into "Brightborn" undead to be a blessing.
The Immortals had been sent by the gods, long ago, to rule over mortals and subject them to the will of the gods. There had been many minor Immortals across the history of the game world, but the only ones which historians considered truly worthy of that title were the Brightlords themselves, whose very blood had shined with a radiant light.
The Brightlords, however, had no interest in ruling over mortals. The gods had made a mistake in their selections of the creatures to imbue with celestial energy and had created a band of rebels who revolted against them.
Though the players wouldn't realize it for quite a long time, Brightlord Temporix's devouring of the other Brightlords had been all according to the plans of the Brightlords themselves... and so the gods now demanded a world where no Immortals would rise ever again, so as not to bring Brightlord Temporix closer to the plans which had been prepared long, long ago.
But none of that mattered in the current scenario. Floor 5 of the Eternal Tower was intended to be the first proper combat encounter between the Immortal players and Brightlord Temporix.
If they'd followed the story missions to this point, the players would have seen the trail of destruction Temporix left behind him. They would have seen him suddenly gain the power to transform an entire village into Brightborn undead, and would have been told that this was because of his time and space magic which allowed him to borrow power from his future self, who had achieved a great victory.
Therefore, players had to travel to the forbidden Eternal Tower and enter it. This was where Brightlord Temporix Had gained his powers in the first place, long ago. They couldn't prevent that, but players 'could' prevent him from the moment when he destroyed the Immortal Shrine in the future and gained so much power that he could no longer be stopped.
In this life, of course, Ignatius had skipped all those story missions. They weren't necessary for him to gain access to the Eternal Tower, and they didn't contain anything as useful as Sarexia's Gauntlets. He wondered about how much Ozyrus knew, though.
Ignatius knew Ozyrus was a member of the Revenant Cult, a group of "white hat hackers" who had learned much about the workings of Path of the Immortal's AI before it launched. Their whole cult was obsessed with living eternally inside the game, and they'd known about this possibility before the game's launch due to realizing that it was based on the work of Dr. Wu Zuhai, the man whose biotech had enabled the horrors of the recent civil war in America.
But Ignatius didn't know how much the Revenant Cult knew about the lore and other workings of Path of the Immortal itself. Eventually, Ignatius realized that he might reveal too many of his secrets if he didn't clear up exactly how much Ozyrus knew.
So, he said in a low voice, so as not to alert any nearby enemies, "I notice that you didn't ask how I got Sarexia's Gauntlets. You're not intrigued at how I learned such a powerful exploit?"
Ozyrus smirked and replied in an equally quiet voice, "Of course I'm intrigued. But Dr. Wu Zuhai clearly gave you special knowledge about the game. After all, he gave you that script to free your mind from the corporeal flesh. Our own research suggested that the doctor wasn't involved with Path of the Immortal at all, but you seem to be solid proof in the other direction. Yes, I wonder how much you know... but there would be no point in asking now. I'm confident that you will join us as a brother, and then you can share your knowledge as you best see fit."
Ignatius nodded and fell back into silence.
Ozyrus's response was a good sign, in several ways. It suggested that the Revenant Cult didn't have much of this game knowledge themselves, and that Ozyrus was truly confident that Ignatius would join him—and therefore wouldn't be likely to betray him in this dungeon, even though Ignatius was very suspicious that, even this early, the cult was trying to reach Floor 100 of the Eternal Tower and gain their wish.
But when he finally did infiltrate their ranks, what exactly was Ignatius going to tell them?
Oh well. He'd deal with that eventuality when it came.
Finally, the two players reached their destination: the former location of the Immortal Shrine.
The building had once been majestic, a two-story temple that had been magically forged out of a single block of the same stone which served as the foundation for the city. Billions of impossibly colored glass tiles had shimmered across its surface, no two of them the same shade. To a person with Immortal blood, the rainbow had seemed even richer, like a sliver of heaven brought down to Earth.
The rainbow had been broken, the sliver of heaven ground down to rubble.
Where the Immortal Shrine had once stood was now a huge dome of white energy, crackling with rainbow lightning, covering the indestructible floor of the shrine. The walls were far less indestructible, and they lay in scattered pieces all around the inside and outside of the dome.
The two players approached the dome, and soon, a message appeared to greet them.
GAME: The Eternal Priestess could not keep this sacred place from falling. Yet, you feel a strange resonance nearby… Vanquish the magic which binds the circle and let justice be done, Immortal.
And directly above the dome of light, a thousand feet in the sky, hung the Eternal Tower.
"Interesting message," Ozyrus said. "You don't happen to know what it means, do you?"
"Yes," said Ignatius. "We need to get inside the circle. There's a magical device—a floating orb—that's spawned somewhere around the city now that we've reached this point. We need to interact with it to banish this dome of energy so we can step into the circle inside. That'll let us teleport into the pocket dimension that the boss is in the middle of creating."
"I see," said Ozyrus. "I assume there's more to it than simply finding the orb?"
"If you close your eyes, you can feel it pulsing," said Ignatius. "That's how we'll track it down. But it can move away from you if it sees you. It'll try to lure you into groups of monsters, then run away once you're busy with them."
Ozyrus tapped his staff on the ground thoughtfully. "An annoying mechanic designed to drain our Hunger Clocks. Oh well. Let's get to it." He closed his eyes, then frowned. "Wait. I feel... 'four' resonances. Not just one."
And Ignatius's blood ran cold as he realized he'd just made perhaps his first major mistake in this new life.