They said it wasn't there before when humans just began populating the world.
But ever since I opened up my eyes as a baby, it was already there and many people had already gone inside it.
Many came out with inhuman powers, becoming heroes, central figures in kingdoms and empires, and also not uncommon, villains.
With their newfound ability that they got from it, they could be anything their hearts chose to be.
Although there were some that didn't make it outside after venturing inside, most of them succeeded in getting the little power they wanted and swore to never go back inside it again, just like me.
However, there were always people who were never satisfied with the power they got. They always wanted more and more.
And The Tower could give them more.
As long as you can brace the danger, defeat the trials, and survive, The Tower would give you as much power as you want.
Some even had returned with the power of a higher being. Destroying a whole kingdom by themselves, changing the weather of a nation, and erasing mountains by only waving their hands.
All that power came from the circles.
The tower gave those circles to us and it became the source of our strength.
The higher we climb the tower, the more our circle evolves, and it will give us even more power and ability. The more we climb the tower, the more we would eventually be able to wield power similar to those higher beings.
The higher we climb, the closer we are to becoming gods.
—-------
"So, your powers, the glowing circles on your hands, you got them from entering the tower and clearing its trial?"
"Yes…" The bandit leader quickly answered.
Farrel had been intrigued by the bandit leader's story.
He still couldn't make sense of the concept of a whole different world, but more stories that he didn't know before, made the concept more and more realistic than before.
Like the existence of such a tower that gave circles to people who went inside it, he couldn't even think of such things existing in his own wildest imagination.
All he knew his entire life was to search for power on his own.
Be it roaming the world to borrow the strength of centuries-old ghosts or spending all of your life meditating and learning inner strength, those kinds of powers could only be gotten by searching for them yourself.
There's no such thing as a place giving you all of it just by simply playing its game.
But hearing someone tell him something like that really existed in this new world and he actually had seen it with his own eyes, had planted a seed of wonder in his heart.
"So, where can I enter this tower thingy?"
After trying to recall his memories, the bandit leader soon answered,
"The Tower has many entrances throughout the world, including one near The Forest of Death. You can enter from there, the biggest human settlement near The Forest of Death."
Hearing the bandit leader's answer, Farrel began thinking and weighing his options.
He was currently 'stranded' in a whole new world that he knew nothing about.
The civilization of the world seemed to be somewhat similar to Earth's medieval age where crimes and the rule of the jungle were still a huge part of its society.
And in this jungle, there weren't only ordinary tigers and crocodiles.
There's somehow something giving out powers to these beasts, giving wings to these tigers and crocodiles.
And Farrel found himself as weak as an ordinary twig in this jungle, free for anyone to walk over him and easily break him.
With a malnourished body of a teenager and no powerful ghosts aged in the hundreds of years empowering him, Farrel was just really prey that anyone could take.
Well, at least that would be the case if they fought Farrel head-on without him doing any preparations at all.
But the fact that he was now really powerless, the bottom feeder in the pyramid still didn't change.
He still didn't know what the heck happened to his soul and how it found itself inside a stranger's body in a whole new world.
But in order to figure that out, he had to survive first.
And he didn't know whether the bandit leader was exaggerating or not when he said people could really become higher beings or maybe gods if they climbed this 'Tower'.
The existence of Gods themselves was a mystery to a lot of people.
But Farrel knew that holy powers and demon energy did exist. He had seen them before.
His ghosts might give off similar energy to the demons, but the demon's energy was different.
Just like holy energy that felt divine, the demon energy also felt divine, though the divinities that the two emitted were different.
'Can these demons can also be considered gods?'
Just like the bandit leader said, people with unimaginable powers didn't only come out as heroes, there were also villains.
And if these villains had the ability and actually destroyed a whole kingdom by themselves, would they be considered gods or demons?
Farrel still didn't know the validity of these stories, but he knew that he couldn't just ignore them.
Moreover, he had seen these circles with his own eyes and how they gave the bandit leader a power that no ordinary person could have had back on Earth.
Farrel then decided.
'Alright then, I won't lose anything just by checking it out first.'
"Do you know the way there?" Farrel asked the bandit leader.
"Yes… I know how to get there." The bandit leader answered.
"Then in the morning, lead me there."
Nodding his head, the bandit leader then felt his body pulled somewhere by force.
He tried to fight it, but it was no use as his spirit soon disappeared into the steel sword once more.
Seeing the scene in front of him, Joy gulped a nonexistent saliva when he saw the bandit leader just disappear like that without being able to do anything to resist.
"So, do you want to sleep now, Farrel? I will help stand guard and watch out for any humans or beasts."
Instead of nodding his head and leaning his head back onto the tree trunk, Farrel stood up from his seat and stretched his body.
"Thanks for the offer, Joy, but I still have something else to do first."
Farrel then walked back towards the direction of the bandits' hideout, walking carefully through the dark since he didn't want to waste his energy to give his eyes night vision.
He didn't have any powerful ghosts under his command yet. He only had a kid with a special ability and a woman that loved to annoy people to death.
He had to conserve his now limited energy since there was something he wanted to do.
"Where are you going?"
Joy floated beside him, becoming his scout, watching out for any dangers that might lurk around him.
"Well, we'll be going on a journey and I literally have no strength to fight right now. I need to gather some."
Joy didn't quite understand yet what Farrel had meant, but when they finally arrived at the empty bandit hideout filled with all the bandit corpses, Joy finally got an inkling of what Farrel wanted to do.
"Don't tell me you want to-"
"Yes."
Without letting Joy finish his words, Farrel cut him off and raised his sword.
He then began chanting.
The chant this time was significantly longer than before, and it took more energy as it even took a portion of Farrel's contracted ghosts, Joy's, and the ghost woman's energy on top of Farrel's own to supply the spell.
But after the spell was finished and manifested itself, it was a worthy sight to behold.
"Come here and serve your new master!"
With Farrel's shout, a certain energy weaved from the spell spread out throughout the whole bandit hideout.
Going through the still corpses of the bandits that had killed each other.
A few seconds of silence went by as the energy touched all the corpses inside the hideout.
But in the next second, the silence broke apart as shouts, screams of fear and anger, cries of agony, and the silence of broken souls filled the area.
All the souls of the bandits came out of their bodies and they all started moving in one certain direction, none other being the steel sword that Farrel had raised up high.
One by one, all dozens of souls of the bandits went inside the steel sword.
Making the sword one of the strongest cursed items Farrel had ever created with such an amount of ghosts contained inside it.
"Good." Farrel nodded his head after all the souls in the vicinity had entered the steel sword.
"Now, along with your old leader, serve me and give me your strength."
The sword began trembling when it heard what Farrel had said.
"It's your choice," Farrel spoke again.
"Fight back and suffer more, suffer even worse than what you've felt when you're killing each other."
"Or be a good obedient subordinate and I might release all of you free."
Farrel then knocked the sword with his fingers a few times.
"You can ask your old boss whether I could really make my words come true or not."
After Farrel said those words and a few seconds went by, the sword stopped vibrating completely as it now rested silently in Farrel's hand.
And not only that, Farrel felt negative energy flowing out of the sword, slowly and gently nourishing his body. Filling him with power that he didn't have before.
"Now we're ready for tomorrow."
Farrel smiled wide and giggled, making Joy slowly but surely float away from him while muttering,
"Creepy old man…"