It was effortless. I was moving like I never had before. Like a ghost. Like a cheetah! Easily three miles an hour. Maybe even four. I would have to test this further. No stairs up, so I guess this is the top of the tower. Spiral stairs headed down. I kept right on jogging.
The next floor down was… beautiful. I don't have the right words. Like the ruin of a church or a temple. The ceiling was higher than it ought to have been, two, three stories tall, with brilliant light shining through the frames where windows should have been. The stained glass replaced with patterns of light and shadow over the floor and pools under that vast arched ceiling.
Most of the room was filled with a single long, rectangular pool. Dozens of feet long, maybe fifteen feet across, it ran most of the length of the room. The pool itself seemed to be white marble, the water shatteringly clear, and yet, you couldn't see the bottom of it. I walked along the edge of it, admiring the way the water bounced the daylight around the room. Making the gray stones seem to dance and flicker with life.
The second, smaller, pool was at the very back of the hall. It was tucked into its own little alcove, the back of it touching the far wall of the room. About six feet in diameter, also marble but with faint gold veins running through it. A high window was above it, looking out over the forest, and up at the blue sky. Faint wisps of white mist rose off it. It felt holy.
Not a word I use much. Not seriously. But this felt holy. This world, this place, was supposed to be some cursed gacha game, but it felt… real. The pool was the realist thing I had ever felt, in either world. Like I was in the presence of something much greater than myself. Ancient, mysterious, and wonderful.
I could imagine splashing around and having fun in the rectangular pool. I would feel wrong touching this one.
I touched the pouch and summoned a regular resonance crystal. It popped into my hand. Smooth, with sharp angles and painfully pointy edges. I tossed it at the round pool. A glowing wall of swirling starlight bounced it right back at me. Not permitted. My reflexes were now good enough to snag the flying crystal out of the air.
I might change my mind later, but Robe Guy was currently getting a pass in my book. This new body was pretty great.
Well. I could more or less guess how this went. Some gacha games had special recruitment screens for higher level draws. I looked back at the long pool. You could fit a lot of people in that. Probably not more than one at a time in the smaller pool.
Save the best for last? Let's not pretend I could ever have passed the marshmallow test. I dug the Iridescent Clarion Crystal out of the sack and offered it to the pool.
The sunlight through the window caught the rippling colors trapped inside the thick crystal rod. Like the shimmer of mother-of-pearl. The holy music coming from the crystal seemed to be drawn to the curved alcove and amplified. The crystal was lifted by some magic of the pool and drawn over the water. It slowly spun in a sunbeam, picking up speed until it burst into a shattered rainbow of light.
There was a moment, like the world was holding its breath. With an ecstatic release- she was born.
Ethereal choirs sang as the sunlight picked out the gold of her hair. It cascaded down over the polished silver of her armor, a knight, with a longsword in one hand and a shield in the other. Six purple stars drifted down and circled her head like a halo. She walked across the water, steel shod foot silent as she stepped on the marble. With a grace I could hardly imagine, she took a knee and lay her sword and shield in front of her.
"In this life, and every life, I, Versai, shall serve the Tower Master. May the Heavens witness my oath!"
There was a golden chime in the air. I felt something change. I was no longer just… me. There was me, and Versai. There would be others, I knew. But whoever I was before died when she was born. I could feel my thoughts wrenched around. A new priority. A new identity weaseling its way in, next to who I was. Not replacing it, adding to it.
I was the Tower Master. And this beauty, this warrior spirit, was the first Awakened Soul under my command.
A… very real girl. Woman, actually. Strong, capable woman. Competent. And so staggeringly, shockingly beautiful, she was hard to look straight at. And I was now attached to her. Forever, apparently.
I… am… not really okay with this. This is not good. When I say I'm 2-D for life, I'm not playing. I could feel my skin start to crawl.
There was a moment, a sense of gathering energy and awareness. Then awkwardness.
"Tower Master?"
"Sorry! I'm new to this. Please, stand up." I flapped a bit. Damn! My first words were an apology. Very not alpha. Very beta behavior. Weak. I had already made myself the submissive, when I was supposed to be the Tower Master. Self loathing twisted my guts.
She pretended not to notice.
Versai stood up, belted on her sword and slung her shield behind her. It turned into a flowing red cape. Apparently attached by magic. Because sure, why not. It looked killer on her. But she would have looked killer in a cardboard box. Ideally one with a plastic cover, on a shelf.
The armor was not cut to flatter. Excessively, brutally practical. It might as well have been a man's armor, without the faintest hint of boob plate. No ornamentation at all, beyond the red cape. No points for guessing it would get more elaborate with time.
I would make a crack about being robbed, but… she made it hard to breathe.
Blond, blue eyed, skin so white it was almost translucent. She had a pointy but not too long nose- I'll stop. Any list of Versai's parts would be worthless. Her eyes weren't almond shaped. Almonds are the shape of Versai's eyes. She was the measure other things were compared to.
Only the very best of the 2D girls I adored were on her level. Only the very, very best. And she had the immense handicap of being 3-D and worst of all, IRL.
"I'm your first Awakened Soul?" She smiled.
My heart must have been upgraded along with everything else, as it didn't explode on the spot. It shouldn't be legal to be that pretty. Oh God! A smile that would have a dentist weeping for joy, and their accountant snapping their calculator in rage.
When I regained the ability to form coherent thoughts, I nodded. "Yes. My name is-" I glitched. I don't have a better word for it. I glitched.
I couldn't remember my name. I felt panic trying to pour in. I was missing my name. My name. I had a name. A life in another world. I could remember my life in the other world. I could-
"Liam." I smiled. Wow, that was weird huh? How could I possibly have forgotten that my name was Liam, and always had been? "It's a pleasure to meet you, Versai."
She nodded, her face becoming serious. "Tower Master, the situation is dire. The tower is entirely without defenses, we have no equipment, you have neither weapons or magic at your disposal, and I, alone cannot stop the endless hordes of monsters. We need more help, more awakened souls. By any chance do you have more Resonance Crystals?"
I smiled. Now I can flex a little, recover some of that Alpha energy. "I do. A full thousand of them." Well, and a bit. Not enough for another summons.
"Great! To use them, throw them in the Spirit Heart Pool and you can get the dollies to work." She nodded decisively.
I did, but as I did so, my ear snagged on a word.
"Sorry, did you say 'dollies?'"
"Five stars and under get progressively dumber and more obviously artificial. It helps if you don't think of them as people."
"What?!"
"Oh, you get used to it." She waved an exquisite hand dismissively. The long pool was lighting up with a gentle white glow, blinding mist rising up out of it. Holy music again, but significantly less impressive than Versai's summoning. "But hey, it's nice that you have an extra. Most of the other Tower Masters only got nine."
"Err… how long did they last?"
"The record is three waves." She smiled at me "warmly." "I'm sure you will beat that record. You have the skills to make the kills, right?"