Draco looked entirely nonplussed. "How cheap, trying to sound mysterious so I would feel worried and fearful about what comes later? That's not gonna work, 'Guvna'."
Draco then pointed to the glowing scoreboard. "You see, let me enlighten you on something you realized the moment you saw my score but are desperately trying to ignore."
"Not speaking for others who came in later, those like you lot who must have arrived early basically had no idea what you were getting into or what you were dealing with, so you relied on your own wits and some of the information from Tadaima to maneuver through the floors."
Gavin interrupted him with a pat of his amazing pompadour. "Hah, the first floor is the easiest floor, and you think that it makes you suddenly knowledgeable about how the tower works?"
Draco raised a hand in a 'no offense gesture'. "Hey, I get what you're trying to say, but you're not getting my point, the first floor may be easy but if not anyone else, the first 3 and I all had blank slates upon entry."
"We knew nothing about what happens within or what limitations there would be but adapted as we went. This ability to adapt as well as skill was what set you all apart from the get-go, showing Pretty Boy as a number 1 talent with Madam T.i.t.s and the Guvna coming after."
Dorothy suddenly covered her large c.h.e.s.t which was teased by Draco, while James chuckled at having his accent mocked. Gavin reacted with a smile after being called pretty boy, seemingly not understanding the sarcasm.
"So then, if that's the case, how would you rate my talent compared to yours when I have more than ten times the points when we all had the same starting point? If Gavin was able to keep his lead under the circ.u.mstances from day 1, shouldn't I be able to keep taking first place on every floor up to where you fellows are currently stuck at?"
Draco's question caused the crowd to go silent as they realized his point, while the faces of the top three darkened with discomfort. Draco had directly poked the sore that had just developed in their hearts, dragging out the very conclusion they had reached when they saw his score.
If Draco was allowed to continue on his own, it was more than likely he could keep up this streak and break the balance. However, they who had been at the Tower's top for almost a 100 years could not bear to see a last-minute newcomer step over them at all costs, so here they were trying to recruit him.
After all, once he joined one of their factions, they could force him to stop his climb and use his points to rise to the top, but it seemed that he wasn't as foolish as they had hoped. From the very beginning, it had been desperation to stop this anomaly that had driven them here to make their offers, knowing deep down that it was impossible for a person with this kind of power to agree.
As usual, if the carrot did not work, there would always be the good old stick.
Gavin smiled darkly. "Mr. Draco, are you sure you can afford to be on the opposing side of our factions? Think carefully, for it will decide your stay in this tower!"
Draco waved his hand boredly. "Even if we could attack each other here, I wouldn't give a f.u.c.k. Rank 5 is well within my power to kill, only Rank 6 and above can make me pick up my skirt and flee."
Draco then lost interest in continuing further and called out. "Oi, Tadaima?"
The floating orb pushed through the crowd and appeared before Draco. "Yes Candidate, how may I help you?"
Draco rubbed his chin. "You said the placement on the first floor decided what residence one can have, so do I get the best?"
Tadaima bobbed up and down. "That is right, Candidate. As the new first place ranker of the first floor, you are entitled to the Central Castle, however it is occupied by the current overall first place. As such, the tower has decided to grant you the alternate central castle that was constructed in case this very issue arises."
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtDraco nodded and followed the orb out of the square while many eyes watched him with mixed emotions. The top three especially harbored evil thoughts, yet one after the other began to smile, then left the square as well.
Now that the show was over, the rest dispersed as well. After all, not everyone was under the thumb of someone stronger or part of a faction, either because they were too weak or too stubborn, so they also had their own things to do.
Draco eventually reached a large castle that looked very similar to his Rank 7 one near the outskirts of the safe zone. His eyes flashed when he looked at it, as it was the same in design as to what he had seen in the center of the area, but for it to be placed out here…
It only served to show that the one who had created this tower had good foresight. They knew that it was not impossible for a newbie to replace the current leader somewhere along the timeline of the trial, so they certainly couldn't put this eyesore to those who had been around longer near everyone else.
Tadaima gave Draco a tour of the castle. It basically had every facility he might need, and there was nothing he couldn't do here that was not available on the outside. Since even tools were provided for crafting, it was clear that one could trade more than just raw materials.
It was likely what was happening too. People who completed floors, redeemed special materials and made items out of them to barter or sell. Potions especially should be favored over equipment here since fighting was not allowed and some floors had limitations of various types.
Draco was also pleased to learn that only the castles in the Safe Zones had direct portals to the trial floors, allowing the owners of such castles to enter without having to enter the square. This was all the more reason why Draco would have to be 3 times dumber than he already was to accept such a deal from those idiots.
After settling in for a bit, Draco decided to redeem the Heart of a King Colossus. He sat down and without noticing the flow of time he spent the next 20 hours analyzing its structure from head to toe, sighing with some slight fatigue when he did so.
Eva and co had even designed the area a bit more, making it similar to a modern neighborhood with a lovely park, a playground, and clean roads. In the playground, Rila was currently playing with Nemea and Sphea, Qiong Qi's two cubs.
Smiling, Draco descended into Eva's Heavenly Palace and found his Celestial Beauty focused in meditation. Draco intended to scare her like she used to do him in the past, but with the depth of their soul and mental connection, it was simply impossible.
Eva opened her eyes and smiled when she saw Draco in her home. The two hugged and Eva c.a.r.e.s.sed Draco's hair gently.
"Well, what brings you to my lair Handsome Devil?"
Draco's lips twitched. Why did she make it sound like he was an innocent lamb that had entered the lion's den? Harrumph, if anything, it was he, Draco, who was the lion!
"Well, I was suffering from an acute lack of happiness and soul satisfaction, so my doctor prescribed a huge dose of Eva Morningstar to make me feel better."
Such lies would work on anyone else but Eva. She smiled slyly and held Draco's hand as they walked upstairs. "Just admit you want a place to rest your head and a beauty by your side."
Draco coughed weakly. "Well, it is part of your charm that you know me so well. It seems you've inherited 0.001% of my latent IQ!"
Eva had gotten used to losing HP whenever Draco spoke, so she had no external reaction. She just brought led to her bedroom, where the duo proceeded to be lazy together.
She still found it hard to believe how Amaterasu managed to f.u.c.k up something this big, and that was even more shameful that her descendants failed to realize that truth.
Lucifer had easily been able to create his hell for all souls of the world, so where was the prophesied heaven for good souls to go when they died?
Well, Eva suspected that Lucifer had hastily drafted something to fill in the gap while Amaterasu had continued to admire herself in the mirror and deluded herself into thinking her Celestial Maiden abilities were the best of the lot.
Draco understood why Eva was anxious to fix this. After both of them had reached Rank 3, they now had - tentatively - full control over the known aspects of their bloodline. The next Rank Up would see them take one step further, an attempt to perfect integration of bloodline and body.
In other words, to perfectly merge sub-human genes and the High Human Genes to allow Draco and Eva to obtain the kind of raw power Lucifer and Amaterasu had while still being able to reproduce and possess a majority of similar functions to the normal human.
The issue here was that once they achieved this milestone, their bloodlines would be set. The foundations would be built permanently and could only be developed upon. Unless either one of them was willing to shatter their progress entirely and start again, change at the fundamental level would be impossible.
Unless Eva fixed her heaven now, she would never get a chance to do so in the future. This would have been a herculean task with great risks in the real world, but luckily Boundless World existed.
This allowed Eva to try and fix her issue in the game, and if successful here, she could replicate it outside without harming her actual body or bloodline. As such, she had been spending her off time working on it ceaselessly.
Thankfully, she was making great progress in this regard. The problem was that the Abyssal Eye Inheritance was not exactly broken or severely damaged, just corrupted. It was like a pond that should have pristine water being murky and black with impurities.
However, Eva simply did not have the energy or resources to accomplish the latter. She could only take the first option and clean out the dirt from the foundation Amaterasu had left behind carefully.
To achieve the second method of cleaning it out entirely and refilling, she would need an inestimable amount of energy. Even if all the generators in the world were connected to Eva, she would need to absorb their energy for almost 200 years.
Seriously, a place that all souls on earth could go after death and have their paradisaical wishes fulfilled… do you think such a thing could be managed by mere electricity?
Draco decided that he could help in some way. As such, he placed his hand on Eva's back and circulated along the route for her Abyssal Eye Inheritance. His soul was pulled into the realm, and he was that it was a huge void-like area with many eldritch horrors floating about aimlessly, screeching and roaring occasionally.
There was only a small patch of beautiful white light in the corner, when he and Eva spawned. Even this small bastion of light was slowly being encroached upon by the darkness as it sought to fight back and maintain the dominance of its new home.
Seeing this, Draco's lips couldn't help but twitch. He, unlike Eva, did not like thinking bad of Amaterasu since she was like an elder sister to him, or more like his big bro's girlfriend, so his feelings toward her were that of a junior.
While Eva felt the same towards Lucifer, she had great respect for him for his cleverness and ingenuity, but she naturally despised her 'true' self.
However, despite Draco's unwillingness, he couldn't help but sigh and look down on Amaterasu. The more he and Eva delved into the matter of their bloodlines, the more the duo felt like Lucifer was too good for her, and the only good thing she did was creating Eva.
Eva turned to Draco. "Well babe, will it work?"
Draco took a deep breath. "We won't know for sure till we try. Let's go with Plan A."
Eva nodded and closed her eyes to focus. Draco also did the same and entered a lotus sitting position like some cultivator, his energy flowing into Eva beside him unceasingly.
Eva then raised the hand and grunted deeply.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm"Light of Purification!"
This was the technique she had specifically devised using her light-based abilities to combat and purify the darkness in this realm. It was the optimal balance of light energy and had the perfectly opposing type, taking Eva months to develop it.
Immediately, a bubble of light was emitted from Eva's hands slowly. It looked like white sonar waves stretching out from her position to as far as it could reach, almost like the space before Eva was water and she was using a finger to disturb it.
The light sizzled the moment it hit the darkness, like food being poured into hot oil or like cold water on hot metal. The two energies were reacting, battling it out for dominance in this realm.
The darkness had a great advantage as it had more quantity and could smother all things, but it was helpless against this light. Eva had managed to carve out this domain by burning her bloodline energy repeatedly many times, and her progress was steady.
In about a couple of years of nonstop work, she should be able to prodigy the realm at this rate. This meant that she would need 4 years to clear it in the game and almost 4 years to do so in real life.
This was where Eva's problem lay. Staying at Rank 3 for 4 years in Boundless time, much less real time. By then, who knew if they would still be on earth at all?
So, she was hoping to find a faster and more efficient way, and thankfully, Draco came in to help. With his infusion of Energy, she felt her speed double, as well as a unique feeling that the darkness destroyed by their combined energy would not be able to come back.
This meant she wouldn't have to lose progress on her clearing in the future. Still, this was not enough, as it still meant that it would take her two years AND force Draco as well as herself to do absolutely nothing for that entire duration.
Soon, the duo paused their work and sighed. They then spent the next few days resting before Draco prompted Eva to move onto Plan B.
This time, Eva sat in a lotus position as she channeled all her energy toward Draco who was focusing. The fellow them opened his eyes and spoke powerfully.
"Destructive Flow."
Draco realized a super-charged wave of Destruction Energy that he targeted at the darkness, and the two energies collided. This time, instead of sizzling the White-Haired Duo were shocked to see that it actually silently consumed the darkness completely, permanently destroying the part of it that it came into contact with.
Draco stopped and shared a look of surprise with Eva. Their speculation that Destruction Energy was more suited to this purpose was right! Destruction Energy was much better at this than light energy, but the duo quickly noticed a downside.
Destruction Energy was Destruction Energy. Even though it had consumed the darkness, it had also consumed the specific matter of the space where it passed through, damaging it greatly.
This meant that even if they cleared the darkness out using this method, they would be fundamentally damaging Eva's heaven and making things slightly worse than they already were.
Just to fix the damage this test alone had done would require a lot of energy from Eva. Despite this, the duo hared a strange looked and smiled. They were finally certain that they had found the right path, which was their Plan C.
Before that, Draco asked Eva: "How has it been going?"
Eva then clapped her hands together and spread them apart slowly, a white light manifesting in between them. However, unlike her usual piercing light, this was a soft cream color that soothed the soul.
"Pretty well. It's much easier for me than I thought." Eva replied with a smirk.
Ever since Eva had deduced that they were able to harness other energies within their category, she had been training with Hikari to master Creation Energy. Eva theorized that Light and Darkness were above Destruction and Creation, which turned out to be true.
As such, Draco should be able to master Darkness Energy while Eva should be able to master Creation Energy. It was easier for Eva to achieve this due to her high mastery of Light Energy over two lifetimes and the fact that Creation was a subset of light, but Draco was struggling with Darkness as it was the macro-energy and he had only gotten his bloodline back a few real-time months ago.
However, that was not relevant right at this moment. Rather, Draco ad Eva took deep breaths and both sat in lotus positions, connecting their minds and energies to each other and forming a cycle between their bodies.