puddles4263
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The Great Tower: Prologue
🕑 Added 2019-04-08 03:44:15 +0000 UTCWhew, just this little teaser for now. Not that I changed much from this portion, but I spent most of my time reading back through and familiarizing myself with what happens later. Trying to think about plots I want to shift...
Well anyway, the goal for the release two weeks from now is to finish out his week in the marshes. Frog antics. Yanno. Enjoy!
(P.S.: I was surprised how much I enjoyed revisiting this xD)
To each member of the board, Mikani turned. Her luminous yellow eyes were expressive and watering. She bit her lip. Her hands tightened on the edge of the table until her knuckles were white.
Yet no one came to her support.
Blinking back tears, Mikani said, “The humans of Earth are my life’s work. For ten thousand years… we’ve stolen so many pop culture ideas from them to boost ratings-”
“And yet profits are falling,” Den said harshly. Although he likely didn’t mean anything by it, Den’s position at the head of the table aided a tragic air of finality to the decision. Mikani hiccuped into her hand.
With a sigh, Den shook his head. “The way they’ve been governing themselves recently… their ‘entertainment’...”
Den trailed off. But as Den settled into silence, Qube spoke up.
“They are an embarrassment.”
Mikani glared hatefully at Qube. “But what I don’t get… is why HE is going to take control of their lives.”
Qube readjusted his glasses. “We run a business, Mikani. You would do well to remember that.”
Before Mikani could spit out the string of curses that was brewing in her mouth, Den leaned forward. “It is not as though they will not be given a chance. Like all of those without Citizenship, the humans will be cast on The Great Tower. Their fates are now their own.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Mikani said bitterly. “At best, they will serve as fodder. Even if they can tap into some of the Tower’s spirit, their natural abilities-”
“Everyone loves an underdog,” Qube said smugly.
If she could do it without being punished, Mikani would have loved to bash Qube’s face into the heavy wooden table. But even if she had the will to do something like that, Mikani was unsure if she could.
Before becoming the head producer, Qube had climbed The Great Tower himself. And had made it to the 40th Floor.
So Mikani settled on glaring.
Qube laughed, clearly enjoying her frustration. “You never know, one might experience moderate success. They appear to be a relatively adaptable race, after all.”
“Meeting adjourned,” Den rumbled.
*****
Click.
For the hundredth time, the young man from Earth refreshed his internet browser. Once again, the newest chapter of his favorite webnovel hadn’t been released. Obsessively, he checked the time. 6:02 P.M. The daily release should have happened.
Why hasn't it been posted?
But that thought was cut off by the sensation of being punched in the gut. The air around him seemed to tremble… and then he was somewhere else.
He was sitting in a pitch black chair in the middle of an infinite white space. And in front of him was floating a grey creature with 11 eyes. Other than that, there was nothing. Just… color.
Black. White. Grey.
Eleven eyes.
The young man’s brain was whirring at full speed to capture and understand all the information that was being thrown at him. But only one thing was immediately clear: the grey creature in front of him was very bored.
“Welcome, chosen one. You will soon be competing on The Great Tower, one of the greatest programs the integrated multiverse has to offer! In order to make things interesting, you are offered the chance to sell bits of yourself to I, the Ilium, in exchange for power. What are you willing to offer, contestant?”
What a weird question, the young man thought. What wouldn’t I be willing to offer for power?
Because based on this setup…
The young man looked carefully around. He surreptitiously knocked on the black chair he was sitting on and then winced as he cracked his knuckles painfully against the material. It wasn’t wood… but it wasn’t metal either.
When it was clear that there wasn’t any answer in the surroundings, the young male asked. “...bits of myself? Like body parts?”
“Perhaps.” The Illium seemed surprised he had responded at all. “Body parts, personality traits, inches of your height… basically anything. The more precious the thing is you sell, the more you will get in exchange. I have many methods”
The trick in novels is always to do something extremely simple that most people wouldn’t think to do. So what comes next…
The male considered briefly. “First, I will sell my name.”
“Done.”
The male blinked, then smiled ruefully. Then he closed his eyes, thinking something very hard. It’s a gamble… but if I want to succeed, I must take risks. To start…
...first, leaving a trace for myself later…. And then… just need the guts to say it.
To the young man’s surprise, the words came with surprising ease. “Next... I sell my memory of my previous world.”
The creature chuckled, snapping his fingers. “Fine accomplished. Anything else?”
As soon as the Ilium snapped its fingers, the light inside the young man’s eyes winked out. Because the body sitting in the chair was barely a man at all anymore. It was simply a creature of instinct. It had been deprived of memory, name, and therefore meaning. It was a misplaced child, more than anything else. A broken toy that had been ripped for a god’s pleasure.
The silence slowly stretched. The Ilium sighed. These things happened occasionally. An individual would sell too much, resulting in it becoming almost nothing.
Of course, the Ilium did not lie; it gave them power in exchange. But it was not an instant power. It was more akin to seeds planted within these sellers. Seeds that needed time to flower and grow.
After five more minutes, the Ilium had enough waiting in silence. “If that’s all-”
“Wait.” The male’s voice was deeper, somehow, when he spoke now. The thing that had once been a human male frowned at the ground, its face split into thousands of deep lines. Then it looked up. Despite itself, the Ilium flinched.
There was a new light there. Something deranged and warped, like the dreams of a twisted king. But there was also resolve there. A determination that the Ilium had no way of giving, no matter what was sold to it.
Was it luck…? The Ilium wondered. Or was this inevitable? To have the nerve to sell his name and his memory. This is-
“I must… tell you something. ‘I sell my humanity’. And then…” The lines on the thing’s face grew deeper as the internal struggle reached a fever pitch.
“It… is done…” The Ilium said quietly. The thing before him still bore the shape of a human, but that was simply a default. What breathed from within that skin was no longer anything close to human. It was a machine that had all of the function parts ripped out. What was left...
The male thing gazed into the distance as the grey creature with 11 eyes continued to observe this strange thing. All at once, the deep ridges and lines on the thing’s skin disappeared. Because the face of the one time human male split into a wide smile.
A smile so wide it could swallow a world. “And now I must learn... to kill.”
Comments
Tristan A
Read this update a couple days ago, and then went to RoyalRoad to see what the plot was about. Ended up reading all of it (well almost all I decided not to read like the last 5 chapters) . Honestly it was awesome. Yes it definitely came off as less thought out and put together as LoRG but I can already tell that if you wanted it could improve a lot. So, I will definitely be looking forward to if you want to update it. It's fun reading the your original prologue and your updated one seeing how with just a few alterations and wording you made it more suspenseful, really showing off your gains in the Dao of writing.
Nicholas F
I have fond memories of checking every day for the next chapter of TGT.
DaQualyn Singleton
There are no words for how happy I am to see the return of the great tower. If there’s anything you excel at, it’s interesting and driven character development. I especially love that you don’t tend to force us to sit through the decisions of a hyper-naive mc who constantly cries about every hard choice like a child. Your mc’s tend to pull themselves up by their boot straps and get the job done. They understand how serious these changes to their lives are and fight to not just survive, but thrive.
Corwin Amber
Question for you: Are you re-writing the chapters that are already on RR? In other words, should I go ahead start that book now too? Or should I just wait for the chapters you are writing now for that story?
KeenTowers
It would be nice to see how the story changed from the original to the rewrites. You could post them as new chapters on RR and leave a note at the end of a chap on LoRG on RR or just “edit” the old chaps by posting the rewrites. Whichever you choose, in the end it’s all up to you
Alan McBrayer
I wouldn't do rewrites since the old comments are kept. There is no reason you can both make a new fiction and just add the rewrites as new chapters to the old fiction. Maybe make a poll on the main fiction asking what people prefer
Scott Frederiksen
Yay!
Tommy Littlefield
I’m so excited you are working in this again this is what made me fall in love with your writing in the first place
Tommy Littlefield
Kinda anti-hero like a venom vibe if it follows the original
Augustus
Both?
Danielle Warvel
I never read the old version. Is the MC going to be a villian character?
EroNingen
use shift-enter to get a newline in the comments Like this =P
Cheshirerogue
I’ve been looking forward to this ever since I read The Great Tower for the first time. I knew it could use a re-write when I finished it but I knew it had potential to be something fantastical and beautiful. Start a riot from the Spider-Man animated movie would be a great influence as music to this series and I look forward to it’s development and progress. Hopefully it will give me inspiration for my own novel since I plan to use Rand’s story to influence the story greatly and would appreciate even more influence from this novel. Good luck puddles. I hope you find a man who can rip apart the world to make the world a better place in the future...no matter the consequences of his actions. And remember...have fun with the experience. It’s the only thing we can ask for in life.
s476
regarding edditing the chapters and a new upload: If you edit the chapers you will have the old comments and old reviews. That can be posetive and negative. But i personally thing it's better for the development of a followership do upload it as a new story, as the comments replay to each other and support the hype/interest.
Noveus
I honestly forgot that you even wrote the great tower before ghosthound. I hadn't even thought of it in so long but I finish what you had previously right before you started writing this story I think
s476
You did a fantastic job on that chapter, seriously hyped me up.
Gam
The great tower is stil in my top 5! I would save up allot of chapters, then post a bunch on RR to get attention like Adarsh said.
Kurt A
Maybe wait until you've got like 100 chapters or so re-written, then start posting it as a new fiction after taking the old one down? Get some new readers that way.
Nanooki12
I would say a new story otherwise people might not pay attention to it. And I am so excited about this. I actually love this story more than randidly
PuDDleS4263
Also conflicted on how I'll be putting this on RR... it seems too much to make a new fiction altogether. Better to edit the chapters?
