Draco resumed his seat on the throne, which he realized could now be resized with a mere thought. As such, he made both it and the table human sized, greatly reducing the vastness of this inner world. It went from a giant sized meadow to a human sized one.
Draco gazed at the table before him and saw the details of the various floors pop up before him. Heck, he could even see some of the instances of the various floors and what was going on, as well as augment them!
That's right, now that he had the Seal of Babylon, he could change the entire floor even WHILE a person was running it!
This made him gasp as he felt a chill in his heart. If the Tower Spirit had been granted this full access to the Tower, it could have truly toyed him to death!
Luckily, neither she nor her master had been allowed to do so for this Unique Quest, with her master not even being around at all.
Draco found it quite amusing to watch those other Tower candidates trying their best on the various floors as a last ditch attempt to get somewhere. After all, there were technically about 2 years left until the end of the Tower's 100-year period, and they probably felt like giving it a try.
Immediately, Draco wore a cruel smile like a predator eyeing its prey. He called up the floor details for those floors and easily learned how to change things about. It was like using a world editor from popular old games that ran on engines, only with your mind.
It was easy enough for him to make drastic changes with his current mental prowess. For the candidates within, they wouldn't even get any prior warning. One second they might be in a fantasy world, and the next second he could beam them into a sci-fi world.
How would it feel?
Draco tried it out and found that 70% of the candidates died since the change in world caught them off guard. He checked to see that their souls were not absorbed by the Tower as nourishment as one would expect, but were collected by the Tower and brought up to him.
He could decide what to do with them. Since the previous owner had been the Fairy Ancestor, and Fairies were generally benevolent, she must have done this to give these challengers another chance at life. She might have resurrected them or send them to ascend to a divine afterlife.
It could be said that dying in the Tower while the Fairy Ancestor had been in charge must have most likely been one of the top 10 places to die, where your afterlife would be filled with good tidings.
However, sigh… these fellows happened to die after Draco got put in charge.
He wasn't limited to his Nine Hells or Eva's Seven Heavens, this way he could simply gift these souls to Roma, and the gypsy could use them for her concoctions. If he gifted them to Zaine, the succubus could corrupt them and make them Devil Imps at the least. If he gifted them to Hikari, the dragoness could use them to resurrect them, but they would be given different forms since Draco would surely interfere.
To sum it up, the lucky ones would go to Eva's Heaven or Hikari's resurrection... Ending up in the Nine Hells, the cauldron or the devil corruption method were fates worse than death.
Draco called out tp his Four Beauties and immediately four portals emerged around him. Four women so beautiful and majestic came out that the realm Draco was in seemed to have brightened up considerably. Moira, who was still recovering from being filled in every hole, gasped.
She had long since seen the Four Beauties with Draco, but it was one thing looking at them through the floor projections and another thing entirely to see them in person.
Eva held Lucitera in hand, who immediately flew up and jumped into her father's embrace. Draco smiled and manifested four thrones beside him, each with the motif of his wives. He then gestured for them to sit down while his other kids also asked him to embrace them. Rosella blushed shyly, Kuro simply curled up on his dad's shoulders and Loki sat on Draco's head like a king.
Seeing Draco holding their children so intimately and seeing how he looked smothered by his own kids, their mothers felt very sweet internally, but they couldn't help but laugh.
Draco wasn't bothered by it at all. In fact, he took out some of the souls he just acquired through the Tower and gave it to his kids to play with.
Imagine being a dignified person from outside, acquiring a ticket to the Tower of Babylon which many people covet, climbing the floors over the course of 100 years, only to be blindsided by the new Tower owner.
Worse off, after you died, your soul becomes a toy for his toddlers to play with!
Rosella grabbed the soul given to her, and her orange pupils flashed with a green light. The soul floated in front of her, and one could see the image of the original owner appear with, screaming soundlessly as he banged on the walls of his own soul.
It was clear that whatever Rosella was instinctively doing, it probably felt more painful than anything anyone could imagine. As for Loki, he lazily gazed at the soul given him as black gas fanned from his body, enveloping the soul.
The black gas warped and morphed the soul brutally, eventually changing into a small black bat that looked somewhat cute. However, there was a slight light of sentience in the bat's eyes, and one could tell it felt despair of the highest order.
As for Kuro, he wasn't much of a soul stealer. He curiously bit down on the soul given him, but he spat it out immediately, clearly disgusted by the taste. As for the soul, it had come into contact with the natural Destruction Energy in the Black Dragon's body, thus it had ceased to exist a few seconds later.
As for Rila, she only checked the soul out and gave it back to Draco, shaking her head. Tsk, tsk, it seemed like this little cutie was the only one without a cruel bone in her body. Then again, the others were Draco's biological kids whereas Rila got adopted.
After distracting the kids, Draco interfaced with Eva and manually explained the Tower's benefits to his other wives. When they heard how useful it was, Zaine's eyes gleamed.
"Give me three days and I will set up the most efficient training and testing regime using the 99 floors."
Draco nodded with a smile. "I have full faith in you."
With that sorted out, it was time to finally leave the Tower. Draco first expelled all those in the Tower to the Safe Zone, gathering them in the square.
Gavin Guy, Dorothy, James, and Helia gazed around with confusion, wondering why they had been brought here. Suddenly, a giant projection of Draco in all his majesty stood above them, gazing down at them with an arrogant smirk.
"Hello, fellow candidates. I am pleased to inform you that I have climbed to the top floor of the Tower and have gained ownership of it for all eternity. As such, the centennial Tower opening will now be canceled, as this Tower shall be my playground henceforth."
The listeners were shocked. They knew Draco would eventually reach the top because some had been keeping up with his progress, but shouldn't reaching the top mean that he would acquire divinity? How did he become the fucking owner of the Tower?!
"Now, my darling climbers, scram for me!" Draco roared as he waved a hand.
Immediately, everyone was pushed out of the Tower like a rag doll, thrown into the void outside the Tower. Actually, it wasn't a void, but a normal meadowland that could be found anywhere, but for these NPCs that were part of a Unique Quest, it might as well have been a void.
Once they reached a certain distance, they all disintegrated into ash because they got too far from the quest's area. Their real selves who were at all sorts of places on the Main Plane jolted, but then shook off the weird feeling of one version of themselves having died.
After cleansing his Tower cruelly, Draco teleported to the entrance with the Four Beauties. He then called, and the Tower shrunk itself into the size of a tennis ball, resting on his palm with ease. Draco put it away and left the area of the Unique Quest, where in which the AI made itself known through familiar prompts.
｢Tower of Babylon – Unique Quest
Description: The Tower of Babylon has returned to the world. Rise through all 99 floors of unique challenges to acquire Divinity!
Note: Certain impositions have been placed on the execution of this quest;
1. All challenges can only be attempted once.
2. True Death constitutes failure.
3. Only the challenger with the token will be regarded as a trial taker, however, a trial taker can use any method to pass the challenges.
4. Time limit: 3 years.
Rewards: Treasure Chest (Grade and amount based on final completion), Gold (amount based on final completion)｣
｢Congratulations on completing: Tower of Babylon Unique Quest
Time elapsed: 9123:22:59
Hidden Quests completed: 4
Objectives complete: All
Assessment: SSS+
Reward:
3,000% Exp (non-conversion)
50,000,000,000 platinum
5x Divine Treasure Chest｣
Wew, what good rewards!
He had spent over a year in the Tower and had completed far more objectives than he remembered. Apart from the first few floors where he didn't get perfect endings and the last 90 floors where he wasted time letting his people train themselves, as well as the 31st to 40th floor where he and Eva had trained extensively for months, everything else had been completed to perfection.
3,000% experience was 30 free levels he could use once he entered Rank 4. The best thing about it was that it would not be converted by his abysmal experience gain rate. Reaching Rank 5 from there should not take too much time.
The platinum was pretty good, enough that Draco didn't disdain it. He could use it to buff the guild further, but he remembered that Akainu told him that the guild earnings had spiked to a level he couldn't fathom.
As for the 5 Divine Treasure Chests, they were the greatest gain. The Tower was good, but most of the things inside would only add to his Refinement archive, so he could use them later, and he couldn't refine anything above Rare Rank for items and Legendary Rank for resources.
Once he broke through to the next stage, it would increase to Legendary for items and Semi-Origin for resources. Why else did you think Draco continually racked his brains on how to achieve Norma's requirements, even though it meant using shortcuts?
Once he upgraded, he could ratify the methods he used and turn them from 'active' to 'passive'. Of course, if Norma imposed any more nonsense requirements, Draco didn't know where he could find any more tricks to bypass them.
Out of curiosity, he checked the four Hidden Quests he had completed and their rewards.
｢Congratulations on completing: Hidden Quest 4/5
#1: Do not use the Hospital in the Safe Zone at any time. Reward: Permanent +10% HP recovery.
#2: Do not take any damage while climbing the floors of the Tower. Reward: Permanent +50 to Endurance.
#3: Do not retreat from any floor at any time. Reward: Permanent +50 to Spirit.
#4: Subdue the Tower Spirit. Reward: Ownership of the Tower of Babylon.
#5: Clear every floor with a perfect score. Reward: Unclaimed. ｣
Seeing his gains, Draco opened his character sheet and saw that, truly, his stats had been increased.
However, you couldn't blame him for not feeling it since, at this point, the stats in the game were naught but a cute little reminder of what the game should have been like had the author not done 3 pounds of cocaine and failed basic maths.
Of course, seeing there was one Hidden Quest he had failed to get and couldn't even see the reward irked the perfectionist in him. Nevertheless, he shrugged and realized he had already made off with the biggest prize.
What more did he fucking want?
