Asturian Warbringer stood atop of hundreds of corpses that formed a small hill. He looked at his watch with the same intensity he watched the battle between millions in front of him.

Arrows, crossbow bolts, ballista bolts, bullets, cannon balls, and all manner of projectiles coated with either fire, poison, or magic, flew beside spells of all elements. The smell of burnt flesh and molten metal caused by the fall of meteors was spread by the powerful windstorms accompanying the huge hurricanes that reaped lives left and right. Instantly created pitfalls killed people in subterranean spikes, and water forcibly entered people's lungs to drown them even as they stood on dry land. Darkness consumed people alive while light burned their minds with no visible injury. The death element killed uncountable warriors, and the life element preserved their best.

The battle between holins and orcs, elves and drow, dwarves and sorins, kobolds and taloi, and many more races from both sides was mesmerizing. A show of power and destruction. The stuff legends were made of.

Asturian yawned, bored.

At 10:45:36 PM, he crouched and a lightning-infused arrow passed by where his head stood a second ago.

Five seconds later, he sidestepped to avoid a ball of pure darkness that would've opened a hole in his torso.

Seven minutes and two seconds after that, he had to leave his hill of corpses. Soon, it exploded through unseen ways into bits of blood, viscera, and metal.

Unfortunately, he had miscalculated the timing. He simply wasn't used to being as weak as he currently was. Some of the metal from the corpses' armor ripped through his throat with the ease of a hot knife going through butter.

Asturian died chocking on his own blood, and darkness followed.

But that wasn't the end. Not really. His consciousness remained in the dark, and an holographic white game window with golden borders appeared in front of him.

Myriad Phoenix's Heart

You've suffered a lethal injury. The Myriad Phoenix's Heart has been automatically activated.

5 charges remaining.

The darkness dissipated and Asturian found himself in a room so large it was impossible to see its ceiling or walls. The floor was made of perfectly cut black stone, and all of humankind could be seen lying unconscious on it.

Another system message was floating in front of him.

Welcome to the Sentinel Tower

You have 10 years to conquer the 100th Floor with worthy achievements.

If you succeed, humankind will be released from the Sentinel Tower.

If you fail, humankind will be sent to hell.

He had returned to the past, to the instant humankind had been kidnaped by the thing that called itself the Sentinel Tower. It was so big it felt more like a bunch of worlds flattened and stacked on top of each other.

And it had received them with the promise of doom.

Soon, everyone would wake up and most people would panic, as he himself had done the first time he went through this. Luke Kells, he had been called back then. A sixteen-year-old with a whole lot of psychological issues from his abusive teenage life.

Asturian sighed. His last death had been stupid. The stress and dying hope was getting to him, making him careless.

He closed his eyes and waited for the tower to transport them all to the Test Floor. Thanks to the Myriad Phoenix's Heart he had kept by chance on the very first run, he easily remembered everything he had ever seen or heard, so he would have an easy time repeating his steps until the last moment.

It would be a long time before he reached the final floor once again, but he had gotten used to it.

= - = - =

At 10:45:36 PM, Asturian crouched and a lightning-infused arrow passed by where his head would be.

Five seconds later, he sidestepped to avoid a ball of pure darkness that would've opened a hole in his torso.

Seven minutes and two seconds after that, he had to leave his hill of corpses. Soon, it exploded through unseen ways into bits of blood, viscera, and metal. He crouched just in time to avoid the metal shrapnel and found another hill to watch the battle from.

He couldn't resist yawning again.

After the hundredth time seeing different versions of the final battle, it became boring. He would be more excited if he had been actually fighting, but this run—and the previous three—was about attempting to win exactly as he had entered the tower. He had no skills, no class, no job, no traits, no tower equipment, nothing. He was a level one scrub that hadn't even passed the Test Floor and still survived to tell the tale—the only one in the entire tower as far as he knew. That was indeed almost impossible and had taken him over thirty runs of doing crazy things and investigating the tower to accomplish.

The only reason he wasn't more bored was because there was always a tiny chance he would succeed this time. Even after almost ten thousand runs, he still wasn't sure about what the tower would consider enough achievements to save humankind.

He hated the damn thing.

Asturian saw the air shimmering a few yards to his right and recognized it for what it was: a sub-dimensional fairy's air beast. The issue about the damn puppy-like thing was that it had no notion of its power and committed friendly fire when trying to lick a friend as much as it killed enemies.

He took a step back. The shimmering air blinked out of existence just to reappear where he had been standing.

"No!" He said in the tower common language. "Bad air beast! This is not a playground! Go find enemies to kill!"

Before the beast could react, a blade cut Asturian's throat. He never saw the perpetrator.

Damn assassins.

= - = - =

Instead of stepping back to avoid the shimmering air, this time Asturian stepped forward. An instant later, he heard the sound of something wet getting smashed. He turned to see a dead kobold in black armor, his assassin in the previous run.

Its corpse was twisted in an impossible angle and something furry was coming out of its stomach, which had been ripped open in an unsightly manner. The air beast had teleported to the same place the kobold occupied, where Asturian had been a moment ago, and the resulting reaction wasn't nice to see. But an instant later, the now scared air beast teleported away, its furry body back to being almost perfectly invisible.

Asturian left that corpse hill and climbed another one closer to the battle.

He was the only human in the floor. It had taken him all his ability to get all races but humans to make a new attempt against the Demonic Horde. Even he would be absent if the system didn't require at least one human alive in the last floor after the final battle to analyze humanity's achievements and tell them if they had won their freedom or not.

This run was progressing well. His experienced allowed him to detect the incoming tipping point. Soon, the battle would—

He never saw the lighting bolt made of pure darkness come from the heavens and kill him.

= - = - =

After the lightning bolt, Asturian had been killed by mistake by a panicked ally, then by an area spell which made a hellhound appear beside each person and attack them. The final battle was just too chaotic, and since he was powerless, he had trouble avoiding trouble—pun intended.

It was only when he had but one revive remaining that he finally lived to the end.

Tens of millions of corpses littered the ground. Hills of gore and streams of blood redecorated the grasslands where the final battle had happened. The world had been tainted red.

Only Asturian was still standing.

He couldn't see movement anywhere, but the tower hadn't given him any message saying he had cleared the floor. Was there another assassin somewhere? He waited for a while and when none appeared, he decided to make himself a target so he would know what to do on the next run.

It was annoying to move in a ground covered by weapons of all kinds dropped by the dead. The sneakers he had arrived in the tower with provided little protection against magically enhanced blades. It took him over half an hour to move a little less than a hundred yards, as he also had to pay attention for traps and unstable magic. It was even harder because he had to avoid showing knowledge or battle experience that would cause the tower to recognize his skills and give it to him.

He stopped when two new system messages appeared in front of him.

Achievement unlocked: Dauntless Eternal Newbie

You have survived the final battle with the power and means of a complete newbie.

Trait acquired: Damage Immunity

Trait acquired: Damage Immunity

If your enemies failed to damage you even when you were as harmless and weak as possible, they don't deserve to hurt you at all. Ever.

You're complete immune to all damage while in the Sentinel Tower.

Both the achievement and the trait were novelty to him, something rare in the past few thousands runs. He hoped the achievement would be enough to save humankind, but the trait was almost completely useless. This was the final battle in the tower, there was only a return to the past if he had failed, and sweet release if he had won. Either would remove all his traits.

At least the achievement confirmed the battle was over. Probably a heavily-injured warrior from the Demonic Horde had been barely alive after the fight and had just died. Now he only had to wait for the tower to decide humanity's fate.

He still remembered what he had seen in his first run, so long ago. Well, of course he did, the Myriad Phoenix's Heart gave him perfect memory.

Yet even without it, the words he had read back then would have been burned into his mind.

Climb Result

The human race's achievements aren't good enough.

In 1 hour, the human race will be sent to hell.

Everything they had done, all their suffering, all their effort, had been for naught. Defeating the Demonic Horde hadn't been enough. They had lacked worthy achievements.

The last hour of his companions and him had been one of disbelief, anger, and mourning. Hidden loves were professed, lust sated, old wounds treated. The team of five, which had started as ten times that number, had reached the end of their lives in a bittersweet hug.

Asturian had never met other people like them.

And then, the strange rock they had gotten as a reward for a difficult dungeon had acted.

As all hidden items, the system hadn't automatically told them what it was when they found it. Unlike similar items, their attempts to pry its secrets open hadn't bore fruit. After much debate, they had decided it was a reward, so they didn't want to throw it away, yet they also didn't trust it. They had left it with Asturian, who had the highest defense stat and most defensive items of them all.

It had activated itself as soon as Asturian died.

Myriad Phoenix's Heart

This hidden item has resonated with your death and revealed itself. It has automatically bound with you and will replace your heart from now on.

You've suffered a lethal injury. The Myriad Phoenix's Heart has been automatically activated.

9,999 charges remaining.

And so he had gone back to his first day in the tower with a fiery heart, cried himself to sleep, and died by a goblin's hand on the Test Floor, thus wasting his second life.

After that, he had lived everything there was to live in there and tried everything to get worthy achievements. From winning the final battle all alone to letting others win without his presence, from winning with as much achievements as possible or with the hardest ones to get, nothing had worked. And now, he was waiting for yet another result.

He trembled thinking of the consequences in case he failed once again.

Simply put, he was out of ideas. Either this worked or humankind would go to hell. A real, terrible place, a floor in the tower which he had visited twice and never wanted to go back to.

When the result of his latest climb finally came out, he had to read multiple times to believe it.

Climb Result

Congratulations! The human race achievements are good enough!

In 1 hour, the human race will be returned to the moment before you were taken from Earth.

All memories of the Sentinel Tower will be removed.

The Sentinel Tower will not take humankind back into it again.

Not only multiple times, Asturian read the message hundreds, thousands of times until he believed it. He had done it. He had finally done it.

He had saved humankind.

The weight of the world left his shoulders for the first time in they hundred fifty thousand years he lived throughout ten thousand runs. The average of fifteen years per run could only be achieved by increasing the time limit given by the tower by using special items. His knees weakened and he fell on them. He cried in sheer joy.

He had done it.

He had finally made his mother proud of him.

Asturian sobbed like a child. He let his entire body fall sideways over corpses, blood, and guts. He didn't care. He hugged himself and let himself cry more.

Almost as good as winning was the promise that he would forget it all. Everything about the tower would be erased from his memory. He would go about his life as normal.

Finally, he could rest.

And then, as usual, the tower crushed all his hopes and dreams.

To the victor belong the spoils!

You've cleared the tower by yourself!

As reward, you have been provided with the following items:

> 1 x Khan Elixir of Perfection

> 1 x Khan Honorary Citizenship

> 1 x Khan Memory Pass

The first two were alright. He had only ever read the word "Khan" once before and had no idea if it was a rarity, quality, or something else.

However, the memory pass was the stuff of his nightmares.