Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 398: Piker

Darkness quickly gave way to light, and Zac in his muddled state was a bit confused when he was met with a prompt that covered his whole vision.[Tower of Eternity entered. Use pseudonym or real name?]

It was just like when the ladder system was initiated back in the day, and Zac looked at the prompt blankly for a few seconds. The events that just had transpired made him unwilling to use his real name, but he also didn’t want to be known as the Super Brother-Man again. He had already introduced himself as Zac at the Zethaya, and Boje was still alive, so he was a bit unsure what to do.

But suddenly he had a spark of inspiration.

“Zac Piker,” Zac said with a raspy voice.

Piker was his mother’s maiden name, at least according to his dad. Zac had been one year when they married, and Leandra took on Robert’s last name. By now Zac realized it was probably a fake name she used when she arrived on Earth, which made it a solid option to choose.

Picking this pseudonym was a way for him to signal his mother that they were alive. She would perhaps hear of the name somehow, especially if he climbed far enough, and come help them out with their situation back on Earth.

The scene quickly changed and Zac found himself sitting on by a camp-fire, joined by his two travel companions and a headless corpse. The moment the prompt disappeared Zac felt a pang of worry, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he had just made a monumental mistake choosing that name. But done was done, and Zac rather focused on the others.

Galau had woken up at some time during their frantic escape, and he currently sat on the ground looking as though his soul had left him. His eyes were glazed as they stared into the distance, void of thought and hope. Ogras was instead staring evenly at Zac, his eyes rife with unspoken words.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t expect that to happen,” Zac coughed as he scratched his chin. “But I did get a treasure for Alea I think.”

Of course, his true feelings weren’t quite as calm as he wanted to let on. The Splinter had thoroughly screwed him over this time, to the point of no return. Zac groaned as reached for his Cosmos Sack and took out a Nexus Crystal to start restoring his energy.

The combination of his terrible wounds, using [Hatchetman’s Rage], and activating the first two swings of [Deforestation] had really done a number on his body, and he felt so weak that a level 20 would be able to wring his neck if they wanted to.

Luckily he hadn’t suffered any wounds to his soul, so he had no problem activating his Dao of Trees to help recuperating. The Dao soothed his harried body, and he finally had a chance to look around.

If it wasn’t for him remembering entering the Tower he would have thought they had left the special dimension and were teleported somewhere on Earth. He knew that the place was magical, but he had underestimated the Tower of Eternity.

Zac had somewhat expected to find himself inside some sort of maze, where he had to beat the floor boss to proceed to the next floor, like some old school dungeon crawler. But he was currently sitting in front of a fire in a small glade. Around him was a tranquil leafy forest, and there was even a normal sky when he looked up through the canopy.

Nothing about this place felt like either a tower or some sort of Trial, but rather a simple camping trip that brought back his memories to the day that the Integration took place. They were only missing the trusty camper and a cooler full of beer to complete the experience. But everyone present obviously didn’t share Zac’s nostalgia.

“I’m finished,” Galau said with hollow eyes from across the fire. “My cousins will tell the elders what transpired. I will be sacrificed to the Zethaya Clan in an effort to curry favor and distance themselves from you two lunatics.”

“Well, this is our bad,” Zac said, but corrected himself after seeing the face Ogras was making. “Fine, my bad. I got a bit heated and things got out of hand. We will do our best to make things right for you.”

“You can always say that we kidnapped you,” Ogras finally said after releasing a heavy sigh. “We did carry you into the tower after all.”

Galau didn’t answer, as he kept looking into the distance with a face full of regrets. Zac and Ogras could hear him mumbling under his breath, but Zac could only make out ‘. Ogras only rolled his eyes before he turned to Zac.

“Are you okay?”

“Can you give me a few hours?” Zac sighed.

“It’s fine, we’re not short on time any longer,” Ogras shrugged. “We’ll wait.”

Zac nodded in thanks and arduously got up from his sitting position, but he suddenly turned back toward the fire as he took out the small vial he got from Boje.

“Can you tell me what this is?” Zac asked as he waved it at Galau.

The youth initially wanted to ignore him, but he soon enough reluctantly got up to his feet to look at the bottle.

“It’s actually a bottle of High-Grade [Serene Flesh Pill]. It’s part of the Zethaya Pill House Serene Path-series of healing and nurturing pills. These three pills are worth almost 200 Million Nexus coins!” Galau blurted out. “The Zethaya truly have the best stuff.”

“Can you be sure that it’s not poisoned or something?” Zac asked.

He initially hadn’t planned on eating these things, but if he only relied on his own pills and constitution he would be in a bad shape for weeks, which was too much time to waste even within the Tower. He literally had pieces of guts dangling down from the side, and he was hesitant to move around as it was.

Galau looked a bit confused, but his eyes started shimmering with a slight glow, indicating he was using some sort of ocular skill.

“It looks fine to me?” Galau said. “Besides, I think the Zethaya wouldn’t do something to create poison pills disguised as their healing pills. Such a thing would cause massive harm to their reputation. They would rather offer an extreme bounty for your capture if they wanted to deal with you.”

Zac felt it made sense, and he took out one of the pills that looked like a pristine pearl. It was a lot better than any pill he had found during the hunt or bought from Calrin. His gut feeling didn’t warn him either, so he quickly popped the pill into his mouth as he went over to the body of Rasuliel. He

Of course, the cherry was just one of a large number of treasures, making Zac feel that expending the charge on his ring to not be the end of the world. There were no doubt more defensive treasures in the Spatial Tool that Rasuliel didn’t have a chance to use during their hectic battle.

Zac took out one box or vial after another, glancing at their contents. All of them were clearly good items judging by their spiritual emanations, but he had no idea what they did. He could have Galau go through the things to find anything that would be useful during the climb. But he suddenly froze after opening a particular box.

Wasn’t that the Eye of the Pathfinder Oracle?