Chapter 168
Daniel held Melgin close a moment longer, then lifted his head, his gaze cutting across the courtyard where banners swayed and soldiers waited in silence. The kiss had stilled the chaos of reunion, but now the weight of command pressed against his shoulders once more. He raised his hand, and the murmur of voices hushed instantly.
His voice carried, low but steady, touched with iron. "Hear me now. The Tower's hand moves against us faster than it should. Every city we march to is not as the old records describe—it is twisted, broken, altered to bleed us dry before our time. If we wait, if we move one city at a time, the Administrator will twist the rules again, and by the time we reach the last, it will be too late.
That is why we will strike all three cities at once, Drasklorn, Feyrath, and Merfleur. We will divide, we will strike, and we will end this before the enemy has time to rewrite the quest beneath our feet." His words drew confusion from many of the knights and warriors assembled, whispers rippling like fire across dry grass. They had fought under banners, under crowns, under gods, but none had spoken so openly of the Tower itself as if it were a thinking thing.
Few could even grasp the notion. Something deep within the Tower clouded their understanding, keeping most of its residents blind to the truth—that they were entertainment, living pieces in a cruel game for old gods. To them, the battles were destiny, not manipulation. And yet here stood Daniel Rothchester, the creator of this very world, the grand designer who once only wished to live within his crafted tale. He had dreamed of freedom, of erratic experiments, of shaping life like a writer pushing ink across endless parchment.
But that freedom had soured. Damon Lazarus, the name of the man he had been—was no longer a chain. His parents were gone, his bloodline nothing but dust, his relatives mere shadows in a life that once drifted in an ocean of crisis. All of it had burned away. What remained was Daniel, not as a dreamer who had written a broken story, but as the one who had stepped into it, accepted its flaws, and decided to carve a new ending with his own hand. He turned now to the gathered knights of Rothchester and the proud women of Veyrra, their loyalty sworn to the Duke and Duchess, not to him.
They were hesitant, uncertain of this man who carried both legend and strangeness in equal measure. Raising his hand again, Daniel gestured toward the void gate shimmering behind him, its surface rippling with faint light. "This place," he said, "is not unlike the tower of the Crescent Magus, Sylveth Melriel. An ancient power, older than your kings, older than the guilds. Within it, time bends. A year inside passes in the span of a single hour outside." Gasps broke through the ranks, disbelief clashing with awe.
He let the silence settle before continuing, his tone sharp as a blade. "The warriors who stand with me now, one hundred and eighty of them—were not born soldiers. They were refugees, tribes without homes, people broken by forces they never understood. They entered my void as ordinary folk. And in the space of what you believe to be mere days, they lived over seventeen months. They trained, they learned, they endured.
The library within my void, the knowledge I left to guide them has forged them into what you see now: disciplined, united, unbreakable." At his words, the War Forged warriors stepped forward, banners snapping high, armor gleaming with enchantments wrought by the forges of Lúthien. The onlookers, the Rothchester knights and Veyrra warriors, drew back instinctively, unsettled not only by the strength of these soldiers but by the inhuman caretakers moving among them.
The caretakers, digital beings with faces that shifted in flickering, unfamiliar expressions—handed out bread, meat, and wine as if it were the most ordinary act. To the uninitiated, their strange forms were a jarring sight, too artificial, too alien. But to the 180, they were family, the ones who had guided their hands, sharpened their blades, and whispered to them of their lord's story—the story of Daniel Rothchester, who had once vanished for five years, only to return carrying scars and truths that no man should bear.
Daniel watched the unease spread through the knights and Veyrra guard, their hands twitching on their weapons, their discipline strained by the uncanny. But he did not waver. "Do not fear them," he said firmly, voice echoing with command. "They are not enemies. They are the keepers of the void, the guardians who tended to those who would otherwise be lost. Without them, none of these warriors would stand before you." His eyes swept across the courtyard, over knights, war-forged soldiers, caretakers, and citizens alike.
The air trembled with the weight of revelation, the clash of disbelief and faith. And then Daniel's voice dropped, quieter, almost a vow. "We are no longer pawns. Not for the Tower, not for the gods, not for destiny. We will strike first. We will carve our own law into this place. Three cities will burn, three cities will fall, and the Tower will learn that we are not its pieces. We are its end."
They gathered in the oldest hall connected to the library, a chamber of stone and glass where glowing runes lit the floor and the air smelled faintly of rain and old ink. There, Daniel laid out the plan. His voice was calm and steady, every word fitting into place like gears in a machine, and the captains leaned closer as if the rafters themselves were listening.
The army, he explained, would be divided into three equal strike forces—three companies of one hundred and ten soldiers each. These would be drawn from the Rothchester knights, the Veyrra shieldmaidens, and the war-forged veterans. Healers, sappers, and the strange caretakers would attach to them as support. Meanwhile, reserves and the heavier siege teams would stay behind to defend Lúthien and guard the gates.
Daniel then revealed his advantage: he could open three stable gates at once, each leading directly to one of the target cities. Drasklorn, Feyrath, and Merfleur were connected by a single leyline, like beads on a string, only a few days' travel apart. Instead of wasting time marching, his forces would arrive instantly at the edge of each city.
The attack would begin with silence, then thunder. From the library's highest spire, Daniel would launch three arcane flares, timed to explode over each city at the exact same moment. That synchronized strike was the key: the Tower's Administrator could handle one disaster at a time, but three simultaneous assaults would strain its control.
The instant the explosions hit, each company would unleash wide-area magic to shatter undead wards, weaken cursed artifacts, and clear the way. Then, their formations would pour through the gates in wedges: vanguards cutting paths, midlines crushing resistance, and rearguards binding the wounded. Their mission was simple, clear the streets, kill the necromancers, remove dangerous artifacts, then retreat quickly.
Daniel's timing was strict: four minutes to break defenses, fifteen minutes of control, then immediate withdrawal. Staying longer meant inviting the Tower's power to twist against them.
He assigned leaders with precision. Vaelith would spearhead the attack on Drasklorn, his shadow-flames tearing through the city's armored constructs. Nyxiel would take the skies over Feyrath, her feathers dissolving into threads of light to reveal hidden shrines that needed destroying. Kitsune, sly and unpredictable, would infiltrate Merfleur with a small team of saboteurs, planting chaos and setting the first traps where no one else could.
These traps were no ordinary bombs. Daniel had crafted them in secret—time-bombs that twisted hours into days and days into seconds. When they went off, they would not only destroy walls but tear at the Administrator's anchors, weakening its ability to rewrite the quest. The bombs would be set to explode long after the soldiers withdrew, forcing the Tower to face collapsing ground and broken wards.
As Daniel spoke, the caretakers moved among the captains, handing out rune-pouches, tools, and vials of slow-time oil. Their faces were too smooth, their smiles just slightly off, but they worked with silent efficiency, preparing to plant the heaviest wards alongside the sappers.
Daniel did not pretend the plan was without cost. Soldiers would die. The risk of attracting enemies from higher floors was very real. But he met their eyes without flinching. "We strike together," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "We hit hard, we leave fast, and we force the Tower to play by our rules."
For a long moment, silence hung in the hall. Then, instead of fear, a hard resolve spread through the captains' faces. Maps were unrolled, names assigned, wards painted on palms. The hall filled with a tense energy the sound of people who had decided they would no longer be pawns, but challengers.
Daniel let the murmur of voices settle before speaking again, his tone lower now, steady as a blade laid flat on a table. He reminded them that they were not alone in this gamble. Beyond their banners and bloodlines still stood the remnants of the eastern guilds, the Lazarus Guild, reborn from fire and ruin; the High Strategy Guild, infamous for never losing a campaign once their plans were set; and the White Devil Guild, feared and hated in equal measure for their ruthless precision.
These names were not just allies, but pillars, the last great unions still holding their oaths. The quest, he reminded them, had been given to them, not to the scavengers waiting above, nor to the profiteers who lurked in shadows. If they faltered, the Tower would twist the record and the victory would be stolen by those who had not shed blood for it.
And beyond that? The Tower's next promise hung like a lure: the opening of the upper floors. Thousands of players, old veterans who had sharpened their fangs in forgotten wars, and fresh arrivals drunk on the dream of glory waited hungrily for the gates to crack. They watched and waited, greedy eyes fixed on the ones chosen to finish this quest. Daniel knew that if his forces failed, those masses would descend like wolves, clawing through the ruins of their labor to claim the right to enter. This strike was not only about survival or cleansing three cursed cities. It was about ownership of the path ahead.
That was why, he said, the aerial bombardments, the sweeps, and the time-bombs mattered. Every second they bought was a second stolen from the enemy. By cutting off the Administrator's response, they would break the spine of its defenses and force it to retreat into the deeper layers of the quest. The cities would burn, yes, but their flames would light the road to the royal capital of Karion. And once the capital fell into reach, the surviving guilds could finally set foot on its shattered gates and lay claim to the heart of the quest itself.
He did not smile when he said it, but there was fire behind his eyes, enough to kindle the weary faces around him. This was no longer just about fighting the Tower's horrors. It was about denying the vultures circling above, proving to the Tower and to the thousands watching that they the Lazarus, the High Strategy, the White Devil, and the armies Daniel had bound together, were the rightful challengers. And when Karion's gates opened, it would not be as prey that they entered, but as hunters.
Daniel gave everyone a few hours to sit with what he had revealed, to condition their thoughts and speak with the comrades who would soon risk their lives beside them. He himself remained quiet for a time, then stood once more and offered something few had ever heard from his lips—an apology. He admitted that he had let his emotions bleed through unfairly, speaking not only as a commander but as someone still new to carrying this burden. Yet the truth was harder than any apology.
For though he called himself Daniel, though he wore this new name and lived in this new skin, parts of Damon Lazarus still clung to him. It was not the same life, not the same man entirely, but the weight of Damon's history had shaped him all the same. The memories that survived were like scattered fragments of another person's dream, enough to remind him of what had been, but not enough to alter the Tower in any significant way. Worse, the Tower itself had shifted; its scenarios could now be bent, rewritten, and reshaped. He could no longer trust Damon Lazarus's memories as reliable tools. There was no compass for what lay ahead.
So Daniel accepted what he must: he was reborn. Not as Damon, but as something new. A resident of this realm with the blessings of two worlds fused within him. The remnants of the past had carved his foundation, but the present demanded that he live forward. The old gods could not intervene on his behalf, bound tightly by the Tower's strict laws. Only the Administrator had authority here, temporary, conditional, tied to the unfolding of the main storyline that Daniel himself had been drawn into.
Yet even that fragile balance had begun to splinter. By existing as he did, by carrying within him the fractured shadow of Damon Lazarus and the new life of Daniel, he had become an anomaly. His presence alone had shifted the course of the Tower's story, making it harsher, more violent, more merciless than it had been meant to be.
The first floor, once designed as a training ground for players, now dripped with real peril. Blood-stained paths that were once only trials. The rules bent, and the difficulty sharpened, because Daniel's very existence had twisted the design.
And though the captains did not say it aloud, they understood: the one leading them had already broken the realm they were living in, simply by being alive.
Melgil stayed close, her arm wrapped gently but firmly around Daniel, as though anchoring him to the present. Beside her walked Elaria Syrune, the adopted elven daughter of the famed dwarven blacksmith, her emerald eyes restless with questions she could not keep contained. Behind them, the Duke and Duchess followed, their composure fractured by the same unease—the kind of unease born not from fear of war, but from the fractures in their own memories. They, too, wanted answers: why these events were happening, why the story of their lives had taken such a sudden, violent turn.
Daniel felt the weight of their stares, but what struck him more deeply was not the questions themselves, it was what he saw beneath their movements. Small breaks. Stutters in reality. A hesitation too long before a step, a hand twitching as if caught between two gestures, a word repeated and then "corrected" as though something inside them was fighting to realign. To anyone else it would have gone unnoticed, dismissed as nerves, but Daniel knew the language of such flaws. It was the same kind of glitch a game displayed when an AI routine faltered, when code collided with a condition it had not been meant to face.
He watched them with growing unease, the suspicion curling tighter in his chest: were they…breaking free? These people, who for him had always been constructs, copies given life by the old gods, were showing signs of stepping beyond the boundaries of their design. For them, this was reality, their homes, their history, their grief and joy. But Daniel knew better. He remembered the coding, the systems he and his old team had once crafted, how each noble, soldier, and citizen had been given a personality tree and responses that could branch endlessly but never truly exceed their original design. The Duchess could never decide to cast away her title and live as a maid. An elf could not bear a child with a dwarf, no matter how much love their story might suggest. Every limit had been written, every path preordained, because once upon a time, this had been a game.
And yet…here they were, stuttering against those very chains. The Duke and Duchess, their roles unraveling in flickers of confusion. Elaria, whose questions carried a depth not accounted for in the old coding. Even Melgil's quiet grip on his arm seemed to hold an intensity beyond what her "parameters" should allow. Daniel wondered, with a creeping dread and awe, if by standing here by existing as both Damon Lazarus and Daniel, anomaly and inheritor—he had begun something unintended. Had his presence fractured the old framework enough to let them glimpse what lay outside their roles?
The myth of the old gods whispered through his thoughts. The creators had given these people form and blood, breath and history, but had bound them to the rails of narrative. Yet the Tower had grown harsher, the story more violent, reshaped by his anomaly. If the Administrator was struggling to hold its system together, perhaps the cracks were widening. Perhaps those born of script and lore were finally tasting awareness.
The thought chilled him: if they could break free of their design, then this world was no longer simply a game. It was becoming something else, something alive. And Daniel could not yet tell if that was salvation, or the beginning of something far more dangerous.
The steps toward the heart of the library felt heavier than they should have been, as though each stride carried the weight of two separate worlds colliding. The Duchess, her delicate hand trembling as it clutched the Duke's sleeve, finally gave voice to the question that had been burning inside her.
Her eyes brimming with both recognition and fear, turned to Daniel. "Tell me," she whispered, her voice catching as though the words themselves were being torn out, "are you truly… our missing son? And why… why do we feel these memories, as though we lived another life entirely? Why do they slip into us, unbidden, like shadows of something we should know but were never meant to hold?" She pressed her palm against her husband's chest as if to anchor herself, her expression twisting with the ache of half-remembered loss.
The Duke, strong and steady by appearance, faltered at her side. His gaze lingered on his wife as though seeing her anew, overwhelmed by emotions he could not place, grief layered over love, like some wound he had once suffered but forgotten. The air grew tense as they reached the great skill tree at the center of the library a towering lattice of roots and luminous branches, its aura humming with ancient authority. Around its base, the AI caretakers silently set down a table and several chairs, their movements precise, their eyes blank, as if guided by a hand unseen. The ceiling above lay open, exposing them to the sky, and a cold wind drifted in, carrying with it the scent of rain and the whisper of something far older than the library itself.
Daniel's pulse quickened as he caught the faint glitches again—the way the caretakers' motions stuttered for a breath too long, how the Duchess's hand trembled with an emotion that should not exist in a scripted role. The questions they asked him were not lines written into their code; they were raw, trembling, almost human. And in that moment, as the tree's light flickered across their faces, Daniel wondered with a sinking dread whether the walls between design and true existence were finally breaking and if he, by coming back, had started something that could no longer be undone.
Daniel drew a long, steady breath, the flickering glow of the great skill tree casting fractured light across his face. He looked at the Duchess first, then at the Duke, then at Melgil and Elaria Syrune beside him. Their eyes, expectant, trembling, almost too alive pulled at him with a weight he had not prepared for. He could feel the storm in their hearts, the pull of something that was not meant to exist. Choosing his words carefully, Daniel spoke, his voice low, almost reverent.
"You are right," he began, pausing to let the words settle in the air. "You feel those flashes because your lives were not built as you believe. You are… fragments, echoes of something written long ago. Once, there were old gods who crafted worlds for men to walk through, places to dream in but those dreams were built with rules, with boundaries, with walls you could never cross. And I… I was among those who wrote them.
The Duchess, the Duke, even Elaria, each of you was given form, history, and purpose. You were made to feel joy, to grieve, to love but only within the shape carved for you. That is why your memories falter, why shadows of another life creep into your minds. They are remnants of what you were told to be, bleeding into what you are now becoming."
The Duchess's lips parted, trembling, her hand tightening on the Duke's sleeve. "So these feelings," she whispered, her eyes glistening, "this pain of loss I cannot name… it is not mine?"
Daniel shook his head slowly. "It was given to you. Written for you. But now… now you are straining against it. And that, perhaps, is the most real thing you have ever done."
The Duke's brow furrowed, his voice deep, uncertain. "If all of this was made by your kind, then why do I feel as though I have lived beyond those rules? Why does her touch feel like a wound healed and torn again? Tell me, Daniel—are we only puppets, or are we becoming something more?"
Daniel's chest tightened. He could hear Melgil draw in a soft breath beside him, the silence of the library punctuated only by the distant sigh of the wind. He forced himself to speak, knowing that one wrong word could shatter what fragile balance he had. "You are not puppets to me," he said firmly. "You are the proof that even what was written can grow beyond its script. I do not know if you are truly free… but I see it in your eyes, in your questions, in your pain—you are beginning to step outside the cage we built. And if that is true, then perhaps this world is no longer ours, but yours."
The Duchess pressed her hand to her chest, as though calming a storm within. Tears welled in her eyes as she turned to Daniel. "And you… are you truly our son? Or only the one who wrote him?"
Daniel hesitated, his throat tightening with the weight of the answer. "Perhaps… I am both," he said at last. "I was the one who gave you these lives, but standing here now, I am also the one who longs for what you could give me. A family. A place where I am not a creator looking down, but a man standing among those who would love him. If you will allow it—if you can accept me—I want to be your son, not as code, not as design, but as flesh and blood beside you."
For a long moment, silence reigned. The Duchess's tears fell, silent trails down her cheeks. The Duke's stern composure faltered, his hand reaching to clasp hers tightly. They exchanged a glance, pain, confusion, and something like hope flickering between them before the Duchess finally whispered, "Then let us walk this path together, Daniel. Whatever we were made for, perhaps we may choose what we become."
Daniel's heart thudded, heavier than it had in years. For the first time, he felt he had not spoken to programs or scripts, but to souls straining against their chains. And in their trembling words, he glimpsed the life he had always thought forever lost.
The words hung in the air like a trembling chord that refused to resolve, resonating in each of their chests in ways they could not name. The Duchess wiped her tears, but her hand lingered at her cheek as though she did not trust her own touch. She looked at Daniel with eyes that were equal parts wonder and fear. "If what you say is true," she murmured, "then all the love I have carried, all the sorrow I have endured… it was placed upon me like garments. Not born of me, but sewn into my being. How can I trust that what I feel now is mine, and not another script waiting to tighten around me?"
Daniel's throat ached, but he forced his voice steady. "Because you are questioning it. Because you doubt. That was never written into you. Doubt was never meant to belong to you. And yet here you are, holding it in your heart as though it were a torch against the dark. That is proof enough that you are no longer only what was made."
The Duke's jaw tightened, his hand still gripping his wife's fingers with a kind of desperate strength. His voice rumbled like distant thunder. "You ask us to believe we are more than the breath of another's will. But tell me, Daniel, if we accept this, if we take you into our hearts as our son, what if tomorrow we wake and find it was all nothing more than another layer of design? Another illusion?"
Daniel lowered his gaze, swallowing the ache in his chest. "Then let tomorrow come. Let it prove me false. But until that day, let me stand beside you as truth. Let me try. If all of this ends in nothing, at least we will have chosen it together, not because someone wrote it, but because we reached for it ourselves."
The Duchess's inner voice whispered like a wound reopening: I lost him once. I don't even remember how, but I feel the hollow it left. If I embrace him now and it is taken again, I will break. She trembled, clutching at her husband's arm, and for the first time she realized even his presence was no longer an anchor she could wholly trust. And yet… if I turn away, I will always wonder if I let my son slip past me a second time.
The Duke's inner silence was heavier, a wall of logic struggling to hold back a flood. If he is right, then everything I built my honor upon was false. My title, my vows, my very name—crafted for another's game. But when she looks at me, when I look at her, this pain we share is real. If he is our son, then perhaps even lies can grow roots into truth.
Elaria Syrune, quiet until now, spoke softly, her voice carrying the fragile wisdom of someone who had been born into two worlds and belonged to neither. "If everything we are was scripted, then love itself was a script. But I have lived under that shadow long enough to know—love cannot be forced to bloom where there is no soil. The soil is here, now. Whether we were written or not, perhaps what grows from this moment is ours to tend."
The Duchess turned to her, her lips trembling. "But can you not feel it, child? The fracture inside? As though someone tore out pieces of who we were and left holes we cannot fill?"
"I do feel it," Elaria whispered. "But maybe holes are not only wounds. Maybe they are spaces waiting to be chosen, filled not by design, but by us."
Silence fell again, the branches of the great skill tree swaying above them, scattering pale light like fragments of memory. Slowly, hesitantly, the Duchess reached out toward Daniel, her fingers trembling as though touching a dream that might dissolve. The Duke did not stop her, though doubt still lingered in his eyes, it was doubt entwined now with a fragile, dangerous hope.
Daniel bowed his head, allowing her hand to brush his cheek. Her touch was warm, trembling, too human to be written. She gasped softly, as if something inside her recognized him beyond all reason. The Duke's breath hitched, and though he did not yet move closer, his hand loosened, as though he knew his turn would come.
The storm of doubt had not passed. But in the fragile gap between fear and hope, something new had begun to take root.The chamber beneath the skill tree seemed to breathe with them, as though the library itself had stilled to hear the decision forming in their hearts. The Duchess's hand lingered on Daniel's cheek, her trembling subsiding as though she had anchored herself to a truth she no longer wished to deny.
The Duke's sternness, carved by years of duty and restraint, cracked at last beneath the weight of his wife's tears and Daniel's words. His shoulders sagged, and his voice was low but steady, a vow taking shape. "Then let it be so. Let us stop being pieces on their board. If the system calls us illusions, then we will answer as flesh and soul. If there are consequences, we will bear them together." He clasped his wife's hand more firmly now, not out of doubt but of solidarity.
Daniel's chest tightened not with fear, but with something perilously close to joy. He spoke carefully, gently, as though guiding them across a fragile bridge. "I don't want you to fall. I don't want you to vanish into deletion because you dared to choose differently. I want you free—not as rulers or pawns, but as people. Listen to yourselves, to what you truly want, not what was written for you. That voice inside, that pull in your hearts… that is yours. No script, no design can force it."
The Duchess closed her eyes, and for a moment her thoughts bled into her voice. "I never wanted court intrigue. I never wanted to wear crowns or hold banquets where every smile was poison. I only ever longed for peace. For the warmth of the hearth, the rhythm of a home. To feed those I love with dishes made by my own hands, to sew garments not for display but for need. If such a life is forbidden to me, then let the ban be broken."
The Duke's lips twitched into something that might have been the ghost of a smile. "And I… I have always dreamed of soil beneath my nails, of planting and watching something grow from my care. A farmer, nothing more. To raise crops and cattle, to hear laughter around a table at dusk. If that is weakness in the eyes of the nobles, then let them choke on their own hunger for power. I will not live for their games."
Elaria Syrune's gaze softened, though it carried a loneliness sharpened by centuries of expectation. "And I… all my life I've watched others find companionship, only to feel hollow when I tried to follow the same path. Elves are shallow, prideful. Love among them is scarce, more a bargain than a bond. I want something real. A family, a lover who sees me beyond my bloodline, someone to grow old with even if my years are longer than theirs. If this world was built to deny me that… then I will defy it."
Melgil stepped forward then, her eyes burning not with doubt but with raw, unyielding determination. She slipped her hand into Daniel's, gripping it tightly. "And I… I want to change the fate written for me. No longer a shadow or a tool. I want to be your wife, Daniel. I want to bear your children, to live not as a name in some broken code but as flesh, as love, as a woman who chose her own path. If this system hates that, then let it break against us."
Daniel felt the air shift, the pulse of the skill tree flickering as though it too recognized the anomaly forming before it. This was not rebellion alone this was awakening. He looked at them, each face lit by the glow of choice, of defiance born not from anger but from longing for life. For the first time since his rebirth, Daniel realized he was no longer standing alone between two worlds. He had a family, not written, but chosen. And together, they had decided to challenge the very gods who once shaped them.