['Reiss (★)' has returned to the Goddesses' embrace! His fighting spirit will be remembered forever.]
['Baric (★)' has returned to the Goddesses' embrace! His fighting spirit will be remembered forever.]
['Vella (★)' has returned to the Goddesses' embrace! Her fighting spirit will be remembered forever.]
['Judo (★)' has returned to the Goddesses' embrace! His fighting spirit will be remembered forever.]
['Lairan (★)' has returned to the Goddesses' embrace! Her fighting spirit will be remembered forever.]
[Party 21 has been annihilated!]
I observed the notification windows hovering above me.
It had not been ten minutes since the scouting party went to the sixteenth floor.
I had been sitting at one of the benches on the first floor square to see how long they would survive and gauge the difficulty of the next tower trial.
Considering time flowed differently between the trial and the lobby, I could not say for sure how long the sixteenth floor would take place.
But I was almost certain the enemies in that trial were too strong for level 10 1-star heroes.
Either that or the scouting party failed the mission's objective on the sixteenth floor, resulting in their annihilation.
Sigyn definitely had changed their approach. Not just in the lobby management, but in climbing the tower as well.
Master never sent a scouting party for regular trials before.
Not only that, Master sent a full party instead of a one-man squad.
Did the fifteenth floor affect Master?
Perhaps Sigyn was surprised by all the dangers we faced in the third Quintal Trial.
I doubted the single scout Master sent for the fifteenth floor allowed them to foresee all the challenges in that mission.
It was something that I had been thinking as well.
Master apparently was not all-knowing about the tower's trials.
They likely did not know what lied on the next floor until they deployed a party to challenge it. Hence Master sending all these scouting parties.
This assumption implied that Master was not the one creating and controlling the tower's missions.
Our Master was a challenger like us.
Someone else created the tower of trials.
The voice that invited me and the other 4-stars to the forged land was the likely suspect so far.
I was not certain how to take this theory, however.
Glad that Sigyn was in similar circumstances as us in regards of the trials.
Or worried that our Master was as clueless as us.
The Quintal Trials were getting more complex the higher we climbed the tower.
The enemies grew stronger and their number kept increasing. More and more heroes were needed to challenge them.
We would need all the help we could get if we wanted to reach the top of the tower.
[Pathetic! I knew they're trash. But still!]
Alam grunted in front of me.
"I assume you can't tell me what went down on the sixteenth floor?"
I asked the fairy.
She immediately shook her head.
[You should know by now that topics about the missions themselves are off-limits. Even for you, Vice-Master.]
I had been observing Alam ever since I met her.
The fairy did not seem to belong to Master.
It was as if she was just here to assist them. But not completely under their authority.
The fairy possessed knowledge that could greatly help our climb.
I was certain she knew what would happen in the trials given her behavior whenever the subject was brought up.
But Alam kept saying that she was not allowed to reveal anything.
Considering the fairy's authority in the lobby, I suspected she was more connected to the power that built the entire forged land than she was to Master.
[Ask me anything about the lobby, but not about the tower's stages. They are something that you'll just have to see for yourself.]
The fairy said to me in a strict tone.
I sighed at her words.
"If only that is enough…"
I proceeded to walk off the square and went to the building by the rift of space-time that Master constructed just today.
Inspecting this new facility was actually the reason why I came down here in the first place.
"I've seen the construction report. Is this the Tactical Post that Sigyn built?"
I asked the fairy.
Alam nodded while rolling her eyes.
[Yeah. It's pretty useless in my opinion.]
She did not seem happy with Master's decision building this Tactical Post.
"Why would you say that? What does this facility actually do?"
[The Tactical Post allows Master to issue commands in the mission.]
My eyes widened upon her reveal.
Master could now order us inside the trials?
I knew we could somehow communicate with Master since that was how Master knew what supply to deliver through my dimensional portals.
But if Master could also guide us in the trials…
"Isn't this a good thing? Master would be able to help us more directly."
Alam snorted at my claim.
[A master should not interfere with the missions. They would just mess everything up!]
A master?
That would imply Sigyn was not the only one of their kind.
But what did that also imply?
That there was another lobby just like ours? One ruled by a different master?
Where did their heroes come from?
Were they fighting for the fate of Dunia as well?
Or could they be from another world?
We had discussions in Fadrin of the possibility there being other worlds than Dunia.
The subject was brought up and studied when the end of the world was no longer an unbelievable topic anymore.
There were talks of creating a portal to those other worlds to evacuate our people.
Assuming such worlds, safe worlds, existed, we still needed the great power to create a portal to reach the faraway stars.
It was a useless discussion since we could never solve either problems.
Though I supposed it was still sort of useless trying to think of other worlds.
What mattered was our own world, Dunia. That was the one world we wanted to save.
"So how exactly does the facility works? What kind of command can Master give us in the trials? How would such commands be conveyed?"
I asked the fairy as I made my way into the small building.
The Tactical Post was consisted of only one room.
There was a circular table at the center of the chamber, with a white map laid on it. Two chairs were placed opposing each other at the table.
[With the Tactical Post, Master would be able to give command which suggests what the heroes should do in the mission.
[Where to go, who to kill, and other types of instructions. There should be a distinct sign emerging in the mission which would indicate the heroes what Master wanted them to do.
[Mind though, the heroes aren't obligated to follow the orders. The heroes ultimately decide what to do in the mission.
[By upgrading the Tactical Post, Master would be able to issue more complex and advanced instructions. The Tactical Post could be upgraded by Master holding mock battles repeatedly with the heroes.]
Such function would definitely help us in the Quintal Trials.
On the tenth floor, the parties were divided and had to work on our own separate goals.
I could not precisely monitor what the other parties were doing back then. Hence I could not give the proper instructions when crisis occurred.
If Master could instruct the other parties in my stead, then we could mitigate such dangerous scenarios in the trials.
But that also depended on how well Sigyn's skill in reading the flow of the battlefield.
Master needed to have a good understanding of tactic in order for them to be of help to us.
Was there a way for me to learn that aspect of Sigyn?
Upon that thought, a notification window appeared before me.
[Master is proposing a mock battle to 'Serafina (★★★★)'.]