Tower Apocalypse 3, page 1
TOWER APOCALYPSE 3
CASSIUS LANGE
RYAN TANG
Copyright © 2023 by Cassius Lange
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or literary publication.
Publisher’s note:
This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters, and incidences are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, events or locations, is completely coincidental.
Trade paperback
Amazon KINDLE
1st Edition – 2023
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CONTENTS
Foreword
1. Meet Tiamat
2. Town Management I
3. Put Away The Pitchforks
4. Town Management II
5. The Test
6. The Alliance
7. We Have Cookies
8. Boba Tea
9. Skill Quests
10. Floor 5, Part 1
11. Floor 5, Part 2
12. Floor Of The Deposed Demigod
13. System Reboot
14. The White Glint
15. Floor 6, Part 1
16. Floor 6, Part 2
17. Floor 6, Part 3
18. A Strength Beyond Stats
19. The Stranger
20. A New Quest
21. Ship Core
22. Floor 7, Part 1
23. Floor 7, Part 2
24. Security Approaching
25. Pure Chaos
26. The Final Push
27. Fresvale
28. Verdunn
29. Potions R Us
30. Floor 9, Part 1
31. Floor 9, Part 2
32. Floor 10
33. Lakeside Terrace
34. Roulette
35. World Battle, Part 1
36. World Battle, Part 2
37. World Battle, Part 3
Epilogue
The LitRPG Community
More Community
FOREWORD
A brief summary of Devin's adventures in the previous two Tower Apocalypse books.
Book 1
One day, when we were just minding our own business, an enormous tower slammed into my hometown and sucked me inside. But it wasn’t just me—the same happened to more people all around the planet.
Me and 99,999 other kidnapped humans, were brought to Gaea, a world ruled by Demigods and an arrogant being known as the System.
Our bodies and minds were mysteriously transformed. We gained superhuman abilities and found fantastical weapons. An enormous tower loomed high above us, and we were promised that each floor we climbed promised even more strength and rewards.
It wasn't nearly as cool as it sounded.
20% of the humans were picked from the dregs of humanity—thieves, criminals, bloodthirsty mercenaries. In a world where might made right, they quickly seized power.
It was all me and my newfound friends could do to survive.
I gathered trusted allies, and we built a place for ourselves. We hunted monsters together, and found out what we could eat. We even managed to build a small village, a sanctuary from the thugs surrounding us.
I found my friend Jenny from back on Earth, and we met a tough and reliable guy named Ben, along with his beautiful sister Emma. Our party continued growing after that, with Ren the merchant, Elisa the healer, and Hermina the sniper. We even got some veteran help from Hanson and his band of military men.
Best of all, I developed a summoner ability, reanimating Reiny the skeleton knight and Shai the skeletal wyrm. They looked creepy but acted just like big kids, with loyal personalities to match.
There was only one problem.
The System kept punishing me for killing other humans—even in self-defense. Sometimes, it felt like I was punished harder for protecting myself.
First, I got the Hexmancer class, then my katana transformed into a cursed blade that kept pushing me to kill more, offering limitless power if I succumbed to the calling.
Things got worse from there.
The System infected my mind and body directly, using negative karma to forcibly change my personality. It wanted to push me into becoming a bloodthirsty monster willing to attack innocent people to grow stronger, and I had to fight it every single day.
Soon, I had the slayer's mark, a grim reaper floating above my head that advertised to everyone I was a murderer. It was basically the scariest scarlet letter ever, and soon, people were siding with Mafia bosses from back on Earth instead of me. Talk about bad luck…
And if I'm being honest, part of me got that. A cursed katana, two hulking skeletal monsters flanking me, a giant shadowy aura around me, the ability to curse people to death...yeah. Not winning a congeniality award anytime soon.
But I knew whining and moaning wasn't going to get me anywhere. If I wanted to fix my reputation--and make sure that humanity wasn't led by a bunch of thugs and killers--I had to use action, not words.
I was going to prove the System wrong. Maybe I wasn’t going to become a great person or anything, but I definitely wasn’t going to be a demented killer.
My friends and I started climbing the tower, achieving goals and objectives while pushing humanity forward as a species. As people fought alongside us, we fixed our reputation one person at a time.
At the end, we were confronted with the biggest creep of them all--the Demigod's favorite human, a thug named Roman with mind control powers and a magical sword. He didn't care at all about humanity's growth, he just wanted power.
In fact, he attacked us right when me and my friends were trying to clear the third floor. He wanted to kill us, and to get the kill steal, taking all the credits and rewards for himself.
The battle was tough.
He knew how to use the karma system, and he built my anger up to a fever pitch.
When he took over, he tried getting me to kill my friends, even Emma, who for some crazy reason had decided to become my girlfriend.
In the end, we pushed through. I was able to regain control of myself, and strike him down.
For our efforts, the Demigods rewarded us the town of Prahna on the third floor, giving humanity a place to stay…and for me, I got my first actual good day of rest since coming to this place.
People even started looking at me with admiration instead of hatred, and even the mark stopped mattering as much.
I had to admit that I liked it. Being hated sucked, and having everyone looking to me…well, I didn’t think I was a great leader or anything, but I did have an ego.
However, peace wouldn’t last long. It never did.
Book 2
After getting rid of Roman, things were just starting to look a little better.
I was learning a lot more about force, the magical power we’d gained since coming to Gaea. Part mana and part chi, yet distinctly technological, I knew the strange power contained the key to our eventual freedom.
Me and my village continued growing larger, and we were even able to bring in some of Roman’s brainwashed victims. Everybody was working hard and putting the work in, growing our base to be better and better.
Not only that, we formed new alliances with other villages. Maxwell and his wife Alice led a village to our north, and Allan and his sister Sonya led a village to our east.
At first, I hadn’t trusted either of them, but after risking our lives together at the battle of Prahna, we started splitting our resources, including our town portals and hubs. That helped us grow even further, and my party turned into a squad after I added the four Blade Dancers, led by Marc Rosewater, and Aleena the harpy summoner.
Strangest of all, the System started helping me.
Before, it was downright hostile, mocking my efforts to defeat Roman, the Demigod’s favorite.
But now, it was handing me hints, feeding me a path towards greater power.
I didn’t know what was going on, but I took the tips. I needed all the help I could get.
However, as our power rose, so did the danger.
Boris the head of the R
Even worse, our worries weren’t restricted to humans anymore.
The darkling and dwergar, two other races, had spawned near us. The System promised a climactic World Boss event that would pitch all three races against each other.
We did what we could, continuing to grow our town while climbing the tower and forging new alliances. After the Auction of Prahna, we gained plenty of powerful items. Emma was becoming a powerful mage in her own right, and Ben even got Roman’s old sword.
After proving our strength in a skirmish with Tang and Schroder, we added them to our alliance as well, albeit on somewhat uneasy terms. They weren’t going to work with us directly, but I sensed they had humanity’s good in mind, especially since they were willing to take just about anyone in to form an army.
Disaster struck at the worst possible time.
In the middle of a feast to celebrate our new alliance, Ren discovered what Boris, Miki, and Perrin were up to—they’d become Cultists, servants to the System. In exchange for new powers and specialized living weapons, they were sacrificing humans to the World Boss, preparing the latest event.
We rushed to battle, killing them, but it was too late—the World Boss awoke.
It was a horrifying Brood Mother, a giant mix between a bug and a dinosaur that could spawn countless monster children to attack us.
The sight of the enormous creature also attracted the darkling and the dwergar. The darkling were vicious and savage, with a strict hierarchy focused on their princes Nieven and Tigris. Meanwhile, the dwergar were outright bizarre—it was a strange mix that combined tough-looking dwarf-like creatures with enormous blue-skinned giants.
For a while, there was a tense three-way standoff, even as the Brood Mother and her spawn raged through human territory.
But at the end, Schroder and I were able to broker a peace. The dwergar and us allied, pushing back the darkling and killing the Brood Mother.
Once again, we’d triumphed through near-impossible odds, securing our survival, and even gaining new allies along the way.
And at the end of the fight, the System offered one last bit of help, this one far more valuable than everything else combined. She reanimated the Brood Mother as one of my summons, turning it into an all-powerful skeletal beast named Tiamat.
The rewards from the World Boss came pouring in, and humanity was poised to grow stronger than ever before.
But at the same time, I felt something weird happening.
There were machinations on Gaea rumbling outside of our control, and I had an inkling the System’s help wouldn’t last for much longer.
MEET TIAMAT
“Meet Tiamat.”
I gazed down at my village from Tiamat’s back. Riding her wasn’t necessarily to introduce her, but I knew how impressive I looked sitting on the warlord’s throne at her back. As the village leader, I wanted people to know I could keep them safe, and part of that was a little bit of showmanship.
At twenty-five feet tall while standing on all fours, Tiamat was still five feet shorter than Shai at his full height. However, the transformed Brood Mother was much broader than the skeletal wyrm.
Tiamat looked a little like an ankylosaurus skeleton, only with a bladed stegosaurus-like tail. Her head was vaguely draconic, with a long snout, countless razor-sharp teeth, and three rows of horns.
It was a few days after the last battle. My friends and I had settled back down in our village, and for a while—a very short while—life was peaceful. We farmed in the Resource Hub, trained in the Dungeon Hub, and got to relax and enjoy our lives together in the market.
There was only one issue—the skill boxes and rewards we’d received after defeating the World Boss. Initially, the timer on the boxes had been ticking down from twenty-four hours, promising great prizes to everyone who’d fought in the event.
But a short while after, a new notification appeared, claiming that all rewards were frozen for investigation. We had no idea what that meant.
According to Schroder, who went to visit dwergar territory, their boxes were frozen too.
But other than that mystery, everything seemed like it was going well.
Now that everyone was settled down, I thought they were ready for the next big shock—my latest summon, a hulking recaptured World Boss.
Emma blinked. The shock was obvious in her eyes. “Is that… the Brood Mother?” she asked hesitantly. She didn’t show any fear, but I could see she was a little uncomfortable. I couldn’t blame her. We’d just fought the Brood Mother a few days ago, and the battle had resulted in significant casualties for all three races—human, darkling, and dwergar.
Hermina’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the skeletal monstrosity. “It is…isn’t it. Some kind of transformation, or something. But how did that happen?”
“Did that thing even have any bones?” Ben asked. “I thought it was more like a bug, wasn’t it.”
Rhino laughed. “It had bones, yes. I remember smashing into them with my rhino head. But the bones weren’t quite like this. Devin, what happened?”
I paused, unable to offer a direct explanation.
The Brood Mother had been a gift from the System, and she’d threatened to punish me for telling everyone too much about her assistance.
I didn’t know why, but she was basically slipping additional power to me under the table.
All I knew was that I couldn’t afford to turn it down. Reanimating the Brood Mother into Tiamat had been the greatest help yet, and I was hoping for more.
“I got lucky, let’s leave it at that,” I said.
Ben rolled his eyes. “Lucky. You reanimated the World Boss and turned it into a dinosaur because you got lucky.”
“Well, I did get the last hit on it. And I got an additional reward for dealing the most damage. Maybe it was related to that.”
Ben smiled. It looked like the explanation satisfied him. “Well, it seems like you’ve gone far ahead of me again, Devin. I’ll have to get right back to training.”
My simple explanation seemed to mostly satisfy everybody.
I could tell that some of them, like Emma, Ren, or Hermina, had their suspicions, but they knew better than to pry. After living on Gaea for the last few weeks, we knew that the System and the Demigods were utterly arbitrary.
Hansen walked right up to Tiamat, then briefly bowed his head. The brief movement was polite, yet proud, much like everything the veteran soldier did. Tiamat’s shadow loomed far over the man, but he spoke without fear.
“Tiamat. My name is Hansen—I’m not sure you remember me, but I fought on the opposite side of the battle. I was wondering, do you still have access to your brood spawning ability?” he asked.
Tiamat’s voice rumbled through the village, and I could see the others jolting in surprise. Despite her large size, Tiamat’s voice wasn’t nearly as deep as they’d expected. It was soft and pleasant, even motherly. She reminded me of an ancient Greek goddess, perhaps Athena.
“Of course, I still have that ability,” she replied. “As a lifeform based on the Brood Mother, summoning spawn is my signature technique.”
