"What? Are you sure about that? What if it’s more of this messy scripting you were talking about?" Another one of the Returners asked, earning a raised eyebrow from me.
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"How about you take yourself and greed out of the equation for a moment, Krissener of the Holland Guild," I said with sass, causing the man to stiffen before taking a step back.
"From the start, we aren’t meant to have free access to come and go as we please from the Undead Tower; however, we have restricted access, unlike the Normies, who are locked in there until they clear the Alpha Peak."
"The Tower isn’t intended for us; it’s for the Non-Returners to get a taste of the future, a tool, if you will. So, while some of you sit there and try to formulate plans, keep that thought in mind because, like I said, even if us High-Rankers enter the Tower, even returning the investment that is the Entrance token is a long shot."
"But still possible, so long as we are able to clear the quests on higher floors, correct?" Cutting in and acting like an authoritarian, Erik stated.
"In Theory, as I said, it’s entirely possible; however, there is no discernable way to figure out the reward pool; it’s all randomly generated, just like our Event Quests. I suppose if we assume things in the best-case scenario, individuals may have the opportunity to receive a return on investment, but that’s if, and ONLY IF, they make it to the Beta Floors."
"I haven’t even gotten to the restrictions placed on us Returners; for one, we will be subjected to Standard Particle Suppression."
"Let me build a hypothetical for you real quick." Stepping away from the board, I crossed my arms and faced the group of returners standing all around the room.
"You spend over a year, climbing floor by floor, earning yourself barely enough to make ends meet for survival because, let’s be honest, with how many floors there are, there are bound to be safe zones where people will set up bases or cities, anyway."
"You spend over a year climbing the floors and make it to the final Alpha ranked one, only to find that the quest is a 1v1 match against a Maxed Level Beta-Rank dragon; tell me, how many of you here would be able to win? I know I, for one, could probably barely make it through, but that’s not without severe bodily harm."
"That doesn’t make sense, Mr.Nexus. Something like that wouldn’t happen; the Quests should be set up so that there is a way to win!" Fredrick stated, showing off his experience as a gamer.
"Your mindset isn’t incorrect, Fredrick, and generally, you would be 100 Percent correct. Arkadia is fair, and because the System hands down these quests, they, too, should be fair; however, you don’t have the full information because people…" Glaring at Krissener, I continued my rant.
"Like to think with emotions involved or in a way that allows for their wealth to increase drastically. I specifically told you we would be restricted, but it doesn’t stop at particle suppression or even limited access; the moment we step foot in the Tower, our path is drastically more difficult to the top than any normie."
"Difficulty…setttings, fuck…" Fredrick grumbled while suddenly coming to a realization.
"Correct, I told you the quests are adaptive, and that also includes their contents. Depending on how much higher you are than the Floors Rank, the difficulty setting will be equally adjusted."
"If the Players are on Easy mode, then we start at Hard, and it only gets worse depending on how much higher than the requested Rank we are. So If someone here was Beta-Rank, and they walked into the Non-Rank Peak, well, it would be no different than entering Hell Mode."
"Oh, forgot, I’m talking to simpletons who don’t understand my references; Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert, INSANE, THEN HELL!"
"So if you wish to waltz into the tower, thinking it’s a means to earn a quick buck, you will be brutally killed before you even have the time to shit yourself in fear… but then again, all I have is conjecture at this point until the Tower finishes formation, and we step in there; I have only theories and what I can learn from the runes." Holding up my hands in defeat and shrugging my shoulders, I walked back over to the whiteboard and then circled the runes, which proved the majority of my statement, specifically the restrictions placed on returners.
I wasn’t entirely sure there wasn’t some returner adept in reading runes, but just in case there was, I wasn’t about to play games with the kind of thing that would make me ditch my Nexus alias.
---
From start to finish, my conference with the Current High-Rankers lasted nearly three hours, and apart from some other small details, such as when the Empowerment Stage was supposed to end (Roughly four more hours), I told them about as much as any basic Runesmith would be able to figure out.
What I neglected to tell any of them was the depth of knowledge I had obtained, such as Draven being able to control up to the Non-Rank floors from the get-go and that there were specific pillars on each safezone floor, aka, the first floor of every Rank, which would allow someone general building and control rights, like a kingdom building game.
All of this was vital information to me and mine that I wouldn’t easily release to the public and would instead allow them to figure it out all on their own, but by the time they did, all the pillars would have already fallen into my hands.
Sure, I wasn’t lying about the fact that it would be difficult to earn back the cost of Tokens and such, but that was by merely clearing the floor quests; never once did I mention the taxation system or any other income source that could be captured.
’Even so, this isn’t something which can be done overnight; it is a lengthy process that would take years to come to fruition, and by the time it did, Arkadia would be descending,’ I thought while leaving the basecamp and walking toward the wall of light.