Chapter 190: Evil In A Jar [Bonus Chapter 4/10]

"What’s the condition?" Lukas asked.

Karrakas looked at each of them in turn before speaking.

"I want the three of you to follow my instructions without question. Completely and immediately." His voice was firm. "If I tell you to stop, you stop. If I tell you we’re turning back, we turn back."

"No matter the decisions I make, I don’t want any discussions to counter it. No pushing back, and no deciding that you know better in the moment." He held Lukas’s gaze. "Out there, hesitation is how people die. If I call something, I need it followed instantly."

Lukas nodded slowly. "Understood."

"There’s something else you need to know about the quest itself," Karrakas continued. "Class change quests have specific rules. What is the specific wording for your quest?"

Lukas frowned before answering. "It said to walk barefoot in a straight line for twenty four hours on the Second Floor."

Karrakas sighed in relief. "That’s good."

"Why is that good?"

"The quest said you needed to walk for twenty-four hours, not within twenty-four hours. That means you’ll be allowed to pause and rest during the twenty-four hours, but you cannot sit down. You cannot take the weight off your feet entirely. The moment you sit, the quest fails."

"Any time you spend standing still to rest won’t count towards your twenty-four hours. The clock only moves when you’re walking, so factor that into your expectations. The total time you spend out there will be longer than twenty-four hours."

Akira frowned slightly. "How much longer?"

"Depends on how often you need to rest and for how long." He looked at Lukas. "That part is up to you and your body."

"And if we encounter something I decide is beyond your capacity to handle, we’ll stop immediately. And I want no argument about that."

Lukas, Melody, and Akira shared a few glances, then all three of them nodded.

"We’ll follow your lead," Lukas said.

Karrakas held his gaze for a moment longer, then sat back.

Melody leaned forward. "I have one question. What happens if Lukas fails the quest?"

Karrakas exhaled through his nose.

"If he fails," he said quietly, "he reverts to his original class. Whatever class he wants to change to would be gone and the quest wouldn’t show up again."

"What if he fails the quests but ascends to the Third Floor later? Would the quest come back again?"

"Surprisingly, yes." Karrakas answered. "If he ascends to the Third Floor and meets the requirements, he’d be given another class change quest. But the difficulty would be harder, or it would be something different. He might even meet the requirements for a different class than the one he originally wanted to change to."

"No one knows the rules, but when it comes to some things, the Tower is incredibly consistent."

Akira set her cup down and looked at Karrakas. "I have a question. Something I think you might know more about than most."

Karrakas raised an eyebrow. "Ask."

"How did humans end up in the Tower?" She gestured upwards in a loose motion that encompassed everything above them. "How did any of this start?"

Karrakas was quiet for a moment. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling briefly, as if deciding how to begin.

"Officially," he said, "no one has an explanation. If there were ever records that told the full story, they don’t exist anymore. I don’t know if they were destroyed, lost, or hidden somewhere no one has found."

"But over the centuries, several theories have been made. Most of them are speculation from people grasping at straws." He looked at the table. "But there’s one story that’s been passed down in my family, generation to generation. I can’t tell you how much of it is true. But I can tell you what it says."

Lukas leaned forward slightly, interested.

"A long time ago," Karrakas began, "the world wasn’t what it is now. There were no floors above or below. Just ground beneath your feet and sky above your head. One flat plane, stretching in every direction."

"In order to give humanity a place to thrive, all the evil in the world was gathered up, sealed inside a jar, and buried deep in the earth. Far enough down that no one would reach it by accident. And humanity was given the surface. They were free to build, to grow, and to do whatever they wanted." He paused. "With just one rule. Never go below the ground."

The table was quiet.

"For a long time, humanity honored it," Karrakas continued. "They grew. They built cities and created things worth being proud of, spreading across the surface until the world was full of them."

He looked at Akira. "Then one day, a woman broke the rule."

"Who was she?" Melody asked.

"No one knows her name. No one knows where she came from or what she looked like. All the story says is that she dug. Deep into the earth, past where anyone had gone before, until she found the jar." He paused. "Then she raised it up and smashed it."

Silence filled the air at his words.

"Everything sealed inside came out," Karrakas said. "Evil of every kind, things that had been locked away since before anyone alive could remember. They spread across the surface, killing and destroying. Humanity was nearly wiped out entirely."

He looked at the table. "At least until the Tower was found. No one knows who found it or how, but it was there, and it was the only option left. Humanity fled inside and sealed the door behind them."

"And that is how we came to be inside the Tower."

Akira’s eyes narrowed. "Why did she break the jar?"

Karrakas shrugged. "No one knows. The story doesn’t say. Maybe she was curious. Maybe someone told her to. Maybe she just wanted to see what was inside." He opened his hands. "That part has never had an answer."

Melody shook her head slowly. "I don’t think that’s what actually happened."

"Neither do I, entirely," Karrakas said. "But this story was important enough that someone in my family decided it needed to be remembered and passed on. Generation after generation, they kept it alive."

He looked at her. "Something sparked it. Some real event or real memory gave someone a reason to start telling it."

"Whether that something looks anything like the story we ended up with, I couldn’t say. But I don’t think it came from nothing."

Everyone nodded, absorbing the story they’d just heard.

Lukas sat there, quiet, with only one thought in his mind.

’Isn’t this story awfully similar to that of Pandora’s box?’