When Rakna accepted the notification, he was met with an unrecognizable sight. He squinted his eyes and looked up. Plateau Zero had been thoroughly renovated.
No longer was it a dreary and dark city full of neon lights that defied gravity. It was closer to a dome now, delimited, and still as small compared to other Plateaus. However, uniquely, the walls were geometrically perfect; with smooth cubic pieces of steel haphazardly piled up and soldered together.
These fascinating walls slowly curved to make the hemispherical ceiling. And, at the center of it, a wide and massive vertical tunnel opened a view to something completely alien.
It was bright and filled with various adornments. The tunnel had countless objects melded into it like an expressionist work of art; inverted doors, stone fences, vegetation, wood, gold, glowing ores, flowing rivers… It blended into a myriad of colors suspended in an aurora of light.
When one looked at this passageway, they would feel as if it was a rhetorical path to heaven. But in the people who might try to spot the end of it; a feeling of dread wasn't unlikely.
Rakna tore his eyes away from it and quietly looked. The ground level was much more natural than whatever was up there. At the very edges, adjacent, or outright straddling the walls, some buildings could be seen, reminiscent of what once was Plateau Zero.
Aside from that, the Plateau now resembled a fancy stadium. Which, as of right now… contained a little less than two hundred people by Rakna's count.
The place was big enough that everyone was spaced out plenty, but for the first time, the therian was able to truly admire the diversity of the races in the System. At every glance, he would see a new species; of both Hosts and sentient Wilden.
Whether it be Centaur, Harpy, Mothman, Dokkaebi, Jiangshi, Cyclops, Yaoguai, or Unicorn; these words popped up to his CrystalSight. And that was without counting the many races that Rakna had never heard of in any mythos.
Some of them also fundamentally couldn't be missed. Like the Griffon perched atop a structure in the distance, the Giant with a wine-red beard sitting cross-legged, or the Phoenix floating in the air without even flapping its wings…
And Rakna wasn't the only one observing his environs either. He could sense all the gazes being thrown around. Already, the authority granted to him by his Titles was sending him notifications of people trying and failing to peer into his status.
'Seems like I'm catching attention,' the therian commented internally. He started walking, noting that more people seemed to be teleporting in after accepting the System prompt sent by Eva.
"{Obviously you are,}" Fray blankly said.
Rakna snorted at that and made eye contact with several people he already knew, notably many of the Myth Council members. On a side note, he immediately located Alcina and Ulquiel; the Oni and Pope had somehow already started bickering; they were louder than everyone else.
"So, you are here as well," Rapture said as the therian stopped to stand beside him.
"Well, I'm the one who got this back," he quipped and waved at the Plateau.
"Hm," the golem acquiesced and looked on at the tunnel above. "The Téras killed itself."
Rakna stiffened at the sudden info. "That's… unexpected. Was that his intent from the start? Do you think the Abyss Téra have a way to resurrect their comrades?"
Steam billowed out of Rapture's body. "Who knows."
Before anything else could be said, Rakna sensed something behind him.
"Ooh~" A sultry voice sounded. "So, you are the cutie Karvienth told us about."
The therian looked over his shoulder with a scowl and saw a beautiful woman… hanging upside down. Her long black hair gave out to gravity while her torso was completely nude.
Rakna pursed his lips and glanced upward, taking in the large, arachnoid body that this woman's upper half was attached to. She had woven a web reaching the ceiling and rappelled down.
"…an Arachne, huh?"
Her red eyes gleamed as she smirked. "Why, yes. Does it disgust you, mayhap?"
"Not really," Rakna shrugged. "There are far more sordid creatures out there. Spiders are elegant as far as that goes, although creepy." He wisely held onto the fact that his uncle would have likely shot her head off at first sight though.
She chuckled. "Good to know." She swung on her web to circle him. "I am Juro; Spider Queen."
"The type of 'Queen' I'm thinking of?"
"Yes," she smiled and flipped, landing on the ground on her arachnid legs. Her hair fell back over her breasts as she towered above even Rapture. "A lot of us are here today. The Phoenix up there is Ahken, the King-Title bearer of his race. Same for Gran, the Griffon."
She then pointed her chin in other directions. "The Avian, Tiger, and Cat Kings are there. And you should have met Karvienth at the Myth Council, yes? Look, you can see him from here."
As a matter of fact, Rakna had already located the conspicuously small dragon sitting on the head of a summoned brethren of his.
"I remember that all Kings are part of the Council by default, no?" The therian said. "Why did you come here and not the meeting?"
"Actually, not all King-Title bearers are in the Council. It's only those who are recognized to have developed their reputation that get to be accepted by the System," Juro wagged her finger. "And as for not participating in the meeting… Well, a lot of Kings are Wilden who do not want to deal with Hosts. And the rest are just not interested. But a 'Forefront'… now, that sounds fun."
Rakna squinted his eyes at the smirking Arachne.
"Oops," Juro noticed something and turned her head. "Now that is a scary duo… I will be excusing myself. See you, cutie," she winked and jumped, latching onto her web and crawling back to the ceiling with incredible speed.
It didn't take long for the cause of her sudden retreat to arrive. Rakna looked over and saw a match up that would certainly make a lot of System residents nervous.
"Hey, it's been a while," Cain promptly greeted him with a friendly expression. "I've heard of the situation in Clockwork. I hope everything's okay?"
Rakna huffed. "Yes, nothing too bad, I suppose. But we did discover that an Abyss Téras had been conducting mass assassinations. The only good thing is that Allan managed to pull through."
"Ah, I see," the top Host sighed sadly. "It's a shame he wasn't caught sooner."
"It's too soon to talk about what-ifs," an elderly voice rebutted and Ensis stepped forward to join them. The old warrior opened one eye to look at Cain. "Afnil Albus is still at large, and he can do as much damage, if not more. Who knows what he is doing right now."
Immediately, Rakna could feel the intense gazes exploding in number. He couldn't blame them as right now, arguably the most famous Hosts were gathered in a group, alongside the oldest Local who rarely left his Plateau.
"Well, I am not denying the need for action," Cain replied to Ensis. "I have been trying to find the base of the Abyss Téra for the past weeks, but I have had no luck. From everything we know, the Outer Land has to be where they are, but I only ever encounter regular Téra."
"The 700th is one of the hardest Plateaus to navigate," Ensis scoffed. "The spiritual energies are in such dissonance that tracks cannot be preserved," he explained. "Besides, if we agree to consider them responsible for Plateau Zero's takeover, it's been at least centuries since they've started to prepare; they've had plenty of time to relocate to a very remote corner."
"That makes sense…"
Rakna hummed as he quietly listened to them. He eyed a new arrival and opened his mouth, "By the way, are Kamiria, Lux, or Merlina not with you?"
"Ah, right, she isn't," Cain nervously rubbed his neck, stretching it. "Haha… she is not going to be happy. I accepted the invitation thinking she would get teleported with me as usual," he sighed.
The therian blankly looked at him. "Hell hath no fury like a tsundere scorned. Good luck."
He slumped in defeat.
"Merlina and Lux do not qualify to be here, even if they belong to the Top 10," Ensis answered to his part of the question. "Take a good look at who is gathered here."
Rakna complied and Eye of Symphony appraised every face in his sight in a blink. A list of every person present was projected onto his retina. Kryas, Enya, and Zialtra were here too.
On one hand, as the Top 10 Hosts, there was no reason to investigate their qualifications. On the other, there was a clear anomaly. Isael, Excalibur's wielder, wasn't present despite his brother's attendance. Perhaps he was busy, which could apply to numerous other Hosts and Locals.
But the more Rakna looked, the more he understood what Ensis was alluding to.
"There are only Guild Leaders and 'Crown-Bearers'," the old warrior said with closed eyes. "That is to say, only those at the helm of a substantial group seem to have been brought. "
"Looks like it…" The therian muttered.
While Cain wasn't affiliated with any organization, he was the exception to the rule. The one man at the top of all Hosts probably didn't need a reason to be anywhere.
On the other hand, people like Kryas, Zialtra, and Ulquiel made sense. Truth was, no matter their nature, nearly all factions inside the System had a Guild formed for their activities. That naturally included everyone under the Pavilion, who held the first spot in the Guild Ranking.
Right below them, there was the Church, and in 10th Place, we could find Trafford. Among others, Alicia's Night Parade was ranked 7th. Even the Crafting and Merchant Guilds held 4th and 9th place respectively due to their sheer number of members and soft power.
"If that is the case,we are missing four of the top Guild Leaders then," Rapture commented as his internal structure made a particularly sharp sound. "I can understand Frag and the High Palace, however."
"True," Cain nodded. "Zen is usually quite an agreeable guild, so they might be busy now. So, that leaves us with Shattered Order."
Ensis huffed. "I wouldn't hope to see Nelchael anytime."
"Nelchael?" Rakna raised an eyebrow.
"She's the leader of Shattered Order, the 3rd Ranked Guild operating in Shattered Paradise, which is the 750th Plateau," Cain shrugged. "Oh, now that I think about it, you may not know about this yet because you have joined recently, but you're aware that only Hosts can make Guilds, right?"
"I never really thought about it, but I'd assume so."
"Then, you should also know that Locals can join a Guild instead. Shattered Order is one of those that is composed of mostly Locals. Nelchael is one of the few untainted Angels in the System. She was brought from outside as a Host. She embraced the Fallen Ones despite everything and made a guild for them to belong to."
"It's not surprising considering her epithet," Rapture chimed with a burst of steam. "She was made by God to be the guiding light of clarity to those who have fallen."
"Sounds like a conscientious leader…" Rakna cocked his head in confusion. "Why do you expect her not to come?"
"She never leaves Shattered Paradise," Cain shook his head. "She's a nice person, really. I've met her a few times. But, for nothing, will she ever leave that Plateau. Nobody knows why."
"Is that so…" The therian muttered. He only needed to check his Eye's data to see that this angel was ranked 11th amongst Hosts, just short of the Top 10. Though, even if she didn't directly aid in the war against the Téra, she would at least be the sturdiest defense of the 750th Plateau.
"Speaking of…" Rakna spoke up. "The line between Host and Local is really thin, I realize. Wilden aside, and their incredibly high-level evolutions."
"Haha," Cain chuckled. "I agree. But it's not that weird. Locals are simply the people who descend from those created by the System at its inception; they can even have children with Hosts."
"Wilden too, I guess," Rakna snorted. "I have a horny cat at home," he joked.
Cain smiled in amusement. "For sure. Back in the day, I'm told societies were divided in Plateaus by design. It was beastfolk in the 1st, merfolk in the 100th, automatons in the 250th…" He waved at Rapture. "Humans in the 500th and Fallen Angels in the 750th. With more in between."
"But this all doesn't stop more members of those races from coming in as Hosts," he added. "For instance, we had a Local community of vampires that was swallowed up by Nesslyria."
"That doesn't mean there is no distinction to make at all," Rapture complemented with a dull tone and his core intensified the glow in his eyes. "As the oldest, I have witnessed our advent. The first Locals were made intelligent and fully conscious of reality."
The other three silently looked at him.
"You,young ones, wouldn't know. There is a reason there are so few Hosts or Locals older than a thousand years. In the first millennium, the System was a battlefield. Every day, the ranking would renew itself. And it took as much time to settle down. It was then that the Wilden began to emerge as both an enormous threat and a faction."
Rapture exhaled a cloud of smoke. "The highest Plateaus were the least affected since Hosts took much more time to reach them. Yet, that didn't mean they were peaceful. Before the arrival of Nelchael nine hundred years ago, the Fallen Angels were in civil anarchy."
"Why is that?" Rakna asked curiously.
"Angels are the Agents and Children of God," Ensis said in Rapture's stead. "Falling is the worst of shame for them. So, you can imagine. A whole population of Fallen created tainted; feeling like an insult to their Father."
"Not to mention, they went insane grappling with the idea that they were artificially made by the System and not by His hands," Cain sighed. "Nelchael saved them; they saw her as salvation sent by God."
Rakna fell silent at that and neither did they say anything else. Yet, wordlessly, they shared one more question. Regardless of the System's secrets, they could only speculate what motivated its architect to birth so many creatures in such an irresponsible manner.
"Ah! Rakna!"
The bubble of silence around the group was pierced by the sudden arrival of Lanata. The merry sheep girl ran up to the therian with a beaming face. She braked her momentum with both feet, a tight grip on her sword as always.
"Ah, Lana," Rakna smiled fondly at the girl. "You were diving into a Dungeon earlier, right? Did it go well?"
"Un," she nodded. "It was fun! But I accidentally broke it when I drew Rammy and Eva got mad at me again," she added with a pout. "I got another warning, and she took away my rewards."
The therian snorted. Aside from himself, there were plenty of troublemakers in the System. But amongst them, Lanata probably had received the most scoldings from Eva personally. Her sword was just that otherworldly when fully unleashed.
Ensis glanced at the sheep girl with an appraising gaze. Rapture and Cain also sensed her power as soon as she approached. Their silence alone carried the weight of their thoughts about her.
Soon after her arrival, a pedestal rose in the center of the room and everyone's attention focused on it. A flash of pink light covered it, furnishing it with a flower-like carpet. Eva landed on it after emerging from the now fading light.
The little girl haughtily put her hands on her hips.
"Alright, you maggots! Time for war!"
She grinned naughtily at the dumbfounded crowd.
Rakna facepalmed at the back.