Perspective: Alessio Leone
Ignite your Essence.
Even the phrase itself carried an almost mystical weight — as if each syllable were part of a ritual.
Among all the concepts within the Black Tower, Essence was perhaps the most complex — and the most misunderstood.
In his previous life, Alessio had spent countless nights reading, rereading, and analyzing every possible record on the subject.
And even after so much information, so many theories and speculations, no one truly seemed to understand what Essence was.
The most widely accepted theory — at least among the players who had managed to ignite it — claimed that Essence represented the truest reflection of the player's own self.
Not a mere attribute or numerical bonus.
But a living extension of who they truly were.
It was as if the game itself could look deep into a player's soul — through masks, desires, and contradictions — to find something that defined them… and then ignite it, turning that core into real power.
A concept as symbolic as it was subjective.
But it made sense.
The Black Tower had always been that way — cold and mathematical in structure, yet poetic in its design.
And the testimonies of those who had gone through this process only reinforced that duality.
The first case Alessio remembered was the most famous: the Emperor of Ice.
One of the five greatest mages the Tower had ever seen.
His mastery over the element of ice was absolute — his spells reshaped battlefields like a force of nature, and his very presence could alter the climate of entire regions.
Everyone knew he had ignited his Essence.
Although he never revealed the exact details of what it granted him, the mage always claimed that his bond with ice came directly from it.
In an old forum post — one Alessio could still recall word for word — the mage described his Ascension trial:
"I walked for days through a frozen continent.
The wind cut me, the cold tore me apart, and I could feel the ice seeping into my skin, my bones, my soul.
And when I finally stopped resisting it…
I became the ice itself."
According to his account, the trial lasted days inside the simulation.
But in the real world, not even a minute had passed.
That was the most unsettling feature of Essence Ascension: time inside and outside didn't follow the same rules.
Some reported days of trials, others months — even years — yet the game returned them almost instantly.
Another famous case Alessio recalled was entirely different — that of the leader of the old guild Black Bulls.
Though his guild never made it into the Ten Colossi, its power was feared by thousands.
And that power didn't come from physical strength, but something far subtler — his mind.
He could predict the movements of allies and enemies alike with uncanny precision, crafting long-term strategies that shaped entire wars within the Tower.
While others reacted, he anticipated.
In an interview, Alessio remembered him saying with calm, steady confidence:
"I'm neither the strongest nor the fastest.
I just see the world more clearly.
That's the gift of my Essence."
In his own Ascension account, the Black Bulls leader described living for months as a king — managing an entire kingdom, balancing economy, politics, diplomacy, and war, while the game relentlessly tested him, pushing him to lose control.
When he finally awakened, he realized his Essence was Governance — the ability to understand and manipulate complex systems with superhuman clarity.
Two completely different cases.
Two equally extraordinary results.
And recalling those stories, Alessio believed that even if he didn't know what his own trial would bring, he at least had an idea of how to act — what kind of logic to follow, what kind of choice to make.
But he was completely wrong.
Alessio couldn't tell if what was happening was a cruel joke by the Black Tower's developers — one of those hidden ironies written into the code to make players laugh at their own misery — or if the game was truly as deep as people claimed, capable of touching the human soul and reflecting what one truly was inside.
But from what he saw — or rather, what he felt — he couldn't find anything remotely fair about it.
He knew, of course, that within the Tower there were tests that stripped players of everything: weapons, armor, abilities — even the stats they had spent hours, days, weeks grinding for.
It was rare, but not unheard of.
There were reports of players reduced to their bare essence — no gear, no power, no magic, just flesh and instinct.
But Alessio had never imagined something like this.
Never.
Of all the possibilities he had read, debated, or theorized in his past life's forums, none came close to what he was now experiencing.
There was no comparison.
While other players remained themselves — human, recognizable, tangible — he did not.
Everything felt wrong.
From the instant he crossed the gray portal, the world had dissolved into a storm of light and sound.
For a moment, he lost all sense of body, weight, and form. It was like being swallowed by lightning.
Then, when the light faded and the ground returned beneath his feet — or what felt like feet — instinct replaced reason.
The air smelled sharp, mineral, almost metallic.
His vision was sharper — far sharper than any human perception.
Every particle of dust floating before him shimmered under an invisible sun.
Even the smallest sounds — the whisper of grass, the distant crack of stone — reached him distinctly, each with its own resonance.
The sensation was… beyond human.
But what truly made him grasp the scale of the change was his first attempt to speak.
He opened his mouth, but what came out wasn't a word.
It was a roar.
Deep, guttural — echoing across the plain around him.
A sound that was not human.
His body answered the echo, and he felt it.
Muscles moved differently — dense, powerful, but foreign.
His stance was anchored on four limbs.
The weight distributed evenly; the ground trembled beneath clawed paws, and when he looked down — he saw no hands.
Only paws.
Covered in thick, golden fur that rippled under the warm breeze.
And that was when the realization struck him.
No mirror, no reflection — just instinct carving the truth into his bones:
He had become a lion.
The roar that had escaped him before came again, this time involuntary — a physical reaction to understanding.
The sound thundered through the hills and returned to him, amplified, stronger, wilder.
It was unlike any skill or transformation he had ever seen in the game.
It wasn't a temporary form, nor an illusion, nor a spell.
It was him.
The flesh, the blood, the instinct — everything screamed that this was what he had become.
Alessio didn't know why, or what it meant.
He didn't know if it was some cruel joke by fate, an ironic nod from the developers to his name and nickname — Leone, Aslan, the Lion — or if the game had somehow, impossibly, captured something deep within him.
Something that defined him.
Perhaps that was the true nature of Essence: stripping away every mask, every pretense, until nothing remained but what was hidden beneath it all.
And if that were the case, then the Black Tower had decided to show him — with absolute clarity and brutal honesty — what he truly was.
A predator.
A king among beasts.
A lion.