[Welcome to the Tower of Stories, Khan Reynolds]
Khan Reynolds?
My actual name.
I felt anxiety rise in my chest again, but the same tranquility flooded my being and I found myself just as calm as before. The artificial serenity was almost more unsettling than the panic itself, like having someone else's hand on the wheel of my emotions. But it gave me the clarity I desperately needed, so I didn't fight it. Instead, I let my mind work through the implications.
The first being that the tower knew my actual name and used it, not the Ben one. Maybe it was because the soul was what was tied to the tower, the essence of who I truly was beneath whatever facade this world had tried to impose on me. Or maybe the thing that had built the tower had also pulled me into this world, though that was a big jump in logic.
After all, Tower of Stories wasn't finished when I'd last encountered it in my original reality.
There had also been no indication in the novel that the Tower had been built by someone specific, but if it had been built by someone, there was no indication said person was still alive or that said person had the ability to pull me from Earth into this reality. The questions multiplied like rabbits in my head, each one spawning three more, until I forced myself to stop.
Focus, Khan. One step at a time.
[You have arrived at Floor 1 of the Tower of Stories]
This was it. I had to focus. Floor 1 was a special kind of floor, mainly because it was one of the few single-person floors in the entirety of the story, meaning that each person was placed in a different narrative. Unlike the higher floors where groups would work together or compete directly, the first floor was intensely personal---a test tailored specifically to the individual climber.
I had no clue what I would be facing. For example, the protagonist had gotten placed in a mystery story, some convoluted murder case in a Victorian mansion filled with suspects who all had secrets worth killing for. The reward for clearing that floor had been what made him so overpowered later on in the series.
Understanding.
The ability to understand and infer anything and everything. The harder the thing, the longer it took, but it was still absurdly overpowered. With that ability, the protagonist could learn skills, power systems, battle styles, languages, complex magical theories, and anything else that they needed just by observing and thinking about it long enough. It was the kind of cheat ability that made readers both love and hate how easy everything became for the main character.
I was sure I wouldn't get something as overpowered as that even if I cleared the floor perfectly, but I couldn't dwell on that now. I had to focus on myself and the current situation. The first priority was figuring out what genre this story was, because that would determine everything, the rules I'd need to follow, the expectations I'd need to meet, the kind of resolution the narrative would demand.
At that moment, the infinite black void I was floating in began to shift and change, reality reassembling itself around me like a film negative developing. The darkness was replaced by warm sunlight that shone against my face making it warm and comfortable.
I stood in what appeared to be the central plaza of a medieval town, complete with cobblestone streets that had been worn smooth by countless feet over the decades.
The buildings surrounding the square were a mix of timber-framed structures with thatched roofs and more substantial stone buildings that spoke of either wealth or civic importance. Windows were small and diamond-paned, and I could see the warm glow of candles and hearth fires flickering behind them as the day began to settle into evening.
The plaza itself was bustling with activity despite the late hour. Merchants were packing up their stalls, folding colorful fabrics and securing wooden crates filled with other goods. Children darted between the adults, playing some kind of tag game that involved a lot of shrieking and laughter.
All in all their was lots of it.
By it, I meant laughter.
At the center of it all was an ornate fountain, its stone surface weathered but still beautiful. Water bubbled up from the center and cascaded down in gentle tiers, creating a soothing sound that somehow managed to cut through all the ambient noise of the busy square. But what really caught my attention was the statue at the fountain's heart.
It was an imp, or at least something that resembled the classical depiction of one. The creature was small and fat with pointed ears and what might have been small horns protruding from its forehead. Its features were carved with remarkable detail, I could make out individual scales on its skin and the the fingernails in their hands.
But the most striking thing about the statue was its expression. Instead of the mischievous grin or malevolent sneer you might expect from such a creature, this imp wore a deep, sorrowful frown.
"Hey Leon, stop spacing out," a voice sounded next to me, startling me out of my contemplation.
I turned my face to look at the owner of the voice. A girl stood beside me, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, with the kind of vibrant pink hair that definitely shouldn't exist in a medieval setting but somehow managed to look perfectly natural on her, though it still looked kind of weird, I mean it was pink for heaven's sake. Her eyes however were a different matter entirely, they were a deep blue, the same shade as the water of the fountain.
A name resounded in my mind, appearing with the same certainty as if I'd known it my entire life.
"Lily."
The moment I spoke her name, I felt a rush of memories flooding into my consciousness, memories that weren't my own. They came in a torrent of images and experiences that belonged to a boy named Leon, the body I was inhabiting.
Leon was a simple orphan boy who had grown up in this very town, raised by the local baker after his parents died in a fire when he was only seven years old. He'd spent his days learning the trade, kneading dough before dawn and helping customers throughout the morning, his hands permanently stained with flour and his clothes always smelling faintly of yeast and cinnamon.
And throughout many of those memories was Lily, the major's daughter who had been Leon's closest friend since childhood. I could see flashes of them playing together as children, sharing stolen pastries, talking late into the night about dreams of seeing the world beyond the forest that surrounded their town.
There were newer memories too, ones tinged with something deeper than friendship, moments where Leon's pulse would quicken when she laughed, times when he'd find excuses to walk past the townhall just to catch a glimpse of her working alongside her father.
You'd have expected memories like that to affect me in some profound way, to create some kind of identity crisis or emotional confusion. But they didn't. It was like there was a membrane separating me from actually experiencing those memories as if they had been my own.
Instead, they felt more like a movie I could immediately recall to access whatever information I needed. I was still Khan Reynolds, just with a comprehensive understanding of Leon's life and relationships.
That was good. I didn't want to have an identity crisis after inhabiting different bodies as I climbed the floors. I had enough problems without adding existential confusion to the mix.
I slapped myself lightly on the cheek.
Stop thinking about the future, Khan, I reminded myself. I had to focus on the now, on this floor, on this story and whatever it was going to demand of me.
"Hey, why did you hit yourself?" Lily suddenly asked, her voice carrying that particular tone of someone who was trying to decide whether to be worried or exasperated.
Without missing a beat, I replied, "Sorry, I was getting lost in your eyes."
Gods, that was terrible. Even as the words left my mouth, I cringed internally. That had to be one of the worst pickup lines in the history of human communication. Maybe that was why I had never gotten a girlfriend back in my original world, my complete inability to say anything remotely smooth or romantic without sounding like a character from a bad romance novel.
But instead of hearing the laughter I expected, instead of seeing the eye-roll that cheesy line definitely deserved, Lily turned her face to the side and downward, a pink hue the same color as her hair flushing her cheeks. Her hands came up to fidget with the edge of her simple brown dress, and I could see her trying to hide a small smile.
Don't tell me that worked! I yelled internally, genuinely shocked.
As I looked at her flushing face, watching the way she tucked a strand of that impossible pink hair behind her ear, something dawned on me. The terrible line working, the way she was reacting, the setting itself with its quaint medieval charm, I think I had figured out what this genre's floor was.
It was romance.