Tower of Avarice: A LitRPG story

Emily stepped onto the 88th Floor in silence. The door of the elevator closed behind her unnoticed, and it was as if she had left one world and entered another in just a blink of an eye.

She stood under a sky that was fractured like broken glass or shards from a smashed mirror. The horizon was endless black, separated and stitched together by veins of cold, white light. Jagged shards of crystal and floating islands drifted through the air in front of her, making up the landmass of their new world.

In the center of these landmasses was a continent with a crater as wide as a battlefield, where something bast had once struck with tremendous force, burning everything black around it. The remnants of charred earth and dead trees remained, but the object itself only pulsed faintly, flickering like a dying ember.

A soft note rang out from her wrist, and she looked down at the silver bangle that wrapped around her left wrist. It was the one constant she had across centuries of battles and different worlds. It had once been smooth, beautiful and ornamental, but now it bore signs of abuse. It was etched and scratched, scarred by magic and the claws of monsters.

The wristband spoke to her, informing her of her goal for this Floor. It had a monotone voice that lacked inflection.

"You have reached the 88th Floor. The Cradle of the Fractured Star. Once, it was a source of illumination for the universe as it travelled the cosmos, spreading light and magic to countless worlds. But the star was shattered during the Cataclysm of Ascent when a Demigod failed to elevator themselves to divinity."

"The fragments of the star are scattered across this realm, each infused with a primal truth of the universe. Without gathering the pieces, neither the star nor you can continue your journey."

An image appeared above the wristband, showing points of light like stars in the night sky. The islands around her formed a constellation, with five turning into different colours to highlight their importance. They all orbited the crater, acting as moons to the central continent.

"You must reclaim the five shards: Ember, Tear, Seed, Echo, and Mirror. Reforge the star and set it free once more."

The silver band gave a final pulse of soft light before falling dormant once again. Emily took a moment to compare the map to her surroundings before setting out.

Drawing on the mana within her, she disappeared from sight, leaving nothing but motes of mana in the air in her wake.

Her mana formed a bridge beneath Emily's boots as she crossed the void between the islands at incredible speed. Each of her steps left a faint ripple of mana in the air, propelling her forward.

The island ahead burned like a forge's heart in shades of red, gold and molten orange. She could feel the warmth rising from the Shard, even from where she stood far in the distance. The closer she got to the island, the more the world shimmered with a haze of smoke and heat.

The moment her boots touched down on the blackened rock, the ground trembled all around her. The terrain was jagged and unstable, rising and falling with each passing moment. A path led forward through a canyon of magma and smoke.

Emily had just begun to move when she felt something was wrong. There was pressure that wasn't just heat but something deeper. It pressed against her skin like a smothering hand, seeping into her chest, into her heart and mind.

Her breath caught in her throat, and her limbs felt heavier with each step. Then, the visions began.

They ignited behind her eyes, searing their way into her brain in a way that was immediate and undeniable.

She saw herself on the 53rd Floor; her hands wreathed in arcane fire as she cut down a swarm of crystalline monsters with no hesitation. Her voice echoed across the battlefield, filled with righteous anger as she cast spells that cracked the land around her and rained death upon her enemies.

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Emily recalled the fury that had driven her forward through her journey, making her unstoppable and relentless. She was once again feeling that anger, and she could barely control herself. She wanted to tear everything apart around her.

Another vision struck her like a hammer. It was of her mother's face, framed by the harsh light of a new world. Emily remembered her hands trembling when she pushed her wheelchair out of the elevator. Then came the violence and the quiet rasp of her final words.

Pure, hot and merciless hatred consumed Emily at that moment. Hatred at the tower and fate, but mostly hatred at herself for not being strong enough to protect anyone.

Emily dropped to one knee, clutching her chest as her heart thudded in her chest. Her vision was swiftly filling with red. She knew that it was the shard doing this, that it was somehow radiating emotions like anger and hate in the same way it did heat. It was stirring her negative emotions and her worst memories.

She struggled to rise, but her knees were shaking. She could feel the edges of her sanity fraying. Her thoughts were being drowned by raw, seething emotion. Her reason was slipping away from her.

"Stop." She whispered, her voice harsh and angry. But the shard didn't listen; instead, it drove itself against the few mental barriers she had remaining. The molten rivers roared louder around her to match her ragged breathing.

It was trying to force her to surrender to her emotions, but she wouldn't let it.

Emily clenched her fists and forced her magic to respond. The mana flowed within her with a cooling sensation that fought against the heat. She remembered standing in Central Park with Mathew, a soft wind on her face. She remembered laughing with him when they were caught in the rain together.

She opened her eyes, and suddenly, she was in control once more. She walked to the center of the Island and plucked the shard from the ground. It was a small red crystal the size of a chicken's egg, laying on the ground as if it had been discarded like trash.

When she put it into her inventory, the feeling of rage was instantly stifled.

The island containing the next shard was as silent as a tomb and covered in a thick fog filled with the smell of rain. As Emily stepped onto the island, she found herself in similar vision of her past. She saw her father, who had died when she was young, his face hazy to the point where she couldn't pick out his features.

But the worst memories were of the choices she had made that she regretted. The shard attacked her by making her relive each horrible moment, leaving her weighed down by sadness and guilt. It took every ounce of her willpower to take a step forward, to accept her pain and move past it.

This shard was a deep blue and was as round as a rock found on a beach after being washed ashore.

The third island was a jungle filled with plants of every type and colour. There were trees that rose thousands of feet into the air and flowing rivers of water crystal clear water. It wasn't until she was deep into the forests and jungles of the island that she learned what challenge the shard would present.

Everything around the shard was dying. The grass underfoot became brittle and ash-coloured, the trees hollow and skeletal. The shard was a bright green as it fed on the life of everything around it.

As Emily approached, she felt the effects of the shard like invisible roots burrowing into her skin. The shard began to drain her strength, health and even her youth. Her breathing shortened and her muscles trembled. Her skin began to crack, and wrinkles deepened on her face and hands.

She was withering with each step she took, but Emily fought with the mana inside her. She snatched energy from the shard, just enough to keep going. But it was barely enough.

When she finally reached the shard, she was an old woman. Her hair was white, her face unrecognizable. She was frail and sickly.

The moment her hand clasped the shard, power flooded into her body like rain to a desert. Her skin smoothed, her bones strengthened, and the years were reversed in a moment. The land around her was healed as well, with trees and plants blooming and blossoming.

The fourth shard was black, and it lay on a barren, dead island. It assaulted her with waves of fear, conjuring horrors from her past in order to drive her away. It wanted to be left alone, to be isolated.

It was the easiest shard for her to deal with. She had been living with fear for centuries in the Tower. Each Floor was filled with horrible things of nightmares, and she had long since faced it. But there was a part of her that breathed a sigh of relief when the black shard was placed in her inventory.

The fifth and last island was filled with glass of a multitude of colours and shapes. She saw herself reflected in countless ways, projected on their surface everywhere she looked. The shard was nestled on the ground in front of five pillars of glass with mirror-like surfaces.

Her reflections demanded things from her or make accusations backed up by experiences from her past. They called her a coward, a martyr willing to die for nothing. They told her Mathew didn't love her anymore, that he was dead or might as well have been. They told her he had found another and had forgotten about her long ago.

When she finally reached the center of the pillars and picked up the white shard from the ground, she wept.

Returning to the crater, the five shards rose from Emily's hand, and their colours swirled together as they flew into the sky. They spun faster as they climbed in a tight circle that formed lines of light that connected them into a ring.

A white spark ignited at the center and hovered for a moment, impossibly bright, before it flared and expanded in a burst of brilliance. The shards fused into a newborn sun that blazed overhead and drove away the darkness.