Chapter 7

"Anyway, I should further explain what a successor is however in order to understand what a successor is, you must first understand something about divine beings. Divine beings are creatures who are all powerful and immortal. They are so powerful that they are capable to extinguishing the life of an entire planet simply by releasing half of their full strength. They are also immortal in the extent that they live eternally however that doesn't mean that they cannot be killed. Divine beings are killable however the probability of killing them is probably less than 0.0000005% due to the fact that they are so powerful that not many beings or items in existence can ever hope to kill them."

"The most common way to kill a divine being is through another divine being." He said as he finished drawing the last symbol on the ground. I suddenly recognized the symbols as ones that I would usually see in a manga. Hades had actually been drawing a magic circle on the ground and as I watched, the magic circle glowed blue with mana before displaying a screen similar to a status window with words written on it.

"This here is an information circle with the relevant information on what a successor is as well as various information that you may require in order to survive in this place as well as the tower. I would suggest that you imprint this circle into your status window. After all, the human mind is such a tiny thing hence I find it hard to believe that you will remember everything I tell you." Hades said sarcastically.

"How do I do that?" I asked

"Really child, do I have to do everything for you!.....sigh…..Just simply place your hand on the circle and say TRANSFER TO STATUS WINDOW"

Following his instructions, I placed my hand on the magic circle and said "Transfer to status window". Immediately blue veins appeared on my hand spreading towards the tips of my fingers which were touching the magic circle and as soon as they touched the magic circle, I felt my body absorbing the mana of the magic circle and I watched as the magic circle slowly vanished before my eyes while the blue veins glowed brighter, pulsing with mana. It was as if I was watching the transfer of data from a hard drive to a computer however instead of the data being transferred through a wire, it was instead being transferred through the blue veins which were directly linked to my brain. After the magic circle completely vanished, I heard the voice of the status window system:

{YOUR STATUS WINDOW HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH NEW INFORMATION FROM THE ?????.}

{YOU HAVE GAINED INSIGHT THROUGH THE USE OF YOUR FIRST ???????}

{INTELIGENCE HAS INCREASED BY 4}

{INTELIGENCE 16 20}

{WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW THE NEW INFORMATION?}

"No" I thought as the status window vanished. I'll look at it later but first I should probably listen to Hades at the moment.

"Seeing as to how you have already absorbed the magic circle, I will simply give you a summary as to what a successor is. Basically, a successor is someone whom divine beings use to kill their boredom. You see, divine beings live eternally and are all powerful and hence after eons of life they tend to get bored because they have already reached the peak of existence. At first the divine beings released their boredom by creating various things such as the universe and all the various living creatures in it however it only took them a few months to create such things so how do you think they relieved their boredom over the remaining eons?

The answer is humans.

The divine beings began to visit human beings whom they considered the best of their creations and would use them to relieve their boredom. At times they would gift the humans various things such as a good harvest or new materials and methods of warfare which the humans would refer to as blessings.

Other times they would use a bit of their powers to bring about floods or drought and famine which the humans referred to as the wrath of the divine beings however this was never actually the case. The divine beings never considered human beings as friends or enemies when they performed such acts as they were simply entertaining themselves to cure their boredom and this seemed to satisfy the divine beings for a couple of millennia.

They would also indulge themselves by sleeping with their creations from time to time which resulted in the birth of demigods who were beings that were half mortal and half god. They had the mortality of a man but the powers of a god.

However, at some point a few hundred years ago, the divine beings became bored of the humans. After all they had inflicted almost everything they could think of on humanity in order to satisfy themselves: pain, death, diseases, knowledge, emotions, love, empathy, machines and various other things which they had impacted upon mankind over all these years and hence they needed a new way to ignite their passion and curiosity. A few thousand years ago, during a meeting among divine beings, one of the divine beings "Argon" came up with a new idea on how to relieve their boredom.

The idea was to create a tower with various levels in which different players competed with each other in order to climb it. However, the divine beings needed something that would entice the players in order to make them climb the tower to which the divine being "Athena" suggested that the players who climb to the very top of the tower should be allowed to wish for whatever they most desire which the tower would grant as a reward to the player. This idea was agreed upon by many of the divine beings and gods and hence every divine being contributed a small bit of their divinity which was gathered together by the god "Hephaestus" who used the accumulated power to create the tower.

This satisfied some of the divine beings for around a few thousand years or so however they realized that the players were taking too long to climb to the top of the tower and at some point were even remaining stagnant at certain floors of the tower which made the divine beings start to grow bored and hence another meeting was held a 1000 years ago on how to increase the ascension rate of the players in the tower in which two ideas were suggested.