Just as Wade said before, the next couple of days pass with little fanfare.
No one talks to us, or gives us any sort of orders, we just sit and wait while occasionally going out to get food from the large mess hall in the main building. I even go so far as to ask Garf about our current situation, but he just tells me to go away.
It’s not all bad though. Having some free time has provided me with a chance to get to know some of the others a bit better. Also, it has allowed me to doom scroll through the Forum a bit and catch up on anything I was missing.
Spoiler Alert: I wasn’t missing much.
The cross-difficulty server sounded really interesting, but after exploring the server for a little while, I quickly found myself getting more annoyed than anything. The server itself only has one thread called ‘Global Chat,’ and the entirety of the thread is just complete and utter nonsense being spewed out.
[Forum]
< Server: Cross Difficulty General >
< Thread: Global Chat >
< Members: 2,452 >
< DeezNuts, NOR > - Does anyone know when June will show herself again?
< Yaga, NOR > - Nah, she said that she wouldn’t be around for a while after the Tutorial.
< Catboygirl, LOS > - Meow!
< Ryche69, LOS > - Wait we don’t get to see mommy June anymore? NOOOOOOO
< DeezNuts, NOR > - Dang that suckssssss
< Liberation, HAR > - Could any players from NOR or EAS difficulty tell me if there was any NPC with the name of Roger on your variant of Floor Two? The guards stationed at the wall keep passing rumors about him.
< YaoiLover, LOS > - Roger? I don’t even know her. 0_0
< Liberation, HAR > - I’m being serious. Do you know the NPC or not?
< Catboygirl, LOS > - Meow!
< ReaperOne, NOR > - Don’t know a Roger but I could prob beat his ass.
The global chat continues on with this crap nonstop. Anyone actually looking for information is ignored or trolled. The average chatter on this thread has turned from a mix of every difficulty, to now just EAS and NOR players. Any HAR or DIC players have retreated into their own difficulty’s threads and resigned themselves to just talking with each other. It was discovered that every group has their own variant of each floor, so information being passed around should have a similar to exact correlation with any one group’s floor in each difficulty.
The thread itself isn’t completely useless though, as if you pay attention enough, you can eek out some useful bits of info. For example, the reason people on the Forum refer to others as ‘players’ is because the ‘Goddess’ named ‘June’ apparently showed up in person to explain the purpose of The Pillar during the ‘Tutorial’ the other difficulties got for some reason. I obviously mention all of this with a grain of salt, as the very fact DIC difficulty didn’t receive any of this information makes me second guess just how legitimate any of it is.
Another boon of the global thread is that it provides the total member count of everyone in all of the difficulties put together. 2,452 is a pretty unique number, but after factoring in the mortality rate for Floor One of DIC, the number clearing points to there being a certain number of people who never made it to the second floor. Angus, who is basically the only one of us that has the patience to deal with the cross-difficulty server, has done the leg work for us and discovered that each group, regardless of difficulty, should have started with thirty people. Following this, he followed up with a few people from LOS, NOR, and HAR, to figure out what the group density spread was.
According to his math, The Pillar should be comprised of 90 groups of 30 people, which totals to 2,700 total players upon the start. Going even further, he explained that each difficulty has a different amount of total groups. LOS should have 50 groups, NOR then has 25, and HAR is at 10. The math works out, as that just leaves the 5 groups leftover for DIC which we already have confirmed.
Angus continues to go on into more specifics about each of the group’s breakdown and more extraneous information, but I tune out the rest of the lecture and instead open up the general thread for our difficulty.
[Forum]
< Server: Death is Certain >
< Thread: General >
< Members: 68 >
< WoopTiDo > - This Floor is already better than that stupid forest. At least here I can take a shower and get something to eat.
< UnironicallyNo > - Don’t get complacent. This is the highest difficulty for a reason, I feel like the better we have it now just spells a worse time for us later.
< Niner > - Could anyone provide some information in regard to the start of F2? Our group has been waiting days now and nothing is happening.
< GlassHouse > - Don’t worry about it, my group XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
< GlassHouse > - Oh crap, I guess the System censors some stuff that everyone hasn’t gotten too yet. Sorry man.
< Niner > - I appreciate you trying.
< GlassHouse > - No problem! Stay safe out their guys!
Reading through some of the chat history, I don’t find much of importance and instead start typing for the first time. I haven’t bothered saying anything since I joined, but since the cross-difficulty chat is so useless, I think it would probably benefit me to establish a presence here just in case.
< GlassHouse > - No problem! Stay safe out their guys!
< Still > - Anyone have any new info on the ‘F0 Tutorial’ the global chat keeps talking about? I think it’s all a load of shit.
< GlassHouse > - Hi, Still! I don’t think we have met yet, but I have heard good things about you from Noct!
It takes me a minute to remember the other’s aliases on the Forum, but I’m pretty sure Noct is Angus.
< Still > - Good things?
< GlassHouse > - Yes! Noct said you were nice and that you cleared Floor One by yourself. That’s very impressive! As for your question: I don’t see any reason to not believe what the others have said. Better to believe a lie that could be the truth than not believe the truth by thinking it’s a lie, right?
< PlayerOne > - That’s just bullshit Glass. I would rather have the truth than believe some fake ‘Goddess’ that didn’t even have the decency to tell us any of this information herself.
< GlassHouse > - Maybe not giving us the tutorial was apart of the DIC difficulty requirements? Perhaps the lack of information was to increase the strain on us, right?
< Still > - I disagree. Why would they not provide us with F0 if we were just going to learn about it all after F1? The logic doesn’t make sense.
< PlayerOne > - ^
< GlassHouse > - I admit I can see the merit in that line of thinking.
< Million > - Still
< Still > - ?
< Million > - I cleared F1 by myself too. You aren’t special.
< Still > - ?
< Million > - I am the best DIC player here.
< PlayerOne > - Give it a rest man, no one cares!
< Still > - I guess man, I’ve never played the skin flute so I wouldn’t know.
< Million > - What
< PlayerOne > - XDDDD
< NotLikeMe > - LMAO
…
I watch the Forum blow up with a bunch of XD’s and LOL’s while smiling to myself. ‘Million’ is now spamming the chat with all kinds of threats due to the ruthless response by the other DIC chatters. Enjoying myself for a little longer, I end up closing the Forum and head over to where the rest of the group is waiting at the door. Ever since I arrived, we all head to the mess hall together to go get food. Vince likes to refer to it as “Team building during chow,” but in reality, it’s just us having a meal while we discuss anything new we learned from the Forum or the floor itself.
“Dude that was hilarious.”
Wade greets me with a knowing grin while all of us head out toward the main building. His alias on the Forum is ‘NotLikeMe,’ so I know that he was lurking long enough to see the confrontation with the Million guy. His mention of the events causes Angus to fall back to walk with us.
“What was?”
“Seb just killed some dude in the DIC general chat.”
Angus blinks at Wade for a second before checking the aforementioned thread. After a few seconds, the younger boy bursts out with a chattering laughter that he immediately tries to cover up with a shy expression. Despite our talks over the last couple of days, I can tell that Angus is still relatively shy around everyone because he is the second youngest besides Benny. While the majority of us are in our early twenties, some people like Henry and Sara: the wild haired woman I saw when I first arrived at the barracks, are in their mid-thirties. This leaves the 17-year-old Angus feeling somewhat isolated, as the next youngest person is Nikki, who is eighteen and barely talks to him.
“No need to be so stiff around us Angus. You know we’re buddies for the rest of our lives now, right? Even if that life is super short!”
Wade’s antics make the younger boy relax a little bit, and the kid’s doe eyes light up.
“That sounds good to me! I didn’t have many friends back home so this isn’t so bad for me. It still sucks only being older than Benny. He’s only eight years old! How am I supposed to talk to him about The Pillar when Kathryn and Nikki won’t let him out of their sight?”
Angus’s indignation at not being able to discuss complicated topics with an elementary schooler makes me laugh.
“It’s not like it can be that bad. I mean, age is kind of thrown out the window here in The Pillar. Everyone starts with two skills and a dream. It’s not like I had any inherent advantage in talking to Wade or Kathryn even though they are both around twenty like I am. I just happened to know Wade from before this, and we were also apparently in the same hospital at the time The Pillar started.”
Angus’s brows scrunch in annoyance at the unfairness of our automatic friendship, but he leaves it be and we continue on our way to the cafeteria. I empathize with the shy teenager though, as I am horrible with social situations usually. Wade is honestly the only reason I can talk so casually, as his presence allows me to fall back into some of my memories of fooling around with other kids in school.
Internally, I also wonder what the odds are of Wade and I being in the same place at the time when we were all taken, but I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end. Everyone here was pulled from the same general hospital and spat out in the minotaur’s cave of Floor One. We all talked about it already, but no one has any idea on why we were specifically taken, or why it landed us in the hardest difficulty of this place either.
Soon enough, we are all sitting in the mess hall with another plate full of mysterious food that none of us bother to ask about. Today, my plate consists of a purple meat slab with dark gray sauce and a side of greens that look kind of like popcorn. I’m not picky though, as I have been eating out of a tube for 25% of my life, so I am more than happy to dine on the alien grub.
Our meal is fairly typical, with everyone kind of just mingling and talking about Forum nonsense. Near when everyone is finishing up and getting ready to head back to the barracks, Garf walks through the main door of the building with a loud echo, which draws everyone’s attention. It has become so normal for him to be seen sitting behind the desk with his head buried in paperwork, that I hadn’t checked if that was still the case when we all first walked in.
We sit quietly while the bookish man strides toward us with a fixed purple eyed stare. This is the most attention we have gotten from him the entirety of the time we have been here, so no one moves as he makes his way across the room and places himself at the head of the table we currently sit at.
“I have news. Your trainers have arrived and will be settled in shortly. When they inform me they are ready, I will send for you all, and you will report here as soon as possible. Is this clear?”
We all nod silently and Garf says nothing more as he makes his way back to his desk. After exchanging a few looks, we all quickly clean up and head back to the barracks to wait for when Garf finally sends for us.
It would seem that Floor Two is finally underway.