Tower of God: The Flower of Earth (Slow Updates)

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Ewart flopped down into the grass as soon as we appeared on the next floor, and not one of us bugged him as we knew that he needed the rest.
Except for Kal.

"That. Was. AWESOME!" She bounced around, happy to have done all that fighting.

"That was not awesome Kal! That was inconsiderate! You forced Ewart to relive through his most traumatizing memory!" Noe snapped at her, as Dustin stepped away from the Khun. "We could have picked a better memory! But no! You had to be a miss-go-happy-lucky-trigger and made him suffer emotionally and mentally!"

"So? We got through it didn't we?" She shrugged, unbiased, and looked around the floor that the team had just arrived on.

Noe yanked on her twin braids, "No. No. You know what? I don't want to be a team with you anymore if you're gonna be this discourteous. Come on Dustin, Jeonsa." She turned and walked away, her original two teammates from the floor of tests hesitating before following. They didn't mind leaving Kal after what she just made them go through, but they didn't want to leave the rest of the team, especially considering they were only a team of two fishermen and a wave controller. It wasn't balanced nor fair to the rest of the team.

"Fine! Leave, you... You.... You cowards! I don't even know what that word you called me means Noe Freaking Khun! You think your family name gives you a higher status! Fine!"

Weldon put a hand on his fellow scout's shoulder, "Kal, stop it, you're gonna make this situation worse."

"Get your hand off me. I got us through a hard floor, and this is how they thank me?" She shoved his hand off, "by leaving? I don't wanna be their teammate if they were so stuck up like that too!"

"Kal, you really are being discourteous." Mercy walked over to her teammate.

Kal pouted as she crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, "I don't ev..."

"It means you're being rude and showing the lack of consideration for other people Kal. You have no idea how Ewart felt about that memory. It wasn't something he wanted to live through again nor show any of us." Mercy interrupted.

"Mercy is right." I turned to look at Ewart, who was getting to his feet. "I didn't want to show you guys that or live through it again and you forced us to Kal."

"So? You lived."

"Yeah. I lived. But what? I had to suffer listening to my childhood friends and neighbors screaming in fear for their lives. I had to watch my parents get killed right in front of me again. I had to add more trauma on top of the trauma I had already attained the first time I had lived through that event, by now also being worried about my friends being killed at the hands of the Red Crystals in my memory." He looked at Kal dead in the eyes.

"But you know it was all fake so it doesn't matter." Kal shrugged.

"But it wasn't! Not to me! Not to any of us who got hurt in that floor!" He snapped at her, his fingers clenching up into a tight fist as he trembled.

Backing away slightly from the two, I looked as Ewart's crystals on his arms seemed to grow a tad bit longer and sharper, and looked at Mercy and the others who were still here, as they all were angry at Kal, but had a feeling Ewart was going to do something he regretted if one of them didn't stop him.

But with her attitude and uncaringness about what she had done, no one dared to move against him.

"Look, clearly this has been traumatic for you. I am sorry if I did induce more trauma to you, but you gotta move on. Otherwise we aren't getting higher up the tower. There are going to be far worse trauma inducing challenges up ahead." Kal sighed and unfolded her arms. "If we had gone for an easier memory, the memory would have been corrupted more. At least in yours, you knew what would happen, and the only thing that was corrupted and made worse about it was that there were more of those guys at the exit and more in general, from what you told us in it."

"What..." He untensed. Did she actually feel bad about it? "What d..."

"If we had gone into one where we had no idea what was going on, we would have had no idea what changed. If we had gone into the one about Jigu's staff like you wanted to, the information could have been corrupted and we would have not found out anything, and would have had no idea of what to do if something happened." She interrupted.

"So you are saying this was a play of strategies?" Ewart glared at her, still angry, but slowly starting to get the point.

"Yeah." She sighed.

"Then why did you just act like you didn't care at all with Noe? She wants to kill you now Kal."

"Because this floor needs smaller groups to pass. And I figured it was best if she was angery at me, even if we have to go head to head against each other, she would be better at surviving the higher floors than I would be."

"Kal, what are you talking about?" I questioned her, seeing her lower her head to stare at her feet, tears dripping down her cheeks onto the tops of her shoes and the floor. Wanting nothing more than to see her friends move onto the next floor and make up for what she had made Ewart suffer through.

"Attention. All testers, please gather in the lobby, all testers, gather in the lobby, thank you." An announcement rang from somewhere nearby, as Kal turned and started heading to the testing arena's lobby, full and ready to do this all alone.

"Kal, wa..." I tried to reach out and stop her, as Mercy grabbed my hand to stop me. "Don't. This is something she needs to do alone Jigu."

I looked at her with worry and watched her go. "But, she..."

"We need to go. We will meet up with her after, ok?" Mercy told me with a firm grip.
I watched Kal go and merge into the audience, and sighed, knowing Mercy was right.

"Ok. Let's go."