Chaos and Order - A Multiverse Fanfic

0172 4th Floor - The City of Leisure!

4th floor,

The Primordial Tower

Kai came out of the flashes of teleportation, with a rational mind and full of expectations.

Unlike before, now he knew what he would face before entering the city itself. So the moment he looked down and found himself in a white shirt, black pants, and black shoes, he nodded to himself.

"A very good afternoon, sir," a sweet voice entered his ears.

Kai looked to his right and saw a teenage girl dressed in a long, blue soiled frock patterned with small red flowers below the waist. There was a large, thin hat over her head, shading her face from the golden, burning rays of high afternoon. Her eyes were common brown, her hair black, and her face simple.

A resident?! Kai reflected. There was no way to sense if a person was a Contestant or not unless his Perception were to sense some kind of danger, or there was an enormous gap between the two Perceptions. Yet, Kai just knew this girl was no Contestant. He could feel her emotions, a tinge of warmth mixed with her happiness. More often than not, Contestants lacked this warmth for other unknown Contestants.

"Yes?" Kai said, smiling.

The girl blushed, her cheeks becoming rosy. "Are you a newly ascended Contestant?" she asked as if she had become familiar with the question. "If you are, may I have the honor of showing you around and giving you a tour before you depart for the City of Leisure? Of course, all this is for just 100 MC."

Kai looked at her as the girl bit her lips, nervous about hearing a refusal. Meg had already told him about the City of Leisure while they were within the Random Worlds. If the 1st Set represented all that was poor and filthy about the Primordial Tower, then the 4th floor represented only one thing — Leisure.

Meg had given him a clearer picture of how things stood in the Primordial Tower.

The sizes of floors varied with Sets, but within a particular Set, they were almost of equal sizes.

The first floor was the biggest, with a size comparable to a minor planet, and the poorest, lawless region as well. As one left the 1st Set, the quality of life enhanced drastically. The 2nd and 3rd Sets were mainly based on the late 1700s to early 1900s, she had told him. The sizes of the 2nd Set's floors were comparable to the continents of Asia and Europe combined. Meg had then drawn comparable sizes to give Kai an idea.

It kept on decreasing from there onwards with every subsequent Set, the technology and quality of life increasing along with it as if one was moving down the river of time and not ascending floors of a tower.

That's why millions of Contestants are in a race to reach the 4th floor, Meg had said. Not only do they leave a sick society behind but also get to live in comfort for the rest of their lives if they don't dare to go out in the Random Worlds anymore.

It was also the reason for it being named the City of Leisure.

It had the highest concentration of non-Contestants if one didn't count 1st-Set at all.

"OK," Kai nodded and then bowed. "I am in your care, my lady."

The girl beamed. "Please come with me," she said, gesturing with her hand. "My name is Lucy."

"Desmond."

Lucy took him away from the spot where Kai had teleported. He looked around and saw many flashes. In hundreds, to be exact. But unlike the 2nd floor, there was no hubbub and no forced conscription. Large tents were raised all around, with numbers on them in enormous lettering. People were going in and out of those tents in a scant, chaotic manner.