Reborn as an Extra - Chapter 33

Chapter 33: Who is Riya?
Jold district No-4, Arte’s star-watching tower.

A huge tower stands majestically here, right in the middle of the Jold district No-4 in the city’s outer area.

This place is actually rather close to the great Freya Academy.

This tower has a very magnificent look from outside; several clouds can be seen covering its top, due to which the tower’s top is always hidden from the people looking from outside.

But the difference about this tower is that in this magical world filled with magical phenomena, this tower’s insides are completely without any mana, and it’s not a tower containing monsters or floor bosses, etc., like in those tower raiding novels.

This is also the reason why this tower is actually more of a tourist attraction spot than a spot for awakeners to raid.

Every day thousands of people visit this place just so they can reach its top to view a beautiful scenery and try their luck.

Even though this tower doesn’t have any mana inside it, there’s still a strange phenomenon; there exist illusions in this tower.

There’s only one single thing inside this hollow tower, and that is a seemingly unending staircase in a circular fashion.

Several thousand people try to climb it every day, but all of them just get stuck in some kind of strange illusion and find themselves standing directly outside of the tower.

Even though they have been climbing fine until just a few minutes ago.

Due to the fact that no one has been able to climb this tower, people have started to call it by the nick name of ‘Illusion Stair Tower’.

You must be thinking, Why didn’t S-Rank or SS-Rank individuals check it out then? Well, the answer is simple: simply give a little holiday to your brain cells and fill it with water, then think with it, cough! Cough! (Warning: Don’t try this in reality.)

I mean, just like in every other cultivation novel there is a restriction that individuals with high realms can’t enter; the same is true here; individuals at A or above ranks can’t enter this tower in the first place or it will self-destruct itself.

Which will cause a devastating blow to the money this tower generates every year with tourism. This will not only affect the total annual income of the investors in this place but will also reduce the per-annum income of the Jold district.

Now you must be thinking, Why hasn’t it been conquered by B-rankers yet, right? Then now focus your brain, which is now immune to cell damage with the presence of the legendary spiritual liquid protecting your brain from any backlash, cough!

Simply speaking, this all setup is done for the heaven’s chosen, the child of luck, the individual who can make the world spin around him due to his sheer luck, Yeah Fade, the protagonist.

Then how can anyone else get to climb this tower when it’s only reason for existence is for the protagonist to put on a show of face-slapping?

The backstory of this tower is like this: on a cloudy night during Awakeners Era 3108, suddenly lightening appeared, and with that lightening, a tower descended on a barren area filled with nothing but dead soil all around it.

That area was originally called Arte’s Dead Desert, on the name of the Earth Wizard Arte, a former S-ranker who died in this area. (current Awakeners era 4345)

After the sudden appearance of this tower, some lucky passing by awakeners got to witness the sudden appearance of this tower, and they then decided to explore.

But due to repeated failure, they decided to give up in the end and returned to the city to report this incident.

The history records tell us that this news spread like wildfire among the human race.

A huge number of awakeners started to visit the tower but failed to accomplish anything; still, the continuous visits of awakeners continued.

This caused a small town to form around the tower in this barren area.

Gradually, that town has now become a district, now known as the ‘Jold district’.

Due to the huge expansion of the human race, the nearby city has expanded so much that the once faraway tower is right in the core area of the city.

But over a thousand years passed, and no one ever confirmed or claimed about successfully climbing this tower.

Due to which this tower is now so famous that even some neighboring races also know about it.

Now people come here for the mere purpose of entertainment, and the real purpose, which was to climb, has long been out of the minds of people.

After all, no one would like to waste their efforts on something that is impossible to do; this is totally normal.

Over the years, no one has been able to climb this tower. Such a disappointment for a good-looking tower, right?

…

‘Hmm, so this is how it looks at the top of this tower; it’s actually a better scenery to look at.’

‘Sadly, I can’t bring Lia here, sigh~’

At the very top floor of the tower, the scenery is breathtaking.

If you look downwards, you can actually see right through the clouds as if they didn’t exist in the first place.

‘A rather strange phenomenon…’

What Rio didn’t consider was that it was even more strange and ironic for him to be standing at a place that no one has ever visited since a thousand years.

Not to mention he was even considering having a date here, truly bizarre.

Rio looked at the evening sky, which has slowly started to turn darker. The fading red shine of the sun illuminates the sky, making the scenery even more beautiful.

Even though this place is extremely high in sky, the winds are still slow and steady, bringing fresh breeze and making Rio’s black hair rustle in the air.

‘It seems it will take a bit more time for it to appear… I will have to wait a little more.’

Seeing that there was still time for the thing to appear for which he had come here, he decided to wait for a bit.

While waiting for it, Rio remembered the things that happened in the past few days.

He had been very busy to sort out all that had happened and now it seems that it is an appropriate time for it.

‘I didn’t expect that my interference can cause such a huge change in the story… well, at least the results are better than the original.’

In the novel that Rio had read in his previous life, the number of people killed was counted over 100 during that bombing, and then even more of them were killed by that group of disguised individuals.

Originally, Fade was supposed to cause a commotion there before the start of the firecrackers.

Knowing that there was something wrong with the machine, he tried to tell people that they should leave the area and evacuate in order to save their lives.

But this method actually backfired; due to Fade being a disaster magnet, several individuals in the crowd didn’t listen and started to argue with him, causing his actions to be delayed.

Then he directly gave up and left to find Anna. He thought that it was a good choice but actually caused more damage. It took about half an hour for him to bring Anna.

When they arrived, they found hundreds of dead bodies scattered around the place.

Link was sitting near the corpse of a girl at that time, right in the center of the area. He was repeatedly saying ‘Riya please wake up!’.

Riya was a cannon fodder type extra in the novel; she died in the very first chapter she appeared in the hands of now-dead Yug.

After which Link goes on a rampage, destroying everything around him, and after killing Yug, he attacks the evacuating people until he comes back to his senses automatically.

This incident not only affected the academy but also triggered the start of Link’s downfall.

Link began to lose to Fade in every way from this point forward until the conclusion of the academy arc, when Fade killed him.

Link became mentally weak due to witnessing the death of Riya. He didn’t care much about the people he killed, but Riya’s death was a huge blow to his mind.

Even Link’s own father scolded him since he was not able to protect Riya; after all, he’s engaged to Riya; she died in front of him, and he wasn’t able to save her.

With even his own father not supporting him, he broke even further and slowly started to darken bit by bit.

His sadistic tendencies, which had started to heal due to Riya, immediately increased. He became even more cruel and sadistic than he originally was.

His reputation fell from the very top to the very bottom in a matter of a few months after he got defeated by Fade continuously.

But Link didn’t care; he had long developed a grudge against Fade and considered Fade guilty for Riya’s death.

His mind was already messed up in the first place, and Fade being the disaster magnet, he attracted Link’s grudge against himself.

There’s no need to tell what would have happened after; you can guess it.

Yeah, Link died in the end, and then Link’s father started to chase after Fade; then, after Link’s father died, his subordinates started to chase him, and the cycle continued for two whole years, just like that.

But compared to this tragic ending, the reality has been altered in a rather better direction.

Even if you calculate the casualties, only 40 individuals died, including all killed by the bomb and those black-clothed guys.

As Rio had diverted Link’s attention, Link wasn’t able to kill those innocent people, and his rampage never happened.

Although Anna and the professors arrived a few minutes later than the original time, in the end it all turned out well.

The most important change to the story was:

‘I was able to save the life of the most talented healer of the younger generation, Riya Croft, the little sister of Raji Croft, The Strongest Frost mage and one of the SS-rankers of human race.’

‘I wonder how much effect will Riya have on Link now that she’s alive…’