Lady Freya's Stone Titan was a key player during Furfur's assault on the city.
Alongside Deadman Walkyr, the titanic construct pushed through the city, until it eventually reached the center. There, it leveled much of the region all for the sake of killing two harrowing Climbers that'd been enthralled by Furfur. Later, it destroyed one of the mountainous terrors of flesh that were unleashing hordes of monsters at the Prime Settlement. It continued aiding in battling long after, which was the cause of its change in appearance now.
Its body which once looked carved of stone was now covered in flesh and bone—becoming eerily humanoid. It did not have flesh, not in the way one would expect a layer of skin. Instead, there was a thick coating of dry blood over the muscles and tendons that stretched and weaved. Somewhere underneath all that weight, there was a layer of bone that all of the other components clung to.
This ginormous, walking monolith had been an essential piece in their defensive effort. Unlike many of the Climbers, it could dive into the depths of the ocean—not dissimilar to the fashion Worthy had seen Alice's sentries behaving in her memories—and confront the calamities beneath with lethal precision.
Its massive size and power gave it an advantage against the smaller enemies. The larger ones would serve as fuel for it, as it slowly absorbed them over time and used them to further empower itself. By now, Worthy believed that if the Titan wished, it could damage the wall of the Prime Settlement, if only a little before it used the mass it collected to recover from the damage.
'Does it really have any sentience of its own now?' This left Worthy curious.
Now that he knew ingesting the divine blood helped expand the capacity of a person's mind, he was curious how this process would engage with something as massive as the Stone Titan, which was reaping more rewards from it than any Mindless abomination on this Floor. Mindless abominations had a small quantity of divine ichor flowing through their veins, yet now the Stone Titan had assimilated a lot of that.
Who was to say it didn't have a mind of its own, somewhere beneath the confinements of Lady Freya's consciousness?
It was only one of the boy's many conjectures about the strange world surrounding him. He wanted to know as much as he could, because his journey through the First Floor would soon come to an end.
Worthy entered the Tower because he lost hope. Awaiting a miserable death to either starvation, cannibals, or being bludgeoned while rummaging through garbage for supplies. His sister wanted to go to school—real school—and their lack of wealth, and practically anything else to their name, weighed her down. It restricted her, stopping her from achieving everything both Coward and Worthy knew she could.
The First Floor was a lot more hellish than he'd anticipated. It was too complicated, in comparison to the other trials he'd caught wind of.
Initially, Climbers were supposed to enter the First Floor, congregate with one another, and defeat monsters until a Gateway to the Second Floor opened. Whatever mysterious, ancient history was buried in the origin of the obelisk that loomed menacingly over Malas Town had crept through the cracks of security its creators managed. An ancient fiend was awakening from its slumber, and when that happened, the whole tower would be at risk.
War Reaver, as far as Worthy could tell, possessed the greatest culmination of strength and powers out of everyone in the Prime Settlement.
Before the authority of not just the Tower, but whatever boundary existed between mortal and divine laws; even War was powerless. If the wraith of Alice's father was to be trusted, War could not destroy the heart of the Blood Marauder thanks to its connection to the Dream of Hope and the First Gateway.
Only a high influx of burdens could be used to destroy it.
The only person in the world who carried those many burdens was Alice, who was either long dead or perhaps somewhere in the Tower now. There was no telling where she went, with the information the boy had collected thus far.
'Welp, she isn't the only person now.'
Alice was the only person who could carry the burdens of an entire world, but she was not the only one who had enough burdens to disrupt the laws of the portal she made. Her father carried with him innumerable burdens, a weight exceeding anything Worthy could imagine… until now.
Now, he could imagine all of those burdens.
Because for a while, much to his own reluctance, he was crippled by them. For hours, he was unable to move and could only writhe and scream in agony. It was a new pain, unlike anything he'd ever felt before. When he imagined the weight of burdens, he thought that it was a pressure that one could endure. However, calling it a weight was deceptive. It was far more burdensome than any weight that could be left on a human's shoulders.
It was agonizing. Emotions that were not his own flooded into his body and left him feeling sad when he was angry, and somehow in the mix of that anger, he could even find immense joy. An irreconcilable union of feelings swelled in his body and exploded into veins of pain and distress threatened to leave him vegetative.
Had it not been for the enhancements to his mind invoked by the divine ichor, collected through [Kleptoparasitism], his mind would've collapsed. His body was not without its own stress, however none of that was nearly as detrimental as the surge of indecipherable thoughts, sensations, and emotions.
So that was the reason Worthy was now the most valuable asset in the entire floating city. He opted not to disclose this information with anyone. After all, his ability to guide people to wherever his or their desired destination was would be invaluable on later floors. Risking being kidnapped by someone like Old Lady Haul was not something he was comfortable with.
'I'll endure it. Everything this world throws at me, even if it's impossible pain. Old Man, Hope… I'll be back. My wish'll be granted, and all this struggle will be worth it. One floor at a time…'
"...One floor at a time."
Sighing, the child stared out at the vast, red expanse, carrying with it untold tales. An innumerable number of people had lost their lives beneath the red waves, and soon, more people's blood would be washed into it. Because the journey towards the end of the world would be finished soon.