A song of sky and dirt! The characters, that being the technical term, of Always Leveling Titan long sang of those days, when below they plied their shovels and picks to wrest from the jealous earth a space for their own use, at first a ramp spiraling downward, and later a great shaft ringed by that same ramp with cavities carved in the sides to store tools and provide rest areas where exhausted workers could sit and compare levels. Meanwhile, above, in the Tower of Aspirants, they did nothing at all except watch their visitors slay impossible foes at less possible rates.

Level 4,000s ascended and 5,000s descended after filling not only their experience bars, but their inventories as well. The unconquerable heroes from other games claimed all the loot at first, less at second, and none at third, for even a single Vadsteel Scale from Always Leveling Titan would suffice to prove they had visited that exotic locale, should any of the boys back home exhibit such discourtesy as to question them on that point. More than that they judged superfluous. Would Aerywe Beruvo like a Vadsteel Armor Shard as a souvenir? Nobody there cared. There on floors 299 and 300 (“My evil tower also had many floors,” Ulrik bragged, spurring Boxer Andit to reminisce about fighting through them all the way to the top), they cared only for distracting conversations and anecdotes as they slaughtered Ancient Horrors or had Ancient Horrors slaughtered for them.

“I don't think I heard right. Some Horror chunks must have flown in my ears and blocked them up,” Reginn said while chunking more Horrors. “C, to B, to A, to S, to SS, to SSS, is the scale of rarity, as I understand it.”

“Right,” confirmed Wedarian, which is to say elf, Star Mage StarSix.

“And yet! BigGuy30 claimed his rarity to be AA.”

“Right. He is.”

Reginn looked at Ulrik and Vampire Lord with eyes humble enough to beg.

“I have no love for letters. They have betrayed me at every turn,” Ulrik said. He treated a mob to the fruit of his anger and proceeded. “I don't mind that you dropped AA from your list. I approve! It's a dumb naming scheme. Others are more fastidious. They want to know where the missing rarity went.”

“Oh. Sure. It's just S that they gave out later for characters they wanted to augment.”

“Does that clear it up? No? Um, let me try it this way.” Enx Flying Monster Talixia, who was a harpy, flapped once and settled into a thoughtful position, her chin resting on the wings she folded in front of her. “Sometimes they buff characters by giving them a new rarity. There's a whole big process, materials, yeah. So. Normally if you're an A, that means S is next right? But BigGuy30 for example is kind of a comic relief and S is a little exalted for him, so they gave him the same stats but called it AA. There are only a few AAs. Dragon02 is another one, and it's the same there except he's not comic relief. He's a pathetic villain who couldn't save his family from the demons. That's us. So he worked for them until Titan03 killed him. It was all very sad. It was sadder since we killed his family except his sister anyway. Whoops!”

Vampire Lord, when his laughter passed, asked for clarification. “Did every B, then, start as a C? And every SSS an SS? My interest is acute, for our native game employs no such mechanism.”

“Nah, it's not like that,” StarSix said. That was all, until a Zazen Slayer sitting nearby poked him. “Nothing's guaranteed. Stay the same rarity, jump from B to SS. It all happens. Doesn't mean anything.”

“This wood elf just told us rarity doesn't mean anything. We'll frame that sentiment, take it home with us, and throw it in the fire as a warning to others. What are you talking about?”

“Behind you, Ulrik.”

Ulrik's eyes stayed locked on StarSix while his scimitar wandered over his shoulder and poked an Ancient Horror as all who interrupt conversations deserve, defeating it. The threat removed, StarSix answered, “I'm talking about final rarities. The specific one doesn't mean anything.”

Talixia hurried to speak when the officer stepped one foot closer. “What if we separate horizontal and vertical? The thing is, going up in rarity is good. It's a buff. What he's getting at is that the specific rarity they give you doesn't matter. After hearing you complain, er, discuss about being a Rare, I imagine it's different in your game. Here, FairyDragon and HopingXYZ are both S, but that doesn't make them the same. FairyDragon is much stronger. Does that make sense?”

“Not a bit. When I look at a line of crusaders, I want to know which among them are useless without paying a dozen scholars to peer at them. It's these two! They're the useless ones! Ha ha ha!” Ulrik and Vampire Lord did not contest Reginn's words, but their faces discouraged the characters they were powerleveling from agreeing with too much enthusiasm. Not that the three lounging against the wall would have. Every crusader and every officer seemed to them to be a hero of legend, and each second they waited for their turn was rewarded a dozen times over. What luxury, to sit and grab the money and materials sent flying from the corpses of the game's strongest enemies by the very force of their explosive deaths! What a bargain, when the only price demanded was chats about rarities and elemental systems!

“We don't have elements,” StarSix explained. “My spells do. Enemies have resists. You know.”

“I do know! Flames of Dovesk!” Five more Ancient Horrors died. “I'm an Inferno.”

“Oh. Is that good?”

It was. Meanwhile, on the other floor, Mentor Tendradius Pux and Boxer Andit shepherded a flock of four characters with no less success for their lack of a third champion. A Knight took his leave after hitting 5,000, and the next in line brought a report on the excavation progress. “No sort of 'collab tunnel' or similar structure has been unearthed. The prevailing opinion is that all the removed dirt should be used to build artificial slopes for skiing, as the mountains in the background can't be reached.”

“And for roadwork. That's what we do when we get back. Big hills and obstacle courses. Get some tires.”

“A suggestion for the pit. Underground bowling alley.” Tendradius split three Ancient Horrors into eight pieces and frowned. “The natural next approach is for us to arrange our own deaths and hope to respawn in Freegate. That would interrupt our fighting, however.”

Boxer Andit nodded and splattered another mob. “It's a poser for sure.”

“It something can be figured out, it will be. You must all have tremendous INT scores, with your strength.”

“INT? What's INT?”

A new anecdote entered the Always Leveling Titan lore when its characters discovered Commandment of Hero and Holy Legend Army had no INT whatsoever. No wonder officers and crusaders boasted such strength. They skipped the useless stats. Despite the obvious advantages of a null stat, the locals theorized gaining a few points might help their visitors think up ways to return home, and therefore the grateful beneficiaries of powerleveling passed the hat around to come up with five Spectacles of Superior Intelligence for their guests. Mentor Tendradius struggled to fit his spectacles under his goggles, possibly because of his 0 INT, but the other four donned their new accessories and luxuriated in their massive twenty-point stat increase.

“Excellent. Now for innovation.” Ulrik looked around. Through his new glasses with swirly lenses he picked up everything, seeing what he had never seen before, or rather never understood. The currents of air which set dust to swirling within the tower, the slight increase in temperature where the sun hurled its rays through the tower windows, and the inch of extra space the locals gave the outsiders compared to other Always Levelers. “We should kill lots of monsters to show off.”

“As before?”

“I must have been a genius already.”

“Seems so. Put those glasses on your sword instead, make it cut a little smarter. Ha ha ha!”

The officers and crusaders pondered their situation with their reinforced brains while continuing their efforts till nearly every character from C to SSS had hit 5,000. One relaxed session, close to the last, was interrupted by BigGuy30 who yelled news through the window after he climbed up the tower's outside wall.

“Strangers near the Serene Shrine! Another day, another wonder. What's your favorite thing about being alive?”

“Battle.” Ulrik dispatched an Ancient Horror and turned around. “Oh. You really are there. I thought I had finally gone crazy.”

“But you answered me.”

“Madmen can still be polite. What strangers?”

“I would tell you, except that they're strangers, so I don't know.”

“I also hate to use words to get information. People are evasive. Not just crusaders and Inorrea, either. Still! It can be done.”

“Yes, and I hoped you would help me with that. I recently had the most painful experience of my life when some strangers beat me like I had the highest Ruberian Pendant drop rate in the game. I'm a little skittish right at the moment. That'll fade like all memories, but for now, want to come with me?”

Ulrik leaned out the window and yelled up. “Strangers! Sighted! I hope it's someone I like! We're going now!” He jumped out of the Tower of Aspirants a knee ahead of Vampire Lord and Reginn, not to mention a floor in front of Mentor Tendradius Pux and Boxer Andit. BigGuy30 opted to scramble back down the ivy that grasped the tower in its green grip instead, perhaps because of the skittishness.