[Welcome to Floor 6.]

[You are currently located on the continent of Gilse’a, where its three controlling nations have been bitter enemies for over a thousand years.]

[Shirisho, nation of martial prowess. Rhuun, the land where magic rules all. And Trioron, where technology aids strength.]

[These three nations continuously alternate between periods of uneasy peace and all-out war. Their philosophies of strength unchangeable, a lasting peace between them is utterly impossible.]

[The only thing in common between them: the belief that the strong rule over the weak.]

[You and your team have entered the 6th Floor as citizens of Rhuun. Do your best to prove to them that you belong to the former category.]

“Ha, I knew it,” said Anna, “there’s no way a team with three casters wouldn’t be put in Rhuun.” She looked like the cat that ate the canary, and with good reason.

The composition of a Floor team played a part in which of the three nations they were “made citizens” of on the 6th Floor, along with the difficulty they selected. Magic caster classes were actually, well...they weren’t exactly rare in people in Area 1, but they were outnumbered quite a bit by people with physical classes. This was reflected by Shirisho, in that it had by far the highest number of well-trained physical class troops.

Trioron’s army was better equipped, but only a third of the size of Shirisho’s, and contained at least some mages. Rhuun’s army contained a lot more mages, but their physical troops were the worst trained, and their army overall was the smallest of the three. Usually, most challenger teams, who on average had only one caster member, who picked Medium difficulty or below were assigned to Shirisho, and High and above were assigned to Trioron. However, there was a random chance, around 20%, for a team on Medium or below to become citizens of Trioron, or a team on High or above to become citizens of Rhuun. Those teams would have a harder time with their mission, but they’d get a bonus to their clear rating at the end.

Rhuun always had the hardest time making headway against the three nations’ stalemate, so with the fact that we were on Extreme difficulty plus the fact that we had 3 mages instead of 1 or 0, so I agreed with her assessment that we would almost certainly be joining Rhuun.

I didn’t say that to her face though, for the same reason none of my teammates had: Healer mage classes already had a reputation for both rarity and turning the tide of battle. Even the Common class Cleric usually had no trouble at least finding a team.

In Rhuun, they were downright exalted, especially those of superior classes like Anna had. And she had the Aristocrat profession. Now that it had come to this, she’d be the acting team leader for the floor simply because no one in Rhuun would be able to get their heads around the situation being otherwise.

[Your team’s Mission Difficulty: Extreme]

[Mission Selected]

[Expand Rhuun’s territory by occupying at least 5 enemy towns, including at least one major city, and ensure all captured territories are occupied by Rhuun’s forces on your 100th day on the Floor.]

“Seems about right for an Extreme mission to me,” said Anna, “for now, we’ll stick to the contingency plan.”

We only had three days to gather information and not only join Rhuun’s forces but secure authority in them, before war would be declared. That honestly wasn’t enough for most challengers to do much more than join their respective nations’ armies. And maybe on Medium, High, or Very High difficulty, challengers could afford to work their way up into greater confidence with those armies during the war itself.

Not us, though, especially since we’d been put in Rhuun. Rhuun had by far the most emphasis on defense in their doctrine out of the three nations, only striking out at enemy territories when they believed themselves certain of victory.

Shirisho was the most aggressive force, but they tended to have more difficulty holding on to what they took. Trioron weren’t as good at offensive strategies as Shirisho, often needing to resort to difficult sieges to secure towns and cities, and their technology gave them defenses that were superior to Shirisho’s, but not as formidable a deterrent as the rain of spells Rhuun brought to the table.

The three nations would fight, and fight, and fight, until it just wasn’t logistically feasible to fight anymore, at which point an uneasy peace would be brokered until their economies recovered enough to go at it all over again. And every time, though certain towns and villages and territories would change hands, none of them would end a conflict having secured a remotely decisive advantage over the others.

The Extreme difficulty missions could vary, but all of them known had the common factor of breaking, or at least threatening to break, this stalemate. Capturing a major city and enough surrounding areas for more than a short time would definitely do the trick. Absent the influence of powerful challengers, such places would be attacked or bombarded, but always with intent to weaken enemy forces staging there rather than actually take and hold them.

If one side threatened to break the stalemate in such a manner, the third side would act to bail out the losing side because naturally, they’d worry that after the first gained an advantage, they wouldn’t be able to stop them either.

None of the three had either the resolve to attempt to finish the fight absent challenger interference, or the inclination to attempt to broker genuine peace.

It was a very curious situation, and in public discussions of the 6th Floor scenario there were no end of theories put forward as to how and why this situation had come about and perpetuated for however long it had prior to the Floor mission period.

None of which were germane whatsoever to our own mission, but I had to wonder if a Titled I difficulty mission would require a team to secure not just an advantage, but a decisive victory for their side. And then, would even higher difficulties need to uncover this mysterious truth about the conflict’s origin?

More and more lately, I’d been getting the sense that the Tower was practically built on secrets upon secrets and the existence of difficulties beyond Extreme and Qualifications was barely scratching the surface of the uppermost foundation.