Bureau of Floor Guardians

The **Bureau of Floor Guardians** refers to the group of beings that are charged with handling the maintenance, upkeep, law enforcement and control of the Obelisk and are shown to have the highest authorities in The Tower's System.

## History

As stated be Yeon-woo and confirmed by Jeong-woo, the Floor Guardians were all originally players within the Obelisk that chose to retire from being a Ranker and instead become a "Spirit" that helped administrate the Tower. The Guardians themselves were originally Players and High Ranking Rankers that disappeared from the Tower years ago and their identities and reputations gradually disappeared over time to the point that the Tower at large now believe them to have all perished.

However the truth was due to various factors such as clashes with other rankers, lack of forces, talent limits, a shortage of skills, All-for-one’s discouragement, and other walls, these Players were thus then forced to put down their swords and stop climbing up the Tower, but due to their lingering attachments to the Tower, they still could not bring themselves to leave due to them having desperate wishes or goals but never had the ability to reach the top or accomplish them and died without peace or because they were filled with lingering feelings and anguish they couldn’t abandon and instead opted to bind themselves to the System as administrators of the Tower.

The Guardians themselves are required to abandon their original names as Players and continue working under a code-name or a nickname as guardians, causing them to effectively become nothing more that "Shadows" of their former selves.

## Role

The main role of the Bureau is to regulate and maintain the various functions of the Obelisk and maintain its system. As such one of the main rules that Govern the Bureau is their policy to remain completely neutral and simply observe from afar the affairs of the Tower and are forbidden to meddle in the affairs of its Players or Clans under threat with severe punishment.

This is seen in their main role as the observers and regulators to each of the Trials within each Floor of the Obelisk, As seen where the Floor Guardians main duty is the properly explain the specifics of each Floors Trials and tell the Players what they need to do to finish the Trial. In fact, The Bureau members themselves are duty bound and threatened with punishment to give as much information assistance to Players to accomplish the trials and trying to use extortion for monetary gain by selling information or for any other reason is grounds for severe punishment.

Other than their duties as Floor Guardians, the Bureau is also charged with the Tower's upkeep, as seen where one of their main jobs was to repair and restore any Floors that are severely damaged by Players.

Another aspect of their duty to the Tower is that the Bureau also acts as one of the main controlling party that regulates the activities of the various Gods and Demons within the 98th Floor of the Obelisk and are mainly charged with dealing with them should an issue arise and take complaints from them should the Godly and Demonic Societies have concerns.

As seen with Yeon-woo, when a God or Demon of the 98th Floor becomes interested in a Player, they can assign a floor guardian to rely a message to them.

It would later be revealed that another duty of the Floor Guardians was to intermediate the disagreements between the Transcendents of the 98th Floor of the Tower and All-For-One, the Tower's Apostle.

### Operations

#### **Prisons**

Other than their duties and operations of keeping the Tower's upkeep and maintaining order in each of the Floors, the Bureau also have additional operations in a few hidden locations within the Tower. This is seen where they managed the secret location, such as the *Cave of Yaanek*, that possess the unique property of removing the blessings and support of the Tower's System once a Players into it.

Due to the unique properties of the cave, the Bureau has transformed the cave into a prison to house and imprison Players that have been deemed to be "Troublemakers". Player who have caused excessive damage to the floors, Players who are capable of damaging the Tower's system and Players that have caused excessive destruction within the Tower in General are apprehended and imprisoned by the Bureau inside the Cave. With them sentencing them in accordance to the amount of damage they have done.

The Cave of Yaanek is also the location where the rare ore, the Blood-Tear Stones, can be found and mined. The Blood-Tear Stones themselves is one of the main components needed to create *Adamantite*, making its value in the market immense as even the Gods and Demons of the 98th Floor are searching for it.

As such, the Bureau have also made use of their prisoners as labor to help them mine it, with the Bureau turning the mining operation of the oar into a form of punishment. As stated by Tarneck, as long as the prisoners fulfill each of their quota within their sentenced time, they will be released with no issue.

The Mining operation and prison itself is run by a separate faction of Floor Guardians called **Bridgeheads**, who are tasked with overseeing the prison and making sure the prisoners are under control.

The members of the Bridgeheads are;

* **Tarneck:** The Sheep of the 12 Zodiacs and leader of the Bridgeheads.
* **Hanabi:** Former High Ranker within the Obelisk formerly known as the *King of Mythical Creatures*. Now a Mid-Ranked Guardian and member of the Bridgeheads.
* **Ohn:** Tarneck's second in command leading the Bridgeheads.

## Recruitment

The members of the Bureau are typically stated to be some of the most powerful Players within the Obelisk who disappeared from the public eye of the Tower. Its been stated that due to All-For-One preventing any and all players from exuviating and gaining transcendence on their own using the Tower's system. Leading to many of the Tower's most powerful players effectively reaching a dead end in the evolution, this in turn lead to them in turn agreeing to join the Bureau of Floor Guardians in order to by pass All-For-One and gain transcendence under the Bureau of Floor Guardians, who due to their role as mediators between the Lower Floors and the Upper Floors containing the Gods and Demons of the 98th Floor, transcendence was the bare minimum to become a guardian.

The exuviation process itself under the bureau was stated to be heavily controlled by them and the evolution of the recruits power was controlled to insure that they do not become beings with sufficient power to endanger the Tower or its System.

Other than recruiting players, the Bureau was also known to offer Gods, Demons, Monsters and even Otherworldy Gods positions within the Bureau due to their immense power. This is seen where several members of the Central Bureau was stated to have been Transcendent beings that ran rampant in the infinite dimensions and universes and became infamous for their power prior to joining the bureau and being contained within the Tower.

## Abilities

In terms of sheer raw power, it is said that the combat ability of Bureau member was equivalent to a Ranker within the Tower and the 12 Zodiacs, the Highest and most powerful Floor Guardians, are stated to have strength equal to that of a High Ranker or even those of the Nine Kings.

### Authorities

Similarly to Mysterious Merchants of the Merchant Union, Floor Guardians possess unique abilities and privilege's within the Tower and have a unique "Window" exclusive for only their personal use. However unlike Players and Merchants, the Floor Guardians are referred to as Administrators to the Tower System and can directly make changes to it within a certain degree.

* **Administrators Window:** Floor Guardians are shown to have unique access to the "Admin Window" of the Tower in contrast to the "Player Window" Players have. This Window grants Floor Guardians access to several unique functions and abilities that is impossible for Players to use. As seen where Floor Guardians can use it to freely teleport across all the Floors of the Tower regardless of whether they past the Floors Trials, Personally give out Rewards and Items to a Player once they finish a trial or an achievement, Access the surveillance system of the Tower and observe all going on's within the Tower and have free access to the Tower's Records of the Floors and Freely access a Floor's "saved data" in order to restore a Floor back to its pristine condition should it be severely damaged.