Chapter 152: Greed

Kael’s smile wasn’t friendly.

It was teeth with a point. It said: You are not chasing me anymore. You are running from me.

Petrov backed away as he realized he was way in over his head.

His rage wavered. Not disappeared, Petrov wasn’t the type to let go of greed that easily, but the reality of it finally reached his muscles.

Kael wasn’t a wounded newbie to be jumped after a boss fight. Kael was the reason the boss fight ended the way it did.

Turning, he noticed that there were members of the Sun Clan coming over, going above the cooked corpse of the basilisk.

Footsteps approached from behind the smoke-stained slope. Green dots closing in. Voices, sharper now that the immediate stampede had ended. Sun Clan survivors moved cautiously, eyes flicking from Kael to Petrov to the crisped bones on the rails like they couldn’t decide which horror to focus on first.

“Oh, you got them good,” Iori said as he saw the dozen or so Snake members turned to a crisp.

Iori’s tone held a strange mix of approval and calculation. He wasn’t praising Kael for being clever. He was praising him like a man praises a weapon that performed well. Kael felt that distinction immediately.

“But Kael, my boy, I noticed something interesting,” Iori said.

He stared at Petrov like he became a non entity, something to be rid off whenever he wanted. But he still didn’t attack.

Kael understood why, even when his enemy was there, he couldn’t attack him. If he did, he’ll still get nerfed. And if that happens, the idea in Iori’s head would go to naught.

The contract was still a leash around both clans’ throats. Iori could glare. He could posture. But he couldn’t just end Petrov here without paying the Tower’s price, and paying that price now would weaken them exactly when they needed to consolidate loot and prepare for whatever came next.

It was disgusting, the way rules could protect monsters like Petrov.

“What is it? Iori?” Kael asked.

“Tsk, no longer calling me boss now, are we rioting?”

“Did you ever think of me as a member?” Kael asked as he flicked his hand from the brain matter and the blood of the climber he had just eliminated.

He shook it off like dirt, but the warmth still clung to his knuckles.

His voice stayed flat. He wasn’t asking for reassurance. He was cutting the illusion apart with a question Iori didn’t want to answer honestly.

“We did, we fought together, bled together.”

“You tried to leave me alone twice now.”

“It happens,”

The casualness of that reply was almost impressive. Iori didn’t deny it. He didn’t apologize. He treated betrayal like weather. Like an unfortunate drizzle you walked through and forgot.

“Now, I suppose you want a share?” Kael asked.

“Would be very wise to hand it over, after all, we outnumber you. And I don’t think you’re very friendly with our buddy here,” he said as he looked at Petrov.

Kael knew it; they were now fully hostile toward him and didn’t even try to hide it.

The words weren’t even veiled. Outnumber you. Wise to hand it over. That was the clan speaking, the “we” that had never included him.

Kael could feel the shift in the air as Sun Clan members tightened their grips and spread out slightly, not to attack yet, but to make sure he understood the shape of the cage forming around him.

Kael sighed. He looked at the Sun Clan once more, “You really want to do this?”

He wasn’t begging. He was checking. Sometimes people backed down when you asked them to say their intentions out loud. Sometimes they realized how ugly they sounded. Sometimes.

Not often.

“You can’t horde the hidden piece by yourself.”

“The system said I did the most, I get to take the most.”

“But that’s not how clans work, you hand over what you get, and it gets divided.”

“Worthless and useless scum get to leech off those who worked hard. That’s no clan, that’s just tyranny.”

The words came out sharper than he expected, because he wasn’t only talking about the Sun Clan. He was talking about Earth.

About bosses and debt and people who smiled while holding a knife. About the way “teamwork” always somehow meant you suffer so someone else can call it leadership.

Kael noticed the hesitant stare on Peter, he wasn’t an alley per se, but it felt slightly good that one of the Sun Clans didn’t greed for what he had.

Peter’s eyes kept flicking away from Kael’s inventory window that only existed in imagination. He didn’t look hungry. He looked conflicted. Like he’d finally realized what kind of man Iori was, and how little “clan” meant when loot entered the equation. Kael didn’t trust Peter, but he noted the hesitation anyway. Hesitation could be leveraged.

“Unfortunately,” Kael said, “All I got was a Darkness Rune. And some material, I’m not handing either over.”

He chose the words carefully. Darkness Rune first, because that was the piece they didn’t care about. Material second, because anyone with two brain cells understood material meant gear and gear meant advantage. And then the hard line. Not handing either over. No negotiation.

“Is that the same material you’re wearing under that tracksuit?” Iori asked.

“Good eyes, something like that.”

“You can’t have it all for yourself; we also need to armor up.”

“You didn’t work for it as hard as I did; you think you could have beaten the basilisk without me?”

“You wouldn’t have been able to do the same either.”

Kael felt the truth of that sting. It was annoying because it was partially correct. He had used them. They had used him. The only difference was Kael was honest about it, at least to himself.

“That’s the difference between you and me, I’m an opportunist,” Kale said as he lowered the lever from the wall and tore it away.

The lever came off with a violent jerk, metal groaning as it disconnected. Kael didn’t care if it could be used again. He needed it out of the way so he could walk the tracks for what he was planning.

“What are you doing now?” Iori took a step forward.

“Something I should have done before.” He said

He moved fast, faster than they expected, because people always underestimated how quickly a man could commit when he’d already decided to burn a bridge. His boots hit the railing, and his stomach tightened, instinct screaming electricity, but the rails were dead now. The lever was gone.

He reached the other side of the platform, where the maintenance door was. The same door that had hundreds of grayed out our red dots.

Kael knew it well. His Internal energy was in the shitter. Very low, and he couldn’t fight the Sun Clan if they came at him. And running away would exhaust his energy before he reached the exit of the metro system.

There was only one way out of this.

The ticking time bomb that Dragon warned him not to touch.

He could practically hear Dragon’s calm voice in his head: Don’t kill more zombies. Kael wasn’t planning to kill them. Not now.

But opening that door, entering that space, was still playing with the same loaded gun.

He ripped the hinges off the door.

Metal screamed. The hinge pins popped. The door sagged. Kael yanked it away with brute force, and stale air breathed out from inside like the exhale of a tomb. The smell hit him immediately, old rot, dampness, that sweet-sour stench of something that had been dead too long.

“What are you doing? You think you can escape through that place, you don’t know where it leads. It’s just an electric maintenance passage. We’ll catch you before you make it to the next section. Just hand over the materials, I promise that you won’t be harmed.”

Iori’s words followed him like a leash thrown after a dog that slipped its collar. The promise was almost funny. Won’t be harmed.

Kael didn’t believe it for half a second.

“Nah, I’m done following others. If you want something,” Kael said as he took a step back with his back to the entrance of the maintenance shaft. “Come and get it. But I can promise you one thing. Following me will truly be the end of you all.”

He meant it. Not as intimidation, but as a statement of fact.

If they followed him into the zombie nest, they’d panic. If they panicked, they’d swing. If they swung, someone would kill something. If someone killed something, the floor could become an apocalypse early. And Kael, alive, different, stubborn, would survive long enough to watch them drown in it.

He then activated presence and disappeared.

The world dulled again. His body thinned. The doorway became a gray frame. The Sun Clan’s faces blurred, their expressions turning into shapes rather than details. Kael slipped backward into the maintenance passage like he was being swallowed by the tunnel itself.

“Did he go in?” someone said.

“He must have, he is translucent, not transparent. I saw his silhouette go into the maintenance area. Let’s follow him!”

Peter jumped, “I don’t think we should boss…”

Iori frowned. Kael didn’t usually say things he didn’t mean. His warning from earlier was true.

“What is it, Peter…” Iori asked while a couple of Sun Clans rushed toward the maintenance door.

“He said before that it’s full of monsters…”

“It’ll be fine, we’re a squad, a few goblins won’t hurt us.”

Kael almost laughed in the darkness at that. Goblins. They still thought goblins were the problem. They still thought every monster on this floor behaved like a goblin.

Stupid killed faster than any basilisk.

“Holy shit!” someone shouted from inside the maintenance area.

He ran back, “Boss! There is a shit ton of Zombies here!” he said it, not with fear. But with greed.

Of course. Of course, the first reaction wasn’t fear. It was profit.

“What do you mean, go back!” Iori said as he realized the danger.

Zombies were not uncommon back in the normal Tower of Trial. But they are a pain in the ass for unleveled first-floor members.

They weren’t hard because they hit like trucks. They were hard because they didn’t stop. Because one bite ended you later. Because numbers mattered. Because panic turned a tidy hallway into a death pit.

“No, boss! They’re all dormant, this shit is free EXP!” he said.

Just then, one of the two who had already been there stabbed a zombie through the head.

And got two cores for it.

“We can farm here forever!” he shouted.

Kael didn’t need to see it to imagine the grin on that idiot’s face. The way his eyes would sparkle at the sight of a core like he’d just found salvation.

The way he’d never realize that “dormant” was not the same as “dead.” The way he’d forget that the Tower never allowed forever.

And just as he picked up the core and turned for his next free kill, the dormant Zombie turned its head.

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