Chapter 153: Treasure Driven

“Do you understand what I’m telling you now!” Torrac howled inside the administrator chambers.

The chamber around them didn’t feel like a room so much as a cut-out section of reality, boxed and suspended. Blue-lit edges, cold geometry, and the faint hum of systems that were older than most worlds’ histories.

Torrac’s voice tore through it anyway, sharp enough to make even the air feel offended. He hovered, twitchy and bright-eyed, like an animal that had been cornered too many times and decided the only response left was violence.

“Calm down, little rabbit,” Boar spoke. “Have you not seen Dragon being calm, he is the one who decided on the contract in the first place.”

Boar’s voice had weight. Not loud, not dramatic, just heavy enough that it landed and stayed. It carried that tone of someone who’d seen tantrums from smaller beings for centuries and had long since stopped respecting them.

Torrac visibly bristled at the “little rabbit,” but didn’t snap back immediately, which said more than any apology would have.

Snake snickered as she watched the screen.

It wasn’t a cruel snicker. It was amused, delighted even, the kind of sound you make when you’re watching someone else’s problem become entertaining. Her silhouette leaned in her cubic platform, posture relaxed, like this was a theater performance and Kael was the lead actor doing improvisation no one could predict.

After all, what Kael had just done was pretty much a challenge to the authority of the tower and the Administrators.

A climber was supposed to struggle inside the rails the Tower set, not drag the rails out of the ground and beat someone with them. Kael had a habit of turning “rules” into “tools,” and the Tower didn’t like tools it didn’t authorize. Neither did administrators who needed the illusion of control to sleep at whatever counted as night for them.

Dragon remained calm in his darkened cubicle, watching intently. He didn’t lean forward. He didn’t shift. He simply watched, eyes unreadable, the kind of stillness that made everyone else’s movement look childish. In the dim, his presence felt like a mountain behind a curtain.

Torrac’s rage sounded smaller in comparison, like a storm screaming at stone.

“Are you not going to act? I don’t have a [Pause] left for the first tower, I would have used it!” Torrac said.

The desperation crept out between the words. “Pause” was a trump card, a cheat that allowed administrators to slap reality and make it behave. Torrac had none left, and that was what truly scared him. Not Kael. Not zombies. Not contracts. A lack of control.

“I’m thinking,” Dragon said as he manifested a screen in front of him, It was the content of the contract he had with Kael.

The screen bloomed into being with a soft shimmer, floating between them like a legal guillotine. Dragon didn’t need to raise his voice.

The act itself was authority. Everyone’s attention tightened around it, even Torrac’s, because whatever was written there mattered more than any argument.

“Hmm, he really is smart,” Dragon said.

The words came out almost like an observation you’d make about a tool you respected. Not admiration. Not fondness. Something more inconvenient: recognition.

“What do you mean, Dragon? He breached the contract did he not?”

“He did not,” Dragon said.

The refusal was immediate, clean enough that it clipped Torrac’s fury mid-flight.

“He caused the Zombies to wake up, that means he shouldn’t be given the reward. Or are you just being too lenient with him?” Torrac’s ears practically steamed.

He flailed verbally because he couldn’t flail physically. He wanted Kael punished the way a child wants a toy taken away from someone else.

“Do you even read?” Dragon asked. “Read the contract again…”

The insult was gentle and devastating. Not shouted. Not even angry. Just a quiet question that implied Torrac’s outrage was built on laziness.

Torrac blinked once, and then another time as the contract’s content appeared in front of him.

His mouth opened like he wanted to argue, then stalled as his eyes moved over the words. You could almost see the anger trying to find a loophole to crawl through.

[Once Kael Ardent leaves the tenth floor, he shall be awarded one Elixir. By Dragon.

On the premise that he does not kill any zombies before they awake from their dormant state]

Torrac opened and then closed his mouth.

The words didn’t care about his feelings. They sat there, simple and brutal. “Does not kill.” Not “does not cause.” Not “does not provoke.” Not “does not indirectly trigger.” It was written the way you wrote a contract when you wanted to see if someone was clever enough to exploit it.

“He did not awaken the Zombies, the other climbers did. He did not attack them, the other climbers did. He broke no rules, he only made others break them. The contract holds. In fact the contract has been fulfilled now since the Zombies have awoken. He can now kill them if he wishes… but,” Dragon looked at the silhouette of a sprinting man who was avoiding the Zombies that were waking around him.

“He isn’t doing that…” Dragon exclaimed.

Dragon’s calm finally shifted, not into anger, but into interest sharpened by surprise. Kael was running. Not fighting. Not farming. Not doing the obvious “smart” thing everyone expected once the restriction was gone. He was moving like a man who didn’t care about the apocalypse he had just helped unleash, because his focus had already jumped ahead.

“There must be a reason why he’s rushing, he looks like a man with an objective.” Snake said as she watched intently.

Snake’s amusement faded into curiosity. Her eyes narrowed slightly, following the moving figure on whatever unseen display she had. She wasn’t laughing now. She was tracking.

“You all are too foolish to recognize it aren’t you,” Monkey said.

Monkey’s tone carried that irritating confidence of someone who lived to be right. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded entertained by everyone else’s delayed comprehension.

He was considered one of the smartest ones in the room, though Dragon was without a doubt the wisest, Monkey was Definity the second after him.

Monkey’s silhouette barely moved, yet the room seemed to lean toward his words anyway. That was what competence did. It pulled attention without demanding it.

“What do you see that we don’t?” Boar spoke.

“His map, it’s leading him to a treasure. A treasure he would have lost if he didn’t cause this mess. He was planning since the moment he saw it, and now he’s going for it.”

Monkey’s answer landed like a nail through the center of the conversation. The chaos wasn’t random. It wasn’t just escape. It was a calculated burn. Kael had chosen apocalypse because apocalypse cleared a path. Not physically, but in terms of timing and access.

The rest of the zodiac took a look at where Kael was heading and they all realized it.

There was a brief quiet, the kind that happens when multiple powerful minds arrive at the same conclusion at once and none of them want to admit they missed it earlier.

“The Momentum Rune?” Rabbit muttered.

“You’re finally using your head now.”

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