Chapter 154: The Death of a World

Torrac’s voice had shrunk after hearing Monkey. He sounded almost offended, like the Tower itself had insulted him by letting Kael be this slippery.

“Yes, the Momentum Rune would have turned to ash as it was soon to be hit with the closing circle of the Ifrit. If he respected the contract and never woke the Zombies. Or caused the zombies to wake up, the rune would have been lost. But now…”

Monkey let the implication stretch. The rune wasn’t just a prize. It was a ticking deadline. Kael hadn’t “broken” the contract. He had used the contract as bait, then used other humans as the lever to break the floor’s timeline in his favor.

“He can easily go for it. But, can he make it in time?” Dragon muttered as he noticed that Kael was running low on energy.

Internal energy.

Dragon’s focus sharpened on that detail. Mana drained meant headaches, collapse, and helplessness. Internal energy drained meant something different: the body failing. The muscles are refusing. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t just blur your thoughts, it turned you into meat.

“Well, that’s what makes this climber interesting. I heard a few Constellations are rearing to recruit him.” Snake said.

Her tone was lighter again, but it wasn’t a joke now. It was the sort of lightness that came from sensing a shift in the board. A new piece worth watching.

“No constellation recruited anyone from the first floor of the Reverse tower…” Torrac said.

That sounded like a protest and a fear at the same time. If constellations stepped in this early, it meant the Tower’s normal flow was being disturbed. It meant Kael was not just a nuisance; he was a crack.

“That is true, since they have seen what other climbers could do. They’ll only offer a contract to their former contracted climbers after they die. If they even do that. But this time. This child is showing them something far better than what the living climbers are.” Monkey added.

Monkey sounded pleased. Kael wasn’t strong in the conventional way. He wasn’t showing raw power. He was showing systems thinking. Exploitation. Innovation. The kind of behavior that made higher beings lean forward because it wasn’t common in the dead or the living.

“Let us keep watch for now. And see how far this young man can go.” Dragon said and leaned back in his chair.

The decision was made, calm and final. Observation instead of intervention. Let the board play out.

Torrac was the only one who was fuming at how Kael was unfairly hoarding resources and causing problems. But even he had to tone down his aggression. After all, he was still being investigated for sabotage and back dealings with other constellations.

His fury had a leash now. A political leash. He could bark, but biting would expose him. So he watched, forced to swallow his rage while Kael ran through the consequences like he owned them.

********

Kael hurried through the corridors of the maintenance shaft.

The air in the shaft was colder than the main tunnel, sharper, and filled with that stale “utility” smell, old dust, damp insulation, metal that had been sweating for years.

The corridor was narrow, lit poorly, and cluttered with pipes and cables that made it feel like the city’s guts. And full of zombies.

Kael moved fast anyway, boots slapping concrete, shoulders brushing walls and Zombies when the space tightened. He didn’t care about scraping himself. Pain was cheap compared to time. He cared more about not alerting any of these disgusting creatures as he ran forward.

The sounds of battle and screams were like music to his ears as the many climbers from the Sun Clan met their ends, a brutal, screaming, and flesh-tearing end at the hands and teeth of zombies that were woken too early.

He didn’t slow to listen, but he heard enough. A shout cut off too quickly. The wet crunch of something biting deep.

The frantic thud of bodies colliding in a corridor too tight for “formation.” The Sun Clan had always been loud about loyalty. Now they were loud in a different way, the way everyone got loud right before they died.

Kael felt no pity rise. He’d offered warnings. He’d been ignored. In the Tower, ignoring warnings was a form of suicide.

A notification signaling that the contract with Dragon had been completed showed up in front of him. It was cause for both joy and worry.

Joy that if he manages to leave the tower, he’ll get to save his mother once he obtains the Elixir.

That thought hit like a warm knife. Not comforting, but sharp. It carved through the Tower’s noise and reminded him why he was still moving at all. Why he was willing to burn a floor if it meant one more step toward her.

And worry since that meant that the zombies would all be woken right now.

Woken meant roaming. Roaming meant the maintenance maze became a meat grinder. It meant every corridor had become a dead end full of teeth. Kael’s chest tightened at the thought, not from fear exactly, but from calculation. The board was shifting faster than he liked. And he didn’t have the energy to navigate it all. Quite literally at that.

Another notification appeared in front of him soon after.

[The world of &é”-@é Has perished due to the collapse of society. It began when an outbreak of a lethal virus spread globally and terminated all life within a couple of years.

You now know why this world is empty and why it is inhabited by monsters from other worlds.

This could be the fate of your world if you do not grow strong and save it.

Survive what killed a planet and eliminate what guards the door to leave this forsaken world.]

It was a quest with no reward and a mission.

The Tower loved those. Messages that weren’t gifts, just pressure.

A reminder that worlds died the way people died here: one mistake becoming a chain reaction, one “small outbreak” turning into extinction.

Kael’s stomach turned at the phrasing, not because it was poetic, but because it was familiar. Everyone on Earth knew what it meant to live under the shadow of mana poisoning and monsters.

This was the same story, just with a worse ending.

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