Chapter 39: Conviction

He picked up the hammer and lightly tapped the crowbar. The sound was small, a simple metallic click that echoed and died. Nothing seemed to change or happen at a glance. He tapped again, a little harder, then again, testing, measuring.

He struck at it again, trying to understand if the hammer is also limited to only function on items created by the tower. For a moment, he worried he’d misunderstood the description, that the Tower had given him a “repair” hammer that only repaired the Tower’s own toys, leaving his real-world tools to rot.

Nothing changed again, but the third hit the crowbar reacted. The reaction was quiet but immediate, as if reality had been waiting for permission. All the rust that had been covering it simply shed away, not flaking off in messy pieces but dissolving into nothing, leaving clean metal behind.

The chipped part was immediately restored to its former pristine state, edges smoothing as if time had reversed on that single damaged spot. The crowbar felt different in his hand too, more balanced, the surface less gritty, the weight more even.

[Congratulations!]

A notification scared Kael.

[You are the first one in this climber generation to ’repair’ a damaged item]

[You have obtained the title [Tinkerer]]

[Tinkerer- Slight increase in proficiency when it comes to repairing simple items]

+2 Dexterity

***

Kael froze for a second, eyes locked on the window as if it might bite him. The Tower had a way of turning even success into a jump scare. His heart thumped once, hard, then settled when the words sank in, first in this generation.

The phrasing made his skin prickle. It implied there are others, generations, waves of people that are constantly supplying the reverse tower. He wasn’t unique in this, only the first in this ’generation’ to obtain this effect.

The Tower didn’t congratulate people for being clever. It congratulated them for surviving long enough to do anything at all.

“Wow, that’s pretty neat,” Kael thought for a second. As he felt that although pricklish and borderline painful, the two added stats in dexterity seemed to make his fingers a little bit nimbler.

He pulled the rest of his items from his inventory. There was a rune there alongside the Anchor Rune.

ᚱ-ᚪᚾᛞᚹᛖᚪᚱᛞ {Presence}

Type- Rune- Consumable.

Permanent Effect.

Lower the presence of your body.

Kael noticed something unlike the other legendary rune of Anchor. This one was a ’Consumable.’ Which meant it will probably disappear once used. He stared at the word consumable longer than he needed to, and the word Permanent even longer because it suggested inflexibility, a permanent chain to future choice. Both runes had the same effect…

Lower presence. In a goblin-infested area, that sounded like the kind of thing people would kill for. It also sounded like the kind of thing that could go wrong in ways he didn’t yet understand.

Lower presence to whom, exactly? To goblins? To people? To the Tower itself? The system loved vague phrasing. It was like signing contracts written by someone who enjoyed loopholes. And kael was not declining the thought of considering the Tower as some sort of Fae system.

Still, there was no reason for him to simply cut off the path of magic by using this, or the other rune. A pointless risk. So he simply put everything away and leaned on the closest wall, waiting for the sun to rise. The wall was cold through his clothes, and the stone gave no comfort, but it was better than stepping outside into a sea of red dots.

He settled himself the way he used to settle on hard ground during long workdays, shifting until the pressure wasn’t on his spine, until his shoulders stopped trembling, until his breathing stopped sounding like he was still running.

To keep himself occupied and not simply die out of boredom, he kept checking his minimap. At first, he checked too often, like staring at it could make the world change faster. Then he forced himself to slow down, to ration even his attention. Every now and then, a couple of green dots would appear next to the black building.

But soon, they’d either run away, as apparent by how they moved back to where they came, or simply disappear where they arrived. Meaning they probably died. The disappearances happened in a way that made his stomach clench each time, because it was so clean. One moment a dot existed, the next it didn’t, as if their whole life had been a brief flicker on his screen.

He couldn’t hear the sound coming from outside, so at least he didn’t hear their screaming. The building swallowed noise like it swallowed light, turning the world beyond into a silent problem he could only observe indirectly. That silence made it easier to wait. It also made it easier to imagine.

This place was far too infested with goblins to be attempted this early on. After a while, perhaps many climbers will find this place, maybe when they’re strong enough to conquer it. Though it might not be a good thing.

If one or two of the climbers manages to get something powerful, it might completely flip the game. Kael pictured it too easily: someone swaggering out with a legendary chest plate, someone grinning with a weapon that made the floor’s balance meaningless, someone deciding that the easiest way to climb wasn’t to fight monsters but to harvest other climbers.

Obtaining a legendary item, something like the chest plate that John wanted, would simply destroy the balance and might even put Kael at risk. He didn’t like thinking of himself as part of some “balance,” but the Tower clearly had one, and the Tower clearly enjoyed breaking it.

For now, Kael had no intention on revealing this location even if he went back to the Sun Clan hideout… His mind kept circling back to that “if.” It was a small word with a lot of weight. Going back meant explanations. It meant suspicion.

It meant the leader watching him with a measuring look, calculating what Kael had gained and what he might be hiding. And it meant people who weren’t John, but were still people, and people were always one bad day away from turning into John.

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