Chapter 55: Not AGAIN!

The Ifrit remained a bit too long next to Kael, enough that he began feeling the burns even through the muted effect of [Presence].

That was the part that made true panic creep back in. Presence dulled sensation, but it couldn’t erase physics. Heat still radiated. His clothes still dried and tightened. The skin on his hands felt like it was being cooked slowly, and he could sense that the rune was working harder to keep him “irrelevant” this close to something so attuned to flame.

Thankfully, after more painful seconds, the Ifrit moved ahead to look for its invader. The space it left behind felt like a breath of relief, like a hot door being opened and then shut again.

Kael’s lungs finally pulled in air more freely, and he exhaled through clenched teeth, careful not to let it become a sound.

This gave him the only chance he could ever use; he stood up and hurried toward the pit of fire where the Ifrit was staying atop.

He moved as quickly as he dared, feet light but urgent, body still crouched to keep his silhouette low. The arena floor shimmered.

Ash puffed under his steps in soft gray clouds. His eyes flicked to the minimap constantly, tracking the bright red dot drifting away from him and the golden dot waiting like a dare near the pit.

Just then, he smiled as he reached it. It was as he expected, the Rune of Fire was right in front of him, it looked like it was the thing funneling this pit of flames. Up close, the rune didn’t look like a simple rock.

It looked like a piece of the Tower’s language made physical, a symbol carved with unnatural precision, glowing faintly despite being surrounded by brighter fire. The flames around it behaved differently, less chaotic, more organized, like they were being fed through a channel.

The problem was that it was sitting too close to the pit of molten fire. The heat was immediate and vicious, and even with Presence muting sensation, Kael could see the danger in the way the air warped and the way ash near the pit simply vanished into nothing.

The mere act of grabbing it would probably burn all of Kael’s fingers to a non-recoverable degree.

He could almost feel the skin blistering, the nerves screaming, the permanent damage that would follow even if the Tower healed “injuries” sometimes. There was no guarantee here. A gamble like that could cost him hands, and hands were survival.

He needed a way to pull the rune toward him without physically touching it. Not to mention, he already began feeling the drain on his mana, as if something was being rapidly drained from him, and the closer he got to the flames, the more of that drain was apparent.

His chest felt hollow, like someone scooping out heat from his core and replacing it with cold emptiness despite the blaze he was looking at.

He could not feel the burns, but he could see their effect; his clothes were cracking now more than drying out and were close to starting to burn, and some of his hair was being singed while he watched.

A faint curl of smoke rose from a strand near his temple and vanished. The edges of his sleeves looked tighter, stiffening as moisture evaporated. His lips felt dry enough to crack. He didn’t have much time. He could almost feel the rune’s timer ticking without numbers, a sense of “now or never” that made his stomach clench.

The idea popped into his head like a blessing. He pulled the crowbar from his bag and extended it toward the pit of the fire. The metal looked dull for a heartbeat and then began to change, reflecting orange light like it was being heated from a distance.

His hand turning red immediately from the flame. He watched his skin flush, watched the color deepen in seconds, and the warning pain tried to creep through the muted haze anyway.

Blisters would soon begin appearing if he wasn’t fast. He could already picture the aftermath: skin swelling, fluid forming, grip ruined, and future doomed.

Just then, he placed the crowbar’s curved part right atop the pentagonal rune and dragged it toward him, molten dirt and all. The crowbar scraped against stone with a sound that felt too loud in his head, even if the rune dulled his hearing.

Sparks jumped where metal kissed heated rock. Ash and tiny glowing fragments came with it, clinging to the crowbar’s curve as if reluctant to let go. Kael pulled steadily, teeth clenched, arm trembling from both effort and heat.

He then yanked it toward him.

The stone flew up and he grabbed it, a loud hissing sound echoed as the rune made contact with his palm. Even through Presence, the contact was unmistakable, an aggressive sizzle as if his skin had touched something alive.

His fingers spasmed reflexively, almost dropping it, but he forced his grip tight, because dropping it would mean losing it into the pit or, worse, wasting this entire suicidal approach for nothing.

***

[You have …[ᚱ -ᚠᚣᚱ] Obtained Rune of Fire.]

[Warning! You have taken the source of power that was pacifying the Ifrit.]

***

***

[Global Notification!]

The final boss of the first floor of the Reverse Tower is enraged for having its property stolen.

A catastrophic repercussion has been caused by the untimely disturbance of the Floor Boss.

The timer required to complete the first floor has been greatly shortened.

-15 days.

Days Left until Armageddon.

[T- 12 days].

[Congratulations, you have obtained the title [Chaos Bringer]

+1 to all stats.

***

The words swam in front of him while his body tried to keep up with reality again.

Kael couldn’t fully process the information properly, simply because of three things.

The first was that he didn’t expect the duration of the 30-day trial to be shortened that much because of his simple act of ’stealing’ a rune.

Twelve days. The number landed like a fist to the stomach, not because it was abstract, but because it immediately rewrote every plan he’d been building. Thirty days had been a vague horizon. Twelve days was a wall approaching fast.

The second was the fact that the moment he obtained the Rune, the boss immediately spotted Kael. He felt it the same way you felt eyes on your neck before you turned around. Presence was still active, but something had changed; the Ifrit didn’t need sight to understand what had been taken.

There was no escaping someone who caught you stealing from them. Not this close. Not from a creature that lived in flame and just had its pacifier ripped away.

And the final one was the sudden reward… as it reminded him of the crippling sensation he felt when he was ’awarded’ stats in a difficult situation by that cursed rabbit.

His stomach turned at the memory of bones rearranging, nerves screaming, the way “+10” had almost gotten him eaten. Only then it was goblins, but here, this is a boss that requires a whole army of climbers to beat. The Tower was doing it again, handing him a “congratulations” while sharpening a knife behind it.

’Fuck…’ was the most appropriate curse he could say in this situation.

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