Chapter 68: To Dare or Not To Dare

Kael, however, had already reached the edge of the first station. He hid right behind one of the pillars and kept watch on his mini-map.

The station was a skeleton of its old self, broken tiles, scattered signage, half-collapsed walls, but the emergency lights still hummed faintly, casting weak pools of illumination.

Kael pressed his back to a concrete pillar thick enough to hide his outline, breathing through the dullness of Presence while his eyes flicked between tunnel and minimap.

He noticed that the second Snake had already entered the tracks and began slowly approaching.

That dot moved differently: more cautious, more deliberate. The ranger wasn’t charging headlong like his friend.

He was assessing, stalking, thinking. Kael felt a flicker of irritation because the plan worked best when everyone behaved stupidly. Still, one stupid, one smart meant he had to be sharper.

Kael’s stunt needed perfect timing, and he did everything possible to get rid of his pursuers. Every clang, every thrown rock, every step he took was a piece of choreography meant to keep the tunnel’s attention on them, not him.

All he needed now was the main event to arrive. He could almost feel the rails vibrating faintly even from the hiding where he stood, like something heavy shifting deeper in the system.

And as if not to disappoint, the hulking creature came out, its speed far faster than even Kael had any right to disbelieve.

It didn’t crawl. It didn’t lumber. It flashed, a mass sliding through darkness with frightening momentum, scales rasping against stone and steel like sandpaper dragged by a god.

The station lights caught only fragments: a gleam of armored hide, the curve of a colossal body, the hint of a head that was more mouth than face.

It simply flashed past the station, and the last he heard of the man was a soul-wrenching scream.

The scream didn’t last long. It started human and ended wet, cut off mid-syllable as if the tunnel itself had swallowed it. Kael’s stomach tightened anyway, because even when you planned it, hearing someone die like that shook something primal loose in you.

[You killed a climber.]

[You Refreshed the Duration of being a Red Climber]

[You must not kill any other climbers for the next 12 Hours to lose the Red status.]

[You were the last to deal damage to the dead Climber]

[You have obtained 1 soul core.]

[You have obtained 4 soul Cores.]

Kael was surprised by the free gift. He didn’t think that his attempt at aggravating his pursuer into chasing him would result in five free cores.

The notification felt almost insulting in its cheerfulness: Congratulations, you’re still alive, here’s your profit. He swallowed, forcing himself to focus on the numbers because numbers were what got him out. Cores were breathing room. Cores were the difference between being hunted and being gone.

Just as he kept a watch on the mini-map, the red dot belonging to the basilisk had already consumed the first green dot and was running fast toward the second.

The movement was aggressive and direct. Predator logic. No hesitation. The basilisk didn’t “search.” It flowed toward sound and life, fast enough that the dot almost seemed to skip positions on the map.

Unfortunately, the green dot belonging to the ranger moved back immediately when he heard the yell and managed to exit the station. He didn’t freeze. He didn’t investigate. He ran. The green dot retreated with sharp purpose, slipping out of Kael’s immediate range like a man who understood one thing very clearly: anything that could make that scream wasn’t something you fought tonight.

The red dot belonging to the basilisk stopped at the exit that Kael took to go into the system. It lingered there a moment, as if tasting the air, as if choosing whether to chase above ground or continue its patrol. While the green dot continued running away, it stopped for a second or two.

Kael could already understand what happened and thought that he messed up. That pause wasn’t exhaustion.

It wasn’t confusion. It was calculation, someone checking their bearings, someone deciding their next move with intent.

He had hoped the basilisk would kill both of them, that way his ’Hidden Piece’ knowledge would remain his and his alone.

However, fate isn’t predictable. And from that sudden ’stop’ of the green dot, he realized that the ranger was probably informed of the hidden piece, and is now going to his clan to tell them of such.

Kael’s jaw tightened. Information spread faster than fire in this Tower, and the moment it spread, it stopped being an advantage and started being a race.

Now, there was one small ray of hope; it was nighttime. So the chances of that Snake member returning safely were very low. Still, they weren’t nonexistent.

Night killed quickly, but it didn’t kill everyone. Some people survived by being cautious, by being lucky, by being cruel. Rangers tended to be all three.

Kael couldn’t keep track of him as he got out of range, and so did the basilisk, which thankfully decided to go further up instead of returning to its lair.

The red dot drifted away into the tunnel network like a shark disappearing into deep water. The station’s weak lights buzzed overhead. Kael stayed still for a few beats, letting his pulse settle, letting the rune’s dulling keep him calm by force.

Kael thought about remaining here for the rest of the night, and once the basilisk returns to its dungeo,n he could go back up and see what he could do.

The idea was safe. Boring. Sensible. It was exactly the kind of plan Kael would’ve made on day one.

“Nah,” he shook his head, and the motion was small but decisive. “I already made a decision to stop playing passively…” His voice was low in the empty station, almost swallowed by distance.

He looked at the dark end of the tunnel toward where the basilisk had come from. Darkness didn’t look like empty space anymore. It looked like a mouth.

“There is only one thing left to do here,” he muttered and picked himself up. His legs protested, but the new stats helped, and the pain from the arrow in his shoulder was sharp but tolerable, something he could carry instead of something that carried him.

Armed with his mini-map, it wasn’t the same as he first found himself here. He moved forward, toward the open dungeon, toward danger itself, but at the same time toward opportunity.

The contradiction didn’t bother him anymore. In the Tower, danger and opportunity were usually the same door.

Fifty cores to leave, and fifty-five cores payment for the map. The numbers marched in his head like a drumbeat, like a chant he couldn’t stop repeating. They gave his fear shape. They gave his exhaustion a purpose.

He already had twelve cores now on his person, nine from the kills on the snake members and a few more from random goblins and the loot he sold to the Imp.

It wasn’t enough, not even close, but it was a start. A foundation. A tiny pile of proof that he could claw his way upward even when the Tower tried to drown him.

Armed with nothing but the crowbar, Kael headed forward, toward the dungeon he spotted on his first day.

The rails stretched ahead like black lines into the unknown, and every step he took felt like crossing another invisible boundary.

A dungeon without its keeper shouldn’t be as hard. That thought was a comfort he didn’t fully trust, but he held onto it anyway because hope, even cheap hope, was still fuel.

“At least I hope it isn’t…” Kael stepped forward.

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