The air in the grove didn't just vibrate; it curdled.
As the "Entropic Pulse" retreated like a defeated tide, the center of the grove erupted. Earth, massive roots, and ancient obsidian stones were flung into the canopy as a titan rose from the depths. It was the Heart of the Grove, but the name was a pastoral lie. It was a gnarled, obsidian-wood heart the size of a cathedral, suspended within a jagged ribcage of bleached titan-bones that hummed with a sickly violet light.
[Floor Boss: The Core of the World-Tree (Corrupted)]
[Rank: Calamity Class]
[Level: 55]
[System Note: Due to 'Anomaly' interference, the Boss has bypassed its 'Dormant' phase. Initiating Absolute Eradication.]
The survivors fell to their knees. The sheer weight of the Boss's aura—a tangible, crushing pressure known in the higher floors as Intent—was enough to trigger the [Faint] status on anyone below Level 10. Elena slumped against a pulsating root, her breathing shallow and ragged, while Julian Miller crawled backward on all fours, his rusted gladius forgotten in the muck.
"Level fifty-five?" Miller's voice was a panicked, high-pitched squawk that cracked with terror. "The tutorial said the boss would be Level ten! It's a death sentence! Arthur, you brought this on us! Your 'glitch' provoked the System! You've killed us all!"
Arthur didn't look back. He didn't have the luxury of addressing Miller's cowardice. He was staring at the Boss with the intensity of a surgeon looking at a tumor. To his eyes, the titan wasn't a monster; it was a massive, pulsing data-stream. He could see the loops of its internal clock—the rhythmic thrum of its "heartbeat" that regulated the floor's mana density.
"Provoked it?" Arthur's voice was a low hum, barely audible over the roaring of the wind that whipped through the clearing. "No, Julian. I just skipped the dialogue. Why wait for a fair fight when the result is predetermined?"
The Boss struck. A skeletal arm, composed of thousands of fused vines and the petrified remains of previous challengers, swept across the clearing. It moved faster than the speed of sound, creating a localized sonic boom that shattered every leaf in a hundred-yard radius.
Slot 1: Kinetic Regression—Momentum.
Arthur stepped forward. He didn't duck, and he didn't parry. As the massive, mountain-shattering limb made contact with his raised, open palm, he didn't absorb the force. He didn't rely on physical strength. He reached into the logic of the impact and looped the Initial Vector.
The arm hit him and stopped dead. Not because Arthur was an immovable object, but because he had forced the arm's movement to repeat its first millisecond of contact indefinitely. The trillion-ton force of the swing was trapped in a spatial loop, vibrating so fast it hummed a high, piercing note that made the survivors' ears bleed.
"Fenris," Arthur said, his hand glowing with the white-hot heat of the trapped friction. "You said you were bored. How do I kill something that has ten million Hit Points?"
The black cat, Fenris, sat on Arthur's shoulder, his nine tails swaying lazily despite the hurricane of force being held at bay just inches from Arthur's face. "HP is just a vanity metric, kid. It's a number the System uses to keep track of 'Durability' so the Gods can bet on the fight. But everything in this Tower—from the dirt to the Deities—is made of the same thing: Essence. If you loop the 'Death' of a single cell... well, you're the analyst. You do the math."
Arthur's eyes narrowed, the gold light within them flickering with a cold, predatory intelligence. Loop the death of a cell. He couldn't do it from here. He needed to be closer. He needed to get inside the ribcage, where the core was vulnerable.
"Elena! Get up!" Arthur shouted, his voice a command that cut through the mental fog of the Boss's aura.
The architect looked up, her face pale, her eyes wide with shock. "I... I can't move, Arthur. The pressure... it feels like the sky is sitting on my chest."
"Build me a path," Arthur commanded, his eyes never leaving the violet core of the Boss. "Your skill is [Structural Analysis], isn't it? Don't look at the monster. Look at the gaps in the logic. Where is the anchor point that holds this gravity together?"
Elena shivered, but something in Arthur's absolute, terrifying calm acted as a tether for her fracturing sanity. She forced herself to look. She activated her skill. Her eyes glowed with a sharp, cerulean blue. "The third rib... the one made of ivory. It's not physical matter, Arthur! It's a mana-conduit! If you break that, the whole structure loses its center of mass!"
"Good enough."
Arthur deactivated [Atmospheric Regression]. He didn't need the dry zone anymore; the heat from his kinetic loop had already turned the rain into steam. He needed speed.
Slot 2: Spatial Regression—Stride.
Arthur moved. To the survivors, he didn't run; he simply ceased to exist in one location and manifested in another. He appeared thirty feet in the air, standing directly on the glowing ivory rib. The Boss roared—a sound that shook the very foundations of the Floor—and its "Heart" pulsed a violent, necrotic violet light. A wave of decay erupted from the core, designed to rot any organic matter it touched in a matter of seconds.
Slot 3: Biological Regression—Vitality.
Arthur felt the skin on his face start to blacken and peel. He didn't panic. He immediately looped his "Current Biological State" to the moment before the wave hit. His body became a flickering ghost—constantly rotting and constantly un-rotting in a cycle so fast it created a shimmering, silver afterimage.
He reached the ivory rib. He placed his hand on the cold, vibrating surface.
"Regression," Arthur whispered.
He didn't loop the rib's strength. He reached into the "History" of the object—a technique he had only just intuited as his Level climbed. He forced the ivory bone to regress to the time before it was a bone—back when it was a soft, unformed piece of marrow in the womb of a primordial beast.
CRACK.
The massive anchor point liquefied in an instant. The ribcage of the Boss groaned as gravity reclaimed its mismatched parts. The cathedral-sized heart, stripped of its support, began to plummet toward the forest floor.
[Warning: Floor Boss Integrity compromised.]
[Initiating 'Self-Destruct' Sequence. Error... Error...]
"Oh, no you don't," Fenris hissed, his shadow expanding across the crater until it blotted out the violet sky. "No one leaves this theater without paying the toll."
The cat leaped from Arthur's shoulder. In mid-air, the small feline form stretched, distorted, and exploded into a monstrous, nine-tailed wolf of smoke and starlight. Fenris slammed into the falling Heart, his jaws, large enough to swallow a house, clamping down on the obsidian core.
"Now, Arthur!" the wolf's voice echoed like thunder in Arthur's mind. "The Ouroboros Ring! Loop the 'Impact'!"
Arthur landed on the ground just as the massive Heart hit the dirt. He pointed the black ring on his finger at the point of contact.
Slot 1 & 2: Combined Regression—The Big Crunch.
The impact of the three-hundred-ton Heart hitting the earth was caught. Arthur didn't let the energy dissipate into a crater or a shockwave. He looped the Kinetic Release.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The ground shook. Then it shook harder. The force of the three-hundred-ton fall was repeated ten thousand times in the same square inch, in the same millisecond. The earth itself turned into white-hot plasma under the pressure. The Corrupted Heart began to compress, folding in on itself as it was crushed by the weight of its own repeated impact.
[Floor Boss: DEFEATED.]
[Calculating Overkill Multiplier: 5,000x]
[Experience Gained: 2,500,000.]
[Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! ...]
[Current Level: 35]
The forest went silent. The acid rain had stopped for good, replaced by a gentle, glowing mist of pure mana. The grey fog of the System's "deletion" had been replaced by a golden, shimmering light—the sign of a Perfect Clear.
Arthur stood in the center of a mile-wide crater of smooth, black glass. In his hand, he held a pulsating, grape-sized violet crystal: The Core of the World-Tree.
[You have obtained a 'Primordial Fragment'.]
[The Gods of the 10th Floor have noticed your existence.]
[The Demon King of the 70th Floor is taking notice.]
Arthur looked at the crystal, then at his hand. The Ouroboros Ring was glowing with a faint, hungry light.
"Arthur..." Elena walked to the edge of the glass crater, looking down at him. She looked different now—her skin was glowing slightly, and her Level had jumped to 15 just from being in the vicinity of the kill. "We... we actually survived."
"We're just getting started," Arthur said, his voice devoid of triumph, filled only with a cold, forward-looking intent.
He looked toward the horizon, where a massive pillar of white light was descending—the elevator to Floor 2. But something caught his eye in the dirt near the crater's edge.
Julian Miller was gone.
In the spot where Miller had been cowering, there was only a shimmering, purple glitch in the air—a tear in the fabric of the Floor. A message was etched into the glass in scorched, black letters:
THE SYSTEM HAS A NEW FAVORITE. SEE YOU ON FLOOR 10, ANOMALY.
Arthur stared at the message. He didn't feel fear. He felt a clinical satisfaction. The System had finally stopped trying to delete him and had instead started playing the game.
"Fenris," Arthur said as the cat returned to his shoulder, its nine tails twitching. "How many races are in this Tower?"
"Ten thousand major ones," Fenris purred, his yellow eyes reflecting the golden light of the Clear. "A million minor ones. And about six 'Primordial' entities who think they own the floorboards. Why?"
Arthur began to walk toward the pillar of light, his silhouette framed against the dying glow of the First Floor.
"Good," Arthur said. "That's a lot of logic I need to break."
[Floor 1: Complete.]
[Transferring to Floor 2: The Trade-City of Ghal-Zul.]