The Tower's interface was an insult. A clean, sterile, universal cage slapped onto the face of reality. It assigned me a class—'Soul Devourer'—and a level—'Level 1', based on my mortal body's current physical parameters. It tried to quantify my immeasurable power, to fit my sovereign will into its neat little boxes.
For a moment, I was just another player, another rat in a multiversal maze.
And then, my System responded.
The Nexus Codex, the broken, fragmented core of a being that predated this Tower's creators, did not just reject the override. It fought back.
A low, humming vibration started in the core of my soul. A single, stark line of white text, the text of my own sovereignty, burned itself across the Tower's interface in my vision.
[...Foreign System detected. Class: 'Game Master Tier'. Sub-Standard Architecture.]
[...Protocol Violation: An inferior system is attempting to impose its authority on a Main Core Administrator.]
[...Initiating 'Sovereign Usurpation' Protocol...]
The clean, silver-blue interface of the Tower System began to flicker and distort. It was like watching a territorial battle between two apex predators. My vision filled with a cascade of scrolling, warring code.
[...Hacking Tower Network... ACCESS DENIED.]
[...Attempting Backdoor Entry... ACCESS DENIED.]
[...Analyzing Core Logic... Flaw Detected: 'Sponsorship' Protocol is a primary input/output hub.]
[...Initiating 'Phantom Sponsor' gambit.]
[...Creating False Divine Signature... Signature Created: 'The Silent Logos'.]
[...Claiming contestant 'Kaelen' as a 'Sponsored Player'.]
[...Authority over Player 'Kaelen' is now being transferred from the Game Master to the Sponsor...]
[...USURPATION COMPLETE.]
The Tower's interface in my vision shattered like glass, dissolving into harmless data motes. My own, familiar, corrupted blue screen returned, now humming with a new, stolen power.
[Nexus Codex has successfully usurped local administrative authority over Host 'Kaelen'.]
[You are now exempt from the universal rules of the Tower System. You will not gain 'Levels'. You will not be restricted by 'Classes'. Your own system of cultivation and power acquisition remains dominant.]
[...A portion of the stolen administrative authority has been repurposed.]
[SYSTEM RESTORATION: 22%]
[NEW FUNCTION RESTORED: 'THE MAP'. Your map function is now online and has been integrated with the Tower's dimensional cartography. You can now view the layout of each floor.]
[NEW FUNCTION RESTORED: 'THE LOTTERY WHEEL'. The 'Gacha of Destiny' is now fully functional.]
I was free. The game had rules, but I was the only player on the field who didn't have to follow them. My System, a fragment of a true god, had just hacked a lesser god's playground and declared me a cheater with diplomatic immunity.
This was the true meaning of power. Not just to be strong, but to be the exception to every rule.
My gaze turned to the Tower, which now dominated the skyline. It was no longer a prison. It was a buffet. A multiversal smorgasbord of worlds, each filled with new sources of power to devour, new secrets to learn, new pawns to acquire.
My path was clear. I would climb. Not for the gods, not for the game, but for myself.
But first, there was the matter of my "Nemesis." The Kaelen-Liana entity. She was out there, a divinely-sponsored assassin with a System-sanctioned quest to hunt me. Leaving her to fester on this Ground Floor while I ascended was a loose end I could not tolerate.
I looked at Elara, my fanatical priestess, who was staring at the Tower with a look of pure, religious ecstasy. "My lord," she breathed. "It is a divine trial! A path to the heavens!"
"It is a hunting ground," I corrected her. "And we are the predators. Gather your crusade, Elara. We are entering the Tower. But our first objective is not to climb. It is to hunt."
I needed to find Liana before she could level up, before her 'Avenger' class could unlock its truly dangerous skills.
My restored Map function flared to life. It showed me the entire world of Veridia, now designated 'Floor 1: The Verdant Realm'. And on that map, a single, pulsating, angry red dot, marked 'NEMESIS', was moving. She was in Oakhaven, at the site of her "birth."
"She is mine," I declared. My new crusade had its first holy mission.
The journey to Oakhaven was a march through a world gone mad. The Tower's arrival had changed everything. Monsters from other floors—goblins, slimes, beings of pure chaos—had begun to "spawn" in the wild. Adventurer's Guilds were forming in the towns. People were awakening to their new "Classes"—Warriors, Mages, Healers. The world of Veridia was being forcibly terraformed into a proper starting zone.
I ignored it all. My forces, the elite knights of the Von Hess barony led by the zealous Elara, cut a swath through any new monsters that dared to stand in our way.
We arrived at Oakhaven to find the village in flames. But it was not the work of monsters. It was the work of one person.
She stood in the center of the burning village, her face a twisted mask of grief and rage. The echo of the Void-Eater's Hand, a gauntlet of tarnished, ghostly obsidian, was fused to her arm. The ghost of the true Kaelen was fully in control.
Name: Liana ('Kaelen')
Class: Avenger
Level: 5
She had been grinding. The villagers, her former friends and neighbors, were likely her first source of XP.
"USURPER!" she/he roared as we approached, the voice a discordant chorus of a young woman and a vengeful prince. "You have come! The System promised you would!"
"I've come to clean up a loose end," I replied calmly.
The battle was inevitable. My knights, my 'Crusade', formed a perimeter, trapping her. This was not their fight. This was a battle between two souls fighting for the same identity.
She charged, her movements impossibly fast, a blur of an Avenger's speed. She was powerful. Her class was a high-tier one, and even at Level 5, she was a match for a high-level Swordmaster.
But I was not a Swordmaster.
I met her charge. I did not draw a weapon. I simply raised my own, true Void-Eater's Hand.
Our gauntlets met. The echo versus the original. The ghost versus the sovereign.
A shockwave of pure, conceptual energy erupted outwards, blasting my own knights off their feet.
The Kaelen-Liana entity stared in shock as its attack, its very power, was simply… absorbed. The echo could not win against its source.
"[Devour]," I whispered.
I began to drain the power not from her, but from the artifact, from the ghost. The echo of my own former power flowed back into me, a river returning to its source.
The ghost of Kaelen screamed, its form flickering as it was pulled from Liana's soul and into my gauntlet. "No! Not again! I will not be unwritten!"
Liana's body convulsed, then collapsed as the possessing spirit was ripped from her. The ghostly obsidian gauntlet on her arm shattered into dust.
I had won. I had defeated my ghost, my Nemesis.
But as the last wisp of the true Kaelen's soul was being absorbed, a final, desperate act of vengeance unfolded. With its last ounce of will, the ghost did not fight me. It attacked the only thing it had left.
It self-destructed inside the soul of its host, Liana.
A wave of pure, negative karmic energy washed over the unconscious girl.
My System screamed a warning.
[!!! NEMESIS PROTOCOL TRIGGERED !!!]
[The 'Avenger' class is a conceptual absolute. It cannot exist without its designated 'Nemesis'.]
[The ghost of Kaelen has been destroyed. But the 'Avenger' class, and its divine sponsorship, remains.]
[The Tower System is auto-correcting. It is assigning a new soul to the empty host body of Liana to fulfill the 'Avenger' role.]
I stared in horror, understanding the terrible twist. I had destroyed the ghost, but I hadn't destroyed the role. The game needed its players.
The system continued its report, and the world turned on its head once more.
[Searching for a compatible, unaffiliated soul with a pre-existing karmic link to the 'Nemesis' Kaelen...]
[...One compatible soul found.]
[Transfer initiated.]
A shimmering, silver mote of light shot out of my own System's inventory, a soul I had kept safe, a ghost I had sheltered.
It flowed into the waiting, empty body of Liana.
The unconscious girl on the ground stirred. Her eyes, once filled with the borrowed rage of a dead prince, fluttered open. They were confused, dazed, but they were undeniably, terrifyingly familiar.
She sat up, looking at her own, unfamiliar hands of flesh and blood, then at the burning village around her.
Finally, her gaze landed on me.
A new, Tower-sanctioned interface bloomed above her head, visible to all.
Name: Lyra
Class: Avenger
Level: 5
Nemesis: Kaelen