The staircase of light dissolved, depositing us not onto solid ground, but into a silent, disorienting freefall through a sky the color of a bruised twilight. Below us, stretching to an infinite horizon, was a city.
It was a metropolis of impossible, gothic spires and sprawling, shadowy architecture, all built upon a series of floating islands connected by bridges of solidified smoke. A cold, perpetual rain fell from a sky devoid of any sun or moon, the streets below glistening with a wet, oily sheen. This was the Second Floor.
But I barely registered the breathtaking, gloomy vista. My attention was focused inward, on the catastrophic silence in my own soul.
The System was gone.
The constant hum of the Nexus Codex, the flow of data, the quest logs, the map, the store—everything was dark. It was like a god going blind and deaf. The symbiotic partner that had defined my entire second life had just… shut down.
I was unplugged.
We landed, not with a crash, but with a soft impact on the slick, black cobblestones of a deserted rooftop. The Tower's automatic systems had cushioned our fall.
"My lord?" Elara's voice was filled with a new, uncertain reverence. "This place… it feels… wrong."
She was right. The air was thick with the scent of wet stone, ozone, and a strange, ambient despair. But more than that, I could feel the raw power of this place. The magical energy here was denser, more potent, and far more predatory than on the Verdant Realm of the first floor.
Lyra, unbound from her pact by the System's crash, stood apart, her expression a mask of wary calculation. She rubbed her wrists, a phantom feeling of the chains that had bound her. She was free, in a way. Free from my direct control. She looked at me, her eyes searching, trying to gauge the new dynamic between us. Was I still her master? Or was I now just a man?
"The System," I said, my voice a low growl, answering the unspoken question in the air. "It is… hibernating."
A flicker of something—hope? triumph?—flashed in Lyra's eyes before she suppressed it. Elara gasped, her faith momentarily shaken.
This was the ultimate test. Was I Kaelen, the Sovereign, the master of a cosmic power? Or was I just a puppet whose strings had been cut?
A cold, hard smile touched my lips. The System had been a tool. A powerful, indispensable tool. But a sovereign is not defined by his weapons. He is defined by his will.
"It changes nothing," I declared, my voice resonating with an unshakeable authority that had nothing to do with a system and everything to do with the monster I had become. My cultivation, my Nascent Soul, my reforged body, the Void-Eater's Hand—that power was mine. The System had been the accelerator, but I was the engine.
My immediate priority, however, was survival. We were three unknown variables in a new, hostile environment. I could no longer rely on a system to scan my enemies or offer shameless solutions. I had to rely on my own senses, my own cunning.
And on my two, dangerously unpredictable companions.
"Elara," I commanded, my tone leaving no room for her faith to waver. "You are my eyes and ears. Your devotion is to me, not a floating screen. You will be my scout. Find out the rules of this city. Find the centers of power. Do not engage. Just observe."
She bowed, her faith restored by the sheer force of my command. "Yes, my lord."
"Lyra," I said, turning to her. Her chin was raised in a defiant tilt. "You are no longer bound by our pact. You are free to leave. To try and survive in this city on your own. Your 'Nemesis' class will make you a target of opportunity for the gods who sponsor this floor. They will likely send you quests to hunt me. You can accept them."
It was a gamble. A test.
"Or," I continued, my voice a silken, dangerous whisper, "you can accept the truth. Out there, you are a pawn, a tool for gods who see you as disposable. With me, you are a part of the single most powerful force on this floor. Your choice."
She stared at me, a war raging in her eyes. The choice between a dangerous, hateful freedom and a powerful, pragmatic servitude.
"For now," she finally said, her voice tight, "our paths remain aligned. You are still the clearest path to power."
"A wise decision," I acknowledged.
I had my court again. Not bound by faith or by pacts, but by a fragile, temporary alliance of pure self-interest.
We spent the next week learning the truths of this new world, which the inhabitants called 'Nocturne, the City of Eternal Rain'.
Floor 2 was not a unified kingdom like Veridia. It was a sprawling, anarchic metropolis, a single city-state that comprised the entire floor. Power was not held by kings, but by powerful, immortal Guilds, each one sponsored by a different, unseen god or demon from the floors above. There was the Shadow Syndicate, a guild of assassins. The Alabaster Legion, a guild of holy knights. The Cogwork Consortium, a guild of arcane mechanics. It was a city of endless, shifting turf wars.
Players here were more advanced, more cynical. They fought for 'Guild Rep', for 'Sponsor Favor', for the rare keys that would allow them to challenge the floor's Guardian.
And the Guardian of this floor was not a wise old man. The legends all agreed: the Guardian of Nocturne was a creature known only as 'The Labyrinth', an ever-shifting, sentient dungeon that was the source of the city's greatest treasures and its highest body count.
My path to the third floor would be through a living maze.
But as I gathered this new information, a chilling realization began to dawn on me. The 'shameless quests', the 'fated opportunities'—they had all vanished with my System. But the world itself, the deep logic of the Tower, still operated on those principles.
And I was still the 'Primary Anomaly'.
The world was no longer delivering treasures to my doorstep. Instead, it was doing something far more subtle. It was creating… patterns. Coincidences. Events that seemed random, but my paranoid, sovereign mind could see the narrative threads.
The Alabaster Legion, a guild of sun-worshippers, found their holy powers mysteriously weakening in the city's eternal twilight.
The Shadow Syndicate discovered a series of ancient, hidden tunnels beneath their own headquarters, perfect for ambushes.
Small, seemingly random events were happening all over the city, all of them subtly, almost imperceptibly, pushing the city's factions towards a single, inevitable conflict.
The Tower itself was writing a story. And I was at the center of it. It was trying to force my hand, to maneuver me into a position where I would have to reveal my true power.
I had become a living, breathing plot device.
I ignored it. I focused on my own power. In the silence of my System, I could finally focus on my cultivation without distraction. I pushed my Soul Ascension realm forward, my control over my own energy becoming more refined, more absolute.
But the final twist came not from the world's grand narrative, but from the ghost in my machine.
One night, as I sat in meditation, I felt a faint, hesitant psychic touch. It was Lyra, from the room next door in our hidden tenement hideout.
Kaelen, her telepathic voice was weak, fragile. I... I feel strange. Ever since we arrived... it's like a part of me is missing.
It was the Nemesis class. It compelled her to hunt me, to hate me. But her own, true soul, the one I had saved and sheltered, was rejecting it. She was at war with her own, divinely-appointed purpose.
There's a pain, she continued. In my soul. A... a hollowness.
And then, my own, silent System, which had been a dead weight in my consciousness for weeks, flickered. A single, corrupted line of text appeared, a diagnostic report triggered by her psychic distress.
[...Analyzing... Lyra soul-signature...]
[...Her 'Avenger' class is a parasitic conceptual entity.]
[...It requires a source of 'Hate' and 'Obsession' to function.]
[...Her own soul is rejecting the parasite. It is starving.]
[...To survive, the parasitic class is now seeking an alternate fuel source...]
[...SCANNING HOST 'KAELEN' FOR COMPATIBLE EMOTIONS...]
[...'Obsession' detected. Latent, residual obsession from your past life's fixation on the original Lyra.]
[...A SYMBIOTIC BRIDGE IS FORMING...]
[...Her parasitic class has latched onto YOUR obsession. It is now feeding on YOUR emotions to sustain itself.]
[CONCLUSION: The stronger your possessive feelings for her become, the more powerful your designated 'Nemesis' will grow.]