Chapter 4: Echoes Above and Below
The blue gate spat Kelvin out like an lava hole. Level Two was brighter, more spacious and in a breath that smelled of iron and rain: fresher air than Level One, but sharper, as if the dungeon here preferred to teach by Witt's and violence. The tunnel widened almost immediately into an amphitheater of stone—pillars like rib cages, where other players watched and chat amongst themselves. Lamps hummed with cold light which no one know who lit them up; the ground thrummed with movement. Sixty people, the System told him in a sterile chime that slid into his mind between heartbeats.
[CONGRATULATIONS — LEVEL UP]
[Reward: +12🌕]
Kelvin barely noticed the congratulatory fanfare. His eyes were already measuring the space: exits, chokepoints, possible blind spots for ambush. His fingers curled around his worn out hand made spear. He felt the System's offer of twelve points arrive like a minor itch—an opportunity. No hesitation. No ceremony.
He funneled all twelve straight into Agility.
[Agility: 189+12🌕→ 201]
[Points Remaining: 0]
Fast enough to be annoying. Faster than most. But not fast enough to be untouchable.
He had expected fewer people. Level One and Level Zero where cowards and beginners clung, the System's minnow pools; Level Two and above were the grinders. That many faces meant one thing: the dungeon's difficulty drew ambition like blood draws flies. The crowd's density pulsed with potential threats: rival raiders, thieves, opportunists, and worse—those who thought the System owed them something. Kelvin kept his posture neutral, a statue with the potential to move like lightning. He watched others watch the dungeon.
Above the crowd—above the physical, beyond the glow of lamp and the chatter the world that mattered even less and even more than flesh stirred.
Somewhere outside the ceiling of stone and humanity, an Admin observed.
It was no single eye. It was a crown of eyes, surrounding it's head each one like an insect with million of lenses that can see beyond . A dozen tentacles—slick, curvy, subtle as a snake —writhed around an object that was not a hand but a device: hundred of Status windows surrounding it but was interested in one. The Admin squealed with small, high laughter that was not hostile and not kind. It toyed with windows, swiping, peeling, opening. It delighted in the little surprises: a Willpower spike here, a Title there, a diamond like a bright fruit.
Another Admin nearby—sleeker, who was also monitor hundreds of other status windows —tilted his head toward her. She reached out with two of her tentacles to pluck a human Status Window and examined it like a connoisseur sniffing wine. When the window unfurled, she made a delighted noise.
"Look," she murmured in a voice that made the lights flicker. "This one is quick. He cleared Level One too fast. He's odd. Special."
The Admin's face curdled into a frown. Humans are disappointing, I thought they were capable being . We gave them this godlike system, and they yielded so little. Nine S-rankers in a year, no SS, no SSS. Pathetic.
The female Admin tilted her crown of eyes and peered closer. Her tentacles stroked the glowing numbers of Kelvin's Window like someone caressing a map. There was something there—a flare of calculation, an odd distribution: obscene Willpower, an Agility spike, a diamond tucked away like a secret. She hummed. Different, she said. I feel… curiosity. I will make a wager.
She set her tentacles like dice.
"If he is what I think," she purred, "it won't take three months for him to reach S rank. He's already unusual. He carries tenacity."
The other Admin made a chemical sound that might have been a chuckle. "Deal," it replied. Warm light ran along the lattice. "If he reaches S in three months, you take the next batch of experiments. If not, you reset this layer entirely."
They make wagers like children. They did not know the shape of human stubbornness, or the shape of Kelvin. They did not know his memory of other lives, the small, precise architecture of revenge and strategy that had hardened inside him like a blade. But they had noticed a flicker—an anomaly. That was enough to make them curious.
Back in the stone amphitheater, under lamps that hummed and screams of players clashing far away, Kelvin felt nothing of the Admins' conversation. He felt the small buzz where his Status Window sat like a dormant insect. He smelled the dungeon: wet earth, spices of rot, and the faint metallic tang of enemies waiting. He flexed his fingers and stepped down into the press of people.
There was a hostel-runner here—a small cluster of bunks carved into the rock where players could camp, trade, or sleep. Kelvin passed them and kept to the shaded wall. He moved like a shadow. The others watched him with complicated faces: curiosity, hunger, disdain, and calculation. In one cluster he caught sight of three lounging figures—two young men with easy smiles and a leader who carried himself with practiced arrogance.
A voice called out, flat and insolent. "You there. You should rest. Level Two hits hard past this. The semi-boss is ahead. If you push now, you'll die like an idiot."
Kelvin didn't stop. He slowed enough to let his shadow cross the speaker's face. The speaker—squat, rosy-cheeked, with eyes like coin slots—saw the back of Kelvin's hood and his hand twitching on a knife. He squinted.
"Look I've gone through this level before you won't survive the semi-boss alone plus you look like you don't even have the 3 lives"
".....You pried into my Status Window," Kelvin said, and his words were a blade. He let the accusation sit between them like a dropped coin.
The squat man paled. Sweat rose on his brow. "W-what? I—no—"
A taller man with the look of a leader swaggered into the light—George, if memory and cheap rumors matched him. He was the kind of man who wore kindness like armor. "Hey," the leader said, hands spread, "don't be rude. He's just worried because it's dangerous. You should forgive him. It's just—well—caution."
Kelvin watched the way George placed himself between question and consequence. The leader's smile was professional: practiced warmth, the false currency of men who traded trust for power.
He remembered them" George and Lee. Two plunderers who, in one of my previous loops, had been Dangerous criminals that scavenged status Windows users and sold secrets. I had ended them back then, a little too efficiently."The memory shocked him now like a splinter.
"Do I kill them now?" the thought came like a cold stone.
"No. Not here. Not for now. "
"He let the memory fold away. I will use these fools. Devils can still be tools. Control is cheaper than blood."
"You better not look into my status window again," Kelvin said. His voice was a soft chip of ice.
George blinked. "Of course, of course. None of us touched your—"
"You should be careful of people who can see others' status windows," kelvin interrupted, still with a strong composure, voice higher now, as he looked around at those that were resting. "You can't trust someone who knows all your secrets."
They laughed among themselves, a brittle, nervous sound. The crowd picked up the ripple and moved away in the way crowds do when they want to pretend bravery. The three men exchanged a glance—something like relief, something like calculation. If a fight came for Kelvin, they wanted the right distance. If a treasure fell off him, they wanted the right hands. The leader George leaned closer and whispered, soft enough for pocketed knives to hear: "Let the dungeon kill him. We'll be the first to finish him and take his belongings."
Kelvin's eyes narrowed. He didn't have time to deal with them cause he had a bigger plan.
They departed like gulls on a tide—noisy, messy, winged with malice. The hostel hummed again with low conversations. Someone banged a pot; someone else argued over whether to try the southern path.
Kelvin moved on, deeper, through corridors that opened into gardens of fungus and spines. Level Two breathed differently than Level One. The beasts here were less obvious, less brutish, and more cunning—ambush predators that favored traps, feints, and layered assaults. Kelvin felt the difference like the difference between cold steel and a hot knife: both cut, but one was designed to be felt first.
This level is a lesson in patience, he thought, and the sentence was a blade hidden in velvet.
He met a pack of Sedge Hounds—hairy, with elongated jaws that snapped like clamping steel. He didn't fight so much . He led them through a narrow passage where their jaws were hampered, cut tendon after tendon as they tried to turn, and finally dropped them with small, surgical motions.
Points come like coins from broken glass, he thought.
Kelvin moved closer to the bridge in front of him,which looked crooked with steam gas that covered what lies below he could feel the semi-boss's presence like a scent of iron and burned sugar. The air tasted metallic and hot.
He paused and listened to the dungeon. The semi-boss ahead favored sound, a hunter who used the rumble of footfalls to triangulate prey. Kelvin measured the echo, the way the sound bounced off certain pillars and was absorbed in others. He tested a foot, then another, then leaned into the rhythm as if playing a metronome.
I don't need to be the loudest. I need to be the quietest that the level fears.
The path split as three narrow tunnels, each a trap with different punishments: one with collapsing tiles, one filled with poisonous mists, one with ambush holes. Kelvin picked the middle—poison if he misread the wind. He moved like ink sliding on paper, not touching the edges, not breathing until his gut told him to.
Halfway through, the semi-boss struck.
It was smaller than the Throne Beast but more cunning: a Spineweaver, a creature that used its own exoskeleton as a harp of death, launching needle-like quills and then collapsing the tunnel to trap prey. Its mouth opened like a scissor
GAAORRRRR
and it made a sound that shaked the pillars.
Kelvin didn't panic. He had Willpower for that. He had Willpower: a mountain of cold, far more stubborn than nerves. His mind tuned like a string and pulled. He sidestepped the first volley, the quills swinging past his cheek. He rolled under a collapsing floor tile and stabbed up into its underbelly. The Spineweaver shrieked in pain as blood gushed out .
He moved through the rest of the traps clean, efficient, and without breaking.
When he emerged from the final passage, breath even, and with a few new cuts.....
[Congratulations SpineWeaver Defeated]
[+50🌕] [+15💎]
[New Achievements:Defeating a semi boss]
[Title🏅: solo hero]
[Solo Hero🏅: 10% off on any courage abilities]
"The semi-boss will respawn fast if others come. I have to keep moving forward"
George's voice echoed like gulls again, distant. He had found a crowd to gossip to, another pack to hunt with. A small, unpleasant plan to take Kelvin's belongings if he died. Kelvin smiled inwardly.
"Try next time." He murmured
As he stepped further into the green-lit halls of Level Two, a System note blinked at the corner of his vision—a trivial ping at first.
[ADMIN INTERFERENCE DETECTED — UNKNOWN SOURCE]
[ MISSION CREATED]
[Defeat the Boss monster within 10 minutes]
[Reward:_ 100🌕,_50💎, _3🥇, _1🥉]
Kelvin's lips twitched with something close to a smile. Above the hot stone and the chipped armor of Level Two, a wager had been placed. Curious Admins were watching. Bets would be laid, experiments reset, outcomes measured.
They like their games, he thought. Let them game. I play better when others think me a piece on their board.
He strode forward, weightless as a shadow and heavy as consequence. The semi-boss had been a novelty—an irritation to sharpen reflexes. He had no illusions about the higher levels: more eyes, more players, more machines of calculation attempting to predict human unpredictability. The Admin had made a bet. The dungeon would test him. So would the world.
Kelvin zipped another corner, stepped into a vaulted hall where screams and laughter braided into a single sound, and felt, for the first time since his rebirth, something like amusement bloom inside his chest.
He touched the diamond in his pocket—a small weight, a bright future. Titles sat like sly companions in his mind: Lone Slayer and Speed Raider, discounts like keys to locked doors. George and Lee scuttled like crabs on the periphery of his vision. The Admins' wager was a blindfold they had tied over themselves.
He moved on. The green light swallowed him again, and the dungeon, like a patient and hungry teacher, began to teach once more.