Chapter 13: The Regression of Shadows
Kelvin decided to go back to level 1 for the special rewards.
And blue light shimmered over Kelvin's hooded form as he stood before the gate to Level One once again. The air tasted metallic — familiar, almost nostalgic — like the scent of blood and data fused into one. For most players, this place was a memory. For him, it was a battlefield he'd already conquered twice in different lives.
"Back to the beginning," he whispered.
The gate pulsed in response, scanning him.
[⚠ WARNING: PLAYER ABOVE LEVEL RANGE]
[ACCESS PERMITTED – SPECIAL CONDITION MODE: REWARD OVERRIDE ACTIVE]
He smirked faintly. The System tried to warn him, but he'd already found the loophole.
"Revisit the earlier levels twice, and the System will open their hidden cores — the Special Dungeons."
No one believed that in his second life. They rushed forward, chasing numbers instead of wisdom. But Kelvin had learned that the early levels contained the foundation of every law that governed the tower. To break the System, you must start afresh from the began.
[LEVEL ONE: The Broken Plains]
The world materialized around him — a wasteland of cracked soil and distant ruins. Green fog drifted across the horizon. A dozen newbies spawned nearby, coughing, confused, clutching rusty weapons.
Kelvin kept his hood up, face shadowed. His aura was tightly sealed. To them, he was just another silhouette in the mist.
"Where are we?" one of the players whispered.
"Is this… the game?" another asked.
They were terrified — like every human during their first awakening. Kelvin remembered that same confusion from his first life. He almost pitied them.
Almost.
Monsters crawled out of the mist — malformed wolves with glitching bodies and flickering jaws. The newbies screamed and scattered, striking clumsily. One of them tripped, dropping his blade.
Kelvin didn't move at first. He just observed — eyes sharp behind the shadows of his hood. Then he sighed softly.
"…Tch."
He lifted a single finger.
[Mind Action + Perception :-10,388]
[ Notice: Mind Action has been Heightened]
The fallen sword rose from the ground as if drawn by invisible strings, slicing through the wolf before it could reach the player. Blood splattered across the dirt, sizzling from the corrupted energy. The boy looked up, trembling, searching for who saved him — but Kelvin had already vanished into the fog.
"Rule one," Kelvin thought. "Never reveal the source of strength. Rule two — "never let them thank you."
He moved like a phantom across the battlefield, stepping on air using Space Walker, his body shifting along invisible planes. Each time a player was about to die, a blade appeared from nowhere, or a blur smashed through them, or a monster simply dropped — headless — before reaching them.
To the newbies, it was divine intervention.
To Kelvin, it was maintenance.
He didn't do it out of compassion. He was stabilizing the ecosystem. The more players survived, the more chaos would exist for the Admins to monitor — more data, more noise to hide within.
[+50🌕]
[+50🌕]
[+50🌕]
His points stacked up faster than the monsters could respawn.
When the last creature fell, the sky cracked open.
[SPECIAL DUNGEON UNLOCKED – LEVEL ONE CORE: "The Forgotten Cavern"]
[RECOMMENDED PARTY: 10]
[STATUS: SOLO ENTRY DETECTED]
[REWARD POTENTIAL: HIDDEN ITEM 💎]
Kelvin stepped forward without hesitation.
[The Forgotten Cavern]
The entrance was a mouth of stone, dripping with blue bioluminescent liquid. Inside, shadows moved like smoke — the kind of darkness that listened. The deeper he went, the colder it grew, until sound itself seemed to stop obeying physics.
At the heart of the cave, a giant creature pulsed — not alive, but waiting.
Its body was half crystal, half bone.
[BOSS: Core Guardian | Level 1-Special | Power Tier: C-]
"Perfect test," Kelvin murmured.
He activated the Scales of the Weak.
The air rippled.
[Power Balance: Activated – Equalizing Attributes…]
The Guardian's aura shrank, its movements slowing as its energy was forcibly reduced to Kelvin's baseline. He lunged, blade glowing white-hot with energy.
[Stat Swap: 10% Agility → Strength.]
One kick. Then another. The beast shattered — crystal fragments scattering like stars.
[💎 +10]
[🌕 +200]
[Hidden Reward Unlocked: "Crystal Heart Fragment" – Artifact Material]
Kelvin caught one fragment midair. The light reflected in his eyes.
"Reward one… secured."
[LEVEL TWO: The City of Rust]
Two hours later, he stood inside what looked like the remains of an ancient metropolis. Towers of corroded metal leaned toward the clouds. The ground buzzed with static. Weak android monsters patrolled the streets, moving on fractured programming.
A group of five players huddled behind a broken car, whispering nervously. He heard their words easily, even from hundreds of meters away.
"We can't beat them."
"There's too many."
"Where's the system hint? Why isn't it showing up?"
Kelvin sighed. "They still depend on prompts…."
He leapt across rooftops using Space Walker, silent as data flow. One android raised its rifle — and before it could fire, its arm twisted backward, crushed by invisible force.
[Mind Action – Neural Override]
Every machine froze mid-motion, then turned their weapons on each other.
Explosions rippled through the streets. The group of players ducked, stunned, as the battlefield cleared itself in seconds.
Kelvin stood on the roof above them both hands in his hood pocket as it fluttering in the wind.
A girl looked up and gasped. "Who is that?"
But before they cald say anything to him he was already gone.
[SPECIAL DUNGEON UNLOCKED – LEVEL TWO CORE: "The Rusted Memory"]
[Access Granted]
After killing level 2 boss he entered through the crumbling dungeon wall lines until he reached a central chamber filled with hanging screens, all flickering with fragments of code.
The dungeon boss — The Echo Machine — floated in the center, its head a sphere of glass filled with distorted reflections of human faces.
[BOSS: Echo Machine | Level 2-Special | Power Tier: C+]
"Let's make this quick."
He drew the Scales of the Weak, activating it midair.
The machine reacted instantly — screens bursting, projections screaming human words in hundreds of voices at once.
"You think you've escaped the System, Kelvin."
"You can't hide from the Admins forever."
"You will break — again."
He ignored them.
"Stat Swap: 15% Intelligence → Strength."
One punch cracked the sphere.
The second shattered it completely.
Light flooded the room.
[💎 +20]
[🌕 +400]
[Hidden Reward: Data Key – Unlocks Interface Expansion (Passive Skill Upgrade Slot +1)]
He smiled faintly. "Good. A new slot. I can merge Mind Action enhancements next."
[LEVEL THREE: The Forest of Reversal]
The third level was a nightmare disguised as paradise. Trees and flowers beautiful like like the garden of Eden, and rivers flowed backward up ito the mountains— gravity distorted in impossible ways.
New players here were even more confused. Many were dying not by monsters, but by mistakes — walking into anti-gravity rivers to play in or getting attacked by beautiful man eating flowers.
Kelvin watched from the trees.
He saw one group of three surrounded by beautiful trees that sprayed them fear toxic.
They screamed as they all saw their worst fears.
"N-Nooo d-don't do this to me. Have you forgotten am your step daughter.
Please M-Mike am begging you!!!"
Another man screamed in fear.
"No doctor don't—Dont cut it... Don't cut it I won't have more children again please just don't cut it off !!!"
Kelvin whispered under his breath.
"Scales of the Weak."
The forest lost half its powers while the weaker players were buffed.
The forest slowly dried and withered .
The players gasped, spinning around, but there was no one in sight.
[SPECIAL DUNGEON UNLOCKED – LEVEL THREE CORE: "The Reverse Temple"]
Inside, the dungeon inverted every rule. Up became down, forward became backward, and pain reversed into energy.
Most humans couldn't even think straight in here. Kelvin thrived.
He activated Mind Action plus space Walker at full range, aligning his brainwaves to the distorted physics.
[BOSS: Reversal Hydra | Level 3-Special | Power Tier: B-]
Each head moved with different opposite attack flows — one breath acid the other fire and the last lightning.
Kelvin's lips twitched.
"Beautiful."
He blurred through space, swapping stats mid battle from agility to strength from strength to the durability from the durability to vitality to stamina ,strength, agility you name it.
Dodging punching kicking countering and many more. The hydra couldn't keep up even with three heads and felt like it needed more heads as it looks at the itselves with confusion
It tried its best to focus his attacks lightning fire and acid attack on Kelvin but it ended up hitting the other head one blinded the other with acid poison another electrocuted the head of the order while the last roasting the entire dungeon in fire .
Kelvin wasn't phased cause he was able to dodge all attacks true out his entire movement which made made after images making it feel like he was standing in a particular place for the beast to attack.
But that was not the case after he saw a chance he transferred 50% of all his starts to strength and one punche the beast from its stomach
The Hydra convulsed, screaming in three different voices — and died.
[💎 +30]
[🌕 +600]
[Hidden Reward: Temporal Core – Passive Buff: +15% Speed in Time-Distorted Zones]
He stood at the exit of Level Three, breathing softly — not out of exhaustion, but contemplation. The glow of light moving around him, forming a halo the next dungeon gate.
"That's three… and their hidden dungeons cleared twice over," he murmured."
He turned his gaze toward the distance — where Level Four's gate glowed faintly beyond the clouds.
"Level Four's special dungeon…" he said quietly. "Harder than all the rest. Designed to crush anyone below Elite Rank. But difficulty means nothing when rules can be rewritten."
The gate's hum echoed faintly in the silence.
Meanwhile — Admin Observation Room
Far above the tower, within a sphere of ships core dungeon, several alien figures watched the data streams flowing across the projection.
One of them spoke — a voice like static in multiple dimensions.
"He hasn't stopped in two weeks. No rest. No sleep. No sustenance. And yet his mind remains stable."
Another replied.
"Human biology should have collapsed after seventy-two hours. His Will stat exceeds modeled predictions."
The first Administrator's body flickered — a blur of light and code.
"Kelvin... He's bypassing progression pacing. Replaying levels for hidden cores. That's not instinct — that's memory."
A pause.
"He remembers."
A low vibration filled the chamber — not sound, but the emotional equivalent of unease.
"Should we intervene?"
The answer came from a deeper voice — one that pulsed with command.
"No. Let him climb. The higher he rises, the closer he comes to the wall. And when he reaches the point of no return… that is when we'll strike."