The first thing that hit Kael was the smell.
Damp stone, mold, and something sour-sweet that he refused to identify. Tower Seventeen's first floor was a classic starter dungeon: narrow tunnels, crude torches burning with static fire, the distant chitter of low-level mobs.
A text overlay scrolled across his vision.
[LOCATION: TOWER SEVENTEEN – FLOOR 1]
[BIOME: SUBTERRANEAN WARRRENS]
[PRIMARY HOSTILES: GOBLIN VARIANTS (LEVEL 3–7)]
[BONUS OBJECTIVES AVAILABLE.]
Joon's cheap lantern flickered to life, casting shaky light over the tunnel. The other two drew their weapons, steel scraping from leather.
"Party UI on," Joon said.
Four faint silhouettes appeared as outlines at the edge of Kael's vision: Joon, Lina, Scar Guy (whose name turned out to be Tae), and himself. Beside each, a small HP bar and level.
[Joon – Level 8 – HP: 120/120]
[Lina – Level 7 – HP: 95/95]
[Tae – Level 9 – HP: 150/150]
[Kael – Level 4 – HP: 3/100]
Lina made a face when she saw his numbers.
"You weren't kidding."
"I said it's a display error," Kael replied. "Trust me. I've tanked goblins before."
He hadn't. But they didn't need to know that.
His class floated beneath his name: [SUPPORT: ANALYST]. It was the most unimpressive thing the System had ever handed out. No flashy actives, no big numbers. Just passives and a few skills that might as well have been flavor text.
[SKILLS]
– [Scan I] – View basic info on a target.
– [Tactical Insight I] – Minor party-wide accuracy and evasion increase if weaknesses are identified.
– [Minor Adrenaline Boost] – Slightly increases an ally's speed for 10 seconds.
– [Note-Taker] – Automatically records dungeon layouts and enemy patterns. (Non-combat.)
Basically: he was a living notebook.
But notebooks were useful.
He stepped into the middle of the group, not in front, not in back. Safe but central. He murmured, "Scan," and pointed his focus down the tunnel.
Light blue overlays flickered into existence.
[ENVIRONMENT] – Tripwire traps detected. Crude. Wood + rope.
[HOSTILES] – Goblin scouts ahead. Three. Basic stone knives. No armor.
"Tripwire ten meters ahead," Kael said. "Three goblins past it. Lina, take point. Your shield can handle a surprise throw. Joon, you flank left when they charge. Tae, if one breaks, you body-block."
They gave him identical looks.
"What?" he asked.
Joon grinned. "Nothing. Just missed having you call the plays, that's all."
Lina sighed. "Fine. If I die because of you…"
"You won't," Kael said. "Watch the ceiling. They like to drop from there."
They moved.
Lina's boot hovered over the tripwire, then stepped over it cleanly. She raised her shield just as three hunched shapes scuttled into view, eyes glowing sickly green in the dim.
[GOBLIN SCOUT – LEVEL 3]
HP: 45/45
Weakness: Head, throat, hamstrings.
Behavior: Ambush, retreat if outnumbered or injured.
"Tae, cut off the back one," Kael said. "Joon, eyes on the knives—they throw before charging."
Lina's shield rang as a stone knife clanged off it. Joon was already moving, blade flashing. Tae barreled into the narrow passage, sealing the goblins in.
It was messy.
It always was with E-ranks.
Lina took a shallow cut to the arm. Joon nearly tripped on the corpse of the first goblin he killed. Tae overcommitted on his swing and slammed his shoulder into the wall, cursing as stone scraped skin.
But they won.
Three twisted little bodies hit the floor, dissolving into black dust a moment later, leaving behind chipped knives and a handful of System shards.
[+10 EXP]
[LOOT ACQUIRED: DULL GOBLIN SHARD x3]
[PARTY BONUS: +5% EXP]
"Easy," Tae said, shaking out his bruised arm. "Could do this all day."
"That's the plan," Joon replied. He turned to Kael. "Nice calls. You really memorized this place, huh?"
"Floor 1 is all pattern-based," Kael said. "The System's lazy. It repeats layouts with small variations. Once you see the template, you just fill in the blanks."
Lina was binding her arm with a cheap bandage. She hissed as the antiseptic foam activated. "You talk like you're not part of it."
"I'm not," Kael said before he could stop himself.
They looked at him.
He cleared his throat. "Not really. System loves you guys. It barely acknowledges me."
It was true. Most of his life, the blue windows had been silent. No quests. No neat 'daily reward' popups. Just the same static stat screen and that glaringly low HP bar.
He moved ahead, scanning again. Paths unfolded in his mind, overlaid with data.
As they pressed deeper, the fights blurred together. Goblins, traps, more goblins. Kael called out warnings, pointed out flanking routes, timed pushes. His Tactical Insight skill thrummed in the back of his head, a quiet hum telling him when their odds were good or bad.
[TACTICAL INSIGHT I – ACTIVE]
[HIT CHANCE INCREASE: +3%]
[DODGE CHANCE INCREASE: +3%]
Barely anything numerically. But over dozens of engagements, it added up. A near-miss instead of a cut artery. A blocked strike instead of a broken jaw.
Slowly, the party started listening to him without complaint.
"Two groups merging ahead," Kael said at one point. "Six hostiles. One has a crude spear—Goblin Brute variant. Joon, don't try to parry that. It'll break your sword."
"I like this one," Tae chuckled. "He thinks I'm stupid enough to parry a brute."
"You are," Lina said.
They moved, fought, and moved again. Time dissolved in the rhythm of combat.
Then the floor shuddered.
Kael froze.
That wasn't part of the pattern.
"Did you feel—"
The tunnel ahead convulsed like something had punched it from the other side. Dust rained from the ceiling. System text flashed red in Kael's vision.
[WARNING: UNSTABLE FLOOR EVENT DETECTED.]
[CALCULATING…]
[CALCULATING…]
[ERROR: EVENT DATA CORRUPTED.]
The rest of the party only saw the first line. They swore. Lina raised her shield instinctively.
"Unstable floor?" Tae said. "Like a collapse event?"
"Shouldn't be," Joon muttered. "They patched that exploit months ago."
[ERROR: COULD NOT SYNC WITH LATEST PATCH.]
[ATTEMPTING ROLLBACK…]
Kael's blood ran cold.
Rollback?
The walls snapped like bad video glitching. For a moment, he saw double: the tunnel as it was, and a previous version of it overlaid on top. In the ghost-tunnel, a massive jagged pit yawned in the middle of the floor.
"Back!" Kael shouted. "Everyone back, now!"
They stared at him.
The world stuttered.
Reality chose a frame.
The floor directly ahead of Lina vanished.
She screamed as the stone under her boots turned into falling pixels. Her body dropped into a black gap that hadn't been there a heartbeat ago.
Kael lunged.
His fingers closed around the strap of her shield as she fell. Momentum yanked him forward, his boots skidding on the edge. For an instant, he hung suspended between solid ground and nothing, Lina's weight dragging him down.
Her eyes met his, wide and terrified.
His HP bar flashed.
[HP: 3 / 100]
[WARNING: IMPACT WILL BE FATAL.]
Then something strange happened.
The warning text glitched.
Letters flickered, rearranged, like someone was backspacing them in real time.
[WARNING: IMPACT M̵̢̨̼̺͖̱̻̮̦̟̫̹͙̟̳̰͚̦̎̋̿̔͊̇͂̔͌͘A̴̩̦̗̮͙͚̱̞͌̑͌͑̅̚͝Y̴̡̨̛͙͔̱̰̗͋͊͗͌̈́͝ ̸̢̢̳͓͙͔͈̫͉̗̠͖̻̘͊͐̆͆̓͜͠B̴̨̡̡̭̠̮̖̝̱̣͙̘̳̤̟̗͖̩͉̎͊̇͊̄͋͗͜͝Ę̴̡̢̯̻̥̭̰̞͎͖̺̬̖͍̰͙͍̜͇͉̰̼̫̠̍͌̐̓͆͝ ̷̨̙͕̦̬̲͇̫̭͑͐͆͊͒̎̏͒͒͌͝F̶̢̺̦̘̬̟̲͈̗̰̖͉̤̜͝A̶̡̻̩̼͕̼̼͕̫̫̻̤̻͗̎̏͋̅͌͊̿̾̒̿͌͜͠T̸̰͍̘̼̭͋͒͂̓͘͝ͅͅĄ̴̛̝̦̝̜̞̺͈̘͖̹̻̮͖̥̤͎͎͕̫̗̫̰̹̓̅̓̇̅͜ͅL̵̟̮̯̗̖͑̽̑͒̃͑̈́͆͗͘]
A new line of text materialized beneath it, different font, different color. Not System blue, but a harsh, glaring white.
[UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED.]
[OVERRIDING PREDICTION MODULE…]
Kael's grip should have slipped.
His arms should have wrenched from their sockets.
Instead, something impossible happened: Lina's weight lessened, like gravity had been quietly turned down. He heaved, teeth gritted, and dragged her up over the edge in a clumsy, painful roll.
They collapsed in a tangle of limbs.
Tae and Joon shouted from behind, scrambling away from the pit that had no business existing. Stones tumbled into the dark, never making a sound when they hit bottom.
Kael's heart hammered in his chest.
[HP: 3 / 100]
[DAMAGE TAKEN: 0]
That wasn't how anything worked.
The System flashed again, right in the center of his vision.
[PRIVILEGED FLAG TRIPPED.]
[SEARCHING FOR ROOT CAUSE…]
[USER: KAEL RYU – STATUS: ANOMALY]
Lines of code cascaded behind the text, faint and transparent, like he was seeing through a crack in the UI.
For the first time in ten years, the System spoke to him directly.
[REQUEST: DO YOU WISH TO DEBUG THIS ERROR?]
[YES] / [NO]
His breath caught.
"Kael?" Lina's voice shook. "What the hell just happened?"
Joon grabbed his shoulder. "Hey. Talk to us. Tower events don't just—just—rollback like that. Is this some new patch?"
Kael swallowed.
He was still half on top of Lina, fingers dug into the leather straps of her shield. Beneath him, the stone floor felt solid but wrong, like a rendering that hadn't fully loaded.
The white text pulsed insistently.
[DO YOU WISH TO DEBUG THIS ERROR?]
He could say no.
He could pretend this never happened, drag everyone out of the Tower, and go back to scraping by on Floor 1 until something else killed him.
Or he could say yes.
And whatever part of the System had noticed him—had marked him as an anomaly—might do something even stranger.
Kael had always been cautious. Careful. Obsessed with minimizing risk.
He thought of his sister lying in her hospital bed, machines humming softly around her. The doctors' words: If her condition doesn't stabilize, we'll need to transfer her to a private Tower clinic. The insurance won't cover that.
He'd been at the limit of what an E-rank could earn for a long time.
He stared at the blinking options.
Then he whispered, so quietly even he barely heard it:
"Yes."
He focused on the word not as speech but as choice.
The Tower disappeared.