The hospital didn't have a Tower, but it was built like one.
White walls, too bright lights, corridors that all looked the same. System kiosks in the lobby for payments and check-ins. Nurses with small HP bars floating faintly above their heads, equipped with MEDIC or SUPPORT classes instead of damage skills.
Kael hated it.
He hated the smell of antiseptic, the quiet beeping, the way everyone tried not to make eye contact. He hated the way the System's presence here was subtler but no less absolute.
His sister's room was on the twelfth floor.
He paused outside the door, hand hovering over the handle.
For a moment, he considered using Debug Sense in the corridor, just to see what kind of bugs lurked in hospital systems. He decided against it. The last thing he needed was to discover a "minor discrepancy" in someone's life support.
He knocked lightly and stepped in.
Haneul looked up from her tablet, where she was watching a Tower raid stream with the sound turned low. Her black hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, and an IV line trailed from her arm to a humming machine.
"Kael," she said, face lighting up. "You're late. Again."
"Good to see you too," he replied, managing a smile as he dropped into the visitor chair. "How's the glamorous life of not being allowed to stand up too fast?"
"Thrilling," she deadpanned. "I leveled up my Endure Boredom passive to rank 3 yesterday."
She coughed, a soft, dry sound, and winced.
Kael's smile flickered.
"Vitals?" he asked.
"Stable," she said. "Doctor Cho says my condition is 'plateauing.' Which I think is medical for 'we have no idea what we're doing but you haven't died yet.'"
"Progress," Kael said. "I'll take plateau over freefall."
She studied his face for a moment.
"Were you in a Tower?" she asked. "You have that look."
"What look?" he said, startled.
"The 'I almost died but am pretending it's fine' one," she said. "It's in your shoulders."
He exhaled.
"Floor 1," he said. "We had an event glitch. But I'm okay. Everyone's okay."
"You should stop going into Seventeen," she muttered. "That Tower's cursed."
"It's also the only one I know well enough to survive consistently," he said. "And its payouts are predictable."
"Predictably small," she said.
He didn't answer.
Her gaze sharpened.
"Kael," she said quietly. "Did the hospital say something?"
He hesitated, then nodded.
"They're… suggesting," he said carefully, "that if your condition doesn't improve, you'd benefit from being transferred to a Tower-adjacent clinic. One with direct access to System-licensed healers and artifacts."
"And insurance doesn't cover it," she said, finishing the thought.
He nodded again.
"I'll figure it out," Kael said. "I just need to climb a few more floors. Get some rare drops. Maybe join a mid-tier guild."
"Your HP bar is still broken," she said flatly. "You're not joining a guild. They scan that stuff."
He forced a grin.
"Maybe I'll become a streamer instead," he said. "Glitch content. 'Watch the guy with 3 HP insult goblins and the System itself.'"
Haneul rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth tugged up.
"You never do anything halfway," she said. "If you're going to die screaming at the System, at least make sure it hears you."
He almost told her then.
About Debug Sense. About the logs. About vending Nodes and tripwires and the feeling of floating in the System's skeleton.
Instead he said, "You should rest," and stood.
She reached out, catching his wrist.
"Hey," she said softly. "Don't burn yourself out trying to save me."
"Too late," he said, squeezing her hand. "Let me have this one reckless thing."
She let go.
"Be careful," she said.
He promised. He planned to break that promise immediately.
Two days later, he stood once more at the base of Tower Seventeen with Joon.
No Lina. No Tae. Just the two of them, outclassed by almost everyone around.
"Sure you don't want a healer?" Joon asked, eyeing the crowd. "Even a sketchy freelance one?"
"They'd ask questions," Kael said. "We keep this quiet until we know what I can and can't get away with."
Debug Sense hummed at the edge of his perception, eager to be used.
They stepped up to the entrance.
[ENTER: TOWER SEVENTEEN – FLOOR 1?]
[RECOMMENDED LEVEL: 5+]
[PARTY SIZE: 2–6]
[YES] / [NO]
Kael accepted.
The now-familiar wrench of transition pulled them in.
Their boots hit the damp stone of Floor 1.
[LOCATION: TOWER SEVENTEEN – FLOOR 1]
[EVENT STATUS: UNSTABLE FLOOR FLAG – RESOLVED (TEMPORARY).]
"So the pit's gone?" Joon asked.
"Probably," Kael said. "But we're not testing it manually."
He activated Debug Sense.
The tunnel lit up with faint icons. The tripwire's collision box now matched its physical placement exactly. His earlier patch held.
No new bug flags on the floor geometry.
"Okay," he said. "Time to try something bigger."
He beckoned Joon to follow and moved deeper into the dungeon until they heard the familiar goblin chittering ahead.
"Three scouts, Level 3–4, same as last time," Kael said after a quick Scan. "One's got a slightly better knife. Take the front. I'm going to… adjust the odds."
"Music to my ears," Joon said, rolling his shoulders.
He advanced, sword raised.
Kael hung back and focused on the nearest goblin.
[GOBLIN SCOUT – LEVEL 3]
HP: 45/45
STR: 6
AGI: 8
VIT: 4
INT: 2
PER: 4
LUCK: 1
[MINOR FLAGS AVAILABLE.]
He called up LOCAL PATCH.
[SELECT TARGET FLAG.]
[SCOPE: LOCAL OBJECT ONLY.]
[PERMISSION: MINOR FLAGS.]
A list appeared.
[FLAG: DAMAGE_TAKEN_MULTIPLIER = 1.0]
[FLAG: AGGRESSION_LEVEL = 0.7]
[FLAG: FLEE_THRESHOLD = 0.3]
[FLAG: CRIT_CHANCE = 0.05]
Kael almost salivated.
This is it, he thought. Real combat tuning.
"Minor," he reminded himself. "Minor change."
He selected DAMAGE_TAKEN_MULTIPLIER.
[CURRENT VALUE: 1.0]
[ENTER NEW VALUE:]
He didn't dare go crazy.
"1.5," he thought.
[APPLYING LOCAL PATCH…]
[DURATION: 300 SECONDS OR UNTIL OVERWRITTEN.]
[COST: 1 DEBUG POINT.]
[DETECTION RISK: SLIGHTLY INCREASED.]
The goblin's outline shimmered faintly, a tiny glitch that only Kael could see.
"Joon!" he called. "Hit the one on the left first."
Joon lunged.
His blade cut through the goblin's chest with a wet, crunching sound. The damage number that flashed in Kael's vision was bigger than it should have been.
[DAMAGE: 72]
[GOBLIN SCOUT – HP: 0 / 45]
[OVERKILL.]
Joon blinked.
"Damn," he said. "Did I get stronger?"
"Their defense got worse," Kael replied.
He quickly patched the second goblin the same way. Joon carved through both like they were made of wet paper.
"Okay, that's definitely not just me having a good day," Joon said, breathing a little harder but grinning. "You did something, right?"
"I nudged a multiplier," Kael said. "Temporarily. Local. The System probably thinks it's noise."
He hoped.
He opened debug logs in the corner of his vision as they moved on.
[LOG: T17_F1_GOBLIN_DAMAGE_TAKEN_VARIANCE INCREASE.]
[SEVERITY: VERY LOW.]
[STATUS: UNFLAGGED.]
"Good," Kael murmured.
They cleared room after room, Kael occasionally bumping goblin damage-taken multipliers or slightly increasing their FLEE_THRESHOLD so they would break and run sooner. Each time, combat got easier.
Each time, a tiny counter ticked up.
[DETECTION RISK: 3% → 4% → 5%…]
On the fourth room, he tried something different.
He targeted a trap instead: a ceiling spike that was supposed to drop when someone passed under it.
[OBJECT: SPIKED_TRAP_CEILING_17-F1]
[FLAG: TRIGGER_ON_PLAYER_PRESENCE = TRUE]
[FLAG: RESETTABLE = TRUE]
He flipped TRIGGER_ON_PLAYER_PRESENCE to FALSE for 300 seconds.
They walked under it. Nothing fell.
Joon whistled.
"Do you have any idea how many E-ranks die to those stupid things?" he asked. "If you can just… turn them off—"
"Temporarily," Kael said. "If a higher process revalidates the floor state, my changes will vanish."
"You've been a bug for years," Joon said. "I think you're overdue some bug exploitation."
Kael didn't disagree.
By the time they reached the familiar point where the pit had opened last run, nothing dramatic happened. The floor remained solid, the geometry stable. His earlier permanent patch to the rollback event log had held.
They cleared the rest of Floor 1 easily.
[FLOOR CLEAR.]
[EXP GAINED: 350.]
[LOOT DROPPED: MINOR GOBLIN LOOT BAG x4.]
[BONUS: FAST CLEAR – +10% EXP.]
Both of them leveled.
[USER: KAEL RYU – LEVEL 6]
[HP: 3 / 100]
[DEBUG POINTS: 1.]
Back at the entrance gate, Joon flexed his hands.
"I felt it," he said. "The difference. Everything was… softer. Slower. Like we were suddenly over-leveled."
"That was one floor," Kael said. "And I only changed minor flags. Imagine what I could do on higher ones."
The thought made him dizzy.
Joon's expression sobered.
"What's the catch?" he asked.
Kael opened the monitoring logs.
A new process name had appeared among the low-level chatter.
[WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω INITIATED.]
[TRIGGER: LOCAL FLAG VARIANCE INCREASE (TOWER_17).]
[STATUS: PASSIVE MONITORING.]
"There it is," Kael said quietly. "The catch."
"English," Joon said.
"The System started a watchdog," Kael said. "Some subroutine dedicated to noticing when someone messes with its toys. Right now it's just… watching."
"And if it decides it doesn't like what it sees?" Joon asked.
Kael didn't answer.
He didn't know.
Another notification pulsed.
[NEW QUEST: "THIRD BUG – HIDE."]
[OBJECTIVE: CONCEAL YOUR MODIFICATIONS FROM WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω.]
[REWARD: STEALTH MODULE.]
[PENALTY: FORCED DEBUG ACCESS TERMINATION.]
"So it wants to play cat and mouse," Kael said.
"Good news is, you're a rat that can edit walls," Joon said. "That's got to count for something."
Kael's lips twitched.
"We cash out," he said. "Then we go somewhere quiet, and I figure out how to lie to a god."
They exited the Tower, pockets marginally fuller, detection risk incrementally higher.
Above Tower Seventeen, invisible to every Hunter streaming their loot screens and stat windows, a new line of code pulsed quietly.
[ANOMALY_TAG: KAEL_RYU – PRIORITY: ELEVATED.]