「Every ti I tried to understand how the Tower works, things only got worse.」
The thought echoed in the hollow space of Kang Min’s mind as the edge of Varkas’s sword grew closer, a sliver of cold steel reflecting the crimson ruin of the sky.
「I spent years analyzing the chanics, the lore, and the hidden intentions of the Constellations. I tried to treat it like a puzzle, a logic problem that could be solved with enough patience and research. And every ti, the Tower just moved the goalposts. It twisted the rules until my ’logic’ beca my greatest weakness.」
A dull ache throbbed in his charred left hand, but he didn’t flinch.
「So how did I do it? How did I reach the 600th floor and perform feats that made even the Gods look away in fear? How did I beco the only person to ever stand at the threshold of the end?」
A grim, blood-flecked smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
「Ah, that’s right. I stopped thinking. I stopped trying to make sense of the nonsense. I realized that in this place, the only universal truth is force. You don’t solve the Tower. You fucking cleave through every damn thing in your path until there’s nothing left to block the way. Logic? Narrative? Simulation? It doesn’t matter. If it has a health bar or a physical form, it can be broken.」
Varkas’s blade was inches from his throat. The heat from the red mana was searing the hair on his neck.
「Exchange.」
SHUCK.
In the space of a microsecond, Kang Min was gone. The heavy longsword slamd into a discarded, half-lted iron breastplate that had been lying in the mud. The impact sent a spray of sparks and liquid iron into the air.
Kang Min reappeared six feet behind Varkas, his boots skidding on the blood-soaked gravel. He didn’t wait for his equilibrium to settle. He lunged, his right hand gripping his sword with such force his knuckles threatened to burst through the skin.
Varkas roared—a sound that was more a tectonic shift than a human voice—and spun. The speed was unnatural. The demonic possession had stripped away the limitations of Kaelen’s human fra. He moved with a jerky, stop-motion violence, the Red Hands of Ruin leaving trails of crimson static in the air.
「You think you can run from your own fate, Otherworlder?」 Varkas’s voice was a chorus of a thousand dying screams. 「These hands were made to crush the world! You are nothing but a splinter in my palm!」
Varkas swung his left arm—the one encased in the newly stolen Left Hand of Ruin. A wave of red, explosive mana erupted from the glove. It wasn’t just heat; it was pure kinetic destruction.
Kang Min’s eyes tracked the wave. He knew the pattern. In the Old World, Varkas’s "Ruin" was a 360-degree shockwave, but because Varkas was currently inhabiting a stolen, imperfect body, the output was directional. There was a blind spot in the lumbar region where the mana flow struggled to synchronize with Kaelen’s nervous system.
Min dived. He didn’t move away; he moved in. He rolled through the dirt, the red explosion passing inches above his back, the heat peeling the layer of soot off his leather armor.
He ca up under Varkas’s guard, driving his blade upward toward the gap in the demon’s armpit.
CLANG.
Varkas caught the blade with his right hand. The silver-white light of the Right Hand of Ruin had turned into a muddy, flickering scarlet. The glove didn’t just stop the sword; it began to lt it.
「Small. Weak. Pathetic,」 Varkas hissed.
「I’m a porter,」 Min whispered, his face inches from the demon’s black-eyed mask. 「I’m used to carrying heavy loads.」
[Skill: Exchange!]
Min swapped the sword in his hand with a jagged piece of obsidian he had pocketed from the mountain. The sudden change in weight and texture caused Varkas’s grip to slip for a fraction of a second.
In that heartbeat of an opening, Kang Min delivered a brutal, mana-saturated kick to Varkas’s knee.
CRACK.
The demonic being’s leg bent at an angle no living thing should endure. Varkas didn’t cry out, but he stumbled. Min seized the opportunity, grabbing a fallen halberd from the ground and swinging it with everything his 20% unsealing could offer.
The fight beca a brutal, smart-man’s war of attrition. Varkas was vastly more powerful, but he was fighting with the clunky, over-eager bloodlust of a being who thought he was invincible. Kang Min was fighting with the cold, calculated efficiency of a man who had died a thousand deaths and learned sothing from every single one.
Min used Exchange not just for movent, but for psychological warfare. He swapped the direction of falling debris. He swapped his boots with the mud beneath Varkas’s feet to make the demon slip. Every ti Varkas thought he had a killing blow, the target changed.
『He’s losing his rhythm,』 Min thought, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow bursts. 『The red mana is too heavy for Kaelen’s body. Every ti he uses the gloves, he’s tearing his own vessel apart. I don’t need to overpower him. I just need to be the catalyst for his collapse.』
Varkas swung again, a massive overhead strike. Min didn’t dodge. He stood his ground.
「Co on, then,」 Min challenged, his eyes glowing with a desperate, blue fire.
Varkas scread and brought both hands down. The ground beneath them shattered as the red mana converged.
[Skill: Exchange!]
At the mont of impact, Kang Min swapped his charred, ruined left hand—the physical space it occupied—with the handle of a nearby burning supply cart.
The explosion of red mana hit the cart instead. The wood vaporized instantly, but the backlash of the redirected energy slamd into Varkas’s chest. The demon coughed up a spray of black, oily blood.
Min didn’t let up. He lunged through the smoke, his movents a blur of insane speed. He wasn’t using a sword anymore; he was using his bare right hand, reinforced by every scrap of Narrative Energy he could muster.
He punched Varkas directly in the center of the chest, where the soul-link was most vulnerable.
「GET. OUT,」 Min roared.
He reached for the gloves.
The Left Hand of Ruin and the Right Hand of Ruin reacted to his touch. They recognized the "Otherworlder" who had once mastered them in a different tiline. The red mana began to fight against Varkas, the gloves vibrating so violently that Kaelen’s arms began to shatter.
With a final, agonizing heave, Kang Min tore the gloves from Varkas’s hands.
The demon let out a final, ear-piercing shriek. The red light erupted in a blinding flash, throwing Kang Min backward.
When the light faded, Varkas was gone. The demonic features lted away, leaving only the broken, lifeless body of Commander Kaelen lying in the mud. The horns retreated, the eyes cleared, and the sharp teeth blunted. The commander looked small—just a man who had been used as a puppet by a ghost.
Kang Min lay in the dirt, gasping for air. In his hands, he held the two gloves. They were no longer red. They were black and silver, pulsing with a steady, blue magma glow.
『Item Acquired: The Hands of Ruin (Set).』
『Fable: "The Fall of Varkas" — COMPLETED.』
He looked around. The camp was still burning, but the atmosphere had shifted. The rcenary Knights, bloodied and exhausted, were standing over the bodies of the Dusk-Eaters.
As soon as the gloves were in Min’s possession, the massive red gate in the sky began to groan. The jagged rift started to stitch itself shut, the crimson light fading into a dull grey. The shadowy monsters that had been pouring out stopped mid-movent. Their bodies began to crack, turning into fine, black ash that caught the wind and blew away, disappearing into nothingness.
And then, it began to rain.
It wasn’t a storm, but a soft, cleansing drizzle. The morning sun began to peek over the horizon at the sa ti, the light refracting through the raindrops to create a thousand tiny rainbows over the ruins of the capital.
The fire hissed as it died. The air grew sweet and cool.
Kang Min sat there, his charred left hand starting to feel the first tendrils of system-based healing.
「Wait... is it all ending just like that?」 he wondered aloud. 「The war is over? The monsters are gone? Because the item changed hands?」
He looked at the knights. They were cheering, hugging each other, crying in the rain. To them, this was a miracle. To Min, it felt like a script reaching its final page.
「Is it because it’s a simulation?」
The question gnawed at him. He had gathered so much information about the 48th floor during this "stay." He knew about the people who quit the climb. He knew about the culture of Valeria. But was any of it true? Or was this entire experience just a tailored narrative designed by his skill to provide him with the item he wanted?
「I’ll have to find out for real when I actually climb to the 48th floor in the Abyssal Tower,」 he muttered. 「If I see Toby there... then I’ll know.」
The world around him began to shimr. The rain, the sun, the broken bodies of the knights—it all began to dissolve into streaks of blue light and digital static. The "pixels" he had seen from the mountaintop now rushed in to swallow the entire reality.
『SIMULATION TERMINATED.』
『RETURNING TO FLOOR 5...』
Kang Min blinked, and the scent of jasmine and smoke was replaced by the stale, cold air of the Abyssal Tower. He was back in the stone corridor of the 5th floor, his back against the damp wall.
His body felt heavy, the transition from the simulated power back to his current level 32 self feeling like a lead weight.
『EXCLUSIVE SKILL: FLOOR 600 ALL MASTER.』
『STATUS: COOLDOWN INITIATED (3 DAYS).』
He looked down at his hands. The charred skin was gone, replaced by his normal, unblemished hands. Resting in his lap were the two gloves—The Hands of Ruin.
「One of the pieces is back,」 he said, his voice echoing in the empty hall. 「I finally have one of the items that helped with the climb in the old world. With these, the next twenty floors are going to be a joke.」
He leaned his head back against the wall, checking his system clock.
He froze.
「3 hours?」
In the simulation, he had spent three full days. He had trained, fought, drank, and slept. He had watched the sun rise and set three tis. But in the reality of the Tower, only three hours had ticked by.
「The ti dilation... I didn’t realize it was that extre,」 he whispered. 「The skill isn’t just simulating a world; it’s accelerating my perception to a point where I can live a lifeti in a single afternoon.」
He stood up, stretching his stiff limbs. The adrenaline was still humming in his veins, but the exhaustion was manageable. He looked down the dark corridor of Floor 5.
「There’s still plenty of ti before I need to head to the next floor.」
A small, cunning smile played on his lips. He rembered sothing else about this floor—sothing the other climbers always missed because they were too busy rushing to the exit.
「So why not get the hidden item of Floor 5 while I’m at it?」
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