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"Not now, later...," Kael muttered as he began walking away from the reception area.
He didn’t even need the mini-map to know this place was a trap. It felt like one.
The air had that sharp, crowded weight, too many bodies breathing in the sa space, too many eyes flicking toward every ripple of movent.
The stone underfoot was polished like a shrine floor, the kind that punished noise by making it echo. Even the torches, if they were torches, burned too clean, too steady, as if the flas were part of the architecture rather than sothing alive.
And the people...
More guilds, clans, or whatever they were called were appearing. People with incredible-looking gear.
So wore armor that looked like it had been forged out of a living creature’s ribs. Others carried weapons that radiated an aura even Kael could feel through the distance, cold pressure, heat haze, static that prickled on his tongue. And then there were the ones who looked "normal" only because their eyes were dead-calm, like they’d already decided what Kael was worth before he took his second step.
New fish has just arrived, and it feels like everyone wanted a piece.
Kael wasn’t going to stay there and wait for them. He moved past the gathering crowd. Presence was completely hiding him from them.
Or so he believed.
His internal energy dipped with that familiar, steady drain. The world dulled at the edges. Sound thickened. Even the sll, tal, oil, sweat, and blood that had been washed off armor but never truly left, turned distant, like he was rembering it instead of standing inside it.
He kept his stride casual anyway. Not fast. Fast looked guilty. Fast looked like prey.
He threaded the gaps between bodies without touching anyone, sliding along blind spots the way he’d learned on the first floor: stay behind shoulders, move when soone shifts, let their line of sight block your path like a shield.
"You saw that?" Kael heard as he turned.
The voice snapped his attention sideways even before he decided to react. Two climbers stood near a stone pillar, close enough to the portal to get first pick of whoever ca through. Their armor was a clean, heavy blue, plated, layered, the kind that scread: "crafted by soone who knew what they were doing." And stamped on their chests was the symbol of a golden lion.
"What are you talking about?" another climber replied.
Kael kept walking. He didn’t look back too hard. He let his head tilt just enough to listen, like he was admiring the architecture and not checking whether his "invisibility" had just failed.
"I must have been mistaken, I thought I saw soone wearing so awkward gear..."
"Might just be so random scout," the second replied, "The first floor has no gear after all."
Kael’s jaw tightened behind his helt.
Awkward gear. Yeah. Sure. A man wearing a leather Spartan helt, two custom rune gauntlets, a leather jacket, pants, and slling faintly like a cooked boss wasn’t "awkward." He was a walking alarm bell. These two just didn’t want to admit that their eyes might have caught sothing they weren’t supposed to.
The good news: they didn’t chase.
The two of them soon turned to face the portal that brought in first floor climbers.
Kael imdiately walked out of the area, guards, doors, even random people watching didn’t pay attention to him. He simply walked past them and found himself outside the area.
The transition was so abrupt it felt like stepping out of a mouth.
Inside, it was crowded and loud in that controlled, predatory way, people talking softly while asuring each other. Outside, the sound dropped into a lower hum, the kind a city makes when it’s full of life but also full of rules. It was night, and the streets were lit with torches, and what looked like magic light beads hung upon poles to light the way.
Looking back at where he ca from, it looked like a fortress built to keep people in, not out.
Thick walls. Narrow entrances. Watch points. Gates that looked decorative until you noticed the angles were made for killing. It wasn’t a welco center. It was a funnel.
He imdiately understood the reason.
Once soone arrived from the first floor, they get ’picked’, or picked on.
He didn’t want to be either.
Kael headed deeper down the street, and when he realized that the population thinned enough, he disabled presence.
The color returned with a little rush, like blood coming back into a numbed limb. Sound sharpened. The sll of the place hit him properly now, cooked ats from sowhere, smoke, wet stone, and that faint, ever-present tang of mana in the air like ozone after lightning.
’Good, now I need to get to a place where I can find so information,’ he muttered to himself as he looked at the map in his head.
Just as he opened the map, he was surprised to see how many golden dots there were on it. It was to an absurd degree, even.
For half a second, his brain did sothing stupid: it tried to treat it like the first floor, rare loot, isolated points, the kind of thing you could sprint toward if you were fast and desperate.
This wasn’t that.
Gold was everywhere.
Entire streets are lit with it. Blocks of it. A river of treasure that made his skin itch.
’Holy shit, all of these are legendary gear?’ he couldn’t believe it himself.
Then his mind caught up with his eyes, and the panic turned into a colder, more practical realization. He understood why. These weren’t just random pieces of gear thrown about; every golden dot had a green dot superimposed on top of it.
Worn gear.
Of course it was. This wasn’t a dungeon floor where loot waited for the brave. This was where the living... and the dead... walked around wearing their progress like flags.
He forced his breathing back into control and tightened his grip on the map.
No drooling. No staring too long.
The mont you look like you want sothing, soone decides you deserve less than what you already have.
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