Kael moved out of the building and began approaching the large arena. The mont he stepped back into the open, the air changed, carrying that dry, baked sll that always clung to places where fire had been living longer than it should.
From this angle, with the second-floor window no longer framing it neatly, the square looked even more deliberate, like soone had taken a bite out of the city and left a clean cavity behind. Broken walls and half-standing facades ford a ring around the opening, their jagged edges resembling teeth, and the ground ahead shimred faintly as heat rose in wavering curtains.
Looking at it now, the buildings that crumbled to make this large square form really did feel like a boss battle area. The layout had that unnatural symtry the Tower loved: a broad stage, ruined "stands" around it, and a single obvious way in, like the arena itself was an invitation and a warning at the sa ti.
This is where all the climbers would need to gather and slay this guy to exit the stage. Kael could picture it, dozens of people creeping in from different alleys, weapons in hand, nerves tight, pretending they were brave until the first fla shockwave proved who wasn’t.
Though the idea itself contradicts what the imp from the first day said, that they needed fifty cores only to leave. Which begs the question, how does that even work? Kael’s mind latched onto the contradiction because contradictions in the Tower never stayed theoretical for long; they beca knives later.
If the floor had a "final boss," why would currency alone be enough? And if currency alone was enough, why label sothing a final boss at all? He didn’t like questions he couldn’t answer, but he liked unanswered questions more than he liked walking blind into a trap.
Kael thought for a mont, "could it be that you need to slay both the boss and have the currency to leave?" he muttered as he laid low next to what could be appropriately called the entrance of the arena, two buildings that crumbled against each other but left enough space to pass underneath.
The "entrance" wasn’t a doorway so much as a choke ford by accident, two leaning carcasses of buildings eting and collapsing into each other, leaving a tunnel of shadow beneath their broken beams. Kael crouched there, pressed close to rough stone that still held the Ifrit’s heat in its pores, and he used the shade to steady his breathing while he watched the arena’s center.
Kael couldn’t fully understand the reason for this contradiction, but still he decided to trust his earlier conviction. He can no longer act passively.
The thought wasn’t motivational. It was a necessity, the kind that made your teeth grind because you hated it but couldn’t deny it. Passive was how you stayed alive for a day. Aggressive was how you stayed alive for a month. And now he’d made the Tower angry once already. He wasn’t under any illusion that it would forgive him out of boredom.
He slowly approached the giant Ifrit, and the closer he got, the hotter it felt. Enough that sweat began gathering around his forehead and began dripping, and he wasn’t even that close yet. Heat crept over his skin like a living thing, pushing itself into his pores, making his clothes cling uncomfortably in places.
It wasn’t just warmth. It was pressure, like walking into a room where soone had left an oven open and then multiplied that sensation by ten. Each step forward made the air thicker, harder to inhale without feeling like his lungs were being dried out.
He was crouched, moving slowly and cautiously toward the entity. Trying his best to make every step he made fall on hardened ground instead of loose rubble that would make sound. His boots hovered over ash-coated stone, then settled with careful precision. Every crunch felt like a gunshot in his imagination, and he hated how loud his own body seed, breathing, heartbeat, the faint rustle of fabric when he shifted his weight.
His eyes flicked constantly between the arena floor and the minimap, checking the golden dot’s placent, asuring distance like distance itself was a tir he couldn’t see.
Slowly, painfully hot, yet certainly, Kael moved. His throat felt dry, not from thirst but from the heat stripping moisture away, and sweat ran down the side of his face in an itchy line he didn’t dare wipe. He forced himself to keep the sa pace because rushing ant mistakes, and mistakes here ant setting off a sleeping furnace with horns.
The Ifrit remained where it had been, half-subrged in the hole of fla, its stone parts visible through the glare like a statue drowned in molten light.
And for a brief mont, the cracking of fire coming from the Ifrit caused Kael’s heart to almost skip a beat. It was loud and powerful, and resulted in an explosion of sparks. The sound was like a log snapping in a bonfire, magnified until it felt like it should shake the arena.
A burst of bright embers scattered outward and then died midair, as if the heat itself consud them. Kael froze instinctively, muscles locking, crowbar held tight against his body so it wouldn’t clink.
Yet the Ifrit didn’t move or budge. It remained asleep. The stillness that followed was so complete it felt staged, like the Tower was waiting to see whether he’d panic.
Just as Kael was about to take another step, he frowned, took a look at his map, and realized how terribly close to death he was.
His gaze snapped to the dot that marked the Ifrit, and his stomach went cold in a way heat couldn’t touch. The dot on the map that marked the Ifrit was no longer grayed out, but was bright red. Not "waking." Not "stirring." FULLY Alert.
He was walking to the jaws of a beast that was waiting for him to step inside.
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