Chapter 93: The Golden Echo and the Breaking Point
Danny stepped into Floor 800, and the tower responded like metal struck by a tuning fork—
a deep, resonant vibration rolling through its foundations, rising through every floor he'd already passed and every floor still waiting above.
The vibration raced skyward.
Past the storm floors.
Past the Eternal guardians.
Past the spirals and the halls of time.
It even brushed the Wolf King.
His ears twitched. His growl rumbled through floors of crushed stone.
"What is that…?"
He didn't slow.
And Danny didn't either.
He had entered the beginning of the tower's upper core.
And the tower knew it.
The Magic Kid's Fall
Far above, on Floor 900—close enough to feel the first tremors of Danny's ascent—Magic Kid was pacing in a circular chamber lined with glowing runes.
Not training.
Not climbing.
Not testing himself like the others.
He was scheming.
Again.
He had already bent the rules three times during the climb:
once by trying to blast open a shortcut;
once by attempting a forbidden spell to sabotage the floor below him;
and once—most disastrously—by trying to send a vision down into the lower floors to disrupt a rival fighter's climb.
The tower tolerated tricks.
It tolerated ambition.
It did not tolerate cheating.
Magic Kid had been warned twice by the Celestial Overseers—beings who existed as crystalline shards of tower authority.
He ignored them.
Now he was preparing a new spell—
one built to corrupt a guardian's core and turn it into an obedient puppet.
His hands glowed with swirling red glyphs.
"Once I control one guardian, I can leap twenty floors, maybe fifty. Then I'll beat that mutt Wolf King, snuff out Danny's flame, and—"
A booming CRACK split the chamber.
Magic Kid froze.
Rune-branches burst from the floor like glowing chains, winding around him with lightning speed.
"What—HEY—HEY, NO! I WASN'T DONE!"
The chains yanked him off his feet, dragging him screaming toward the center of the room.
The Overseers appeared.
Five translucent crystalline figures, their bodies shifting through colors like oil on water.
"MAGIC KID," they intoned, voices layered.
"YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE TOURNAMENT LAWS.
AGAIN."
"I wasn't doing anything!" he shouted as the runes coiled around his wrists, ankles, waist, throat. "I was just testing defense—TOWER DEFENSE—VERY IMPORTANT!"
"YOU ATTEMPTED TO CORRUPT A GUARDIAN," the Overseers said.
"YOU INTERFERED WITH ANOTHER FIGHTER'S CLIMB."
"YOU ATTEMPTED TO BREAK THE FLOOR BARRIER."
"I was innovating!"
"YOU ARE DISQUALIFIED."
Magic Kid went pale.
"No—NO! I AM THE GREATEST SPELLMASTER—LET ME GO! LET ME—"
The chains tightened.
The Overseers raised their palms.
A rift opened behind them—a portal of crackling blue-white energy.
Magic Kid tried to summon a spell.
Nothing responded.
The rift pulled him inward.
"WAIT—WAIT DON'T—LET ME AT LEAST—AAAAAAAAA—"
He vanished into the portal, swallowed whole.
On the other side was a chamber deep beneath the tower—its prison heart.
A massive cylinder of glowing anti-magic metal.
No spells allowed.
No incantations permitted.
No energy could leave or enter.
Magic Kid materialized inside it, crumpling to the floor.
He pounded the walls.
Nothing happened.
The Overseers sealed the cylinder.
"YOU WILL REMAIN UNTIL THE TOURNAMENT CONCLUDES," they said.
"THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!" Magic Kid shrieked.
"I WANT A LAWYER! I WANT—"
His next spell fizzled into nothing.
The Overseers faded.
His voice echoed helplessly in the cage.
"…I hate this tower…"
Danny Reaches Floor 900
When Danny reached the nine-hundredth floor—after weaving through labyrinths of living shadow and chambers where the tower tried to mimic fragments of creation—he stepped through the light gate and paused.
The air tasted different.
Wilder.
Heavier.
Marked by a savage force that tore apart stone and left scorch marks across the walls.
The Wolf King's presence.
Danny touched one of the claw marks carved deep into the stone.
His fingertips brushed the crack.
Golden sparks flickered.
Danny's expression softened.
"You passed through here," he whispered to the Wolf King. "Raging. Hurting. But still moving forward."
He lifted his gaze.
"And now I'm here too."
The tower's runes pulsed.
Three times.
Like a heartbeat.
Floors 901, 902, and 903 opened in a cascading wave of light as if the tower was clearing obstacles ahead of him before he touched them.
But something else stirred above.
A slow, deliberate shift.
Something waiting.
Something watching.
Bones' Agent Awakens
Deep in Floor 910—a place no ordinary fighter ever saw until the tower deemed them worthy—a shadow peeled itself off the wall.
A human shape, except not.
Its body was made of broken geometry—shards of black stone floating millimeters apart, held in a shape resembling a man. Eyes glowed with violet fire. Its presence chilled the floor around it.
Bones' agent.
A shard of the immortal one's will.
Not Bones himself.
Not even a fragment of his body.
Just an echo he had sent into the tower long before the tournament began, sensing the future creation energy that would one day climb.
The agent's head tilted slightly as the runes in Floor 910 flashed with golden light.
Danny had reached the threshold.
Bones' agent whispered, voice cold and fractured:
"It begins."
The tower tried to activate the guardian lineup—but the agent's form rippled and broke them instantly, their cores freezing mid-command.
Bones' agent stepped forward and placed one hand on the floor.
A corrupting pulse spread outward.
Shadow seeped into the cracks.
Runes sputtered.
The entire 900th tier dimmed as if wrapped in a blanket of dark static.
The agent's body crackled.
Its voice deepened.
"The Golden One approaches.
The Wolf awakens.
The destruction flame stirs."
The shadows around its feet grew deeper.
Bones' echo was smiling in them.
"Operation 'Unravel' begins now."
It dissolved into ash-black smoke, spreading through the upper floors like a silent plague, drifting toward Danny's path.
Danny Steps Onto Floor 901
Danny didn't know the agent had moved.
Not yet.
But he felt a pressure shift.
Not like the Wolf King.
Not like Shadeclaw.
Not even like the tower itself.
Something colder.
Hungrier.
Older.
His eyes narrowed as the silver-lit stone of Floor 901 shuddered beneath his foot.
"You're here too, Bones," he murmured.
Not Bones' body.
But something tied to his will.
Danny rolled his shoulders slowly.
Golden light rippled across his back like a dragon stretching its wings.
And then he felt the Wolf King's essence—far ahead, pulsing like a bonfire in the dark.
A strange warmth rose in Danny's chest.
Not affection.
But recognition.
Momentum.
Warriors climbing toward each other, each carrying their own reasons.
Danny whispered:
"Wolf King… you climbed with your rage."
He clenched his fists.
"I'll climb with something stronger."
The gate to Floor 902 opened.
Danny stepped forward.
The tower quaked as a golden flare shot upward—
a pulse so powerful the Wolf King himself felt it and snarled—
Danny is coming.
Bones' agent whispered in the shadows—
Good.
Everything is beginning.