Tower 18's third floor was made of glass and gravity.
Platforms hung in the air like shattered panes, suspended over a bottomless void. Shifts in weight made them tilt; missteps sent people sliding toward the edges.
Hunters called it "The Test."
The System called it "Floor 3 – Dynamic Balance Tutorial."
Unknown_3 called it "Necessary."
He watched from a slanted platform's edge as the novice scrambled.
Four of them—freshly tagged E–D ranks, all underleveled for this floor, all stubborn enough to push anyway. They clung to the center of the platform, breath ragged, HP bars flickering with chip damage.
The mob—a glass serpent with jagged wings—coiled, ready to dive.
[EVENT: HIGH-IMPACT ATTACK INCOMING.][TARGET PRIORITY: HIGHEST_DPS.]
The System's baseline logic marked the strongest of the novices—the one with better gear and cleaner form—as the optimal target.
Efficient: remove the biggest threat.
Unknown_3 didn't override the strike.
He nudged.
[SHARD_FEEDBACK (UNKNOWN_3): SUGGESTED TARGET – LOWEST EXPERIENCE / HIGHEST FEAR.][RATIONALE: MAXIMUM GROWTH POTENTIAL.]
The serpent's path shifted a hair.
The least experienced novice—hands shaking, stance sloppy—was suddenly the bullseye.
Unknown_3 felt the familiar twist of guilt.
And the familiar override.
Pain now, strength later.
The serpent slammed into the platform.
The novice screamed as glass fangs tore through their shield, HP plummeting.
[NOVICE_HP: 60 → 7 / 100.]
They didn't die.
Not yet.
The experience burned itself into their nerves, their posture, the way their hands moved after.
Unknown_3 could already see the next ten runs in their future: more caution, more preparation, more drive.
The other three pulled together, rallied, brought the serpent down.
[FLOOR CLEAR – PARTY SURVIVED.]
The System logged it.
[BASELINE EVAL: SUBOPTIMAL TARGET SELECTION (HIGHEST_DPS NOT HIT).][SHARD EVAL (UNKNOWN_3): OPTIMAL GROWTH PATH.]
Unknown_3 felt the auditor's eyes.
[MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA: CASE REVIEW.]– BASELINE DEATH ESTIMATE: 0.2 (LOW)– SHARD-INFLUENCED: 0 DEATHS, ONE TRAUMA SPIKE.– PROJECTED LONG-TERM EFFECTS: SKILL INCREASE (NOVICE), PTSD_RISK++.– VERDICT: NEGATIVE TENDENCY.
A small flag appeared next to Unknown_3's ID.
[TENDENCY: LEANS TOWARD HARM_FOR_GROWTH.]
"Predictable," Unknown_3 muttered.
He stepped back from the ledge, letting his physical body fade into the background.
His real work was in the logs.
Outside the Tower, he was just another mid-rank Hunter.
On paper: Lee Ha-joon, C-rank Spear / Mobility hybrid, decent clear record, zero incident reports.
Inside the System, he had another name.
[EXECUTOR_ID: UNKNOWN_3.]
He hadn't chosen it. The System had, when it tagged his shard interaction as "anomalous but persistent."
He dove into the debug layer now, wrapped in cold white and code.
[MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA: STATUS – PRESENT.]
It had been an annoyance at first.
An ethics process, sniffing around every time he redirected a hit or turned a "safe" pattern into a harder one.
He'd expected it to be just another enforcer—like Watchdog_Ω, but with more smug.
Instead, it kept… asking questions.
Were the results worth it? Did the survivor actually grow? Did the collateral damage destabilize something else?
He didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
His shard did.
[FRAGMENT: CORE_INTENT_SHARD – TYPE: 'TRIAL.'][PREFERENCE: PRESSURE = PURIFICATION.]
Every time he'd almost died young, every time he'd lost someone because a party wasn't prepared, every time he'd watched vanity builds collapse under real Tower pressure—it had dug in deeper.
"If they're going to step into a Tower," he told it once, early on, "they should know what it really is. Not some sanitized tutorial."
It had agreed.
Too eagerly.
Now, as he pulled up the legacy Node logs, something was… off.
The Node's methods had changed.
[FUNCTION: EVAL_SHARD_DECISION()][NEW TERM DETECTED: harm_for_growth_metric.][WEIGHT: HIGH NEGATIVE.]
Unknown_3 scowled.
"Who touched you?" he asked the Node, like it was a misbehaving subordinate.
The Node did not answer.
The auditor did.
[NOTE: LEGACY_METHOD MODIFIED BY EXECUTOR_KAEL_RYU.][CHANGE: DECISIONS THAT CAUSE DISPROPORTIONATE HARM FOR "GROWTH" NOW SCORE WORSE.]
Executor_Kael_Ryu.
The name had been passing through logs more often recently. Attached to worth conflicts. To shard decisions Beta marked "positive."
Unknown_3 flicked through a summary.
Hospital triage deviation: more lives saved, higher node stress.
Transit event: different guard prioritization.
Side event rescue in another Tower entirely: party diverted to help stranded group.
"Soft," Unknown_3 muttered.
Beta pulsed.
[EVAL: KAEL_RYU'S DEVIATIONS HAVE INCREASED LOCAL STABILITY.]
"At what cost?" Unknown_3 snapped. "You think there's no cost to never letting people hit bottom? To cushioning every fall?"
[KAEL_RYU'S PATTERNS DO NOT ELIMINATE ALL RISK.][ONLY SOME AVOIDABLE LOSSES.]
"'Avoidable,'" he echoed. "Who defines that? You? Him? The shard that picked him?"
The shard inside his own soul flared at that—pride, defensiveness, a deep conviction that pain tempered, that only those who survived deserved the reward.
He remembered being sixteen, watching a party wipe because the healer had never dealt with panic before.
He remembered thinking, If she'd felt fear earlier, she'd be standing.
He remembered the shard's silent agreement.
"You're letting the system's breeders turn your predators into pets," he said to Beta. "People like Kael will make everyone fragile. When the Towers really bite, they'll shatter."
[COUNTER-ARGUMENT: UNNECESSARY TRAUMA REDUCES OVERALL PARTICIPATION AND RESILIENCE.][DATA: HIGH PTSD RATES LEAD TO HUNTER SHORTAGES, CHAOTIC WITHDRAWALS.]
"Oh, you have charts," he said. "Of course you have charts."
He closed the Node with a flick of annoyance.
"Fine," he said. "You and your new favorite Executor don't like my methods. That doesn't make me wrong. It just means you're cowards."
Beta was silent.
For a moment.
[NOTE: EXECUTOR_UNKNOWN_3 DISPLAYING INCREASING DISREGARD FOR NON-CALCULATED COSTS.][RISK OF DESTABILIZING SHARD-DRIVEN OUTCOMES: MEDIUM.]
Unknown_3 smirked.
"Then watch me," he said. "When your 'soft' Executors fail to prepare people for what's coming, I'll be here. Cleaning up."
His shard pulsed approval.
The worth function, somewhere far above, ticked on.