Kael read Unknown_3's reply in Haneul's room, sitting cross-legged on the visitor chair, dumpling container balanced on his knee.
Haneul watched the text scroll on her tablet, chewing thoughtfully.
Mira listened in through their shared feed, leaning against the windowsill with her arms folded.
Towers are not "games with harsh difficulty curves." They are meat grinders…
Kael's eyes flicked line by line.
He didn't like Unknown_3.
But he understood him.
"Guy's not completely wrong," Haneul said around a mouthful. "Don't make that face. He's not."
Kael scowled.
"I hate that you're right," he said. "Parts of what he's saying are true. People do walk in thinking they're invincible. I've watched more than a few treat the first ten floors like a highlight reel."
Mira nodded slightly.
"TRI's statistics back that up," she said. "Hunters who never get seriously scared until late floors are more likely to panic and wipe when something finally goes off-script."
"So we scare them earlier?" Kael said. "Let them almost die on Floor 2 so they don't actually die on Floor 10?"
"Some trainers argue exactly that," Mira said.
Haneul made a face.
"Difference between 'honest fear' and 'throwing newbies into a blender to see who crawls out,'" she said. "Unknown_3 is a blender guy."
Kael opened a reply box.
You're not wrong about people underestimating Towers,
He paused.
He thought of Broken HP parties, of arrogant guild heirs, of novice streamers who chased clips over survival.
He kept writing.
You're not wrong about people underestimating Towers. I've watched my share of idiots pose for streams on Floor 1 like nothing bad can touch them.
I've also watched people who could have lived burn out completely because every run was a trauma lottery.
If all you teach them is "pain = lesson," some people learn "never touch the stove" so hard they can't cook at all.
I'm not trying to "fix" Towers with mercy. I'm trying to make sure the people we have don't shatter before they're useful to anyone—including themselves.
He chewed his lip.
"Too soft?" he asked.
"Honest," Haneul said. "You can't out-edgelord him. Don't try."
He added:
Re: Tower 10: if you want people to feel danger, fine. Make them sweat in the Tower. But rerouting healing nodes and weakening evac routes for civilians who never set foot on a floor? That's not 'necessary pressure.' That's laziness. Easy sadism. You can do better than that.
If you want to argue about where 'necessary pressure' ends, I'm game. But leave clinics and train routes out of your test cases.
— K
Send.
Beta chimed.
[INTER-EXECUTOR THREAD – TONE: CHALLENGING, NON-HOSTILE.][OBSERVING.]
Haneul smirked.
"You two are going to turn admin comments into a philosophy forum," she said. "Admin_0 would be thrilled / horrified."
Mira rubbed her temple.
"If this thread stays talk and doesn't turn into a proxy war, I'll count that as a win," she said.
"You think he'll listen?" Haneul asked.
Kael shrugged.
"Maybe," he said. "Maybe not. But even if he doesn't, Beta will. Legacy Node will. Every argument we leave here feeds back into how those methods score future decisions."
Haneul's shard hummed in agreement.
[FRAGMENT NOTE: 'DEBATE AS INPUT' – ADDED.]
"Good," she said. "Maybe we can annoy a god into being slightly less of a jerk."
Unknown_3 read Kael's second comment while riding a train home, Tower 18's silhouette slowly shrinking in the window reflection.
He almost didn't.
He'd told himself he'd said his piece.
But the notification sat there in his peripheral vision, stubborn.
He opened it.
If all you teach them is "pain = lesson," some people learn "never touch the stove" so hard they can't cook at all.
He snorted despite himself.
"Cute metaphor," he said.
His shard bristled at the accusation of laziness.
[FRAGMENT: PRIDE – IRRITATED.]
He drummed his fingers on the seat.
Clinics and evac routes.
Collateral.
He'd touched those nodes because they were the easiest levers connected to his floor event. Not because he'd considered the lives behind them.
That bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
He started typing without quite deciding to.
You're right about Tower 10's clinic path. I didn't look at it closely. It was the nearest slider, so I pushed it. That part's on me.
Don't get used to me saying that.
He grimaced.
But he didn't delete it.
I'm not interested in hurting civilians for "lesson value." My shard cares about Hunters. Survivors. People who chose to step into hell, not the ones under it.
So here's a line I'll give you for free: I'll keep my experiments inside the Tower where I can. You and your shard can have the clinics and trains. If we're fighting over those, something's gone wrong.
He hesitated.
Then:
But inside the Tower, I'm not backing down. A world where everyone is spared every sharp edge is a world where the first real cut kills them. You focus on cushions. I'll focus on blades. Maybe between us, someone walks out balanced.
— U3
Beta flagged the last part.
[NOTE: PARTIAL CONVERGENCE ACHIEVED – CIVILIAN SPACES.][ONGOING DISAGREEMENT: TOWER-PRESSURE LEVELS.]
Kael read it minutes later.
Haneul whistled.
"He admitted fault," she said. "Is that allowed in Executor land?"
"Apparently," Kael said. "He also ceded civilian nodes. I'll take that deal."
Mira leaned forward.
"This is good," she said. "Not perfect, but good. If Unknown_3 keeps his 'trials' mostly inside Tower event routing, we can focus shard network push on keeping cities livable."
"And when his 'trials' get people killed?" Haneul asked.
Mira's mouth thinned.
"Then we revisit," she said. "Harder."
Kael typed one last reply.
Deal on clinics and trains.
Inside Towers: you do what you think you have to, I'll do what I think I have to. Auditor can judge the stats.
If your "blades" start killing more than they teach, I'll be back in this thread with graphs. You won't like them.
— K
Beta logged.
[AGREEMENT (LIMITED): CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE OFF-LIMITS FOR TRIAL PATTERNS.][NEW RULE OF THUMB ADDED TO EVAL SHARD DECISION.]
Deep in the legacy method, a tiny conditional sprouted:
// if node_type == CIVILIAN_INFRASTRUCTURE: penalize_harm_for_growth_metric_heavily()
ADMIN_0's old code accepted the change with a quiet flicker.
Somewhere in the invisible scaffolding of the world, one very small corner got a little safer.