The vibration didn't just rattle the stone of the cathedral; it traveled through the very air, a low-frequency hum that vibrated in the teeth and marrow of every living soul in the Sky-Garden. As I stood atop the spire, my left hand—encased in the obsidian-dark Void-Silence—clutched the spire's tip to stabilize the feedback, while my right hand, the Architect's Fracture, remained pressed deep into the white masonry.
I wasn't looking at Kristov. I wasn't looking at the guards. I was looking at the "Fault Lines" of the entire floor.
To all players below, the Second Floor was a paradise. It was a world of floating islands, lush greenery, and golden light that felt like a warm embrace. But through the Architect's Eye, the floor was nothing more than a thin, artificial crust of mana-hardened soil stretched over a massive, hollow frame. It was a beautiful lie, a gilded cage designed to keep them from seeing the gears that ground their lives into fuel.
"Jin, the guards!" Lyra shouted, her voice barely audible over the rising roar of the Tower's protest.
From the balconies below, the Artillery Pillar—a legion of Mages and Marksmen—had already recovered from their shock. A thousand spells, glowing with the blue light of "Easy Mode" mana, began to converge on the spire. Fireballs, ice lances, and bolts of pure energy streaked upward like a reverse meteor shower.
"Lyra, give me ten seconds!" I roared.
She didn't hesitate. She stepped in front of me and slammed her hands together.
[ULTIMATE SKILL: AEGIS RESONANCE]. A massive, translucent dome erupted around us, pulsing in sync with the vibrations of my gauntlet. When the first wave of spells hit, they didn't just shatter; they were redirected, the energy being sucked into the resonance and dissipated into the air.
[MANA SIPHON DETECTED: 4,000 UNITS PER SECOND]
"You see it now, don't you?" I muttered, my eyes tracking the flow of the redirected energy. The spells weren't just vanishing; the floor was eating them. The Sky-Garden was a hungry beast.
"Enough," I whispered.
I didn't punch. I pushed.
I funneled every ounce of the Void-Silence's stored kinetic energy into the Fracture. The obsidian on my left arm turned a dull, matte black as it emptied its reservoir, and the Star-Steel on my right turned a blinding, solar white.
[SKILL: TOTAL STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE — RADIANT FREQUENCY]
The spire beneath me didn't just break; it turned to dust. The shockwave traveled down the central pillar of the cathedral, spreading through the foundations of the main plaza like a lightning strike hitting a sheet of glass.
Crack.
The sound was louder than any thunder. A jagged rift, three miles long, ripped through the center of the Sky-Garden. The golden waterfalls were severed. The light-trees were uprooted. And then, the "floor" began to peel away.
Massive chunks of earth and marble—the size of city blocks—tilted and fell. But they didn't fall into an abyss. They fell into the Gears.
As the artificial crust shattered, the truth was revealed. Below the beautiful gardens was the cold, grinding reality of the Engine. The players screamed, falling back as the ground disappeared beneath their feet, revealing the massive, rusted pistons and the screaming steam vents of the First Floor's ceiling.
The "Heaven" they had fought for was revealed to be a mere shelf in a factory.
I dropped through the collapsing roof of the cathedral, falling like a lead weight through the dust and debris. I landed in the center of the grand plaza, right in front of the balcony where Kristov stood.
He didn't run. He jumped down to meet me, his golden claymore held in a two-handed grip. He was a head taller than me, his armor pristine, his face the picture of a righteous hero.
"You've destroyed it," Kristov said, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and genuine grief. "Years of planning... a society where people could sleep without fear... you shattered it in a single second."
"I didn't destroy a home, Kristov," I said, the Fracture still steaming from the output. "I destroyed a blindfold. Look down."
Behind him, the players—the Fighters, the Mages, the Mothers, and the Children—were staring into the hole I had made. They weren't looking at the beauty anymore. They were looking at the massive Mana Siphons—huge, glowing tubes that were physically connected to the "Council Hall," draining the mana from every player in the vicinity to keep the "Easy Mode" gate open.
"We were keeping them alive!" Kristov roared, charging at me.
His sword moved with the speed of a Level 12 Herald of the Dawn. The blade was coated in a holy fire that hissed as it cut through the air. I raised the Void-Silence to parry, and the impact sent a shockwave that cleared the dust for fifty meters.
Kristov was fast, but he fought like a man who followed the rules. He swung, he blocked, he waited for an opening. I fought like a man who saw the world as a series of errors.
Every time his sword hit my left gauntlet, the obsidian absorbed the vibration. Every time I struck back with my right, the Star-Steel searched for the "fault lines" in his golden armor.
"You're a parasite!" Kristov swung a horizontal cleave that I ducked under.
"Without this kingdom, they will die in the higher floors! They aren't monsters like you!"
"Then they should die as free men, not as batteries for your fake paradise!" I countered, lunging forward. I caught his claymore between my two gauntlets. The Fracture and the Silence worked in tandem, creating a "Harmonic Lock" that froze his blade in place.
We were inches apart, our eyes locked.
"The Architect told you I was a Calamity," I hissed. "Did he tell you why? Because he's afraid that if the players actually looked up, they'd realize they don't need a King. They just need to keep moving."
"They can't move without a leader!" Kristov kicked me back, his strength boosted by a [Divine Blessing].
Around us, the Kingdom was falling apart. Without the floor to support them, the Six Pillars were in disarray. The Vanguard (Tanks) were trying to hold up falling debris, while the Summoners were desperately trying to fly people to the remaining islands.
But the most dangerous part wasn't the falling floor. It was the System.
[SYSTEM ALERT: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY OF FLOOR 2 AT 40%]
[GENERATING REPAIR PROTOCOL: SENTINEL ARMY DEPLOYED]
From the holes I had made, hundreds of mechanical spiders—Maintenance Units—began to swarm upward. They weren't there to save the players; they were there to "clean" the debris. To the System, the players were now "Obstacles" preventing the repair of the floor.
"Look!" Elara, the High Priestess, screamed from the sidelines. "The Sentinels! They're attacking everyone!"
A maintenance unit, a mass of spinning blades and brass, lunged at a group of unequipped players. Kristov saw it. He looked at me, then at his people.
This was the moment of truth.
"Save them, King," I said, stepping back and lowering my guard. "Or fight me. You can't do both."
Kristov gritted his teeth, his knuckles turning white on his sword. He looked at the carnage, the shattered beauty, and the cold reality of the gears. For a second, I saw the man behind the crown—a man who truly believed he was doing the right thing, however misguided it was.
"I will kill you one day, Jin," Kristov promised, his voice low. "But today, I have to save my people from the mess you made."
He turned his back on me and leapt into the swarm of Sentinels, his holy fire erupting into a massive pillar of light as he began to defend the survivors.
I stood in the ruins of the cathedral, my body aching, my mana pool nearly empty. Lyra ran to my side, her eyes wide as she watched the Kingdom—what was left of it—retreating toward the far edges of the floor where the ground was still stable.
"They hate us now," she said softly. "The player... to them, you're the villain who destroyed their home."
"I know," I said. I looked up. Now that the artificial "sun" of the Sky-Garden was flickering out due to the damage, I could see the real ceiling of the Second Floor.
It wasn't a sky. It was a gate. A massive, obsidian gate that led to the Third Floor. And unlike the "Easy Mode" gate, this one was covered in the same 7\bigstar markings as my hand.
[QUEST UPDATE: THE REBELS' PATH]
Objective: Reach Floor 3 before the System completes its 'Sanitization' of Floor 2.
Reward: Unknown.
"We aren't staying for the gratitude, Lyra," I said, beginning to walk toward the gate.
"We're staying for the truth. Kristov can lead them in the ruins. I'm going to find out what's at the top of this godforsaken tower."
As we walked, I felt a familiar presence. The Architect wasn't speaking, but I could feel his gaze—cold, calculating, and slightly... amused.
I had done exactly what he wanted. I had "Reset" the floor. I had shattered the stagnation. But as I looked at my left arm—the Silence of Kain—I knew I had something the Architect hadn't planned for. I had the memory of the men who had failed before me.
"The next floor won't be a garden," I muttered to myself.
"What makes you say that?" Lyra asked.
"Because," I said, looking at the black gate ahead. "The Sentinels aren't just coming from the bottom anymore. They're waiting for us at the top."
Behind us, the Sky-Garden continued to crumble, the screams of the "Kingdom" fading into the distance. The Ruin-Breaker had arrived, and the Infinite Tower would never be quiet again.
One month before the tower ascend.
The rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling glass of the penthouse office, turning the neon lights of the city below into a blurry, electric soup. Christopher Vaughn didn't look at the city. He looked at the medical report on his mahogany desk.
He was twenty-eight, the CEO of a global logistics empire, and he was dying. A rare, degenerative nerve disease was turning his Olympic-athlete body into a cage of lead.
"Sir?" his assistant, a woman who would later become the High Priestess Elara, stood at the door. "The board is waiting. They want to know the strategy for the economic collapse."
"The economy isn't the problem, Elara," Christopher said, his voice steady despite the tremors in his legs. He stood up, leaning heavily on the desk. "The world is stagnant. We build, we buy, we die. There's no... purpose."
He walked to the window. In his reflection, he looked perfect—golden hair, sharp jawline, the "Ideal Man." But inside, he felt the fault lines of his own biology. He had spent his life trying to bring order to chaos, yet his own body was the one thing he couldn't govern.
Suddenly, the rain stopped. It didn't taper off; it froze in mid-air.
[THE SYSTEM IS INITIALIZING...]
A voice, cold and mathematical, echoed not in the room, but in Christopher's soul. He felt a sudden, violent surge of heat in his chest. The pain in his nerves vanished. The tremors stopped. He looked at his hands, and they were glowing with a faint, divine white light.
[COMPATIBILITY DETECTED: 99.8%]
[ASSIGNED CLASS: HERALD OF THE DAWN (LEGENDARY)]
[PATRON: THE MOTHER OF THE GROVE (5-STAR)]
"Elara?" he whispered.
He turned to see her glowing as well, her eyes wide with terror. But Christopher didn't feel terror. For the first time in his life, he felt useful. He saw a blue window floating in the air, offering him a choice: [EASY MODE], [NORMAL MODE], or [DEATH MODE].
He looked at the description for Easy Mode: A world of managed safety. A kingdom for those who wish to protect.
"I can save them," Christopher muttered, his eyes shining with a new, dangerous fervor. "I don't have to watch the world rot. I can build a place where no one has to be sick. No one has to be hungry. A perfect order."
He didn't choose the hard path because he was a coward. He chose the easy path because he was a perfectionist. He believed that if he took the crown, he could shield the people "sheep" from the harshness of the universe.
"Elara, take my hand," he commanded, his voice already shifting into the tone of a King. "We aren't going to just survive this Tower. We are going to colonize it. We will build a sanctuary that the Gods themselves cannot touch."
He stepped toward the shimmering blue gate that had opened in the center of his office, leaving behind his mahogany desk, his dying body, and his humanity. He didn't see the Tower as a challenge to be climbed; he saw it as a piece of real estate to be managed.
Back to the Present.
Kristov stood amidst the smoke of the shattered Second Floor, his golden claymore dripping with the black oil of a maintenance Sentinel. He watched Jin disappear toward the Third Floor gate—the boy who had just destroyed his "Perfect Order."
He remembered the rain in Seoul. He remembered the feeling of finally being "whole."
"You don't understand, Jin," Kristov whispered, his eyes burning with a holy, vengeful light. "You think you're freeing them. But you're just throwing them into the fire. I gave them a world where they didn't have to be 'Ruin-Breakers.' I gave them a life."
He turned to his regrouping army, his voice booming over the sound of the grinding gears below.
"Listen to me! The Calamity has taken our home, but he hasn't taken our purpose! We will follow him! We will hunt him to the highest floor! And when I stand over his broken body, I will rebuild the Kingdom on the bones of his failure!"
The players (now 130,000 after the shattering) let out a roar—not of hope, but of desperation. Kristov had successfully turned their fear into a weapon. He wasn't their King anymore; he was their Crusader.