"AHAHAHA!"
"Ah... I guess I really finally lost it..."
Kang Min sat on a pile of charred bones, his chest heaving. His black hair, matted with a mixture of sweat, dust, and old blood, fell in jagged bangs over his face.
"…Ah, what the hell! I have nothing to lose either way."
He stood up the movement uneven.
"I lost my right arm at Floor 301..."
"And I've been climbing, fighting monsters, and beheading floor bosses with just this half-ruined body until now... but..."
He shifted his weight.
In his left hand, he gripped a heavy, notched blade of black iron.
He pointed the tip toward the center of the room.
A faint, tired smile played on his cracked lips.
"This bastard..."
"You're not like the other bosses..."
From the crimson haze of the chamber, a presence began to solidify.
Scales the color of dried arterial spray, shot through with veins of obsidian black, shifted with the sound of tectonic plates grinding together.
The Great Dragon of the 666th Floor opened its eyes.
They were horizontal slits of molten gold.
[The Guardian of the Abyss, the Great Red-Black Calamity, observes the intruder.]
The dragon's voice didn't come from its throat; it vibrated directly into Kang Min's marrow.
"The only human left in this desolate spire... truly, I commend you.
To walk where millions fell, to breathe where even the atmosphere seeks to dissolve your lungs. You have done the impossible."
The dragon shifted, its massive head lowering until its snout was mere meters from Min.
Its breath smelled of sulfur and the end of the world.
"Unfortunately, human, this is the last floor your eyes will ever behold.
Your story ends in the red dark."
"The last floor?"
Kang Min spit a glob of blood onto the floor.
He didn't look afraid but annoyed.
He looked like a man who had been told his favorite restaurant was closed after a twenty-year hike to get there.
"You're full of yourself..."
Min snarled, his voice rising in volume.
"What makes you think I can't behead you?"
He began to laugh again, a manic, high-pitched cackle that shook his shoulders.
"I'm going to break through this floor! I'm moving up!
I don't give a single fuck who or what is in my way!
If it's a God, I'll eat it! If it's the Tower itself, I'll burn it down!"
The madness peaked. His eyes, normally a dull grey, began to flicker with a terrifying, pale blue.
With a swift, practiced motion, he reached down and gripped a second blade; a short, jagged gladius etched into the earth.
He didn't have a right hand to hold it.
Instead, he slammed the hilt into his mouth, clenching his teeth around the leather-wrapped grip until his gums bled.
He smiled around the blade in his teeth, and then...he was gone.
The air where he stood cracked with a sonic boom.
He reappeared instantly above the dragon's massive brow, a streak of black against the red sky. Gravity took hold, and he plunged down like a falling star.
He hammered the sword in his left hand downward with every ounce of strength in his distorted frame, the blade seeking the soft tissue behind the dragon's eye.
CRACK!
"KEKE... bastard!"
Min muffled his cry through the blade in his mouth.
The black iron bit deep. A fountain of steaming, acidic blood sprayed across his face, burning his skin.
"If I'm going to fight with just one eye... then so should you!
Next, I'm cutting off a limb!"
Its tail, a massive, spiked lash that stretched into the darkness, moved with the speed of a whip.
WHAM!
Kang Min didn't even see it coming. The impact was like being hit by a freight train.
His ribs shattered instantly and he was sent flying across.
He slammed into a jagged rocky wall with a sickening crunch, obsidian shards piercing his back. His blades scattered, clattering against the stone.
He coughed, and for a moment, the world went grey.
He looked up, his vision swimming.
The 666th Floor was a cavern so vast it had its own weather; a suffocating, humid heat.
The sky was a swirling vortex of deep crimson and bruised purple.
Jagged obsidian pillars rose from rivers of slow-moving, glowing red corruption.
Everything smelled of rust and ozone.
"Ah... enough daydreaming..."
He forced his broken body to stand.
His left arm hung limp for a second before he willed the muscles to fire.
In his peripheral vision, a blinding red light flared.
The dragon's maw was open, a swirling sun of compressed mana forming between its teeth.
BOOM!
The dragon unleashed the blast.
A pillar of pure annihilation incinerated the wall where Kang Min had been.
The explosion was so great the obsidian melted into glass.
The dragon lowered its head, smoke curling from its nostrils.
"Cocky. Arrogant...
Your pride was the only thing that lasted longer than your life, human.
To compare a being such as myself to the 'Bosses' of the lower floors is the height of ignorance. Not even the Guardian of Floor 665 is on par with my power.
I am the end of—"
"Hey, big mouth..."
A voice drifted through the settling dust.
Kang Min was standing twenty meters to the left, his clothes charred, his skin blistered.
"...how many floors are there left?"
The dragon's gold eyes narrowed, its pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
"There are far more floors than you have left years of life, human.
But that is irrelevant.
You will not be leaving this one alive.
For I-"
"Oh my god, SHUT UUUP!"
"You're by far the most talkative boss I've faced...do you ever shut the hell up?
Destroyer this...high being that!"
Min spat.
He snatched the blades again one to the left hand and the other the mouth.
Kang Min moved using a high-level skill, [Spatial Blinking], reappearing and disappearing.
CLANG!
The sword in his left hand parried a claw.
The force sent a shockwave through his arm that should have shattered his humerus, but he used the momentum to spin, the blade in his mouth slicing a shallow groove through the dragon's snout.
The dragon was competent and didn't just swing blindly.
It used its wings to create localized vacuums, pulling Min toward its jaws.
It predicted his blinks, sweeping its tail to the exact spot he would reappear.
'Tail coming from the right at an angle of 45 degrees.
Impact will be in 0.2 seconds.'
'I'll have to redirect weight to the stump of the right arm.
Use the shift to drop low and strike the under-belly.'
Kang Min dived.
The tail whistled over his hair, taking a chunk of the rock wall with it.
He skidded through the red dust, his mouth-blade leaving a trail of sparks on the dragon's belly scales.
He found a chink of a scar from a previous fight and drove the black iron in.
The dragon roared, the sound shattering the glass-like obsidian nearby.
It slammed its massive body down, trying to crush him.
Min rolled, his lungs screaming for air, his heart hammering against his broken ribs.
After an hour of blood and iron, the dragon backed away, its chest heaving.
It had lost an eye, its snout was a mess of gore, and several of its wing membranes were shredded.
But Kang Min was in worse shape.
He was kneeling, his left arm shaking so violently he had to jam the sword into the ground to stay upright.
"It is a tragedy."
The dragon spoke, its voice dropping to a low, somber vibration.
"A human, reaching this height.
You have survived the loneliness that would have turned a god insane.
And have carried the hopes of a dead world on your back for three hundred floors."
The dragon leaned in, its golden eye staring into Min's soul.
"But can you not see? It is all useless.
Humans were never meant to conquer these heights.
This Tower was built to filter the weak from the eternal, and you, Kang Min, are tragically weak.
Even if you manage by some miracle to leave this floor... what awaits you? More floors filled with More silence.
You are the last of your kind. You'll always be alone as you have been!"
Min coughed, a thick spray of crimson painting the dark soil.
"Kill your dreams, human!"
"Kill the hope that keeps you standing.
It is a poison and it will only make the end more painful for you!
Lay down your blades and embrace the silence.
You have earned the right to rest."
For a moment, there was silence.
The red world seemed to hold its breath.
Why keep going? Why climb a ladder that leads to nothing you're not even sure of?
Then, a sound broke the silence.
"He... hehe..."
Kang Min began to laugh.
It started as a giggle and grew into a hysterical, sobbing roar.
He looked up, his face a mix of blood and madness.
"The reason I've been able to endure..."
He rasped, his eyes glowing with a terrifying blue fire.
"The reason I've been able to keep walking through the dark while the others turned to dust...
...the reason I didn't stop when my arm was ripped off...!"
He gripped his sword, the metal groaningunder the pressure.
"It wasn't because I'm someone great!
It wasn't because I'm special!
It's because I'm stubborn!"
The dragon's mercy vanished.
"Then remember this, human... you dug your own grave!"
The dragon's throat glowed white-hot. But Min was already moving.
He vaulted off a falling obsidian pillar, launched himself through the air, and landed squarely on the dragon's neck and began cutting through it's neck.
The dragon thrashed, its tail smacking Min in the head.
The world tilted and his vision went black.
He felt his consciousness slipping, the dark pull of a concussion trying to drag him down.
'No.'
He bit his tongue so hard it nearly severed, the sharp pain jolting his brain back into focus.
He clenched his left arm, his fingers locking around the hilt of his broken blade in a grip that would never open again.
He began to saw.
CHWAK! CHWAK! CHWAK!
He drove the broken iron into the neck scales and pulled.
Flesh on flesh. Bone on bone.
The dragon roared in agony, flying into the air, slamming its back against the ceiling to shake him off.
Min's ribs shattered further, his internal organs turning to pulp.
He bled from his nose, his ears, his eyes.
'I'll cut and cut and fucking CUT!', his mind screamed.
He ignored the feeling of his spine cracking and the heat of the dragon's blood melting his skin.
With a final, gargantuan heave, he channeled every remaining drop of his mana into the edge of the broken blade.
"DIE YOU PIECE OF SHIT!"
CRACK—THOOM!
The dragon's neck bone gave way.
The massive head separated from the body.
The head hit the ground with a thud that shook the entire floor.
A second later, the mountain-sized body followed, a larger thud that signaled the end of an era.
Kang Min tumbled off the carcass, hitting the ground like a sack of wet flour.
He lay there in the red dust, his chest barely moving.
He panted, each breath a jagged needle in his throat.
He tried to move his left arm, but the muscles were shredded.
Kang Min also tried to open his eyes, but they were gummed shut with blood.
He lay there for a long time, silence finally reclaiming the chamber.
Then, a faint, humming sound began.
Kang Min forced his one eye open and looked to the side.
Ten meters away, the severed head of the dragon lay in the dust.
Its eyes were closed and even Its body was motionless...but...
But within the head's mouth, a red light began to flicker.
He began to laugh; a tired geuine laugh.
"Ah... fuck!"
The red light expanded, turning the entire world red before turning into a blinding silent white.
***
[Calculating Probability...]
[A new 'Story' is attempting to intervene.]