Part 1: The Aftermath
The smoke inside the warehouse was beginning to clear, revealing the tableau of violence.
Twenty members of The Dynasty lay on the concrete floor. They were groaning, clutching shattered wrists, kneecaps, and ribs.
None of them were dead.
In the Starter Town, killing another player triggered the "Murderer" status. The NPC guards would hunt you down instantly, and you would be barred from all safe zones.
So Elian hadn't killed them. He had done something worse.
He had left them at 1 HP.
"Elian!"
The shout came from the shattered doorway.
Valen burst in, his sword drawn, his face pale with panic. Behind him, Seraphina and a violet-haired woman—Lyra—stumbled to a halt.
They had expected a battle. They found an execution site.
"Titan!" Seraphina screamed, dropping her staff and rushing toward the center of the room.
The small boy was slumped against a crate. His face was a mask of bruises, and his arm was bent at an unnatural angle.
But he was awake. He was chewing on a piece of dried meat Roger had given him.
"I held the door, Sera," Titan lisped through a swollen lip. "I was the wall."
Seraphina fell to her knees, her hands glowing with desperate, white healing light. Tears streamed down her face.
"You stupid... brave... stupid boy," she sobbed. "Why didn't you run?"
Valen looked at the devastation. He looked at the Dynasty members writhing on the floor, then at Elian, who was calmly wiping blood off The Reaper's Edge.
"What happened?" Valen asked, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Who did this?"
"The Dynasty," Elian replied, not looking up. "They wanted to send a message. They thought we were weak."
Elian pointed his sword at the whimpering mage leader on the floor—the one Roger had shot through the wrist.
"They were wrong."
Lyra, the Cursed Gambler, walked slowly into the room. She stepped over a groaning warrior, her mismatched eyes wide.
She looked at the bullet holes in the armor. She looked at the precise, surgical cuts on their tendons.
"You guys..." Lyra whispered, clutching her lute case. "You took down a twenty-man raid team? With a child, a blacksmith, and an alchemist?"
"And a sniper," Roger called out from the rafters, waving lazily. "Don't forget the sniper."
Part 2: The Price of Living
Valen walked over to the Dynasty mage. The man was terrifyingly high-level for the First Floor—Level 9.
But now, he looked like a broken doll.
"You hurt a child," Valen growled. The "Hero" in him was vibrating with anger. He raised his sword.
"Stop," Elian ordered.
Valen froze. "Elian, they tried to kill Titan! We can't just let them go!"
"If you kill him, the Guards kill you," Elian stated. "And I don't have time to break you out of jail."
Elian walked over to the mage. He crouched down.
"Please," the mage begged, clutching his ruined hand. "I... I was just following orders! Commander Thorne said—"
"I don't care what Thorne said," Elian interrupted.
He reached out and ripped the mage's belt pouch off.
Clink.
"In the Tower," Elian announced, his voice carrying through the silent warehouse, "Life has a price. Since I am letting you keep yours, I am taking everything else."
Elian stood up.
"Strip them," he commanded his team.
"What?" Jax asked, stepping out of the shadows (he had arrived moments after Valen).
"Take their armor," Elian said. "Take their weapons. Take their potions. Take their boots. Leave them in their underwear."
Roger laughed from the rafters. "I like this guy."
"Elian, that's..." Seraphina started, looking up from healing Titan.
"It's cruel?" Elian finished. He looked at Titan's broken arm. "Cruelty is the only language they understand. If we let them walk away with their gear, they will come back tomorrow. If we send them back naked and bankrupt... they become a warning."
For the next ten minutes, the warehouse became a salvage operation.
The Dynasty members wept as they were stripped of their expensive, high-tier gear.
Roger claimed a Rare-tier scope from the Ranger.
Jax took a pair of serrated daggers.
Kael, the blacksmith, grunted as he piled plate armor onto his anvil. "Good metal. I can melt this down. Make something actually useful."
When they were done, twenty naked, shivering players lay on the cold floor.
"Get out," Elian whispered.
They didn't need to be told twice. They scrambled over each other, crawling and limping out of the warehouse, disappearing into the night to face the shame of walking through the town square with nothing.
Part 3: The Tenth Member (Revised)
When the intruders were gone, a heavy silence settled over the room.
Elian walked over to the corner where Caelum was sitting.
The blind elf was still shaking. He hadn't moved during the looting.
"I... I did nothing," Caelum whispered, his voice cracking. "I heard the boy scream. I heard the metal breaking. But I... I couldn't..."
"You did exactly what you needed to do," Elian said softly, placing a hand on the elf's trembling shoulder.
"If you had used your mana, the Administrator would have found you. And then we would have lost our eyes."
Caelum looked up, his blind face wet with tears. "I am a monster, Elian. I let a child bleed to save my own skin."
"No," Elian corrected. "You held the line. Just like Titan."
Elian stood up and turned to the group.
Valen. Seraphina. Jax.
Luna. Kael. Titan.
Caelum. Lyra. Roger.
And Elian.
Ten people.
Ten broken, rejected, overpowered anomalies.
"We are all here," Elian said.
Valen looked around the room. He saw the Sniper cleaning his rifle. He saw the Gambler tuning her lute. He saw the Tank flexing his healed arm.
"We have ten," Valen nodded. "We can register."
"What do we call ourselves?" Seraphina asked, wiping soot from her face.
"The Avengers?" Jax suggested.
"The Cleaners?" Roger offered.
"The Doom Squad," Lyra muttered.
Elian looked at the Black Cube in his inventory. He looked at the diverse, chaotic group of people who had no business working together.
He remembered the recording from Floor 0.
The Tower is a seal. You are digging down.
"We aren't heroes," Elian said. "And we aren't climbers."
He walked to the warehouse door and looked up at the looming Spire that pierced the sky.
"We are the glitch in their system."
"The Guild name is 'Eclipse'," Elian declared.
"Because when we arrive, the light dies."
[System Notification]
[Guild Registration Initiated.]
[Guild Name: Eclipse.]
[Founding Members: 10/10.]
[Guild Master: Elian.]
[Registration... Complete.]
[Global Announcement: A New Guild has been established in the Starter Town!]
[Guild 'Eclipse' is now active.]
Valen let out a breath he'd been holding. "So, that's it. We're official."
He looked at Elian expectantly. "Do we head for the Portal? Floor 14 unlocks in... three weeks, right?"
"Correct," Elian said, looking at the ruined state of their warehouse. "The Tower is locked. We have nowhere to go but here."
He kicked a piece of broken timber.
"We can't leave the Starter Town yet. Not with the Dynasty lurking and the floors sealed."
"So what's the plan, Boss?" Roger asked, leaning back against a crate. "Do we hunt?"
"No," Elian said, sheathing The Reaper's Edge. "We build."
He pointed to the shattered steel doors.
"Kael, fix the entrance. Make it reinforced. Use the Dynasty's armor if you have to. I want a door that can stop a siege."
Kael grunted, eyeing the pile of stolen loot. "I can make it stronger than the city gates."
"Titan," Elian pointed to the heavy debris. "Clear the floor. Move the crates."
"Yes, Boss!" the boy chirped, happy to be useful.
"Luna, set up ventilation. If we're going to live here for three weeks, I don't want to die from potion fumes."
"Roger, get on the roof. Watch for scouts."
Elian looked at his exhausted team. They were battered, dirty, and running on adrenaline, but they were his.
"We turn this warehouse into a fortress," Elian commanded. "Tonight, we sleep in shift. Tomorrow... we start the real training."
The team moved. There were no complaints.
For the rest of the night, the sounds of hammering, sweeping, and heavy lifting filled the warehouse. They patched the walls. They organized the loot. They made beds out of straw and blankets.
Eventually, the adrenaline faded. One by one, the members of Eclipse collapsed into sleep.
Titan curled up next to his siblings. Seraphina leaned against Valen. Caelum meditated in the corner.
Elian took the first watch.
He sat by the newly reinforced door, staring into the darkness of the slums.
He didn't sleep. He planned.
Hours passed. The artificial night of the Starter Town began to fade.
Slowly, light began to creep through the cracks in the roof.
The sun—the fake, projected sun of the First Floor—rose over the horizon.
Morning had come.
And for the first time in history, the sun didn't just shine on a town of adventurers.
It shone on the birthplace of the Eclipse.