Arlon fell.
The fall lasted a long ti.
Fifty… sixty seconds? Maybe more. He didn't check. He just kept falling, unable to see the bottom.
Then, suddenly—
He was on the ground.
Not a crash. Not a hard impact.
He was just… there.
It was unnatural. One mont, he was falling. The next, his feet were on solid ground.
Then, a sound whispered in his head.
So quiet.
Too quiet.
Even when he focused, he couldn't make out what it was saying.
Before he could dwell on it—
A notification appeared.
[Welco to Floor ???]
Arlon frowned.
The usual welco ssage. But the floor number?
"???"
Another bug?
It wouldn't be the first ti. The Tower had been behaving strangely ever since he started interfering with its systems.
Especially when it stopped spawning monsters.
But this floor was… different.
He looked around, scanning his surroundings.
First, the ground was dirt.
Not the polished stone of the other floors. Just plain earth, soft beneath his boots.
Second, the lighting was wrong.
There were no blue flas. No torches, no floating lights—nothing like the eerie illumination of the other floors.
And yet—
It was bright.
As if a sun shone overhead. But there was no sun.
Third—there was no ceiling.
Arlon looked up.
Only an endless blue sky stretched above him.
No stone do. No towering walls.
Just open space.
And yet, despite everything, he knew he was still inside the Tower.
The air, the atmosphere, the subtle pressure against his body—it was the sa.
The ti also moved at the sa pace it was on the 90th floor.
He didn't get the readjustnt on the 90th floor, though.
This wasn't the outside world.
He turned in every direction.
No monsters spawned.
No structures, no paths, no walls.
Just an endless expanse of dirt.
His first instinct? Dig.
If he was still in the Tower, then the mana flow should still be beneath him.
And if he could reach it…
He could take control again.
Arlon knelt and started digging with his hands.
The dirt was loose, easy to move, but too slow.
After a few minutes, he grew impatient.
He raised a hand and cast a spell.
The ground erupted.
With magic, the process was far faster. He tore through the dirt, carving out a massive pit.
Deeper.
Deeper.
Until—
He stopped.
Because he had found it.
The mana flow.
The familiar sensation surged beneath him. The pulse of power, the very essence of the Tower itself.
But when he checked the mana flow, he learned two things.
First was that he was definitely in the Tower, and it was possible to connect to the mana flow.
And the second was that he was wrong before.
When he started studying the mana flow on Floor 90, he had assud that he could control the whole tower.
He could spawn infinite monsters and level up, teleport to any floor he wanted, etc...
And he thought that the mana flow was the controller of the Tower, not part of it, the whole controller.
That was only half true.
Yes, what he had learned was real. Yes, he had gained power over the Tower's systems.
But only for that floor.
The mana flow changed on this one.
Of course, he still didn't know what this floor was, and there was a possibility that the normal floors could be the sa.
However, Arlon instinctively knew that this was the case for each floor.
So, he had wasted his ti. He could have sent the notification long before to leave floor 90.
But he had continued studying the mana flow for more. And the ti wasted was the price for his greed.
Now, he could spend another year studying this mana flow and move to another floor, which was sothing he wasn't sure he could.
But he didn't know what floor he was on and where he would go from here, even with the use of mana flow.
He didn't want to waste more ti on it. Instead, he would challenge the floor normally if possible.
Maybe the reason he fell wasn't a bug, but this was the Tower's punishnt for interfering with its system
---
Arlon looked around once more.
Still nothing.
No structures, no landmarks, no indication of where to go—or if there even was anywhere to go.
Just the endless expanse of dirt stretching in every direction.
But there was sothing else.
The sound.
At first, he had assud it was coming from sothing nearby.
So hidden chanism, so invisible presence. But after searching and finding nothing, he realized it wasn't stopping.
A whisper.
Too quiet to understand. Too faint to even recognize as a language.
He activated his detection spell.
Nothing.
Not a single thing.
And that was serious.
His detection spell was powerful now—far beyond what it used to be.
If he were on Earth and cast it at full strength, he was sure he could cover half the planet. Maybe more.
And yet, here… it was useless.
The whisper remained undetected.
If his spell couldn't pick it up, then either it wasn't physical… or it was sothing beyond even his current abilities.
Which ant there was only one way to figure it out.
Testing.
He picked a direction and started walking.
He didn't stop.
Hours passed.
Then an entire day.
Eventually, sothing changed.
The sound.
It was quieter. Just barely. A minuscule difference, but noticeable.
Arlon halted.
Turned around.
Moved the other way.
This ti, the whisper grew louder.
Again, it was almost imperceptible. Just a slight increase.
But it was enough.
Now he knew which way to go.
Unless, of course, this was a warning.
There was no way to know.
Not without getting closer.
---
Arlon walked in the other direction.
A day passed.
He reached the spot where he had started—the place where he had first fallen.
Looking up, he checked again.
Still nothing.
No opening, no clue as to where he had co from. Just the endless sky.
He lowered his gaze and kept moving.
Since the pit he had dug was still there, it ant he could leave marks.
That would make things easier.
As he walked, he cast a spell.
A blue-green fire flickered to life in his palm.
Then, he dropped it onto the ground.
The flas didn't extinguish.
That was their nature—this fire wasn't bound by the usual rules.
This served two different purposes.
First, it served as a marker. Each fla left behind was proof of where he had been.
Second, it let him check his path.
Every once in a while, he glanced back. If he aligned two of the fires in a straight line, it ant he was still moving correctly. If they curved—then sothing was off. Either he was unconsciously shifting, or so external force was altering his course.
With this thod, he continued forward.
Days passed.
Then a week.
And still—
The whisper remained incomprehensible.
He couldn't make out a single word.
Not because it was in another language—though maybe it was.
But because it was simply too quiet.
No matter how far he traveled, no matter how closely he listened, it remained just outside of his reach.
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