The gate opened to thunder.
Not just distant rumbling, but a constant roar, like an ocean made of sky, crashing down in pulses of white-blue fury. The mont Leon stepped through, lightning flashed across the horizon—arcs leaping between jagged peaks of ironstone that pierced the clouds like spears.
The rain wasn’t water.
It was blood.
Dark crimson droplets fell from a torn sky, sizzling as they struck the black tal floor, steaming on contact. It didn’t burn skin, but it carried sothing far worse—mories.
Each drop whispered screams of fallen climbers.
[Welco to Floor 523 – Storm in the Blood]
• Atmospheric Hazard: Constant Lightning Field
• Terrain Hazard: Blood Rain (mory Contact)
• Survival Ti Without Conductor: 9 Minutes
• Floor Sovereign: Er’Zan, The Endless Climber
Leon’s boots sank half an inch into the wet ground. He looked down.
His reflection wasn’t now. It was him—on Floor 2. Weak. Lost. Angry.
A crackle of static danced across his skin.
Behind him, the rest of the team materialized, each grimacing at the sudden weight pressing against their bones. Naval flinched as lightning arced off his shoulderplate. Kael instinctively pulled his coat tighter as a bolt struck less than ten feet away, shattering a stone pillar.
"Keep moving," Leon shouted, voice almost drowned in thunder. "Don’t stop. This floor is testing how far your blood can carry you."
Milim blinked. "That’s... weirdly poetic."
Roman looked up. "No. He ans it literally."
A shape began to rise ahead—up a slope of warped iron, where lightning did not strike. A dead zone, encased in the eye of the storm.
There, standing at the summit, was Er’Zan.
He wore no armor. His body was torn, like soone halfway between living and rembered. Muscles like cracked iron. Face wrapped in burnt cloth. And in one hand—
—a spear made from bone and thunder.
"Another Crown approaches," Er’Zan said. "Will you die... or climb over ?"
Leon stepped forward, eyes sharp. "Are you alive?"
Er’Zan laughed once. "Not really. But not dead either. I reached Floor 600 once. Then... sothing reached back. I wasn’t allowed to stop."
He stabbed the spear into the ground. Thunder split the sky behind him.
"So now I wait here. To see if anyone else can carry the weight."
Leon nodded once.
"Then let’s find out."
Boss Battle: Er’Zan, the Endless Climber
The lightning didn’t pause for introductions.
The battle started with a flash.
Er’Zan teleported mid-swing—his spear crackling as it blurred into arcs of white-hot plasma. Leon barely blocked the first hit, his shoulder exploding with static as he was flung backward twenty feet.
Kael moved in next, unleashing rapid blade bursts—but each ti he struck, Er’Zan redirected the kinetic force into lightning, returning the damage through the air.
"Don’t strike raw!" Leon shouted, coughing blood. "Use grounding! Pull the storm into you, not around!"
Roselia understood first.
She dipped her fingers into the blood rain, drew a sigil over her chest, and accepted the static.
In that mont—lightning danced harmlessly across her.
Naval followed, adjusting his form. Milim chanted, layering a resonance field from her Echo mory to create a temporary conductor ward.
Then the real fight began.
Er’Zan moved like a beast unbound. Every strike was punishnt. Every movent bled intent. He didn’t fight to win.
He fought to test.
"Let’s see how many tis your legs can break before you give up!" he roared, shattering the ground with a spinning spear slam that sent Roman tumbling.
Leon took that mont.
He focused—not on the pain, not on the noise.
But on the blood.
He activated a new sequence in his Shell Reverb—tuned it to the pulse of his heartbeat, to the falling rain, to the lightning burning his nerves.
Then—
He moved.
Not faster. Not harder.
Cleaner.
Each movent chained to the last—Shell Reverb perfectly synced with the storm’s rhythm. He didn’t dodge lightning. He danced with it.
His sword found Er’Zan’s side—cutting deeper than any before.
The Sovereign staggered.
Then smiled.
"Good," he whispered. "Very... good."
With the rest of the team coordinated now, they moved like a single unit.
Kael grounded the east flank, drawing lightning into the collapsed pylon field.
Roselia cast arc sigils in blood, slowing the enemy’s step.
Naval and Roman played bait and counter.
And Leon...
Leon climbed.
One final blow—infused with Shell Reverb and the essence of the storm—sliced across Er’Zan’s chest, scattering sparks and mory fragnts like wind-tossed glass.
Er’Zan didn’t fall.
He just sat down.
And laughed.
"You’ll go higher than . I can feel it now."
[Floor Sovereign Defeated – Er’Zan: The Endless Climber]
• Node Core Transferred
• Trait Gained: Storm Channel – Lightning-based skills gain 20% efficiency during overload phases.
• Passive: Rain Blood mory – Leon may imprint a battle mory on any floor with environntal hazard once per floor. Auto-replays if he falls in combat.
As the storm began to fade, Er’Zan stood one last ti.
He passed his cracked spear to Leon.
"It’s not power you need," he said. "It’s persistence."
Then, his body unraveled into static.
The portal shimred with a dull, mournful hue—gray like fading ash, and edged with thin lines of crimson thread. Unlike the last few gates, it didn’t hum or crackle. It was quiet.
Leon stepped through first, and the world shifted into stillness.
There was no sky.
No wind.
Only silence.
They stood on a polished floor made of smooth obsidian slate. Hundreds—no, thousands—of thin, rectangular pillars surrounded them in perfect rows, each one etched with a glowing na in golden script.
So nas were clean and bright. Others flickered. And many more were cracked, broken down the center like they’d been forcibly erased.
[Welco to Floor 524 – The Chamber of Sealed Nas]
• Purpose: morial Archive of Failed Climbers
• Sovereign: None
• Combat: Locked
• Objective: Find the Unsealed Na
A soft breeze whispered through the pillars—but there was no source. Only... voices.
Faint and echoing.
Roselia took a careful step forward and reached out to touch one of the glowing nas.
"Xellian T’rell... Floor 478... Died saving his twin brother."
She blinked. "These are real. Every climber who died in the Tower... it’s recording them."
Roman tilted his head, reading another.
"Ava Lorne... Floor 319... Betrayed by teammate."
Milim’s brow furrowed as she walked through the rows. "Why show us this now?"
Leon didn’t answer. He kept moving.
He walked past a na that read:
"Varek Goldfla... Floor 401... Killed in trial. Crown stolen posthumously."
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