The world smelled like reheated curry and old books. Kenji Tanaka's universe was a small one, contained within the four walls of his bedroom. The light from his monitor painted his face in shifting colors of blue and red, a stark contrast to the drab grey of his real life. On the screen, he was a legend. He was "Kage," the number one ranked player in the world's hardest MMORPG, Devilskys. He moved with grace and power, his fingers a blur across the keyboard as he commanded his digital avatar, a towering warrior wreathed in shadow and flame. In the game, he had allies, prestige, and a purpose.
Outside the game, he was just Kenji. A nineteen-year-old computer science student who was too quiet in class and too awkward to make friends easily. His life was a predictable loop: wake up, go to university, come home, do a few hours at his part-time convenience store job, and then, finally, escape back into the glowing screen. His father was gone, a soldier lost years ago in a conflict he barely understood. That loss had left a hole in their small family and placed a heavy weight on Kenji's shoulders. He felt a deep, fierce need to protect his mother, Emi, who worked long hours as a nurse and always looked tired, and his younger sister, Yui, whose bright, cheerful energy was the one true light in their quiet apartment.
"Kenji! Dinner's ready!" his mother's voice called from the kitchen, muffled by his closed door.
"Okay, Mom! Just a minute!" he called back, his eyes never leaving the screen. He was leading a raid against a world boss, a creature of nightmare and code that had defeated every other top guild. His commands were sharp, precise, and instantly obeyed by the forty other players who hung on his every word. He felt more alive here, more himself, than he ever did in the real world. Here, his analytical mind and thousands of hours of practice meant something. Here, he was not just Kenji. He was Kage.
He typed one last command, securing the monster's aggro on the main tank, and leaned back. The raid would be fine for a few minutes. He stood up, his joints cracking in protest. The fantasy world of Devilskys vanished, replaced by the reflection of a tired young man with dark circles under his eyes. He sighed. Time to log out of heaven and back into reality.
He opened his door, and the smell of curry grew stronger. He was halfway down the short hallway when the world went silent.
It wasn't like putting on noise-canceling headphones. It was a silence so complete, so absolute, that it felt like the universe itself was holding its breath. The hum of the refrigerator, the distant sound of traffic, his own footsteps on the wooden floor—all of it vanished. He froze, his heart suddenly pounding a frantic, lonely rhythm in the crushing quiet.
Then, the message appeared.
It wasn't on a screen or a wall. It bloomed inside his head, written in letters of pure white light against the black canvas of his mind. The language was alien, made of symbols he had never seen, yet he understood it as perfectly as his own name.
[You have been chosen. The Tutorial is about to commence.]
[You may choose to participate and claim your power, or you may refuse and return to your world as you are.]
[PARTICIPATE] / [REFUSE]
A wave of vertigo washed over him. Around the globe, for a fraction of a second, every man, woman, and child experienced the same silent message. For billions, the reaction was instinctual. The unknown was terrifying. The promise of "power" was a trick. The safe, normal world, however flawed, was all they knew. In a near-unanimous wave of collective fear, 98% of humanity slammed the mental button for [REFUSE]. They reappeared a moment later, clutching their heads, with only a vague, dream-like memory of a strange choice.
But Kenji Tanaka was not like them.
For Kenji, this was not a threat. It was an invitation. It was the ultimate game. The words 'Tutorial,' 'power,' and 'participate' were the language he understood best. It was the pop-up window for the greatest adventure in human history, and he was being offered a front-row seat. Fear didn't enter the equation. His mind, honed by years of gaming, saw only a challenge, an opportunity. A chance to be the hero he pretended to be online.
His choice was not made with logic or reason. It was a pure, gut reaction, born from a thousand nights spent wishing his life were more than just a grey routine.
He didn't hesitate. He didn't think of his mom or sister waiting for him. In that moment, he was Kage, and the ultimate login screen was in front of him.
With a surge of exhilaration he hadn't felt in years, he slammed his will, his very being, onto the glowing word.
[PARTICIPATE]
The world did not fade. It shattered.
His apartment, the smell of curry, the sound of his mother's voice—it all dissolved into a swirling vortex of blinding white light. He felt a sensation of being pulled apart and put back together at impossible speeds. There was no up or down, no sound, no sensation other than pure, raw movement.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
His feet found solid ground. He blinked, his eyes adjusting. The first thing he noticed was the sky. It was a deep, eternal twilight, a canvas of dark purple and soft orange, with no sun or moon in sight. The air was cool, clean, and still. He stood on a platform of perfectly smooth, white marble that stretched out in every direction, polished to a mirror shine.
And in front of him, rising so high that its peak was lost in the dusky heavens, was a tower. It was immense, a pillar of the same white marble, so vast it seemed to hold up the sky itself. Its scale was breathtaking, impossible. It was a monument built by gods.
As he stared, a soft chime, like a single drop of water hitting a placid lake, echoed in his mind. A translucent blue screen shimmered into existence before his eyes, hovering in the air. It was a clean, minimalist interface, familiar and yet utterly new.
[Welcome, Challenger, to the Spire of Beginnings.]
[Your trial starts now. Ascend.]
A slow, genuine grin spread across Kenji's face. It wasn't the tired smirk he wore after a successful raid. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated excitement. The kind of smile he hadn't worn since he was a child.
"A solo dungeon," he murmured, his voice sounding small in the vast emptiness. "No party finder. Good. No one to slow me down."
He waved his hand dismissively at the welcome message, and the screen vanished. With the practiced eye of a veteran gamer, he began to analyze his situation. The tower was the dungeon. "Ascend" was the objective. Simple enough. But first, he needed to know his stats.
"Status," he said aloud, testing the interface.
The blue screen reappeared instantly, this time filled with information.
Status Window
Name: Kenji Tanaka
Level: 1
Class: None
Title: None
Stats:
STR (Strength): 10
VIT (Vitality): 10
AGI (Agility): 10
INT (Intelligence): 10
WIS (Wisdom): 10
He scanned the list, his mind already racing. Classic RPG setup. Strength for physical attack, Vitality for health and defense. Agility for speed. Intelligence for magic, Wisdom for mana regen and maybe cooldowns. All base 10. Balanced. A blank slate.
He closed the window and walked toward the base of the tower. A grand, unadorned archway formed the entrance. There were no doors, only a dark, gaping maw that promised trial and danger. He felt no fear, only a burning curiosity. This was the starting zone. This was where the grind began.
He stepped through the archway, leaving the twilight sky behind.
The interior of Floor 1 was not a marble hall, but a sprawling, dimly lit forest. Strange, faintly glowing moss clung to the bark of towering, gnarled trees, casting everything in an eerie green light. The ground was soft with damp earth and fallen leaves. The air was thick with the scent of wet soil and decay.
Kenji moved cautiously, his senses on high alert. He was Level 1. He had no weapon, no armor, no skills. He was as vulnerable as a newborn. He needed to find the first monster, the tutorial mob, and figure out the rules of combat.
He didn't have to wait long. A rustling in the undergrowth ahead caught his attention. He ducked behind a thick tree trunk, peering around the edge.
It was a goblin. Small, green-skinned, with beady black eyes and a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. It was clad in a ragged loincloth and held a crude, jagged stone club. It was a classic, low-level monster, something he'd killed millions of in games.
But this was different. This goblin was real. It sniffed the air, its movements twitchy and predatory. It drooled a string of black saliva onto the forest floor.
Kenji's heart hammered against his ribs, a mix of excitement and a new, unfamiliar hint of real danger. He looked down at his hands. Soft, slender fingers, used to tapping keys, not fighting for his life. He needed a weapon. His eyes darted around, landing on a fist-sized rock next to the roots of his tree. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.
He picked it up. The stone was cold and rough in his palm. He took a deep breath, his mind shifting from "Kenji the student" to "Kage the strategist." The goblin was weak, but so was he. A direct confrontation was stupid. He needed an ambush.
He waited, his breathing slow and steady. The goblin wandered closer, grunting to itself as it poked at a mushroom with its club. When it was almost directly in front of his hiding spot, its back partially turned, Kenji exploded into motion.
He lunged from behind the tree, closing the short distance in two quick steps. He brought the rock down with all his might on the back of the goblin's head. There was a sickening, wet crunch.
The goblin shrieked, a high-pitched sound of pain and rage. It stumbled, but it didn't fall. It spun around, its black eyes burning with hate, and swung its club wildly. Kenji jumped back, the club whistling through the air where his head had been a second before. The reality of the situation hit him like a physical blow. This wasn't a game where you could just tank the hit. That club would have crushed his skull.
The goblin charged, screaming. Kenji didn't have time to think. He reacted on pure instinct. He sidestepped the clumsy swing and drove the rock forward, smashing it into the goblin's face. There was another crunch, this time of bone and cartilage. The goblin staggered back, blood pouring from its ruined nose.
It was still alive. It was hurt, enraged, and still dangerous.
Kenji saw an opening. He dropped the rock, grabbed the goblin's club arm with one hand, and used his momentum to ram his shoulder into its chest. They both went down in a heap. The goblin thrashed and bit, its sharp teeth snapping inches from his face. The stench of its breath was overwhelming. For a terrifying second, he felt its raw, desperate strength.
But Kenji was bigger. He pinned its arms with his knees and, with a desperate roar, began punching its head with his bare fists. It felt horrible. The feeling of his knuckles breaking skin and hitting bone was nauseating. But he didn't stop. He couldn't stop.
Finally, the goblin's struggles weakened. Its body went limp. He had done it. He had killed it.
He scrambled back, his knuckles raw and bleeding, his chest heaving. A profound silence descended on the small clearing. He stared at the lifeless body of the goblin. It wasn't pixels fading away. It was a corpse. The reality was grim, brutal, and ugly.
Then, the now-familiar chime sounded in his head, and the blue screen appeared.
[You have slain a Goblin Scout.]
[You have earned 10 EXP.]
[Your Level has increased to 2!]
[You have earned 5 Stat Points to allocate.]
[You have acquired a new item: Cracked Goblin Dagger.]
The message cut through the horror like a clean, sharp blade. The feeling of victory, of progress, washed over him, eclipsing the grimness of the act. This was the feedback loop. The reward. This was what he understood.
A small, crude dagger, little more than a sharpened piece of flint with a leather-wrapped hilt, materialized on top of the goblin's body. He picked it up. It felt good in his hand. A real weapon.
"Stat Points," he said, and the Status Window opened again. His level now read '2', and a flashing '(+5)' was next to his stats.
This was the first, and most important, choice. How to build his character? He could go for a balanced build, putting one point in each stat. It was the safe, jack-of-all-trades option. But Kage, the #1 player in Devilskys, had never played it safe. His most famous character, the one he used to conquer the leaderboards, was a Berserker. A high-risk, high-reward build that ignored defense and utility in favor of overwhelming power.
The strategy was simple: hit so hard that the enemy dies before they can hit you back. And if they do hit you, be tough enough to survive it and hit them even harder. It required absolute commitment.
He looked at his stats. INT and WIS were useless for a physical fighter. AGI was good for speed, but his Berserker build in the game relied on charging in, not dodging. It came down to two stats: Strength and Vitality. Power and Health.
He made his decision in an instant. There was no other way. He had to go all in.
"Allocate three points to Strength and two points to Vitality," he commanded.
The numbers on the screen changed.
STR: 10 -> 13
VIT: 10 -> 12
The moment the points were confirmed, a warm, surging sensation flowed through his body. It was an incredible feeling. He could feel his muscles growing denser, stronger. The aches and pains from the fight faded away, replaced by a feeling of robust energy. This wasn't just a number on a screen. It was real, tangible power.
He gripped the Cracked Goblin Dagger. It felt lighter now. He gave a few practice swings, cutting through the air with a speed he didn't possess a minute ago.
Another rustle came from the trees. Another goblin.
This time, Kenji didn't hide. He didn't hesitate. He held his new dagger, felt his new strength, and a cold, predatory focus settled over him. The initial shock was gone, replaced by the familiar mindset of the grind.
He walked out to meet the goblin. It saw him and charged, club raised. Kenji met it head-on. He didn't dodge. He moved with a new, brutal efficiency. He ducked under the goblin's swing, the club grazing his shoulder, and plunged the dagger deep into its chest.
[You have slain a Goblin Scout.]
[You have earned 10 EXP.]
It was a one-hit kill.
He pulled the dagger free and looked at the corpse, then at the path leading deeper into the dark forest. There would be more. Hundreds more. Thousands.
The excited smile he wore when he first arrived was gone. It was replaced by a look of intense, unwavering concentration. This was not a game to be won in a single evening. This was a long, arduous journey. He was alone, at the bottom of an impossibly tall tower.
He looked down at his bloody knuckles, then at the dagger in his hand. He had taken his first steps. He had chosen his path. The boy who was Kenji Tanaka was already fading, and the cold, efficient grinder known as Kage was taking his place.
He took a deep breath of the damp, alien air and started walking. The grind had just begun.
The first year in the Spire was a blur of violence and victory. Kenji Tanaka, the nineteen-year-old student, ceased to exist. In his place was the prodigy of Floor 1, the rising star of this lonely world. He attacked the Spire with the same obsessive focus he'd once reserved for Devilskys. Every monster was a puzzle, every floor a new raid tier to be conquered. The brutal reality of killing, the slick feel of blood on his hands and the stench of alien viscera, faded into the background, replaced by the clean, satisfying chime of the System.
[You have slain a Crimson-Eyed Minotaur.]
[You have earned 2,500 EXP.]
[Your Level has increased to 34!]
[You have earned 5 Stat Points to allocate.]
"Allocate all five points to Strength," he would mutter to the empty air, his voice hoarse from disuse. The surge of power that followed was his only reward, the only feedback that mattered. His build was a monument to single-minded aggression. Every five levels, he would put a handful of points into Vitality, just enough to ensure he could survive the one big hit he might fail to dodge. Every other point was funneled into the furnace of his Strength stat. He became a glass cannon built from solid iron. His strategy was simple: kill everything before it had a chance to mount a real defense.
He was ruthlessly efficient. On a floor of crystalline caverns where sound-sensitive bats swarmed from the ceiling, he learned to move with absolute silence, his leather-wrapped feet making no sound on the jagged crystal floor. He would find the central resonant crystal and shatter it with a single, overwhelming blow from his massive axe, the resulting sonic boom killing the entire swarm in an instant. On a floor that was a single, vast swamp under a sky of permanent, sickly-green rain, he learned to breathe shallowly to avoid the poison spores from the native flora and used the murky water to ambush the hulking frog-behemoths that dwelled there.
He cleared Floor 10 in a matter of weeks. Floor 20 fell a few months after that. The loneliness was a constant companion, a dull ache in the back of his mind. In the quiet moments after a difficult fight, camped in a cave with the glowing embers of a monster-fat fire, the faces of his mother and sister would flash in his thoughts. Yui's bright laugh, the worried crease in his mother's brow. The taste of her curry. The memories were a source of pain, but they were also his fuel. He was doing this for them. Every floor cleared, every level gained, was a step closer to returning home as a hero, a protector strong enough to keep them safe forever. This thought kept the encroaching despair at bay. He just had to be faster, stronger. He had to clear the Tutorial.
By his fifth year inside the Spire, he was over Level 80 and a master of his craft. He had learned skills from rare book drops: [Mighty Cleave], an area-of-effect attack for his greatsword; [Battle Roar], a shout that could stun weaker foes; and his most prized ability, [Pain Eater], a passive skill that slightly increased his damage output for every point of health he was missing. It was the cornerstone of his Berserker identity. He learned to fight on the edge, welcoming injury as a source of power.
By the ninth year, the floors grew more abstract, more nightmarish. He fought his way across a floor made of shifting obsidian platforms floating in a void, battling winged demons that bled pure shadow. He climbed a floor that was a single, colossal tree, its branches home to metallic insects the size of wolves. The loneliness was sharper now, a constant pressure. The memories of home were growing fainter, harder to grasp. The drive to protect his family was still there, but it was less a warm fire and more a single, hard point of light in an ever-expanding darkness.
Finally, at the dawn of his tenth year in the Spire, he stood before a gate of solid gold that hummed with immense power. The System message was stark.
[You have reached the 100th Floor.]
[The Spire Guardian awaits. Prove your worth and complete your trial.]
A surge of pure, unadulterated triumph shot through him. This was it. The final boss. He had made it. His hands trembled as he pushed the golden gates open.
The chamber beyond was a coliseum of impossible size. The floor was scorched black, littered with the ancient bones of creatures far larger than anything he had ever fought. And in the center, coiled in slumber, was the Guardian. It was a dragon, but it was to other dragons what a mountain is to a stone. It had three heads, each one covered in scales of a different color: one of volcanic obsidian, one of glacial ice, and one of venomous, sickly green. Even in sleep, its presence was a physical weight, pressing down on him, screaming of ancient power and malice.
As he stepped into the arena, three pairs of molten gold eyes snapped open. The pressure intensified a hundredfold.
The fight was not a duel; it was a catastrophe.
For three days, the chamber was a whirlwind of destruction. The obsidian head breathed rivers of fire that melted the very floor. The ice head exhaled blizzards that flash-froze his limbs and threatened to shatter his bones. The poison head spewed clouds of acid that sizzled through his armor and ate at his flesh.
Kenji was no longer a strategist. He was a force of pure survival. His level, which had felt so high, now seemed laughably inadequate. He abandoned all finesse and relied on the two pillars of his existence: his colossal Strength and his inhuman Vitality. He tanked a jet of flame that would have incinerated a lesser man, his skin blistering and peeling, and used the burst of power from his [Pain Eater] skill to cleave a deep gash in the dragon's obsidian neck. He allowed his left arm to be frozen solid by an ice blast, ignoring the screaming agony as he shattered the ice with his own strength and buried his greatsword in the glacier-like hide of the second neck.
He was a bleeding, broken, burning thing, kept alive only by sheer will and a dwindling supply of healing potions he'd saved for a decade. On the third day, with his health bar a single, blinking red pixel and his body a canvas of third-degree burns, frostbite, and acid wounds, he saw his chance. The three heads reared back to unleash a combined attack, a tri-elemental beam of pure annihilation.
He knew he couldn't survive it. It was the dragon's ultimate skill. So he didn't try.
With a final, desperate roar that tore his throat raw, he activated a skill he'd earned on Floor 92: [Final Gambit]. It was a one-time use skill per day that converted every last drop of his stamina into a single, unstoppable attack. He charged forward, a broken comet of flesh and steel, directly into the converging beams of energy.
The world became white-hot pain. He felt his armor melt, his skin vaporize, his bones begin to char. But he did not stop. He pushed through the apocalypse, his greatsword glowing with the condensed power of his life force. He reached the beast's chest and swung.
The sword struck the dragon's heart, a massive, crystalline organ visible through its ribs. There was no sound, only a flash of blinding light, and then the immense body of the Spire Guardian began to dissolve into shimmering particles of gold dust.
Kenji collapsed onto the floor, his body screaming, his vision fading. But he was smiling. He had won. It was over. He waited for the message, the one he had dreamed of for ten long years.
[CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE CLEARED THE TUTORIAL.]
The words formed in his mind, crisp and clear. But they weren't the ones he expected.
[Congratulations on clearing Floor 100. Unlocking the Upper Floors.]
[Now entering Floor 101.]
Kenji's smile froze, then crumbled. His heart, which had been soaring with triumph, plummeted into an abyss of cold, absolute dread. He stared at the message, reading it again and again, his mind refusing to process it. Unlocking the Upper Floors? This wasn't the end?
Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself to his feet. Across the vast chamber, another gate, this one of dull, featureless iron, was slowly grinding open. It revealed not a sky, not a return to his world, but another dark corridor leading upwards.
The hope that had fueled him for a decade didn't fade. It was extinguished. Snuffed out in an instant, leaving behind nothing but the cold, black ash of despair. He stood there, a broken warrior in a dead god's arena, and for the first time in ten years, he felt utterly, completely, and hopelessly lost.
The man who stepped onto Floor 101 was not the same one who had triumphantly entered Floor 100. The light in his eyes was gone. The dream of a hero's return was a bitter poison in his soul. He had to make a choice. He could give up, let the next monster kill him and see what happened. But the System had called this a Tutorial. What if death here was permanent? What if there was no return, only oblivion? The uncertainty was a cage. The only way forward, the only path that wasn't a complete unknown, was up.
So he climbed.
But to survive the crushing despair, he had to perform a kind of mental surgery on himself. The memories of home, once his greatest motivation, were now an unbearable agony. The thought of his mother's face, of Yui's smile, of the mundane beauty of a sunny day on Earth—it was a pain worse than any dragon's fire.
So he built a box in his mind. A thick, lead-lined container in the darkest corner of his consciousness. One by one, he took his precious memories and locked them away. The warmth of his mother's hug. The sound of his sister humming her favorite pop song. The feeling of rain on his face. The taste of real food. He pushed them all into the box, slammed the lid shut, and sealed it with the cold iron of pure necessity. Thinking of them would break him. To continue, he had to forget.
The years began to blur. Time ceased to be measured in days or weeks, but in floors and levels. He cleared Floor 120. Then 150. He stopped talking to himself. There was no point. His internal monologue, once a constant stream of strategies and hopes, quieted until it was little more than a whisper of combat commands. Parry. Dodge. Cleave. Next.
He was no longer Kenji Tanaka. Kenji Tanaka was a name in a box. He was the Berserker. An entity of purpose-built violence moving through an endless dungeon. His actions became fluid, economical. He wasted no energy, no thought, no emotion. He was a perfect grinding machine.
His level climbed into the 200s, then the 300s. The stat points flowed almost exclusively into Strength. His Vitality was high enough that he could now survive catastrophic wounds, and his [Pain Eater] skill had evolved into [Agony Conversion], turning a percentage of all damage taken directly into his Strength stat. Pain was now just another resource to be managed.
He acquired skills that would have been world-breaking myths in Devilskys. [Titan's Grip], allowing him to wield colossal two-handed weapons with a single hand. [Indomitable Will], granting him immunity to all forms of mental attacks, a skill he barely noticed as his mind was already a fortress of emptiness. [World Breaker's Strike], an ultimate skill that could shatter the very ground he stood upon. He would learn a new, legendary ability, feel the power settle into his soul, and feel nothing. No joy. No pride. It was simply a more efficient tool for the job.
The floors grew stranger, more hostile. He fought on a floor of living flesh, where the ground itself tried to digest him. He battled constructs of pure light in a cathedral of glass. He hunted massive, burrowing worms through a desert of black sand under a burning white sun. Decades passed. Forty years. Fifty. Eighty. He lost count. The twilight sky of the lower floors was a distant memory. The heavens of the upper Spire were a chaotic swirl of alien colors and impossible constellations.
On the ninety-third year of his climb, on Floor 387, he slew a Forgotten Iron Golem and it dropped a single, flawless skill book. [Berserker's Soul]. It was a Mythic-tier trait, a passive ability that redefined his entire existence. The lower your health, the higher your STR and AGI. Damage taken is converted into a temporary power boost. Immune to mental status effects born from fear or pain.
It was the capstone to his build, the final piece of the puzzle. It sanctified his entire philosophy. From that moment on, he fought in a state of perpetual, near-fatal injury. His body became a landscape of horrific wounds that were constantly healing, a cycle of destruction and regeneration. He was most powerful when he was closest to death.
He reached the hundred-year mark somewhere around Floor 410. He didn't celebrate. He didn't even notice. He just killed the floor boss, a psychic horror with a hundred eyes, and moved on to the iron gate for Floor 411. The Berserker did not mark time. The Berserker only climbed.
Time lost all meaning. It was a river he stood in, the water flowing past him, but he remained unchanged, a stone pillar of violence. Decades melted into a century, then two. The box in his mind was buried under layers of scar tissue and silence. The entity that was Kenji was not just forgotten; it was a fossil, a ghost of a ghost.
The climb was no longer a journey. It was a state of being. He was a fundamental part of the Spire, just like the monsters and the iron gates. A force of nature moving eternally upward.
On his 150th year, on a floor made of solidified starlight, he found a sword. It was stuck in the chest of a dead, celestial being the size of a mountain. It was a greatsword, a colossal blade of black, star-flecked metal that seemed to drink the light around it. When he pulled it free, the System named it for him: [Last Word]. It was a Mythic weapon. It didn't have a sharp edge; it dealt damage with pure, soul-crushing force. He hefted it. It felt like a natural extension of his arm. He discarded the legendary axe he had carried for a century without a second thought. This was a better tool.
Over the next fifty years, scattered across a hundred floors of cosmic horror and impossible landscapes, he found the pieces of a matching armor set. In the heart of a dead star, he found the [Breastplate of the Undying Heart]. From the corpse of a time-devouring worm, he looted the [Greaves of the Endless March]. The [Crown of the Ashen King] was his reward for destroying a lich who ruled a kingdom of silent ghosts. Piece by piece, he donned the [Ashen King's Battlegear]. The suit of petrified, ash-grey bone fit him perfectly. It made him look like an ancient god of death. He did not care. It was just armor. It negated fatal blows and gave him infinite stamina for walking. It made the grind more efficient.
His level crawled upwards with agonizing slowness. He passed 500. Then 600. Then 700. The experience points required for a single level-up became astronomical. He would spend years on a single floor, slaughtering millions of high-level monsters—creatures that could likely destroy entire cities on Earth—just to see the progress bar on his status window tick up by a single percentage point. He became a god of strength in an empty church, his power witnessed by no one but the things he killed.
The loneliness was no longer an ache or a pressure. It was the very air he breathed, the substance of his reality. The silence of the Spire was his only companion. He was so steeped in solitude that the very concept of another sentient being felt like a fantasy.
One day, after a battle that had lasted for what felt like months on a floor of cracked glass under a blood-red sky, he rested. He sat on the razor-sharp edge of a glass crater and looked down into a pool of black, reflective liquid that had bled from the floor's guardian.
He saw his reflection for the first time in over two centuries.
The face that stared back at him was not his own. It was the face of a stranger. The soft features of the nineteen-year-old boy were gone, eroded by time and hardship. This face was hard angles and pale, scarred skin. The eyes were the worst part. They were ancient, empty pools of profound weariness. There was no anger, no sadness, no joy. There was nothing. It was the face of a man who had seen too much and felt too little for too long.
He tried to remember his own face. The face of Kenji Tanaka. He couldn't. He tried to remember his mother's face. He could recall the idea of her—gentle, weary, loving—but the specific curve of her smile, the color of her eyes, it was all gone. Smudged out, like a photograph left in the sun for a hundred years.
He tried to remember Yui. Her name echoed in the vast emptiness of his mind. Yui. Bright. Cheerful. A light. But her face? The sound of her laugh? Gone. Lost to the box, and the box was lost to time.
The realization didn't bring a wave of grief. He was too far gone for that. It was a simple, quiet confirmation of a truth he had long known. He was utterly and completely alone, not just in the Spire, but inside his own head. The man he had been was dead, and he, the Berserker, was a ghost haunting the corpse.
He stood up, his mythic armor making no sound. He hefted his mythic greatsword. He looked at his status window.
Level: 785
The number meant nothing.
In the distance, the iron gate to Floor 632 stood waiting. It was no different from the hundreds of gates that had come before it. It promised nothing but more of the same. More killing. More climbing. More silence.
With the slow, inexorable movement of a glacier, he began to walk towards it. The climb was all that was left. It was all he was.
Floor 632 was a masterpiece of despair. It was not a forest or a cavern or a castle, but a shattered world. Jagged islands of volcanic obsidian, some as small as a stepping stone and others the size of mountains, floated aimlessly in a vast, silent void. The void was not black, but a deep, churning crimson, as if they were suspended inside a dying god's heart. There was no sky, only the endless, blood-red nebula.
And there was the sound.
It was a constant, high-frequency shriek, a sound like grinding metal and tearing space, punctuated by deeper groans that felt like they were vibrating his very bones. It was the sound of the native inhabitants: the Shriekers. They were formless things of teeth and shadow, coalescing out of the red gloom, amorphous blobs of darkness studded with rows upon rows of razor-sharp fangs. For centuries, their chorus had been his battle hymn, the soundtrack to his endless slaughter.
Now, it was just noise. A headache he had learned to ignore.
He stood on the edge of a large obsidian plateau, his mythic armor, the [Ashen King's Battlegear], drinking in the faint, bloody light. The tattered [Cloak of the Lonely Night] at his back billowed softly, though there was no wind. Below him, in the crimson void, the Shriekers were gathering. Hundreds of them. They swirled like vultures, their collective screeches rising in pitch as they sensed his presence. In a year, or a decade, he would have leaped into their midst, his greatsword, [Last Word], singing its song of crushing force. The battle would have been a long, monotonous affair, ending with him standing on a pile of dissolving shadow-flesh, his experience bar having moved an infinitesimal fraction.
But today, he didn't move. He just watched them. There was no fire in his belly, no battle lust, no cold focus. There was nothing. The well had finally run dry.
He had just leveled up. The last kill, a hulking Void-Titan that had taken him three weeks to wear down, had finally pushed him over the edge. Level 786. The reward for his efforts was the right to do it all over again, for a prize that was even further away. The iron gate to Floor 633 was already visible in the distance, a faint black rectangle hanging in the red void, waiting patiently. Waiting to lead him to more of this. More killing. More silence. More nothing.
With a mental command, he opened his status window. The familiar, translucent blue screen appeared before him, a stark and clinical contrast to the hellish landscape.
Name: Kenji Tanaka
Level: 786
Class: Berserker Lord
Title(s): [Floor 632 Conqueror], [The Solitary One], [King of Ruin], [He Who Fights an Endless War]…
Stats:
STR: 1810
VIT: 1910
AGI: 360
INT: 60
WIS: 60
Traits (Selected):
[Berserker's Soul (Mythic)]: The lower your health, the higher your power. Pain is fuel.
[Spire Hermit (Unique)]: Your presence is a whisper. Your solitude is a shield.
[Limit Break (Legendary)]: Shatter your limits. For a price.
His eyes scanned the numbers, the titles, the descriptions. They were a resume for a job he never wanted, a list of achievements that felt like a prison sentence. [The Solitary One]. A poetic way of saying 'the man who has not spoken to another soul in centuries'. [He Who Fights an Endless War]. A literal, horrifyingly accurate description of his life.
He stared at the first line.
Name: Kenji Tanaka.
The name felt like an artifact from another man's life. He tried to attach a face to it, a memory, a feeling. Nothing came. There was only a vague, academic knowledge that this was once him. The boy who liked video games. The boy who had a mother and a sister. They were characters in a story he'd read a long, long time ago. Their faces were gone, their voices were echoes of echoes.
A deep, profound weariness settled into his very marrow. It was heavier than the [Last Word] in his hand, heavier than the pressure of the deepest ocean floors he'd battled on. It was not a physical exhaustion; his body, with a Vitality stat nearing 2000, was a fortress of impossible health. He could fight for a year without rest. His [Greaves of the Endless March] meant he could walk forever.
But his soul could not take another step.
What was the point of Level 787? What awaited on Floor 633? Another color of void? Monsters with slightly sharper teeth? A new kind of silence? The grind had hollowed him out completely, leaving nothing but a shell of statistics and skills. He had become the ultimate weapon with no war left to win, only an infinite training ground.
He scrolled down to his inventory, his eyes glossing over the billions in gold, the mountains of myth-tier crafting materials. He saw the [Elixir of Infinity], the consumable he had been saving for nearly 200 years. He had always told himself he would use it before the true final boss, when he needed that last push. He now understood with crushing certainty: there was no final boss. The Spire was the boss. And it could not be killed.
His gaze fell on one item, nestled amongst the god-like artifacts.
[Ring of the Forgotten Vow] (Unique): A simple, unadorned iron ring. It has no stats.
The first item he ever received. A quest reward from a grateful NPC spirit on Floor 1, for finding its lost trinket. He had kept it for almost three centuries. Why? He no longer knew. Perhaps it was the only thing that tethered him to the boy who had stepped into this tower full of hope. It was a fossil of a forgotten emotion.
The Shriekers below were growing bolder, their screeches becoming a unified, piercing wave of sound. A few of the braver ones began to spiral upwards, testing his defenses.
He looked from the ring on the screen to the greatsword in his hand. This weapon had slain gods and demons, felled titans and annihilated legions. It had feasted on the life force of millions, sustaining him, protecting him. It was a part of him.
And he was so, so tired of carrying it.
With a quiet sigh, a puff of air that was utterly lost in the cacophony of the damned, he let his fingers go slack.
The mythic greatsword, [Last Word], slipped from his grasp. Time seemed to slow as the colossal blade of star-flecked night fell. It tumbled end over end, silent in the void, until its pommel struck the obsidian plateau.
CLANG.
The sound was deep, resonant, and shockingly loud in its singularity. It was not the crunch of bone, the sizzle of acid, or the tearing of flesh. It was the simple, pure sound of metal on stone. It was the first sound not born of violence he had consciously made in a century. It echoed in the crimson void, a final, definitive period at the end of a very, very long sentence.
The Shriekers paused for a fraction of a second, as if confused by the unfamiliar noise. Then, sensing weakness, they surged. A tide of hungry darkness and gnashing teeth rushed toward the motionless figure.
Kenji closed his eyes.
He did not raise his hands. He did not brace for impact. He did not activate a single defensive skill. The [Breastplate of the Undying Heart] would shatter to save him from the first fatal blow, but there would be a thousand more immediately after. His [Berserker's Soul] was useless, as he had no intention of fighting back.
He just stood there, a lonely statue of ash-grey bone and forgotten dreams, and waited. He had faced down death countless times, spitting in its eye as he teetered on the brink. He had always won, always clawed his way back with rage and power.
Now, he welcomed it like an old friend. He prayed that this death, this ultimate logout, was final. He prayed for the sweet, gentle mercy of nothing.
The first Shrieker hit him. The pain was immense, a chorus of a thousand razor blades digging into his flesh. It was a familiar sensation.
But for the first time, it was followed not by a surge of retaliatory rage, but by a sense of peace.
The pain was brief.
Then, blissful darkness.