The evening city has a cool breeze that made it seem like a different world from during the day.
The streets were quieter. The guild scouts had gone home. The vendors who hawked potions and equipment to fresh Climbers had packed up their stalls. Only the Towers remained, their silhouettes cutting against the dark sky like knives.
Nathan walked with his hands in his jacket pockets, Mirko tucked against his chest in bunny form. She was warm and a small, steady heartbeat against his own.
He had left Lucy with Mrs. Chen, the retired Climber who lived two doors down and charged reasonable rates for evening babysitting. Lucy had been delighted as Mrs. Chen let her stay up late and told stories about Tower climbs from before the modern ranking system. Nathan had not told Mrs. Chen where he was going because he knew She wouldn't have approved.
'You should have slept,' Mirko said through the link. Her voice was soft but edged with something that wasn't quite reproach. 'Training drained you today. I saw it. The others saw it too, even if they didn't say anything.'
"I'll sleep when we're Level 25."
'That is not how human bodies work, Master. I have researched this. You require approximately eight hours of...'
"I'm aware of how sleep works, Mirko."
'Then why are you choosing to ignore it.'
Nathan didn't answer. He pulled up the Tower registry on his interface, scrolling past the major Towers... the ones with more floors and more boss encounters and famous leaderboards that attracted attention. He wasn't looking for attention tonight. He was just looking for efficiency.
The Tower of Shifting Stones appeared near the bottom of the list. Five floors. C-Rank difficulty. Monsters were Stone Elementals: slow, durable, predictable. No serious boss-level threats. No unique mechanics that would slow him down. The Climber reviews were unanimous: boring, repetitive, excellent for grinding.
Perfect.
He selected it and diverted his path toward the eastern district, where the smaller Towers clustered like forgotten monuments.
The entrance was unguarded. No TCA official, no registration desk, no crowd of spectators waiting to see who emerged and with what rank. Just a stone archway set into a weathered building, the portal within rippling like a heat haze over summer road.
Then Nathan stepped through.
---
The Tower of Shifting Stones was exactly as advertised.
Floor 1 was a cramped labyrinth of grey corridors that rearranged themselves every few minutes with a grinding sound like bones being crushed. The walls were rough-hewn and cold. The air smelled of dust and old magic.
The first Stone Elemental materialized from the wall itself... a hulking humanoid figure of compressed rock, its chest glowing with an embedded core the color of embers.
Nathan didn't slow down.
[Hunter's Insight] mapped the elemental's structure in a fraction of a second. The core was the weak point. Always the core. [Focus Shot] at three seconds of charge cracked the outer stone. A follow-up [Mana Arrow] punched through the fissure and detonated the core from within. The elemental collapsed into rubble.
[Ding! XP Gained!]
He moved on.
Floor 1 took seven minutes. Floor 2 took six. The elementals were identical... same patterns, same weaknesses, same slow, predictable swings. Nathan had fought harder enemies in the Tutorial Realm. The only challenge was the labyrinth itself, its walls grinding into new configurations that tried to separate him from the exit. [Hunter's Insight] made the shifting patterns readable. He navigated them without breaking stride.
Floor 3 took eight minutes. His arms were beginning to ache from repeated draws, the muscles in his shoulders and back sending quiet protests. The Leyline Ring hummed on his finger, its upgraded mana current a steady reassurance... his reserves were stable, his regeneration outpacing his expenditure. But mana wasn't the problem.
Physical fatigue was.
Mirko had stayed in bunny form through all three floors, harassing elementals only when necessary, letting Nathan take the kills. She understood the math. XP spread across fewer summons meant faster leveling. But he felt her tension through the link... a coiled spring of restrained energy.
'You're slowing down,' she observed.
'No, I'm not.'
'Your draw time on the last elemental was point-seven seconds slower than the first. Your accuracy dropped by four percent. You're favoring your left leg when you pivot.'
'huh? You're counting?'
'I am your Knight, master!. Tracking combat metrics is part of the job.'
Nathan didn't have a response to that.
Floor 3's final elemental crumbled. The notification appeared.
[Ding! Level Up!]
[Level 20 Reached!]
The surge of mana that accompanied leveling washed through him like a cold drink on a hot day. His reserves refilled. The ache in his muscles dulled slightly. Five levels to go.
He stepped through the portal to Floor 4.