An illegally recruited Raider could be dismissed as an intruder but a person carrying a configuration created through administrator-level interference proved someone has been rewriting the Tower’s rules itself.
Still, hearing King call it something deliberately produced made her skin crawl.
"How long do you think we have before they figure it out?" Misha asked as she drew her knees closer to her chest.
[That is difficult to measure from inside the Tower nya. As you have already known, time passes differently inside and outside of the Tower.]
She bit her lower lip. She knew the numbers. One day in the outside world amounted to roughly five years within the Tower. Knowing the calculation was easy but understanding what it meant was apparently something else entirely.
She had fought through floors, watched people die, gained levels, and seen a city nearly fall. Outside, only minutes had passed. The thought made her stomach twist again.
[That difference allows Towers to cultivate generations without centuries passing in the worlds connected to them,] King continued. [But it also means an Administrator observing from outside can react far more quickly than anyone living in a Tower understands nya.]
"So whoever did this noticed Caleb’s invitation within minutes, right?"
[Yes.] King’s ears angled forward before he leaped onto the bed. [They noticed an impossible entry then they traced the alterations connected to it nya.]
Misha looked down at her knuckles. Forcing the words past the tightness in her throat, she asked, "Why couldn’t Caleb stop it?"
[He did nya.] King’s gaze sharpened. The answer came so firmly that Misha fell silent. He rarely sounded offended on someone’s behalf.
[If Master had failed completely, Genesis would not have received a Floor Quest to prepare themselves nya. The original floor state would simply have resumed. The city and everyone inside it would have been treated as obstructions occupying an active monster zone. No preparation and no retreat condition.]
"Obstructions..." Misha couldn’t help but imagine the settlement disappearing beneath thousands of goblins without warning, only slaughter.
"Then the quest was Caleb’s doing?"
[Partly. He could not stop the original floor from returning, but he forced the Tower to acknowledge the residents as participants rather than debris nya.]
Misha’s stomach turned again. Debris was somehow worse. A participant could fight, flee, fail, or survive. Debris was simply removed.
She remembered the desperate crowds near the portal and the System notice forbidding the use of teleportation runes.
"But the return stones..." she said. " Couldn’t he have done something about those too?"
[Teleportation runes depended on sanctuary anchors nya.] He lifted one paw and inspected his claws.
Misha waited for him to continue.
King gave her a look that suggested she should already know what those were but soon noticed that she did not. The disappointment that slowly entered his expression made it seem as though she had failed a lesson he had never bothered to teach.
"What?" Misha asked as her brows drew together.
[You do not know what sanctuary anchors are nya.] King lowered his paw with a sigh.
"No one gave me a Tower engineering manual." She huffed as she folded her arms.
[Of course.] King looked away. [Each settlement contained registered spatial coordinates that allowed personal runes to fold space safely nya.]
"Safely?"
[Without depositing the user inside a wall, beneath a lake, or several hundred meters above the ground. Teleportation is considerably less forgiving than your kind prefers to imagine nya.]
King began cleaning one paw as though he had not just described several unpleasant ways to die.
"And when the sanctuary protocols were removed..."
[The anchors disappeared with them nyauh.]
Understanding settled over her slowly. The runes had not simply been blocked because the Tower wanted to prevent people from escaping. Their destinations had ceased to exist as a safe locations within the System. Using one would have been like trying to return to an address after the entire street had been erased from the map.
[The active Floor Quest also restricted unstable spatial movement nya,] King added. [The Tower prevents participants from using portable teleportation to bypass siege boundaries or escape contribution conditions. Some floors allow the use of teleportation runes, some do not.]
"Like the Boss Floor."
[Exactly nya. Some quests permit teleportation, others do not. The restriction depends on whether spatial escape would invalidate the purpose of the quest.]
Misha remembered the glowing portal inside the church. "Then why did the portal still work?"
[Fixed portals are part of the Tower’s original structure. They do not rely on sanctuary anchors in the same way personal runes do nya.] He stepped across the blanket toward the foot of the bed.
"So Caleb kept it open?" Misha asked as she followed him with her eyes.
King’s smugness faded. [The restoration command attempted to seal it nya. But Master managed to preserve it as an evacuation route. He could not protect both the portal and every teleportation rune while maintaining control over the Floor Quest nya. So he chose the fixed route.]
The simplicity of the decision chilled her.
If a settlement defended itself, it remained. If it could not, the Tower did not care whether it had existed for ten years or ten thousand. Peace had only ever been an Administrator’s edit.
Caleb had chosen one exit he could keep open, a single narrow funnel through which thousands of terrified people had been forced to flee.
They had called it evacuation. It had saved lives, but it had also pushed survivors upward. If Genesis could no longer protect them, then climbing became the only direction left.
"Why would another Administrator do that?" Misha asked as her fists clenched. "Was it really because Caleb broke the rules to invite me?"
[Administrators do not think in terms of individual lives nya.]
She blinked a few times in confusion. "Then what do they think about?"
He turned his head toward her. [Output nya nya.]
Misha frowned. "What does that even mean?"
The black cat watched her for a long moment before looking away. [Every Tower must produce something nya.]
"You already said that."
[And yet you still do not understand it nya.]
She rolled her eyes. "How am I supposed to understand when you keep speaking like an ominous fortune cookie?"
He scoffed. [I am not food nyauh.]
"That was not the important part."
He decided to ignore her correction. [Some Towers cultivate heroes, some produce weapons, some produce rulers, and others create things that should never be given names nya.]
The room seemed colder despite the blanket around Misha’s legs.
She watched him carefully. He had spent most of the night behaving as though the universe existed several ranks beneath him. Now his posture had gone rigid.
[All Towers are linked to something beyond ordinary worlds. Administrators call it the Root nya.]
"The Root?"
[The name is incomplete, but your language has nothing better.] King turned toward the rain-streaked glass and then closed his eyes. [It is a structure outside the worlds you understand nya. Towers grow from it like sealed vessels attached to a greater body. Each one cultivates its contents until a worthy product is produced.]
They were just products? Products?
Everyone climbing, fighting, dying, and growing stronger was shaped into something another entity intended to use.
Misha pictured roots spreading through darkness except the image immediately felt wrong. Roots belonged beneath trees. They carried water and nourishment toward something living.
What King described sounded closer to veins... or feeding tubes.
Misha’s skin prickled. "What happens after a product is produced?"
[Then the product is collected nya.]
A chill moved down Misha’s spine.
"C-collected by who?" She asked, her voice faltering despite her attempt to steady it.
King looked toward the closed bedroom door. For the first time that night, he appeared uneasy. [That is not a question I can answer safely nyauh.]
"Because Caleb ordered you not to?"
[Because some things notice when they are discussed nya.]
Somewhere deeper in the mansion, a clock chimed. Neither of them spoke until the final note faded.
Misha forced herself to breathe. She suddenly became aware of every shadow in the room, the gap beneath the door, the dark corner near the wardrobe, and her own reflection faintly visible in the window.
Nothing had changed. That did not mean they were alone.
King’s ears turned as though listening to something she could not hear. Several seconds passed before his shoulders finally loosened.
[Your brother broke a fundamental recruitment law to bring you inside. His sanctuary protocols also delayed the Tower’s intended production cycle nya.]
Misha swallowed hard. She stared down at the blanket now gathered in her hands. "All because he wanted this place to be survivable for me..."
King looked at her, his expression hardened. [Not only for you nya.]
"But I was the reason." She tightened her grip.
[You were one reason nya.] His tone sharpened. [Do not reduce decades of his decisions to yourself merely because guilt makes the story easier to understand nyauh.]
Misha flinched. The words struck harder than she expected.
King stepped closer across the bed. [Master knew what kind of place the Tower was nya. He knew that if he succeeded in bringing you here, you would enter a world designed to grind people down until something useful remained.]
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