Insomniac Player

Floor 5 rebuilt Ironfall Town whole. A blood-red sky hung over stone roofs and narrow streets, enormous military banners moving with no wind behind them. Armor rang out beyond every corner, though no knights ever actually appeared. The town’s trumpet sounded at fixed intervals, commanding an army that existed only just outside his line of sight.

The tower had copied the place well enough that his shoulders tensed before he’d even finished looking around.

This was where Doctor Smoke had sent him to gather intel, where three hundred knights had turned a simple assassination into a full military problem, where he’d learned scouting a gate could get more dangerous than actually fighting whatever lived inside it.

The Lord of Ironfall’s castle waited at the far end of the road.

Someone sat on the outer wall. The fifth Damien dropped down into the street.

Its face was almost exact this time, hair falling right, the same exhaustion sitting under both eyes. Only the smile looked borrowed, held too evenly on both sides, like it had been measured with a ruler.

➤[Floor 5 initiated.]

➤[Guardian Replication Rate: 50%.]

A copy of the First Blood Dagger sat in its hand.

"Doctor Smoke planned the raid," it said.

"True. She led the whole team."

"The others fought the knights."

"That was their part."

"You killed the Lord after everyone else opened the route. Then the system handed you the gate."

Damien looked toward the distant castle. "The system has questionable property laws."

"You took the reward."

"I also took the Knight Commander chasing me across half a burning city."

"And escaped."

"Correct."

Its smile dropped. "You say that word like running deserves some pride."

"Running deserves better press than it gets."

The trumpet sounded, and the reflection didn’t outrun him so much as simply stop existing where it had been standing, its outline sinking into the shadow thrown by a military banner until it matched the dark completely.

➤[Replicated Shadow Imitation activated.]

Half the skill was still enough to erase the thing from sight entirely. Nocturnal Eyes sharpened the whole street for him, but they couldn’t reveal something that had genuinely become part of the shadow around it.

He listened instead. No breathing. No footsteps. The banners made no sound. The phantom army marching beyond the houses kept its loop going, metal striking stone in the same repeating groups of six. But the trumpet’s final note caught wrong near the western wall, the echo bending slightly off, like something solid had gotten in its way.

Damien threw his dagger. It crossed the road and buried itself in the banner’s shadow, and the fifth reflection tore loose from the darkness with the blade lodged in its shoulder, its skill broken and its cover with it.

➤[Replicated Shadow Imitation interrupted.]

He reached it before its own dagger came back up, struck the wounded shoulder, caught its wrist, and drove it into the wall.

At fifty percent it could still fight back. It twisted free, headbutted him, and cut across his already-bandaged stomach, tearing the earlier wound open fresh. He answered with an elbow to its throat.

They went down together against a stack of empty weapon crates.

"You needed the trumpet," it rasped.

"It was available."

"You always need something."

"So do you. Right now you need my dagger out of your shoulder."

He pulled it free. The guardian tried to block the returning thrust with the same injured arm, but half his speed wasn’t enough to make that block land in time.

The blade went into its eye. Ironfall cracked apart from one horizon to the other.

➤[Floor 5 cleared.]

➤[Level Up: 26 → 27.]

➤[Available Stat Points: 21.]

He found himself kneeling on grey stone, one hand pressed against his stomach. The wound was manageable. So was the annoyance, barely.

"Five more."

The staircase opened above him. Tycho City waited at the top.

Unlike the real city after the gatebreak, this version stayed frozen right in the moment of destruction. Aerial roads hung broken between buildings. Abandoned vehicles floated at dead, wrong angles. Far off, twelve Hollow Giants stood between the towers with their chest-mouths already open, thousands of lesser monsters filling the streets underneath them. Every single one of them faced Damien. None of them moved.

The Floor 6 guardian stood on top of a crashed transport. Sixty percent replication had finally fixed the unnatural smile. This one looked worn, wary, mildly irritated, exactly the expression Damien wore whenever a problem refused to solve itself.

➤[Floor 6 initiated.]

➤[Guardian Replication Rate: 60%.]

"You ran through this whole city while everyone else fought," it said.

"Thousands of monsters were chasing me specifically."

"Hamari saved you."

"Good shot."

"Daria cleared the street. Doctor Smoke and Naked Nun held the line."

"Also very helpful."

"You attracted the monsters, put civilians at risk, and waited for stronger players to actually kill the giants."

Damien stepped onto the roof. "I killed one myself."

"Because the system threatened to take your skills if you didn’t."

"Motivation gets complicated."

The other Damien shook its head. "You always rename fear as strategy."

That one stuck with him, not because it was entirely true, but because the gap between fear and strategy had never been all that wide to begin with. He hadn’t stopped being scared the moment he made a plan. He’d built the plan because he was scared. Every escape route, every trap, every quiet observation started with the same private admission underneath it: I might not survive this one.

Maybe courage was supposed to start somewhere else entirely. He’d never bothered finding out.

The guardian stepped back into the transport’s shadow. Blackness folded around it, and Damien turned before the system even finished announcing it.

➤[Replicated Shadow Dash activated.]

It came out of the shadow behind his left shoulder, shorter range and less speed than the real thing, but not slow enough to matter. A copied dagger opened a line across his upper arm.

He spun and slashed. It was already moving, having read exactly which counter he’d throw and ducking under the blade before it arrived, kicking his knee out and forcing him toward the roof’s broken edge.

He caught his balance two steps clear of the drop.

"That’s irritating."

"You mean effective."

"Both, apparently."

It advanced. He let the first two strikes push him back on purpose. On the third, he triggered Shadow Imitation.

➤[Skill Activated: Shadow Imitation]

Darkness folded over him, and the guardian stopped dead. It had his memories. It knew exactly how he normally used this, to vanish, reposition, come back from the safest angle available, and its eyes swept the nearby shadows checking every likely route.

He didn’t reposition at all. He stayed exactly where he was, right in front of it. The skill hid presence. It never made him intangible. He stepped forward without a sound, caught the weapon wrist, and drove his forehead into its nose.

It staggered. He hooked a foot behind its ankle and threw it against the transport roof hard enough to bend the metal. Before it could get up, he brought the dagger down.

It rolled clear. The blade punched through roofing instead. It kicked his wounded stomach on the way past and scrambled off, and his hidden form flickered as the pain broke his concentration for half a second.

It saw the flicker and attacked straight into it.

He dropped the skill early rather than try to hide from something that had already spotted him, and met the false blade with his own left forearm instead. It cut clean through the sleeve and into flesh underneath.

He trapped the arm under his elbow anyway. The copy understood its mistake a half-second too late. Full strength always beats sixty percent of it.

He broke its wrist, pulled his dagger free of the roof, and drove it through the guardian’s ribs. The frozen monsters below opened their mouths in unison.

Tycho City vanished before a single sound could escape any of them.

➤[Floor 6 cleared.]

➤[Level Up: 27 → 28.]

➤[Available Stat Points: 24.]

He sat down hard on the stair leading up. Blood ran freely from his forearm. His stomach wound had torn open again, and his left knee ached badly every time he put weight on it. None of it was immediately fatal.

That’s become an uncomfortably low bar to clear.

He used up the last of the bandages in his pack and checked Shadow Imitation’s cooldown.

➤[Cooldown Remaining: 00:57:12]

Shadow Dash still sat ready. He didn’t climb yet.

He had the time to spare. He leaned back against the wall and let the cooldown run out on its own, and the tower didn’t rush him for it. Instead it filled the mirrored stripe running beside the staircase with images of everyone who’d ever helped him. John mid-swing in a fight. Daria’s staff already rising. Hamari sighting down a scope. The Broken Road investigators bent over evidence on a table.

He looked away from all of it. The tower thinks needing help is proof of weakness. That’s a childish way to measure strength. What actually bothered him was that some small, stubborn part of him had believed the same thing, more than once.

When Shadow Imitation finally cleared, he stood with a grunt.

"Apparently my subconscious has a whole production budget."

He climbed.

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