Deadlink
Season 1
Chapter 1
Deadlink: Game of Gods
In the year 2029, a mobile game named Deadlink appeared on every smartphone across the globe. No one downloaded it. No one remembered installing it. Yet, when it opened, it opened for everyone.
“Welcome, Player. HP synced. Ability assigned. Let the purge begin.”
Each person was assigned a unique power, tethered to their psyche, desires, or hidden fears. Alongside it appeared an HP bar on their phone screen—real-time, constant, inescapable.
What players learned too late was this:
When your HP hits zero in the game, your real body dies. Permanently.
---
Gerbert Maddox, 30, a quiet engineering student obsessed with systems and mechanics, was among the first to truly use the game.
Deadlink gave him the ability: Manifest — the power to summon anything he understood fully. Firearms, siege engines, surveillance tech. If he knew how it worked, he could create it.
In his first moment of combat, Gerbert conjured a medieval trebuchet on a crumbling city overpass. A firebomb soared across the skyline, eliminating five players. The horror of it left him shaken.
But the game demanded blood, not hesitation.
Movement, conjuring, even hiding cost HP. Rest was rare. Combat was constant.
---
Rann, 29, a goth girl hardened by a broken home, found solace in solitude. Her ability: Phase — the power to slip into and through solid matter. Walls, floors, even steel.
But phasing didn’t cost HP—it cost stamina. Each phase built exhaustion. And if she pushed too far, she risked glitching into the void between spaces.
Her strategy was stealth and precision. She became a whisper in the battlefield, a ghostly assassin.
---
Ace, also 29, was flamboyant and unpredictable. Every step he took bloomed flowers. His gift: Verdant Dominion — the power to manipulate plant life. He turned nature into a weapon.
Thorny vines impaled enemies. Razor-sharp petals danced like blades. Blossoms exploded in clouds of psychedelic pollen. Where Ace walked, the battlefield became a garden of chaos and death.
---
The world fractured. Cities crumbled into arenas. Forests twisted into labyrinths. Beaches became death traps. Survivors became killers. Killers became legends.
---
In the ruins of a mall during the game’s midpoint, Gerbert, Rann, and Ace collided.
Gerbert conjured a drone turret, raining bullets across a shattered food court.
Rann phased through a broken escalator, slipping behind him.
Ace erupted the ground in roots and sunflower mines that sprayed venom clouds.
They clashed—deadly, focused, bloodied.
But in the heart of the chaos, none of them wanted to win. Not like this.
Temporary alliances sparked in the fire. Could they find a way to break the game’s cycle? Or were they doomed to kill until only one heartbeat remained?
Because Deadlink didn’t just watch.
It adapted. It judged. It fed.
And it was always watching.
Chapter 2
Blood & Wires: Game 9
Gerbert’s early weeks in Deadlink were a blur of blood, silence, and sleepless calculations.
He learned the hard way: every action cost HP. Conjuring even basic weaponry chipped away at his life. A crossbow? Light drain. A turret? Dangerous. A railgun? Nearly suicidal.
But the worst part wasn’t the toll on his body. It was the faces. The dying players. Their final looks.
He started wearing gloves—not for utility, but to stop feeling the cold steel of his own conjurations.
---
Game 9 dropped him into the blown-out ruins of an electrical grid facility, where steel catwalks twisted like bones and wires hung like webbing. The kill count was already in double digits.
Gerbert crouched beneath a wrecked transformer. HP: 48/100.
He had a short-range railgun conjured—devastating, but heavy. His breath came in sharp bursts.
Then the wires moved.
They slithered.
A figure dropped from above in a cracked electrical suit, his nametag blinking:
Zappo – HP: 81/100
“You’re the conjurer, right?” Zappo sneered. “The Builder. The Guy Who Doesn’t Kill Unless He Has To.”
Wires hissed to life, fanged and writhing like serpents.
One struck.
[HP -12] → 36/100
Gerbert rolled aside, bleeding.
Another player appeared—clean-cut, charming, surrounded by five perfect clones.
Replikid – HP: 60/100
“I don’t usually team up,” Replikid said with a grin. “But watching Zappo toy with you? Couldn’t resist.”
Gerbert was surrounded. He couldn’t conjure anything fast enough. Not without burning his HP to zero.
Then—
A hand grabbed him from the floor below.
The world shimmered—and he phased through the steel.
---
He landed hard. Darkness, then light.
Standing over him: black ponytail, smudged eyeliner, combat boots.
Rann. Her breath was ragged. She looked half-dead, but unbroken.
“Get up, Engineer Boy.”
Wires phased through the floor above, hissing. Rann grabbed a pipe, melted into a wall, and exploded outward—impaling one of Replikid’s clones.
“Three seconds. Conjure something.”
Gerbert’s mind kicked into overdrive:
Threat Type: Multi-angle. Solution: Auto-turret. 360° tracking. Facial lockout.
Turret deployed.
Bullets flew.
Clones dropped.
Zappo screamed—Rann struck again, kicking him into the turret's line of fire.
[Zappo – HP: 0/100]
[Replikid – HP: 0/100]
---
Silence.
Gerbert collapsed, HP now 17. Rann knelt beside him, just as winded.
“Why... help me?” he asked.
She didn’t meet his eyes. “You build things. Useful things. Maybe you’ll figure out how to kill this f***ing game.”
She leaned against the wall, head tilted back.
“Until then… I’m not letting good pieces go to waste.”
Not a friendship.
Chapter 3
Bloom and Break
No buildings. No shadows. No shelter. Just wind-cut grass, broken stone monuments, and open sky.
It was a battlefield designed to strip away cleverness and reveal only power. There was nowhere to hide.
Gerbert and Rann had made it halfway across the plateau in practiced silence. Her steps were light, measured. His eyes scanned the horizon, fingers twitching near his conjureplate.
That’s when the air changed.
A breeze swept past, thick with something out of place. Not smoke. Not dust.
Floral.
Rann’s body tensed. “It’s him.”
A patch of grass ahead exploded.
Petals, vines, roots—bursting in every direction in a riot of color and motion. Flowers bloomed midair and spun to the ground like falling blades. From the heart of it all stepped a man dressed like spring itself.
Ace – HP: 93/100
Long pink coat flaring dramatically in the wind. Stylish boots that made flowers bloom beneath each step. His smile dazzled. His voice, when it came, rang with theatrical glee.
“Hello, darlings,” he said, cocking his head. “Lovely day to try and kill me, isn’t it?”
Rann’s reaction was instant—she phased backward behind a ruined stone block. Gerbert’s hand flew up, a barrier conjured just in time to deflect a sharp burst of rose-thorns that speared the earth between them.
“You again,” Gerbert muttered. “Of course.”
Ace stepped forward slowly, arms raised like a performer hitting his mark. “You wound me, engineer. After all the chemistry we’ve shared?”
A turret snapped into place beside Gerbert, clanking and humming as it locked onto Ace.
“Let’s see if the garden can catch this,” Gerbert said flatly.
Click-click-click—FWHIP!
The turret fired. Three precision shots sliced through the air.
Ace spun. Vines rose in arcs to intercept. Each bullet deflected, thudding into the dirt.
Rann reappeared to the side, boots kicking up petals. She dashed low, phasing between broken pillars for cover, angling for Ace’s blind spot.
Ace caught her movement with the edge of his eye. “Still darting around like a shadow. You never slow down, do you, Rann?”
He twirled.
A ring of lilies burst outward from his heels, releasing a pollen wave.
Rann choked mid-phase, coughing hard as she emerged behind a stone. “He’s upgraded his field control.”
“Confirmed,” Gerbert said. “He’s playing the whole map.”
Ace walked with exaggerated grace, placing a hand on the ground. Vines surged upward, curving into a towering wall of bloom and thorn that separated Rann from Gerbert.
“Isolation tactic,” Rann warned. “He’s trying to split us.”
“Noted,” Gerbert replied. His hands glowed, assembling a compact sonic burst device on his wrist. “Let’s test his harmony.”
He slammed his palm to the ground. SHOOM. A focused sonic pulse radiated out.
Ace winced.
The flowers screamed in reply, twisting their petals into warped funnels to absorb and bend the sound.
The air turned discordant, strange.
Ace steadied himself, brushing pollen from his shoulder. “Okay, that one stung a bit.”
Rann burst through the vine wall, blade in hand. She swung wide, aiming for his midsection.
Ace ducked, back arched. A sunflower bloomed upward to intercept the strike, its thick stem acting like a shield. He kicked backward, forcing Rann to phase-step away before he could counter.
“Still sharp,” he said, panting now. “But not sharp enough.”
Gerbert fired a bolt of kinetic force, catching Ace in the side. The plant-wielder grunted, knocked off balance.
He crouched, breathing hard.
Petals drifted across the field. A silence settled.
Gerbert was sweating. His conjuration systems hummed with strain.
Rann had scratches along her arms. Pollen clung to her boots and gloves like glittering dust.
Ace stood slowly. A single flower rested between his fingers.
“Are we going to keep this up, sweethearts?” he said, softer now. “It’s getting a bit exhausting, and I do prefer to make an exit looking fabulous.”
Rann didn’t lower her guard. “We’re not here to die. But we will if we have to.”
Gerbert shook his head. “It doesn’t have to go that far.”
Ace’s smile wavered. “You two… you always talk like you're better than this place.”
“No,” Gerbert said, “we talk like people who want to survive without becoming monsters.”
Rann stepped closer. “Not every meeting has to end in a bloodbath.”
Ace looked between them, a flicker of something behind his eyes—fatigue, perhaps, or memory.
Then he let the flower fall.
It landed soundlessly in the grass.
“Fine,” he said. “But only because you’re both so stubbornly reasonable.”
He walked toward them—no vines followed.
Just steps.
Just a hand, outstretched.
“Ace,” he said, smiling like a man who’d just finished his performance. “Flamboyant, fabulous, and your new favorite mistake.”
“Gerbert,” the conjurer said, shaking it.
“Rann,” came her cool reply.
They stood in silence.
Not as allies.
Not yet.
But something softer than enemies.
The Plateau of Silence held its breath as the three turned away from battle.
Petals swirled in the wind behind them.
And peace, for once, bloomed.
Chapter 3.1
Side Story: Ace’s First Bloom
Before the Plateau, Ace moved like a comet through the chaos of Deadlink—brilliant, erratic, uncatchable.
And always alone.
He dazzled. Every floor he touched bloomed in his wake—vines curled through shattered pavement, daisies burst through bullet holes, and thorns twisted up from scorched ground like applause. Players remembered him. They stared. They whispered.
But no one stayed.
Too loud.
Too flashy.
Too unpredictable.
Ace could never quite tell if it was the power they feared… or the person who wielded it like a prop on a stage no one asked to be part of.
“What’s your deal, anyway?” a player had asked once—back on Floor 3, just before the start of a match.
Ace had smiled, radiant. “Style, darling. I’m here to die beautifully.”
They’d rolled their eyes and left before the round even began.
He hadn’t bothered asking their name.
On Floor 5, he’d joined a squad—just for a stretch. Eleven minutes of chaos, shoulder to shoulder. His pollen mines had cleared a path through a wave of stone beasts. His vines had snagged a berserker mid-charge before they could flatten the healer.
Ace had turned the battlefield into a garden—and a victory.
At the end, the squad leader, tall and cold-eyed, gave a single nod. “You’re good. But you draw too much attention.”
They left without another word.
Not even a wave.
So by Floor 6, Ace didn’t expect anything new.
He entered the Plateau of Silence alone, as always. The sky above was blank and endless. The stone ruins were broken down to stumps, offering no shadows to hide in. Just wind, silence, and grass that rippled like an audience waiting for the first act.
“Perfect,” Ace muttered, brushing a stray vine from his boot. “A battlefield with nowhere to hide. My kind of theater.”
He didn’t look for allies.
He made an entrance.
An explosion of color. A garden born from chaos.
Thorns coiled like serpents. Blossoms burst into confetti. Petals rained from above. Ace stood at the center, arms spread, pink coat flaring behind him like curtains parting before a show.
And then—
He saw them.
Rann.
Gerbert.
Two players he remembered. Two who had endured.
He remembered Rann slipping effortlessly through a trap he’d set back on Floor 2. She had stepped through a wall of thorns like mist and left his bloom mine shredded behind her.
He remembered Gerbert adjusting vectors mid-battle, muttering calculations as his conjured tech wove defensive grids faster than Ace’s roses could punch through them.
They hadn’t feared him.
They’d measured him.
And seen someone worth countering.
Now, they stood before him again—older, sharper, still standing.
This time, when Ace threw out his arms and shouted—
“Hello, darlings! Lovely day to try and kill me, isn’t it?”
—they didn’t flinch.
They didn’t mock.
They moved.
Not away from him—but toward him.
And for the first time in a long time, Ace smiled…
Not as a flourish.
Not as a warning.
But as a player. As someone seen.
Something bloomed beneath his ribs.
Not a trap.
Not a weapon.
Hope.
That maybe, just maybe, being too much was exactly what this world needed.
Chapter 4
Game 10: Falling Grounds
Floor 10 wasn’t a battleground. It was a trap.
A place built to kill not through force—but through failure.
They called it The Falling Grounds.
A shattered arena suspended in an endless void. Massive stone platforms floated in midair, each one slowly rotating, cracking, or collapsing, as if mocking the players who dared to stand on them.
Above the void, a single directive echoed through the wind:
Reach the exit platform before the countdown ends.
No respawns. No resets. Fall, and you fall forever.
Over two dozen players stood scattered across the first few stable platforms, already tense.
When the buzzer sounded, the madness began.
Gerbert acted instantly.
He knelt, conjuring a brace of mechanical grappling latches, each one locking with a metallic clank onto nearby platforms. His targeting display flickered as he mapped the angles.
“Anchor points established,” he muttered. “Rann, move now!”
Rann didn’t need telling.
She sprinted forward and phased through a spiraling chunk of stone, reappearing midair on a rotating platform—already panting. The stamina drain in a place like this was brutal.
“Platform’s unstable!” she shouted.
And it was.
The moment she landed, it buckled and tilted violently.
She launched herself off just as the slab disintegrated beneath her.
Ace, meanwhile, stepped lightly from edge to edge, boots tapping petals into existence.
“Bridge, darlings!” he called, whipping a coil of vines across a five-meter gap. They latched onto a column like ivy spears, hardening into a crude swaying walkway.
“I love your chaos, but maybe less tilt next time?” he added to no one in particular.
Below, a scream rang out as a player misjudged a leap and vanished into the black below.
No explosion. No system warning.
Just silence.
One down.
Then monsters spawned—crawlers with stone-carved limbs and snapping maws. They materialized mid-jump, slamming into platforms or directly into players.
A boy with glowing arms screamed as a crawler latched onto his back and dragged him over the edge.
Another player landed on a false platform—it looked solid, but shattered the moment weight hit it.
More screams. More bodies. The player count was dropping fast.
Gerbert leapt to another platform, firing his blaster at an approaching beast. It shrieked, crumpling—but its dying flail smashed into the edge, breaking off part of the rock.
“Ten seconds to shift!” he called out. “Stay mobile!”
Rann phased again—this time through a flailing monster. Her arm shimmered as she passed through its chest, snagging the internal core and ripping it out on the other side.
She landed hard, breathing heavy. “Stamina at thirty.”
Then—
A blur.
A shockwave.
A slab above shattered as something hit it from below, launching debris into the air.
A figure leapt from the rising stone and landed hard on their platform, cracking the surface with a thunderous BOOM.
Taan.
Dark hair whipped behind her. Her fists were wrapped tight. Her expression was unreadable.
She didn’t speak.
She charged.
“Wait—!” Gerbert raised his hand, conjuring a kinetic shield just in time to block a spinning kick that rippled across the barrier.
“Hostile!” Rann shouted, pulling a blade and moving to flank.
Ace raised both arms—vines bursting from his coat like whips. “Careful, darlings. This one’s got heat.”
Taan ducked low and punched upward, smashing through the base of Gerbert’s shield. The recoil knocked him back, feet skidding against the stone.
Rann phased forward, jabbing for Taan’s exposed side—but the girl caught her wrist, twisted, and tossed her over her shoulder.
Rann vanished in mid-air, reappearing on a higher ledge, clutching her arm. “She’s fast.”
Ace flicked his wrist, sending petal-shurikens spiraling toward Taan’s flank.
She dodged two—let a third graze her—then grabbed a fourth mid-spin and hurled it back, point-first.
Ace caught it, blinking. “Rude.”
Gerbert fired three blaster shots—Taan dodged one, blocked another, and rolled under the third, slamming her palm into the rock, using the momentum to launch toward Rann.
Rann phased downward, emerging under the ledge, boots locking to the underside with a mag-strip just in time.
They clashed again—Taan punching, Rann phasing, Ace weaving in support with pollen and roots, Gerbert coordinating shields and attacks.
No one went all out.
But no one held back either.
Finally, Taan landed hard on one of the outer platforms, breathing rough. Her arms trembled. Scratches lined her forearms. Her foot was bleeding.
Still—she grinned.
“You’re not bad,” she said, chest rising and falling.
Gerbert stepped forward cautiously, still holding his conjured shield.
“You were testing us,” he said.
Taan didn’t deny it.
“Wanted to see for myself,” she replied.
A loud gong echoed through the air.
COUNTDOWN ENDED. GAME COMPLETE.
Platforms began locking into place, sealing off as the final four players stood in silence.
The screen flashed above them, listing survivors:
SURVIVORS: 4
– GERBERT
– RANN
– ACE
– TAAN
Twenty-three players gone.
Some had fallen.
Some had fought each other.
Some had simply frozen—and died because of it.
Taan looked over at the three.
No apology.
But she extended her hand.
Gerbert looked at it—then took it.
Ace brushed imaginary dust from his shoulder. “Well. That was stressful.”
Rann rolled her wrist, sore. “I still don’t trust her.”
“You don’t have to,” Taan said.
Her grin faded into something steadier.
“But I’m not leaving.”
And so there were four.
Not friends.
Not yet.
But survivors—with bruises, tension, and now, a little trust forged in freefall.
Chapter 4.1
Side Story: Taan’s Test
The air shimmered around them as the last of the platforms disintegrated behind their boots. Cracks of light stitched the void beneath, swallowing what was left of Game 10. For a moment, silence ruled—just breath and survival.
They had made it out.
The Safe Zone on Floor 11 wasn’t warm, nor welcoming. It was a hollow expanse beneath a fractured ceiling, lit only by pale-blue torches lining the perimeter. Stone slabs formed a rough camp. There was no music. No cheer.
Just the sound of gear clicking back into place, footsteps crunching dust, and the quiet recalibration of shaken minds.
Taan stood near the edge of the torchlight, arms crossed, ready to walk off into whatever came next. Her cloak flared slightly with each breath. She didn’t fidget. She didn’t thank anyone.
Gerbert approached carefully, weapon holstered, face calm.
“You’re strong,” he said. “Come with us. We’re not trying to win. We’re trying to end it.”
Taan turned.
For a second, it looked like she might say something.
But instead—
She struck.
No warning. No announcement.
Just motion.
Her foot cracked stone as she lunged, faster than anyone expected. Her fist blazed through the air, slamming straight toward Gerbert.
Gerbert acted instantly. His conjured shield bloomed to life, absorbing the hit with a loud THRUM as vines erupted from behind him to anchor it. The impact still shoved him a step back.
“Taan—?!” he shouted.
But she didn’t answer.
She was already moving.
Her next strike shot toward Rann, who phased sideways into a wall, only to realize—
Taan was anticipating it.
Taan’s elbow sliced into the wall where Rann reappeared, barely missing her ribs. Rann grunted, phased again—out, across the camp—and readied a counterattack from behind.
“She's serious,” Ace muttered. “Lovely.”
He spread his arms wide, and a pulse of pollen exploded from his coat.
Golden mist swirled between the torches, slowing vision, stinging eyes. Petals followed—razor-edged shurikens of pressed flower, launched in a fan toward Taan.
She ducked one, smacked another aside, and leapt through the third—using a burst of momentum to spin-kick toward Gerbert again.
This time he met her.
He raised his blaster, aiming low.
CRACK—CRACK—CRACK!
Blue bolts flared toward her legs. She slid low, blocking one with her wrapped forearm, the other ricocheting off her cloak’s edge.
She smiled—just a little.
Rann appeared behind her, half-phased in the wall, and launched a ghost-strike—a phase-accelerated jab toward Taan’s side.
Taan spun, caught Rann’s wrist in mid-motion, and threw her across the camp. Rann phased before impact, appearing upright, panting.
Ace stepped in, vines surging from beneath his boots, coiling to intercept Taan’s next charge.
They wrapped around her arm.
She tore through them.
But in that brief second—Gerbert conjured a second shield.
“You done?” Gerbert asked, his chest heaving, sweat beading along his temple.
Taan stood in the center now. Breathing heavy. Surrounded.
Ace’s vines curled defensively around the group. Rann had one arm resting on a stone, half-phased, catching her breath.
Gerbert’s HP bar had dropped, still visible through the interface. His shield flickered weakly, almost out.
Taan looked at each of them. Met their eyes.
Then—she dropped her stance.
“Alright,” she said.
She exhaled slowly, cracking her neck. “You’re worth sticking with.”
No apology. No smile.
But no malice, either.
She turned, sat on a nearby slab of stone, and folded her arms again.
Just like that.
It was done.
No promises. No sentiment.
But trust—built the only way Taan knew how.
With fists.
And resistance.
And the confidence that they didn’t break.
Not even when tested.
Chapter 5
The Path of Floors
After Game 10, Deadlink changed.
Not in the sudden chaos of a bloodier map or a deadlier monster.
But in what it revealed.
Because Deadlink wasn’t just a match-based bloodsport anymore. It wasn’t chaos for chaos’ sake. It was structure—a towering, brutal system built for control.
One hundred floors. A vertical world.
Each level a gauntlet, a world of its own—crafted to test, isolate, and reduce. But patterns had started to emerge, and for those who survived the early hell, the truth became visible.
Every five floors came a Safe Zone—places encased in invisible barriers. Temporary refuge. You could eat. Heal. Trade. But even those havens carried weight. You couldn’t stay forever. And everyone knew: safety was always rented, never owned.
At every thirtieth floor, everything shifted.
Floors 30, 60, and 90 weren’t just new challenges. They were filters. Purpose-built Dungeon Blocks sat there—zones designed to break the strongest, to weed out the rest. The survivors called them execution chambers with puzzles.
And they weren’t wrong.
Players whispered of it constantly now. If you wanted to live, you needed Blings. The currency that bought everything: weapons, food, beds, breathing room. It wasn’t just economy. It was oxygen.
Some players PK’d for them. Quietly. Strategically. You never knew who would vanish in the next floor drop.
No one knew who ran it.
No one had seen an Admin.
And death was permanent.
They gathered in a side room off the Safe Zone on Floor 11. Four of them. The war-room atmosphere was unofficial—but real.
A conjured map hovered above a projection plate in the center, flickering with neon-blue light. Floor scans. Resource data. Death percentages. A whole tower of numbers and blood.
Gerbert stood near the projection, focused on its grid lines. His eyes twitched behind his glasses, flicking between paths, probability notes, and density curves.
“Each floor has its own algorithm,” he said. “The Safe Zones are self-contained, but they’re temporary. Everything else keeps shifting. Traps, enemy types, terrain.”
Taan crouched nearby, arms resting on her knees. “We’re not meant to climb,” she said. “We’re meant to die before we see what’s above.”
She pointed at the overlay for Floor 30’s Dungeon Block. It was marked in crimson. “And this? That’s not difficulty. That’s execution.”
Rann stood with her back to the wall, arms crossed, face blank. Her voice, when it came, was sharp enough to cut air.
“This isn’t a game anymore. It’s a hierarchy. Every floor is a screen. A stage. A punishment.”
Gerbert didn’t look away from the display. “And someone’s watching.”
Taan didn’t hesitate. “We’ll get to them.”
From the far corner, Ace lounged on a slanted bench, vines curled lazily around his fingers. His coat was draped over one shoulder, hair tousled, expression calm—but his eyes were sharp.
“Darlings,” he said, voice melodic, “they’ve built a tower for monsters. What they didn’t expect…” He sat up. “...was for the monsters to get smart.”
Rann raised an eyebrow. “You mean us?”
“Obviously,” Ace grinned. “We’re dangerous. We just need to stop acting like prey.”
Gerbert leaned back, his conjured notes collapsing into neat digital folders. “There’s more than one way to play this.”
Taan stood, unfolding like a spring. Her limbs moved with a subtle tension—restrained strength. “And we don’t have to play it their way.”
Ace stood next, stretching like a cat. “No, but if we’re going to climb their cursed tower, I’d like to make it look fabulous.”
No one laughed.
But no one argued.
They turned toward the hallway exit. The floor assignment had just pinged.
Gerbert closed the interface.
Rann cracked her neck.
Taan flexed her bandaged hands.
Ace sighed theatrically, stood, and spun his coat into place.
No one said a word.
But when the door opened—every step forward meant something.
The next floor awaited.
And this time, they understood the rules.
Which meant they could break them.
Chapter 5.1
Side Story: Conjurations and Preparations
The Safe Zone between Floor 10 and 11 wasn’t high-tech. It wasn’t mechanical. It wasn’t floating in the dark.
It was a forest.
A place where grass grew underfoot and filtered light poured through the trees like golden dust. There were chirping sounds—manufactured, surely—but it felt natural. A simulation of safety. A brief, silent lie of peace before the next trial.
But the Linkbreakers weren’t resting.
They were working.
Gerbert had set up near a moss-covered boulder, sketching energy diagrams in the dirt. A conjured interface hovered above the ground beside him—projection glyphs cycling through test parameters.
He tapped in a command.
A shimmer erupted across the clearing.
A hexagonal energy wall burst into form between two trees—tall, glowing with a muted blue sheen.
“Deployable Kinetic Wall,” Gerbert muttered. “Reflects standard projectiles. Absorbs kinetic shock.”
He stood back. “Someone punch it.”
Taan was already rolling her shoulder. She took a half step forward and drove her fist into the barrier with practiced force.
The wall absorbed it, rippling like a stone skipping across water.
Taan shook out her wrist. “Not bad. Less recoil than last time.”
“Because I split the energy channel into three distribution arcs,” Gerbert said, scribbling into his notes. “It's not perfect, but it'll hold against close-quarters force.”
Nearby, two mini-drones hovered out of a small conjured case—quiet and agile, each no bigger than a closed fist. They lifted into the trees, sensors blinking orange.
“Recon units,” Gerbert explained to no one in particular. “Thermal and atmospheric sensors. Limited stealth capacity. Still not silent, though.”
One of them veered off-course and buzzed into a branch.
Gerbert sighed. “Stability’s still trash.”
From a shaded patch of ferns, Ace gave an exaggerated clap. “I love how you say that like a disappointed parent. The stability’s still trash, but we’ll keep feeding it and sending it to school.”
Gerbert didn’t look up. “If I wanted performance art, I’d go to your side of the forest.”
Ace, of course, had his own garden.
But his version of gardening was tactical.
At the base of an old oak, a set of bloom mines rested in the soil—small seed pods wrapped in bark-textured casing. They pulsed softly, warm to the touch.
He crouched and tapped one.
It burst open silently, releasing a golden pollen cloud that drifted through the air like glittering mist. The nearby tree trunk was coated instantly in sticky, fibrous threads.
“Sticky pollen,” Ace said brightly. “Slows movement. Blocks vision. Tastes awful.”
He plucked one of the pods from the ground and tossed it between his hands. “I'm working on timing the bursts. If I can sync them to delayed detonation, we’ll have soft traps that don’t kill—just humiliate.”
Taan passed by, raising an eyebrow. “That’s your goal? Humiliation?”
Ace winked. “Morale damage is still damage.”
Taan, ever focused, had anchored herself to two thick tree trunks with a tangle of resistance cords wrapped around her waist, arms, and legs.
Her sweat darkened the bandages around her fists as she launched into short, controlled bursts—jabs, kicks, pivots. Every movement snapped the bands taut, testing her balance and holding her speed in check.
“Boost,” she whispered.
Her body jolted forward in a low lunge, then halted mid-air as the cords caught her.
She held the position. Breathed through it.
“No tearing,” she muttered. “Control held.”
She recorded the results into a small scroll.
3.1x enhancement. Zero recoil. Duration: twelve seconds.
Ace watched her out of the corner of his eye. “If I moved like you, I’d wear nothing but confidence and bandages.”
“You already do,” she replied, not breaking form.
His smile widened.
At the edge of the clearing, Rann stood ankle-deep in a narrow stream that snaked through the Safe Zone. The water shimmered beneath her feet.
She inhaled slowly.
Then stepped forward—and phased.
The moment she entered the water, her body staggered.
She winced, gasped, and dropped to one knee, half-phased into the stream, her hand clutching her ribs.
The phasing collapsed.
She surfaced fully again, coughing.
Gerbert was already approaching. “Water phase?”
She nodded. “Failed. The flow disrupts the anchor. Can’t stabilize.”
“You nearly drowned.”
“I didn’t.”
She stood slowly, brushing water from her hands. Her breathing was tight, but not broken.
“But,” she added, lifting her gaze, “I can phase longer through stone now. Less strain. More depth. No recoil.”
She demonstrated—stepping directly through a tree trunk.
One second.
Two.
She emerged out the other side like a ghost.
“I couldn’t do that before,” she said.
Gerbert adjusted his notes. “That changes everything.”
They didn’t say it aloud.
But they all felt it.
This wasn’t just recovery. This wasn’t waiting out the next floor.
They were learning.
Gerbert, with deployable shields, surveillance tech, and unstable new prototypes.
Ace, refining battlefield control through plants and strategic terrain disruption.
Taan, mastering her body’s internal surge, finally able to boost without destroying herself.
Rann, pushing her limits—trading water for stone, but unlocking longer, sharper phasing windows.
No one called it what it was.
But they were no longer just survivors.
They were building something.
Together.
And whatever it was becoming—
It was strong.
It was sharp.
And it was ready.
Chapter 6
Collision Test Course
The path to Floor 11 stretched across a broken transit station, half-swallowed by ruin. Its ceilings had caved in long ago. The rails were twisted, benches scattered like discarded bones, warning lights still blinking faintly from consoles that hadn’t functioned in years.
No monsters. No traps.
Just the slow grind of dust under their boots.
Too quiet.
Ace yawned. “If this place gets any more nostalgic, I’ll start crying. Someone left a half-eaten ration bar in that seat.”
“Takes you back, doesn’t it?” Gerbert muttered, reading the floor’s heat signatures through his lens. “No recent activity. Clear through to the Safe Zone marker.”
Rann walked a pace behind them, arms loose at her sides, gaze scanning the shadows. “Could be worse. Could be clean.”
“That’s when you should be worried,” Gerbert replied.
At the rear of the group, Taan was silent.
Olive skin glinting with sweat, her sleeveless top clinging to her spine, her breath steady. Her black ponytail swung slightly as she walked. Her boots made no unnecessary sound.
She had been walking with them for a couple of weeks now.
And she enjoyed it.
She liked Ace’s dramatics—how he never let the dread settle too deep. She liked Rann’s bluntness—how she spoke only when necessary, and always with precision. And she liked Gerbert’s quiet competence—how he always seemed to have a plan, and rarely needed to explain it.
She didn’t say much.
But she’d stayed.
Until now.
Without a sound, Taan broke into a run.
Gerbert spotted it first. “Here we go,” he said under his breath.
Ace sidestepped, eyes gleaming. “Finally.”
Rann didn’t flinch.
They all knew exactly what this was.
Not an ambush.
A test.
Taan’s foot hit the stone, and she launched forward, a crack of wind snapping behind her. Her first punch struck the ground beside Ace hard enough to crater the tile—a warning shot.
Ace stumbled back, vines bursting reflexively from the ground to cushion his fall.
“What the hell?!” he shouted, half-laughing, half-panicked.
Gerbert rolled sideways, conjuring a hexagonal kinetic shield with a flick of his wrist. The barrier shimmered as debris pinged off its edge.
Rann phased through a nearby pillar, her body slipping into the material like mist.
Taan was already on the move again—lunging toward Gerbert.
“Shield up!” he barked.
The kinetic wall absorbed a blow that would’ve broken ribs. The shield dented, but held. She pivoted, spinning into a wide sweep kick that shattered a support beam.
“She’s testing us!” Rann shouted, emerging from the wall behind Taan and aiming a low kick toward her knee.
Taan dodged, just barely.
She was fast. Not just quick—explosively fast. But every strike came with a cost. As she boosted forward again, you could see it:
Veins bulging. Sweat beading across her brow. Blood flecking her lips.
She was hurting herself with every motion.
But she didn’t stop.
They weren’t fighting to win.
She was testing them.
Their reactions. Their limits. Their trust in one another.
And the others rose to meet it.
Gerbert’s drones deployed in a tight triangle, cycling through stun charges. Rann darted like a knife between the gaps, waiting for her opening. Ace, recovering, summoned thorn-wrapped vines that launched forward like whips—not to restrain her, but to redirect her motion, slow her.
“Left flank!” Gerbert called.
“I see it,” Rann answered, phasing through Taan’s blind spot.
This time, she made contact.
Rann’s leg swept under Taan’s—perfect timing—and Taan hit the ground with a heavy thud.
She tried to rise—
—and a drone fired its concussive burst.
The force slammed her back down.
For a breathless moment, no one moved.
Taan groaned, laughed through bloodied teeth, and raised her hands in the air.
“Okay. Okay! You passed.”
Ace exhaled. “Darling, was that a job interview?”
Rann approached slowly, her expression unreadable. “You testing us again?”
Taan coughed, rolled onto her side, and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist.
“You’re strong,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Not just strong—together. That’s rare. Most teams I met… broke.
She sat up, eyes scanning the three of them.
“I don’t want to walk alone anymore.”
There was no pause.
Gerbert stepped forward and offered his hand.
“Then walk with us.”
Taan looked at it. Looked at them.
And took it.
They didn’t call it a team.
Not then.
But something shifted.
Taan brought something wild, physical, and raw. The kind of power that could collapse a wall—or hold a door against the end of the world.
Gerbert brought calculation. Shields. Systems. The rhythm.
Rann brought silent adaptability. The unseen edge. Cold focus.
Ace brought color. Chaos. And surprise.
Taan respected that.
And they respected her honesty.
Together, they left the transit station behind.
Not just survivors.
Now a force.
And rising.
Chapter 7
The Shifting Green
Objective: Traverse the forest and reach the exit gate within 6 hours.
Rules:
The forest reconfigures every 30 minutes.
Players must avoid or eliminate hostile creatures.
PVP is allowed.
No map provided.
---
The arena for Floor 16 was a monstrous, living jungle—trees taller than buildings, vines that breathed, and a sky permanently stained moss-green. The landscape warped and changed like a spreadsheet reorganizing cells. One wrong path could lead to ambush, quicksand, or worse.
Gerbert stepped into the forest first, scanning the terrain. “Stay close. We need a formation.”
Ace summoned a trail of blooming lilies to mark their way. “So we don’t get swallowed by sentient moss.”
Rann phased between tree trunks, scouting ahead. Taan stretched her arms, already bleeding from the pressure of activating her anatomical boost. “Let’s just punch whatever moves.”
They weren’t alone.
---
New Players Introduced
Ysang – A pale woman with stark eyes, always whispering to the trees and stones. Her ability allowed her to commune with the environment itself—walls, roots, even water. But the environment only told her partial truths, never exact locations or outcomes.
Ray – A lean elderly man with wild eyebrows and a walking stick made from twisted bark. He could speak to wildlife and insects—not command, but communicate. Their information was often emotional and chaotic, but helpful in the right context.
Duane – A towering man with a cheerful smile and gentle voice. He could summon two clones of himself, each with a portion of his strength and stamina. However, the more clones he maintained, the more confused and fragmented his consciousness became.
Together, the seven players pushed through beasts, moving trees, and toxic pollen clouds.
They watched nameless players fall—some ambushed by feral creatures, others devoured by the forest itself.
At one point, Ysang warned of a collapsing grove. Gerbert conjured a portable shield array to protect the team. Taan fought a mutated gorilla-like creature with bone hooks for arms—winning, but with shattered ribs. Ace created toxic brambles to corral smaller threats, and Rann phased to redirect them.
Eventually, they made it to the final shifting quadrant. Only the main team—Gerbert, Rann, Ace, and Taan—plus Ysang, Duane, and Ray, remained.
The exit gate was buried beneath a giant root cluster.
Rann phased in to confirm it. Gerbert blew the roots apart with a planted mine.
No words were exchanged as the three strangers quietly nodded and walked off in different directions.
No alliances. No hostility. Just survival.
Rann simply muttered as she watched them go,
“To each their own.”
Gerbert gave a small nod. He understood.
Chapter 8
Echo Vault
Location: Floor 23 — Zero Gravity Dungeon
The vault didn’t feel like a dungeon.
It felt like a tomb—an ancient metallic catacomb fractured by time and violence, now drifting silently in the vacuum of artificial space. Shattered corridors twisted into one another, held together by invisible gravitational pulses. Entire slabs of broken bulkhead floated weightless, rotating like dying planets.
Nothing stayed still here.
Not the rusted stairways. Not the flickering lights. Not even the air.
And everywhere—the blind ones hunted.
Hulking, multi-limbed creatures crawled across the walls and ceilings. Their eyes were sealed shut, skin grown over their sockets like wax. Yet their heads tilted at the slightest tremor—drawn to movement, drawn to vibrations, drawn to breath.
A message glowed in red across their HUDs:
“REACH THE CORE. ESCAPE. MAKE NO SOUND.”
No countdown. No map. No safe zone.
Just floating death.
The team launched forward without a word. Their movement was clean, silent, coordinated.
Gerbert activated a compact propulsion device strapped to his wrist—its pulses gentle, barely stronger than a sigh. He drifted low, hugging metal debris, scanning ahead through holographic lenses.
Rann blinked into and out of phase, timing each shift with quiet precision. Her boots never touched metal. Her breath was measured. She didn't so much as scrape the air.
Taan had wrapped her fists and legs in weighted bandages soaked with padded cloth—enough to dull her enhanced momentum without deadening her reflexes. She moved like a falling feather, folding and unfolding her limbs with focused grace.
Ace, uncharacteristically silent, grew patches of soft moss and cushioning vine tendrils. He anchored himself with floral filaments and guided others by sprouting silent handholds. The vines stretched like velvet ropes, gently curling around their waists when they drifted too far.
They moved through the vault like ghosts.
Then—
A muffled sob.
A hiccup.
A glint of gold behind a floating chunk of broken generator.
Kokay.
She was curled into a ball, clinging to her enchanted bag like a lifeline. Her eyes were wide, terrified.
Ace was the first to spot her. He narrowed his eyes, lips parting in alarm.
But it was already too late.
She sniffled again.
Three of the creatures—blind, massive, ears flared like satellite dishes—turned toward the sound.
Their heads twitched. Their spines curled.
They began to crawl—slow, deliberate, eerily silent.
Gerbert mouthed: “Don’t move.”
But Kokay’s eyes had already gone white.
Her pupils vanished beneath the glow of second sight.
Her hands trembled as the visions flooded in—every twist of a claw, every swipe of a spiked limb, every player death she hadn’t seen before. It was chaos.
But amid the chaos, there was a thread.
A line.
A path.
Kokay moved.
Not fast. Not loud. Just perfectly placed.
She kicked off the generator at exactly the right angle, her knees drawn in, her path weaving between three converging monsters by fractions of an inch.
Her hand tapped the floor only once—at a specific panel—causing a small plate to drift free and draw one monster away.
The others followed her motion—but always just behind.
The team moved.
Taan understood instantly. She snapped forward, pivoted silently, and tucked Kokay under her arm in a launch carry, using the force to send them both sliding through a crumbling maintenance shaft.
Rann phased through a sideways airlock and reappeared next to one of the beasts mid-strike, her arm slamming silently into its shoulder just enough to redirect its momentum away from Kokay.
Ace hurled a vine—no thorns, no pollen—just a looping guide. It wrapped around Kokay’s leg, slowing her spin just before she hit the wall. He gritted his teeth and snapped another patch of moss open beneath her next drift path.
Kokay’s movements weren’t guesses.
She was seeing seconds ahead.
Eight… ten… fifteen…
She screamed without sound—eyes wide in pain—but she kept moving.
They reached the next chamber.
And monsters flooded in behind them.
There were at least ten now—scraping the walls, pulsing across ceilings like slow-moving shadows. Their claws didn’t stab—they listened. Every clink of armor, every clatter of breath drew a fresh chase.
The team scattered—still together, but pulling apart in silent momentum.
Gerbert pulled out a pulse glyph and angled it downward, tilting a panel just wide enough to close behind Rann as she passed.
Kokay’s head snapped to the left. “Block—don’t go there.”
Ace adjusted.
A tentacle lashed past where his skull had been seconds before.
Taan, gripping Kokay by one arm, used a spiral of wall cables to launch herself into a backflip—landing against a moving platform before it drifted them to safety.
The room spun.
They flew.
Bodies of other players drifted past—some torn open, some curled like dolls in fetal position, their faces frozen in shock. Kokay bit her lip, shaking. She didn’t look away.
They made it to a final corridor—a shaft lined with collapsed containment crates. Silent light blinked at the far end.
Kokay pushed her sight.
22 seconds.
It was too far.
But she pushed anyway.
She groaned—then screamed, her voice still soundless as she clutched her head.
The monsters reached the threshold—but they missed.
They swept their arms forward.
And missed.
Again.
Every move Kokay had called was just one second ahead of death.
The team sailed through the final access hatch.
The door sealed behind them.
Silence returned.
For real this time.
Final Chamber – Stabilized Zone
Low gravity now. Air, dim light, breathable. The weight of pursuit lifted. The HUD blinked:
Core Reached – Temporary Stabilization Enabled
They landed in awkward, scattered positions—some floating, some rolling.
Kokay dropped to her knees, clutching her stomach.
“I… I saw too much,” she mumbled. “I extended to twenty-two seconds…”
She reached into her bag and vomited into a floating pouch, shielding her face with one shaking hand.
Taan rubbed her back gently.
Gerbert sat against a support beam, wiping cold sweat from his brow.
Rann leaned silently against the far wall, watching the sealed door in case it opened again.
Ace gave Kokay a thumbs-up with a weak smile. “Remind me never to make you mad.”
Kokay tried to smile back. It was more like a grimace.
But they were alive.
Somehow.
Through silence, vision, and a fragile thread of trust—they had made it.
Chapter 8.1
Side Story: Little Lights, Loud Hearts
Location: Safe Zone, Floor 23 — Post-Zero Gravity Dungeon
The warm flicker of lantern light cast soft shadows across the walls of the small inn room. Floor 23’s Safe Zone was quiet, the chaos of the zero-gravity dungeon far behind, though not forgotten.
Kokay sat on the edge of her bed, her legs tucked beneath her, surrounded by glowing outfit previews that hovered gently in the air. Pale blues, soft whites, shimmering pastels—sparkles, hoods, tiny charms. It was overwhelming.
She reached out and poked one of the projections—a white hoodie with long, floppy bunny ears and a heart-shaped zipper. It spun slowly in place.
Across the room, Gerbert sat by the wall with a toolset spread around him. He was tinkering with one of his conjured scanner devices, his brow furrowed in quiet concentration.
“I don’t get it,” Kokay mumbled.
Gerbert glanced up. “Get what?”
She fidgeted with the edge of her blanket. “I’m not strong. I cry all the time. I panicked in that maze. I barely made it.”
“You saw futures,” Gerbert said simply. “You gave us direction. Without you, we wouldn’t have gotten through Floor 23. That’s strength.”
She looked up at him, surprised by how gently he’d said it.
“I only wanted to look nice,” she whispered. “But now they call me a hero.”
“You can be both,” Gerbert replied with a small smile.
Kokay hesitated… then blinked and reached for her terminal. “Wait. There’s more. I didn’t tell you—there are fan clubs. Two of them.”
Gerbert stopped working. “Fan clubs?”
She nodded rapidly, flustered. “One’s called Little Lights. The other’s Bunny Vanguard. They’ve been following me for over a month. I only found out today. Gerbert, they wrote songs. And—chants. And entire blog posts about how I made them feel ‘safe’ and ‘seen’ and I didn’t even know!”
He tilted his head. “That’s... kind of amazing.”
She waved her hands frantically. “But I didn’t do anything special! I just—I just helped people I saw in trouble! I was scared the whole time! I don’t deserve all this—this kindness.”
Gerbert set down his tools and looked at her, quiet but firm. “Maybe you don’t think you do. But they decided you mattered. Not because you were loud. Because you were kind. You saw them. You stayed when others ran. And that sticks.”
Kokay stared at the screen, where a soft lofi track titled “Clairvoyant Heart” played under dozens of glowing comments.
There was one quote she read aloud, barely above a whisper:
‘When I was losing hope, Kokay held my hand and said she could see a future. She didn’t promise it’d be perfect. But she said I’d live. And I did.’
Her hands trembled slightly. “…I don’t know how to carry that.”
“You don’t have to,” Gerbert said. “Just keep being you.”
The white bunny hoodie floated back into view. Soft, simple, warm. It had long ears, fluffy cuffs, and a little silver thread stitched into a heart at the chest.
Kokay reached out and held it there in the air for a moment.
Then she smiled, just a little.
“Okay…” she said softly.
“…but I’m still buying this bunny hoodie.”
Gerbert chuckled and leaned back against the wall. “That’s more like it.”
Kokay tapped her terminal. The hoodie shimmered, then neatly packed itself into her inventory.
And for a few long minutes, she simply sat there—small, kind, and radiant in her quiet way. Maybe not the loudest. Maybe not the strongest.
But hers was a courage that bloomed in silence.
And that was enough.
Chapter 9
The Bidding War
Location: Floor 24 – The Auction of Price
The game was different this time. No monsters, no dungeons. Just a pristine hall lined with crystalline pedestals and guarded by shimmering barriers of light.
A voice echoed through the arena:
"You may bid. Not with Blings. But with your memories, your health, your time. You may even bid a day of your life, unconscious. The highest price wins."
The players stood in silence. Kokay decided not to join this time to recuperate.
Then chaos began.
THE ITEMS:
Item 1 – Sword of Flame
Summons a blade of pure fire. Cuts through armor.
Weakness: Generates intense heat. Extended use scorches the user’s arm.
Item 2 – Cloak of Protection
Auto-deploys a protective aura when HP falls below 20%.
Weakness: Can only trigger once per day.
Item 6 – Titan Necklace
Boosts physical defense by 40%.
Weakness: Disables all offensive skills for 10 seconds after activation.
Bidding Results:
Unnamed Player won Item 1 (Sword of Flame) by giving up a treasured memory.
Gal won Item 2 (Cloak of Protection) by bidding a full day of coma.
Migz won Item 6 (Titan Necklace) by giving up five years' worth of taste memory.
The moment the bidding ended, a new rule was declared:
“Stealing Time: For the next 5 minutes, you may attack to take another player’s item.”
THE FIGHT
Unnamed Player, clutching the Sword of Flame, was immediately targeted by Amore.
Silent. Focused. Dangerous.
She watched his patterns, reading his surface thoughts like headlines.
“They’re going to come at me from the left—”
She moved right.
In a blur, she was inside his guard. One precise strike to the neck. The sword clattered. Blood floated.
[Unnamed Player – HP: 0/100]
Amore took the sword.
Gal, weakened by her coma-bid, tried to run with the Cloak of Protection.
Taan caught her mid-air.
“I like you,” Taan grinned, “but I’m gonna need that.”
She boosted her leg, launching a car-level kick.
[Gal – HP: -40]
The cloak activated just before she hit the wall. She survived.
But the item flickered—now in Taan’s possession.
Migz was ready.
Wearing the Titan Necklace, his body glowed with armor. When two players attacked, his skin turned metallic. They couldn’t get through.
He knocked both out cold, then fell to one knee—his taste memory now gone. But he kept the necklace.
When the timer ended, only eight remained:
Gerbert, Rann, Ace, Taan, Kokay, Amore, Gal, Migz.
All others… were corpses.
At the exit, the survivors looked at each other—tired, cautious, silent.
Amore said nothing, holding the Sword of Flame.
Gal clutched her ribs.
Migz stood tall, frost clinging to his beard.
None of them joined the group.
Rann muttered, “To each their own.”
Gerbert nodded.
The game was done. But the war continued.
Chapter 9.1
Side Story: Amore’s Notes (POV)
Amore sat cross-legged in an empty Safe Zone pod on Floor 29. The dome hummed faintly around her, designed to evoke peace—sunlight filtered through simulation, the gentle rustle of trees piped in through ambient sound.
She didn’t care for it.
But she liked the silence.
Her notebook rested on her lap, black ink already filling several pages in short, precise strokes. No doodles. No flourishes. Just diagrams, layouts, names, and weapon forms—distilled strategy in flowing cursive.
She flipped to a fresh page.
Did not speak.
Did not sleep.
She wrote.
Her long bangs veiled her eyes. A flickering holo-lamp overhead cast her features in soft rhythm.
Taan
Kinetic boost surges. Powerful reflexes. Self-regulating strain. Vulnerable to internal backlash. She moves like she’s always five seconds from self-destruction—but knows it.
Amore remembered the feel of her mind. Controlled chaos. Calculating.
Taan thought in angles, momentum, pain thresholds.
Amore could respect that.
Migz
Ice controller. Wide-radius utility. Strong defensive logic. His motivation is clear, admirable. Protective mindset rooted in principle, not panic.
Amore hadn’t seen him speak much, but she’d seen him act.
That impressed her.
His ice and Ace’s plants were distant cousins—both controllers of space, condition, and tempo—but the temperatures were emotional, not elemental.
Ace ran hot. Migz ran cold.
Opposites. But equal in force.
Gal
Sound wave-based ability. Interface mod on dominant hand. Unsure if activated recently—no visible use. But thoughts align with vibration, frequency, range.
Amore tapped her pen thoughtfully on that one.
She hadn’t seen Gal use her power. Not directly. But Gal’s thoughts vibrated differently—literal patterns, pulsing in tempo like a singer before a note drop.
“I can charge it. I can push it. Not now. Not here. Wait—wait—”
Unspoken. Unused.
Amore tilted her head.
A girl saving her real song.
Smart.
Ace
Botanical toolkit. Bloom mines, vines, thorn-laced defense. Prefers crowd disruption to direct assault. Weaponized performance.
Ace's mind was all fireworks.
“Keep smiling, they’re watching.”
“Left flank—cover with pollen.”
“Make it look good. If I die, I’ll die beautiful.”
It was almost annoying.
But underneath the pageantry?
Precision.
Ace thought in tactics, just cloaked it in charm. A battlefield conductor—dripping in color, but deadly as roots breaking stone.
Gerbert
Conjuration class. Rapid rune construction. High adaptive logic. Emotional discipline used as energy conservation. Core unknown.
Gerbert didn’t “think” the same way as the others.
He calculated.
Even when hit. Even when breathing heavy.
His surface thoughts were shallow—by design. Locked doors. Echo chambers. His emotions were hidden under layers of cooling fans and schematic overlays.
But Amore had caught pieces during a fight.
“Recalibrate—0.6 delay—rotate left turret. Save drone. Save them.”
Cold logic.
But aimed to protect.
That made him dangerous.
Rann
Phase capability. Molecular pass-through. No spoken thought, mostly visual processing. Operates by feel. Impossible to predict—but not impulsive.
Rann was difficult.
Not because she hid anything. Because she didn’t verbalize anything. Her brain moved through instincts more than words.
When she fought, her thoughts weren’t sentences.
They were images. Pulse timings. Calculated shadows.
Amore could only gather fleeting impressions.
A breath before a strike.
A corridor she hadn’t turned into yet.
Stone.
Stillness.
Pain, then nothing.
They were good.
Stronger than she’d expected.
But not unreadable.
The chaos made it easy.
In battle, minds were loud.
Focused.
Clumsy.
Desperate.
People thought the chaos would hide them—but all it did was open the floodgates.
Survive. Kill. Win. Hide. Run. Steal. Guard. Push. Don’t die.
Every thought, every instinct—surfaced.
And Amore was there.
Listening.
Amore glanced down at her lap, where the Sword of Flame lay across her legs. It pulsed gently—heat just beneath its hilt, like it remembered the fire it was born from.
She had taken it. Cleanly.
She traced a finger down its edge.
Weakness: Heat retention. Prolonged use requires dispersion. But the strike? The strike is instant. It burns before they know it lands.
She smiled.
“This will do,” she murmured.
They still thought she was just quiet.
Still thought she was just observing.
Still hadn’t noticed she never missed a beat.
Let them focus on surviving.
Amore was already hunting.
Chapter 10
Whispers Between Floors
Location: Safe Zone – Floor 24
The grass here was soft, kissed with dew that shimmered beneath the glow of ancient lanterns. Above, the sky was a flat dome of dim light, painted in muted stars that never shifted. All around them, a thin veil of magic pulsed faintly in the air—a barrier marking the Safe Zone of Floor 24.
For once, no one was hunting them. No monsters. No traps. No clock ticking down.
Just silence, and breath.
The campfire crackled at the center of their small camp, flames flickering blue and gold from the conjuration module Gerbert had set down. Everyone sat close, ringed in by exhaustion and warmth.
Taan sat with her elbows on her knees, holding the Cloak of Protection in her lap. Its texture was strange—part cloth, part something else. It shimmered like heat on stone.
“Only activates when I’m still,” she said to no one in particular, flipping the fabric between her fingers. “So I gotta choose. Punch… or survive.”
Gerbert looked up from where he was repairing a scorched mini-drone. “You don’t punch gently either.”
Taan smirked but said nothing.
Across from her, Kokay huddled in a thick hoodie, her oversized bag sitting like a loyal pet at her side. She wrapped her hands around a cup of steaming tea—Gerbert had added a few conjured herbs to help her nerves. It smelled like mint and rice.
She hesitated, then said, “Um… so. My bag’s enchanted.”
Rann raised a brow. “Like… how enchanted?”
“It doesn’t weigh more no matter what I put in it.” Kokay unzipped the top, reaching in elbow-deep, and pulled out a heavy-looking lantern. “I always thought that was normal. My mom used to buy bags like this all the time.”
A pause. Everyone stared.
Ace, eyes wide, leaned in theatrically. “Kokay. Babe. You might be richer than God.”
Kokay blinked. “I… don’t think that’s true?”
Ace burst into laughter and collapsed into the grass. “She’s adorable,” they wheezed.
Meanwhile, Rann rolled one shoulder, flexing her gloved hand. “I phased through water today. Thirty seconds, give or take.”
Gerbert raised an eyebrow. “That’s… big.”
“Yeah,” Rann said. “Feels different. Harder to keep shape. But doable.”
“Nice,” Taan muttered. “We’re gonna need that later.”
Ace took a sip of their own tea—something floral and gold—and waved a hand. “Also, I gave some of my winnings to a shelter.”
Rann blinked. “What shelter?”
“There’s a cross-world donation button in the shop. I picked three—dogs, cats, and something called a ‘sleepy marmot reserve.’” They shrugged. “Felt right.”
Gerbert looked genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know that system even worked.”
“Apparently it does.” Ace winked. “You’re welcome, marmots.”
The fire crackled.
And then—footsteps.
They weren’t loud. Just measured. Intentional.
Two figures stepped into the light.
The first was tall and thin, wearing a charcoal coat and carrying a sketchpad under one arm. His eyes were sharp, but not hostile. The second, just behind him, was lithe and elegant. Pale hair fell over one shoulder. From her back extended a pair of folded wings—feathered, silver-tipped, and unmistakably real.
“Whoa,” Ace whispered. “Wings.”
The man spoke first. “We’re not here to fight.”
They paused.
“My name is Liem. This is my fiancee, Venus. We saw your team during the last game.”
Venus gave a polite nod.
Liem continued, “We’re proposing a temporary alliance. We’re not weak. But we know how this place works. Strong groups survive. Lone pairs… don’t.”
Gerbert studied them carefully. “You said alliance. What do you bring?”
Liem lifted his sketchpad. “I draw. Objects, creatures. I can make them real. But it’s… sensitive. My emotions affect their form. Fear, anger—it distorts the conjuration.”
“And me,” Venus added softly, stepping forward. “I can fly. I can fight from the air. But I pay for it in blood. Each flight takes from me.”
Ace looked her up and down, nodding in appreciation. “That’s dramatic. I love it.”
The team fell into a brief silence. Then Rann nodded once. “We vote.”
No words were needed. In Deadlink, trust had to move fast or not at all.
Kokay gave a small thumbs-up.
Gerbert didn’t even pause. “You’re in. Temporary.”
Liem exhaled slowly, tension easing from his shoulders. “Thank you.”
Venus smiled. It was faint but real.
---
That night, as the lanterns swayed and the campfire dimmed, eight players rested beneath a sky that never moved. The breeze stirred leaves, and somewhere in the forest beyond the barrier, something large moved—but could not cross.
For now, they were safe.
And for a moment, it felt like peace.
But peace, in Deadlink, never lasted long.
Chapter 11
Rumblings and Roots
Location: Safe Zone – Floor 24
The Safe Zone had a strange kind of peace to it—the type that always felt temporary. The wind rustled through tree branches, birds chirped, and distant footsteps echoed softly over the grassy trails.
Taan stood near the edge of camp, adjusting the Cloak of Protection around her shoulders. It shimmered briefly whenever she stilled, then dimmed the moment she moved.
“Ugh,” she grunted, shifting her stance again. “So it only kicks in if I’m a statue?”
Ace twirled up beside her, holding a sprouting bud between two fingers. “That’s the poetry of it, darling. Be still, be shielded. Move, and you’re meat.”
Taan arched a brow. “You saying I should just stand there and tank hits?”
Ace spun once, then clapped his hands dramatically. “No, no, no. You must pose. Like so!” He struck a flamboyant stance, chin lifted, arms wide.
Taan snorted. “You’re hopeless.”
“Hopelessly talented,” Ace replied with a wink.
He turned and raised both hands. From the earth, a massive sunflower bloomed upward—tall as a man, its center thick and textured like a barricade.
“Ta-da! Sunflower Shield. Durable. Stylish. Photosynthetic.”
Then he flicked his wrist, releasing a drifting cloud of pollen that glittered in the air before sizzling into a nearby stone. The rock hissed where the pollen clung to it, etching into the surface.
“Deadly pollen. Slow burn. Sticky. Smells nice.”
“Alright,” Taan admitted, nodding. “That’s pretty sick.”
Behind them, Rann emerged from a tree trunk, wiping sweat from her brow.
“No more backlash,” she said. “Phased through solid bark and back without puking.”
“That’s big,” Gerbert said, looking up from his notes. He was hunched by the fire, sketching gadget diagrams into a conjuring pad. A half-formed gravity disk flickered beside him.
Kokay approached with a tray of hot drinks just as his eyes narrowed.
“Company,” he muttered.
From the shadows of the woods, four figures stepped out.
At the front was a tall, muscular woman with red braids and animated tattoos sliding across her arms like living creatures. She walked with confidence and casual ease.
“Relax,” she said. “Not here to start anything. Name’s Jaja. Team Rage.”
Beside her came Andrea, smiling serenely. Her arm had transformed into something between a falcon’s talon and a panther’s limb. She raised it in greeting.
Behind them was a high school-aged girl with a storm in her stride. Sheg, her school uniform singed and her hands crackling with electricity.
Last was Migz—quiet, frost trailing from his boots, his eyes scanning calmly. His presence alone dropped the air a few degrees.
Gerbert stood. “Migz. From the auction game.”
“Yeah,” Taan added. “The guy who held his ground and kept the Titan Necklace.”
Migz gave a respectful nod.
“Ice user,” Ace said. “Deadly, efficient, no theatrics. Kinda my opposite. I dig it.”
Jaja’s eyes flicked over the group, finally landing on the talk of the town, Kokay.
“So it’s true,” she said. “We’ve got a local Deadlink celebrity in our midst.”
Kokay nearly dropped the tray.
Jaja smirked. “You’ve got, what, two fan clubs? Maybe three? Some of them write poems about your clairvoyance.”
Ace clutched his chest. “They do? I want in.”
Kokay’s cheeks flushed red. “I—I didn’t ask for any of that.”
“Well, you’ve got it,” Jaja said. “Problem is, fame paints a target on your back. Doesn’t matter if you asked for it.”
“We can defend ourselves,” Taan said firmly.
“Sure,” Jaja nodded. “But it’s not always about how strong you are. Sometimes it’s about how visible you are.”
Andrea smiled wider. “Sometimes it’s about envy.”
Sheg turned without a word and walked off into the woods.
Migz lingered, then gave a small bow. “Good to see you again,” he said quietly, before following.
As Jaja turned, she paused. “Just a warning. Friendly. Player to player.”
She looked over her shoulder one last time.
“Watch your back.”
And then they were gone.
The group stood in silence.
“Y’know,” Rann finally said, “I think I liked them.”
“Same,” Taan muttered. “Doesn’t mean I trust them.”
“They’re definitely watching us now,” Gerbert added, going back to his notes.
Ace sidled up to Kokay, nudging her. “Two fan clubs? Girl, you’ve made it.”
Kokay groaned, hiding her face behind the tray.
Chapter 11.1
Side Story: The Princess
Location: Safe Zone – Floor 24, Campfire Night
The night air was cool and quiet, the usual tension of Deadlink fading beneath the shimmering barrier that encased their camp. Firelight danced across old trees, their bark catching the glow like silent sentinels. The group was asleep or winding down, nestled in their own blankets and thoughts.
Kokay sat a little apart at first, hugging her knees near the edge of the fire's warmth. Her oversized bunny hoodie was pulled up over her head, shadows curling around her small figure.
Gerbert was the first to notice.
He moved closer, his conjured campfire crackling quietly between them. Rann joined not long after, arms folded, silent as ever but present.
They didn’t push her to speak. But something in the night—the soft breeze, the way her tea had gone cold in her hands—made Kokay exhale slowly and murmur, “Can I tell you something?”
Gerbert just nodded. Rann tilted her head.
“I was living like a princess,” Kokay began, voice quiet and small. “Not the tiara-and-ballroom kind, but... comfortable. Silly. My parents—mom and dad—they own a chain of logistics companies. Not flashy, but huge. And successful. I never had to think about money.”
She hesitated, glancing up at the stars flickering through the barrier. “We had staff. Drivers. Cooks. I had a stylist for a bit in middle school, if you can believe that.”
Gerbert blinked. “That’s... rare.”
Rann raised an eyebrow, curious.
Kokay rubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. “They enrolled me in Brightvale International.”
That made both of them pause.
Gerbert’s brows lifted. “Brightvale? That Brightvale?”
Even Rann’s stoicism cracked with a soft scoff. “Only the richest of rich get in there. Ace mentioned it once. Said they served imported steak at lunch.”
Kokay flushed. “It’s not that fancy…”
Gerbert gave her a deadpan look. “They have a climbing wall with self-adjusting gravity. That’s not a normal school.”
She looked down, embarrassed. “Yeah, well. I never fit in. My friends—if you could call them that—were all polished and perfect. They teased me. Called me a spoiled crybaby. Said I couldn’t do anything without someone holding my hand.”
Rann was silent.
Kokay’s hands tightened on her hoodie sleeves. “When Deadlink got popular, they dared me to sign up. Said I’d be the first to drop out. That I’d cry in the lobby and uninstall.”
Her voice cracked then—but only a little.
“But I didn’t,” she said. “I’m still here.”
Gerbert’s voice was quiet. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” She sniffled, laughing softly at herself. “I cry a lot. I panic. But… I think I like helping people more than I hate being scared. I think I want to be useful.”
Rann, after a long silence, leaned back against a rock and said simply, “You are.”
Kokay blinked.
“You’re still here,” Rann added, her tone as firm as stone. “And that means something.”
They didn’t speak after that, not for a while. But when the fire dimmed and the camp grew quiet, Kokay inched closer to the flames. Her face, usually twitching with anxiety, was soft in the firelight.
She slept soundly that night—closer to her team than ever before.
Chapter 12
Friends, Features, and Foes
Location: Safe Zone – Floor 24
The tranquil terrace of grass, winding stone paths, and gently swaying lanterns painted a picture of peace. Yet beneath the calm, tension hung like mist. For Team Gerbert, it was a time to rest—but also to reflect.
Near their tent, Rann sat with a towel draped over her head, eyes closed but never quite at ease. Kokay changed into a fresh oversized sweater, patterned with softly blinking sheep—the fabric humming with gentle enchantments. She hugged a warm cup between her hands, watching the quiet hum of the Safe Zone around them.
Gerbert flipped through his conjuration notes with a furrowed brow, while Ace knelt by a cluster of his combat plants, watering them carefully with recycled dew. A low hum vibrated through his vines, carrying a subtle song only the greenery could hear.
A soft system chime broke the silence.
Rann cracked one eye open. “Liem and Venus added us,” she murmured, her voice casual but sharp.
Gerbert blinked. “Wait—what?” He looked up, confused, a page of sketches fluttering in his hand.
“They used the Add feature,” Rann said, tapping the glowing notification that floated by her shoulder.
Kokay leaned forward. “There’s an Add Friend feature?”
Right on cue, a faintly shimmering system message blinked into life:
NEW SYSTEM FUNCTION: SOCIAL NETWORK ACCESSIBLE
Add Friends: Available starting Floor 20
Party Invites
Emergency Call Function
Note: Many players overlook this due to panic or early elimination.
Ace chuckled, brushing dew off his hands. “So we’re a party now. How cute."
Earlier that day, the sky had been turning a soft amber, the breeze carrying the scent of grass and rain. Liem and Venus had approached the camp, moving with an easy grace.
“We’re heading out,” Liem said, sketchpad tucked under one arm. His tone was casual, but his eyes lingered on each of them, thoughtful. "But one call, and we’re back."
"You’re stronger than we expected," Venus added, her voice soft, her wings catching the dying light in a shimmer of white and gold. She offered them a graceful nod—an unspoken promise.
No ceremony. No drawn-out goodbyes. Just a quiet bond.
With that, they had turned and disappeared into the bustle of the Safe Zone, swallowed by the growing crowd.
Kokay clutched her cup a little tighter, watching them go. “Think we’ll see them again?”
Ace leaned back, the firelight dancing across his pink coat. “If fate wants us to," he said, a hint of fondness hidden in his grin.
Taan only shrugged, resting her chin on her knees, silent as ever.
Night fell.
The grass around the Safe Zone shimmered under thin enchantments—bright enough to feel safe, but dim enough to leave room for shadows.
It was Taan who noticed it first. A flicker in the dark. Movement—fast, low, deliberate.
“Movement. South side," she muttered, standing without a sound.
Gerbert’s response was immediate. “Positions,” he ordered under his breath, already conjuring a pulsing orb that emitted low, screeching sonar—too high-pitched for most to hear.
Kokay stiffened. “Why would anyone—” she started, but her voice trailed off as figures began weaving through the darkness.
The first attacker never saw Rann coming.
She phased through a bush like a specter and slammed into him with a brutal sweep. His blade clattered harmlessly across the stones.
Another figure lunged for Ace—only to meet Taan’s boosted elbow square in the shoulder. There was a sharp crack of bone. He collapsed instantly with a strangled cry.
A third assailant leapt forward, aiming for Kokay. But vines snapped out of the ground mid-air, coiling him like a python, and slammed him hard into the dirt. Ace tightened his fist, the vines writhing one last time before retreating.
"PKers," Rann said flatly, stepping over the downed player without a flicker of hesitation.
The attackers scrambled away, bleeding and cursing into the night, their weapons abandoned.
Gerbert lowered his sonar orb, jaw tight. "Rumors were true then," he muttered. "Players killing for Blings... or just for the hell of it."
"Madness is spreading," Taan said, her voice like a stone dropped in a still pond.
Ace brushed dust from his sleeves with a grimace. “We’re lucky they were sloppy."
"We need better defenses," Gerbert said, already sketching out motion-triggered barriers to ring the camp tighter.
"We need more allies," Kokay whispered, setting her cup down with shaking hands but a steady gaze. “We can’t do this alone.”
The fire crackled on, flames dancing high and bright.
Beyond the warm circle of light, the shadows shifted.
The Safe Zone still shimmered with its careful enchantments. But now they knew:
Even in places of refuge, danger lingered—just outside the fire’s glow.
Chapter 12.1
Side Story: Venus & Liem
The campfire flickered against the carved stone of the small cavern they’d claimed for the night, far from the bustling Safe Zone. Liem’s sketchpad rested on his lap, while Venus stirred a modest pot of broth made from scavenged herbs and dried meat strips. Familiar silence stretched between them — not empty, but easy.
“You’re quiet,” Venus murmured, not looking up.
Liem’s charcoal slowed. “Just... thinking.”
“About them?”
He nodded. “They’re strong. Good, even. The way they fought… how they trust each other. It reminded me of why we joined.”
Venus leaned back on her hands, watching the firelight play across Liem’s face. “And we’ve made it this far together.”
She smirked. “Took me weeks to track you down once I got pulled in. You really don’t make it easy, you know.”
“I didn’t think you’d follow,” he said softly, eyes still on the flickering page. “I should’ve known better.”
Venus nudged him with her shoulder. “Of course I followed. We were a team before this world. Nothing here changes that.”
They’d met in college — Liem, the quiet artist with ink-stained fingers and sleepless nights; Venus, the unapologetic high-flyer with a fire in her gut and steel in her wings. Their bond had started in study halls and moonlit rooftops, sealed over years of shared ambition and whispered dreams.
When Deadlink pulled them in, it became the latest challenge they faced together — a promise, not just to survive, but to make meaning of the madness. Liem’s sketches carried shape and soul; Venus’s flight carried hope and fury.
As she ladled broth into two tin mugs, she added, “We’ll keep our distance from Team Gerbert for now. I like them, but we need to move at our pace.”
Liem accepted the mug and smiled. “We’ll cross again, I think.”
Venus sat beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. “When we do, we’ll still be side by side.”
In the hush that followed, shadows from Liem’s conjurations curled like ink along the floor — leashed to his feet, as always. Venus tucked her arm around his and closed her eyes.
They didn’t need words. Not tonight.
Chapter 13
Welcome to the Family
Two days passed in the Safe Zone of Floor 24. The group had rested, repaired their gear, and prepared for the next climb. Spirits were high. They were getting used to each other—trust building in small, steady ways. As the final bags were packed and the map reviewed, a sudden sound halted everything.
Kokay was crying.
Standing near the gate, eyes glistening and fingers fidgeting with her bunny hoodie strings, she finally blurted out:
“C-Can I… can I join the party?”
Everyone turned. Confused.
Taan blinked once… then burst out laughing.
“What are you talking about?” Ace asked, stepping forward with a concerned frown. “I thought you were already part of the team!”
All eyes turned to Gerbert.
“I mean,” Gerbert said with a shrug, “I’m fine with it if everyone else is.”
Rann folded her arms. “We just needed to check with you, since you’re our leader.”
That made Gerbert freeze. “Wait, I’m the leader?”
Taan doubled over with laughter. “Oh my god, how long did it take you to realize?!”
Ace giggled, then gently turned back to Kokay. “Sweetheart, why’d you think you weren’t part of the team?”
Kokay sniffled, eyes darting nervously. “Because… because no one added me as a friend… or sent me a party invite…”
There was a silence. Then Taan laughed even harder. Rann bit her lower lip, trying not to crack. Ace covered his mouth. Gerbert just shook his head, trying not to smile but failing.
“Oh, Kokay,” Gerbert said warmly, “we’ve been traveling without adding each other. We’re a mess like that. But I’ll fix it now.”
He pulled up his interface.
One by one, the notifications popped up.
[Ace has added Kokay as a friend.]
[Rann has added Kokay as a friend.]
[Taan has added Kokay as a friend.]
[Gerbert has added Kokay as a friend.]
[Party Invitation: Gerbert → Kokay. ACCEPTED.]
“Welcome to the family, Kokay,” Gerbert said.
And Kokay, in front of the team, cried even harder—but this time from joy.
Chapter 13.1
Side Story : Team Rage
The woods on Floor 24 trembled.
It began with a threat barked from the shadow of a crumbled signpost:
“Hand over your blings, or we cut you down.”
Team Rage stood in the clearing, their path forward blocked by five PK players. Armor patched together from mismatched loot. Weapons dripping with overconfidence.
Jaja cracked her neck, braid swinging as she tilted her head. Then, with a smirk, she raised her fingers to her temple and twirled them in the crazy sign.
“Are you guys stupid? Or just gone?”
That was all it took.
The summoner raised both hands. Black glyphs spun around him as a human-sized stone golem burst from the earth with a deafening CRACK. To either side, two others lunged: one a speedster flickering in and out of motion, the other a woman with a curved scimitar, blade dancing like waterlight.
Andrea grinned. “Guess we’re skipping the warm-up.”
Lightning danced across Sheg’s fingers.
A single snap—ZRAKT!—and it raced down her arms, collecting at her knees, her calves, the soles of her feet. The ground shook as she launched forward, a blur of crackling fury, her laughter echoing.
She met the speedster mid-dash, their paths colliding like meteors. Her elbow struck first—BOOM!—discharging raw voltage through his ribs. The impact flung him into a tree, bark exploding on impact.
Andrea didn’t speak. She screeched.
Steel hissed against steel as she met the scimitar woman head-on, slamming their blades together in a brutal flurry. Andrea’s arms shimmered—her own transformation activating as her forearms morphed, skin giving way to scaled animal-like muscle, claws forming around the grip of her twin daggers.
“You cut me,” Andrea hissed, smiling with blood on her cheek. “I like you.”
The fight between them blurred, wild and intimate, like two beasts locked in a deadly waltz.
Meanwhile, Migz stepped forward with eerie calm, his breath fogging in the air despite the humid forest. With a flick of his wrist, ice coiled up from the soil like vines, lashing around the summoner’s ankles. The golem charged—too slow.
Migz didn’t even look at it.
He lifted his arm. A blade of ice crystallized in the air—then snapped forward like a spear, impaling the summoner through the shoulder. The golem froze, then crumbled, its master screaming behind it.
Migz adjusted his hood. “Should’ve brought more.”
From behind a moss-covered log, an archer released a silent arrow, aimed directly for Sheg’s back.
Before it even crossed halfway, Jaja’s eyes flicked.
She tapped her forearm. The tattoo on her bicep—an intricate spiral lance—glowed crimson and burst from her skin as a solid weapon, materializing in her hand.
In one fluid motion, she spun, raised her weapon, and batted the arrow out of the air. Her eyes scanned the forest.
She felt him—the hidden one creeping behind Migz.
“Five... six...” Jaja whispered. “Cute trick.”
She launched her lance. It spun once, twice—CRACK!—and impaled the hidden rogue through the leg, pinning him to a tree trunk. He screamed.
Jaja pulled the weapon back to her hand with a flick—her tattoos glowing faintly.
“I could use a warm-up,” she muttered, stepping into the fray with a wide, hungry grin.
By the end of the skirmish, the PKers were either unconscious, frozen, or bound with vines of electricity. No one died—barely. But they’d remember this.
Team Rage walked away unscratched.
And behind them, the forest seemed to whisper a new name across the leaves:
“Don’t mess with Rage.”
Chapter 13.2
Side Story : Linkbreakers
On the road to their next game, Team Gerbert takes a moment to finally add each other as friends. Kokay, always thoughtful, asks what their group should be called—and who the official leader is.
Taan, Rann, and Ace all agree instantly: it’s Gerbert.
Ace, dramatically stammering, says that while he usually lives for the spotlight, Gerbert deserves it this time. Rann affirms it without hesitation. Gerbert gives in with a sigh, accepting the role.
Thinking carefully, he names them Linkbreakers.
Rann smiles. Ace nods with flair. Taan casually agrees with hands in pockets. Kokay giggles.
The moment quietly defines them: a name that’s simple, practical, and true.
As they walk, they arrive at a massive gate—the entrance to their last game before Floor 30. Crowds of players are gathered outside, tension and anticipation in the air.
Chapter 14
The Labyrinth Gate
The gates of Floor 30 loomed high like ancient obsidian jaws waiting to swallow the players whole. Dozens of survivors had gathered at the base — some chatting nervously, others sharpening their weapons in grim silence.
Among them, Liem and Venus caught sight of the Linkbreakers.
Venus, still in flight mode, waved from the air. Liem adjusted his sketchpad and smiled warmly.
“Look who survived the forest and the vault,” Ace said, striking a pose.
“Long time no bleed,” Rann teased with a grin.
Liem and Venus walked over, the four of them easily falling into step, talking like no time had passed.
At a distance, Team Rage stood in their own corner — serious and quiet.
Jaja crossed her arms, glancing toward the Linkbreakers once but saying nothing.
Andrea leaned against a wall with her eyes shut, blade at her hip.
Sheg bounced lightning between her fingers like a toy.
Migz gave a silent nod when he saw Kokay glance their way.
Nearby, Duane and Gal laughed nervously — both of them clearly ready but trying to lighten the mood.
Ray sat cross-legged in the grass, whispering to a grasshopper like they were trading secrets.
Ysang had both hands on the stone gate, her fingers tracing the carvings like she was listening to the heartbeat of the place.
Then — the ground rumbled.
With a grinding groan, the Gate opened.
Inside lay a vast labyrinth, shifting with every tremor, breathing like a living thing. Monsters, traps, and dead ends awaited.
The goal? Find the exit. Survive. Or be swallowed.
---
Gerbert stepped forward and looked back at the group. “We’ll cover more ground if we split.”
There was a moment of hesitation, but heads nodded in agreement.
Team 1: Gerbert, Kokay, Taan
Team 2: Ace, Rann, Liem, Venus
With friend-links active and a shared party channel buzzing to life, they entered two different paths — each dark, winding, and full of unknown horrors.
The Labyrinth had begun.
Chapter 14.1
Walls and Whispers
The Labyrinth towered over them like a creature made of stone. Even Venus, with her wings stretched at full height, couldn’t rise high enough to see the full map — the shifting stone above closing quickly after every flap.
“This thing’s alive,” Rann muttered, phasing her hand through the wall only to gasp in pain. “Way too thick. Takes too much out of me.”
Ace conjured a blooming sunflower shield as a monster lunged from the shadows, its limbs like brittle twigs but sharp as blades.
Venus dive-bombed, wing blades slashing the beast in two.
Liem, sketchpad glowing, summoned a rugged beast with thick fur and claws, directing it with a calm but focused intensity.
“Let’s keep going. I’ll relay what we’ve learned,” Liem said, his voice steady.
He opened the shared comm. “Gerbert, update: walls too thick for Rann, Venus can’t fly above. Path’s crawling, but manageable. We’ll map what we can.”
Back at the other end…
---
Duane and Gal were locked in a chaotic fight. Duane’s clones flanked the twisted chimera ahead, striking in perfect unison with his twin axes. His breathing was tight but controlled — every movement precise.
“Back left, Duane!” Gal shouted, releasing a sharp, sonic burst to drive away another creature slinking in. Her waves were steadier now — not overloading like before, but striking with force and timing.
“You’ve been training,” Duane muttered, a grin flickering across his face.
“Only so I don’t get you killed,” Gal replied.
---
Elsewhere, Ray ducked beneath a crumbling arch, whispering, “What are you? What made you like this…”
But the creatures that skittered out were wrong — twisted thoughts, fractured memories, snarls of nothing coherent.
“They’re too far gone,” Ray whispered sadly, then reached for the jar at his belt. A cloud of insects poured out, forming a buzzing shroud. He vanished into the fog, fleeing silently into another corridor.
---
Ysang, always distant, touched the walls. Her fingertips pulsed with faint light, her eyes wide in concentration.
“The maze breathes… and it tells me where not to be,” she said to no one, drifting just before a trap activated — a ceiling spike plunging where she had stood.
The labyrinth shifted, and she ran, dodging with uncanny precision, letting the ground’s murmurs lead her deeper into the unknown.
Chapter 14.2
Univited Guests
Gerbert relayed the information to his team while checking the timer glowing above. Two and a half hours had passed. They were given six hours to get out. As Gerbert drafted a map, Kokay suddenly shouted, “An attack will happen in 30 seconds!”
Then—boom. Sheg landed with a crash, sending up a puff of dust. Andrea followed behind, waving with a cheerful smile. "Lovely day, isn't it?" she called out.
Taan grinned, instantly sensing that these two weren’t here for small talk. Sheg launched herself toward Gerbert with lightning-enhanced speed, but Taan intercepted her midair. The two women clashed, exchanging a flurry of kicks and punches that blurred in the air. Sparks danced at their feet as Sheg’s lightning-infused movements met Taan’s reinforced, calculated strikes.
“I didn’t know thunder came with such a terrible fashion sense,” Taan jabbed, ducking a wild strike.
“At least I don’t dress like an off-brand ninja!” Sheg snarled back, charging her fists.
Meanwhile, Andrea’s arms morphed into massive tiger claws, and she sprinted toward Kokay and Gerbert. Kokay's eyes widened, glowing faintly. She sidestepped at the last possible moment, her clairvoyance giving her a glimpse of the incoming swipe. Andrea missed, her claws grazing air.
“Fast little bunny,” Andrea grinned, shifting her lower body into horse legs for a sudden burst of speed.
Gerbert conjured a kinetic wall to block her charge, then sent a mini-drone whirring upward to get a better view. Andrea dodged a counterattack and spun toward him, claws ready, but Kokay shouted a warning just in time. Gerbert rolled aside, landing behind another conjured shield.
Sheg and Taan’s battle heated up. Sheg launched a lightning bolt into the ground to distract Taan, then kicked off a wall for an aerial assault. Taan twisted midair, intercepting her with a knee to the side. They landed, breathing hard, each smiling like they were enjoying it.
Then, suddenly, a cold gust swept in—Migz. With a simple stomp, ice spread across the ground, separating the fighters.
“Enough,” Migz said firmly, his voice calm. “Focus.”
Jaja appeared moments later, grabbing both Sheg and Andrea by their ears. “What did I just say about attacking allies?” she scolded, dragging them backward like misbehaving students. Andrea pouted. Sheg rolled her eyes.
Migz bowed slightly toward Gerbert’s team. “Apologies for the interruption.”
Jaja released the girls and turned back to the group. “Still… not bad,” she added with a smirk. “You’re not famous for nothing.”
As the dust settled, Gerbert checked on Taan and Kokay. “You two okay?”
Kokay nodded, wiping her eyes but smiling. Taan gave a thumbs-up, still catching her breath. Gerbert resumed drawing the map, contacting Liem to share updates and coordinate their efforts.
The labyrinth awaited, but tensions had eased. Rivalry turned into respect. The clock kept ticking.
Chapter 14.3
The Echo of Stone
The chaos within the labyrinth grew louder by the hour.
From the outer paths, the distant echoes of unnamed players shouting and fighting filtered through the thick stone walls. Some battled monsters with grit, others ran in circles—lost and exhausted. Amidst the frenzy, Ysang, a curly-haired, soft-spoken woman with an eerie calmness, noticed a few disoriented players struggling to find their way. She slowed, stared briefly, then turned and walked away, her quiet philosophy clear: survival comes first.
Ray, meanwhile, found a small group of panicking players. He paused, offered them hurried directions with his usual gentle clarity, then left on his own to find the exit. His walking stick tapped calmly against the stone with each step.
On another path, Duane and Gal stood back to back. Duane’s clones fought furiously beside him, mirroring his precise strikes. Gal, focused and sharp, sent sonic pulses that echoed through the corridors, shielding them from encroaching monsters. They shouted to nearby players, urging them to flee before charging ahead.
At the far end of the maze, the five-hour mark struck.
A group consisting of Gerbert, Kokay, Taan, Team Rage, several unaffiliated players, and finally Ysang all reached what they believed to be the exit. It was a towering wall—unmoving, unbreakable.
Migz stepped forward and struck it with ice-enhanced force. Nothing.
Sheg groaned in frustration and yelled into the air, furious but uncertain who to blame.
Gerbert knelt, drawing furiously on his sketchpad. Kokay reached for her clairvoyance, eyes glowing faintly, but Taan held her back.
"Save your strength. You're drained," she said, watching Kokay's panting form.
Gerbert stood. "It’s the entrance," he declared.
Everyone turned to him.
"The exit. It’s where we came in."
With urgency pulsing through him, he conjured a massive speaker.
"EVERYONE!" his voice boomed, reverberating through the maze. "GO BACK TO THE START! THAT’S THE EXIT! PASS IT ON!"
Taan followed with a yell, her voice sharp and commanding, "MOVE! WE DON’T HAVE TIME!"
On the other end, Ace, Venus, Rann, and Liem came running, wide grins on their faces.
Ace winked at them and turned to Venus and Liem. "That’s caps for you."
They sprinted down corridors, shouting to every player they passed: “Back to the entrance!”
Gal and Duane did the same, slashing through the final waves of monsters while urging others to escape.
Ray, still calm, offered brief guidance before moving faster than usual, keeping his direction steady.
Then, with only thirty minutes remaining, the entire labyrinth began to tremble.
Walls rumbled.
Ceilings cracked.
Stone began to collapse.
Panic surged. Yet amidst it, something greater surged too—unity.
Players who had never spoken before screamed directions to each other. Some helped the injured. Others held off monsters so that the weak could pass. For once, alliances didn’t matter. Everyone ran with the same goal: to make it out.
Team Rage fought like a single organism. Ysang glided through chaos with perfect timing. Ray tossed a jar of insects to obscure a horde’s view. Duane’s clones took hits meant for others. Gal’s sonic blasts opened paths. Venus flew overhead, directing traffic. Ace trailed vines to mark the safe path. Rann phased through stone to scout shortcuts. Kokay held on to Taan’s shoulder, still drained but determined. And Gerbert ran at the front, map in hand, voice hoarse from calling directions.
When the final wave of players burst through the collapsing entrance, the ground behind them caved in. Stone swallowed stone. The maze sealed forever.
Over 80% survived.
A record.
Far away, in a dimly lit chamber, an admin stood before a massive screen.
They watched as players cried, laughed, collapsed, and embraced. Some shouted to the sky. Others sat in stunned silence, breathing deep.
The admin stood still.
Then, slowly, they turned away—smiling—and left the room.
The screen dimmed, but the echo of stone and unity lingered long after.
Chapter 15
The Price of Secrets
Floor 30 had an artificial elegance to it. The Safe Zone looked more like a luxury casino lounge than a survivor’s haven. Neon signs shimmered over extravagant buildings, and quiet jazz played over hidden speakers. It felt detached from the chaos that brought players here—on the other side of the dungeon block, monsters still spawned. But here, players drank, exchanged secrets, traded in information.
Two weeks ago, Amore had cleared the last labyrinth. Her blade still smelled of scorched ozone and sweat, but she didn’t let that cling to her tonight. She was dressed in a slim black dress, high heels clicking against the polished marble of the Safe Zone’s bar lounge. She hated dressing up. But it was one of the instructions of the person she was meeting.
Amore paused at the entrance, scanning the room. Her eyes landed on a curvy figure in a back corner booth, waving at her with manicured fingers and a playful smile.
Mika.
Long wavy brown hair, eyes that sparkled with mischief, and a taste for clothes that turned heads—Mika was flirtatious, coy, and impossible to ignore. Her outfit barely followed the dress code, a shimmery top that revealed more than it hid and a skirt that did nothing to tone her down. She was all curves, all confidence. Known by very few as an intel. Protected by different guilds because of her value.
"Ami-Ami! You’re late," Mika teased, holding a half-finished cocktail.
Amore slid into the seat opposite her, crossing her legs with a quiet sigh. “Don’t call me that.”
“Oh, relax,” Mika waved it off, leaning in with a gleam in her eyes. “So! Before we get down to boring business—can I just say, you look gorgeous tonight? That slit? That cut? You could kill a man with just that look.”
Amore didn’t react. Mika didn’t mind. She launched into a rapid-fire stream of chatter anyway.
“Anyway, have you seen the new Gilded Lips magazine cover? Ugh, the colors are off but that perfume insert? Girl, divine! And don’t even get me started on that new boy band—what’s their name again? Aether Rush? The lead singer? Smoldering. I swear, if I wasn’t so busy being fabulous, I’d totally join their fan guild.”
“Mika.”
Mika blinked as Amore cut her off. “Let’s get to it.”
The intel pouted dramatically, resting her chin in her palm. “You’re no fun, you know that?” But she pulled something from under the table—a small silver flash drive. She handed it to Amore.
The moment it touched Amore’s fingers, it disintegrated in a shimmer of data.
“Everything you asked for,” Mika said sweetly. “Floor 30 dungeon block details. Boss mechanics. Player profiles. You know, the usual.”
Amore nodded once. “Thanks.”
Mika leaned back and twirled her straw. “By the way, I’m spending your thirty million blings on shoes and dresses. I have a shopping problem. Thought you should know.”
“I don’t care.”
“You never care,” Mika sighed dramatically. “Cold-blooded. No wonder people fear you.”
Amore stood to leave.
“You do look stunning tonight though,” Mika added, tone warmer. “Just saying.”
Amore paused at the doorway, eyes unreadable. “Goodbye, Mika.”
Mika ordered another beer as the door shut behind her. She took a sip, glancing at the live band now playing on stage.
“How the hell did she even find me…” she muttered to herself. Then smirked. “This new wave of players… intriguing.”
---
From Amore’s point of view, she never revealed how she tracked Mika down—but when she first arrived on Floor 30, she had read the minds of several wandering players. It didn’t take long to piece together who held the real power in this glittering facade of safety.
She inserted the flash drive into a data port at the Tower of Information, one of Floor 30’s tallest facilities.
The files opened.
—Dungeon Report: Floor 30 Block—
> A morphing dungeon with a rotating spawn system. Boss adapts and counters the abilities of those who enter. No consistent patterns. High casualty rate.
Then came the list of names under: Potential Threats & Notable Players.
Judy – Perfumer. Guild leader. All-female group. Floor 50.
Valentino – Flame user. Guild master. Ruthless. Believes in strength above all. Last seen operating on Floor 50.
Then one last name.
Gerbert Maddox.
Amore smiled slowly. Shocked. Amused.
“Thirty million well spent,” she murmured. Money she earned from robbing player-killers—provoked or not. They deserved it.
And now she had everything she needed to prepare.
Game on.
