The Tower rose from the heart of Ashvale City like a blade driven into the earth by some forgotten god, its surface a smooth black stone that swallowed light rather than reflected it. Two hundred years since the Great Awakening, and the thing still made people’s skin crawl to look at directly. William Belforht had stopped feeling that particular unease a long time ago. Now it was just the place he went to almost die.
He stood at the base entrance with five others, checking the straps on his worn leather satchel for the third time. Not because it needed checking. Because his hands needed something to do that wasn’t shaking.
’Floor one today. Maybe floor two if Reyes is feeling ambitious.’ He breathed out slowly. ’Just stay alive. Stay useful. That’s the job.’
The raid leader, a broad shouldered C Rank hunter named Dorian Reyes, was running through the party roster with the bored efficiency of a man who had done this a hundred times and expected nothing new from the hundred and first. His Talent was Iron Body, Rare grade, which made him nearly impossible to kill on the early floors. It also made him insufferable, but nobody paid an insufferable tank to be pleasant.
"Kessa, front line with me. Bram, you’re on ranged suppression. Ilsa, healing support, you know the drill." Reyes’s eyes slid over to William last, the way they always did, like an afterthought he was obligated to acknowledge. "Belforht. Support."
"Right." William adjusted the satchel strap again.
Kessa, a lean girl with a Blade Dance Talent that had earned her an Uncommon grade and a reputation for showing off, snorted from where she stood sharpening a dagger that didn’t need sharpening. "Support. That’s generous. What exactly does a Common grade tamer support, Reyes? Morale?"
A ripple of laughter went through the party. William kept his eyes on his satchel.
’Ignore it. You’ve heard worse.’
He had. Seven years of it, ever since the awakening ceremony at age ten when the crystal in front of him had flickered a weak, uncertain blue instead of the bright colors that marked real potential. Taming Talent. Common grade. The examiner had barely looked up from his clipboard before writing it down, already thinking about the next child in line.
Taming Talents were considered a joke outside of a handful of specialized guilds. Sure, in theory a tamer could bond monsters and turn them into allies. In practice, on floors this low, there was nothing worth taming. The monsters were too weak to be useful and too aggressive to approach peacefully. William’s seven years of training had produced exactly one result: he could tame low tier vermin that nobody wanted, and he could sense monster auras a few seconds before anyone else in the party.
That second part was the only reason Reyes kept bringing him along. Early warning, free of charge, in exchange for a fifth of a share.
"He’s here because I said he’s here," Reyes said flatly, already turning toward the Tower entrance. "Move out."
The inside of the Tower never looked the same twice. That was one of its many mysteries, one of thousands that the Global Hunter Association’s research division had spent two centuries failing to fully explain. This time the first floor manifested as a stretch of grey marshland, reeds taller than a man swaying in a wind that had no source, the sky above replaced by a flat, sourceless white glow.
William felt it almost immediately. A pulse, low and animal, somewhere off to the northeast.
"Marsh crawlers," he said. "Maybe six. Northeast, close."
Reyes grunted an acknowledgment and adjusted course without thanking him. Kessa didn’t even glance back.
’Six months ago I would have let that sting. Not anymore.’
They cleared the crawlers without much trouble, Kessa’s blades a blur of motion, Bram peppering the stragglers with arrows infused with wind mana, Reyes standing in the middle of it like a wall nothing could move. William stayed at the back, watching, occasionally calling out positions his aura sense picked up before the others noticed. It was the only value he brought to a fight like this and everyone in the party knew it, including him.
Floor two was a burned out forest. Floor three, a cave system slick with something that glowed faintly purple and stank of rot. By the time they reached the stairwell down to floor four, the party had thinned Bram’s arrow supply to half and Ilsa had used most of her mana keeping minor wounds closed.
"That’s enough for today," Reyes announced, wiping sweat from his brow. "We push floor four next week once Bram restocks."
Kessa didn’t argue. Nobody did. Four floors in a single trip was already more than most low tier parties managed, and greed had killed more hunters than monsters ever had. William felt something in his chest loosen slightly at the words. Four floors, no injuries beyond minor cuts, and his own contribution modest but real.
’Not a bad day.’
He should have known better than to think that.
The stairwell down pulsed faintly as they approached it, the Tower’s peculiar way of acknowledging a party’s intent to progress. But before anyone could step onto it, the air around them shifted, the same subtle pressure change William had learned to recognize in his years of scraping by on early floors. Something was here that didn’t belong on floor three.
"Wait." William’s voice came out sharper than he intended. "Something’s coming. It’s strong. Stronger than anything we’ve felt today."
Reyes turned; irritation written plainly across his face; the kind of irritation reserved for support members who spoke without being asked. "Define strong."
William closed his eyes, letting his Taming Talent stretch outward the way he’d practiced a thousand times in empty training yards nobody had bothered to watch. The pulse he felt back made his stomach drop.
"I don’t know exactly. But it feels like it doesn’t belong on this floor. Something got displaced, maybe from deeper down."
A displaced monster. Rare, dangerous, unpredictable, everyone in the party had heard stories. Sometimes when a Tower reset its floors, something powerful from a lower level ended up stranded somewhere it shouldn’t be, confused and violent until it found its way back or was killed.
Ilsa’s hand went to the pendant at her throat, a nervous habit. "We should retreat. Now, before it finds us."
Reyes hesitated only a moment before nodding. "Kessa, Bram, fall back to the stairwell up. Belforht, keep tracking it, tell us if it’s closing distance."
They moved as a group, quick and controlled, the practiced discipline of hunters who had survived long enough to know panic got people killed. William kept his senses stretched thin, monitoring the pulse of whatever lurked nearby, and for a moment it seemed like they might slip away clean.
Then the ground shook.
Not from footsteps. From something closer, from directly beneath them, and William barely had time to register the wrongness of that before the marsh floor split open in a spray of black earth and something enormous surged upward between the party and the stairwell up.
Three heads. Three sets of burning red eyes. Fur so dark it seemed to drink the light around it, and where its breath touched the reeds, they curled and blackened and burst into pale flame.
"Cerberus." Reyes’s voice had gone very quiet. "That’s a Floor Ten guardian. What in the hells is a Floor Ten guardian doing on Floor Three."
Nobody answered him, because nobody knew, and because the beast was already moving.