The difference between a Tower and a dungeon was something William had never properly understood until he started exploring both, and it took Reyes’s casual mention to finally force the distinction into clarity.
"Towers are anchors," Reyes had explained during their last tavern visit, gesturing with his cup. "They’re fixed points where the dimensional barriers thin out. Been in the same spots for two hundred years, same layout, predictable progression. A Floor Ten is always a Floor Ten, a boss is always there waiting."
"And dungeons?"
"Natural rifts. Monsters pushed through cracks in the barrier and dug in, created their own lairs over time. Smaller scale, less organized, no guaranteed floor structure. You might find three different monster types inhabiting the same space, or you might find nothing at all if the rift’s been picked clean recently." Reyes had paused, taking a drink. "Dungeons are unpredictable, but they’re also where the real hunters make their money. No Association oversight, no regulations on what you can tame or keep, treasure’s yours entirely if you can extract it."
That unpredictability was exactly what had drawn William deeper into a rift three miles east of the city than he’d intended to venture, following Frost’s lead into passages that twisted in ways no Tower’s orderly floors ever did, monster density rising and falling without warning or pattern. He’d left Cerberus in the Realm hours ago, trusting Frost’s scouting to keep them clear of anything that would require the guardian’s full attention, and was beginning to reconsider that decision when the scream cut through the dungeon’s low, ambient noise.
It wasn’t close, perhaps two passages ahead and slightly downward, but it was unmistakably human and unmistakably in distress.
William’s hand went to the sword at his hip on instinct, Frost’s head snapping up from where the fox had been investigating a side passage, both of them moving toward the sound without any real discussion about it. The rational part of William’s mind offered several excellent reasons not to get involved in someone else’s emergency—he didn’t know the situation, didn’t know if it was a trap, didn’t know if whoever was screaming was worth the risk.
The irrational part, the one that had walked back into a Tower alone to find a man he’d barely liked, overrode all of it, and William pressed forward.
He found her backed against the far wall of a wide chamber, surrounded, seven goblins in a loose circle around her that tightened slowly, clearly enjoying the hunt more than rushing the kill. She was young, maybe sixteen or seventeen, dressed in proper hunter’s armor that had already taken enough damage to suggest she’d been fighting for a while, her left arm hanging awkwardly at her side, blood soaking down past her elbow.
[Goblin (Common Grade) x7]
[Target: Injured hunter, isolated, low combat ability]
"Fall back!" William shouted, and every head in the chamber snapped toward him, the goblins’ attention dividing in that crucial instant between the wounded prey they were savoring and this new threat storming into their territory.
The girl’s eyes went wide at the sight of him, some mix of relief and new fear crossing her expression, and William didn’t give himself time to think through what came next. He’d trained for two weeks straight on dungeon monsters weaker than this, had expanded Doppelganger into something that held its strength better with every use, and these were Common grade trash that had only been dangerous to a single, wounded hunter because numbers were doing the work individual strength couldn’t manage.
[Doppelganger — Activate]
The split came clean and immediate now, William’s attention dividing between two bodies with the ease of long practice, both copies moving at speeds that would have been impossible for his original frame alone. One copy went for the girl’s side, moving to block her from the goblins’ easy reach while the other charged directly into the pack’s center, sword rising to catch the first goblin’s crude spear and drive it back.
[Doppelganger Active: 2 Bodies]
[Combined Strength: 82% per body]
The improvement from his last Doppelganger deployment registered automatically in his awareness even as his body moved through the fight, muscle memory and increasingly steady control combining to make the combat feel less like desperate improvisation and more like choreography he’d been practicing for weeks.
The goblins pressed forward in their pack instinct, trying to overwhelm through numbers, and William met each attack with strikes that felt clean, precise, no wasted motion or panicked deflection the way his younger self would have managed. His blocking copy drove the girl further back into the chamber’s corner, creating space, while his offensive copy tore through the goblins’ loose formation, leaving two of them bleeding on the stone floor before the pack had fully registered how badly they’d misjudged this particular meal.
Frost darted in from the side, silver fur barely visible as it moved, Frost Step propelling the fox in quick, brutal circuits around the remaining goblins, striking at legs and tendons, slowing them just enough for William’s copies to capitalize on the openings her speed created.
The fight ended in under a minute, the remaining goblins either dead or actively fleeing back into the passages they’d emerged from, deciding a wounded hunter was only worth the effort when she was alone and exhausted.
William released Doppelganger as the last of them vanished, both copies dissolving back into his single form with a controlled breath rather than the exhaustion that would have taken him hours ago, and turned immediately toward the girl still backed against the wall, one arm hanging useless.
"Can you stand?" he asked, already assessing the damage with a healer’s eye he didn’t actually possess. The arm looked bad, wrist at least dislocated if not broken, and the blood loss had been enough to pale her face to an unhealthy grey.
"I..." She stared at him with something between shock and incomprehension. "You just. You soloed seven goblins."
"I had help." William gestured at Frost, who was in the process of cleaning goblin blood from its silver fur with methodical precision. "Can you walk? There’s an exit passage about two hundred feet back the way I came, and you need actual medical attention before that arm gets infected."
The girl nodded slowly, pushing herself away from the wall with her good arm, and William caught her before her knees buckled, supporting most of her weight as they made their careful way back through the dungeon’s twisting passages.
It wasn’t until they were nearly back at the surface exit that she finally managed to form another coherent sentence.
"What’s your rank?" she asked, voice thin with pain and disbelief. "That kind of power, solo goblin pack takedown, you have to be at least D-Rank."
"F-Rank," William said simply.
She stared at him again, the same expression of incomprehension settling back into place, as though he’d just told her something that violated every law of physics she’d been taught to believe in.
"That’s not possible."
William didn’t bother arguing with her, too focused on getting her topside and to an actual healer before the arm’s damage became permanent. But he filed her disbelief away, another small confirmation of just how far he’d climbed in two weeks of quiet, determined work, and how little the world outside his own careful training actually understood about what had changed.