Noah woke up with a jolt, his heart pounding against his chest as if it wanted to escape his own body.
His hands dropped desperately to his waist, feeling around, searching for the half of him that was missing, the one he had seen roll away from him just an instant ago by his perception.
Legs.
There they were. Whole. Warm. His.
He let himself fall back against the mattress, letting out a trembling sigh, and brought a hand to his chest, gripping the fabric of his shirt as if that could anchor him to something real.
Beneath his palm, he felt the heartbeat. Strong and fast.
“I’m alive…” he murmured, still barely believing it.
[Technically, you died a few minutes ago. But yes, you’re alive now. Grammar’s complicated.]
“I didn’t need the language lesson this morning.”
[You never do. And yet, here I am, giving it anyway.]
Still shaken, he opened his system window and looked for the new entry in his list of skills.
[Skill stolen: Swift Step]
[Rank C.]
[Allows the bearer to accelerate a few meters in an instant. All attributes are boosted for a single attack.]
He looked at the clock on his nightstand. The same time as always. The same crow’s caw outside. He had returned, once again, to the exact same point, but with something new in his pocket.
‘Return really works,’ he thought, sitting up slowly. ‘And if I combine Swift Step with Echo Thrust… I could strike, move before they react, and let the second phantom impact finish the job.’
It was an idea. A dangerous, stupid, and probably painful idea.
But it was his.
He got up without even fixing his hair, without changing out of the clothes that had technically already “died” in a few hours earlier, in another timeline that only he remembered.
‘Forgive me, Lily,’ he thought, glancing sideways at his sister’s closed bedroom door. ‘I promise I’ll make you breakfast. Just… after this.’
◇◆◇
The plaza was packed again by the time he arrived, though this time the chaos had a different flavor: Noah was no longer just cannon fodder waiting his turn to be crushed to death.
A Hunter with a short sword tried to cut across his path —literally, sword-first— and Noah activated Swift Step without a second thought.
The world slowed around him for a fraction of a second. His body shot to one side, dodging the blade with a margin that made him feel, for the first time in his life as a Hunter, genuinely fast.
“What the hell—¿!”
He didn’t stay to hear the rest. He slipped into the crowd, using gaps that appeared and vanished amid the shoving, unintentionally sparking a couple of scuffles along the way —someone shouted, someone else cursed him, a third person ended up on the ground fighting another over the space Noah had left empty behind him— but he didn’t stop.
He ran, dodged, slid between shoulders and shields, until finally the colossal shadow of the door covered him completely.
He crossed the threshold.
And for the first time, out of all the times he’d tried, Noah Astrea set foot inside the Fortress.
“Finally!” he said between gasps, with a smile so wide his cheeks ached. “I’m making progress! I made it to the entrance for the first time!”
Around him, dozens of Hunters were also entering, shoving through the last few meters, fleeing the chaos they’d left behind in the plaza. Noah watched them for a moment, calculating, searching the faces for someone worth his while.
But that could wait.
First, he wanted to see just where the hell he was standing.
◇◆◇
The inside of the first floor looked nothing like what he had imagined.
There was no bare stone, no damp dungeon corridors.
Instead, a golden and crimson hall stretched out before him, with columns carved into impossible shapes —half-formed faces, hands holding pageless books, statues of creatures that matched no known animal— all bathed in a light that didn’t seem to come from any visible torch.
It was beautiful. And deeply unsettling.
No one knew who had built the Fortress. There were theories, of course: fallen gods, ancient civilizations, something far worse than either of those.
But looking at those statues with their too-human eyes carved into black stone, Noah understood why no theory ever felt satisfying.
He climbed a cracked marble staircase and reached a dark wooden door. He opened it without thinking too much about it.
On the other side, there was no more corridor.
There was a portal.
Through it, Noah caught a glimpse of a black lake beneath a sky split by lightning, water churning as if something enormous moved beneath the surface.
He stepped back instinctively.
“Hey, get out of the way!” a Hunter shoved him aside without a shred of courtesy, and without hesitating for a second, crossed the portal straight into the storm.
Noah stood there staring at the spot where the man had vanished.
‘That was his path,’ he thought. ‘Not mine. Not yet.’
He closed the door and kept exploring.
◇◆◇
He found it in a side corridor, crouched among the shadows of a column: a humanoid with charred blue skin, incandescent cracks running across its body like dying veins of lava.
A demon.
The first real monster Noah had ever seen in his life.
“Well, well,” he murmured, unable to hold back a smile. “My official debut as a Fortress Hunter.”
The creature roared and lunged at him.
Noah activated Swift Step.
The world slowed down again. He slid beneath the beast’s claws, drove his dagger into its side, and, a second and a half later, the phantom echo of Echo Thrust struck the exact same spot.
The demon’s body split in two with a wet crack. Its torso fell farther than its legs.
“A gift from my past life,” Noah said, watching the body disintegrate into black particles.
He didn’t feel fear. He felt, for the first time, something resembling control.
‘I can move through this place,’ he thought. ‘I can make money here. But that’s not what I came for today.’
The next Hunter he encountered carried a spear and had the look of someone who’d spent more time inside the Fortress than Noah had spent alive.
Noah pretended to attack him with every intention of killing him.
The man, of course, defended himself with ease. The spear ran clean through Noah’s neck before he could even complete a single feint.
He fell to his knees, feeling the hot blood run down his chest, and even though he already knew what was coming, even though he had already died once before that same day, the tears blurred his vision all the same.
It didn’t matter how many times he came back.
Watching himself die was never going to feel normal.
[You Died.]
[Random skill theft activated.]
[Skill stolen: Awareness]
[Rank D.]
[Allows the bearer to sense presences and imminent dangers nearby.]
‘No wonder he saw me coming,’ Noah thought, already back in his bed, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand before getting up again.
He went back in. He found a mage who reduced him to ashes amid screams he could still hear in his head upon waking. A brutal death, burned alive.
[Skill stolen: Fire Resistance]
[Rank C.]
Four deaths. Four new pieces in his improvised collection.
◇◆◇
Noah opened his eyes for the last time that morning, staring at his bedroom ceiling with a calm he hadn’t felt in hours.
He sat up, patting down his entire body, including his face. Feeling himself melt had been quite the trauma.
They were good skills. Useful. But not enough.
‘They won’t be enough for the higher floors. Even that spear guy killed me quickly the moment I got close. His level was higher than mine—I’m worthless compared to the ones at the top.’
He stroked his chin, thinking.
‘I’m still weak. Very weak. I need more strength, all the strength I need to take care of my sister. I need more powerful skills.’
He got up and looked out the window. The Fortress stood in the distance, watched with a sense of helplessness. That colossal castle of a thousand floors.
‘If I want to reach Rank S,’ he thought, ‘I need to steal from the best. Those who’ve cleared past two hundred floors. And for that, I have to climb floors. Defeat bosses.’
He opened the door, resolved.
‘I have to reach the end of Floor One. I’ll go see the boss. I need to know what I’m up against, and rise. I’ll go right now.’
NOTE: I’ll be uploading one chapter a day. :D
Remember, if the novel gets enough support, I’ll increase the release rate to 2 chapters a day ^^