The first hit of the morning —or what was left of it, since Noah had already lost count of how many times he'd "started the day"— was against a group of three small demons, barely the size of a large dog, with cracked gray skin and short but fast claws.
All three fell in under ten seconds.
[Swift Step] to close the distance. Dagger straight into the first one's throat. [Echo Thrust] finishing the job a second and a half later while Noah was already moving toward the second.
The third one didn't even manage to roar before the dagger pierced its skull from below.
[Level increased: 2.]
"Wow," Noah said, shaking off his dagger to clean it. "I barely noticed that."
[That's how leveling up works. It stops hurting before you even realize it.]
"Is that supposed to be motivational?"
[It's an objective fact. Don't confuse the two.]
Before, any one of those three demons would have cost him a limb, literally. Now they were barely a warm-up. The difference wasn't just in the numerical level, but in something simpler: he knew exactly what to do.
Because he'd already done it before, in some other version of that same morning that no one else remembered.
'I carry all the progress with me,' he thought, walking down the golden corridor toward no place in particular. 'Level, skills, muscle memory. Every time I die, I come back more prepared than the last time. That's… an obscene advantage.'
An advantage that, as far as he knew, no one else had.
'Or do they?' he thought afterward, frowning. 'If I have this, couldn't someone else have a similar ability? Someone who also comes back, who also steals? It would be stupid to think I'm the only special case in an entire world.'
The thought left an uncomfortable taste in his mouth. He preferred not to keep thinking about it for now.
He walked for what felt like a full hour, climbing stairs, crossing empty halls, without running into a single Hunter along the way.
That, in itself, was already strange.
'There should be more people here. Thousands entered with me.'
[Floor 1's portals don't lead to the same place for everyone. Each Hunter travels a different path within the same structure. Welcome to the Fortress's first real lesson: you'll never see most of the people who die beside you.]
"That explains the lake with the storm."
[Correct. It also explains why, five minutes ago, you tried to go through a door that spat you back out like garbage.]
"You didn't need to add that last part."
[I did.]
There were no shortcuts. He already knew that, but now he understood it in a more uncomfortable way: to reach floor 1000, he had to climb one at a time, killing the corresponding boss at each level, no exceptions, no secret bridges, no tricks that skipped the order.
The Fortress didn't reward cleverness for cheating.
It rewarded surviving long enough to earn the next floor.
At the end of a corridor flanked by black stone statues —the same ones with the too-human eyes that had already unsettled him before— he found an enormous door, carved with symbols that burned in a dull shade of red.
In front of it, a statue different from the others rose slowly, as if it had been asleep, waiting for his arrival.
It had a vaguely human shape, but its proportions were wrong, unnaturally elongated, and for an instant —just an instant— Noah caught a glimpse through its hollow eyes of a fleeting image of what lay on the other side.
Something enormous. Something breathing heavily. Something that smelled, even through the stone, of rotten flesh.
The statue went still again.
[Occupant level reading: far higher than yours. System recommendation: don't be an idiot.]
"Thanks for the blind faith."
[You're welcome.]
He was about to move closer when someone collided with his side with the force of a small vehicle, and Noah ended up flat on his back on the floor.
"Watch where you're walking," said a woman's voice, cold, without the faintest trace of apology.
Noah looked up.
And for a second, he completely forgot he'd just been knocked down.
Standing before him was a woman who seemed to have stepped out of an entirely different level of existence: semi-long black hair, wavy, falling with a movement no normal physics should allow; red eyes that looked at him with indifference; round gold earrings gleaming against her pale skin.
A fitted black dress, stockings of the same color, and fabric guards on her forearms covering part of her hands.
Every inch of her said: elite Hunter. Her name: Belle Snow, Rank S. The last floor she was known to have reached was 512.
"Belle Snow?" Noah said aloud, unable to help himself. "The famous Belle Snow?"
She looked him up and down with an expression that didn't shift a single millimeter.
"Rank F," she said, as if delivering an unpleasant medical diagnosis. "People at your rank don't even last one floor."
"Thanks for the diagnosis," Noah replied, getting to his feet. "Can I ask what someone from Floor 500 is doing on Floor 1?"
Belle adjusted one of her forearm guards without any urgency.
"I needed some fresh air."
"Fresh air? Here?"
"The lower floors have no real threats left for me. It's peaceful." She started walking, leaving him behind without further ceremony. "You should worry more about surviving than asking questions, Rank F."
And she left, walking down the hallway with the same indifference with which she'd arrived, as if she'd just passed by a piece of furniture rather than a person.
Noah stood there watching her walk away for a moment longer than he was willing to admit.
'A true Hunter,' he thought. 'The kind who climbs alone, no team, dependent on no one. She's… stunning. Like a goddess. I wish I could get a woman like her…'
He shook off his clothes, took a deep breath, and looked back at the boss's sealed door. He needed to stop getting spellbound by the sway of Belle's hips.
It was now or never. Well, technically never wasn't really an option for someone who could come back from death, but the point still stood.
He pushed the doors open.
They swung open with the creak of ancient metal, revealing a vast circular chamber, lit by torches burning with a greenish flame.
And in the center, waiting for him, was the boss.
Six meters tall. A grotesquely fat body, covered in folds of grayish skin, with an inverted pig's head on its neck, the eyes staring directly down at the ground at an angle that shouldn't be anatomically possible.
A stench of decomposing flesh filled the air. In one of its porcine hands it held an axe the size of a door, its blade bristling with irregular teeth, as if the weapon itself were hungry.
Noah felt his mouth go dry.
"That," he murmured, "is disgusting."
The monster slowly raised its inverted head toward him, as if those eyes pointed at the floor could somehow, impossibly, still see him.
Noah drew his dagger, more out of instinct than any real confidence.
"I'm not going to be able to beat you today," he admitted quietly, taking a step back. "Not a chance, not at my level."
He glanced back, gauging the distance to the exit, already planning the most dignified retreat possible.
The doors he'd come through were closed.
Not with the slow creak from before.
Fully shut, sealed, as if an exit had never existed there in the first place.
Noah swallowed hard.
"Ah," he said, with a calm he didn't feel in the slightest. "Great."
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. ^^