From the outside, Tower Seventeen never changed.
Same black spire. Same faintly humming surface. Same entrance swallowing Hunters like an indifferent throat.
Inside, Floor 2 was nothing like Floor 1.
Kael's boots sank into moss instead of stone. Light filtered in through a fake sky—too bright, too uniform, like a rendering of a forest from someone who had never seen one. Trees rose in jagged clusters, their leaves glitching at the edges when the fake wind shifted.
[LOCATION: TOWER SEVENTEEN – FLOOR 2]
[BIOME: RUINED FOREST]
[PRIMARY HOSTILES: KOBOLD VARIANTS (LV 7–10), GLITCH-HOUNDS (LV 8–11)]
[BONUS OBJECTIVES AVAILABLE.]
Joon whistled low.
"I forget how pretty it is up here," he said. "Right up until something tries to chew my legs off."
"Don't get sentimental," Kael said, activating Debug Sense.
Icons flickered everywhere.
The trees weren't real trees—they were objects with growth flags, collision boxes, texture IDs. The moss had a dampness parameter. The breeze was a global effect.
And threaded through all of it, like cobwebs in the corners of code, were bugs.
Tiny misalignments. Flickering leaves. A kobold patrol route that clipped through a log 0.3% of the time.
He pulled up the floor's event log.
[EVENT: FLOOR_2_WELCOME]
[STATUS: NORMAL]
[WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω: MONITORING LEVEL – LOW.]
[VARIANCE: WITHIN TOLERANCE.]
"Watchdog's awake," he murmured. "But not on high alert. Yet."
Joon adjusted his grip on his sword. His gear was still trash—E-rank leathers, a blade one upgrade away from snapping—but his HP bar had more green than last time.
[Joon – Level 10 – HP: 180/180]
[Kael – Level 6 – HP: 3/100]
Floor 2 was recommended Level 10+. Kael was under-leveled and permanently one sneeze from the grave.
Not ideal.
"Game plan?" Joon asked.
"Don't die," Kael said. "And don't do anything too stupid that screams 'admin console.' We assume everything up here is logged twice."
"That's your definition of not stupid?" Joon said. "You and I have very different baselines."
Kael let that slide.
"First pack," he said. "Twelve meters ahead, right cluster. Kobold scouts with short bows. One Glitch-Hound on leash."
He hadn't used Scan yet; he didn't need to. Floor 2 had standard openers—he'd watched enough streams, studied enough layouts. Analyst or not, he'd been obsessed with this stuff long before the System gave him a fancy title.
"Cover," he added. "Trees with bark thicker than your wrist. Don't rely on their aim being bad."
"What about their aim being worse?" Joon wiggled his eyebrows. "Any chance of 'nudging' the arrows off?"
Kael considered it.
"Too many variables," he said finally. "If I start messing with projectile physics, Watchdog is going to take notes. I'll start small. Damage multipliers only."
He edged forward until the first kobold came into view: a lanky, dog-faced creature with a patchwork cuirass and a shortbow of twisted bone.
[KOBOLD SCOUT – LEVEL 8]
HP: 120/120
STR: 9
AGI: 13
VIT: 7
INT: 6
PER: 10
[FLAGS: …]
Kael hooked onto DAMAGE_TAKEN_MULTIPLIER with LOCAL PATCH, nudging it from 1.0 to 1.3.
A tiny ripple passed through the kobold's model, like a frame skip.
"Leftmost," Kael whispered. "Now."
Joon exploded from behind the tree.
Arrows flew—too many, too fast—but Joon had at least listened about cover. One arrow grazed his shoulder for a shallow hit; the rest thunked harmlessly into bark. He reached the modified kobold first and carved through it in two swings, damage numbers popping above its head like fireworks.
[DAMAGE: 82]
[DAMAGE: 66]
[KOBOLD SCOUT – HP: 0/120]
"Yup," Joon panted, ducking back behind the tree as arrows thudded into the ground where he'd been. "You definitely did something."
Kael patched two more kobolds, careful not to touch all of them—some had to behave normally, or Watchdog's variance models might start drawing lines back to him.
The Glitch-Hound was another problem.
It dragged its kobold handler forward, jaws glitching at the edges, parts of its texture failing to load between frames. Its eyes were static, full of crawling pixels.
[GLITCH-HOUND – LEVEL 9]
HP: 150/150
SPECIAL: CORRUPTION BITE (APPLIES STACKING DEBUFF TO HP REGEN.)
NOTE: ENTITY PARTIALLY UNSTABLE.
"Do not let that thing touch you," Kael said sharply. "Treat it like poison with teeth."
"Wasn't planning to hug it," Joon said.
Kael opened its flags.
[FLAG: CORRUPTION_INTENSITY = 1.0]
[FLAG: LEASH_OBEDIENCE = 0.8]
[FLAG: TARGET_PRIORITY = LOW_HP_TARGETS FIRST]
[FLAG: UNSTABLE = TRUE]
The last one pulsed like a warning.
"Of course," Kael muttered. "You go for the guy with 3 HP first."
He tried to nudge TARGET_PRIORITY. The System rejected him.
[ERROR: BEHAVIOR_FLAG_TIER = MAJOR. GUEST PERMISSION INSUFFICIENT.]
He swallowed a curse.
"New plan," he said. "We kill it before it looks at me."
"Working on it," Joon grunted, as another volley of arrows hissed past.
Kael compromised.
He applied Local Patch to the hound's CORRUPTION_INTENSITY, shaving it down from 1.0 to 0.7. Still dangerous, but maybe survivable for Joon if he took a bite.
[DETECTION_RISK: 0.06 → 0.07]
[WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω: VARIANCE – MINOR.]
"Keep it busy," Kael called. "I'll feed you openings."
He used Scan on the environment, highlighting slight depressions, loose rocks—anything Joon could use for footing or leverage. His Tactical Insight kicked in, overlaying predicted path lines in his vision.
"Three steps left, then roll," he said.
Joon obeyed, mostly out of habit. An arrow that would have taken him in the throat grazed his cheek instead. His next swing connected with a kobold's bow arm, sending the weapon spinning.
The fight was ugly and frantic and too close.
The Glitch-Hound finally lunged.
Time slowed.
Kael saw the path of its jaws, the way its trajectory would miss Joon by a hair and put it on a collision course with—
Me, he realized.
Targeting the lowest HP.
He didn't have time to run.
Reflex, not reason, made him reach for Local Patch again—this time not on the hound, but on the world.
[OBJECT: FLOOR_TILE_17-F2-034]
[FLAG: FRICTION = 1.0]
[MINOR FLAG: EDITABLE.]
He slammed it to 0.2.
The hound's claws hit the tile, scrabbled, and slid. Its momentum carried it just far enough off-course that its corrupted fangs snapped shut a breath away from Kael's leg.
It crashed into a tree instead.
Joon didn't waste the opening. His sword came down in a two-handed slash.
[DAMAGE: 110]
[GLITCH-HOUND – HP: 40/150]
The hound spasmed, flickering between frames, texture tearing at the edges. It tried to stand; Kael shoved its DAMAGE_TAKEN_MULTIPLIER up to 1.4.
Joon finished it with a thrust through the neck.
[GLITCH-HOUND – HP: 0/150]
[STATUS: DELETED.]
Silence crashed in.
Joon leaned against a tree, panting.
"You good?" he asked. "Because that thing looked really interested in your ankles."
Kael's heart hammered hard enough to hurt.
[HP: 3 / 100]
[DAMAGE TAKEN: 0]
"I'm fine," he said, voice only a little too high. "Just… creative with friction."
He checked the logs.
[WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω: VARIANCE SPIKE DETECTED.]
[SOURCE: FLOOR_TILE_17-F2-034 FRICTION_FLAG.]
[ACTION: FLAGGED FOR REVIEW.]
[STATUS: PENDING.]
"Okay," Kael muttered. "That one we don't do often."
"Can you keep doing that?" Joon asked, eyes bright. "Because that was sick."
"Once in a while," Kael said. "If I want to keep my head."
They pushed deeper.
Floor 2 introduced verticality—fallen logs, climbable ruins, vantage points for kobold snipers who actually knew what they were doing. Kael resisted the urge to patch everything. He stuck to tiny nudges: a damage multiplier here, a slightly delayed trap trigger there.
Each time, the watchdog's logs ticked and adjusted.
[ANOMALY_SCORING UPDATED.]
[KAEL_RYU_CORRELATION…]
[ADJUSTED – WITHIN NEW BASELINE.]
His detection risk hovered between 0.06 and 0.08, refusing to spike.
By the time they reached the mid-floor mini-boss clearing, both of them were sweating and low on consumables.
The clearing was a ring of stone pillars around a cracked altar. Moss glowed faintly blue in the shadows. The System's UI pinged.
[BOSS ENCOUNTER: KOBOLD WARPACK CAPTAIN – "BROKEN-TOOTH"]
[LEVEL: 11]
[RECOMMENDED PARTY: 3–5.]
[REWARD: RARE LOOT, BONUS EXP.]
"Three to five," Joon repeated. "We're basically three if you count your hacks, right?"
"Very optimistic math," Kael said. "We pull this and we leave after. No greed. No bonus objectives."
"Scout's honor," Joon said.
"You were never a scout," Kael replied.
"Details."
The boss emerged from behind the altar: a heavily-scarred kobold in bone armor, brandishing a jagged glaive. Two elite bodyguards flanked it, bearing heavier shields than any kobolds on Floor 1.
[KOBOLD WARPACK CAPTAIN – "BROKEN-TOOTH" – LEVEL 11]
HP: 600/600
STR: 18
AGI: 14
VIT: 15
INT: 10
PER: 16
SPECIAL: PACK COMMAND, RALLY CRY, FRENZY.
Kael opened its flags.
[FLAG: DAMAGE_TAKEN_MULTIPLIER = 0.9]
[FLAG: PACK_AURA_RANGE = 15.0]
[FLAG: FRENZY_THRESHOLD = 0.5]
[FLAG: AI_PATTERN_ID = BOSS_T17_F2_A.]
"Of course they gave it DR," Kael said. "Why wouldn't they?"
He hesitated over DAMAGE_TAKEN_MULTIPLIER.
If he changed it too much, Watchdog might scream.
If he didn't change it at all…
He glanced at Joon.
"We might die either way," Joon said. "At least die with fewer hits taken, yeah?"
"Scientific argument," Kael said. "Hard to refuse."
He bumped the multiplier from 0.9 to 1.1.
[LOCAL PATCH APPLIED.]
[DURATION: 300 SEC.]
Then, on a reckless impulse, he tapped into the captain's PACK_AURA_RANGE, reducing it from 15 to 10.
That would shrink the radius of its buff on nearby kobolds—subtle, but meaningful.
[DETECTION_RISK: 0.08 → 0.09]
[WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω: VARIANCE NOTED – INTENSITY: LOW.]
"Once we engage, I only tweak in emergencies," Kael said. "You know the drill. Don't try to solo it like you're on a stream."
"Mean," Joon said. "Accurate, but mean."
They stepped into the clearing.
The captain roared—a guttural, crackling sound that didn't match its body, audio glitching at the edges. The bodyguards brought their shields up. More kobolds crawled from the ruins, drawn by the call: scouts, skirmishers, a shaman with a crooked staff.
Joon's HP bar felt painfully small next to 600 on the boss.
Kael exhaled.
"Let's rewrite the odds," he said.
And they charged.