Kael's next Tower run felt different.
Not because the mobs had changed—Floor 2 still had its moss, its kobolds, its glitch-hounds. Not because his stats had suddenly skyrocketed.
Because he couldn't stop seeing worth calculations everywhere.
A young duo in borrowed armor arguing at the gate:
[SYSTEM: PARTY_WORTH_TO_TOWER_ECOSYSTEM: LOW.]
[RISK: MEDIUM.]
[JUSTIFICATION: ACCEPTABLE.]
A veteran C-rank healer selling potions at a discount to E-ranks:
[SYSTEM: USER_WORTH_CONTRIBUTION: MODERATE.]
[SYSTEM_INVESTMENT: MINOR.]
[JUSTIFICATION: PERMITTED.]
The numbers weren't official UI. They were artifacts, echos of Root logic, exposed to him through his link to Haneul's shard.
He hated them.
"Analyst brain engaged?" Joon asked, adjusting the strap on his new bone glaive. He looked ridiculous and vaguely terrifying with it.
"Something like that," Kael said.
He pinged Haneul.
Heading into Seventeen. Will try not to let anything bite me.
Rude, I like kobolds, she replied. Bring me back a rock. A weird rock. For science.
I am not starting a cursed rock collection in your hospital room.
You say that like you have a choice.
He smiled faintly and stepped through the gate.
On Floor 2, he paid more attention to logs than to loot.
When a kobold skirmisher broke early and fled, he glanced at its evaluation:
[ENTITY_WORTH_TO_SYSTEM: EXP PELLET.]
[ENTITY_WORTH_TO_ROOT_INTENT: LOW.]
[JUSTIFICATION: SACRIFICABLE.]
A faint, irritated flicker colored the shard feedback.
[FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK: DISAGREES WITH TERM "SACRIFICABLE."]
[ADJUSTMENT: NONE.]
"Hey," Joon said, panting, as he stabbed the fleeing kobold in the back. "You in there? You're staring again."
"Just thinking about terminology," Kael said.
"Wrong time to edit a dictionary," Joon grunted, yanking his glaive free. Black dust scattered.
They fought, they patched, they moved.
The watchdog stayed quiet, Trace Masking doing its job. Kael nudged a few damage multipliers, adjusted a trap here and there. He was careful, almost conservative. He felt like every tweak might echo into some hidden "worth ledger" he didn't understand yet.
At one point, they found another party's bodies.
Not fresh—maybe two runs old. Loot already stripped, tags collected. Just the faint outline of former UI markers where HP bars had once hovered.
[SYSTEM: USER_WORTH_TO_TOWER_ECOSYSTEM: SPENT.]
[STATUS: LOGGED.]
The shard flared.
[FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK: TERM "SPENT" FLAGGED.]
[SUGGESTED LABEL: "LOST."]
[ACTION: IGNORED.]
Kael stumbled.
"Whoa," Joon said, catching his arm. "Trap?"
"No," Kael said. "Just… stepping on semantics."
"Hate when that happens," Joon said. "You wanna explain?"
"Later," Kael said.
They cleared Floor 2 without doing anything dramatically stupid. They didn't touch the mini-boss this time; they farmed safer packs instead. Kael's level ticked up to 8. Joon started flirting with the idea of tackling Floor 3.
"Not soon," Kael said. "We've already attracted one Observer. Let's not ping any more."
He checked his detection risk.
[DETECTION_RISK: 0.07]
[WATCHDOG_PROCESS_Ω: STATUS – PASSIVE.]
Good.
He headed to the exit.
Just before they stepped through, the System hiccuped.
Not visibly—no walls flickering, no monsters stuttering. It was subtler, like a small math error somewhere in the distance.
A new log flashed in his debug overlay.
[ERROR: WORTH_EVAL_FUNCTION_CONFLICT (MINOR).]
[LOCATION: TOWER_09_FLOOR_4.]
[DETAILS: ROOT_INTENT_SHARD_FEEDBACK != SYSTEM_BASELINE.]
[STATUS: AUTO-RESOLVED (SYSTEM BASELINE PRIORITIZED).]
Another.
[ERROR: WORTH_EVAL_FUNCTION_CONFLICT (MINOR).]
[LOCATION: CITY_GUARD_EVENT_NODE_3.]
[DETAILS: FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK SUGGESTED PROTECTION_PRIORITY SWAP.]
[STATUS: AUTO-RESOLVED.]
Not his Tower.
Not his city, even.
He froze.
"Haneul," he whispered.
Her shard wasn't the only one awake enough to grumble.
ADMIN_0 had scattered fragments widely. His debug access had given one shard a nudge. The others…
They were starting to push back, infinitesimally.
"Kael?" Joon said.
He didn't answer.
He dove deeper into the error logs, filtering by the new conflict code. More entries blinked into existence, scattered like stars.
[WORTH_EVAL_FUNCTION_CONFLICT.]
[WORTH_EVAL_FUNCTION_CONFLICT.]
[WORTH_EVAL_FUNCTION_CONFLICT.]
Almost all marked MINOR. Almost all auto-resolved in favor of System baseline.
Almost all recent.
"Okay," he said softly. "Okay. This is fine."
It wasn't fine.
ADMIN_0 had failed to rewrite Root. But their shards were still out there, under the floorboards, slowly waking up enough to say, I disagree.
And the System was still saying, too bad.
He stepped through the exit gate on autopilot.
The plaza hit his senses—noise, light, advert jingles. Jin Hwa's holo-billboard smiled down, spear gleaming.
[USER_WORTH_TO_SYSTEM: VERY HIGH.]
[USER_WORTH_TO_ROOT_INTENT: UNKNOWN.]
"Kael?" Joon said again, more insistent. "Seriously. You're doing that thousand-yard stare thing."
"Just… ran into a value error," Kael said.
"In your head?" Joon asked.
"In the world," Kael said.
He checked his messages.
Mira had sent a short, clipped note.
We're seeing minor Root/ System evaluation conflicts in non-local logs. Didn't start until after your Node test. This may be coincidence. Or not.
We need to talk about the scope of what you're poking.
Haneul had sent a longer one.
Doctor Cho let slip that some random Tower run across the city logged a "worth evaluation inconsistency" today. He looked freaked. Can you come by later? Bring actual food. The shard may be nibbling on our definitions; I'd like something to nibble on that isn't philosophy.
Kael looked up at Tower Seventeen.
For years, he'd seen it as a black box that spat out death and loot.
Now he saw it as one node in a global, buggy system where "worth" was a function and human lives were variables.
Admin_0 had tried to fix it and died.
Now, accidentally, he and his sister had given the corpse a faint nudge.
"Let's get paid," he told Joon. "Then I've got somewhere to be."
"Date with a doctor?" Joon waggled his eyebrows.
"Something like that," Kael said. "She's very into my soul."
"Horrifying way to phrase that," Joon said. "I approve."
Kael forced a laugh.
Inside, he opened the Inheritance quest.
[NEW SUB-OBJECTIVE: OBSERVE GLOBAL WORTH_CONFLICT EMERGENCE.]
[HINT: YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY SHARD TOUCHING THE SCALES.]
He closed it quickly.
For now, he decided, he would focus on two people: one in a hospital bed with a shard in her chest, and one standing under a Tower with 3 HP and a wrench in his hand.
The rest of the world could wait a few more runs.