The bone-gate at the far end of the chamber groaned open, emitting a low, mechanical hum. It didn't lead to another dark cave, but to a pristine, white-tiled hall—the central hub where the "safe" elevator had finally docked.
I tried to take a step, but the adrenaline that had kept my shattered arm moving evaporated. The world tilted. The golden fire of the catacombs bled into a blurry white. My knees hit the cold floor first, then my shoulder.
"Wait! Stay with me!" Lyra's voice was the last thing I heard before the darkness claimed me.
[SYSTEM RECOVERY INITIATED...]
[HEALING TITLES APPLIED: 'ONE WHO SHATTERS HIMSELF' — REPAIRING BONE DENSITY...]
[LEVEL 9 STATS FINALIZED.]
My eyes snapped open. The first thing I saw wasn't a god or a monster, but a sterile, high-tech ceiling. I was lying on a floating cot in the middle of a wide plaza.
"He's awake! The crazy one is awake!"
I sat up with a groan, my muscles screaming in protest. I looked at my left arm—it was wrapped in a strange, translucent medical film, the bone finally straight and solid, though a faint scar shaped like a lightning bolt ran from my wrist to my elbow.
Then, I saw them.
Across the plaza, the "Normal" and "Easy" players were gathered. There were only twelve of them left. Out of the eighteen who had entered the "safe" elevator, six were missing. Their clothes were shredded, and many were covered in bandages. The muscular man who had tried to recruit me sat on the floor, staring blankly at his boots.
A shimmering blue barrier separated their "Safe Zone" from the "Death Mode" landing where I lay.
"Look at his level," someone whispered, pointing a trembling finger.
Because I wasn't in a party, my stats were visible to everyone.
[PLAYER: JIN]
[LEVEL: 9]
[CLASS: RUIN-BREAKER]
[STATUS: DEATH MODE SURVIVOR]
"Level nine?" the muscular man muttered, finally looking up. His own level flickered above his head: [LVL. 3]. "We almost died fighting a swarm of Level 2 Goblins... and he's Level 9?"
Lyra was sitting next to my cot, holding a small bottle of blue liquid. She looked better—she had reached Level 5. When she saw me sitting up, she let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for hours.
"The Tutorial is officially over," she said quietly. "Gerion is coming back any minute to distribute the 'Starter Rewards' and move us to Floor 1. But everyone is terrified of you."
I looked at the twelve survivors. They looked like sheep who had barely escaped a wolf, only to find a lion waiting for them at the exit.
Suddenly, the air in the center of the plaza glitched. Gerion-1-356 reappeared, but he looked different. His grey skin was now adorned with golden circuitry, and he carried a stack of shimmering crates.
"Congratulations, survivors!" Gerion chirped, though his eyes immediately locked onto mine. "The 'Normal' path was... bloodier than expected, wasn't it? But oh, look at our Death Mode duo! Level 9? In a tutorial? The 7\bigstar Architect certainly knows how to pick his champions."
Gerion floated toward the barrier. "Now, before we enter the Tower proper, it is time for the MVP Reward. Since one player achieved a 'God-Tier' feat..."
He turned to me, a cruel, wide grin splitting his face.
"The System allows the MVP to 'tax' the other survivors. You can choose to take half of their earned gold, one of their starting items, or... you can choose to let them keep everything."
The twelve players froze. The muscular man stood up, his hand going to the hilt of a rusty sword. "He wouldn't," he hissed. "We barely survived as it is!"
I stood up, ignoring the twelve survivors who were cowering or cursing behind their blue barrier. Gerion's grin widened, waiting for me to "tax" the weak, but I didn't even look at them.
My Architect's Eye wasn't focused on the small group. I was looking at the horizon of the plaza.
"I don't want their scraps, Gerion," I said, my voice echoing in the vast hall.
Suddenly, the white walls of the hub began to ripple. The space expanded, stretching for miles in every direction. From every corner of the sky, pillars of light began to strike the ground.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Hundreds—then thousands—of players began to materialize. These weren't the twenty people I had started with. These were the survivors from other "Tutorial Sectors" across the world. Some were covered in dragon blood; others wore high-tech armor or tattered robes.
Within minutes, the quiet plaza was a roaring ocean of thousands of humans.
[ANNOUNCEMENT: ALL TUTORIAL SECTORS CLOSED]
[TOTAL SURVIVORS: 142,000]
[INTEGRATION COMMENCING...]
"Ah," Gerion chuckled, floating higher into the air. "It seems the 'Small Pond' era is over. Welcome to the Great Hall of Floor 0, little Ruin-Breaker. You aren't the only 'special' one anymore."
I scanned the crowd. Above the heads of the thousands, levels flickered. Most were Level 3 or 4. But then, I saw them—the "Elites."
A woman in white armor: [LVL. 10 - PALADIN]
A man with a floating grimoire: [LVL. 11 - ARCHMAGE]
The 7\bigstar Architect had been busy. I wasn't the only one who had been "scouted" by a God.
"Look!" Lyra pointed toward the center of the Great Hall.
A massive, holographic leaderboard flickered into life, towering hundreds of feet high. It was the Global Tutorial Ranking.
KRISTOV (Sect 001) - LVL. 12
ELARA (Sect 042) - LVL. 11
[HIDDEN] (Sect 777) - LVL. 9
"You're third," Lyra whispered, her eyes wide. "But... why are you hidden?"
I touched the 7\bigstar mark on my hand. "Because the Architect doesn't want them to see me coming."
Suddenly, a massive gate at the far end of the hall began to creak open. This wasn't a bone-gate or a simple door. It was a portal of swirling nebulae that led to the true Floor 1.
[FIRST QUEST: THE CROSSING]
Objective: Enter the Floor 1 Gate.
Warning: The gate will only stay open for 10,000 players. The rest will be "recycled."
The thousands of players fell silent for a heartbeat. Then, the stampede began.
"Lyra, run!" I grabbed her hand.
I didn't use my strength to fight the other players. I reached into my pocket and gripped the Master Key. It pulsed with a cold, golden heat. While the 142,000 players fought and trampled each other to reach the main gate, the key showed me a "Fault Line" in the back wall of the Great Hall—a path only a 7\bigstar contractor could see.
The 142,000 players charged like a tidal wave, weapons drawn and eyes bloodshot with desperation. The roar of the crowd was deafening—until the first player reached the swirling nebula of the gate.
Instead of a battle, a soft, chime-like sound echoed through the entire hall.
[NOTIFICATION: CALIBRATION COMPLETE]
The violent, swirling portal slowed down, turning a gentle, calming blue. The "Death Mode" pressure that had been crushing my chest suddenly vanished, replaced by a breeze that smelled of lavender and fresh rain.
The stampede ground to a halt. Thousands of players tripped over each other, confused, as the terrifying "Recycling" warning flickered and disappeared.
"Wait..." a voice shouted from the front. "Look at the description!"
A new holographic sign appeared above the massive gate:
[GATE 1: THE PATH OF COMFORT (EASY MODE)]
Status: Open to all. Minimum survival guaranteed.
"It was a test," Lyra whispered, her hand trembling in mine. "The '10,000' limit... the 'recycling'... it was just to see how we would react under pressure."
A collective sigh of relief rippled through the Great Hall. People dropped their swords. Some burst into tears, hugging strangers. The "Elites" who had been ready to slaughter their way to the front sheathed their weapons, their faces softening from killers back into humans.
"We don't have to fight," someone laughed hysterically. "We can just go in! It's Easy Mode!"
But I didn't feel relieved. I felt a cold chill down my spine. I looked at the 7\bigstar mark on my hand—it wasn't glowing with "comfort." It was vibrating with a warning.
I looked at Gerion-1-356. He was floating high above the crowd, his arms crossed. He wasn't smiling anymore. He looked bored. Disappointed, even.
"Look at them," I muttered to Lyra. "They're all walking toward the blue light like moths."
"Isn't that a good thing?" she asked, looking at me with confusion. "We can go in together. No more Death Mode. No more breaking your bones."
I looked at the Master Key in my hand. It wasn't pointing at the big, blue, "Easy" gate. It was pointing at a dark, narrow crack in the corner of the hall—a jagged line of shadow that everyone else was ignoring in their joy.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION (PRIVATE)]
The sheep have found their gate. The Architect waits for his builder.
"The Easy Mode gate is a trap, Lyra," I said, my voice low so the celebrating crowd wouldn't hear. "Maybe not a trap that kills you, but a trap that stops you. If we enter that blue gate, we'll never climb to the top. We'll just be 'residents' of the Tower."
I turned my back on the thousands of relieved players and walked toward the darkness.
"Wait!" she called out, glancing between the beautiful, safe blue light and my lonely shadow. "Where are you going?"
I didn't look back. "To the real Floor 1."
Lyra stood frozen at the crossroads of her fate. To her left, the shimmering blue gate of Easy Mode promised a life of safety, companionship, and a world where she wouldn't have to watch someone shatter their own bones just to survive. To her right, my silhouette was disappearing into a jagged, lightless crack in the wall.
She looked at the thousands of players laughing and walking into the blue light. They looked happy. They looked safe.
Then, she looked at her own hands—the hands that had held a barrier against the Obsidian Hive.
"Wait for me!" she cried out.
She sprinted away from the crowds, away from the comfort, and dove into the shadow behind me.
The moment she crossed the threshold, nothing happened.
There was no explosion. No roar of a monster. No system announcement. The transition was silent and hollow. One moment we were in the loud, crowded Great Hall, and the next, we were standing in a world of absolute, oppressive silence.
We were on a narrow stone ledge. Above us was no sky, only the infinite, upward-stretching belly of the Tower, filled with rusted gears the size of cities. Below us was a sea of grey clouds.
[LOCATION: FLOOR 1 — THE FORGOTTEN GEARS (DEATH MODE)]
"It's... so quiet," Lyra whispered. She looked back, but the crack we had entered through was gone. There was no going back to the Easy Mode gate now.
I looked down at my hand. The Master Key had stopped vibrating. It had done its job. It had brought us to the "True" Floor 1—the skeletal interior of the Tower that the 142,000 players would never see.
"The others think they're 'inside' the Tower," I said, looking at the massive, slow-turning gears above. "But they're just in the rooms. We're in the engine."
There were no NPCs here. No "Starter Town." Just a single, narrow path made of floating debris and rusted iron leading toward a distant, flickering golden light.
"There's no tutorial here, is there?" Lyra asked, her voice small.
"No," I replied, flexing my scarred left arm. "Here, the only rule is the one we make."
I checked my status one last time.
[STAMINA: 100%]
[MANA: 100%]
[GOAL: REACH THE SECOND GEAR]
As we took our first steps onto the rusted path, the 7\bigstar mark on my hand began to glow with a steady, cold light, illuminating the way forward through the "forgotten" parts of the world.
One month later
The "Temporary Town" was a marvel of architecture, but it was cold. It had walls but no soul; forges but no fuel.
"We have twelve thousand Mages," Kristov, the Rank #1, slammed his fist onto a stone table in the central plaza. "But half of them are carrying wooden sticks they found in the Tutorial woods. We can't launch an expedition into the deeper floors with gear that breaks after three spells!"
"The Easy Mode gate doesn't provide iron, Kristov," Elara, the High Priestess of the Support Pillar, replied calmly. "It provides safety. If you want steel, we have to find a way into the 'Grey Zones'—the areas between the paths."
Meanwhile... In the "Engine" (Floor 1 - Forgotten Gears)
While the Kingdom debated logistics, Lyra and I were standing in a graveyard of ancient technology.
"Look at this," Lyra whispered, pointing at a massive, unmoving gear we had climbed onto. It wasn't made of rusted iron like the others. It was a deep, shimmering Star-Steel.
My Architect's Eye flared. The entire gear was glowing with a structural "fault line" that pulsed with pure mana.
[ITEM IDENTIFIED: ANCIENT STAR-STEEL CORE]
Rank: Epic (Tier 1)
Utility: Can be forged into Grade-A weapons or used as a perpetual energy source for a city.
"They're looking for scrap metal back in the Hub," I muttered, looking at the thousands of tons of legendary material surrounding us. "And we're standing on enough steel to arm a continent."
"Can you break it?" Lyra asked.
I looked at my hand. My mana was full. "I don't need to break the whole thing. I just need to harvest the 'faults'."
I knelt and pressed my palm against the Star-Steel. Instead of a violent explosion, I channeled a precise, high-frequency vibration into the gear's molecular bond.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: STRUCTURAL HARVEST]
Tink. Tink. Tink.
Perfectly square cubes of Star-Steel began to pop out of the gear, refined by the sheer pressure of my skill. This wasn't just raw ore; it was "Processed Ruin-Metal."
[LEVEL UP! LVL. 9 -> LVL. 10]
[YOU HAVE REACHED THE FIRST MILESTONE: 'THE HARVESTER']
"If the Kingdom finds out we have this..." Lyra started, looking at the glowing cubes.
"They won't," I said, sliding a cube into my inventory. "Not until I'm ready to sell it to them. They want to build a Kingdom? Fine. But every sword they hold, and every wall they build, is going to belong to me."
The Star-Steel cubes in my inventory didn't just feel like metal; they felt like compressed power, humming against my thigh. As I held the last harvested piece, the 7\bigstar mark on my hand didn't just glow—it burned.
The air around the massive gear distorted, and the deep, resonant voice of the Primordial Architect filled the hollow space of the engine room.
"A builder who only harvests is nothing more than a scavenger. To truly conquer the infinite, you must create the tools of your own destruction."
[DIVINE QUEST INITIATED: THE RUIN-FORGE]
Objective: Construct a functional Ruin-Forge within the Forgotten Gears.
Required Materials: 10x Star-Steel Cubes (Acquired), 1x Core of a Gear-Guardian (Pending).
Reward: Access to the [LEGENDARY CRAFTING] menu and your first Signature Weapon.
"A forge?" Lyra asked, looking around the desolate, rusted platforms. "We don't even have a hammer, let alone an anvil. How are we supposed to build anything here?"
"I am the hammer," I said, looking at my scarred left hand. "And the Tower is the anvil."
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Detection: The 'Kingdom's' first Resource Expedition has entered the lower pipes of Floor 1.
Proximity: 2,000 meters.
I could see them through the gaps in the floor. A group of about fifty players—mostly Fighters for protection and Summoners with pack-animals—were struggling to climb the rusted pipes far below us. They were using cheap, wooden ladders and ropes. They looked pathetic compared to the scale of the machinery.
"They're coming for materials," I muttered. "But they're heading straight for the Gear-Guardian's territory."
I looked at the path ahead. The "Second Gear" I needed to reach was guarded by a massive, mechanical entity—a sentinel designed to keep the engine running by crushing anything that didn't belong.
"If I kill the Guardian, I get the Core for the forge," I told Lyra. "If the Kingdom's party hits it first, they'll be wiped out in seconds."
"Are we going to save them?" Lyra asked, her hand already moving to her barrier-casting position.
"No," I said, my eyes cold as I watched the #10 ranked player leading the expedition below. "We're going to use them as a distraction. While they draw the Guardian's 'Aggro,' I'm going to dismantle it from the inside."
The Forge of Fate
We reached the threshold of the Second Gear. A towering, bipedal machine made of brass and steam stood at the center, its eyes glowing with a harsh, red light.
[BOSS IDENTIFIED: SENTINEL UNIT-01 (LVL. 15)]
The Kingdom's expedition finally crested the ridge, panting and exhausted. When they saw the Sentinel, their leader—a man named Marcus (Rank #10)—raised his rusty sword.
"For the Kingdom! Take it down for the metal!" he roared.