Floor 65 smelled wrong.
Not blood.
Not yet.
Metal, wet stone, and the sharp sting of ozone that always came before Tower violence. Jaehyuk could taste it on the back of his tongue. Bitter. Static. Like licking a battery.
The corridor shook again.
Dust drifted from the ceiling in a soft, gray rain.
"Left!" Mira barked.
Somin stumbled sideways as a spear of white light punched through the space where her chest had been.
The beam hit the wall behind her and burned a hand-shaped hole into the stone.
Heat rolled over them.
Somin made a sound that was half gasp, half prayer.
"I'm okay," she said, too fast. "I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay--"
"You're not okay," Jaehyuk said.
He caught her by the shoulder and shoved her into the alcove.
Another beam scorched the corridor.
Then another.
Then three more in a burst so fast the air itself seemed to tear.
Mira swore.
"They're tracking healers," she said.
Jaehyuk stared down the hall.
A Vanguard squad was retreating in good order, shields up, axes ready, but the enemy had stopped caring about frontliners.
The Tower had changed the rules.
Or Vanguard had.
Maybe both.
A support hunter formation moved in the open lane ahead. Twin casters in black masks. A third climber in a collar of silver beads. Their hands flashed in unison, and a net of pale threads snapped across the corridor, aiming not at the fighters but at the people behind them.
The healers.
The medics.
The buffers.
The ones who kept everyone else alive.
"Move!" a man shouted from the rear.
He was already limping.
A healer beside him tried to grab his arm, and a thread wrapped around her wrist and yanked her hard enough to make her cry out.
Jaehyuk heard fabric tear.
He heard someone bite back a scream.
He heard the tower hum through the stone like a giant throat clearing.
"Support class sweep," Mira said.
Her face had gone flat.
Too flat.
That was the dangerous version.
Jaehyuk looked at the corridor ahead and felt something cold settle under his ribs.
This wasn't random pressure.
It was a hunt.
A real one.
The kind that started with weak people and ended with no one left to patch up the rest.
Somin's fingers dug into his sleeve.
"Jaehyuk," she said. Her voice was thin. "Those beams, they're not missing by accident."
"No," he said.
Another scream echoed from the front.
Short.
Cut off.
Then the wet crack of a body hitting stone.
Somin flinched so hard her teeth clicked.
Jaehyuk stepped out of the alcove, then stopped when a burst of light sliced the air in front of him.
He waited.
Counted.
The beam pattern had a rhythm.
Six shots.
Pause.
Four shots.
Shift.
The old knowledge surfaced like a hand from deep water.
Floor 65 in his first life had been a pressure floor. Group corridors. Relay fights. A logistics floor where climbers moved between safe chambers while monsters and guild squads collided over the same lanes.
This version was worse.
He remembered that feeling too.
The Tower had taken something simple and made it cruel.
Mira leaned beside him, sword half raised.
"Can you read it?" she asked.
"Yes," Jaehyuk said.
"Then read faster."
He almost smiled.
"That's not how this floor works," he said.
She gave him a look. "Then how does it work?"
Jaehyuk looked at the supports.
The corridor split ahead into three lanes.
One lane was wide, reinforced, and already full of bodies.
One was narrow, dim, and silent.
The last was marked by a strip of red cloth tied around a broken pillar.
A bait route.
A sacrifice path.
Vanguard had learned to dress murder up as guidance.
And now the Tower, or whatever was feeding on the panic, had started doing the same thing on its own.
"We don't take the wide lane," he said.
Somin swallowed. "Because it's crowded?"
"Because they want crowded," Jaehyuk said.
A healer at the front screamed again.
This time the sound echoed.
Wrong.
Too long.
Like the corridor itself was repeating it.
Somin stared at the wide lane.
There were healers there.
Three of them.
Maybe four.
One was kneeling beside a fallen tank, hands glowing as she tried to knit bone back together. Another had her staff up, face gray with exhaustion. A boy not much older than twenty was shielding both of them with a cracked shield that shook every time a beam passed.
Their formation was already breaking.
"They're going to wipe them," Somin whispered.
Jaehyuk didn't answer.
Because he could already see the next ten seconds.
The beams would cut the front line apart.
The healers would move forward to help.
The threads would catch them.
Then the support hunters would collapse the lane from the back and turn the entire corridor into a meat grinder.
It was the old death floor all over again.
Just bigger.
Faster.
Meaner.
On Floor 23, one healer had died because her party had abandoned her when the boss spawned adds.
Here, dozens were about to die because someone had learned how to scale abandonment into infrastructure.
He heard Somin breathe beside him.
A soft, ragged inhale.
Fear.
He knew that sound.
He hated that sound.
Her fingers were shaking on his sleeve.
"Jaehyuk," she said. "We should push through the side lane. If we stay here--"
Another beam burst across the corridor.
Closer this time.
Hot enough to make his skin prickle.
"If we go through the side lane, they'll cut us off," Mira said.
Somin looked between them.
"Then what do we do?"
Jaehyuk answered without looking away from the corridor.
"We don't let them kill the healers."
Mira gave him a quick, hard glance.
"That's not a plan."
"It is today," he said.
He stepped out of the alcove.
A beam snapped toward him.
He ducked under it and moved.
Shadow Step.
One burst.
Short.
A blink of black space and he was on the far side of the corridor, close enough to smell scorched cloth and iron sweat.
A Vanguard frontliner saw him and shouted.
Too late.
Jaehyuk kicked the man's knee sideways and drove an elbow into his throat.
The man folded with a gurgle.
Mira hit the lane a heartbeat later, sword slashing in a clean arc that forced two more enemies back.
"Keep moving!" she shouted at the injured climbers. "Don't cluster!"
Somin sprinted after them, white light gathering in her palm before she even reached the wounded.
The nearest healer had a slice across her cheek and blood on her lips.
Somin grabbed her shoulder.
"Don't stand," she said. "Sit. Sit down, now."
The woman blinked at her.
"What?"
"Sit down," Somin snapped.
The woman obeyed on reflex.
Somin pressed both hands to her ribs.
Light flared.
The healer gasped as pain turned into breath.
Jaehyuk saw the support hunters react at once.
A head turned.
A mask tilted.
They'd noticed the glow.
Of course they had.
The tower probably had too.
"Somin!" he shouted.
Too late.
A thread of white light lashed from the rear lane and struck the stone beside her.
The impact sprayed shards across her cheek.
She jerked back.
Mira moved first.
Her sword met the second thread, cutting through it with a crack like snapping ice.
"They're aiming for you," Mira said.
Somin looked horrified. "Me? Why me? There are other healers--"
"Because you're better," Jaehyuk said.
It was ugly.
It was true.
And truth on the Tower usually came with teeth.
A support hunter in silver beads lifted both hands.
The corridor filled with thin luminous lines, a web cast wide enough to catch half the lane.
Jaehyuk saw the angle.
Saw the trap.
Saw exactly who it would take.
"Down!" he shouted.
He shoved Somin flat.
The web passed over her head and slammed into the healer behind her instead.
The woman screamed as the threads wrapped her shoulders and dragged her toward the front.
No.
Not dragged.
Offered.
The support hunter was feeding her into the kill zone.
Jaehyuk's jaw tightened.
"Mira!"
She was already there.
Her blade flashed.
One thread severed.
Two.
The third snapped against her guard and left a streak of smoke along the edge of her sleeve.
She hissed through her teeth.
"They're using us as handles," she said.
Jaehyuk looked at the lane again.
The healers were getting funneled.
Not just attacked.
Sorted.
The weak got driven to the front.
The strong got forced to protect them.
The backline got trapped by their own instinct to help.
A perfect Tower machine.
A perfect Vanguard tactic.
And Somin was standing right in the middle of it.
The image hit him with a sick, old familiarity.
Floor 23.
Somin on her knees.
The party moving ahead without her.
The helplessness.
The stupid, cruel distance between knowing and reaching.
Not again.
He caught her arm and yanked her behind a broken column as another beam chewed through the space she'd just occupied.
Stone hissed.
Dust stung his nose.
Somin was breathing too fast.
"Jaehyuk--"
"Stay low," he said.
"I'm trying."
"Then try harder."
Her eyes widened.
Then she snorted once, even now.
Even here.
"You're awful," she said.
"Later."
Mira shouted from the lane.
"Left flank! Another team!"
Jaehyuk looked.
Two more support hunters coming in from the red-cloth path.
So that was the plan.
Wide lane.
Side lane.
Crossfire.
Somin was the center of the net.
Not because she was alone.
Because she was visible.
Because healers always were.
He understood in one cold, ugly second.
This wasn't just support hunting.
It was attrition warfare.
Kill the healers.
Break the parties.
Make everyone else exhaust themselves trying to save people.
Then the floor clears itself.
The Tower loves efficiency.
Jaehyuk pushed Somin farther behind the column.
"No healing unless I say," he said.
She stared at him. "What?"
"No glow. No panic. If you heal too early, they track you."
"People are dying!"
"I know."
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
Her hands balled at her sides.
She was scared.
He could smell it on her.
Sharp sweat, iron, and something medicinal from the potions in her pouch.
"Then what am I supposed to do?" she whispered.
Jaehyuk glanced at the lane.
Mira was holding three fighters by herself.
One of the healers he'd shoved forward had already started healing the wrong way, glowing too bright, too long. The support hunters had seen her and started shifting the beams.
Somin saw it too.
Saw the pattern.
Her face went white.
"They're using us as bait," she said.
"Yes," Jaehyuk said.
"Like Floor 23."
He didn't answer.
Because yes.
Because larger scale.
Because crueler.
Because this floor had learned how to turn her death into a strategy.
Another scream.
Nearer now.
A healer in the wide lane dropped to one knee, clutching her throat as a thread cut across her collar.
The boy with the cracked shield lunged to help her.
The support hunter in silver beads smiled under his mask and tightened his hands.
The beam struck the shield first.
Then the boy.
He went down hard.
The healer reached for him and got dragged into the same line.
"Enough," Mira snapped.
She broke away from her fight and sprinted toward them.
Jaehyuk's head turned.
"Mira, don't--"
She didn't listen.
Of course she didn't.
She cut through the nearest support hunter and slammed shoulder-first into the wide lane, knocking the injured healer sideways out of the beam path.
A thread caught Mira's sleeve.
Another snagged her shoulder.
She tore free with a grunt.
The silver-beaded hunter's head snapped toward her.
"Mira!" Somin shouted.
Jaehyuk moved before he thought.
Shadow Step.
Again.
One burst.
He appeared between Mira and the beam.
The light hit him full in the side.
Pain exploded across his ribs.
White fire.
Heat.
The smell of his own skin burning through fabric.
He staggered.
Mira spun.
"Idiot," she hissed.
"You're welcome," he said through clenched teeth.
The support hunter raised both hands again.
Another web.
This one wider.
Faster.
Jaehyuk saw it coming and knew there was no clean answer.
If he chased the hunter, Somin died.
If he protected Somin, the hunter escaped.
If he split the difference, both happened.
Interesting.
He moved to Somin.
Not the hunter.
Mira saw it and her eyes widened.
"Jaehyuk!"
"Protect her," he said.
It was all he had time to say.
He put his body between Somin and the incoming web and drove her down behind the column.
The light tore overhead.
So close he could feel his hair lift from the heat.
Mira was already turning to cover them.
The support hunter in silver beads shifted target.
His hands angled.
The web collapsed into a tight spear of light.
Straight at the column.
Straight at Somin.
Mira saw it a fraction too late.
"Somin!" she shouted.
She moved without thinking.
No hesitation.
No calculation.
She took the hit meant for Somin.
The beam slammed into her side with a sound like breaking wood, and Mira flew back against the stone hard enough to crack it.