The Tower gave me three things when I entered.
A stone corridor big enough to park a Boeing 747 in. A hundred strangers who all looked like they were reconsidering every decision that had led them here. And a class assignment that made me want to reconsider my entire existence.
I really should have stopped at the strangers.
The starter kit had four things in it.
A knife that had clearly lost several arguments already. Three protein bars. A folded piece of paper. And the specific kind of silence that means whatever you're about to read is going to ruin your day.
I unfolded the paper.
> [CLASS ASSIGNED: SURVIVOR — F RANK]
I read it three times. The Tower's system was supposed to evaluate your body, your mind, your potential, your entire existence as a human being, and then assign you a class that represented your peak combat capability.
Mine had evaluated all of that and concluded: this one might not die immediately.
Warrior. Mage. Assassin. Knight. Elementalist. The guy two spots to my left had already unfolded his paper and was showing it to everyone around him with the energy of someone who had just won the lottery and wanted witnesses.
> [CLASS ASSIGNED: FLAME EMPEROR — S RANK]
S Rank. One of maybe three recorded in Tower history. A class so rare that researchers had written entire dissertations about whether it could still appear in modern climbers.
I looked at his paper.
I looked at my pocket.
I put my paper deeper into my pocket and decided that surviving was a perfectly valid life skill and I should focus on doing that.
The Flame Emperor caught me looking. He smiled. It was a kind smile, which somehow made it worse.
"Tough luck," he said.
"Thanks," I said.
He had already moved on. I was already forgotten. That was fine. That was completely fine.
We walked for ten minutes before I saw her.
Left wall. Half-hidden behind a group of older climbers who had made it clear through pure body language that she was not part of their group and was not going to become part of their group. Small. Young. Maybe sixteen. Hands white-knuckled around her starter kit like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
She was shaking hard enough that I could see it from four meters away.
Every single person walked past her without looking.
I stopped.
She flinched before I even said anything, whole body going tight, like she'd learned that someone stopping in front of her usually meant something bad was coming next.
I held out a protein bar instead.
She stared at it. Then at me. Then at it again.
"Take it," I said. "You need it more than I do."
Longer pause. Then she took it with both hands.
I kept walking.
I didn't know how right I was. Not yet.
The Tutorial Boss arrived at the first junction without an introduction or a warm-up or any kind of courtesy warning whatsoever.
One second the corridor was empty.
The next second three meters of iron-armored Goblin Warchief was standing in the middle of it holding a club the size of a mid-range sedan.
> [TUTORIAL BOSS: Goblin Warchief — Level 1]
> [Objective: Defeat or Survive]
Level one.
The hundred climbers around me immediately voted unanimously for survive and began stress-testing every wall for hidden exits.
There were no hidden exits.
The Flame Emperor lit both hands on fire like he'd been doing it his whole life, which given the class he might as well have been, and started moving toward the Warchief with the calm focus of someone who already knew how this ended.
I wasn't watching him.
I was watching the girl — backed into the junction corner, the Warchief turning toward her with the slow patience of something that had already decided she wasn't a real threat. Just an inconvenience to deal with on the way to the actual fighters. The club was coming up.
She wasn't going to move in time.
Here is what I want to be clear about: I did not make a decision. My legs made a decision. My brain was still filing the paperwork when I was already sprinting across the junction with a dull knife and a complete absence of any plan whatsoever.
I got between her and the club.
I had just enough time to register that this had been a genuinely terrible idea.
The club came down.
Pain. Real pain. The kind with no edges and no room for anything else. Ribs. Then more ribs. Then something deeper than ribs.
Then the floor.
Then nothing.
Cold stone. Cheek. That was the first thing.
Then: distant fire. Someone shouting something victorious. The smell of scorched air.
I sat up.
My chest felt completely normal.
That was impossible. I was certain that was impossible. I had felt my ribs break in sequence like a xylophone of personal catastrophe and then something more important than ribs had stopped working and I had died on a stone floor.
And now my chest felt fine.
The girl was staring at me from two meters away. Her face was doing several things at once and none of them had won yet.
"You—" she started.
The notification appeared.
> [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
>
> Cause of Death: Blunt Force Trauma (Level 1 Goblin Warchief)
>
> Lifespan Remaining: 70 Years
I read it twice.
Seventy years. I was twenty-three. Realistically, with my diet and sleep schedule, I had been hoping for sixty. Seventy was more than I had started with this morning.
Second box.
> [Previous Lifespan: 60 Years]
>
> [Death Bonus Applied: +10 Years]
>
> [Current Total: 70 Years]
I read that one four times.
Then I sat on the stone floor and did the math while the Flame Emperor finished the Warchief behind me with what sounded like a very satisfying amount of fire.
One death. Level one boss. Ten years.
The Tower had a hundred floors.
Each floor harder than the last. Each boss stronger. Each death — potentially — worth more.
One hundred floors.
I was F Rank. The Tower had looked at me and seen someone whose only skill was not dying. Every other climber in this corridor had received that as an insult.
I was starting to think the Tower had accidentally told me something useful.
Yuna grabbed my arm. Stronger grip than expected.
"You died," she said. Very quiet. Very controlled. The voice of someone applying significant effort to staying calm. "You stopped breathing. I checked. You were dead."
"Yeah," I said.
"*Yeah.*"
"I need to do it again," I said.
Silence.
"Come again," she said.
"The Tower pays out on death. Ten years per kill at this level." I looked at the passage ahead. Dark stone. Distant torchlight. More things waiting to kill me, which was starting to sound like a business opportunity. "Hundred floors. If the scaling holds even a little—"
"You want to keep dying," she said. Completely flat. "In a dungeon. On purpose. Repeatedly."
"The math works."
"The *math.*" She said it like she was tasting something bad. "You just died. You were clinically dead on this floor. And you have already calculated the ROI."
"Do you want to see my working?"
She closed her eyes.
She kept them closed for a while.
Then she opened them and followed me anyway.
First mistake she ever made. Probably.
One last notification. I hadn't triggered it. It just appeared, in text that felt slightly different from the standard System font. Older. Deeper.
> [ANOMALY DETECTED]
>
> Climber #4471 has triggered a non-standard revival event.
>
> Flagging for observation.
>
> Entities notified: 0
Entities notified: 0.
Not none. Not N/A.
Zero. A live number. The kind that starts at zero because it hasn't changed yet.
I stared at it for three seconds. Then I dismissed it and kept walking because the math still worked and I had never once let existential dread improve a situation.
Somewhere above. A place with no name and no floor number.
Something that had been asleep for a very long time opened its eyes.
***
> [FLOOR 1 — IN PROGRESS]
> [Days Remaining: 6]
> [Class: SURVIVOR — F RANK]
> [Recorded Deaths: 1]
> [Lifespan Banked: +10 Years]
Six days. One death. Ten years banked. A hundred floors ahead and something ancient that had just woken up because of me specifically.
I picked up the dull knife and kept walking.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"...Yuna."
"Yuna. How do you feel about dying. Scale of one to ten."
"I am in negative numbers," she said immediately. "I have left the scale entirely. I am in a different chart."
Almost a smile.
Good, I thought. One of us should be reasonable.