"Right... then, I’ll be heading there,"

"What about me... do I stay put inside your book?" Gale asked.

"No," Ludwig shook his head, "I need you to meet up with Van Dijk. Can you manage?"

"Not with this body..."

"I’ll handle that," Kaiser said, "I can cast polymorph on him, it will be ugly, but better than this... sight," Kaiser said.

"Find Van Dijk and make him move," Ludwig said. "I don’t care what excuse you use. Lie if you have to. Tell him monsters are coming, tell him Solania burns, tell him his sister dies if he stays idle. Pick whichever version gets him moving fastest."

Van Dijk was dangerous, arrogant, and a problem in several ways, but he was powerful enough to matter. If Ludwig could not be everywhere, he needed monsters pointed at bigger monsters.

"It’ll be a hard thing to prove," Gale said.

"That’s the thing with knowing only portion of the future, but you have to inform him, he’ll at least come up with countermeasures if not act directly."

"I shall." Gale nodded.

"As much as I want to go myself and inform everyone... to just tell them what is going to happen... I just can’t expose the fact I know of future things. I’m off." Ludwig said as he took several steps into the tower. Every instinct wanted to run toward Solania, toward Lufondal, toward everyone who would die if nobody moved fast enough. But the tower still had to be cleared. Pride still had to fall.

Without Pride’s Crown, Sloth would dominate.

Soon, he disappeared Leaving Kaiser and Gale alone. The tower swallowed him without ceremony.

"Let’s head out then."

*****

Inside the tower, Ludwig didn’t hesitate or waste time, he moved directly, rapidly, into the first floor. There was no wonder left in the transition, no pause to study the impossible structure. He had already bled through this place once. Now he moved like a man crossing a trapped room after already remembering where every wire was buried.

The first floor happened quite differently from the last time. Ludwig found himself close to the first camp that was rundown, burnt and had bodies laying about. The smell of ash and old blood clung to the air, and the broken tents sagged under soot. Instead of heading toward the lizardmen area, fight Grath who was coming soon, Ludwig chose another path.

He headed straight toward the Red King Tribe. The route was rough, marked by broken weapons, crude banners, dragged bodies, and scattered bones. Before, these had been hints. Now they were markers on a solved map.

Killing the Red King was a hassle proving to be far more arduous without Gale present. No support from the flank. No undead pressure turning bad situations manageable. The Red King was still brutal, still backed by a tribe that moved with savage cohesion, and Ludwig had to pay for each mistake with flesh.

But after the first attempt, where Ludwig died once, he realized one thing.

"I can’t allow him to control the goblins..."

He switched tactics. Aiming directly for the Goblin King this time. Killing him first, forced the Red King to not obtain any troops. He then challenged him, and the kill was secured. It was not clean. Nothing involving goblins, blood rituals, and a Red King with too much stubbornness ever became clean. But without the goblin structure feeding him, the battle narrowed into something Ludwig could manage.

Unfortunately, in this run, he never got to meet with the Ogres. The realization came after the floor’s sequence began folding toward completion. In pure efficiency, leaving them behind would have been acceptable. Maybe even smart.

But he had promised them.

So, he used [Termination]

The second climb through the tower no longer resembled a challenge. It resembled an infection. Ludwig did not explore the floors anymore. He spread through them, carrying knowledge from one version into the next and contaminating the intended trials with memory.

What had once been uncertainty became procedure.

The Goblin King died before his first war council concluded. The Red King never amassed enough bodies to fuel his rituals. The lizardmen bent the knee after a display of force so overwhelming it eliminated negotiation entirely. Ludwig did not waste time with speeches. He showed them the difference between resistance and survival, and most creatures with functioning instincts understood. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

When Ludwig reached the Ogre territories, he did not arrive as an uncertain outsider this time, but as a returning inevitability. He entered their conflict knowing what needed to be cut away. Alongside Ludwig, the ogres, lizardmen and goblins slaughtered the foolish red orcs, and unlike last time, Ludwig tore one of the tusks of the Red King and kept it, some might think it a souvenir. It was not exactly that. It was purpose.

Ludwig redid the floor and corrected mistakes. Closed loops. Collected variables. Then moved on.

Floor after floor blurred beneath him. Corridors, enemies, traps, negotiations, betrayals, monsters, reward windows, and death points passed in a rhythm that became almost mechanical. His body fought. His mind recorded. His lantern burned. He moved.

He was slow.

He started again.

Still slow.

Again.

Again!

AGAIN!

The Tower noticed. Doors opened faster. Mechanisms activated before he arrived. Certain encounters seemed displaced, as though the Tower itself had begun making small accommodations for an entity it no longer fully understood. A door unlocked a breath too soon. A trap shifted by a pace. A guardian appeared already facing the path he would take.

And still Ludwig climbed. Faster. Higher.

Again.

The urgency outside the tower remained behind every action. The sky breaking. Monsters crossing. Solania burning in the near future if Kaiser failed or if Ludwig took too long.

The rest of the floors, Ludwig simply cheated. Noctivex was powerful beyond any means. It was not elegant, and it certainly was not the intended solution, but intended solutions could rot in whatever administrative corner the Tower kept its sense of fairness.

Noctivex tore through obstacles that should have delayed him and reinforced him through damage that should have killed him.

And so, he bulldozed through the floors.

And once Ludwig stepped through the gates of the golden palace once more, the stagnant heat and suffocating pressure welcomed him like an old enemy. White marble. Mountains of discarded gold. Mirrors lining the walls like silent witnesses. Every reflection seemed ready to repeat his failure if he gave it the chance.

At the center of it all, beneath the fractured amber glow of the dome, Pride was already standing there.

Not seated.

Not materializing.

Waiting.

His posture was perfect, of course, because Pride would probably consider asymmetry a moral failure. But there was something in the stillness now that had not existed before. It was not the effortless patience of a superior being expecting another insect to crawl into view. It was attention.

His golden eyes were fixed on Ludwig with an intensity that had not existed during their first meeting nor the twentieth. Ludwig stopped just inside the entrance, feeling the weight of that gaze.

The loop had changed.

Pride had changed.

For the first time since Ludwig had entered this domain, Pride spoke words Ludwig had never heard before.

"This world..." Pride said slowly, his voice carrying something dangerously close to genuine uncertainty. "How come it... returned?"