Neo stood at the base of the tower, on the side opposite the entrance.

Here, the white stone had almost vanished beneath thick growth. Vines crawled across it, roots clung to every crack they could claim, and the whole side of the tower leaned over a drop cruel enough to end the story in one mistake.

Neo glanced down once.

The cliff fell away into dark emptiness.

’Hehe... yeah, that’s not funny at all.’

He rolled one shoulder, adjusted the vine coiled around his body, and started climbing.

He already had a rough idea where the opening should be. That brief line of light he had seen through the door yesterday had been enough. He had measured the angle in his head, turned the tower over in his mind more times than he cared to admit, and now all that remained was proving he hadn’t imagined the route.

His fingers found stone, root, vine, then stone again.

His right foot pressed into a narrow jut of white rock. His left hand shifted higher. His body stayed close to the wall, never giving the height more room in his mind than it deserved.

The vine around his waist dragged lightly against the tower as he climbed.

It wasn’t there for comfort. It was there because he wasn’t stupid.

If he got inside, he couldn’t exactly stroll back out through the front door. Not unless he wanted the whole camp asking why he had mud on his clothes and answers he had no intention of giving. He needed a way back out that left no witnesses and no noise he didn’t choose himself.

’I need to find out what’s really inside this place,’ he thought as he climbed. ’Why they’re guarding the entrance. Why nobody here wants to force their way in.’

The wall turned slick under one boot.

His foot slipped.

Neo’s stomach lurched hard enough to drag all thought out of him at once. His body snapped tighter against the tower, fingers locking down with enough force to bite pain into his hands. For an instant, his weight hung badly, one leg scraping for purchase while the dark below opened wider than before.

Beast Strength surged through him.

His grip doubled. The root in his hand groaned under the pressure, but held.

Neo pressed his forehead briefly against the cold stone and exhaled through his teeth.

’And here I was trying to save Soul Essence in case something inside the tower wants to kill me.’

His arms trembled once, then steadied. He adjusted his footing, found a better hold, and refused to look down again.

That lasted less than ten seconds.

The memory of the drop tugged at him anyway, and he made the mistake of checking once more.

Bad idea.

It was higher than he had wanted. Much higher. The cliff beneath him looked like the sort of place where the world simply decided it was done with a person and scraped them off its edge.

Neo lifted his head at once.

’Up. Only up.’

He climbed with more care after that.

The wall curved slightly as he ascended, the growth thickening around one section near the height he had estimated. That gave him hope. Nature liked weakness. Cracks. Gaps. Openings too small for proper stonework to keep sealed forever.

A little later, his hand brushed emptiness behind a veil of tangled vines.

Neo stilled.

’Found you.’

He shifted onto a thicker root, used one hand to tear the growth aside, and exposed the hole.

It wasn’t large. A broad man wouldn’t have fit. Anyone fed well all their life might have cursed at it for a while.

Neo had come from Zone 0.

That problem did not belong to him.

He gave a low breath through his nose, pulled the coil of vine from around his body, and tied it to a dense knot of roots clinging to the outer wall. He tested it once, hard enough to trust it, then fed the rest through the opening.

The loose length dropped into the tower.

"Good."

Neo slipped through after it.

He descended carefully, boots finding the inner wall while his hands controlled the drop. When he touched the floor below, he let go at once and turned.

The interior was lit.

Torches lined the walls in fixed intervals, their flames steady and unnervingly clean, as if they had been burning for years without smoke, without decay, without anyone tending them. Their light rolled across white stone and threw long shadows over the chamber.

No sign that the jungle outside had ever touched this place.

At the center stood the statue.

From behind the door yesterday he had only caught its size. Now he saw the rest.

A woman.

White robes flowing down a five-meter frame of pale stone, two wings rising behind her shoulders, a long spear resting in one hand. Her face held that same false serenity statues always wore, the kind artists carved when they wanted holiness instead of life.

Neo took in the chamber quickly.

The floor was open. The walls curved upward in a spiral. Along the inner edge, a staircase wound toward the second level.

Nothing moved.

There was neither a Soul Beast nor any trap waiting to spring the moment he landed, and the only breath in the dark was his own.

’So the first floor really is empty.’

That did not make him trust it.

He invoked his sword. Light ran across his hand, and the blade settled into his grip with familiar weight. Better to carry steel than regret.

The staircase sat across from him.

So did the statue.

Neo had to pass near its base to reach the stairs, and he did not like that, but there was no cleaner route unless he wanted to start climbing walls again indoors like a lunatic.

He moved through the center of the chamber with his sword low and ready. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Halfway there, heat struck his chest.

"Ah—"

It caught him badly enough that the sound escaped before he could stop it. Neo’s free hand flew to the chain at his neck.

The ring was burning.

He hissed and pulled the necklace off at once, holding the chain out in front of him while the metal hung there, hot and faintly pulsing.

’Again?’

The last time it had done this, the mountain had opened and he had fallen into a buried nightmare beneath the world.

Neo stared at the ring.

He still knew almost nothing about it. What it was. Why his mother had it. Why it reacted to places it had no right to know. Every answer only seemed to create three more.

The heat worsened when he took a cautious step toward the statue.

Neo stopped.

The ring pulsed once.

The statue answered.

Stone ground against stone through the whole chamber. Loud, impossible to miss. Neo’s head snapped up, jaw tightening as the winged figure shifted backward by slow degrees, its base dragging just far enough to uncover what had been hidden beneath it.

A dark opening.

And stairs.

Neo stared.

"Are we deadass? Could you maybe do that with less noise?" he muttered under his breath.

The statue, unsurprisingly, ignored him.

Below where it had stood, a stairway descended into darkness.

Neo did not move right away. His mind had already split the possibilities apart. Up led deeper into the tower everyone feared. Up could wait.

Down was different.

What lay below was not like the others. It had been hidden. It had answered the ring.

The memory came back without invitation.

The mountain opening. The chained corpse. His First Resonance forced on him in a buried ruin. A Divine class he had never asked for, though he had long since stopped pretending he would give it back if offered the chance.

The ring hung hot from the chain in his hand.

Neo looked from it to the stairs below.

’So that’s what tonight is, huh? Not up but down.’

A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth.

’Fine. Let’s see what you’ve hidden from me this time.’

He stepped toward the opening and started descending into the dark, sword ready in his hand.