Neo and Snot stayed where they were for a few breaths, both staring at the second floor.

The whole place was built in a wide ring around an open center, but what held their attention wasn’t the shape of the floor. It was what was happening along the outer walls.

Soul Beasts were climbing up from below.

Spiders first, their black legs gripping the white stone as they pulled themselves over the edge. Night Walkers followed in bursts, lean bodies hauling themselves upward from gaps in the wall and narrow ledges that shouldn’t have held anything larger than a rat. They kept coming from beneath the tower, one after another, not in a mindless rush, but pulled by something.

All of them were fixed on the same point.

At the far end of the floor, a pale brazier burned with a thin white flame.

The thing simply burned, and every Soul Beast on the floor moved toward it as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

To reach it, they had to pass through a narrow stone section where part of the floor had collapsed inward long ago, leaving only a tight lane between the broken wall and the inner drop.

That was where the trick lay.

The beasts crowded into that bottleneck, packed together by their own numbers, climbing over one another, crushing themselves into a knot of legs, claws, and bodies that could barely move.

Easy kills.

Snot was the first to murmur anything.

"What the hell is this?"

Neo kept studying it. "Looks like a Soul Beast farm."

Snot turned toward him. "A what?"

Neo lifted one hand slightly toward the cold white brazier. "Something’s drawing them in. They stop caring about everything else and just keep moving toward that flame. The path narrows there, they bunch up, and once they’re trapped in that stretch..." He glanced toward the blood-dark stone near the bottleneck. "They kill them."

Snot stared again, slower this time, putting the pieces together in his own head.

"Damn," he said at last. "I really wasn’t expecting this. I’ve got to admit it, those bastards are creative."

Neo’s mouth flattened. "Creative, yes. It also means they’ve been squeezing this place dry for days."

His attention slid toward the outer wall again, toward the places where the monsters were climbing out from below.

That part bothered him more.

Glassbrood Spiders. Night Walkers. Both moving up through the tower walls like there was an entire nest or hunting layer beneath the floors everyone feared.

Neo didn’t like that.

"Bad feeling?" Snot asked.

Neo answered without changing expression. "The beasts are coming from under the tower. That means there’s probably more below than just whatever we’ve already seen."

Snot glanced at him. "You think there’s another section beneath the tower?"

Neo kept his voice steady.

"Could be." He gave a faint shrug. "But from what we saw on the first floor, there’s only the statue and the stairs."

It was a clean lie, and Snot let it pass.

"Yeah," he said. "Fair enough."

They watched the funnel a little longer.

Another spider climbed up. Two Night Walkers followed. All three drifted toward the pale flame as if dragged by an invisible hook through the skull.

Neo’s fingers tightened around Gravebite.

"Wait," he said. "Why rush up?"

Snot turned toward him. "What?"

Neo tilted his head toward the bottleneck. "That pile is worth souls. A lot of them."

Snot’s mouth curved at once. "Now that’s the kind of thinking I can respect."

Neo moved first.

He circled wide, keeping out of the path of the incoming beasts until he reached the rear of the cluster near the narrow lane. From behind, they didn’t react at all. Their entire focus stayed on the white flame ahead, on whatever promise it whispered into the hollow parts of them.

Perfect.

Neo shifted his stance, brought Gravebite up in both hands, and called Beast Strength through his arms.

Power ran into his grip.

The sword’s toothed edge caught the cold torchlight, and for one ugly instant it looked less like a blade and more like a mouth.

Neo swung.

Gravebite tore through the back of the first Glassbrood Spider with sickening ease. The edge bit deep, the jagged teeth ripping through shell and flesh instead of gliding cleanly. The creature came apart in a burst of dark fluid and broken chitin, and the next swing crashed straight into the Night Walker behind it before the first body had even finished collapsing.

The bottleneck helped him.

Everything was packed so tightly that the beasts had nowhere to go. They twisted, shuddered, tried to turn, but the bodies around them boxed them in and the cold white brazier ahead kept tugging at whatever warped instinct ruled them.

Neo cut again.

And again.

Gravebite excelled at this kind of work.

His old sword had split and hacked. Gravebite devoured. Its edge chewed into targets, tore long wounds through clustered flesh, caught in bone and shell just enough to leave ruin behind instead of neat little kills. White stone darkened beneath him in streaks and sprays. Fragments of spider legs skittered across the floor. A Night Walker lost half its neck in one strike and folded sideways into the press, making the next beast’s footing fail.

That gave Neo another opening.

He drove forward and took it.

[Soul-Window]

[You have slain Glassbrood Spider - Heart Core.]

[You have slain Night Walker - Vein Core.]

[You have slain Night Walker - Vein Core.]

More windows followed over each other in pale flashes as the lane turned into slaughter.

Behind him, Snot had already joined in with both daggers in hand, laughing under his breath in disbelief.

"This is filthy," he muttered.

Neo didn’t answer. He was busy.

A spider reared up, trying at last to tear itself away from the flame’s pull. Gravebite met it head-on and split through the front of its skull, the teeth of the sword dragging a ragged line all the way down. The body collapsed backward and jammed the lane for an instant, which only made the next Night Walker easier. Neo stepped in and ripped the blade through its side hard enough that the thing slammed into the wall and dropped twitching.

Ten bodies in all.

By the time the last one stopped moving, the narrow section of the floor was a butcher’s drain of black blood, broken chitin, and torn flesh.

Neo exhaled once and lowered the sword.

Soul Cores surfaced from the corpses a breath later, glowing in dull pulses among the mess.

He gathered them all.

One after another, they dissolved into his hand.

[Soul-Window]

[739/1000]

Snot wiped one dagger against the leg of a dead Night Walker and glanced toward the walls, where more shapes would likely climb up again before long.

"So?" he asked. "Do we leave now? Because I have to say, coming back every night and ruining their little farm sounds hilarious."

A grin touched Neo’s mouth.

"I like how you think."

He turned toward the spiral stairs leading higher into the tower.

"But yes," he said. "Let’s see what’s above this."