They kept climbing.

The central staircase was longer than it had looked from below, broad enough that ten people could have gone up side by side if they had wanted to. Neo and Snot stayed close to the inner edge instead, weapons in hand, boots quiet against old white stone.

Halfway up, they were still not out of that floor.

Balconies curved around them at different heights, broken in places, whole in others, and every one of them held something waiting. Vagabonds stood in little clusters beneath cracked arches. Spiders clung to corners and ceilings where torchlight barely reached them, their bodies folded tight as if patience was part of their hunting method. A few Night Walkers moved farther back between collapsed sections of wall, black limbs slipping in and out of view.

The whole floor felt awake without quite moving.

Snot kept his voice low. "I’m going to be honest. This gives me a terrible feeling. There are only two of us, Neo. Shouldn’t we turn around?"

Neo glanced at him and kept climbing. "Yes."

Snot blinked. "What?"

"Yes," Neo repeated. "After we see what’s on the next floor."

That earned him a look.

Neo went on as if that made perfect sense. "We’ve already come this far. We take one look, and if it looks bad enough, we leave. No fighting. We run for our lives."

Snot let out a breath through his nose. "You say that like it’s reassuring."

"It should be."

"Well... it isn’t."

Neo ignored that and continued walking up.

Snot followed because, for all his complaining, he had already committed the moment he stepped into the tower.

The staircase rose past the last level of the floor and finally opened toward the one above.

Neither of them stepped fully onto it.

Both stopped on the final stretch of stairs, and the same thing ran through them at once.

A hard chill. Not cold in the ordinary sense. The kind of warning that bypassed thought and reached the body first. Every instinct in Neo screamed the same thing.

Do not go farther.

He felt Snot freeze beside him. Snot felt it in Neo too, through the blood, through whatever his class picked up when danger turned from possibility into certainty.

The room ahead was vast, quieter than the floors below, built in a broad arc that framed the thing at its center.

A black throne.

And on it sat the boss.

Neo understood immediately why the girl had broken when she tried to describe it.

The thing did not look like a normal Soul Beast.

Its body was massive, long-limbed, wrong in a way that did not need deformity to feel monstrous. Two arms rested against the throne. Two lay lower across its lap. Another propped up its chin with casual patience. Six swords leaned against the throne around it like offerings laid before a king who had never needed to ask for them.

And its face—

Its face wore a smile. A good mood. The kind that said it had been waiting here for a long time and had not grown bored yet.

Snot swallowed.

"Em... Neo," he said quietly, "I think that’s the final boss."

Neo kept his eyes on it. "Yeah Mr. Obvious, I think so too."

Snot didn’t even try to joke this time. "We should leave."

Neo gave a short nod. "We should. It’s almost dawn anyway."

That was when the spider struck.

It came from behind.

A black shape dropping from the side wall, legs spread wide, fangs aimed straight for Snot’s back. Snot twisted on instinct, barely in time, and the dodge saved his life but cost him something else.

One step.

That was all.

One foot crossed the threshold of the boss room.

The thing on the throne moved.

One instant it had been sitting there smiling. The next, every arm had shifted. All six hands closed around the swords resting nearby with frightening ease, like the blades had been waiting to leap into them.

Neo cut the spider down before it could recover, Gravebite tearing through its head and upper body in one ugly strike.

By the time he turned back, Snot was staring at him.

Neo only caught the expression for a heartbeat.

Beyond Snot, the boss had already risen.

And it was close.

Way too close.

It had crossed half the room in what felt like one step, maybe two. Neo couldn’t even tell where the distance had gone. One moment there had been a throne and empty floor between them. The next, the thing was already there, six swords in hand.

Neo moved first. He couldn’t even pick up the Soul Core that the spider dropped.

His hand caught the sleeve of Snot’s clothing and yanked with everything he had.

Snot came flying back toward him.

Both of them went down the stairs together.

They crashed hard, rolled, hit stone edges with shoulders, backs, elbows, and slid several steps before either managed to stop.

By the time Neo got one knee under himself, Gravebite was already back up in his hand.

He looked up.

The boss stood at the top of the stairs.

It had not followed.

Not because it didn’t want to. Neo could feel that much. The thing simply stood there with all six swords drawn, staring down at them from the edge of its floor as if some rule of the tower stopped it from coming lower.

Snot pushed himself up beside him, breathing hard.

"What the hell was that!?"

"I don’t know," Neo said. "But we’re leaving."

That answer became urgent the next second.

The noise had woken everything below.

Balconies shifted. Vagabonds turned. Spiders dropped from corners. Night Walkers started moving through the broken sections of the floor with far more purpose than before.

The whole tower had heard them.

Snot saw it too. "Yeah. Running sounds good."

They did exactly that.

Down the stairs. Across the wide floor below. Past the spot where they had farmed the trapped Soul Beasts only minutes earlier. Vagabonds lurched toward them from the side paths, too slow to cut them off. A spider nearly landed in front of Neo and lost three legs when Gravebite knocked it out of the air without breaking stride. Snot ducked under a spear thrust from one of the ragged dead and buried a dagger in its throat on the way past.

No stopping.

They hit the first floor at a sprint, crossed the circular chamber, and reached the vine hanging beneath the opening.

Neo grabbed it first and climbed hard, muscle and urgency doing the work where Soul Essence had no business being wasted now. Snot came after him close enough that Neo could hear every curse he was muttering under his breath.

This time, the height bothered him less.

Compared to what had nearly cut them apart upstairs, hanging over a cliff on a vine had suddenly become reasonable.

They pulled themselves out through the opening one after the other. Neo dragged the vine back up at once, hand over hand, not leaving a trace behind if he could help it.

Only when the last length was back in his grip did they finally move away from the edge.

Snot bent forward with both hands on his knees and blew out a breath.

"Goddamn," he said. "What was that?"

Neo looked back toward the hidden opening through the overgrowth, then up at the pale bulk of the tower.

"The boss," he said simply. "And now I understand why the black-haired girl was terrified of it."

Snot barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. "No shit, Sherlock. Did you see that? It crossed half the room in two steps. How is that even possible?"

Neo’s mouth tightened.

"I don’t know."

That was the worst part. The worst part was the movement. That impossible burst of distance swallowed in almost no time at all.

They put more space between themselves and the cliff before either stopped again.

This time, both dropped to the ground without elegance, chests rising and falling as the sky above them bled fully into morning.

For a little while, neither spoke.

The day had come whether they wanted it or not.

Neo stared upward and said, voice quieter now,

"If we want to leave this Breach, that thing has to die."

Beside him, Snot said nothing at first.

Then he let out one long breath and answered,

"Yeah."