Neo walked with his group toward the tower, keeping the same steady pace as the rest while the camp stretched around them in a long, tense column.

More than fifty Awakeneds were moving together this time, enough boots over the dirt to turn the whole march into a low, constant murmur of friction, metal, cloth, and uneven breathing.

Snot walked at Neo’s side and glanced over the crowd ahead.

"A lot of them are scared. Even after seeing the tower. Even after farming the second floor. Only a few really squeezed anything out of it." He tilted his head slightly toward the crowd ahead. "You can hear it in their blood. It’s running hot in the wrong way. And you don’t even need a class to notice the rest. Half of them look like they’re walking to their own funeral."

Neo kept moving without changing pace. "Not many actually went in after they learned what was inside. A handful, maybe. The rest stayed back because fear had already taken root." His mouth tightened faintly. "A group this large inside a place like that is a problem on its own. Add in people with no real experience, and it could turn into a mess fast."

Marika, who had been walking just behind them with Alice, caught that and clicked her tongue.

"You always know how to brighten the mood, Neo. We have numbers. It should be easier like this."

Neo gave her a brief glance. "That answer starts on the third floor. When Snot and I went up, we were only two, and that made a difference. We could move fast, avoid what we had to avoid, and slip through tighter spaces. A crowd doesn’t get that luxury."

Max adjusted the shield resting against his arm and answered in the same steady tone he used for everything.

"That just means you stay close to me," he said. "Don’t worry about our group. I’ll protect all of you."

Snot snorted softly. "Dependable as ever, Max."

By the time they reached the base of the tower, nearly the whole camp had already gathered there. The white structure rose over them in cold stillness, broad and ancient, as if it had watched a thousand scenes like this and found every one of them unremarkable.

The entrance remained shut, and before it stood Byron, elevated on two stacked boxes so the rest could actually see him. With anyone else, it might have looked ridiculous. On Byron, it only made him more Byron.

He waited until enough people had drawn close.

"Today is the day," Byron said, voice carrying cleanly over the crowd. "By the end of it, we leave this place. Keep your heads clear and your feet under you. Just because the lower floors stopped frightening you does not mean the tower has changed its nature."

A murmur passed through the gathered Awakeneds and died again.

"You all know the first and second floors by now. Some of you even earned Soul Cores there with your own hands. You also know where the real danger begins." His expression hardened slightly. "The weaker among you who are still in Ember Core will be careful. The ones in Vein will cover where they can. We move upward together, and nobody starts doing clever nonsense on their own."

That drew a few grim nods.

Then Byron turned his head toward the gray-haired boy and his four companions.

"And our dear friends who enjoyed private access to the tower before the rest of us learned the truth will take the lead. They’re the strongest among us, after all. It’s only fair. They grew fat on everyone else’s fear. They can pay a little of that back by going first."

The gray-haired boy’s face darkened at once.

"What!?" he snapped. "We never agreed to that, Byron! What are you talking about?"

Byron folded his arms. "I’m talking about the least you can do."

The gray-haired bastard took a step forward. "This is bullshit!"

"Less than what the five of you were doing," Byron replied. "If Neo and Snot hadn’t entered the tower, half this camp would still be living under the lie you fed them."

A hard click of the tongue came from the gray-haired boy.

"Fine," he said. "Then every Soul Core we kill is ours."

Byron gave a single nod. "If you kill the Soul Beast, the Soul Core is yours. That was already agreed."

That was enough. The gray-haired group had already lost the room. The rest of the camp had seen the first floor. The second. The easy harvest they had been denied. There was no putting that back behind a curtain.

Byron stepped down from the boxes.

"Move."

The gray-haired group went first, five in total, walking toward the great doors with the stiffness of people pretending they still held authority. The crowd followed in waves behind them. Neo stayed with his own group near the middle, close enough to move when needed, far enough from the front to read what happened before it reached him.

The doors opened.

The first floor greeted them exactly as before. White stone. Torches fixed to the walls. The broad circular chamber. The angel statue rising at the center with the spiral stairs winding upward around it. With this many people entering together, the whole room felt tighter than Neo remembered. Bodies filled the chamber quickly, torchlight sliding over armor, blades, relics, and faces worn thin by anticipation.

Nothing attacked.

That helped more than Neo expected. He could feel it in the crowd, the way the first breath loosened out of people once they crossed the threshold and found no ambush waiting under the statue. A few even straightened, embarrassed at how tense they had come in.

The gray-haired group wasted no time and headed straight for the staircase. Everyone else followed. The flow upward turned clumsy almost immediately, too many people trying to climb with weapons and gear in close quarters, but the movement held.

The black-haired girl stayed behind the rest.

Snot noticed and slowed just enough to glance back at her.

"You alright?" he asked.

She gave a small nod. "Yes."

It was not especially convincing, but she entered and followed as the last one in line.

The climb to the second floor felt entirely different with this many people. Boots struck stone in restless rhythm. Metal brushed railing and wall. Breath rose warmer in the confined space. Voices surfaced here and there only to die under the pressure of the ascent. They were no longer trespassers slipping upward in secret. This was an incursion now, rough around the edges, barely held together, but large enough to feed itself the dangerous illusion that numbers alone could smooth over what waited higher up.

That illusion lasted until the second floor came into view.

At first, it looked familiar.

The broad chamber. The pale flame. The outer walls.

Then Neo saw what had changed.

The thing that had once drawn the Soul Beasts into a cleaner flow was gone. No simple stream of enemies throwing themselves toward a single point.

The walls split.

Cracks opened around the chamber, and Soul Beasts started forcing themselves through in several places at once, climbing out the way they had before, only with no lure to shape their movement. They spilled into the room in jagged bursts, more of them than before, and for a breath they had no target at all.

Then they saw the mass of Awakeneds coming up the stairs.

A spider dropped near the front rank and drove both fangs into a man’s shoulder before he understood the floor itself had changed. Someone shouted. Another beast lunged from the side wall. A third crawled free from a split farther up and leapt straight into the nearest cluster of bodies.

The second floor erupted.

Weapons flashed into existence all across the chamber. Swords, axes, bows, spears, relics in stranger forms. Class abilities ignited in bursts of red, blue, gold, and pale white while people reacted on instinct more than discipline. The order of the march tore apart in a breath and became a live clash of steel, panic, curses, and raw effort as the first ranks tried to hold and the ones behind them tried not to trip over the dead.

Neo summoned his sword at once.

A beast came low from the side, and he cut through its neck before it reached Marika. Max drove forward with shield raised and caught another creature hard enough to fling it backward into the path of a second. Alice stepped in with her axe and split one apart with a single heavy blow that sent blood and chitin skidding across the stone.

From somewhere near the center, Byron’s voice rose over the chaos.

"Hold your lines! Ember Cores behind the Veins! Don’t spread out!"

A good order.

Late, but good.

The sounds inside the chamber changed completely after that. Steel rang against claws. Fire burst bright against white stone. Someone screamed. Someone else answered with a curse and a class skill that lit half the chamber for an instant. Bodies pressed in, tried to pull back, collided with each other, forced gaps where there should not have been any. The second floor, which had looked like easy profit only yesterday, had turned feral again the moment it stopped feeding them on simple terms.

Neo cut another beast down and understood it at once.

This would not be a clean climb.

The siege of the tower had begun.