Iori’s wrist had already committed, elbow dropping, shoulder rolling, the blade aimed straight for the crown of Kael’s head like it was an execution block and not a street.

The motion was practiced, cruelly efficient. Even the other Sun Clan members had that tiny forward lean people get when they expect a clean finish.

Then the sound came.

Not the wet crunch of steel meeting bone, something brighter, sharper. A brittle snap that didn’t belong to flesh.

"How unfun," the words echoed as if they were spoken by the world itself.

The dagger never landed.

The dagger shattered mid-fall, the metal splintering outward as if it had struck a wall instead of a coughing man. Fragments rang off the cobbles and skittered across the street, flashing once in the sun before losing their shine.

Kael was still folded over from the cough, shoulders jerking, breath dragged through blood. Yet the blade had broken around him, as if the air above his skull had decided it didn’t allow weapons.

For a second, Iori was stuck speechless. How did this just happen? Kael’s head shouldn’t be stronger than steel.

"Didn’t I tell you, you won’t make it past one day?" The sound echoed again, looking up, with squinted eyes from the glare of the daylight or maybe the absurd pain he was in, Kael saw him.

The Fist King had simply arrived. For a second, he wasn’t here, and now he is, as simple as that. No grand entrance, no powerful display of power, nothing. He was just there.

He stood in the street like the street had been built around him.

Not in the way a noble "arrived" with fanfare, no ripple of mana, no flash of light, no portal tearing open. Just... presence.

A weight that didn’t press down like the earlier mountain-pressure, but still made the air feel denser, harder to breathe through. His shadow fell the wrong way for a heartbeat, or maybe Kael’s eyes were just swimming.

"Fuck..." The Senior clan member cursed.

The curse didn’t come from fear in his voice so much as calculation. The kind of tone people used when they realized a bad choice had already been made, and now the only question was what it would cost to undo it.

"Who the fuck are you to put your nose in Sun Clan business!" one of the newbies said as he pointed his finger at the Fist King.

The words came out too loud, too sharp, like the boy believed volume could cover ignorance. He took a half-step forward, too, chin lifted, shoulders squared, bravery borrowed from the number of people behind him.

"Shut up!" The words sadly left the senior member’s mouth too early.

He said it like he was trying to grab the sentence out of the air and stuff it back into the kid’s throat. But sound didn’t work that way. The moment had already left the station.

The man who was pointing a finger frowned as he noticed his clanmate’s reaction.

But he forgot one thing: to retract his hand.

And it was too late to do so anyway.

"Damn, man, you don’t feel that?" one of the other members said.

"Feel what?" the one who was pointing asked.

"That?" he said as he gestured with his head toward the man’s finger.

Looking back at his hand, his finger was at an awkward angle. It was no longer pointing forward, but up.

Broken, twisted, and out of its sockets.

There wasn’t even a visible strike. No swing, no slap, no dramatic motion. It was as if the finger had offended reality, and reality corrected it. Tendons bulged under the skin in a way that didn’t make sense, and the joint bent where joints weren’t meant to bend.

Only then did the pain finally reach his brain as he went down on two knees in agony, screaming.

His shout tore through the street, drawing heads from windows, turning a few passersby, and making even the potion shop’s door creak as if someone inside leaned closer to listen. The kid clutched his hand with his other one, shaking, face already paling as nausea tried to climb up his throat.

"Get the fucker out of here!" the senior member said as he locked eyes with the Fist King.

The senior’s stance had changed. No more loose shoulders. No more casual posture. He had shifted his weight like he expected violence and wanted to be ready for it, but he didn’t raise a weapon.

Didn’t even reach for one. His hands stayed open at his sides, fingers tense, the way a man stood when he knew drawing steel would just make his death louder.

"Fist. We don’t have any grievances with you. Why are you bothering us and our business?"

"But you are bothering my business," the Fist King smiled.

It wasn’t a friendly smile. It wasn’t cruel either. It was... entertained. Like a man watching children argue over a knife they couldn’t lift.

The massive man could only stare at the weaklings around him.

The way he looked at them wasn’t contempt. It was assessment, like he was measuring how fragile their spines were without needing to touch them.

"You know well that you’re not as powerful on the second floor. Let’s be friendly."

"And you think that would stop me from twisting your spines?"

"You’ll be hunted throughout the second floor."

"And your clan will have me as an enemy for the rest of the tower, you choose, the same as many other dead clans chose... Make my day," the Fist King smiled.

The senior member’s jaw worked once, as if he wanted to spit something back and realized there was nothing safe to spit.

Around him, the Sun Clan members shifted, some taking a step back without realizing it, others glancing at each other like they were silently asking who would be dumb enough to move first.

"Iori, let’s bounce."

"Wait, why are we listening to this guy?" Iori said.

His voice was tight, rage pressed flat into it. He still hadn’t swallowed what happened on the first floor. He still hadn’t swallowed the humiliation of being outplayed. And now, in front of his own people, he was being told to retreat.

"You’d better listen to your master, little pup."

Iori’s eyes turned red from rage, but, even for the Fist King, the moment he saw him take a deep breath, then turn away, he frowned.

It wasn’t surrender. It wasn’t fear. It was restraint forced through gritted teeth, rage leashed because unleashing it here would be suicide, and Iori knew it.

A small grin crept up the Fist King’s face. "Good-nosed bastard..." he then turned his head to Kael, who was down, "Are you gonna hug the ground the whole day?"

Kael’s palm pressed into the stone, knuckles whitening as he forced his body to obey him again. The painkiller had dulled the edges, but it hadn’t fixed the core problem. Every inhale still felt like dragging air through a wound.

"Wouldn’t mind standing up if my lungs weren’t on fire, Cough!" Kale spat an even larger amount of blood this time.

It splashed dark against the cobbles, thicker than before. The sight alone made a few of the nearby onlookers instinctively shift away, like blood was contagious.

"Damn, it’s worse than I thought, you don’t even have a full day left..." the Fist King said.

Kael forced his spine straighter anyway. Pride wasn’t the reason; staying low made him look like prey, and Kael had learned what predators did with prey.

"Gloat all you want," Kael stood up, begrudgingly and difficultly, "Why have you been following me?" Kael asked.

"How’d you know I followed you?" The Fist King smiled.

"I have my ways," He wasn’t going to tell him about the map.

"Give me your hand," the Fist King asked.

Kael didn’t have a reason not to do as asked, after all, he was literally seconds away from dying. His arm felt heavy as he lifted it, like the motion itself cost something he didn’t have in surplus.

"Without the gauntlet," The Fist King added as Kael removed the gauntlet.

Metal dematerialized cleanly, leaving Kael’s hand bare, and suddenly it looked wrong to Kael too. Too human. Too breakable. Too easy to ruin.

The Fist King pressed his thumb, which was frankly as big as Kael’s entire wrist, and closed his eyes.

The pressure of that thumb wasn’t painful, but it was unmistakably controlled, like he could crush bone if he decided to and was choosing not to.

"Damn, it’s bad. Real bad..."

"Thanks for lessening my worries," Kael said, holding a cough.

"You tried to get medication from this shop?" The Fist King asked.

"Yeah, said that it was five thousand cores to get this healed up, I don’t suppose you have that much."

"Hah!" the Fist King laughed, "You were gonna get robbed blind. This is deviation, Ki deviation. There is no curing this with some floor two potions."

"What the hell is Ki, now?"

"Internal Energy, basically, your body cannot support the energy within it; it’s been trying to hold it in. But the more you use it, the greater it becomes. Without a core to hold that energy, it’ll break your body apart, what you’re experiencing right now." He said as he removed his hand.

Kael’s throat worked as he swallowed. The explanation didn’t feel comforting. It felt like a verdict, simple, clinical, and brutal.

"So he lied to me when he said that he had treatment?"

"Well, anyone would, if you have the money to buy whatever medication he’ll give you, you’ll probably die before you get the chance to return and get an explanation. Win-win for him."

Kael’s lips twitched, not into a smile, but into something bitter. Of course. Of course, even help came with teeth.

"So, there is no solution to this? Cough, Cough!"

"There is." The Fist King said, smiling.

"And I suppose, I have to be your disciple to earn that solution?" Kael replied, almost repulsed.

"Yep."

"Damn..."

"To be honest, this isn’t just rare," the Fist King said, "This is almost incredibly impossible to occur twice in one generation."

"What do you mean?" Kael asked.

"I also had the Nine Destruction Yang Body. Same one you do. And I really need someone to pass on my teachings, so, what do you say? You want to learn the way of the Fist?" he tapped Kael on the knuckles "Since you’re a gauntlet user, isn’t it quite fateful? Ironic or even too convenient."

The tap was light. Casual. Yet it made Kael aware of how thin the line was between "light" and "shattered" when someone like this decided to apply force.

"It is... so much that it’s extremely suspicious..."

"Good, being paranoid is how you survive the tower. Now, since you’ll probably die before we get to my cave if we were to walk. How about I teach you how to fly?"

"Fly? Is that possible?"

"It is," the Fist King smiled as he grabbed Kael by the scruff of the neck. "Close your mouth, otherwise bugs might get inside," And he simply threw Kael in the air.

The world tilted.

Kael didn’t get the courtesy of a wind-up, didn’t get the courtesy of bracing. One second he was standing on stone, the next, his feet weren’t touching anything at all, and the street dropped away like someone had kicked it out from under him.

Air punched into his face, ripped at his clothes, yanked at his stomach.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAA" Was all one could hear from Kael’s disappearing form on the horizon.