Gun wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand and forced himself upright.
The battlefield was a mess.
Smoke from Luna's Ashen Veil drifted through shattered stone.
Ice walls had cracked.
The bodyguards were still pressing in.
And the Architect was watching all of it as he had already decided the result.
Gun's eyes narrowed.
Then he spoke, voice rough but sharp.
"Listen."
The Divers glanced at him.
Even Luna, despite the pain in her arm, focused.
Gun pointed toward the closest enemy.
"From now on, we focus on one person at a time."
Jack blinked. "No matter who?"
"Doesn't matter who," Gun said. "One target. Delete them. Then move on."
He kept talking without slowing down.
"And use the arena itself. Walls, pillars, debris, ice, smoke. Everything. We don't fight clean. We use the whole space."
Waver nodded slightly.
Gun looked straight at Luna.
"And nobody leaves the Ashen Veil unless we have to."
Luna understood immediately. "Keep the healing going."
"Exactly."
Gun took a breath.
"If we stay inside the Veil and force them into our range, we can keep fighting longer than they can."
The others didn't waste time debating it.
They moved.
And for a brief moment, it worked almost perfectly.
Jack and Waver kept the pressure from range.
Luna's smoke and healing made the team feel impossible to break.
Gun and Jack tore through the rookies in a blink, one after another, forcing them down before they could even recover from the chaos.
The small enemies were not the problem anymore.
They had become obstacles.
And obstacles could be removed.
Gun flashed between broken stone columns, Flash Step snapping him from one angle to another, while Mirror Slashes turned every attack into a mirrored death sentence.
Jack came in behind him with lightning-fast cuts, then vanished again into the smoke.
Waver pinned enemy movement with ice and forced them to reposition into worse and worse angles.
Luna stayed in the back, keeping the whole formation alive.
For a few seconds, it looked like the Architect's side was actually falling apart.
Then one of the bodyguards stepped forward.
And everything changed.
Gun lunged first.
Flash Step.
He appeared at the bodyguard's blind side and threw the feint immediately, baiting a reaction.
The bodyguard's shoulder twitched.
Gun saw it.
He committed to the follow-up.
Avenger's Cut.
But the man had already seen it coming.
He moved before Gun could finish.
A brutal counter caught Gun mid-execution and smashed him sideways.
Gun hit the ground hard, then rolled without losing control.
He forced himself into the edge of the Ashen Veil exactly as planned.
The bodyguard followed.
That was the mistake.
The second he crossed into the smoke, the healing pressure from Luna surged across Gun's body.
The injury started to close.
The enemy stepped after him, confident.
Too confident.
Then the bodyguard smiled.
"Done playing."
His body lit up with heat.
Rising Fire.
A pillar of flame erupted upward, launching the Divers into the air and burning them hard enough that even Luna's Ashen Veil couldn't keep up.
Gun's breath caught in his throat.
The fire wasn't just damage.
It was pressure.
It shoved them out of formation and burned through the healing effect faster than it could recover.
Waver threw up ice on instinct, but the fire melted it almost instantly.
Jack lunged in, trying to disrupt the cast.
He triggered Thundering Aura and struck at the bodyguard's opening.
For a split second it looked like it might work.
Then the second bodyguard moved.
A hand snapped out and grabbed Jack by the arm.
The next second, a pillar of stone erupted through the ground and pierced him from three directions.
Jack screamed and went down hard.
Gun's eyes widened.
The fight had gone from bad to worse in an instant.
The rookies were gone.
The bodyguards were still standing.
And the Architect had not even started moving seriously yet.
Gun's chest tightened.
For the first time since the battle began, the thought slid through his mind with complete clarity.
This really was just like ganking.
The strong ones always stacked up on the weak.
The freshies never got a fair fight.
The maxed players crushed them because they could.
That was all this was.
He could see it now.
The bodyguards were the ones doing the ganking.
He, Jack, Luna, and Waver were the freshies getting swarmed.
Gun's jaw tightened.
He looked up.
The Architect saw it too.
The look in Gun's face.
The moment the defeat started to settle in.
The Architect smiled with quiet satisfaction.
"There it is," he said.
His voice was smooth, almost gentle.
"At last, you understand."
He stepped forward through the wreckage.
"You are strongest only if you can make use of those who are strong."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Not by trying to be strong yourself."
Gun pushed himself up, but the pressure of the fight was already eating into him.
He was exhausted.
All of them were.
The Architect's boot rose.
Gun barely had enough energy left to react, but he twisted at the last second and parried the kick before it could smash into his teeth.
The impact still sent him skidding back.
His arms shook.
Luna was gasping.
Waver looked strained.
Jack was down.
The bodyguards closed in again.
Gun realized something awful.
Maybe this was it.
Maybe this really was the end.
Maybe even the Divers had finally reached a fight they could not force their way through.
Then everything stopped.
Not because the battle ended.
Because the world itself changed.
A pressure dropped over the entire battlefield so suddenly and violently that everyone froze.
It felt like the tower had turned upside down.
A crushing presence filled the air.
Gun's knees nearly buckled.
The pain that hit him was so intense he almost thought he had already died.
His vision blurred.
His ears rang.
He was only half-conscious when he looked up and saw them.
Five figures.
Their auras alone cut the air like blades.
Something about them felt familiar, but Gun couldn't place it.
He was fading.
Then one of the newcomers stepped forward and stood in front of the Architect.
The man in black went rigid.
He could not move.
Could not even answer.
The newcomer's voice was calm and absolute.
"Are you Rue?"
The Architect stared.
The man in front of him was tall.
About 190 centimeters.
A green coat.
Two blades.
A wind aura that cut everything around him just by existing.
Gun's mind, swimming in pain, somehow recognized the shape of the name before he even fully understood it.
Slax Brimstone.
The current strongest climber.
An eldritch fighter.
Swiftgale. Assassin. Knight. Mage.
A monster built like a legend.
Slax looked at Rue with cold disgust.
"We don't need mud like you in this tower."
The Architect did not answer.
He could not.
Slax's voice stayed flat.
"The tower is already dangerous enough. Thieves like you are completely unnecessary."
Then he lifted a hand.
Astral Winds.
The attack came so fast Gun could barely track it.
In less than a millisecond, all of Rue's bodyguards were dead.
Just gone.
No struggle.
No warning.
They dropped before they even understood what had happened.
Gun's breath caught.
The difference in power was obscene.
Slax turned his head slightly toward the Architect.
Then cast another ability.
Windthrow.
He spun, grabbed Rue, and hurled him through the building with a force so absurd that Mach 100 looked slow beside it.
Rue's body vanished into the distance.
Hundreds of kilometers away, maybe more.
A single throw.
Gone.
Slax did not even look pleased.
He simply turned to the other four who had come with him and said, "Lower your presence."
Then he looked at the Divers.
At Gun, Luna, Jack, and Waver.
"Take them."
The last thing Gun felt was a set of strong arms lifting him off the ground.
Then darkness closed in.
The battle was over.
And the tower, for the moment, belonged to the stronger.