He left the gear on the bed and walked to the kitchen, where he boiled water and watched the city light shift through the privacy glass.
The flat didn't smell like anything. But he noticed, in the glass, his own reflection—a little older, a little harder, already thinking about Floor 2.
He finished his tea, did a final check on the locks, then lay back on the bed in the new armor and waited for morning.
When sleep came, it was empty.
He woke at six, skipped the shower, and caught the first shuttle out to the edge of the Challenger district, where the city's planners had given up on aesthetics and gone pure function: block after block of low-slung concrete, ringed with chain-link and topped with old security cameras that still tracked motion with insect diligence.
James keyed into the training facility using the code from his System wallet. The front room was windowless, the air sharp with disinfectant and old sweat. He checked in at the desk—a battered tablet bolted to the wall—and confirmed his booking for a single lane, full privacy, three hours.
The lane was a narrow rectangle lined with impact foam and reinforced mesh. On one end, a modular rack held an array of weapons, both real and simulated, all tagged with magnetic strips. At the other end, three training dummies stood at human height, painted matte grey, each with pressure sensors mapped to vital targets.
He set his backpack down, unzipped it, and took out the obsidian-edged sword. The weight still surprised him—heavier than the iron, but more alive, as if the blade remembered something you didn't. He flexed his wrist, practiced the draw five times, then clipped the scabbard to his lower back.
First, physical.
He started slow, working through the sword forms he'd watched on bootleg dojo streams. The first ten minutes were pure mechanical motion, breathing into each lunge, twist, and cut, counting the rhythm of his own steps. The necromancer armor flexed with him, plates hugging his ribs without digging, the material neither stiff nor soft.
After half an hour, sweat ran down his spine, pooling under the neck guard. He shook out his arms, checked the dummies' reset status, then stepped it up: deliberate, faster, more pressure on the blade. The sword's edge bit the target with a faint, satisfying thunk each time he scored a point. His eyes tracked the sensor readout on the wall—accuracy up, speed up, stamina already flagging.
He kept pushing until his shoulder ached and the bone plates stung. He logged his stats at the monitor, then sat on the floor and closed his eyes.
Next, magic.
He pulled up the System interface and checked his mana reserve: 360, full. He visualized the dead wolf from Floor 1—the size, the heft, the way its bones had clicked back into place under his hand. He opened the storage ring and willed the body out onto the mat. It materialized with a gentle gravity, sprawled and unbreathing.
James put his hand to the wolf's chest. "Reanimate," he said. The word did not echo, but the System responded instantly: black mist in the eye sockets, a cold ripple along the muscle. The wolf lurched upright, swaying for a moment before stabilizing.
He repeated the process twice, until three dire wolves stood in a loose triangle around him, heads lowered and eyes burning sickly green.
He stood and pointed at the first training dummy. "Flank left," he said, and the first wolf padded across the mat, teeth bared. He waited for it to lock position, then jogged forward, sword raised. The wolf struck the dummy's midsection just as James cut for the neck; the pressure sensor flashed red, then green, registering a double hit.
He repeated the sequence, changing commands each time—"Circle," "Distract," "Pin"—until the wolves moved in nearly perfect sync with his own attacks. Occasionally, they hesitated or broke pattern, and once the largest wolf bit at his ankle when he didn't move fast enough. He noted the problem, adjusted the delay on his mental cue, and went again.
After an hour, his shirt was soaked and the air in the lane had turned humid and sour. He dismissed the wolves with a snap of his fingers. They dropped to the mat in perfect silence, bodies reverting to dead weight.
He checked the time: still an hour left.
He reset the dummies, reran the sword drills, and then practiced Necro Blast and Corpse Explosion with the simulator targets set to random movement. The recoil from each spell stung his arm, but the System showed improved efficiency—less mana wasted, tighter spread.
At the end, he lay flat on the mat and watched the overhead strip light vibrate against his eyelids. He ran through every motion in his head, over and over, until his pulse stopped racing.
He cleaned the sweat off the blade with the edge of his sleeve, packed everything, and walked back to the main desk to check out. The girl in the armor was gone, replaced by a monitor bot that scanned his face and chirped, "Session complete, have a good clear."
Back at the flat, he dropped the gear by the door and beelined to the shower. The hot water felt almost painful on his skin. He stood under it until his fingers went numb, then toweled off, pulled on clean clothes, and sat at the kitchen counter with his laptop open.
He logged into Tower Tactics Forum, his username still flagged as "NEW CHALLENGER." He set search filters for Floors 2 through 4, sorted by most recent, and started reading.
The reports were brutal in their sameness: Floor 2 was the same as Floor 1, just more enemies. Floor 3: the same, but the wolves had a pack leader with a named AI. Floor 4: a subjugation run with a mini-boss at the end—no one had gotten a clear video of the boss, but the consensus was "oversized dire wolf, smarter than some team members."
He wrote notes in his pad, obsessively: enemy spawn patterns, optimal team compositions, average mana drain per run. He diagrammed the best choke points and circled the tactics that would make the most of corpse management. He cross-referenced every post about Necromancers, trying to see if anyone else was running his build.
He made a table of potential floor runs and plotted out the resource spend for each.
He rechecked his System inventory:
[OBSIDIAN EDGE SWORD (C)] [REINFORCED LEATHER (C)] [CARBON SHIELD (E)] [RING: 0/20]
His eyes went back to the notes. Every post about Floor 4 ended the same way: "It's just the same as before, but more." No one talked about the jump to Floor 5.
He found a post by "HaleRunner" with only three upvotes, buried in the comments.
"Don't bother with tactics on 2-4. They're designed to kill time, not people. The real game starts at 5. If you're reading this, bank your mana, save your gear, and get ready to wipe the floor with everyone else."
James underlined the words "the real game starts at 5."
He closed the laptop, then opened it again to reread the note.
He spent the next hour running drills in his head, replaying every step from the training lane. He practiced the spells with his hand flat on the table, fingers curled into a claw.
He set out his gear on the mat in the living room, then knelt cross-legged in front of it. He closed his eyes and imagined the dummies, the wolves, the sword cutting through cold, empty air.
The room was dark except for the laptop's afterglow. His heartbeat slowed to match the rhythm of the old clock on the wall.
He felt the difference now, the split between before and after.
He was ready for Floor 2.