Free Web NovelChapter 25: 25. Speed Run
The Floor 7 gate sealed behind them, and Nathan didn’t slow down.
Mirko strode beside him in humanoid form, her longsword resting against her shoulder, her pink eyes scanning the flooded stone channels ahead. Knee-deep water stretched into darkness, its surface broken by crumbling pillars and collapsed archways. Somewhere beneath, electric blue shapes slithered.
"Four floors," Nathan said, pulling up the cumulative rank tracker. The display flickered in his peripheral vision... overall time, average rank, margin to the next tier. The math was unforgiving. "We need S-Rank clears on all of them to hit the overall threshold. We can’t be overly cautious and hesitate."
Mirko’s ears twitched. "Finally."
"Full force."
She grinned. "I thought you would never ask."
---
Floor 7: The Collapsed Aqueduct
The serpents attacked in coordinated pairs ... thick, sinuous bodies crackling with lightning. They surfaced without warning, fangs bared, the water around them boiling with electrical discharge.
Mirko met the first pair head-on. [Impenetrable Fortress] flared around her frame, the mana armor grounding the electricity before it could reach her skin. Her sword carved through the water in wide, devastating arcs... not killing the serpents outright, but forcing them to surface, exposing their heads.
Nathan shot them cleanly from dry ground.
[Mana Arrow]. [Mana Arrow]. [Focus Shot] at partial charge for the larger one.
Three serpents. Three kills. The fourth tried to flank. But Mirko pivoted, her blade severing its spine in a single horizontal sweep.
[Ding! Floor 7 Cleared!]
[Time: 6 minutes 8 seconds.]
[Clear Rank: S]
[Reward: Storm Eel Scale (Uncommon Material), Mana Potion x1]
"Six minutes," Nathan said, already walking toward the next gate. "We can do better."
---
Floor 8: The Bone Orchard
Dead trees clawed at a grey sky. The ground was ash and old rot. Skeletal beasts... wolves, bears, things with too many legs... patrolled between the trunks, their eye sockets glowing faint green.
Nathan’s first arrow shattered a wolf’s skull. The bones reassembled in seconds.
"Regeneration," he muttered. [Hunter’s Insight] flared, tracing mana lines through the creatures’ frames. They all connected to something small, pulsing runes buried in the soil. "Mirko. The ground. There are anchor runes feeding them."
"I see them."
She moved like a green storm, her blade plunging into the earth at each rune’s location. Every shattered anchor released a burst of stale mana and sent its corresponding beast collapsing into lifeless bone.
Nathan covered her back, arrows intercepting the creatures that tried to interrupt. One bear reached her flank. She ducked under its claws, drove her sword through its anchor rune, and kept moving.
[Ding! Floor 8 Cleared!]
[Time: 5 minutes 1 second.]
[Clear Rank: S]
[Reward: Bone Powder (Common Material) x3]
"Five minutes." Nathan allowed himself a thin smile. "Better."
---
Floor 9: The Golem Foundry
The air was thick with heat and the grinding roar of dormant machinery. Stone golems lined the walls—hulking, unfinished constructs waiting for the signal to awaken.
It came the moment Nathan’s foot touched the foundry floor.
Wave one: five small golems, child-sized and fast. Mirko waded into them, [Unstoppable Force] building from the first strike. Second strike. Third. Each hit compounded, her blade moving faster, hitting harder. By the fifth golem, she was shattering stone with every swing.
Nathan focused on the heavies. Two massive golems awakened at the far end of the foundry, their footsteps shaking the floor. [Focus Shot] at twenty seconds punched through the first one’s chest. Thirty seconds for the second. His arms screamed from the repeated strain but he ignored their pain.
Mirko finished her tenth strike on a golem’s core, the accumulated force detonating it from within.
[Ding! Floor 9 Cleared!]
[Time: 7 minutes 42 seconds.]
[Clear Rank: A]
[Reward: Golem Core Fragment (Uncommon Material)]
Nathan exhaled. "A-Rank. Slower than I wanted."
"We are still on track for the overall threshold," Mirko said, flicking stone dust from her blade.
He checked the tracker. She was right. Barely. "Then let’s finish it."
---
Floor 10: The Obsidian Arena
The final floor was a vast black arena beneath a starless sky. Obsidian pillars ringed the perimeter, their surfaces reflecting nothing. At the center, coiled like a serpent made of smoke and teeth, waited the Shadow Wyrm.
It rose as they approached... thirty feet of semi-corporeal darkness, its body phasing in and out of solidity. A single mana core pulsed deep within its chest, visible only in the moments when its form stabilized.
[Hunter’s Insight] painted the pattern in Nathan’s vision. The core solidified for three seconds at a time, then phased out for two. A narrow window. He only needed one.
"Hold its attention."
Mirko was already moving. [Impenetrable Fortress] blazed around her as she charged the Wyrm, sword raised. The creature struck like a viper... fangs of condensed shadow, faster than the Dread Knight’s blade. Mirko caught the strike on her armor. The impact slid her backward across the obsidian floor, sparks erupting from her boots.
She held.
[Unstoppable Force] began its rhythm. First strike against the Wyrm’s coils. Second. Third. Each blow carved away shadow, forcing the creature to solidify to defend itself. Fourth. Fifth. The Wyrm shrieked and lunged with its full body.
Mirko met it. Sixth strike. Seventh. Her sword was a blur now, each hit amplified by the skill’s compounding momentum. Eighth. The Wyrm’s phasing became erratic. Ninth. The core flickered, solidifying longer than before.
Nathan had been charging for thirty seconds.
[Focus Shot] burned in his grip, the arrowhead a white-hot star against the black arena. [Hunter’s Insight] tracked the core’s rhythm, waiting for the exact moment...
Mirko’s tenth strike crashed into the Wyrm’s chest.
"NOW!"
The arrow crossed the arena in a streak of light and punched through the exposed core. The Wyrm froze as Shadow bled from its frame in waves. Then its body collapsed inward, folding into itself until nothing remained but a fading wisp of darkness and the echo of a scream.
[Ding! Floor 10 Cleared!]
[Time: 11 minutes 22 seconds.]
[Clear Rank: S]
Nathan lowered his bow, breathing hard. Mirko leaned on her sword, sweat glistening on her skin, her grin wide and fierce.
Then the cumulative notification appeared.
[Ding! Tower of Beginnings: All Floors Cleared.]
[Overall Clear Rank: S]
[Total Time: 1 hour 57 minutes 3 seconds.]
[Solo Climber Bonus Applied.]
[Overall Ranking Updated: 3rd.]
[Reward: Tower of Beginnings Completion Chest (S-Rank), Title: Fast Climber]
Nathan stared at the screen. S-Rank. Solo. His name, now etched into the Tower’s record alongside climbers who’d spent years reaching this threshold.
"Third place..." he murmured.
Mirko straightened. "Third place, Master. Not bad."
Nathan sheathed his bow. "Not bad at all." He turned toward the exit portal. "Next time, we’ll be first."
---
The TCA teleport gate deposited Nathan into the main lobby, and the first thing he noticed was the silence.
The pause before noise.
A crowd had gathered around the Tower of Beginnings leaderboard display... climbers, guild representatives, academy graduates fresh from their own climbs. Every face was turned upward. Every pair of eyes was fixed on the ranking that had just updated. freewёbnoνel.com
Nathan followed their gaze.
[1st] Elise Winterhart – Party (5) – S-Rank
[2nd] Derek Stone – Party (5) – S-Rank
[3rd] Nathan Cross – Solo – S-Rank
The whispers started like a rising tide.
"Solo? He cleared it solo?"
"An S-Rank solo clear hasn’t happened in months..."
"The Bunny King? The F-Grade guy? That’s impossible..."
Nathan spotted Derek near the front of the crowd. His expression was a slow-motion collapse...
disbelief hardening into fury, fury softening at the edges into something that looked almost like fear. Beside him, Tyler and Reid stared with their mouths slightly open, their borrowed confidence nowhere in sight.
Derek stormed forward. "How?!" His voice cracked on the word. "You’re F-Rank! You—"
"How about you stop the charade?" Nathan said. His voice was quiet, but the lobby had gone silent enough that it carried. "Are you going to feed me your tears every time I do something outstanding?"
Derek’s fists clenched. His knuckles went white. For a moment, he looked like he might swing. Then his shoulders sagged, just slightly, and the fear Nathan had glimpsed earlier surfaced fully.
He had nothing.
Nathan walked past him.
Near the edge of the crowd, Elise stood apart. She hadn’t moved since the ranking updated. Her icy blue eyes were fixed on the leaderboard, then shifted slowly to Nathan as he passed. She didn’t speak. She didn’t nod. But her gaze held his for a long, unreadable moment .. not the pity she’d worn at graduation, not the curiosity from their encounter in the TCA hall.
Something quieter. Something like recognition.
Nathan broke eye contact first as he walked away, He had nothing to prove to her. And In the back of his mind, Mirko’s presence hummed with satisfaction.
’Hmph!’
