Floor 56 of the Celestial Tower felt wrong.
Not dangerous.
Not chaotic.
Not hostile.
Just… wrong.
The chamber resembled an antique library mixed with a wrestling arena:
spiral staircases leading nowhere,
floating books that whispered nonsense equations,
massive filing cabinets that rearranged themselves,
and the faint smell of ink, dust, and existential dread.
Julian Breadstone drifted over the scene wearing reading glasses perched on top of six other reading glasses.
"HELLO MY SWEET VIEWERS OF CHAOS AND REASON!
I PROMISED YOU ABNORMAL—AND TODAY WE DELIVER!"
Jimmy adjusted the microphone with a sigh.
"He's not dangerous. But I don't think the Tower was prepared for him."
Julian clasped his hands.
"The Tower wasn't prepared for ME either, darling!"
Jimmy stared.
The silence was the audio equivalent of raising a single eyebrow.
But then—
The projected view shifted, zooming down into the maze of staircases.
A man wandered through the chamber, humming.
Tallish.
Lanky.
Sandy blond hair.
Round spectacles over bright, curious eyes.
A loose sweater vest.
A tie that never hung straight no matter how often he adjusted it.
A leather satchel filled with notebooks, pencils, rulers, and an abnormal number of rubber bands.
He had no weapon.
No armor.
No chi signature.
No magical aura.
Only a warm smile and a complete lack of awareness that he was currently in a multiversal death tournament.
His name hovered politely over his head:
Professor Darrin Quill – Academic (??? Department)
Julian squealed in delight.
"THERE HE IS! THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE TENURE-TRACK THREAT!"
Jimmy whispered, "What department is he from?"
Julian cleared his throat.
"According to his entry form… all of them."
Darrin Quill inspected a floating book.
It flapped like a butterfly, squeaking in irritation.
"Fascinating!" he said brightly. "This life-form appears to metabolize syntax!"
The book bit him.
He laughed.
"Adorable."
He scribbled something in his notes.
A fighter nearby ducked behind a cabinet.
"What are you DOING?! That thing BURNS people!"
Darrin blinked.
"Really? It seems quite friendly."
The book ignited, spitting a fireball.
Darrin sidestepped it absently.
"Hm. Pyro-linguistic. I'll take notes."
Julian whispered reverently:
"He dodged WITHOUT LOOKING."
Jimmy stared.
"No. No way."
But it kept happening.
A floating ledger snapped shut violently where his head had been—
and Darrin wandered forward, tilting his body at the exact right moment to avoid being decapitated.
A staircase folded into a dimensional rift directly ahead—
and he stepped casually onto the only safe tile without even seeing the rift form.
A mimic desk lunged at him—
and he bumped it with his satchel, knocking it unconscious.
Julian clapped like an excited seal.
"HE'S NOT FIGHTING THE TOWER! HE'S JUST… GOING ABOUT HIS DAY!"
Jimmy frowned deeply.
"You're telling me he's not aware he's in danger?"
Darrin Quill stopped at a floating cabinet drawer.
Pulled it open.
Found a glowing sigil orb.
"Oh! A paperweight!"
The orb exploded—
—or WOULD have exploded.
Instead, it rolled off his fingers and detonated behind him, launching a pursuing tower-spawn creature into a portal.
Julian levitated in place, shaking with emotion.
"He is chaos. Gentle chaos. Wholesome chaos. CHAOS THAT DOES NOT KNOW IT IS CHAOS."
Three fighters watched him pass, baffled.
"Is he enchanted?"
"No—that's not magic."
"Is he pretending?"
"He doesn't even LOOK stressed."
"WHY IS HE WRITING NOTES?!"
"What is he WRITING ABOUT?!"
They approached cautiously.
"Professor?" a swordswoman asked.
Darrin looked up.
"Oh! Hello! Are you students?"
They exchanged confused looks.
"Uh… we're fighters?"
"Marvelous! Observational learning opportunity!"
He pointed toward a series of platforms that flickered in and out of existence.
"You see those?" he asked.
"Yes," one fighter replied carefully.
"They follow a pattern," Darrin said cheerfully. "Seven-second variance, recursive loop. Step on them only when they hum in the B-flat frequency."
The fighters blinked.
"B-flat?"
He nodded.
"Yes, yes. Like this."
He hummed.
A nearby platform shimmered brightly.
He stepped on it.
It held.
The fighters hesitated.
"Just hum B-flat?"
"That's not how platforms work."
"He's guessing. Absolutely guessing."
Darrin hummed again.
The platforms synced.
He motioned.
"Go on."
They did.
It worked.
All three fighters crossed safely.
Julian shrieked with glee:
"HE SOLVED THE PLATFORM PUZZLE WITH MUSIC THEORY! OH I LOVE HIM."
Jimmy pinched the bridge of his nose.
"He's a hazard. A helpful hazard. But a hazard."
Farther into the floor, the Tower tried harder.
Books turned into flying sawblades.
Cabinets reconfigured into mechanical beasts.
False staircases chased him.
A research desk conjured a shockwave of sharpened paper.
Darrin:
• dodged the books by bending down to tie his shoe,
• avoided the cabinet-beast by stepping into a stable gravity pocket while reaching for a pen,
• escaped the false staircase by reaching into a portal to retrieve a fallen notebook page (the staircase lunged, missed, and fell into its own trap),
• and walked right through the paper storm because he had accidentally applied a layer of rune-resistant chalk to his sweater vest earlier.
All without realizing any of it.
A nearby fighter stared, mouth open.
"He isn't fighting the tower…
the tower is fighting HIM."
Julian held up a sign that read: CORRECT!
At the center of the floor, the guardian manifested.
A towering bibliomancer construct—
pure swirling text and arcane equations—
designed to overwhelm unprepared fighters with cognitive overload.
It pointed a quill-arm at Darrin.
"IDENTIFY YOUR FIELD."
Darrin brightened.
"Oh! I'm cross-departmental! My current field is… hm… interdimensional semiotics with an emphasis on kinetic runic grammar!"
The guardian paused.
"…invalid specialization."
Darrin beamed.
"Thank you!"
The guardian unleashed an avalanche of living letters.
The letters wrapped around Darrin in a spiral—
only to unravel immediately.
Because Darrin was writing notes so quickly that the guardian absorbed HIS annotations instead of trapping him.
The guardian staggered.
"What… what ARE these notes…?"
Darrin pushed his glasses up.
"Oh, just corrections!"
The guardian froze.
"Corrections…?
CORRECTIONS?!"
Darrin nodded enthusiastically.
"Yes! Several of your equations were recursive in an unstable way, you see—so I adjusted the indexing variables, and—"
The guardian exploded.
Not violently.
Just quietly unraveled into literary confetti.
Julian fainted midair from joy.
Jimmy used a medical rune to wake him.
Darrin, completely oblivious, gathered some leftover letters.
"These will go wonderfully in my journal."
At the exit gate, a group of confused fighters approached him.
One asked, "Professor… are you… are you even TRYING to pass the tournament?"
Darrin blinked.
"Tournament?"
They stared in horror.
Julian howled with ecstatic laughter.
Jimmy whispered, "He really didn't know…"
Darrin adjusted his sweater vest.
"I'm on sabbatical.
I saw an interesting tower.
I wanted to learn."
He stepped into the portal to the next floor, humming softly.
Julian took a deep breath and proclaimed to the entire arena:
"PROFESSOR DARRIN QUILL—
THE MAN WHO SURVIVES BECAUSE THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH HIM!"
Jimmy nodded.
"He's abnormal.
But he'll reach the Top 500
by accident."
Darrin disappeared into Floor 57.
Still humming.
Still taking notes.
Still completely unaware
that he had just passed one of the deadliest floors in the Celestial Tower
using the power of pure intellectual confusion