The Wolf King had never felt anything like this.
Not in his rise from rabid alpha to planetary tyrant.
Not in his first moon-shattering rampage.
Not even in the moment he stood on Floor 900 and realized he could smell the dragons somewhere above—those golden, silver, and bronze signatures that stirred something violent and ancient inside him.
This new feeling was quieter.
Stranger.
Unwanted.
He didn't understand it yet.
But he felt it.
And it began with her.
The Woman Who Shouldn't Have Been Alive
She had no name anymore.
Her human identity had burned away when he touched her with black fire—transformed her, reforged her, reshaped her into something feral and loyal and trembling with new instinct.
She crawled beside him now, barely able to stand on two legs, panting softly as her lupine muscles spasmed and adapted to her freshly altered skeleton.
Her fur was a pale ash-gray, as if her human softness had been scorched but not fully consumed. Her eyes were no longer human, but not quite his either—golden, wide, fearful, hopeful.
The Wolf King towered above her as they stepped onto Floor 900.
The space was enormous, like a cathedral carved from living stone. Banners depicting battles of past tournaments hung from invisible rafters. Runes floated like drifting fireflies. Platforms shifted and rearranged themselves as fighters entered.
This was a proving grounds floor.
A sorting chamber.
A place to test who deserved to climb higher.
The Wolf King's lips curled.
He needed no test.
But she—
She needed everything.
He glared down at his newly-made follower.
"Stand."
She tried.
Her legs shook. Her claws scraped stone. She wobbled.
But she stood.
He nodded once.
"Good."
She shuddered with pride.
The Tower Intervenes
Floor 900 did not care for dramas, destinies, or new loyalties.
It was a floor designed for one thing:
Filter the weak.
A dozen platforms rose from the stone like lunging beasts.
Fissures opened.
Rifts split the air, spitting out tower guardians.
Some were humanoid.
Some beasts.
Some mechanical constructs woven with mana threads.
All were dangerous.
None were prepared for the Wolf King.
But they weren't after him.
They went for her.
The Wolf King reacted instantly.
Black fire exploded from his feet as he leapt across the arena. His hand closed around one guardian's throat, crushing its neck with a single squeeze.
"Mine," he growled.
The guardian dissolved.
He turned as three more lunged.
He swatted them aside like insects.
"Mine."
But there were too many.
And she was too new.
A guardian slipped behind him—a lithe, blade-limbed creature that struck her across the shoulder.
She yelped—
collapsed—
and nearly fell off the platform.
The Wolf King froze.
Something hot exploded in his chest.
Not rage. Rage he knew. Rage was home.
This was—
Panic?
He didn't understand it.
He moved.
Too slow.
The guardian pinned her to the floor with its foot.
She writhed.
Claws scraping.
Eyes wide.
Trying to please him, trying to survive, trying so hard to be worthy—
"STOP."
The Wolf King lunged—
—but the tower responded first.
A sigil lit beneath her body.
Elimination.
She vanished in a burst of white light.
Not dead.
Just ejected from the Tower's climb.
The Wolf King's claws sank into air where she had been.
A heartbeat too late.
His chest tightened.
Something ancient and instinctive cracked inside him.
He rose slowly, turning to the remaining guardians.
The air pressure dropped.
Stone trembled.
The void between platforms shivered.
When he spoke, the tower heard a predator addressing prey.
"You touched what is mine."
The Wolf King's Rage Unleashed
The next moments did not belong to time or combat.
They belonged to destruction.
The Wolf King became a living rupture of force.
The first guardian died before it realized he had moved—body ripped clean in half, black fire sizzling where its heart might have been.
The second exploded under a downward stomp that shattered the arena floor.
The third tried to flee.
He caught it by the leg and slammed it into another, both evaporating under the pressure.
Julian Breadstone, suspended far above in the announcer's booth, made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a scream.
"UH—JIMMY—JIMMY—WE NEED A RULEBOOK—IS THIS ALLOWED—?"
Jimmy stared at the readings, face pale.
"The Wolf King isn't breaking the floor," he whispered. "He's breaking the tower's temperament."
The Wolf King tore through platform after platform, hunting anything that moved.
Anything that had dared target her.
His claws carved trenches through enchanted metal.
His fangs glowed with black fire.
His muscles swelled, pushing his humanoid frame beyond its limits.
He threw a guardian so hard it broke through three floors above before dissolving.
He roared—a sound of raw agony and fury intertwined—and the entire tower shook.
This wasn't just rage.
This was the beginning of something the tower feared more:
Attachment.
He had not cared for anything in centuries.
Not since his pack.
Not since he was infected.
Not since the Buddies' experiments turned him into a creature that knew only destruction.
But something about her transformation—
Something about her helplessness—
Something about the scent of loyalty clinging to her new form—
Something tore open an old instinct buried under centuries of blood.
Protect.
Pack.
Mine.
After the Rage
Floor 900 took a long time to recover.
Most guardians were gone.
Platforms were cracked.
Runes flickered.
The Wolf King stood in the center of the destruction, chest rising and falling slowly, black fire curling off his body.
He stared at the place where she had stood last.
The sigil light fading.
He did not understand why he was still looking.
She was safe now.
Ejected.
Alive.
Out of danger.
He should have forgotten her immediately.
He didn't.
Why?
Why was he thinking of her trembling legs?
Her desperate attempt to stand?
Her eyes looking to him for approval?
He snarled and slammed a fist into the floor.
Stone shattered into dust.
"WHY?"
The tower didn't answer.
But deep inside himself, something whispered:
She was weak.
She failed.
She trusted you to protect her.
And deeper still—
You failed her.
The Wolf King's claws tightened.
That feeling—whatever it was—hurt more than any blade could.
He wasn't used to pain like that.
He didn't like it.
He wanted to kill it.
But it didn't die.
It settled inside him like a seed waiting for the right soil.
A voice old as his first howl whispered:
Anchor.
He hated it.
But he couldn't ignore it.
The Path Forward
With Floor 900 destroyed, the tower simply opened the next gate as a plea.
"Leave," it seemed to say.
"Go upward.
Away from here.
Away from what you broke."
He stepped through.
The black fire around him dimmed slightly, cooling to a simmer.
He wasn't calm.
He was thinking.
Thinking about her.
Why?
Why her?
Why now?
Why did her elimination feel like something was ripped from him?
He didn't have answers.
He didn't like questions.
But something inside him changed.
He would climb higher.
He would reach the top.
He would take what he wanted.
He would fight the dragons.
He would show the multiverse his fury.
But after that—
after the tournament—
after the war against destruction—
He would find her.
He would make sure she learned to stand.
To fight.
To grow.
To hunt.
Not because he needed a queen.
Not yet.
But because something had anchored inside him.
For the first time, the Wolf King wasn't climbing alone.
He didn't understand it.
But he would.