Chapter 94: Corruption in the Upper Tower
Floor 902 did not open like the other floors had.
When Danny stepped through the gate, golden aura flowing around him in a soft ripple of warmth, the tower hesitated. The runes on the door flickered. The stone beneath his boots trembled—not from fear, but from confusion.
Something was wrong.
Something foreign.
Something corrosive.
Danny inhaled through his nose, letting creation energy pool quietly behind his ribs before he released it in a slow, steady breath. The air shimmered around him.
"Bones," he murmured. "You're reaching in from the outside."
It wasn't a question.
It wasn't even anger.
It was a realization layered with disappointment.
The Celestial Tower—a structure of ancient laws, sacred tests, cosmic fair balance—was being touched by something that shouldn't exist inside it. Something immortal and destructive. Something that could never be killed. Something that should never be allowed to influence the tournament.
Bones was not here physically.
Bones was not climbing.
Bones was not even looking at Danny directly.
But Bones had sent a piece of himself.
A mind fragment.
A ghost.
A sliver of will.
An agent.
Danny rolled his shoulders slowly as the corruption grew thicker in the air, settling over Floor 902 like a spreading disease.
"Alright," he whispered. "Let's deal with this."
He stepped forward.
The floor shifted.
And then it broke.
The First Corruption
Floor 902 was usually a reflective chamber—walls of mirror-steel, light puzzles, guardians of glass. But what surrounded Danny now was no reflection.
The walls churned like liquid shadow.
Rivulets of black sludge dripped from the ceiling.
The floors pulsed as if veins beneath the stone pumped sour, hungry energy.
Bones' influence.
A chill crawled across Danny's skin. Not because the atmosphere frightened him—but because the tower had never felt so wrong.
He pressed his hand to the floor.
Golden light spread from his palm like sunlight blooming across frozen water.
Wisps of corruption hissed and recoiled.
But the deeper the golden light flowed, the tougher the resistance became. It wasn't just corruption—
It was intelligent corruption.
It pulled away from him, gathering behind the nearest wall.
Danny raised his head.
"Come out," he said softly. "You don't hide well."
The shadow bulged, then tore itself free of the wall.
A figure stepped forward—shards of obsidian floating in a vaguely humanoid shape, held together by violet fire coursing through the cracks like a dying heartbeat.
Bones' agent.
Danny's eyes narrowed.
"You shouldn't be in the tower."
The agent smiled without lips.
Its voice cracked like shattered stone.
"Neither should you."
Danny didn't answer.
The agent spread its arms, corruption swirling like black snowflakes drifting from its hands.
"Your existence breaks rules," it hissed. "You bend the floors. You soothe the guardians. You stabilize the tower. You change things."
"I repair things," Danny corrected quietly. "You corrupt them."
"Because they deserve it," the agent said. "Bones sees the truth. All things rot. All order fails. All structure collapses. The tower stands only to be broken. And when it topples—oh, golden one—Bones will finally feel alive again."
Danny's expression softened.
Not with pity.
With understanding.
"You're trying to destroy the tournament."
The agent's eyes blazed brighter.
"I am here to destroy your chance."
Then it moved.
A Clash of Concepts
The agent lunged—but it didn't run.
It peeled through space.
One moment it stood before Danny.
The next, it hovered above him in a cloud of cutting shards, each fragment of obsidian slicing through the air like miniature guillotines.
Danny slid one foot back.
Golden flame flickered beneath his heel.
The first shard streaked toward his throat.
Danny raised two fingers.
The shard stopped.
Not by force.
Not by blocking.
He simply touched its essence—
the thin strand of corrupted willpower animating it—
and snapped it.
The shard fell inert, clattering harmlessly to the floor.
The agent hissed.
It hurled more shards—dozens, then hundreds—blades of annihilation slicing through the air. They twisted, spiraled, and curved, aiming for every angle.
Danny moved.
Faster than lightning.
Faster than calculation.
Faster than the Wolf King.
He stepped through gaps in the pattern that the agent didn't even realize it had left open. His body drifted like a golden ribbon, weaving between the cuts without disturbing the flow of air.
He touched shards as they passed—one finger, the side of a palm, the back of his wrist—and each touch severed the will animating them.
Shards rained to the corrupted floor like dead insects.
The agent screamed, fury shaking the mirrored walls.
"You can't break what is already broken!"
Danny shook his head.
"I don't break things."
He raised one hand.
Golden light flared.
"I fix them."
He touched the air.
And the corruption rippled.
Flinched.
Recoiled.
Bones' agent staggered backward.
"You—stop—STOP—!"
Golden flame mocked the corruption's attempts to slither away, weaving through the walls and floors, replacing darkness with soft warmth. Stone turned white again. Runes regained their glow.
The agent roared.
"YOU CANNOT ERASE ME. I SERVE DESTRUCTION. I SERVE—"
Danny stepped forward.
One heartbeat.
He was in front of the agent.
His hand rested on its core—
the floating shard of deepest black, the size of a fist, pulsing with violent violet fire.
The agent froze.
Danny's voice was calm and unbearably gentle.
"You serve pain. You serve fear. But you don't serve destruction—not the real kind. Bones destroys because it's all he knows."
The agent shivered.
"And you," Danny continued, "do not have to."
The shard flickered.
The obsidian shards around it trembled, unsure.
The violet fire hissed weakly.
For a moment—
just one moment—
the agent hesitated.
Bones' will surged.
The shard spasmed, black flame jetting out.
"NO—NO—NO—YOU DO NOT HEAL ME—YOU DO NOT—"
Danny closed his eyes.
"I'm not healing you."
Golden light flooded from his palm.
"I'm releasing you."
The shard cracked.
Silently.
Then it dissolved into a fine mist of harmless white ash.
The obsidian pieces fell to the ground, empty.
The Vox of Bones—his fragment of will—was gone.
Danny exhaled softly.
The tower exhaled with him.
The Tower Reacts
The corruption melted, recoiling from every surface.
The floor straightened.
The walls reformed.
Ruin became structure.
Chaos became order.
The Celestial Tower glowed.
Warm.
Alive.
Grateful.
Runes across the floor lit in a slow wave.
PASS.
But it meant more than that.
The entire upper tower trembled.
A silent message ran through its core:
The golden one protects.
He restores what destruction breaks.
He ascends.
Danny stepped into Floor 903, boots softly ringing against polished stone.
But the echo that followed him—
that was heard by everyone.
By Jake far below, punching through a guardian's armor.
By Swift, dancing through fractal blades.
By Jade Killington, firing chi blasts into the eyes of a giant serpent-guardian.
By the Wolf King, standing on Floor 950, chest heaving with rage and something else he couldn't name.
By the Wolf King's new werewolf lady, curled in the recovery chambers, eyes opening as Danny's aura passed through her dreams like a wind of peace she had never felt.
By Bones himself, in a far-off void prison of shattered stars.
He lifted his head.
Smiled.
Sank deeper into the darkness.
"Oh…
now this is interesting."
Danny kept climbing.
He didn't run.
He didn't slow.
He simply moved upward—
toward Floor 910,
toward the shards of corruption that Bones had left behind,
toward the Wolf King and Shadeclaw,
toward the final stages of the tower,
toward the heart of destruction and the edge of rebirth.
He placed his hand on the gate to Floor 904.
"I'm coming," he whispered.
The tower answered with soft, ancient warmth.
We will follow.