The transition from Floor 4 to Floor 5 was fast.
One moment Dante was standing in the poisonous gloom of the Mire with Ravenna still weak at his side but recovering faster than he expected, and the next they were in a massive coliseum carved from white stone with sunlight streaming down through an open roof to illuminate packed stands filled with thousands of cheering spectators.
[Floor 5: The Arena of Proving]
[Format: Combat tournament]
[Objective: Advance through elimination rounds]
[Note: Elimination does not mean death, losers are transferred to staging area]
[Reward tier: Significant]
"What is this?" Ravenna pressed closer to him, her hand gripping his sleeve as the roar of the crowd washed over them. "There are so many people..."
"Floor 5 is different." He scanned the arena while cataloging details he remembered from a lifetime ago. "No wilderness survival, no monster hunting, just combat between climbers until only the strongest remain."
"We have to fight each other?"
"The losers get transferred out, not killed, so it's one of the safer floors actually." He paused as tournament brackets materialized on massive stone tablets around the arena's perimeter. "But it's also where reputations get made, and winning here means everyone in the Tower knows your name."
'Which is exactly what I don't need, but hiding isn't an option anymore.'
The wolf alpha fight had drawn attention and the Lurker battle had drawn more. Adrian's group, what was left of them, had been spreading stories ever since, and the grey-eyed climber who moved like a ghost wasn't a rumor anymore but a target.
Other climbers were already looking at them with the expressions of people who had made it through four floors and wanted to prove they could go further. Some of them he recognized from the lower levels while others were new, survivors from different entry groups who had taken different paths to reach the same destination.
Adrian Cross stood across the arena with his remaining allies, watching him with a smile that showed too many teeth.
'Of course he made it, cockroaches always survive.'
"New arrivals, attention!"
A voice boomed across the arena, magically amplified to cut through the crowd noise, and a figure in ornate robes stood on a raised platform at the arena's center flanked by Tower guards in ceremonial armor.
"Welcome to the Arena of Proving! Here, your strength will be tested against your fellow climbers. The tournament will proceed in elimination rounds, with winners advancing and losers departing. Final rankings will determine reward tier and priority for Floor 6 entry."
The crowd roared its approval and the announcer waited for the noise to die down before continuing.
"Brackets have been assigned at random. Find your name, report to your designated staging area, and prepare for combat. First round begins in one hour!"
He found his name on the nearest tablet: Dante Graves, Bracket C, Match 7. Ravenna was in Bracket D, Match 3, which meant they wouldn't face each other unless they both made it to the finals.
'Good, I don't want to fight her.'
"I'm scared." Ravenna's grip on his sleeve tightened as she stared at the bracket. "I've never fought humans before, not really, because the mob on Floor 1... you handled that."
"You've killed monsters that would make most of these people piss themselves." He turned to face her and put both hands on her shoulders. "You're stronger than you think, the Heartstone gave you the edge but the courage was always yours."
"But what if I lose?"
"Then you go to the staging area and wait for me to finish." He shrugged. "Losing isn't dying, not on this floor."
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Will you watch my match?"
"If I can." He reached out and gripped her shoulder briefly. "Fight smart, use your fire, and don't let them get inside your head."
"What about you?"
"I'll be fine." He let go and stepped back. "Go find your staging area."
---
The first round was easy.
His opponent was a man named Garrett, a brawler type who relied on strength and durability to overwhelm his targets, and he came in swinging wild haymakers that were telegraphed so clearly he could have dodged them with his eyes closed.
He kept it simple by blocking the first punch, redirecting the second, then stepping inside the man's guard to deliver a precise strike to the solar plexus that folded him in half.
[Match complete: Dante Graves advances]
[Time: 8 seconds]
[Method: Technical knockout]
The crowd murmured, surprised by the efficiency but not yet impressed because eight seconds wasn't fast enough to draw real attention and was just fast enough to suggest competence.
'Good, keep it unremarkable and let them underestimate you.'
He watched Ravenna's match from the stands with his hands clenched against his knees. She faced a woman with a spear, quick and aggressive, who pushed the offensive from the first moment.
Ravenna was terrified and he could see it in the way she moved, hesitant and defensive, giving ground when she should have stood firm. The spear woman pressed the advantage and drove her back toward the arena's edge.
'Come on, fight back, you know how to do this.'
Something shifted when the spear woman overcommitted on a thrust and reached too far. Ravenna's hand came up without thinking and fire bloomed in her palm, catching the spear's shaft and spreading down the wood in a heartbeat.
The weapon shattered while the woman stumbled, and Ravenna lunged forward on pure instinct to take her legs out with a sweep she had practiced a hundred times during their travels.
[Match complete: Ravenna Cinderheart advances]
[Time: 47 seconds]
[Method: Knockout]
The crowd's reaction was mixed with some cheering and others booing because half-demons weren't popular, even when they played by the rules.
He didn't care about the crowd because he was watching Ravenna's face as she realized she had won, watching the disbelief shift into something that looked like pride.
'She did it, she actually did it.'
---
The second round was harder.
His opponent was Liu Shen, the martial artist from Floor 1 who had watched him kill wolves with too much skill and never said a word about it.
"I've been waiting for this." Liu Shen settled into a fighting stance that he recognized as a classical form, balanced and efficient. "Since the first day, I've been wanting to know just how good you really are."
"Guess you'll find out."
They circled each other while measuring distances and probing with feints that neither committed to. Liu Shen was good, genuinely good, his footwork clean and his guard solid, and in the original timeline he would have made it to Floor 12 before a trap dungeon ended his climb.
This time he wasn't going to let that happen.
He attacked first with a flurry of strikes designed to overwhelm and confuse rather than damage. Liu Shen blocked most of them and dodged the rest before countering with a spinning kick that would have taken his head off if he hadn't already been moving.
The exchange lasted longer than his first match as they gave and took for thirty seconds, then a minute, neither able to find a decisive advantage.
Then he stopped playing.
His next strike came from an angle that shouldn't have been possible and slipped through Liu Shen's guard before the martial artist could react. The blow connected and drove the air from his lungs while folding him over the fist.
He followed up before Liu Shen could recover with a precise combination that targeted pressure points and vulnerable joints until the other man collapsed, conscious but unable to move.
[Match complete: Dante Graves advances]
[Time: 1 minute 23 seconds]
[Method: Incapacitation]
Liu Shen lay on the arena floor and gasped for breath while staring up at him.
"What are you?" he managed.
'A regressor who's climbed to Floor 75 and come back to do it better.'
"Just lucky," he said while turning and walking away.
---
The tournament continued through round after round, each opponent stronger than the last and each fight requiring a little more effort and a little more of the skill he had been trying to hide.
By the sixth round the crowd knew his name, and by the seventh they were chanting it because the Grey Ghost who dropped opponents with supernatural efficiency had become the tournament's main attraction. He hated every second of the attention.
Ravenna advanced too, slower and harder but advancing nonetheless. She won her third match with fire and determination before losing her fourth to a hammer-wielding giant who shrugged off her flames like they were nothing, but that was fine because it meant she was safe in the staging area instead of facing increasingly dangerous opponents.
The semifinals arrived and he found himself staring at his bracket.
SEMIFINAL MATCH: DANTE GRAVES vs ASTRID VANE
He had heard the name during the tournament, whispered by spectators and shouted by fans. A berserker woman from a different entry group who had torn through her bracket like she was born for violence. Tall, blonde, covered in scars she showed off like trophies.
She was waiting for him in the arena when he arrived with a massive axe resting on her shoulder.
"Finally." Her voice was loud enough to carry without magical amplification. "I've been watching you all day, Grey Ghost, and everyone you've fought you barely tried."
"Observation or wishful thinking?"
"Both." She planted her axe and cracked the stone floor while her shoulders rolled in anticipation. "I'm going to make you try, I'm going to push you until whatever you're hiding comes out, and then we're going to have a real fight."
The crowd went wild at the promise of a rivalry.
He said nothing and just settled into a fighting stance to wait for the match to begin.
The announcer's voice boomed across the arena: "SEMIFINAL MATCH ONE! DANTE GRAVES VERSUS ASTRID VANE! FIGHTERS READY!"
Astrid's eyes were glowing red now while her muscles bulged beneath her skin and her canines elongated into something that looked disturbingly like fangs.
[Ability detected: Primal Surge]
[Opponent classification: Body path, beast variant]
[Threat assessment: High]
"FIGHT!"
She was faster than her size suggested, faster than anything he had faced since entering the Tower, her axe screaming through the air in an arc that would have bisected him if he had been anyone else. He stepped inside the swing and let it pass close enough to ruffle his hair before driving his fist into her solar plexus with enough force to crack ribs, but she barely flinched and just kept coming.
'Enhanced durability, expected, this is going to take more than love taps.'
They exchanged blows in a blur that the crowd could barely follow. His knife came out and carved lines across her arms and shoulders that healed almost as fast as he could make them while her axe nearly took his head off twice, his arm off once, and his legs out from under him more times than he could count.
She was laughing the entire time.
"Yes! This is what I wanted!" Her transformation was deepening now with her body growing larger and her movements becoming more animal. "You're really fighting! I can feel it!"
'She's right, I am fighting more than I planned to.'
Astrid Vane was the real thing, someone who lived for combat and got stronger the angrier she became. In the original timeline she had made it to Floor 40 before the Black Surge took her.
This time he stopped holding back.
He moved at full speed, the speed he had used in the swamp to save Ravenna, the speed that his suppressed stats said he shouldn't be capable of. His knife found her joints and tendons and the places even enhanced regeneration couldn't protect, and she went down in pieces as her limbs stopped responding to her commands.
"What... how are you..."
He stood over her with his knife at her throat while breathing hard for the first time since the tournament started.
"Yield."
Her eyes burned with fury but she smiled through it. "I yield."
[Match complete: Dante Graves advances to finals]
[Time: 4 minutes 17 seconds]
[Method: Incapacitation]
[Administrator attention: Level 4]
The crowd exploded as medical staff rushed in to tend to Astrid's wounds. She was already healing with her transformation fading as the adrenaline left her system, but her eyes stayed locked on his face.
"This isn't over," she called out as they carried her away. "You hear me, Ghost? This isn't over! I want a rematch!"
He didn't respond and just turned toward the staging area where Ravenna was waiting, because the finals were next and after that came whatever reward the Tower saw fit to grant him. But he could still feel Astrid's eyes on his back, hungry for the fight he had given her and already planning how to get another one.