The night before Floor 6 opened, Dante slipped away from the camp.
It wasn't easy because Astrid slept like she was ready to fight at any moment, her senses tuned for any threat that might approach. Ravenna was lighter, but her emotional sensing meant she often stirred when his mood shifted too dramatically.
He had been planning this for days, ever since they arrived on Floor 5 and he remembered what was hidden beneath the arena.
The Sylvani Temple, one of the lost ruins from before the Tower was tamed, from the ancient age when entities left pieces of themselves in places mortals weren't meant to find. In the original timeline he had heard rumors about it on Floor 60, fragments of a story told by a dying climber who wished he had known sooner.
"There's power buried under the arena," the man had gasped with blood bubbling from his lips. "Old power, the kind that changes everything. If you ever get the chance... Floor 5... look for the crack in the western wall..."
He never went back in that lifetime because by Floor 60 the tournament was locked behind him, and the effort required to return wasn't worth the potential reward.
But now he was here and he knew where to look, and tonight while everyone slept and the guards changed shifts he was going to find what had been hidden for millennia.
---
The western wall of the arena was unremarkable from the outside, just weathered stone covered in moss and climbing vines, indistinguishable from any other section of the ancient structure.
But he knew what to look for.
He ran his fingers along the stonework until he found it: a seam so fine it was invisible to the naked eye, cutting through the mortar in a pattern that didn't match the natural wear of the structure. A door hidden in plain sight, waiting for someone who knew the secret.
His hand pressed against a specific stone while applying pressure in a specific pattern, and the wall shifted just an inch or two to reveal a gap barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through. He didn't hesitate and slipped into the darkness beyond while the wall closed behind him.
[Hidden location discovered: The Sylvani Temple]
[Warning: Ancient protections active]
[Warning: Unauthorized entry detected]
'Of course there are protections, there's always protections.'
He moved forward anyway.
The passage descended steeply through carved steps that led down into a darkness so thick his enhanced senses struggled to penetrate it. The air grew colder as he went deeper, carrying a scent like lightning and old stone and something else, something that made his skin prickle with anticipation.
The steps ended in a chamber that was vast, larger than the arena above, with a ceiling so high it disappeared into shadow. Pillars of white stone rose from the floor at regular intervals, carved with symbols that glowed with a soft green-gold light, and at the center of it all on an altar that looked like it had grown from the earth itself something pulsed with power.
The Ancient Core.
He had heard the stories, scattered fragments of lore collected over eight years of climbing. The Cores were sources of primordial power, left behind by the entities that built the Tower long before humanity ever set foot inside. They granted abilities beyond the normal Path system, abilities that could make a strong climber into something approaching a god.
Most climbers never found one, and those who did rarely survived the claiming process.
He walked toward the altar with his new sword drawn and his senses stretched to their limits. The temple was quiet, too quiet, and he knew from experience that silence usually preceded violence.
The guardians emerged from the pillars like ghosts solidifying into flesh, seven of them, tall and thin and wrong in ways that made his brain itch. They had faces that might have been human once, stretched and twisted into something alien, and they moved without making a sound.
[Guardians detected: Sylvani Remnants x7]
[Threat level: Extreme]
[Recommendation: Retreat]
'Not a chance.'
He attacked first.
His sword, the Champion's Blade, sang through the air as he closed the distance to the nearest guardian. The phantom edge ability extended his reach and caught the creature off-guard, and his blade carved through its midsection before it could react.
The two halves of its body simply reconnected with the wound sealing like it had never been there, and the guardian's stretched face twisted into something that might have been a smile.
'Regeneration, of course, can't ever be simple.'
The other six closed in with their movements synchronized in a way that suggested a hive mind or shared consciousness. He retreated while analyzing and looking for weaknesses that didn't immediately present themselves.
Fire hadn't worked on the stone sentinel and blades weren't working here. What did Sylvani remnants fear?
The memory surfaced from deep in his past: a conversation with Elowen on Floor 45, before the Black Surge, before he lost everything.
"My people lived for millennia before the Tower," she had said while staring at something he couldn't see. "But we were not eternal. The one thing that could unmake us, the one force we could not resist... was the light of the Authority."
Authority, the third Path, the one that interacted directly with the Tower's systems.
He didn't have Authority abilities, but he did have something else: a connection to the system that shouldn't exist, a classification that the Tower itself had labeled IRREGULAR.
'Let's see if that does anything.'
He stopped running and planted his feet while reaching for the strange awareness that had been growing at the edges of his consciousness since the regression. The thing that made him different, the anomaly that the Administrators kept flagging.
Power surged through him, raw and uncontrolled and nothing like any Path skill he had ever used.
The guardians screamed as light exploded from his body, not fire but something purer, a radiance that ate through the remnants and dissolved their forms into motes of light that scattered into the darkness. They came apart in ways that regeneration couldn't fix.
When it was over he stood alone in the temple, breathing hard, his hands trembling with the aftereffects of whatever he had just done.
[Authority manifestation detected]
[Classification updated: Irregular → Undefined potential]
[Administrator attention: Level 6]
He didn't have time to process the notification because the Core was calling to him with its pulse growing stronger, and he knew with absolute certainty that if he didn't claim it now he never would.
---
The Ancient Core was warm under his fingers.
It was smaller than he expected, maybe the size of an apple, its surface covered in patterns that shifted and changed constantly. Green-gold light bled from it and coated his hands while seeping into his skin.
Accept, something whispered. Accept and become.
He closed his eyes and opened himself to the power.
Pain tore through every cell in his body and rewrote them from the inside out. He screamed, or tried to, but sound wouldn't come and all he could do was hold on while the Core remade him into something he didn't recognize.
It lasted longer than he could track, and when it ended he collapsed to the floor of the temple and lay there gasping for breath that didn't seem to fill his lungs.
[Ancient Core absorbed]
[Power source integrated]
[Dual power type detected: Path + Core]
[Synchronization... successful]
[New ability unlocked: Primal Strike]
[Warning: Power signature significantly elevated]
[Administrator attention: Level 7]
'Did it... did it work?'
He pushed himself to his feet with his muscles protesting every movement, and looked down at his hands. They looked the same, but something underneath had changed because he could feel power flowing through channels that hadn't existed before, filling reservoirs he hadn't known he had.
The Path skills from his original timeline were still suppressed, locked behind a vessel that wasn't strong enough to handle them. But the Core power was different because it was his now, integrated into his very being rather than layered on top of it.
He flexed his fingers and felt energy gather in his palm, green-gold light that matched the Core's original glow. With a thought he released it toward a nearby pillar and the stone exploded into fragments that scattered across the chamber like shrapnel from a bomb.
[Primal Strike activated]
[Damage type: Absolute]
[Note: Absolute damage ignores defensive modifiers]
Absolute damage, the kind of power that cut through shields and armor and regeneration without caring what got in its way. The kind of power that could kill things that weren't supposed to be killable.
'This changes everything.'
---
The climb back to the surface was harder than the descent.
His body was adapting to the Core power, but adaptation wasn't the same as mastery and the fluctuations made it hard to move with his usual precision. Twice he had to stop and let waves of nausea pass, and three times he almost collapsed on the stairs.
But he made it back to the surface.
The night was still dark when he emerged from the arena's hidden passage, the sky heavy with clouds that blocked any starlight. He could sense Astrid and Ravenna still sleeping in their camp a quarter-kilometer away, their presences burning in his awareness like candles.
'New power, new senses, going to take time to get used to this.'
He made his way back to camp as quietly as he had left, sliding into his bedroll and closing his eyes just as the first hints of dawn touched the eastern horizon.
Tomorrow they would enter Floor 6, and tomorrow everything would be different. But for now, with the Ancient Core's power still integrating into his body and the Administrators undoubtedly scrambling to figure out what had just happened, he allowed himself a moment of satisfaction because one Core was down with two to go, and once he had all three the Archon would learn what it felt like to face something that could actually hurt it.