The office of Guildmaster Lucien Varn of the Iron Scales Guild was silent but for the rasp of his quill scratching on parchment, the metallic slide of armor as he shifted ever so slightly in his chair, the steady click of the wall-mounted clock marking each second, and the muted sounds of his secretary typing. The afternoon light filtering through the tall windows behind him cast long lines of gold and shadow across the black marble floor, catching on the gleaming curves of the full plate armor that wrapped around his frame like a second skin.
"Lucien, you cannot be serious?" The voice broke through the room with enough force to make the ink tremble in its well as the figure barged into his office – uncaring of how the double doors slammed open.
The secretary, sitting at her workstation in the Guildmaster's office, perked up at the suddenness of the guest who had walked through, nearly causing the teacup in her hand to slip and spill atop her mana-powered laptop.
Crossing to the front of the wide darkwood desk stood a man who would have drawn every eye in the room even without such an entrance — with meticulously styled lavender hair that faintly shimmered under the light, and a tailored suit in the same shade, and violet eyes burned with disbelief and barely restrained fury.
"Lord Heart," Lucien addressed without looking up, his tone even, his hand moving with deliberate calm as he signed another document and placed it neatly atop a growing pile – mentally cursing how, despite having manatech he was still required to sign documents manually instead of using the good old 'copy paste keys' and search bar.
His voice carried the weight of gravel grinding beneath steel, deep and coarse, without a single note of sympathy or irritation. "I have asked you to refrain from raising your voice in my office the last time, and I ask you once again to do so once more – anger and frustration do nothing, but blind the eyes and hands of justice."
"Lucien, you cannot deny me this knowledge." Lord Heart pushed as he moved his hands to be clasped firmly behind his back, hiding that his knuckles were turning pale from the strain he was putting them under. He looked every inch the nobleman, trying to maintain composure — except for the sharp tremor that ran through his voice when he spoke again. "This is my son we are speaking of — my blood. I have the right to know whose hands he died by."
Lucien's quill paused mid-stroke as he exhaled slowly through his nose.
"This is the second time you've approached me about this matter," he said at last, setting the quill aside and pressing his gauntleted fingers against the edge of his desk, the faint creak of metal filling the silence.
Lifting his gaze from his documents, his dark grey eyes settled onto the noble in front of him. "And my answer will not change simply because you ask again."
Lord Heart's expression tightened, his composure cracking at the edges. "There is no way my son could have died before reaching Floor Nine to the creatures that inhabit the Floors," he said, his voice rising despite himself. "Not him. Not— not after everything I made sure he was equipped with, not with his team. He was in the Top 100 of his Generation!"
Lucien's silence stretched long enough that the clock's ticking was beginning to agitate the lavender-haired man.
Then, with deliberate slowness, he leaned back in his chair, his heavy armor groaning softly as it moved with him. He stared at Lord Heart for a long moment before finally turning to the mountain of paperwork before him — stacks upon stacks of reports across the many Floors of the Tower, along with formal death acknowledgments that would be sent to families of the cadets who had passed away during the Linked Floor Quest for Generation 327.
"You are the forty-eighth noble to stand in this room this week," Lucien said finally, his voice cutting through the air like the edge of a blade. "And it is only the third day of the week."
Lord Heart's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
Watching the stubbornness of the noble in front of him, Lucien rose from his seat. The motion was slow, deliberate, and it made his size undeniable, just as his firmness of the matter — a mountain of steel and authority, standing a full head and a half taller than the man before him.
He reached across the desk, not in threat but in finality, closing the open ledger in front of him with a firm thud.
"And this is the second time you've come to me personally, Robert," Lucien continued, his tone shifting to something colder, heavier — not anger, but weariness carved deep. "So, I will tell you the same thing I told you before, and the same thing I told every grieving father and mother whose child died when climbing the Tower."
"Let it go." Lucien's eyes hardened. "The Tower is a dangerous place where the odds are always against you – Billions have died trying to climb it and died within it."
Lord Heart's lips parted as if to argue, but Lucien spoke over him — not by raising the volume of his voice, but with such authority that it silenced him more effectively than a shout ever could.
"And before you say it again — no, I will not release the recordings." Lucien's hand rested against the desk as he leaned forward just enough for his shadow to stretch across the noble's shoes. "The agreement my Guild made with the Tower is explicit. Those recordings are not for public eyes. Not for the nobles. Not even for me to share at my discretion."
Lord Heart's nostrils flared, the purple veins under his pale skin catching in the light as anger and grief warred across his expression. "You would deny me the truth about my own son's death?" he asked, his voice shaking.
Lucien's answer came with no hesitation. "Yes."
When Lucien finally spoke again, it was quieter — not gentle, but carrying the weight of unshakable finality. "Go home, Robert. Grieve your son properly. Don't let your obsession with the manner of his death bury what good remains of his memory."
"My son's Life Orb shattered into thousands of pieces!" Lord Heart's voice broke through the restraint that had been holding it together, the words clawing out from his throat with a mixture of grief and rage.
"I was in my office, Lucien — I was there when it happened. I watched it happen. I was just about to retire for the night when I heard the crack, and before I could even stand, Jeremiah's Life Orb splintered into dust! Covering the Live Orbs of my Eldest son's and my wife's!" His eyes were wide now and glistening with a feverous glow, and his arms were no longer clasped behind his back. "The third one, Lucien. The one with Jeremiah's name beneath it!"
The echo of his words that name hung heavy within Lucien's office.
"I deserve to know!" Lord Heart pressed, his voice shaking, his nails digging crescent shapes into his palms. "I deserve to know how my son died! I deserve to know who killed him and tear into their minds to remove all sense of control over their body and force them to watch as they tear their own family limb from limb before forcing them to consume them before I kill them!"
Lucien's hand curled into a slow fist against the polished wood of his desk, the metal of his gauntlet creaking. When he finally spoke, his tone had hardened into tempered steel. "For the sake of my agreement with the Tower, and the honor of my Goddess, I cannot and will not divulge any information regarding the data collected from this generation's climb during their Linked Floor Quest."
He straightened his gaze and took a step forward, the heavy sound of his boots striking against the marble echoing with the same weight as a gavel's drop. "Any further attempts to pry into this matter," Lucien said, lowering his head slightly until his dark gaze met Robert's squarely, "and I will have no other choice but to take action."
Lord Heart stiffened, the full meaning of those words cutting through his anger, though pride refused to let him show even a shred of fear. "Are you threatening me, Margrave Strongman?" he spat, the title rolling off his tongue like venom.
Lucien didn't flinch and kept his gaze fixed on the man before him. "If you take my words of following the creed of my Goddess and upholding the law of the Iron Scales as provocation, then yes," he said, his voice deep and unrelenting, "I am, Marquess Heart."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Even the secretary at her desk froze, her hand halfway to her teacup as the air between the two men thickened with mana and restrained fury.
Lucien leaned in just slightly, close enough that he could see his own reflection within Lord Heart's rage-filled ones. "Would you like to see what happens," he said, the edge of his words almost growling, "when someone tries to forcibly tilt the scales of justice in their favor?"
Robert Heart's face contorted, the noble mask shattering into something far uglier, barely managing to hold the utter hatred oozing from within his body from exploding and attacking the Guildmaster of the Iron Scales Guild. "We are at war then!" he shouted, turning sharply on his heel.
The heavy doors to the Guildmaster's office rattled the walls as they slammed shut behind him, leaving a sharp crack of sound that reverberated through the room long after he was gone.
For several seconds, Lucien stood in stillness, his broad frame unmoving, the echo of the slam still trembling faintly in the air.
His gaze turned to the far corner of his desk, to the polished bronze scales that sat there — the Scales of Justicia, the symbol of his Goddess, their balance untouched, unmoving. Above them, carved into the base of the statue, was the figure of the blindfolded woman who held them aloft.
Lucien studied her face for a long time, the dim afternoon light catching the line of her jaw, the eternal calm of her expression.
"Justice does not waver for grief," he murmured to himself, the words meant for no one. His hand rose, heavy with the sound of metal, and adjusted one side of the scales that had tilted slightly out of balance from the vibrations of the slammed door — restoring them perfectly level once more.
Only when the plates of the scales hung still, their equilibrium exact, did he return to his chair and resume working while his secretary remained frozen in place from the sheer amount of Bloodlust emanating from the Guildmaster of the Iron Scales Guild as well as the Marquess Heart.
***
Deacon clung to the side of the dormitory tower like a particularly stubborn barnacle with one boot wedged against a narrow seam in the brickwork while the fingers of his right hand hooked beneath the lip of a stone slab jutting from the wall as he weathered out the storm pouring atop him.
His left hand came free long enough for him to lean outward, not enough to risk a fall, but enough to angle his head and peer through the undraped, closed, glass window.
Inside, illuminated by the faint red mana lamps along the walls of the Demonic Standard Dormitory, was Jass.
Her form blurred as she shadow-sparring with her glaive in hand: strikes that carved arcs through the air so clean that he was able to see the arcs of mana that lingered in the air before they vanished a heartbeat later, illuminated even further by the sweat-covered, padded floor.
She pivoted, spinning her glaive behind her and just about to incorporate her Earth Affinity into her shadow sparring, when Deacon rapped his knuckles lightly against the glass.
Jass froze mid-turn.
Her head whipped toward the window, brows pulling down first in confusion, then rising in bewilderment as her gaze snagged on the sight of Deacon clinging to the side of a seventy-three-story tower and onto his head on her window that was on the thirty-seventh floor.
Her jaw practically fell off her face.
The glaive collapsed with a metallic shunk, and she slapped it onto the magnetized clip at her hip before sprinting to the window. With a quick flick, she unlocked it, then shoved it upward.
"Thanks," Deacon grunted as he braced his arm against the frame and vaulted inside, boots landing with enough weight to make the mana-lit floor creak and immediately creating a puddle where he stood from the rainwater covering him.
After giving the room a cautionary glance, he wiped a sheen of sweat and rainwater from his forehead with the back of his wrist and reached for the canteen at his hip with his other hand.
Jass leaned out the window and stared downward, her hands gripping the frame with growing disbelief as it was storming pretty heavily outside.
"You climbed up to the thirty-seventh floor in this weather?" she said finally, voice flat in that disbelieving way she used whenever she was deciding whether she should hit him or throw him outright.
"They really should put an elevator," Deacon complained.
"There is one," she added immediately, shutting and re-locking the window with a firm click. "…Inside."
Deacon made a noise that could generously be described as a complaint and ungenerously as a dying goat. "Those Fiends guarding the entrance to your dorm refused to let me in. Said you had to buzz me in. But I didn't want to ruin the look of surprise on your face—" he paused to gesture vaguely at her stunned expression, "—which was amazing, by the way. So, I decided to take a climb."
Jass pinched the bridge of her nose, inhaled, then exhaled a long, thin line of air that communicated exactly how many brain cells she was losing from prolonged Deacon exposure.
"What are you even doing here?" she asked, dropping her hand and watching him like she expected his answer to be something stupid.
Deacon's smirk widened in a way that always made her brace for impact because the last time he'd smiled like that, they ended up accidentally blowing up a training golem and had to outrun a very angry instructor who promised to flog them both if he grabbed a hold of them.
He tucked his canteen away, straightened up, and met her gaze with an expression that promised chaos.
"Wanna join me in hunting a wyvern?"
Jass stared at him.
Then stared harder.
"This is the quest you said in the group chat that your Guildmaster uncle gave you?"
"Yup." The 'p' popped like a slap. Deacon leaned his weight onto one leg, folding his arms smugly.
"Uncle Bjorn said there were a couple in the Jagged Spires, Gen 134's Floor Ten, in the northeast region of here. Apparently, an avalanche wrecked their nests in the Capped Tops of Gen 57's Floor Ten, so they migrated from there to the Jagged Spires, so, you know…" He shrugged with a grin that barely hid the unspoken let's go cause problems beneath it.
A moment of silence settled between them, stretching long enough that Deacon raised a brow, waiting.
Jass huffed and turned away from him without another word.
"…So?" Deacon asked, watching her walk toward her bed. "You in?"
"Of course I'm in, you dumbass," Jass scoffed over her shoulder. She snatched her Spatial Sling Bag, slinging it across her body as she faced him fully. "Did you tell the others?"
"Nope." Deacon's smirk widened even further, much to her misfortune. "You're my first stop."