Before Kael would "Equip the hammer" he heaved and threw it as powerfully as he could toward the other end of the corridor. The thing was heavier than it looked, heavier than a simple forging tool had any right to be, and it left his hands like a cannonball that immediately started losing its pride mid flight. He did the same with the rune right after, no pause, no breath wasted, just sent the black pentagonal piece skidding and spinning down the illuminated stretch like a bad decision he wanted far away from his fingers.
"What the fuck are you doing?" John asked, voice sharp with disbelief.
"It takes ten seconds for the piece to disappear once touched if not equipped," Kael replied, already leaning forward into motion. "No reason to grab it from this side."
He did not wait for approval. He did not wait for John's opinion. He began a sprint forward, the timer an invisible hand pressing at his back.
John cursed inwardly loud enough that Kael could hear it even over the echo of their boots on the floor. The man's mistake was obvious. He had already equipped the chest piece like an idiot, like a kid putting on a crown made of barbed wire, and now he could not take it back without losing it.
Kael reached the hammer first.
It had not flown as far as he hoped. The weight dragged it down early, and it lay there ahead of him like a black lump against the corridor's pale light. He snatched it up the moment he reached it, and the [Forbidden] curse applied so fast it felt like the air itself punched him.
His entire body sank.
Not figuratively. Not like fatigue. Like gravity suddenly took personal offense at his existence. His shoulders dipped, his spine compressed, and his boots felt like they had been filled with wet cement. Every footstep turned into a slow, ugly battle against the floor, like he was marching through a quagmire that had no mud but all the resistance.
He forced his legs to keep moving anyway.
The rune was further ahead. Not far, but far enough that the ten second rule became a knife at his throat. He could almost see the invisible countdown hovering over it. He muttered under his breath as he moved, not because the words helped, but because the rhythm gave his brain something to cling to.
"Six Mississippi… seven…"
Each step felt like it demanded payment. Each step stole air from his lungs. Not a dramatic gasp, not some heroic struggle, but a relentless drain, like a leech attached to his stamina. The corridor that had seemed straightforward now felt like a marathon while carrying a coffin.
"Eight… nine…"
He reached the rune a second before it disappeared and grabbed it.
The moment his fingers closed around it, the second curse stacked on top of the first like someone decided bricks were not enough and added chains for decoration. The exhaustion hit him in a wave. His breath snagged. His chest tightened as if the rune itself had wrapped a belt around his ribs and pulled. He bent forward without meaning to, heaving once like a man who had just been shoved under water and dragged back out.
For a second he hated the thing.
Unlike the many weapons and gear laid out in that hall, the kind that would break the balance of the tower if obtained this early, Brokk's hammer was a crafting item. It did no damage to monsters or humans. That was why the forbidden curse on it was rather light, which was an ironic thing to think when your legs felt like they belonged to a statue.
The rune, though, was the worse choice in every reasonable sense.
Runes were terrible. That was what everyone said. Useless, fickle, permanent. A poor man's magic, and not even the good kind of poor, more like pathetic. Many had tried to use them. Most failed to achieve anything beyond mediocrity. Simple magic was far superior and easier, and rune magic came with a price that always felt like a scam. The worst part was permanence. In the normal tower, only the person on the twentieth floor could remove them.
So why the hell did Kael pick it up?
He kept moving forward, one step at a time, dragging his weight down the corridor like a prisoner hauling his own sentence.
The reason was simple.
Because the mini map pointed it out as more valuable than even the Achilles chest plate.
A chest plate that could, in theory, keep someone immortal as long as they stayed adamant on killing their foe.
That orange glow on the map had not been random. The tower did not waste highlights. And Kael had learned long ago that when a system pointed at something, it was either bait or truth. In this case, he was betting it was truth disguised as bait.
Each step made him feel like someone quietly added more weight to his ankles.
The only thing keeping his mind from collapsing into pure exhaustion was the question gnawing at him. Why did the map prioritize that rune. Why would something everyone called trash be marked like treasure. What was it about that black pentagon that made the tower's own marking system treat it as special.
An impact like a hammer blow to the side of his head resonated, for a moment his eyes rolled and came back. A one second stun, that was the effect of the Forbidden tag.
Nauseated and about to throw up, Kael could only grit his teeth and move forward.
He turned his head and saw John behind him.
John was moving, but the word moving felt generous. He looked like a man dragging himself out of a wreck. Bloodshot eyes. Hands wrapped around his own torso like he was trying to hold himself together. His gaze went in and out of focus, not because he was tired, but because the armor was doing exactly what Kael had predicted. It was reversing its purpose. Every benefit had been twisted into cruelty.
"Are you good?" Kael asked, not out of concern, but out of calculation. John was a problem, and Kael needed to know how soon that problem would explode.
"I'm… fine!" John snapped.
He clearly was not.
The forbidden burden on that chest piece was nothing short of suicide. Malicious thoughts. Self harm. Brittle bones and gossamer flesh. The mere contact of the plate on his body was visibly shredding him. Even from ahead, Kael could see the way John's skin looked strained, raw, as if the armor did not sit against him but chewed him.
A step on the floor probably felt like an electric current rushing from the sole of his foot up into his skull.
That was the risk of picking something that powerful. It seemed every item was perfectly adjusted to do the exact opposite of its purpose. And Achilles armor was too strong to appear on a trial like this without a brutal balancing act. The tower would never allow that kind of power this early unless the cost was high enough to break the greedy.
Kael moved further ahead.