The steam from the dal tadka rose in a lazy, fragrant spiral, curling around the flickering fluorescent bulb of the Agnihotri kitchen. It was a domestic scene that felt fragile, a thin veneer of normalcy stretched over a world that had recently grown teeth. Ravi, his face a roadmap of worry lines etched by decades of retail stress and a recent brush with literal deities, leaned over his plate.
"I am telling you, Harish, you have the survival instincts of a suicidal lemming," Ravi said, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly tone he used when he was five minutes away from a lecture on the 'Good Old Days' before portals. "I watched the footage. Vikram Agnihotri—the man who can command the sun—was standing in our shop. He offered a gesture of peace, and you... you asked him if he had a loyalty card? You treated the Lord of the Solar Flame like a solicitor selling dodgy internet packages!"
"He was blocking the aisle, Dad," Harish muttered, his spoon moving with a rhythm that was purposefully, almost aggressively, mediocre. "And his aura was making the yogurt sweat. Do you know how hard it is to maintain the cold-chain integrity in xxxxxxxxxxx, India, with a walking furnace in the dairy section? It's a logistical nightmare."
Sarita reached out, her hand resting on Harish's arm, her eyes wide with a mother's primal dread. "Harish, beta, listen to your father. The world is changing. There are 'Players' now, people who can leap across buildings and breathe fire. You... you are a target. You have no spiritual roots. You have no 'System.' To these people, you are just a civilian to be stepped on. You need to be quiet. You need to be invisible. You need to stop poking the lions with your clipboard!"
Kaelen, her own secret power humming like a live wire beneath her skin, slammed her glass of water onto the wooden table. The vibration made the stainless steel bowls rattle a frantic warning. "That's exactly the problem! He doesn't get it! He treats S-Rank warriors like they're annoying telemarketers! One day, one of them isn't going to be in a 'diplomatic' mood, and I'm going to have to burn down three districts just to find where they buried his stubborn, 'spiritless' head!"
"I'm not the problem here!" Harish suddenly yelled, standing up so abruptly his chair screeched against the tile like a dying hawk. He looked at his family—at their pity, their fear, their absolute certainty that he was a fragile piece of glass in a world of hammers. "You want me to be a 'Player'? You want me to have 'roots' and 'rank' so you can sleep at night? You want me to get 'stronger' right this second just to stop this endless, soul-crushing lecturing? Fine! If that's the only way to get some peace and quiet in this house, then I'll do it! I'll go find a stupid tower and get a stupid rank!"
The universe, ancient and opportunistic, took him at his word. A pillar of incandescent, violet-white light tore through the ceiling, ignoring the laws of physics and the property taxes of xxxxxxxxxxx, India. It enveloped Harish in a cold, sterile brilliance.
"Harish!" Kaelen lunged forward, her hand outstretched, but her fingers passed through the light as if it were a holographic projection. The boy vanished, leaving nothing but a half-eaten paratha and the lingering scent of ozone in the air.
Harish blinked. The humid, spice-laden air of home was gone. In its place was the biting, metallic chill of the First Floor of the Spire—the "Labyrinth of Verdant Shadows." He was still holding his piece of roti, and his "Ravi & Son" apron was slightly dusted with flour.
[PLAYER IDENTIFIED: HARISH]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO REGISTER AN ALIAS FOR THE PUBLIC LEADERBOARD?]
"If Kaelen sees my name on a board, she'll lock me in the storage room for a century," Harish whispered. He reached out and typed a name that reflected his true priority.
[ALIAS REGISTERED: dollar]
From the swirling mists of the labyrinth, a Shadow Stalker emerged. This was a nightmare given form—a four-legged beast of oily, shifting darkness with claws like serrated obsidian. It didn't breathe; it hissed like escaping steam. To a normal human, it was certain death. To Harish, it was a messy spill in Aisle Four.
The Stalker lunged, its body a blur of predatory hunger. It moved at a speed that should have been impossible to track, its claws aimed at Harish's throat.
Harish didn't even shift his weight. He didn't drop his roti. He simply raised his right hand, two fingers extended in a casual, horizontal flick—the same motion he used to slide a credit card through a reader.
The "impact" was silent. The air didn't just move; it was rewritten. A thin, invisible line of absolute, conceptual sharpness propagated through the space occupied by the beast. The Shadow Stalker didn't even have time to whimper. It was bisected vertically, the cut so clean that the two halves of its dark matter continued to drift in opposite directions for a second before they realized they were no longer a cohesive entity. The floor beneath it—indestructible obsidian—groaned as a hairline fracture appeared, stretching for fifty meters behind the beast's remains.
[FLOOR 1 CLEAR]
[TIME: 0.7 SECONDS]
[NEW RECORD SET BY: dollar]
The environment dissolved and reformed. Harish now stood in a jagged, crystalline canyon. The walls glowed with a sickly blue light, and the temperature plummeted to a point where a normal man's lungs would have crystallized. This was the Hive.
From every crevice, Bone-Chill Scorpions surged. These were massive, microwave-sized insects with shells made of frozen mana. Their stingers dripped with a neurotoxin that didn't just kill; it turned the soul to ice.
Harish began to walk. He didn't run. He didn't pose. He walked with the rhythmic, bored pace of a man counting the minutes until his shift ended.
A scorpion lunged from his left. Harish's foot was already elsewhere—not a dodge, but a repositioning based on the Absolute Law of his presence. Another surged from above, its stinger a blue needle of frost. Harish gave a bored flick of his wrist.
As a cluster of five scorpions surrounded him, their stingers snapping like whips, Harish's aura shifted for a micro-second. To the creatures, it was as if the sun had suddenly collapsed into a black hole. With a lazy wave of two fingers, the air sharpened into five distinct planes of force.
The impact was a series of wet, crystalline crunches. All five scorpions were split perfectly down the middle, their frozen innards spilling onto the rocks. The jagged canyon walls behind them were sliced as if by a giant's razor, the stone faces falling away in smooth, geometric slabs.
[FLOOR 2 CLEAR]
[TIME: 1.5 SECONDS]
[NEW RECORD SET BY: dollar]
At the base of the Tower, in the bustling "Player Hub" where hundreds of warriors gathered to trade loot and gossip, a collective gasp ripped through the crowd. The massive, golden holographic Leaderboard that dominated the plaza flickered with a blinding brilliance.
"Look at the board! The First and Second floor records just... they vanished!" screamed a man wearing high-tier armor, his face pale beneath his visor.
Leaderboard: Floor 1 (Speed)
dollar — 0.7s (NEW)
Iron_Will — 14m 22s
Leaderboard: Floor 2 (Speed)
dollar — 1.5s (NEW)
Shadow_Fang — 28m 10s
In a nearby VIP lounge, a group of high-ranking A-Rankers dropped their glasses. The conversation that followed was a chaotic mix of awe and existential dread.
"Zero point seven seconds? That's not a clear time," muttered Silas, a veteran climber. "That's the time it takes for the system to register a teleportation. Who is this 'dollar'? A Sovereign? A God walking the lower tiers?"
"No," another warrior whispered, his hand trembling as he zoomed in on the data. "Look at the kill logs. It says 'Conceptual Bisection.' This isn't a high-level skill. It's... it's like the person didn't even fight. They just moved, and reality decided the monsters shouldn't exist anymore."
"Is it a ghost?" a young mage asked, her eyes wide. "Maybe the Spire is glitching?"
"The Spire doesn't glitch," Silas replied, his voice heavy. "It has invited something inside that it doesn't understand. If 'dollar' keeps moving at this pace, the entire global ranking system is going to be a joke by morning. We've been struggling for years to shave seconds off our times, and this person just walked through the Hive like they were checking the mail."
The air in the GSC Command Center was thick with the hum of servers and the smell of expensive coffee and cold sweat. Director Varma sat at the head of a circular table, surrounded by holographic screens displaying the "dollar" phenomenon.
"I want a profile on 'dollar' now," Varma barked, his voice echoing in the sterile room. "Every satellite, every mana-sensor, every CCTV camera in the world. Who registered this alias?"
"Sir, the registration was anonymous," a technician replied, her fingers flying across the keys. "It was done via a burst-link from a Sector that shouldn't even have a high-level player. But look at this... the mana-signature detected at the moment of clear. It's... it's non-existent."
"Explain," Varma demanded.
"The sensor on Floor 1 didn't detect a Mana Surge. Usually, when a Player uses a skill, there's a spike. But for 'dollar'... the reading was zero. It wasn't that they used no mana; it was that the environment itself ceased to record a reading. It's like the player is an atmospheric void."
A veteran S-Ranker, a woman named Elara who had survived the Tenth Floor, leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. "I've seen this before in the old texts. It's not 'strength' as we know it. It's 'Absolute Priority.' If this player wants to move from point A to point B, the universe simply deletes the space in between. If they want an enemy to be cut, the concept of 'being whole' is revoked. This 'dollar' person... they aren't playing the game. They are the person who wrote the rules and is now annoyed that they have to follow them."
"Could it be a Sovereign from the Hidden Realms?" a colonel asked.
"No," Elara said, a grim smile on her face. "Sovereigns are arrogant. They use names like 'God-King' or 'Endless Void.' This person chose 'dollar.' It's a name used by someone who thinks the entire Tower of Trials is just a transaction. Someone who is more interested in the price of their groceries than the fate of the world. And that makes them the most terrifying entity we have ever encountered."
Harish stood at the entrance of the Third Floor. His roti was now safely tucked away in his apron pocket. He looked at his thermos, which he had strapped to his belt. He could still feel the warmth of the tea through the stainless steel.
"If I finish the Fifth Floor, I might get a bonus loot crate," Harish muttered, scratching his head. "Maybe it'll have some of those high-grade tea leaves Ravi likes. That would definitely get me out of the doghouse for disappearing during dinner."
The floor ahead of him began to glow with a dark, pulsating light. The "Trials" were supposed to be the ultimate test of the human spirit, a crucible of suffering and growth.
Harish just saw a long walk and a lot of dust.
"I really hope there aren't any more bugs," he said, stepping into the darkness. "The cleaning fee for scorpion guts is going to be astronomical."
Back at the dining table in xxxxxxxxxxx, India, the paratha finally grew cold, its steam long gone, as the family stared at the empty space where their "spiritless" boy used to be, oblivious to the fact that the person they were trying to protect was currently setting the world on fire, one boring step at a time.