The golden glow of the Tower's teleportation matrix was still stinging Harish's retinas as he stepped onto the twelfth floor. He didn't check his status window; he checked his watch. If he didn't wrap this up in the next ten minutes, the potato curry back in xxxxxxxxxxx, India, would develop that weird, leathery skin that made it taste like spicy cardboard.
[FLOOR 12: THE TEMPEST VAULT]
The air wasn't just moving; it was screaming. A localized hurricane, a sentient vortex of jade-colored wind, whipped through the hall with enough force to strip the paint off a battleship. In the center of the storm hovered the Emerald Hurricane Hawk, a beast whose wings were literal blades of compressed air. It let out a shriek that shattered the nearby stone pillars into gravel.
Harish's "Ravi & Son" apron flapped violently, the strings nearly whipping into his eyes. He squinted against the draft, his hair—usually a messy mop of uncombed apathy—standing up in a dozen different directions.
"This is ridiculous," Harish muttered, his voice barely audible over the roar. "Do they not have doors in this building? The electricity bill for this much air conditioning would be enough to bankrupt a small nation. It's drafty, it's loud, and it's blowing dust into my pockets."
The Hawk, sensing a "fragile" human, dived. It moved with the speed of a falling star, its wings angled to slice Harish into a thousand thin ribbons of grocery-clerk-flavored confetti.
Harish didn't even drop his clipboard. He simply waited until the bird was five feet from his face, then moved his right hand in a lazy, horizontal sweep. His two fingers traced a line through the hurricane.
The impact was a sudden, sickening silence.
The Emerald Hurricane Hawk didn't just die; it was conceptually bifurcated. The top half of its feathered body continued its momentum, slamming into the far wall with a wet thud, while the bottom half tumbled into the abyss below. The hurricane itself—the very wind—was cut mid-swirl. The air pressure equalized so violently that it created a localized vacuum, snapping the remaining stone pillars outward like toothpicks.
Harish walked toward the exit, stepping over a Wind-Core Crystal that pulsed with the power to level a city. "Too heavy," he whispered. "And it's glowing green. That'll never match the kitchen decor."
Minutes later, the Floor 12 portal flared violet. Kaelen burst through, her Phoenix aura flaring so bright she looked like a miniature sun. She skidded to a halt, her eyes widening at the carnage.
"Master, look at the hawk!" Kaelen cried, her voice trembling. "It's been cut horizontally. Not just the bird, but look at the walls! The wind itself was sliced! This 'Slasher'... he's not just strong, he's offending the laws of physics!"
Inside her mind, Chu-mu was vibrating with a primal, ancestral fear. "Disciple, do not touch the air! The 'Intent' left behind by this being is so sharp it's still micro-lacerating the atmosphere. Look there, on the pedestal! A Wind-Core! He left it? He just... he left a core that could grant someone the power of a Storm Sovereign?"
Kaelen lunged for the crystal, stashing it in her spatial ring. "He's mocking us, Master. He's leaving a trail of treasures like they're breadcrumbs for ants. He wants us to know that what we call 'legendary,' he calls 'trash.' We have to move! If we're this close to the trail, we might be able to save Harish before the 'Void' decides he's an inventory error!"
On Floor 15, the "Gilded Labyrinth" awaited—a shifting maze of ten-foot-thick enchanted gold. Harish looked at the first wall, which bore a complex riddle about the passage of time.
"I don't have time for poetry," Harish said, his flip-flops echoing slap-slap-slap against the gold.
He didn't turn left. He didn't turn right. He walked straight toward the nearest wall and performed a sharp, diagonal slash with two fingers. The solid gold parted like warm butter. He stepped through the diagonal gap, performed a backhand flick on the next wall, and then an upward diagonal on the third. He moved in a perfectly straight line, carving a geometric tunnel through the world's most expensive puzzle.
[FLOOR 15 CLEAR]
He walked past the Golden Compass of Destiny without a second glance. "Looks like a cheap souvenir from a temple gift shop," he muttered.
When Kaelen and Chu-mu arrived, they found a straight, jagged tunnel bored through the heart of the "unbreakable" labyrinth. The Golden Compass was sitting atop a pile of gold scrap.
"Master... he's baiting us," Kaelen whispered, her hands shaking as she bagged the compass. "He's showing off. He's clearing the maze with straight lines because he's bored of the curves. This 'dollar' person... he's a psychopath of the highest order."
In the global "Player Forums" and the back-alley bars of the Awakened, the name "dollar" had become a wildfire of conspiracy and terror.
"I'm telling you," shouted a scarred B-Rank warrior in a Delhi tavern, "I saw the Floor 15 logs! The man didn't solve the riddle! He murdered the maze! He cut through the gold like it was wet tissue paper! They say he's a fallen God who was exiled because he found the Creator's records too disorganized!"
"No, no," argued a mage from the Astra League, her eyes wide with frantic energy. "My cousin is a GSC analyst. They say 'dollar' isn't a person at all. It's a sentient 'System Bug' that manifested in the form of a man in an apron. He's clearing the tower to delete the rewards! He's trying to starve the world of magic so we all go back to being grocery clerks!"
"I heard he's the 'Sovereign of Transactions,'" whispered a third party. "He only kills things that aren't 'cost-effective.' He left the Sword of Ages on Floor 10 because it had a 'low ROI.' Imagine being so powerful that immortality is a bad investment! He's the Merchant of the Apocalypse!"
On Floor 20, the Titan Centurion—a fifty-foot automaton of star-metal—raised its glowing blue shield. This wasn't just metal; it was a "Conceptual Absolute," a shield that represented the very idea of "Defense."
Harish looked at the Centurion's massive knees, which were grinding into the polished obsidian floor.
"You're scuffing the floor," Harish said, his voice flat and genuinely annoyed. "Do you have any idea how much wax it takes to get scuff marks out of obsidian? It's a three-man job, and the buffer is currently broken."
The Centurion roared, a mechanical sound that vibrated the very soul. It brought its shield forward, intending to crush Harish into a smear of biological matter.
Harish didn't swing his fingers this time. He performed a sharp, vertical stab with two fingers directed at the exact center of the "Absolute" shield.
The star-metal didn't dent; it parted. The shield separated into two vertical halves, and the Centurion behind it split along the same line as if it were made of wet construction paper. The massive robot fell apart in two clean, silent sections, the blue light of its core flickering out like a spent bulb.
Harish stood in the final reward vault. He ignored the 'Essence of the World-Tree' and the 'Sword of Ages.' He walked to a small, dusty wooden crate in the corner and pulled out a dried-up branch of Celestial Mint.
"There it is," Harish said, sniffing the branch. "Fresh enough. Perfect for the tea. Ravi-ji always says the local mint is too bitter these days."
He stepped into the exit portal, leaving the elixir of immortality sitting on the floor like a discarded soda can.
Seconds later, Kaelen burst in. She almost tripped over the Sword of Ages. She stared at the 'Essence of the World-Tree'—the liquid that could grant eternal life—just sitting there in the dust.
"He left... immortality?" Kaelen's voice broke. She fell to her knees, frantically shoving the God-tier loot into her bursting spatial ring. "Master, he left the Sword of Ages! He left everything! He's mocking the very concept of power! He's telling us that our lives and our legends are common trash to him!"
"Move, Kaelen!" Chu-mu roared in her head. "The portal is still warm! He's going for your house! The Slasher is going for the final kill!"
The transition back to the kitchen in xxxxxxxxxxx was as quiet as a light switch being flipped. Harish was back. He set the Mithril-Filament mop in the corner—it looked like a normal mop, just a bit shinier—and placed the tea and mint on the counter.
"Just in time," he muttered, picking up a spoon to stir the dal.
Suddenly, the kitchen door burst open with a crash that nearly took it off its hinges. Kaelen charged in, her Phoenix aura flaring so violently that the curtains began to singe. Her pockets were bulging with artifacts, the hilt of the Sword of Ages sticking out of her backpack like a jagged tooth.
"HARISH!" she screamed, her face tear-streaked and frantic. "Are you okay? Did you see him? The Monster! The God-Level Slasher! We followed his trail—he cleared twenty floors in minutes! He's so arrogant he doesn't even pick up Immortality Essence! We thought he came here to execute you!"
Harish, calmly tying his apron strings, looked at her with a look of pure, unadulterated boredom. He glanced at the glowing sword hilt in her bag and then at the mud she was tracking across the floor.
"Kaelen, please," Harish sighed, his voice heavy with the exhaustion of a man who just wanted his dinner. "You're tracking mud all over the linoleum. I just mopped that. And why are you carrying all that scrap metal? I told you, I just went out to get some better tea leaves and some mint. I found a new supplier. Sit down and eat your paratha before it gets cold. I even found some Celestial... uh... 'fancy' mint for the chai."
Chu-mu froze.
The Martial God's spiritual eyes darted from the "Mithril Mop" sitting in the corner—a mop that radiated the purity of a hundred stars—to the "Celestial Mint" Harish was currently casually crushing between his fingers. Then, he looked at Harish's right hand.
The 'Void' wasn't outside. The 'Sovereign of Transactions' wasn't a ghost or a system bug.
The entity that had cleared the Tower of Trials for a tin of tea was currently arguing with his sister about mud.
"Master?" Kaelen whispered, sensing Chu-mu's sudden, deathly silence. "What is it?"
"Disciple..." Chu-mu's voice was a terrified rasp. "Don't... don't look at the tea. Just... eat the paratha. If you value your soul, do not ask him where he got that mop."