CHAPTER 209: 7TH FLOOR

Chapter 205: 7th Floor

"Now, Freya," he commanded.

"[Void Strike]."

Freya’s body dissolved and teleported, reappearing instantly on top of the car’s hood, her dagger buried to the hilt in the metal.

"Impressive," I said. "And a complete waste of mana."

They stared at me.

"You’re using your single most powerful, high-mana skill as an opener," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose.

"That’s what a brute-force fighter does. That’s what Aiden would do. You’re assassins. The fight should be over before you even consider using a skill like that. Your Dual Art isn’t an opener. It’s an escape. Or a ’no-fail’ execution on a high-value target after their guards are already dead."

I gestured to the empty street. "Your true weapons are silence, misdirection, and the environment. And this entire city is your weapon."

"[Seraphina. Next target,]" I called.

"[...Found one. In the old church square. He’s patrolling. Two F-Rank guards with him.]"

"Perfect. Twins, with me. You’re just watching this time."

We moved. This time, I led them onto the rooftops.

We crawled along ledges, moved through the rafters of a collapsed department store, and finally took a position on the church bell tower, looking down on the three Goblins below.

"The target is the Captain," I whispered, pointing him out.

"But his guards have a line of sight. If we kill him, they shout. If we kill them, he shouts. How do you solve this, Freya?"

Freya studied the scene. "We... use the Dual Art? I Void Strike the Captain, and Finn takes the guards?"

"No," I said. "You’re still thinking like a brawler. You’re not thinking like a shadow."

I looked at my team interface. "[Seraphina. You see the bell above us?]"

"[...Yes?]" her voice was hesitant.

"[I need you to hit it. Not with a magic arrow. With a normal, physical arrow. I need a single, loud DONG. Hit it the instant I give the signal. Understand?]"

"[...You want me to... ring the church bell?]"

"[Yes. You’re the distraction.]"

I could almost feel her rolling her eyes, but she replied, "[...Standing by. This is ridiculous.]"

I turned to the twins. "Watch."

I pointed down at the Goblins. "The targets."

Then I pointed to a pile of loose rubble and glass on the opposite side of the square.

"[Gideon. [Miasma]. Just a small puff. On that rubble pile.]"

A wisp of green-black fog, almost invisible, drifted down and settled over the glass.

The Goblins, on their patrol, hadn’t noticed.

"They’re halfway across the square," I whispered. "Gideon, now."

Gideon’s spell took effect. The small [Miasma] cloud, which was harmless, was just enough to create a smell.

"Hrak?" The lead Goblin Captain paused, sniffing the air.

He turned his head toward the rubble pile, his gaze moving away from the church tower.

His two guards also paused, looking confused.

"Seraphina... now."

TWANG...

DOOOOOOONNNNG!

The arrow, loosed from a different building where Seraphina had repositioned, struck the massive iron bell.

The sound was deafening, a holy, booming chime that ripped through the city.

The three Goblins, their attention already diverted by the smell, instantly panicked at the loud, unnatural noise.

They spun, their heads snapping up towards the bell tower, their backs now completely exposed to me and the twins.

"You have two seconds," I whispered to Finn and Freya.

I didn’t need to tell them what to do.

They had seen it.

The smell had pulled their attention. The sound had fixed their gaze.

A perfect, multi-layered misdirection.

They dropped from the rafters like spiders.

Shh. Shh.

They landed on the balls of their feet, perfectly silent.

Shnk. Shnk.

The two guards were dead, their throats cut, before they even knew what hit them.

The Goblin Captain, still staring up at the bell, finally realized his guards were no longer breathing.

He spun, his hand flying to his sword.

But I was already there, having dropped right behind him.

Draken’s blade, cold and silent, was already at his neck. He froze.

"This," I whispered, "is assassination."

I pulled the blade. The Captain dissolved.

[Floor 6: Cleared. Time: 28 minutes, 10 seconds.]

[BONUS: ’Silent Assassin’ (All targets eliminated with 0 alerts).]

The bell’s echo faded. The square was silent.

I looked at the twins.

Their eyes, visible through their masks, were wide.

They were staring at their own hands, then at Seraphina’s rooftop perch, then at Gideon’s, and finally at me.

They had just participated in a symphony of coordinated, multi-layered stealth.

They had learned more in five minutes than in their entire lives.

"[Teleporting in 60 seconds,]" the system chimed.

We regrouped at the teleport point.

Alex and Kaelen looked relieved to be done. Seraphina dropped down from her perch, landing silently.

She walked up to me, her face a mask of complex, warring emotions.

"That... was..." she struggled for the word. "I was just a... a distraction."

"You were the key," I corrected, my voice flat.

"Without your sound, their attention wasn’t guaranteed. Without Gideon’s smell, their gaze wasn’t diverted. Without the twins’ silence, the guards would have shouted. Every piece mattered."

I looked at all of them, my ’reject’ squad, now standing a little taller.

"That is efficiency. That is teamwork. And that," I said, as the world began to dissolve, "is how Team Anomaly clears a floor."

The teleport from Floor 6 was a relief.

The sterile, metallic scent of the "Basic Training City" vanished, replaced by the smell of rust, damp earth, and the faint, sweet perfume of pollen.

We materialized on the cracked, broken pavement of a wide, multi-lane road.

This was Floor 7, "The Collapsed Quarter."

It was a landscape of decay, a snapshot of a suburb struck by some great cataclysm and then abandoned for decades.

Two-story houses, their wooden frames rotting, slumped in on themselves.

Skeletal trees, draped in thick ivy, had pushed their way through the asphalt.

A rusted playground, its swing-set chains creaking in a non-existent wind, sat in an overgrown park to our left.

The silence was heavy, oppressive, broken only by the distant caw of a virtual crow.

"Well," Alex muttered, planting his newly-reinforced shield on the ground with a solid thud.

"This is... grim."

Kaelen Vance, our healer, pulled his robes tighter. "I don’t like it. It’s too open. We’re exposed."

He was right. This was a sniper’s paradise.

Seraphina Croft, however, looked energized.

Her eyes, sharp as a hawk’s, were already scanning the crumbling rooftops, the broken windows, the high branches of the dead trees.

"This is my terrain," she murmured, her voice stripped of its usual sarcasm, now humming with a hunter’s focus.

The "boring" stealth-kill drill on the previous floor had clearly left her itching for some real, long-range action.

"Agreed," I said, my gaze sweeping the same lines of sight. My team was sharp, their senses honed by six floors of flawless, efficient clears.

My "misfit" squad was beginning to look like a veteran unit.

Alex’s trust was absolute, Kaelen’s anxiety had been forged into cautious vigilance, and Seraphina’s aristocratic disdain was being slowly, painfully, overwritten by a grudging, results-based respect.

Even the Twins, Finn and Freya, who had already melted into the shadows at the edge of our formation, felt more lethal, their movements now utterly silent after my "remedial" lesson.

"Alright, new floor, new rules," I announced, my voice low.

"The objective just populated. ’Reach the Exit Portal,’ 5km east. It’s a simple traversal. But Kaelen’s right. This place is an ambush-alley. We’re not taking the main road."

My mind was already racing, my internal ’game map’ overlaying the virtual world before me. ’Floor 7.

This is where the Tower AI actively encourages PvP. The main path is seeded with F-Rank trash mobs, but the side paths... that’s where the real loot spawns. And the real traps.’

"Seraphina," I commanded, "you’re our eyes. Get to the high ground. That water tower, two blocks north. It’s the highest point in this sector. From there, you’ll have overwatch for our entire route."

She nodded, a single, sharp gesture, and was gone, scaling a ruined wall with a grace that was both beautiful and deadly.

"Alex, Kaelen, Gideon, you’re the core. Stick together. Twins," I called into the empty air,

"you’re our point. Move one block ahead. Rooftops only. Report any movement. We’re going to leapfrog from building to building."

"And you, Chief?" Alex asked.

"I’m the roamer," I said. "I’ll be supporting where needed. Let’s move."

This was the lie. I wasn’t "roaming." I was guiding. I knew exactly where we were going.

’In Tower of Ascendance, the ’Ambush Alley’

quest starts here. The lure—a ’Hidden Treasure Map’—spawns in one of three static locations on this floor, all of them C-Rank locked chests.

The easiest one to "find" is in the old municipal library.’

I led them north, cutting through a series of collapsed backyards and ruined kitchens.

The Twins moved ahead, their shadowy forms flitting across rooftops, their voices coming back over the comms in short, clipped whispers:

"[Clear.]"

"[Patrol, two Goblins, east corner. Weak. Avoiding.]"

We moved quickly, a well-oiled machine.

After ten minutes, we arrived at our destination: a large, two-story brick building, its front windows shattered, a faded sign hanging crookedly: SELORN PUBLIC LIBRARY.

"We cut through here," I said, pointing. "It’s a solid structure. Good fallback point, and it offers a clean line of sight to the next major intersection."

Alex and Kaelen looked at me, their trust implicit. We entered the main hall, the air thick with the smell of moldy, decaying paper.

Thousands of books lay scattered across the floor, swollen and ruined by decades of virtual rain.

"Spread out," I whispered. "Search for any supplies. We move in two."

While the team fanned out, I walked directly to the "Staff Only" room at the back. It was dark, the doorway blocked by a heavy, fallen concrete pillar.

’The chest is under that,’ I thought. ’Triggered by a proximity sensor in the game code.’

"Chief!" Alex’s voice came from the main hall. "This room is blocked."

I walked over, my team gathering behind me. I "studied" the rubble, my expression one of deep concentration.

(To be Continued)