I rolled my shoulders and tilted my head side to side. The stiffness clung stubbornly to my muscles, slow to leave. I reached into the Tools/Items and grabbed a mid-tier healing potion. One fast gulp, and warmth spread through my chest and limbs. It washed away the pain and reset my balance. Nothing flashy. Just clean relief.

I breathed out slow, an exhale that softened the sharp edges of my thoughts. My gaze lifted toward the sky.

From the first to the ninth floor, this tower had been nothing but grind. Dungeon after dungeon stacked with ambushes and dead ends. I clawed my way through each one, barely ahead of the next blow. Every win flickered out before it landed. No time to celebrate. Not here. The momentum never let up.

But there was one thing I always tracked—

My deaths.

Each one stuck. Not just in memory but in the way I moved now. Every fall left something behind. A habit. A reflex. A scar that did not show.

The tower did not just test me. It watched. It waited to crush the version of me that thought he could push ahead.

And to my ongoing disbelief, the tower’s online store kept throwing curveballs, especially in the weapon section. The whole thing behaved as though a prankster waited behind the curtain, and each new item pushed that suspicion further. I half expected a banana peel launcher next.

The latest item? A toy handgun that fired rubber bullets.

That’s right.

Rubber. Freaking. Bullets.

“Is this a joke?” I muttered the first time it appeared. The laugh that followed did not carry humor. Not angry. Just done.

But the longer I stared at it, the more something shifted. I stopped seeing it as an insult and started seeing possibilities.

Back on the second floor, a slow ignition stirred in my mind.

While wandering, I found myself in a massive bamboo grove.

The stalks reached overhead in steady rows, unmoving even as the wind passed through. The whole place felt older than the tower itself. Nothing loud. Just something solid that settled into my ribs and stayed.

It reminded me of that school trip to Kyushu, the Miyama Kiyomizuyama course. The first time I saw a forest that made me stop walking just to look around.

I did not realize it then, but that was where the change started. A memory edged in. Something from a documentary I watched once. Some guy with duct tape and too much free time making slingshots out of PVC and bike parts.

That’s it.

I dived into the Online Store and hit the button on every supply I needed.

Hammer. Nails. Sandpaper. Handsaw. Heavy rubber band. Chisel. Toy gun. No second guessing.

Two bamboo stalks caught my eye. One slightly thinner than the other. That detail mattered. I cut them both and dragged them back.

Then I started building.

Time disappeared. All I saw were tools and materials. Sawdust clung to my clothes. Splinters jabbed into my fingers. I kept going.

I hollowed out the thinner stalk to form the barrel. The thicker one became the frame. I carved a track inside so the pouch could travel smoothly. I installed a small pulley to reset the band. I ripped the trigger out of the toy gun and wired it to the sling’s release.

It reloaded and fired in two seconds. No jams. No second attempts.

When I held it up, my hands shook a little.

Not from strain. Just the way they did when something worked better than I expected.

That was the first time I said its name. SlingBam.

Right then, the system lit up in front of me.

Blue screen. Words locked in. +15 INT for Ingenuity.

I grinned. I couldn’t help it.

That stat boost hit harder. For once, it felt like the system paused over my shoulder during the build and muttered, “Alright, fine. You get a win.”

Took long enough.

And yeah, I would be lying if I said it did not light something deeper.

If a bamboo slingshot got me that much INT, what would I get for pulling off a DIY firearm?

That moment stuck with me. Even now, here on the ninth floor, surrounded by the stench of death, the SlingBam was enough.

It worked. It was mine. Better than anything the store would have handed me.

Still, it was not the only thing I counted on.

I glanced down at my boots.

And they were perfect.

________________________________________

Puss In Boots

Type: Legendary

Description: The magical boots worn by the sly and lewd cat.

DEX: +60

INT: +35

WIS: +20

LCK: +15

Advantages:

·       Exceptional dexterity and intelligence empower the wearer to outsmart opponents and achieve their goals through wit and stealth.

·       Steps become silent, aiding in stealth and evasion.

·       Improved balance and agility facilitate the traversal of difficult terrain.

·       Running speed is significantly enhanced.

·       Overall dexterity is improved, aiding in nimble movements. Reaction time is reduced, proving useful in combat situations.

Disadvantages:

·       Players may become lecherous over time.

________________________________________

I knew how this would have gone back home.

Drop these boots on some punk, and the police force would have collapsed five blocks behind, red-faced and hopeless. These were not just footwear. They were escape plans with soles.

Who needed wheels when my feet felt lifted clear of gravity.

They molded to me with an ease that felt engineered, the fit shaped by some unseen hand that understood every pressure point and stride pattern of a runner who never slowed. The moment I laced them up, I knew this was the gear that changed the game.

The tower kept tossing garbage gear, thinking annoyance could grind me down. But with these on, the whole strategy crumbled. I was not hanging on by luck anymore.

Even though the last part of the item description sounded strange, it did not matter. Puss In Boots became the benchmark. Everything else felt like cosplay.

Sleek finish. Strong buff list. And yeah, I moved with a different weight with them on.

But the boots were not the only reward wrapped inside this broken system.

The resets kept coming, hurling me back to floor one. But instead of wiping me clean, they built something. Every loop pulled in more gold. Materials piled up. Weapons cycled in and out. I farmed, sold, geared up. It fed this strange groove I had carved with the place.

The system was basically capitalism with amnesia. Forget everything. Do it again. Somehow come out richer.

Best part? I came back better. Faster reactions. Smarter ambushes. I knew how to bait the Akai without getting clawed. I knew the sound Kiiroi creatures made just before they pivoted to flank. I was not guessing anymore. I expected. Each run honed me to an edge that cut deeper every time. This was repetition with teeth.

My stat points proved it. They did not vanish on reset. They stacked. They grew. Every moment of panic, every clean kill, every dodge that scraped by on instinct, all of it accumulated.

Strength and Dexterity? Solid as ever.

Wisdom? That stat exploded the second I started rigging traps and carving ambushes into dirt as intricate challenges.

Remember the ogre on floor one? It never stood a chance after I double-trapped him. Three WIS points dropped at once. They felt earned. No trickery.

Then there was Luck.

Sometimes I thought the system pitied me in bursts. Each time I walked away from something that should have turned me into wall paste, it tossed a handful of LCK points my way and muttered, “Okay, that’s ballsy. Here, have a cookie.”

And then there was the ‘time’ thing. Logic had packed its bags and left ages ago. I stopped trying to file complaints.

The laws here did not apply to me. This world broke everything else, but I stayed locked at eighteen. I had lived close to six years in this game, but my reflection never changed. No lines under my eyes. Not even a hint of age.

Weirdly, I had made peace with it.

There was something clean about staying frozen. Outside, I was the same. Inside? Sharper every run. Burned through XP with the grit of someone chasing a verdict. It could have been worse. I was not rotting in real time.

I know what you’re thinking. Eternal youth sounds like a perk. But trust me, when the mind keeps aging and the mirror does not, it stops feeling earned.

Which brought us to now.

Me, lounging on a chair I looted from what used to be a goblin stronghold. Call it interior decorating for the victorious.

Elbows on the armrests, hands laced behind my head. Stillness all around, rare and welcome.

Earlier, the boss fight had left my nerves humming with the sharp bite of a frayed cable. I still felt the aftershock of my new ammo. Every heartbeat carried a flicker of heat, the sensation of a furnace lodged in my chest and struggling to break free.

That fight would have gone south if I had not had the Hiishi.

I unlocked it after clearing floor five. Felt more like an execution tool than gear. Grenade level payload. Direct hit meant chaos, fire, shrapnel, enemies launched mid-sentence. Brutal. Messy. Perfect.

But they did not come cheap.

One gold bought a single Ishi. Three bought a Kōkyū. But a Hiishi? That was fifty gold evaporated in a blink.

One shot. One explosion.

Good news? Gold was no longer a problem. Bad news? I had become the reckless millionaire who blew five thousand gold on fireworks and called it strategy.

I had built this war chest through blood and grind. I did not flinch when I spent it.

With the SlingBam loaded and a hiishi on standby, I walked into fights as a problem no one was ready for. Not a warrior. Not a hero. Something messier. More unpredictable. More dangerous.

It took long enough, but I was finally not just white knuckling my way through this bugged out death spiral.

Now? I had a hand on the wheel. And yeah, I might have been driving straight through a minefield, but at least it was on purpose.

I took a deep breath that scraped its way in and scanned the stronghold again. It was wreckage now.

Structures burned to hollow frames. Blood smeared across shattered stone. The bodies were everywhere, frozen mid fall, flung in poses that said the end came fast.

This place once held a goblin force strong enough to lock down a floor.

Most were common goblins, nothing special. A few notched up the threat, a dozen hobgoblins, armored and mean. A score of goblin riders threw in with their beast mounts, their charge turning the halls into a wild siege straight out of a fevered sketch, a scene that ended with limbs buried under rubble.

Lucky me, shadow goblins did not turn up. If they had, you would not be getting a recap. I would have been a smudge on someone’s postmortem data chart. Blink and you were gone.

They never fought fair. They never missed. They came in quiet and left behind nothing but poison and silence. You did not track them. You did not hear them. You only knew when it was already over.

But not everything here was pain.

After enough run-ins with poisoned blades and deaths, my bloodstream turned into a toxin sampler, I finally triggered a passive skill called Poison Resistance. And by now it was already maxed at level three.

It was a grim perk, sure. But when your veins felt tuned to host an entire poison museum, any resistance landed as a rare favor from the universe.

The Portal feature was online, unlocked after I cleared the first floor boss.

Not a free ride, though. It was limited. One floor up or down, once per day. No mid fight exits. No skipping bosses. No ducking out while your gear was still on fire.

It was not about convenience. It was about control. Strategic leverage. Still worth it.

There were other options too. Teleportation Scrolls.

Expensive, but the Mass Teleportation Scroll was a game changer. Whole parties could jump to any unlocked floor.

And the best part? You could name drop someone to leave behind. Clean. Painless. Unless you were the one getting dropped. “Sorry, Greg. You drew the short straw.” Every party needed a scapegoat, and this system let you pick yours with the tear of a scroll.

My eyes drifted back across the battlefield and settled on the slumped corpse of Thrognak, the Earthbinder, Ninth-Floor Boss.

A goblin shaman whose magic did not just hurt. It bent the world. Cracked the rules. Turned the ground itself into shifting madness.

He nearly broke me. I had to reset twice just to figure out how to land a hit.

This dude was not just brute strength. He was madness honed into focus. Fighting him felt like a man running after a reflection that refused to stay still inside a house with no corners.

But he was dead now.

Floor nine was cleared.

And beyond the Goblin floors lay something worse.

Lizardmen territory began after floor ten. No more goblins. No more familiar threats. Just new mechanics. New systems. New mistakes waiting to happen.

I stretched my fingers. They still tingled from the last hiishi round. Those explosive shots were the only reason Thrognak was not still chanting. Every coin I spent burned bright, but every shot hit.

Worth it.

I would need more. A lot more.

I rose from the chair, boots slick against the blood-soaked floor. Step by step, I made my way toward the portal at the heart of the stronghold. It glowed quiet and deep, light shifting in slow waves that marked ice sealed beneath the surface.

It waited. It always did.

The rules held steady. Beat the final boss. Survive the floor. Wait out the cooldown. Climb.

There was no mercy here. No forgiveness. No generosity.

If I had made it this far, it was because I had earned every inch. Nothing had been handed to me. Not a single level. Not one point.

Thrognak’s corpse lay behind me. Floor nine was dust.

One more goblin boss stood between me and whatever fresh nightmare this tower was brewing next.

After that, the floor dropped out.

No hints. No paths. No footsteps to follow.

Just the glitch. Just me.

I glanced back one last time. The carnage. The silence. The charred remains of something that thought it could stop me.

Then I stepped into the light.

Whatever floor ten held, let it try. I had broken worse.