Chapter 9: illusion

The four remaining guards didn’t try to fight. They didn’t even try to stand up. They just dropped their electric clubs onto the white tiles and fell to their knees, pressing their foreheads against the dusty floor.

"Please! Don’t kill us!" the head guard screamed, his voice shaking hard. "We were just following orders! Marcus paid our captain to lock the gates! We don’t want any trouble!"

Dante stood over them, his hand looking completely empty, though the invisible black blade was resting right against his leg.

"Where is the key for the elevator?" Dante asked.

In this tower, you couldn’t just stand in a magic circle to go to the next floor. The lower floors were already cleared years ago. The guilds had turned these levels into safe corporate zones with real walls, lights, and locked doors. If you wanted to go up to Floor 15, you had to manually unlock the main elevator at the back of the station.

The head guard quickly reached into his pocket with a shaking hand and pulled out a black card with a gold chip inside. "Here! This is the master pass! It unlocks the elevator gates and turns off the alarms for the next three floors!"

Dante took the card with his left hand.

Yenna walked up from behind the smoke, her black cat tail flicking back and forth. She looked at the four guards on the floor, then up at Dante. "Are we keeping them alive?"

The guards looked at Yenna’s purple, smoky claws and started crying. "Please! We won’t tell anyone you were here! We will delete the security logs!"

Dante shoved the black keycard into his hoodie pocket. He looked at the elevator doors at the end of the white hallway.

"Leave them," Dante said to Yenna. "Killing them doesn’t give me enough stats to waste my time. Let’s go."

He turned his back on the guards and walked toward the heavy metal elevator doors. He swiped the gold card through the slot, and the doors opened with a soft ding.

As Dante stepped inside the box, the digital clock inside his eyes finally hit midnight.

12:00 AM.

[System Notification: It is midnight. You get 1x Free Daily Spin.]

[The Gachapon wheel is spinning now...]

The big colorful wheel appeared in his mind again, spinning around and around before stopping on another slot.

[Spin Complete!]

[You got: ’Old Leather Boots’ (F-Rank Trash Armor).]

- Description: A pair of smelly, worn-out boots with a hole in the left toe. Movement speed increased by 1%.

A pair of ugly, dirty boots dropped onto the floor of the elevator. Yenna stared at them, completely confused. "Why does your magic keep making garbage appear out of thin air?"

Dante didn’t answer. He just watched the golden screen of his second system slam down over the grey box.

[System 2: 100x Multiplier Triggered!]

[’Old Leather Boots’ (F-Rank) ---> Multiplied by 100x!]

[Calculating Evolution... Complete!]

[You got SSS-Rank Divine Armor: ’The Asura’s Cloud-Walker Boots’ (Bound).]

[Description: Boots worn by the god of war. ]

[Effect 1: Movement speed increased by 300%.]

[ Effect 2: ’Void Step’ - You can walk on empty air, clouds, or smoke like it is solid ground. You leave zero footprints and make zero sound.]

The dirty leather boots instantly melted into a beautiful stream of liquid black silver. The silver wrapped around Dante’s old sneakers, turning into sleek, dark boots with glowing purple trim that hummed with pure energy.

The elevator doors closed, and the box started moving up toward Floor 15. Dante looked down at his new boots. He could feel his body becoming light, like he could jump over a building if he wanted to.

"Floor fifteen is a forest trap," Dante said, looking at the metal elevator wall. "Let’s see if their illusion can stop someone who can walk on the sky."

The box stopped moving. The front panels slid sideways, revealing what looked like a dense green jungle. Trees with massive green leaves blocked the view, and vines hung down toward the grass.

Dante walked out first. His new boots touched the ground, but they didn’t sink into the dirt or make a single sound. He looked up at the sky. There was a fake sun shining down, making the air feel warm and damp.

Yenna stepped out behind him, her black tail moving slowly. She closed her eyes to feel the area.

"The text on my map says this entire forest is fake," Yenna said, pointing toward a line of giant oak trees. "It is an illusion barrier. If you walk on the grass, the ground shifts underneath your feet. It forces people to walk in a circle forever until they run out of food and water."

Dante looked down at his black boots. "Then we won’t walk on the ground."

He took a step forward, but instead of putting his foot on the grass, he stepped upward into the empty air.

The air beneath his sole rippled like water, forming a tiny disk of dark energy that held his balance perfectly. He took another step, walking up into the sky as if he were climbing a set of stairs. Within seconds, he was standing twenty feet above the tops of the trees, looking down at the green maze from above.

From up here, the illusion didn’t work. He could see the real layout of the floor. The forest was actually just a narrow straight line, and at the very end of it was the stone gate leading to Floor 16.

"Grab my hand," Dante said, reaching down toward Yenna.

Yenna leaped up, her claws catching his fingers. Dante pulled her up into the air. With his speed increased by three times, he ran forward across the sky, his feet tapping against the empty air like solid glass. The forest passed by rapidly beneath them.

.....

Meanwhile, on the fiftieth floor, Marcus was pacing around his private office. The walls were covered in golden shields, but he didn’t feel safe.

The computer monitor on his desk flashed with a new text message from the fourteenth-floor guard station.

[System Update: Checkpoint 14 has been broken.]

[Status: The automatic guns are destroyed. The guards gave up the master keycard.]

[Intruder Direction: Moving toward Floor 15.]

Marcus hit his desk with his fist, fracturing the wood. "Five guards couldn’t stop one person with zero mana? How did they lose the station?"

He picked up a communication crystal to call the captain of the fifteenth floor. "Activate the main defense grid in the forest! Do not let them find the exit!"

"Sir," the captain’s voice came through the crystal, sounding very confused. "The sensors say the intruders aren’t inside the forest. They aren’t touching the ground at all. They are running across the sky toward the exit gate."

"What?" Marcus shouted, his face turning red with anger. "Use the anti-air cannons! Shoot them down!"

"It is too late," the captain replied. "They already reached the gate. They used the master keycard from Floor 14 to turn off the locks. They are gone."

Marcus dropped the crystal. It fell to the floor and shattered. He realized that whoever was coming up the tower knew every single shortcut and security flaw in the system.

.....

At the back of the fifteenth floor, the massive stone doors clicked open as Dante swiped the black card. He and Yenna stepped into the next elevator zone, leaving the fake green jungle behind.

"Floor sixteen is next," Dante said, his feet touching the floor as his boots returned to normal. "The transformation is beginning. The next floors won’t have human guards. They will have real monsters."

Yenna nodded, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as the elevator started to rise. The real hunt was about to start.