NIP Chapter 451: Rewards for Clearing the First Floor—3
Chapter 451: Rewards for Clearing the First Floor—3
The message from the tower appeared with its characteristic clean format.
[Please proceed to the designated array center. Place the Primordial Void Heart before you. The merging process will begin upon your readiness.]
Leon read it once, then looked around thinking: what designated place?
His thought stopped completely within the same second.
The arena floor had transformed while he’d been occupied with the reward notifications. A massive black array now covered the entire space—stretching across what must have been several hundred meters of stone floor, filling the arena from wall to wall with intricate geometric patterns and symbols that seemed to absorb the ambient light rather than reflect it.
He stared at it.
The symbols were unlike anything he’d encountered before in terms of complexity. Over the course of everything he’d experienced since arriving in this world, he’d come across runic patterns repeatedly—in the tower’s gate, in the activation of his purchased items, on the Primordial Void Heart itself. They appeared constantly, and every single time, his understanding of them remained frustratingly limited.
But even within that general ignorance, he’d noticed gradations. Some runic systems he encountered were like looking through thick fog—the meaning was hidden but the hiding felt shallow, like something he could eventually understand with enough exposure and study. Others were like looking at the surface of deep ocean water and trying to comprehend what lived at the absolute bottom—the distance between him and understanding wasn’t just knowledge but something more fundamental.
These current symbols fell firmly in the latter category.
I can’t even feel a single thing about these. Whatever they’re doing, it’s operating on a level completely beyond my current comprehension.
Yet the frustration this created was oddly enjoyable.
He genuinely wanted to learn about runes. They were demonstrably extraordinary in their utility—an array was apparently playing a significant role in a process that carried a 99% death rate without its involvement, which said something considerable about what runic systems could accomplish. The item he’d purchased for tens of millions of causality before entering the tower—the one that proved unsuitable for direct tower usage—he’d already been quietly developing ideas for. Good ideas, he felt. Ideas that required understanding runes better than he currently did.
First chance I get to find someone with actual knowledge of rune systems, I’m taking it.
He located the center of the array without difficulty. The circular space there was unmistakable—the focal point toward which all the surrounding patterns oriented, a clean circle of unadorned stone sitting in the exact middle of everything.
Leon walked to it with the Primordial Void Heart drifting beside him on a careful current of wind element. The World Fragment he left near the portal—it couldn’t go into any storage and he had a vague, reasonable concern that its unknown properties might interfere with whatever was about to happen. It would be fine there. Outside the tower was his own dimensional realm, and nothing in his realm was going to disturb it.
He settled cross-legged at the center, positioning the Primordial Void Heart directly in front of him at roughly chest height, held in place by the gentle wind current. The black pulsating organ floated there steadily, its silver patterns continuing their slow, shifting configurations, the runic symbols orbiting it in their unhurried paths.
The next message arrived immediately.
[Prepare yourself. The merging process will initiate in five seconds.]
Leon closed his eyes briefly. Drew one slow breath. Let his shoulders settle. Cleared his mind of everything except the immediate present.
This is going to hurt. That’s fine. I’ve been hurt before.
He thought briefly about the tribulation that had transformed him into a Divinordial—the experience that had fundamentally reshaped his existence at the cellular level. That had been an extraordinary level of pain. This was only a legendary-rank item in comparison. How bad could it reasonably be?
He allowed himself a small measure of cautious optimism on that front.
The countdown reached one.
Then one more message appeared, slipping in just before the array activated.
[Good luck and survive, challenger]
Leon stared at the words for a full second.
Good luck and survive.
Not the process will proceed safely. Not the tower’s stabilization ensures your wellbeing. Just: good luck. And survive. As if survival was an outcome worth wishing for rather than a guaranteed result.
In the privacy of his own mind, Leon cycled through approximately one hundred different expressions of profanity across three languages he knew, at considerable emotional volume.
He absolutely did not stand up. Standing up now would obviously disrupt everything and make his situation demonstrably worse. He sat exactly where he was, jaw set, and gritted his back teeth together.
And I never even thought to ask what the survival rate is WITH the tower’s help. I just assumed 99% death outside meant something close to safe inside. But that message doesn’t read like a 100% guarantee.
I walked into this. I sat down and volunteered for this.
How does a tower trick you? How is that possible? Yet here I am.
The array activated before he finished the thought.
The symbols across the entire arena floor lit up simultaneously—deep, concentrated black that somehow radiated brightness, the paradox of it immediately apparent and deeply unsettling to look directly at. The light gathered and moved, flowing along the pattern lines like liquid following carved channels, converging from the perimeter toward the center where Leon sat.
Threads of runic energy reached him first as tendrils—thin, precise, deliberate. The light armor covering his upper body dissolved quietly before they arrived, leaving him bare-chested, and the threads made contact with his skin.
They spread like something with intention.
Moving across his chest and shoulders, down his arms, along his sides, tracing paths over his torso and continuing to the lower body where his already torn clothing offered no real obstruction. The sensation was initially nothing more than a curious warmth—present but not alarming. The threads settled into position across his body like they were mapping him, learning the geography of him before doing anything more significant.
The concentration was heaviest on the right side of his chest.
And there, it began as an itch.