I Don't Need To Log Out

5:00

The countdown had already begun.

Arlon stood there, unmoving, barely registering the notification.

After killing the Voidbound Tyrant, a few changes had happened.

First of all, he didn't level up. But he realized that he was really close now. If he could win against another monster like this, he would probably level up.

No, even if he killed a level 305 existence, he could level up.

Secondly, the Voidbound Tyrant had dropped something.

It was the core inside the monster.

Arlon had seen a connection between the core and the Void Sword it was using.

But the Eyes of KET** only showed "The core of a Voidbound Tyrant" as information.

So, for now, he put it in his inventory.

He also realized that the monster he defeated was another living existence. And it was already level 308.

Arlon wondered how much it had worked to reach that level before Arlon killed it.

He wasn't regretting it or anything. It was just that these monsters weren't some artificial things put in front of him so the Tower could test him.

They were real existences. And maybe this one wanted to ascend.

Of course, it also meant that it had killed more existences than Arlon did.

But now, Arlon took its place.

He looked at his trembling hand.

That thing did something to me.

He couldn't heal while he was fighting.

Whatever it was, it didn't matter now, though. He had regained his passive healing.

And he was still alive.

He endured.

But he was at his absolute limit.

He had no potion left.

None.

And he was about to face the final floor.

If the Tower did end at Floor 100—

Then, this was his last battle.

If it didn't—

He wouldn't go any further.

Because he couldn't.

He wasn't even sure if he could fight anymore.

He exhaled slowly, his body screaming.

But the countdown didn't care.

0:02

0:01

The world shifted.

And Floor 100 began.

---

Arlon's feet met solid ground again.

He immediately glanced around, expecting—hoping—for something different. A grand chamber. A throne room. A final gate.

But there was none of that.

The floor looked exactly like the others.

The same ruined stone tiles stretched out beneath him, cracked and stained with the passage of ancient battles.

The same jagged scars were etched across the walls, too deep to be natural, too chaotic to be mere decoration.

Of course, they were just decorations.

And above him, the familiar pale-blue flames flickered in the ceiling sconces, swaying in a wind that didn't exist.

Nothing had changed.

This was Floor 100.

The air was thick, but it wasn't heavier than the last few floors.

He had been expecting pressure—overwhelming pressure—or at least a sense of arrival.

Some kind of indication that this was the top, the end, the final trial.

But the Tower offered no ceremony.

No message.

No pause.

His body ached in every way a body could ache. His wounds hadn't fully closed, even the potions he drank.

His hands trembled, barely holding on to the blade. But he was standing.

He forced himself upright and steady.

And then, without any warning, it appeared.

No sound. No grand entrance. No magical ripple or dramatic flash.

It was just there, standing across the room. As if it had always been there, waiting for him to catch up.

A humanoid figure.

But only in shape.

The being's frame was roughly the size of an adult male, tall and upright.

Its limbs were proportionate—almost eerily so—but that was where the normalcy ended.

Its skin was a deep, unnatural red. Not the kind of red that looked painted or dyed, but the red of molten heat buried just under the surface.

Veins pulsed faintly beneath it like lava moving through rock.

Its ears stretched back and up, sharp like an elf's—but too long, and thinner, like blades. And its face…

Its face was the part Arlon instinctively categorized as wrong.

Demonic, in the most literal way.

Not monstrous. Not twisted. Just… designed to unsettle.

High cheekbones, too sharp. A nose too thin.

Eyes black where the whites should have been, and irises that glowed like coals.

There was no smile, no expression—just stillness, as if the creature had no need to communicate with anything beneath it.

The hands were human. Almost. Five fingers. No fur, no claws.

But the nails were long—unnaturally long. Like claws that had grown but never thickened, like the being had never needed to use them.

Thin, curved, almost delicate. Arlon doubted they could be used in battle.

They'd snap on contact.

So… why have them?

He didn't like how that question settled in his mind. It reminded him that whatever this thing was, it hadn't been born. Not naturally.

He activated Eyes of KET** immediately. His instincts didn't give him the luxury of hesitation anymore.

The information appeared in front of him. And it was... familiar.

***

[???]

[Level: 310]

[Race: /&%(_'+$½]

[???]

[???]

[???]

***

That was all.

Just like before.

No skill list. No stat values. Not even a name. Just that scrambled mess in the race field—jumbled symbols where a title or species should've been.

Pure gibberish to his eyes. Like the system itself didn't know what it was seeing.

Arlon narrowed his eyes.

There were only two explanations that made sense.

The first—this thing came from a planet where inbreeding between wildly different races had led to unstable hybrid lifeforms.

An evolutionary accident. One that might've been culled elsewhere but managed to survive and grow strong in some distant, unknown world.

The second was that it was artificial. A chimera. Constructed. Pieced together in a lab or a ritual or something worse.

A patchwork being thrown together by hands far above his pay grade. Maybe not even biological. Maybe the race field was unreadable because the thing didn't have a race.

Both options were horrifying in different ways.

Because both options meant someone—or something—was capable of creating a lifeform that reached Level 310 and defied the Tower's classification systems.

His mind flicked back—just briefly—to the things he'd known in his old life. The simplicity of Trion. The narrow lens through which he used to see the universe.

Back then, his world had been divided into the familiar and the unknown. The people of Trion and the Keldars.

That was it.

But since entering the Tower, that view had shattered. Shattered into so many pieces that even now, after all this time, he was still discovering how vast the universe really was.

So many floors.

So many different kinds of monsters.

So many species.

Some he recognized from stories.

Others were unlike anything he could've imagined.

And now… this.

A being that shouldn't exist.

A being that didn't fit anywhere.

It stood motionless, watching him. Or at least, he assumed it was watching him. Its eyes didn't blink. Its head didn't tilt. It didn't breathe.

There was no aura. No pressure in the air. No sudden alert to tell him a fight had started.

It was just a staring contest between two beings that had climbed too high to ever go back.

Arlon tightened his grip on his sword. The light of the blue flames reflected along the blade's edge.

He didn't know what was coming.

But the Tower had never been about knowledge.

It had been about endurance.

And now, Floor 100 waited.

He lowered into a ready stance.

And prepared to face the unknown.