Chapter 8
Author: Kashish
last update2026-05-24 17:38:36

The quiet in his room felt wrong.

Not peaceful. Not restful. The kind of quiet that sits on your chest and waits for you to close your eyes so it can fill your head with every thought you've been avoiding. Downstairs, Lucia was washing dishes, the faint clinking of plates and running water coming through the floor like a lullaby meant for someone who could actually sleep. Gianna had the television on in the living room, volume barely above a whisper, probably already half asleep in the armchair with her tea going cold on the side table.

Dante lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling and waited for exhaustion to do its job. It didn't. His body was tired in ways he couldn't name, but his mind was a dog that wouldn't stop pacing. The Tower. Ten impossible floors. A Celestial Domain where humans were hated. Limits that were supposed to be permanent. A class that didn't exist in any known system. Two skills designed to kill, both locked for three months.

He sat up and pulled his old laptop from under the bed. The screen was cracked in the top left corner, the casing held together by a strip of tape Lucia had put on as a joke six months ago with a sticker that said "vintage." He opened it, waited for the thing to wheeze itself awake, and typed in the address he'd seen referenced on a poster inside the Association building.

ArcaneNet.

The homepage loaded in pieces, his connection struggling with the weight of it. When it finally assembled itself, Dante leaned closer.

"What the hell."

It was organized chaos. Tens of thousands of active members, a live counter ticking upward in the corner. Forums divided by territory, by rank, by race. Video tutorials with thumbnails showing Awakened demonstrating abilities in controlled arenas. Dungeon news updated every hour. Floor clear reports with timestamps and verified team rosters. Entire sections devoted to rare races, special classes, Celestial Domain trade routes, Tower strategy breakdowns.

His registration had synced automatically. A small tag appeared in the top right corner of the screen.

Daniel Moretti. Level 0. Newbie.

"Level zero," he muttered. "They couldn't even start me at one."

He clicked on the leveling guide. The system was simple. Ten levels. One floor of the Tower conquered meant one level gained. Level 10 didn't exist yet because no one in history had conquered all ten floors. High-level users, the ones sitting at Level 7, 8, 9, had access to content Dante couldn't even see. Strategic discussions locked behind clearance walls. Online auctions for rare items. Resources, contacts, intelligence networks that ran parallel to the official Association structure.

At Level 0, most users just posted questions in the general forum. He scrolled through a few. "How do I find a party for my first dungeon?" "Is D-rank gear worth buying or should I save?" "Can someone explain the mana cycling technique from the floor 2 guide?" The answers were sparse. Most went ignored entirely.

He opened the search bar and typed two words before his brain caught up to his fingers.

Fallen Priest.

The community documented almost everything. Class databases pulled from discoveries in the Celestial Domain, from Tower rewards, from decades of Awakened research across every continent. Thousands of entries. Warrior subclasses, mage variants, healer trees, summoner branches, hybrid classifications that combined two or more disciplines.

The search returned nothing.

No entries. No references. No speculation threads. Not even a rumor.

Dante laughed quietly in the dark room. Of course it didn't exist here. It didn't exist anywhere. The system had given him a class that had no history, no precedent, no community knowledge to draw from. He was carrying a title that the entire collective intelligence of the Awakened world had never encountered.

"Just me then," he whispered to the cracked screen.

He navigated to the Tower Guide section. The first sentence stopped him cold.

Entry into the Tower is permitted only with a valid Tower Key. Keys are non-transferable and expire upon use.

He scrolled down. Three ways to obtain a key. The first was guild sponsorship. Join a registered guild and they provide a key as part of their member resources. The second was direct purchase through the ArcaneNet marketplace. He clicked the listing. The cheapest key available was listed at 2.4 million Zen.

"Two point four million," he said flatly. His monthly income from the Association badge was 25,000. That was ninety-six months of saving every single coin without eating, sleeping, or existing.

The third option was the Awakened Assessment Test. Administered by regional Association branches. Passing the test granted a Tower Key, official combat ranking, and eligibility for the National Awakened Federation, where the elite were trained and the strongest rose through a system that ran above and beyond the local guilds.

No guild. No money. That left the test.

He searched for assessment test schedules. Nothing came up. He tried different keywords. Dates. Locations. Registration forms. Every result pointed to the same answer: tests were organized only through local Association branches, and schedules were available in person only. Not online. Not posted. You had to walk in and ask.

He found a forum post from three months ago. Someone with a Level 1 tag asking the same question he was asking now. "Does anyone know when the next assessment test is? I've been waiting for two months and my local branch won't give me a straight answer."

The replies were vague and useless. "Just keep checking." "My branch posts it on their bulletin board." "I heard they only run tests when they have enough candidates." "Good luck lol."

Dante clicked the reply button. A red message appeared across the screen.

Access denied. Your current level does not permit posting in this forum. Minimum required: Level 1.

He stared at it. He didn't even have the right to ask.

He closed the laptop. The cracked screen went dark and the room went with it, nothing but moonlight cutting a thin line across his floor and the distant sound of Gianna's television murmuring through the walls.

Tomorrow he would go back to the Association and ask about the test. 

He would stand in another line and talk to another clerk and navigate another system designed to make people like him wait.

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