I am just an NPC ,but I rewrite the story-Chapter 78: [77] The 7/8 Step

"Let’s see how long you can stay on the page," Malakor had sneered, and as the floor beneath us dissolved into a flickering neon checkerboard, I realized the "page" was currently trying to delete my left boot.

"Ren! My square is blinking! Why is it blinking?!" Tybalt shrieked, his voice hitting a register that probably only Cerberus could hear. He was balanced precariously on one leg, clutching his heavy bag of mana-flour to his chest like a shield. The tile beneath him was strobing a violent, angry red, the word ’NULL’ scrolling across it in jagged white pixels.

"Jump, Ty! To the green one on your right!" I yelled, parrying a bolt of violet soul-fire that Malakor had flicked carelessly from the tip of his spine-staff. The impact sent a jar through my arm, my Level 25 Strength the only thing keeping the "Edge of Reality" from being whipped out of my hand.

"I can’t jump that far! I have bad ankles!" Tybalt wailed, but as the red tile began to pixelate into nothingness, revealing a terrifying drop into a swirling vortex of raw data below, his survival instinct finally overrode his joints. He leaped, squawking as he landed on a stable green square.

"Theo! The rhythm! Talk to me!" I called out, my eyes darting between Malakor and the floor.

Theo was a mess. He was hunched over, his hands hovering inches above a terminal that had risen from a nearby pillar. His thick glasses were sliding down his nose, reflecting a chaotic stream of green code. "It’s a poly-rhythm, Ren! The floor is cycling in 7/8 time, but Malakor is layering a 3/4 pulse on top of it to disrupt the sync! It’s like trying to play two different songs on the same piano!"

"In English, kid! Just tell us where to step!" Red snapped. She was the only one who looked comfortable, her Agility allowing her to dance between tiles as if she were back in the streets of Silver-Port. She blurred into a ’Ghost’s Tread,’ becoming a translucent smudge that Malakor’s auto-targeting bone-needles couldn’t quite pin down.

"One-two-three, one-two, one-two!" Theo chanted, his fingers finally hitting the terminal. "The green tiles follow the odd beats! Stay off the evens or you’ll trigger the erasure! And for the love of god, someone hit that guy! He’s increasing the refresh rate!"

Malakor laughed, a dry, rattling sound that seemed to come from his ribs rather than his throat. "You think a Coder can save you? This is Sector-4 logic, little human. We don’t just write the world; we bleed it." He raised his staff, and the glowing runes on his bone-armor flared. "Bone-Wall: Execute!"

Massive pillars of calcified marrow erupted from the floor, not following the grid, but smashing through the tiles. They formed a jagged cage around Kaelen and Lysandra, cutting them off from the rest of us.

"Kaelen! Lysandra!" I shouted.

"We’re fine, Ren! Just keep the kid safe!" Kaelen’s voice echoed from behind the wall of bone. I heard the heavy thud of his claymore hitting the structure, followed by the sizzle of Lysandra’s ’Sunlight Mantle’ trying to burn through the dark magic.

"S’kar! Help them!" I signaled to the jaguar-man.

The beast-man didn’t hesitate. He let out a primal roar that vibrated in my very marrow, his electric spear crackling with blue arcs. He and his two remaining warriors leaped onto the bone-wall, their claws digging into the porous surface as they began to tear it down with brute force.

"Ren, he’s targeting the dog!" Mia yelled.

I looked over. Malakor had noticed Cerberus. The four-headed hound was a massive anomaly in the room’s logic, his smoky leg causing the digital grid to flicker and "glitch" whenever he stepped. Malakor pointed his staff, and a swarm of skeletal crows, made of compressed shadow and sharp bone, dived toward the hound.

"Cerberus, Guard!"

The dog didn’t need the command. His three primary heads snapped at the air, incinerating the crows with bursts of Soul and Space mana, while the middle-right head—Buck’s head—kept a watchful eye on Mia.

"Tybalt! The coffee!" I yelled, dodging another swipe from the grid.

"Right! Right! Fast-acting caffeine coming up!" Tybalt fumbled with his bag, pulling out a thermos that smelled like a forest fire and a sugar factory had a baby. He didn’t pour it; he tossed the whole thermos to Theo. "Drink the whole thing, kid! You look like you’re about to pass out!"

Theo caught it with one hand, never taking his eyes off the screen. He kicked the cap off and took a massive, desperate gulp. His eyes practically bugged out behind his glasses, his pupils dilating until they were just pinpricks. "Whoa. That’s... that’s a lot of mana. I can see the sub-routines! I can see the comments in the code!"

"Then edit him out!" I roared.

I didn’t wait for a reply. I used the ’Edge of Reality’ to slice through a hovering ’Invoice’ that was trying to drain my stamina. I felt the surge of Level 25 power—I was faster than I’d ever been. I ignored the 7/8 rhythm for a split second, trusting my Agility to carry me across three red tiles before they could register my weight.

I reached Malakor.

"You’re out of your world, Auditor," I said, lunging for his throat.

Malakor’s eyes flared blue. "I am the Soul-Stitcher! You are nothing but an error message!" He swung his staff, the heavy bone-head colliding with my knife.

CLANG.

The silver line on my blade shrieked. It wasn’t a physical sound, but a conceptual one. The "Edge of Reality" was doing exactly what I’d paid for—it was bypassing Malakor’s bone-armor and biting directly into the mana-field he used to animate his body.

Malakor hissed in pain, his translucent grey skin flickering. "How? How can a Level 20 interact with a High-Tier mantle?"

"I’ve got a very good shop-keeper," I panted, sliding my blade down his staff to cut at his fingers.

"Ren! The floor! He’s initiating a ’Delete All’!" Theo screamed from the terminal.

The entire room turned red. The word ’FORMATTING’ began to scroll across the walls in letters ten feet high.

"Everyone! To the terminal!" I yelled, grabbing Malakor’s cloak and yanking him toward the edge of the grid.

"I will take you with me into the Void!" Malakor roared, his hand clamping onto my wrist with the strength of a vice. He began to chant, a wet, bubbling sound that made the air around us turn cold.

"Not today!"

Red appeared from nowhere. She hadn’t used her daggers. She had used her points to buy a ’Heavy-Duty Magneto-Lock.’ She slammed the device onto Malakor’s back, right over the power-pack of his stolen Sector-1 gear.

BZZZZZT.

The necromancer spasmed, his chant turning into a mechanical screech. The violet runes on his armor turned a sickly grey.

"Theo! Now!" I yelled, trying to shake off Malakor’s grip.

"Executing... ’Undo’!" Theo slammed his fist onto the ’Enter’ key of the terminal.

The red light vanished. The ’FORMATTING’ message shattered like glass. The floor solidified into a dull, grey concrete, the digital grid disappearing entirely.

Malakor fell to his knees, his staff rolling away across the floor. He looked at his hands, which were now starting to dissolve into grey ash. "The... the Emperor... will not... forgive..."

He vanished in a puff of cold, stagnant smoke, leaving behind nothing but the blue crystal that had been the top of his staff.

The Logic-Key.

Silence fell over the Archive. The bone-wall crumbled, revealing Kaelen and Lysandra, both covered in dust but otherwise fine. S’kar and his warriors stood over the remains of the wall, breathing hard.

I walked over and picked up the crystal. It was cool to the touch, pulsing with a steady, rhythmic blue light.

[Mission Item Obtained: The Logic-Key.]

[Floor 13 Cleared!]

[Tower Level 28 Reached!]

"Is it over?" Tybalt asked, slowly lowering his rolling pin. He looked around the room, which was now just a dusty, high-tech library. "Can we sit down now? My heart is doing things I don’t think hearts are supposed to do."

"Yeah, Ty," I said, sliding the crystal into my bag. I felt the other fragments react, a warm hum spreading through my satchel. "It’s over for now."

"We owe you our thanks, Eclipse," S’kar said, walking over and thumping his chest. His cybernetic eye was whirring as he looked at the terminal Theo was still hunched over. "The Archive is safe. The history of the Steel-Claw will not be erased today."

"We were happy to help," Lysandra said, giving the jaguar-man a polite nod. She looked at Theo. "Are you alright, Theo? You’re vibrating."

Theo looked up, his glasses crooked. He was still holding the thermos. "I can see... everything. Ren, the data in this room... it’s not just about Floor 13. It’s the map of the next twenty floors."

"You found a map?" Red asked, her eyes lighting up with the prospect of an easier climb.

"Not just a map," Theo said, his voice dropping. "I found the guest list. Ren, the ’High Architect’ isn’t the only one coming. The Tower is opening the gates for ’Guest Stars.’ Participants from worlds that have already finished their stories. Winners."

"Winners?" I asked. "You mean people who actually reached Floor 100 in other versions of the Tower?"

"Yeah," Theo whispered. "And they aren’t coming to help. They’re coming to harvest ’Points’ from the new batch. We’re the ’Bonus Level’ for them."

I looked at the team. The victory over Malakor felt suddenly very small. We were Level 28, but we were about to be hunted by people who had already won the game.

"Well," Red said, popping her neck. "I was getting bored of the easy stuff anyway. What’s the next floor, Ren? Does it have a beach? Please tell me it has a beach."

I checked the screen.

[Next Floor: 14 — The Gallery of Still Lives.]

[Objective: Break the Frame.]

"No beach, Red," I said. "But it sounds like we might be getting our pictures taken."

We spent the next hour in the Archive, letting Theo download as much data as his Level 1 Coder brain could handle. Tybalt managed to find some ’Emergency Ration’ bars in one of the lab’s fridges—they tasted like cardboard, but they were better than the sushi.

S’kar and his warriors offered to escort us to the portal, but I told them to stay and guard the temple. The jungle was still dangerous, and they needed to rebuild.

"We’ll meet again, Ren of the Old World," S’kar said, grasping my forearm. "When you reach the top, tell the gods that the Steel-Claw still hunt."

"I’ll tell them," I promised.

We walked toward the golden portal that had appeared near the terminal.

"Ren," Kaelen said as we reached the threshold. He looked at the Logic-Key in my bag. "That necromancer mentioned an Emperor. Not Valen. Someone else. You think it’s the High Architect?"

"I don’t know, Kaelen," I said. "But whoever it is, they’re the ones who decided that our lives were ’Abandoned Ideas.’ And I’m really looking forward to showing them how wrong they are."

"I like that plan," Red said, stepping into the light.

One by one, we followed her.

The transition hit us, and the jungle vanished.

I landed in a room that looked like an art museum. The walls were a soft, neutral grey, and the floor was polished wood. Everywhere I looked, there were massive, ornate gold frames hanging in the air.

But the paintings inside the frames weren’t painted. They were three-dimensional scenes, frozen in time.

I walked up to the nearest one.

Inside the frame was a village. A village I knew. Oakhaven.

I saw the market square. I saw Barnaby the wagon driver. I saw the tavern where I first met Kaelen. But everyone was frozen. A child was mid-laugh, a dog was mid-bark, and a woman was mid-scream as a Covenant soldier raised his sword.

[Floor 14: The Gallery of Still Lives.]

[Mission: Break the Frame.]

"Oh no," Tybalt whispered, standing next to me. He was looking at a frame to his left.

I turned. In that frame was the bakery at 42 Whispering Lane. It was the moment the Tower took us. I saw myself, Kaelen, Red, Lysandra, and Tybalt, all reaching for each other as the walls dissolved.

"It’s us," Red said, her voice unusually quiet.

"It’s not just us," Cian noted, pointing to the far end of the gallery.

There was a frame that was much larger than the others. It was empty, save for a single word written in the center of the canvas: WISH.

And standing in front of that frame was a woman.

She wore a gown of tattered silk and a crown of thorns. Her skin was the color of old paper, and her hair was a tangled mess of ink-black strands. She was holding a paintbrush that dripped with glowing blue mana.

[Target: The Curator]

[Level: 35]

[Status: Painting...]

She didn’t look at us. She kept her eyes on the ’WISH’ frame, her brush moving in slow, rhythmic strokes.

"Welcome to the Gallery," the Curator said. Her voice sounded like the rustle of a thousand pages. "Would you like to be preserved? It’s much safer inside the wood. No more pain. No more loss. Just the moment, held forever."

"We’re not here to be art," I said, drawing my knife.

The Curator paused. She turned her head, her eyes completely black, like ink-wells. "Every ’Variable’ says that at first. But in the end, they all want to stop moving. They all want to go back to the page."

She raised her brush.

"Let’s see if you’re worth the canvas."

Suddenly, the paintings around us began to move. The frozen soldiers, the villagers, the monsters—they all started to step out of their frames, their bodies still flat and two-dimensional, but their weapons very real.

"Eclipse! Don’t let them surround you!" I yelled.

The "Still Lives" were coming to life. And they were looking for a new home.

"Hey, Ren," Red said, parrying a two-dimensional spear. "I changed my mind. I hate this floor way more than the jungle."

"Focus, Red!" I shouted, slicing through a paper-soldier that dissolved into ink.

The battle for our own history had begun.