SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 170: The Tower of Reject, The Architect’s Rejects
Alvian stood his ground, the [Voidpiercer] dagger materializing in his hand. He analyzed the structure.
[Target: The Spire of Deleted Dreams.]
[Status: Unstable / Glitched.]
[Threat Level: Unquantifiable.]
"It’s not a building," Alvian noted. "It’s a file dump. It’s a compilation of every rejected asset, every broken boss, every map that was too dangerous to release."
"Why is it here?" Valeria asked, raising her shield. "And why did it stop us?"
"Because we made too much noise," Alvian said. "You don’t fuse five Reality Anchors without alerting the landlord."
A sound echoed from the tower. It wasn’t a voice. It was a broadcast, projected directly into their minds.
"USER: ALVIAN. DESIGNATION: ANOMALY. YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS A RESTRICTED SERVER NODE via UNAUTHORIZED CRAFTING."
The voice was flat, genderless, and terrifyingly bored.
"I am attempting to leave," Alvian replied, projecting his thoughts back. "Your garbage dump is inefficient."
"DEPARTURE DENIED," the voice droned. "THE GAP IS A QUARANTINE ZONE. NO DATA LEAVES WITHOUT PURIFICATION. HOWEVER... YOUR METRICS ARE... INTERESTING."
A ramp extended from the balcony of the inverted tower, unfolding until it touched their platform. It was made of glass that flickered with binary code.
"INVITATION EXTENDED," the voice said. "CLIMB THE SPIRE. DEFEAT THE DISCARDS. PROVE YOUR DATA INTEGRITY. IF YOU REACH THE CORE, YOU MAY SUBMIT A TICKET FOR EXTRACTION."
"Submit a ticket?" Seraphina scoffed, though her hand shook as she sheathed her dagger. "We’re being asked to file a customer support complaint by a dungeon?"
"We’re being tested," Alvian corrected. "Again."
He looked at the ramp. It led up—or rather, down—into the inverted spire. The path was clear. The portal home was blocked by the tower’s interference field. The only way to remove the jammer was to shut it down from the inside.
"It’s a gauntlet," Valeria realized. "Boss rush?"
"Worse," Alvian said. "These are the bosses that the developers removed because they were unfair. Broken mechanics. Infinite health pools. Unavoidable kill moves. We are walking into a game design nightmare."
"Sounds fun," Valeria said, though her grip on her claymore was white-knuckled. "Better than floating in nothingness forever."
Alvian stepped onto the glass ramp. It held his weight.
"Stay close," Alvian ordered. "Standard formation. Valeria, point. Seraphina, rear guard. I’ll handle the logic puzzles."
"Logic puzzles?" Seraphina asked.
"Glitches," Alvian clarified. "In a broken world, logic is the only weapon that works."
They ascended the ramp. As they crossed the threshold into the tower, the gravity flipped. Up became down. They stumbled, disoriented, landing on what used to be the ceiling.
The interior of the first floor was a vast, white room. There were no walls, only an endless expanse of white grid lines. In the center stood a single entity.
It looked like a knight, but its proportions were wrong. Its arms were too long, dragging on the ground. Its head was tiny. It held a sword that was merely a long, grey rectangle with the word "SWORD_placeholder_01" written on the side.
[Boss: The Prototype Knight]
[Level: 1]
[HP: 999,999,999]
[Attack: 99,999]
"Level 1?" Valeria blinked. "With a billion HP?"
"It’s a damage sponge," Alvian analyzed instantly. "Used for testing DPS limits. It likely has zero defense but infinite health. And its attack..."
The Prototype Knight moved. It didn’t have an animation. It simply slid across the floor without moving its legs. It raised the grey rectangle.
"DODGE!" Alvian shouted.
He grabbed Valeria and [Void Step]ed backward.
"SWISH."
The grey rectangle swung. The air didn’t just split; a black line of code appeared where the sword had passed. The "damage" wasn’t physical. It was a deletion command.
The line of code hit the floor. The white grid dissolved into a hole of nothingness.
"One hit kill," Alvian said. "Regardless of defense. Regardless of stats. If that touches you, your character file gets corrupted."
"How do we kill it?" Seraphina shrieked, dodging another sliding attack. "It has a billion health! We’ll be here for a month!"
Alvian watched the Knight. It slid again. Swing. Slide. Swing. It was a simple pattern. A testing script.
"We don’t kill it," Alvian said. "We crash it."
He looked at the environment. The white grid.
"System. Analyze floor geometry."
[Analysis: Infinite Plane. Render Distance: Variable.]
"Valeria," Alvian barked. "Draw its aggro. Make it swing at the same spot. Repeatedly."
"Are you crazy?" Valeria yelled, but she banged her shield. "HEY! UGLY! OVER HERE!"
The Prototype Knight slid toward her. It raised the deletion sword.
"Seraphina," Alvian commanded. "When it swings, I need you to throw a smoke bomb. Not at the Knight. At the floor where the sword connects."
"Smoke? Why?"
"To overload the particle physics," Alvian said. "Just do it!"
The Knight swung.
"NOW!"
Seraphina threw a [Shadow Smoke Bomb]. The dark cloud exploded just as the deletion sword hit the grid.
"GLITCH!"
The deletion command tried to erase the smoke particles. But there were too many particles. The simple script of the boss couldn’t calculate the deletion of a million individual smoke motes simultaneously while also processing the floor interaction.
The Knight froze. Its texture flashed red.
[System Error: Calculation Overflow.]
[Process Halted.]
The massive HP bar turned grey. The Knight dissolved into pixels. A door materialized in the white void, marked "Level 2."
"It’s not about damage," Alvian said, walking toward the door. "It’s about finding the bug."
He looked at his team. They were pale, terrified by the abstract nature of the threat.
"Get used to it," Alvian said. "That was the tutorial floor."
The ascent through the Spire of Deleted Dreams was a descent into madness. Each floor was a unique hell, a discarded concept that had been deemed too broken for the live game.
Floor 2 was the "Infinite Corridor." A hallway that stretched forever, looping back on itself every hundred meters. They walked for an hour before Alvian realized the trap. The exit wasn’t at the end; it was in the reflection of the floor. They had to swim through the polished marble to escape.
Floor 5 was the "Room of Mirrors." Every attack they launched was instantly copied and fired back at them with double potency. Valeria nearly died when her own [Titan’s Bash] was reflected into her chest. Alvian solved it by doing nothing. He stood perfectly still for ten minutes until the AI, having no input to copy, entered sleep mode, unlocking the door.
Floor 10 was the worst yet.
It was a swamp. But the "water" was a purple liquid that drained experience points instead of health.
[Environmental Hazard: XP Drain.]
[Rate: 1,000 XP/sec.]
"I’m de-leveling!" Arin (wait, Arin wasn’t here, only Seraphina and Valeria. Correction: Arin was left behind to guard the city.)
"My level!" Seraphina gasped, looking at her status. "I just lost 10% of my progress to Level 55!"
"Don’t touch the liquid," Alvian ordered. He was hovering using [Frost Heart] flight. He carried Valeria, while Seraphina leaped between floating lily pads made of solid bone.
"There’s the exit," Valeria pointed. "Across the lake."
But guarding the lake was a Hydra. A [Hydra of Regression].
Every time a head was cut off, it didn’t just grow two more; it rewound time for the attacker by ten seconds, placing them back in a vulnerable position.
"A temporal loop boss," Alvian muttered. "Disgusting."
He tried to engage. He severed a head with [Voidpiercer].
"FLASH."
Alvian found himself back on the lily pad, the head reattached, his mana spent but the action undone.
"It resets the state, but not the cost," Alvian realized. "It’s an attrition trap."
"How do we beat time?" Seraphina asked, panicking as the XP drain ticked away.
"We don’t beat time," Alvian said. "We overload the buffer."
He looked at the Hydra. It had nine heads.
"Valeria. How many attacks can you launch in one second?"
"With [Titan’s Flurry]? Maybe five."
"Seraphina?"
"Ten, if I push my speed."
"Inefficient," Alvian said. "I need fifty."
He equipped the [Lance of the Void Winter].
"System. Activate [Genesis Mode]. [Tear of the Infinite]: Overdrive."
His stats doubled. His mana became a roaring ocean.
"I’m going to cut all nine heads," Alvian said. "Simultaneously. And I’m going to do it in the same microsecond."
"That’s impossible," Valeria said. "Even with your speed."
"Speed isn’t enough," Alvian agreed. "I need multiplication."
He activated [Runic Aegis +2]. But he didn’t form a shield. He formed mirrors. Fourteen runes arranged in a circle around the Hydra.
"Refraction," Alvian whispered.
He fired a single [Glacial Void Pierce] beam. He didn’t aim at the Hydra. He aimed at the first rune.
The beam hit the rune and bounced. It hit the next rune. And the next. It split, refracted, and multiplied. Within a microsecond, the area around the Hydra was a web of violet lasers.
"Now."
Alvian collapsed the rune field.
The beams converged. All nine heads were struck at the exact same instant of server time.
"SCREEEE—"
The Hydra tried to trigger its rewind. But there was no "previous state" where it was alive to revert to. All heads died in the same frame. The logic broke.
"POP."
