Adrian wakes up with steel underneath him. Heavy fierce winds blew in his ears, pushing onto him.

  He opens his eyes groggily and the world twists. His vision distorts and contracts like he is in a dream. Adrian shifts in his bed, turns to ge-

  Weightlessness takes over and he lunges for the bed again, to hold onto something as the fall tries to take him. His hands grips onto the metal, and for the first time he looks at it and realises what it really is. A huge metal chain. Rusted at places, chipped at others, a short sentence, ‘I was here’ is inscribed on it, and that is where he has woken up.

  The handwriting seems awfully familiar.

  Adrian looks down, and white clouds look back at him. The clouds move and turn, his vision starts to fog, and the humidity slowly increases around him. It is like the clouds are trying to interact with him.

  Adrian looks away, gasping with terrified breaths.

  The fog instantly disappears, and the attention of the clouds vanishes.

  With weak and shaky hands, he desperately picks himself up. His body feels weak, useless. He had gotten so used to the enhancement of stats, that without them, his body feels like it will be destroyed by even the smallest of taps.

  It’s an utterly disgusting feeling, nauseating, and it makes him want to puke. Puke at his own powerlessness.

  Finally, through much struggle, he pulls himself on top and sits on the chain, legs dangling in the gap between the metal loops which compose the chain.

  Adrian tries to look down again, and then the attention comes back. His hand feels sweaty, the grip on the chain slippery, so he looks away. In an instant, the attention disappears, leaving just his sweaty palms.

  “This… this is the fifth floor,” Adrian mutters, his usual confidence no longer present in his voice. It feels like he is back in his clan. Unawakened, and seeing Martin die once again. Weak, powerless, utterly useless.

  “How did I get here? And what happened to me?” He continues, focusing on the present, rather than the tumultuous storm inside of him. The last thing he remember is depleting all of his mana and finally putting the final blade in the boss’s figur-

  “It’s the hidden reward!” Adrian exclaims, suddenly feeling a bit more surefooted. Ji-a had explained when they were planning the expedition that the one who kills the floor boss will be given a hidden reward. The reward being a chance to avoid their untimely death.

  “Is this the place which will keep me alive?” Adrian looks around himself, but everything around him is covered in sickly layers of fog, covering even the chains. The most he can see is a few metres in front of him before the chains disappear completely.

  What am I supposed to do here?

  It is an ideal thought, and yet something changes. The chains rattle, and suddenly the fog to his left changes slightly. A path opens, as if the world itself wants him to walk that path.

  Adrian hesitantly stands up, putting one foot on either side of the loop, and starts to carefully walk forward. There is nothing else he can do in his state except follow. A small chuckle escapes his lips.

  Heh. It really is like back home.

  Adrian continues to walk for a long time. Many times his steps almost slip, but he manages to catch himself on time. He can’t help but lament over the lack of stats. With his current Kinesthetics he could’ve run on the chain if he wanted, without losing his balance.

  Adrian walks for time unknown. He couldn’t even access his skills in the vision, so using Timer is a no go.

  Walking on a chain surrounded by clouds gets monotonous fast. The fear leaves quickly, leaving only the caution of putting his feet on the right spot. The only thing which breaks the monotony of the trek are words written on the chain like a story.

  There are many random stories, love confessions, rants, left by people who have been here. Adrian keeps himself busy by reading those, imagining their writers.

  After a long time, finally something changes. Adrian looks up at the parting clouds, and this time he can make out something beyond them. A vast spread of black and brown, like someone had smeared paint over a canvas and then made it blurry.

  He continues to walk forward, a bit more cautious. The clouds billow and roll away, and in front of him a large mansion opens up.

  It’s a large building made for giants, made out of obsidian with white streaks over it. Wooden pillars in the entrance, sharp spires jutting upwards, a huge tinted window at front, and chains lodged deep into the structure from various sides, holding the mansion floating.

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  And very barely, he can make out another chain underneath the structure, holding… a giant hand.

  Adrian screams and curls as his eyes bleed and his mind turns chaotic. It feels like hands are sprouting from his mind, to take away something… to take away something… this memory, this memory, this memory…

  The hand that doesn’t want to be seen.

  And before Adrian could fall off the chain in pain, the world itself comes to his rescue. The clouds which had always seemed terrifying clung to him like an armour. The small drops of water on his skin flow upwards, over his mind, and then dispersing somewhere, but somehow the pain lessens.

  After a long moment of aching pain, Adrian finally heaves a sigh of relief. The pain and the image of the hand in his mind had been worse than fighting the Rattlers. Many many times worse.

  All Adrian could wish to do now is to curl up and sleep, a deep deep sleep where the hand cannot reach him.

  He opens his eyes, and finds the path laid for him once again.

  A staircase made from the clouds unfolds before him, taking him towards the giant hand.

  Adrian tries not to look its way, keeping his head down, but starts walking anyway. He couldn’t stay here forever, and if this could really help him survive and avoid his death, then the risk is worth it.

  Could the fact that the clue comes on the fifth floor, and not anyway higher indicate that I would die on the fifth floor? Is it really coming so soon for me? How? Why?

  The questions can come later, and honestly, Adrian is way too tired–physically and mentally–to think about it right now.

  As he gets closer and closer to the hand, Adrian realises that he has grossly misjudged the size of the hand from his previous brief view of it. If the mansion is made for giants, then the hand is perhaps that of a giant itself.

  And a very very big one at that.

  Without even looking up, he can feel its shadow falling all over him, and covering him like a thick blanket. For some reason, Adrian can feel some difficulty breathing just by standing under its shadow.

  As he walks closer and closer, the feeling only intensifies, leaving him gasping and hunching just to be able to walk properly.

  And then he reaches the destination. A single severely broken nail of the hand. Adrian dares to look up, hoping that the nature of the vision and the clouds would protect him. They do, although from the ominous stirring of clouds around him, he’s not too sure how long it can hold on.

  Adrian looks at the nail in front of him, and realises that the nail in itself is bigger than him. And it belongs to the pinky. Once again a humbling sensation of his own weakness washes over him.

  The nail is rotten; black as if molded, and broken with cracks like a pavement. A light flashes through one of the cracks in between.

  Gingerly he reaches for the light, but it is dug very deep inside the nail, and the cracks aren’t too easy to pry away.

  Adrian has never been one with overwhelming strength, not even after becoming a Climber. That decision has come to haunt him a few times along the road, but he has managed to stay clear using his skill and flexibility.

  And yet this time he feels like there’s nothing he can do except put all of his back into it, even if he may tear some muscles.

  And so he pulls. The clouds themself morph for him to dig his heel and pull with all of himself. Adrian groans and huffs with the effort, his skin cutting against the irregular cracks on the nail, painting the already dead nail with a trickle of blood.

  Under the pain and stress of the task, the nail moves slightly. It’s the smallest amount of movement he could achieve; barely a millimetre, but even that much was enough.

  The flash of light inside moves, tumbles through the cracks of the nail, and falls on the cloud step like a metal ball.

  Hearing the sound, Adrian opens his eyes and finally lets go of the nail. He sits down a little away from the metal ball, and inspects his hands. Rugged, torn open, and bloody. All from moving the decaying cracked nail of a dead hand.

  Could I have even been able to do anything to him?

  The answer is an obvious no. He would be someone even below an ant to whoever this hand belonged to.

  A few minutes of existing in an existential crisis later, Adrian finally picks up the ball.

  It’s a core. He realises. The core is like a mini night sky–dark with stars etched upon it. The starlight flows from the stars intensely, as if an extreme amount of energy has been compacted within.

  It is a core, yet strangely Adrian cannot figure out what kind. Usually the information would enter his mind directly, just from coming in contact with it, but yet nothing comes to him now.

  He has been about to Sacrifice it to the Tower to get an answer, when the starlight suddenly intensifies, as if rejecting him, and the Tower.

  A deep darkness flows next, from within the confines of the core, and a thousand, a million whispers blow into his ears. They each call out, trying to tell him something, but Adrian can’t understand. His body is being engulfed in the night sky, bit by bit, eroding him from within and without. And it is doing it very quickly.

  Finally the encroaching darkness takes over his senses, it covers his eyes, his ears, and his face, and all that is left in a pitch darkness.

  In that darkness, a single screen appears.

  Hidden Award Distributed!

  To survive an uneventful death, it is prescribed to follow the method shown in the dream.

  Adios!

  And then Adrian opens his eyes. A harsh wind blows in his ears, a strong force holding onto him, yanking him along. A loud cry like the sobbing of elderly person comes from somewhere.

  “Where am I?” Adrian asks, struggling against the grip, but then something else hits him on the head, stopping his struggles.

  “Don’t! Sit still. We are escaping. Will talk later,” A voice flows from behind him, and Adrian instantly recognises it to be Ji-a’s. Am I back?

  He feels the subtle feeling of power flowing underneath him, the familiar feeling of his skills sitting inside of him, and he knows that he has finally escaped the dreams.

  But what are we running from?

  Quickly Adrian tries to look around him, his eyes focusing and then he sees. A kettle of vultures fly towards them, blotting the sky itself with their numbers, crying in their gnarly voices. Sobbing for revenge against their leader.

  Adrian decides that he’s content to sit still for a while, until the danger passes away.

  #