By the middle of the floor, the tower boss noticed us. Not in a personal way. It was waiting at the center like a machine that had always been there.
A giant knight made of black glass. Not a tank, not a man in armor, but a hollow statue shaped from mirrors and blades. It copied the rank pressure of everyone who entered its arena, stacking it into one terrifying aura.
The more proudly the S-ranks showed their power, the stronger it became.
They realized too late. The boss raised a mirror sword, and the first swing knocked three S-ranks across the arena. Serena blocked the next strike and slid backward, her boots carving lines in the floor. The boss's chest filled with glowing letters, all S, all stolen from our pride.
I looked at my own rank. Then I hid it.
The boss's aura flickered. It tried to copy me too, and for one heartbeat an F appeared among the S symbols in its chest, like a wrong note in a song.
I grinned.
Serena understood immediately. She lowered her spear and shouted for everyone to suppress their aura. Some obeyed. Some were too proud. The boss swung again, feeding on the ones who resisted.
I ran forward as the weakest visible target in the arena. The black glass boss turned toward me, every blade on its body aimed at the F-rank.
Good. I wanted its attention.
It lunged. I dropped to my knees and slid under the mirror sword. The strike smashed the floor behind me, sending shards upward. Each shard reflected my F-rank.
I activated Riley's mirror bracelet, flooding the arena with gray letters.
The boss copied all of them. Its chest filled with F. Its giant body shrank. Not because the system changed, but because the boss was greedy. It copied what it saw without wisdom. In three seconds, the towering mirror knight became a human-sized glass duelist with a very confused posture.
Then I revealed S.
The pressure hit it from inside its own copy. Predator reversal and rank shock stacked together. My chain blade wrapped around its mirror sword. Serena's spear pierced its chest. Grace, who should not have entered but had somehow slipped through a lower rank side door with pure audacity, threw a reinforced bomb Riley had sold her at a terrible markup. The bomb stuck to the F symbol in the boss's chest.
I shadow stepped through the boss's own reflection, appeared above it, and drove my heel down as the bomb exploded.
The black glass knight shattered into a thousand pieces. Each piece reflected my S-rank for a moment before turning to dust.
The floor cleared. The city barrier strengthened. And my reward appeared.
Rank concealment advanced. New function, delayed reveal. I could set a lower rank to remain visible for three seconds after I released my real aura.
I read that twice. Then I laughed so hard Serena asked if I was okay.
I was more than okay. I had just become a jump scare.
Delayed reveal changed everything. Before, when I attacked seriously, my true rank returned immediately. Now I could still look like F for three seconds while fighting at full strength.
Three seconds did not sound like much to normal people. To someone with shadow step, a chain blade, and a terrible sense of humor, three seconds was a lifetime.
I tested it on the way out of the tower.
A wounded S-rank who had laughed at me earlier tried to take an extra reward chest while everyone was distracted. Not a crime by itself. Selfish, but not red mark selfish. Then he shoved an injured player away from a healing fountain hard enough to crack ribs.
Red sparks.
I was beside him as an F-rank. He saw me and sneered.
I hit him with full S-rank strength while still displaying F. His face passed through surprise, regret, and modern art before he hit the wall. The three-second delay ended, and my S-rank appeared as he slid down into a sitting position. The safe zone chains took him before he could invent an excuse.
The other S-ranks stopped treating me like a joke. That did not mean they liked me. Powerful people hate when the rules apply downward and upward.
For the next few days, the city stabilized around the tower reward. Barriers thickened. Monster waves slowed. Markets expanded. Riley became annoyingly rich. Grace rebuilt her guild into something less terrible, mostly by warning recruits that if they bullied weak players, I might appear from a trash can.
Serena kept defending the largest gates, but she started using my methods in her own way. She would stand openly as an S-rank to draw monsters away from crowds, while I moved unseen as an F-rank to draw out the humans who used chaos as cover.
We were not a team. Teams had meetings. We had overlapping grudges.
Owen remained locked in a central crystal cell, but his influence did not vanish. Player killers who had followed him split into smaller crews. Some wanted revenge. Some wanted his hidden stash. Some wanted to prove they were smarter than the fake F-rank.
I appreciated the steady stream of volunteers.
One group tried to poison my food at Riley's stall. I displayed F, pretended to eat it, and let them cheer from an alley. Then I revealed that Riley had swapped my bowl with a monster spice stew so hot it counted as a weapon. I threw the bowl into their hiding spot. The spice cloud hit them. They stumbled out crying, and one fired a crossbow at me through tears.
Red sparks, crystal chains, free crossbow.
Another group dug a pit trap on a road where F-ranks collected water. I stepped on it while displaying F and fell dramatically. They leaned over the edge to laugh. I shadow stepped into the shadow at the bottom, appeared behind them, and asked if the pit came with a warranty.
One swung a shovel. Red sparks. I kicked all four into their own hole and called the jail beacon.
A third group tried the clever route. They sent fake victims begging for help. The victims were not bound, not cursed, not even injured. They just acted badly. I watched from a rooftop as they performed the saddest rescue bait I had ever seen. One fake victim actually winked at the hidden attackers.
I still walked in as an F-rank. Not because I believed them. Because they believed I wanted to believe them.
The attackers waited for me to kneel beside the fake victim. Then the fake victim grabbed my wrist, trying to make it look like I attacked first.
I activated delayed reveal and released S-rank pressure while still showing F.
The fake victim's hand froze around my wrist. He looked up slowly. I smiled. He whispered for the others to stop.
Too late. They attacked. Red sparks filled the alley.
Sometimes the trap does not need to be hidden. Sometimes it just needs better timing.