Then Owen escaped.
Not fully. Not freely. His crystal cell cracked during a monster wave when several jailed player killers sacrificed their own penalties to overload the central safe zone. The crystal held most of them, but Owen slipped out with heavy restrictions. His offensive skills were sealed for hours at a time. His rank flickered unstable. He could not enter major safe zones.
But he was moving again.
The city panicked. Serena wanted to hunt him immediately. Grace wanted to lock down the gates. Riley wanted to leave town for a vacation that did not exist.
I wanted to know why Owen had risked escape while weakened. A proud villain does not crawl out of jail just to run. He crawls out because something outside is worth the humiliation.
The answer came from the black tower. Floor two had opened.
Recommended rank S+. Clear reward, regional communication. Failure penalty, night breach.
S+. No one in the city publicly had that rank. Serena was close. I was close. Owen, before his restrictions, might have been close too.
Regional communication meant contact with other cities. Maybe family, maybe help, maybe worse news. Night breach meant monsters would attack when safe zone barriers were weakest.
Owen wanted the floor reward. Not to save people. To control information. Whoever opened communication first could spread truth, lies, warnings, or fear across the region. Owen did not need a government or a crown or anything that boring. He just needed a microphone and terrified listeners.
We could not let him have it.
The problem was that the tower door did not open for S-ranks anymore. It pulsed with a pressure that pushed everyone back. S+ recommended did not mean required, but underranked players would be crushed inside.
Serena tried first. The door let her hand through, then forced her to one knee.
I tried next as a visible S. Same pressure.
Then I lowered my display to F.
The pressure changed. Not weaker. Confused.
The tower assessed visible rank for certain traps and real rank for entry. Just like before, my real rank was near enough to enter. My visible F made the first crushing wave target me as low priority. I slid through the gap sideways while everyone shouted.
Subtle? No. Effective? Extremely.
Serena forced her way in behind me with pure strength. Grace should not have been able to enter at all, but she used a B-rank side sigil we had discovered on floor one and slipped into a support path. Riley absolutely should not have entered, so naturally he did, by hiding inside a supply crate labeled arrows. The crate had no arrows. It had Riley's snacks and three illegal amounts of confidence.
Floor two was a city of hanging bridges above a bottomless night sky. Stars moved below us instead of above us. Bells floated in the air, each one ringing when a player lied about their rank.
That was dangerous for me, until I learned the bells only rang when someone spoke a lie. My rank was not speech. It was fashion.
I abused that immediately.
Monsters on floor two were ranked judges. Tall, faceless figures with scales instead of hands. They pointed at players and summoned enemies matching the displayed rank. Serena got silver dragons. Grace got blade hounds. Riley got a single angry pigeon, because the crate apparently counted as his visible threat level.
I displayed F. The judge summoned a slime.
The slime looked at me. I looked at the slime. It bounced once.
I released S-rank aura under delayed reveal and punched the floor beside it. The shockwave launched the slime across three bridges and into a judge's face. The judge fell off the world.
Serena asked if that was necessary. The slime had started it.
Floor two rewarded creative dishonesty. A bridge demanded the highest rank step forward, so I displayed F and let Serena step onto it. Then the bridge revealed it punished visible pride by spawning weight demons. I switched to S, took the weight demons' attention, then lowered to D so their attacks misjudged the pressure. Grace solved a bell puzzle by refusing to speak at all, which I admired, because silence is the strongest answer when everything is trying to trap your mouth.
But Owen was ahead. We saw signs of him everywhere. Broken judge masks. Blood knife marks on bridge rails. Traps disabled in ways that hurt whoever followed. His offensive seals were fading faster inside the tower, probably because floor challenges counted as dungeon combat, not safe zone punishment.
By the time we reached the central night market, we found his first message written in black blood on a hanging banner.
It said I could not bait someone who had nothing left to lose.
I hated that it was a decent line.
The night market was full of mirror stalls selling fake rank upgrades. They tempted players with glowing letters promising S+ for a price of memory, lifespan, or skill loss. No paperwork, just immediate sacrifice. Several desperate players from other entry paths had already fallen for it. Their ranks burned brighter, but their eyes looked empty.
Owen had not bought one. He had stolen one.
At the center of the market stood a broken stall, and the merchant monster behind it had been sliced apart. Its mirror badge was gone. That badge could temporarily display a rank higher than real strength. For most players, that was suicide. For Owen, it was theater. He could appear as S+ and make the floor open deeper paths for him, even if the pressure tore him apart.
We chased him across bridges that folded like ribbons. Serena cut flying monsters out of the air. Grace disabled traps with clean strikes and sharper instincts. Riley threw reinforced snack coolers that exploded into foam barriers.
I used rank concealment every few seconds. Flashing F to draw monsters, C to open lower doors, S to break through pressure locks, then F again to make judges summon enemies too weak to survive the first counter.
It should have been funny. It was funny. But beneath the humor, I felt the race tightening.