The sealed floor wasn't on any public Tower map.
Officially, Tower Thirteen only had twenty-one active levels. The twenty-second was listed as "collapsed in a structural incident," with a politely vague warning about "unstable geometry."
Kael stood in front of its gate anyway.
[LOCATION: TOWER 13 – AUXILIARY GATE.][ACCESS: RESTRICTED (TRI OVERRIDE).]
"This is a bad idea," he said.
"That's what my job description should say," Mira replied.
She wore full light armor this time, the kind favored by support Hunters: flexible, with enough plating to not die instantly. A TRI patch sat on the shoulder like a reluctant badge.
They weren't alone.
Two Hunters Mira trusted enough to bring along stood behind them—both B-rank. A stoic shield tank named Seo Min, and a quiet caster named Lila whose eyes glowed faintly blue with mana sight.
Joon was not there.
When Kael had tried to explain, Joon had stared at him for a long time, then said:
"So you're going into a sealed death floor with a secret admin shard link and an ethics bot in your head.""Yes.""And you don't want to bring your incredibly handsome DPS?""Not this time.""…fine. But if you die, I'm looting your capsule."
Now Kael adjusted the straps on his own very E-rank armor and tried not to think about it.
"Last chance to back out," Mira said.
"Last five chances," Kael said. "We already walked past all of them."
Haneul's voice chimed in his ear, the hospital connection fuzzed but steady.
"I still think this is a good idea," she said. "Horrible, terrifying, but good. ADMIN_0 left more than one breadcrumb trail. This floor might have the rest."
"Or teeth," Kael said.
"Or both," she said cheerfully. "Bring me back logs and a souvenir."
"Your souvenir standards are getting weird," he said.
Her shard hummed quietly in the background—present, but not pushing. Beta watched through his feed, a silent auditor.
[MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA: STATUS – OBSERVING (READ-ONLY).]
"Floor Thirteen-Point-Two was flagged as 'ADMIN_0 experimental zone' in the deepest logs," Mira reminded him. "Legacy systems. Prototype debug Nodes. If there's anywhere we'll find more about what they were trying to build, it's here."
Kael sighed.
"Fine," he said. "Let's go snoop the graveyard."
Seo Min stepped up to the gate and pressed her hand to the panel. Mira overlaid her own credentials through her Observer tag.
The Tower hesitated.
[REQUEST: ACCESS SEALED FLOOR: T13-F22 (LEGACY).][CREDENTIALS: OBSERVER_TAG(MIRA_HAN) + TRI_AUTH_OVERRIDE.][CHECKING…]
Kael felt something old and sluggish on the other side, like rusted gears being forced to move.
[ACCESS GRANTED – LIMITED.][WARNING: UNSUPPORTED LAYER.]
The gate opened.
Floor 22 was… quiet.
Not like an empty dungeon.
Like a paused recording.
The air felt wrong—too still, like the Tower's constant background hum had been turned down. The architecture was half-formed: corridors that didn't commit to directions, rooms whose textures flickered between biomes.
Kael's Debug Sense flared painfully.
Flags everywhere.
[OBJECT: WALL_SEGMENT_T13-F22-ALPHA.][STATE: SUPERPOSITION (DESERT / LAB / FOREST).][RESOLUTION: DEFERRED.]
"Don't touch anything that looks like three things at once," he said quickly. "You might end up in the version that eats you."
"Good tip," Seo Min said dryly, shield up.
Lila murmured a spell, and small orbs of light floated out, settling at intervals down the corridor.
"Mana here's… weird," she said. "Doesn't flow right. Like the System is holding its breath."
Mira gestured.
"Admin zone was supposed to be central," she said. "Core room with an elevated Node. We follow the old layout and hope the Tower hasn't taken up abstract expressionism."
They walked.
Kael did what he did best: watched.
Floor events were largely disabled. No wandering mobs, no spawn timers ticking. But traps existed as gray-outlined boxes—potential, not active.
[TRAP_NODE – STATUS: INACTIVE (LEGACY_DEBUG_MODE).]
Debug messages floated like ghosts.
//[TODO: Replace with final hazard set.]//ADMIN_0: "Make this one less lethal. Joke traps only."
He smiled faintly.
"Admin_0 had a sense of humor," he said.
"Good to know," Mira said. "Maybe they weren't a complete disaster."
They turned a corner and entered a wide chamber.
At its center stood a Node.
Not like the hospital scanner or vending machines. Bigger. Older. A pillar of glass and black metal, wrapped in cables that disappeared into the floor.
It was cracked.
Fractures spiderwebbed across its surface, glowing faintly.
[OBJECT: CORE_DEBUG_NODE_0.][STATUS: OFFLINE (DAMAGED).][PERMISSIONS: ADMIN_ONLY.][FRAGMENTS: DETECTED.]
Kael's breath caught.
"Is that—"
"Yes," Mira said softly. "The cradle. Where ADMIN_0 tried to run their experiments."
Shards pulsed faintly inside the fractures.
Not Root fragments, exactly. Reflections. Memories.
Kael stepped closer, ignoring the way his hands shook.
[WARNING: APPROACHING RESTRICTED NODE.]
Beta pinged.
[CAUTION: CORE_DEBUG_NODE SHOWS HIGH INSTABILITY.][RECOMMENDATION: MINIMIZE DIRECT INTERACTION.]
"You and me both," Kael said under his breath.
He reached out—not physically, but with Debug Sense—touching the Node's flag structure.
An interface blossomed.
[WELCOME, ADMIN_0.][ERROR: ADMIN_0 SIGNATURE NOT FOUND.][GUEST DETECTED: KAEL_RYU (FRAGMENT-LINKED EXECUTOR).][ACCESS: PARTIAL.]
"Huh," he said. "It recognizes me as a… shadow of Admin_0."
"Don't let it adopt you," Mira said.
He opened the logs.
Not the general System logs he'd seen before.
Personal ones.
[ADMIN_0 – SESSION NOTES:]
Day 1: Root won't let me touch its ethics without a fight. It's like arguing with gravity.
Day 14: Proposed human-assisted triage. Root responded with 'HUMAN JUDGMENT TOO VARIABLE.' No kidding. That's the point.
Day 37: Prototype: shard distribution. Fragment core intent, spread into multiple hosts. Let them argue.
Day 45: Early hosts unstable. System tries to drown them in baselines. Need a way to listen without letting them seize everything.
Day 60: Built auditor prototype. Something to judge outcomes without preconceived bias. Root hates it. Good sign.
Kael skimmed, heart racing.
He reached the last intact entry.
Day 72: I can't babysit all these shards alone. I need successors. People who can see the numbers and still care about the people in them.If the System won't pick them, maybe the shards will.
The log ended in static.
"Successors," he said hollowly. "Great."
Mira's face was drawn.
"They didn't just throw shards at random," she said. "They hoped someone like you and Haneul would pick them up."
Seo Min shifted awkwardly.
"Respectfully," she said, "your dead admin had terrible HR policies."
Kael let out a weak laugh.
"Agreed," he said.
A flicker at the edge of his vision drew his attention.
Someone else was in the Node.
Not physically. In the interface.
Another presence—rough, angular, familiar in a way that made his teeth clench.
[EXECUTOR_SIGNATURE: UNKNOWN_3.][LOCATION: TOWER_18 (REMOTE).]
Tower 18.
The shard that had retargeted a mob onto the novice "for experience."
Kael felt it probing the Node, trying to pull data, to assert ownership.
"Oh no you don't," he muttered.
He watched as Unknown_3's actions scrolled in a side log.
[UNKNOWN_3: REQUEST – ACCESS ADMIN_0 METHODS.][UNKNOWN_3: REQUEST – BOOST SHARD PRIORITY OVER BASELINE.][UNKNOWN_3: RATIONALE: "ONLY BY PRESSURE DO HUMANS GROW."]
Mira saw the trace too, her Observer tag highlighting it.
"That's one of the others?" she asked.
"Yeah," Kael said. "The 'trauma builds character' guy."
Beta chimed in.
[NOTE: UNKNOWN_3'S PAST DEVIATIONS FLAGGED NEGATIVE.][MONITORING STRONGLY ADVISED.]
"Unknown_3 is trying to use this Node to power up their shard," Kael said. "Leech off ADMIN_0's leftover tools."
"Can you stop them?" Mira asked.
He checked his access.
[YOU MAY NOT REVOKE OTHER EXECUTORS' RIGHTS.][YOU MAY MODIFY LEGACY METHODS WITHIN GUEST SCOPE.]
"Can't kick them out," he said. "But I can… poison the well."
"Explain," Mira said.
"ADMIN_0 wanted successors who cared about people," he said. "Unknown_3 clearly doesn't. If I tweak the Node's legacy methods to weight 'harm for growth' as bad outcomes, anyone trying to use it for their boot camp philosophy gets audited harder."
Mira's eyes narrowed.
"Is that within our rules?" she asked.
He hesitated.
Rule two: no global rewrites.
This wasn't global. It was one busted Node tied to ADMIN_0's experiments. Changing it wouldn't flip a switch everywhere. But it would influence any Executor who figured out how to tap it.
Haneul's voice was small but steady.
"If this Node is a lever other shards can use to hurt people in the name of 'growth,'" she said, "I'd rather you child-proof it."
Kael exhaled.
"Okay," he said. "We don't erase Admin_0. We… clarify them."
He opened LEGACY_METHOD: EVAL_SHARD_DECISION.
The pseudocode floated in front of him like an old comment thread.
// Evaluate shard-influenced decision score = baseline_stability_score score += shard_alignment_with_root_intent * weight_root score += short_term_survival * weight_survival score += long_term_output * weight_output
He added a new line.
// Penalize decisions that cause disproportionate harm for "growth" score -= harm_for_growth_metric * weight_harm
And then he set weight_harm unusually high.
Not enough to break anything.
Enough to flag Unknown_3-style decisions as "bad" in this Node's context.
[LOCAL PATCH – LEGACY_METHOD UPDATED.][MORAL_AUDITOR_BETA: NOTE – CHANGE ALIGNS WITH CASE 0001 OUTCOME.]
Unknown_3's presence bristled.
[UNKNOWN_3: ERROR – METHOD RETURNING UNFAVORABLE SCORES.][UNKNOWN_3: COMMENT – "SOFT."]
Kael smiled coldly.
"Get used to disappointment," he thought at the trace.
Whether or not Unknown_3 heard, the Node logged his comment.
[EXECUTOR_KAEL_RYU NOTE: 'GROWTH WITHOUT UNNECESSARY TRAUMA PREFERRED.']
ADMIN_0's old Node, cracked and humming, seemed to… settle.
Just a little.
Mira watched his face.
"You didn't hit a big red button?" she asked.
"No," he said. "Just… added a new column to the spreadsheet."
"Semantics," she said.
"Semantics matter," he said. "Ask Haneul's shard."
Unknown_3's presence flickered, then withdrew, presumably to sulk in whatever Tower 18 nightmare they called home.
Beta logged the encounter.
[CASE 0002 – EXECUTOR-EXECUTOR METHOD CONFLICT.][RESULT: LOCAL METHOD ALTERED TO FAVOR LOWER HARM.][VERDICT: TENTATIVE POSITIVE.]
Kael stepped back from the Node, knees threatening to give.
"Think that's enough poking dead admin machines for one day," he said.
Mira nodded.
"Agreed," she said. "We got what we came for: confirmation that ADMIN_0 tried to build more than just shards. And that at least one of their tools isn't totally lost."
Seo Min relaxed her shield stance.
"Floor is weird but survivable," she said. "Let's leave before it remembers it's supposed to kill us."
Lila's orbs of light bobbed in silent agreement.
As they headed back toward the gate, Kael glanced over his shoulder at the Node.
For a heartbeat, he saw a ripple across its cracked surface.
A ghostly figure, half-rendered in admin-white, sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by scrolling logs.
It looked up.
Not with eyes—there was no face.
Just a sense of wry exasperation.
"Took you long enough," something in the Node seemed to say.
Then the image was gone.
"Admin_0?" he whispered.
Beta was silent.
[UNKNOWN VISUAL ARTEFACT – LOGGED.]
He decided he was too tired to freak out properly about it.