Chapter 199: Old Soul
"W-what do you mean, floor eighty-nine..."
Kael’s voice came out thinner than he wanted. The words had weight, the kind that didn’t belong in a cramped forge full of soot and rust. Floor eighty-nine didn’t sound like a number; it sounded like a place you weren’t meant to reach.
His nose still stung from the earlier pressure, dried blood crusting somewhere inside, and his muscles carried a deep tremor like they hadn’t agreed yet that the danger had passed.
Andre sat heavily on the edge of his bed, bottle in hand, like it was the only stable thing in the room. He didn’t look surprised by Kael’s disbelief. If anything, he looked tired of explaining reality to people who still thought the tower played fair.
"Ye heard right, lad. That man’s strong... no, strong ain’t near enough. Every guild and clan wants him. He wants none o’ them."
Kael swallowed, eyes flicking to the doorway like the giant might reappear just to prove a point. The forge felt smaller now. Not because the walls moved, because Kael did. His idea of "strong" had been forced to evolve in about three seconds.
"I can see why," Kael thought, "Also, what was that about Nine Yang Destruction body? sounds like some Wuxia cultivation crap."
Andre made a sound through his nose, halfway between a snort and a grunt, as if Kael had just spoken a foreign language and then insulted it for fun.
"Don’t know what that ’Wuxia’ is, but what Fist said, that’s Murim talk. And that man knows what he’s sayin’. If I were ye, I’d listen close. If he says ye’ll feel it in a day... then ye’ll feel it in a day, lad. Best brace yerself, gonna be a world o’ hurt if I’m right."
Kael’s fingers flexed inside the gauntlets without him meaning to. He didn’t like warnings he couldn’t quantify. "World of hurt" could mean anything in this place, pain, sickness, a debuff, an internal collapse, some twisted "lesson" the tower decided to teach him for having the audacity to survive.
For a moment, Kael just stood there, trying to stitch his thoughts together into something useful instead of panic-shaped noise.
The forge smelled like old metal and burnt coal and stale drink. The lantern’s weak light made everything look sickly, like the whole place had been left behind by time and forgotten on purpose.
"There’s a reason that old bastard comes to see me," Andre said as he moved toward the bed and sat down.
He said it like it was obvious. Like Kael should’ve known that monsters of men didn’t just wander into broken forges for laughs, no matter how bored they looked.
"Care to share? I thought it would be rude to ask."
Andre’s mouth twitched, almost a grin, almost a scowl. It settled on "annoyed," like usual.
"Yer still standin’ here’s rude, but I’ll let it pass. That man... he’s been in this tower a long, long time. Longer than me. And he never gave up. Hundreds o’ years, lad..." Andre said as he took a sip.
Kael’s stomach dropped. Hundreds of years wasn’t a boast. It was a sentence.
"That’s a very long time to be here."
"Aye. Most hit a wall they can’t climb. Get stuck. Meet foes they couldn’t beat in their wildest dreams... and break." Andre spoke softly.
For once, Andre didn’t sound like he was talking down. He sounded like someone remembering people he’d watched crumble, slowly, painfully, until their "climbing" became nothing but habits and excuses.
"But him? Never stopped. Not alone. Not when the guilds came for him. Not when they tried to put him down. He tore through it all... and kept climbin"
Kael’s eyes narrowed behind his helmet slit. Fighting alone was already hard. Fighting alone while everyone wanted you dead? That wasn’t just strength; that was being built wrong in the head, or being forged into something that didn’t break.
"Quite the will, but I doubt anyone who wants to climb should have any less willpower."
Andre’s stare slid to Kael like he was disappointed Kael still didn’t get it.
"You don’t get it, lad," Andre said. "Climbin’ with a guild ain’t the same as climbin’ alone. And he’s been alone... for a long, long time. Fist King, that’s what they called him back in his world..."
Kael latched onto the last part because it actually gave him something concrete to hold. "He’s not from Earth? A different world?"
Andre’s brows lifted, as if Kael had finally said something that wasn’t half-dumb.
"Where d’ye think those monsters came from, lad? The ones that hit yer world?"
Kael opened and closed his mouth, ’That should have been obvious.’
It was obvious. He’d just never had the time to sit with it. Back on Earth it had always been "monsters appeared." In the tower, it was always "new things try to kill you." Different worlds being real wasn’t shocking; it was just... inconveniently huge.
"He never shared much... but from what I know, he’s got a reason t’ go back. Left a kid behind, after all."
Kael’s breath caught, just for a beat. Not because it made him emotional, but because it made the man make sense. That kind of obsession, that kind of endurance. A world to return to. A child waiting somewhere that didn’t move forward without him.
"I see..." Kael thought for a second.
Andre’s gaze dropped, not to Kael’s face, but to his arms, like the story was done and the real issue had been waiting patiently the whole time.
"Now then..." Andre said as he looked at Kael’s gauntlets, "What d’ye plan on doin’ with that scrap?"
Kael lifted both arms slightly, the chain hanging between them with a faint metallic clink. In the dim light, the mesh-textured surface still looked brutal and functional. It had saved his life more times than he wanted to count.
"Uh, nothing really, they’re working as intended."
Andre snorted like Kael had praised a bent nail for being "mostly straight."
"Workin’ ain’t the same as workin’ well.," Andre added.