The 60-second timer evaporated.

The world dissolved in a familiar, sterile shimmer of blue light, the digital hum of the Tower's system filling our ears.

We re-materialized not in an antechamber, but directly onto the next floor.

The urban decay of the city street was gone, replaced by a wide, circular plaza.

A large, shattered fountain, its water long since stagnant, sat in the exact center.

The plaza was a kill-box, a classic arena for a wave-survival trial, with four dark alleys opening onto it at the cardinal points.

The virtual sky was a bruised, sickly twilight, offering little light.

"That..." Alex let out a shaky breath, the adrenaline from the flawless, silent execution on Floor 1 still humming in his veins.

"That was incredible, Chief. They didn't even touch us."

Kaelen Vance nodded, his face pale but his eyes shining with a newfound, fragile confidence.

"I'm... I'm still at 85% mana. I've never finished a fight that high."

From the shadows near the plaza's edge, Finn and Freya materialized, their expressions as impassive as ever, but they gave me a single, sharp, synchronized nod.

They had executed their orders perfectly.

Gideon, ever the silent observer, simply watched me, his unsettling smile hidden in the gloom.

"Don't celebrate," a sharp voice cut through the relative calm.

Seraphina Croft stalked out from behind a crumbling statue, her beautiful face a mask of furious indignation.

She had followed my orders, and she clearly hated herself for it.

"That was not a battle," she seethed, her voice a low, aristocratic hiss.

"That was pest control. I shot a few crippled, poisoned Goblins that were stuck behind a shield. We looked like sanitation workers, not hunters."

I turned to face her, my expression unreadable. .My "Cursed King" reputation was clearly a source of deep irritation for her, but my cold, pragmatic success was proving even more infuriating.

"And now?" I countered, my voice flat. "We're on Floor 2. Our mana is full. Our stamina is high. Our team has taken zero damage."

I gestured to the dark, ominous alleys surrounding us.

"The other squads who charged in, the ones who fought 'heroically' against that first wave? They are, at this exact moment, exhausted. They're chugging mana potions, which will incur a 'System Sickness' debuff. They're arguing about who missed a block, and they're facing this new floor at 50% capacity."

I stepped closer, my voice dropping. "This is not a performance for your family, Seraphina. This is a five-month marathon. The only thing that matters is efficiency. We won. Perfectly. Your feelings about how we won are irrelevant."

Her eyes blazed, and for a moment I thought her noble pride would make her do something foolish. She visibly bristled, her hand gripping her bow so tightly her knuckles turned white. But she couldn't argue with the logic. She couldn't refute our pristine mana bars.

With a choked, frustrated sound, she spun away. "Tch. Fine. What's next, 'Chief'? Do we hide in a sewer and wait for the monsters to die of old age?"

Before I could answer, a digitized, female voice echoed from the sky.

[Floor 2: Wave Survival – Activated.]

[Objective: Survive all three (3) waves.]

[Threat Assessment: F-Rank Wild Hounds.]

[Wave 1/3: Incoming.]

The team tensed instantly. The mood shifted. Goblins were slow, stupid, humanoid. Hounds were another beast entirely.

"Hounds..." Alex muttered, planting his tower shield on the stone ground with a heavy CLANG. "They're fast. They hunt in packs."

"And they're coordinated," I said, my mind racing, pulling up the old game-lore files. 'F-Rank Wild Hounds. Low HP, low individual damage, but high pack-coordination AI.

Their primary attack is [Lunge], a high-speed charge designed to inflict [Stagger] and [Stance Break] on tanks. They ignore other targets until the tank is down. This isn't a bottleneck problem. This is a stance-break problem.'

A low, guttural snarling began to echo from all four alleys at once. They weren't spawning from one point; they were surrounding us.

"Chief?" Alex's voice was tight, but he looked at me, not the alleys. He was already waiting for the strategy.

Seraphina had an arrow nocked, her gaze, though still angry, now intensely focused. She was a professional, if a proud one.

"This is a different fight," I said, my voice sharp and clear, cutting through the rising snarls. "They aren't Goblins. They will try to swarm and break our tank. We don't let them."

I pointed to the shattered fountain in the dead center of the plaza. "Formation. Now. Backs to the fountain. We create a 360-degree defensive perimeter. They can come from all sides, but they can't get behind us."

The team scrambled, their training or perhaps their fear of me ,making them move with instant obedience.

Alex and I stood back-to-back, our shields facing outward, creating the core of the line.

The Twins, Gideon, and Kaelen formed a tight inner circle, with Seraphina on the fountain's raised edge, giving her a clear vantage point.

"Alex," I said, my voice low. "This floor is your test. You are the only thing they will see. Shield up. Do not swing your sword. Do not try to be a hero. Your entire job is to receive the hit, root your feet, and hold your ground. Nothing else."

"Understood," he said, his breathing evening out, his shield becoming a wall of steel.

"Kaelen," I snapped. The young healer flinched. "Your world is Alex. Forget the rest of us. Your eyes do not leave his health bar. Every heal, every [Protection] buff, every speck of your mana goes to him. If his stance flickers, you've failed."

"Y-Yes, Chief!" Kaelen was terrified, but the singular, simple objective helped him focus. A faint, shimmering barrier of light immediately enveloped Alex.

"Seraphina!" I called up to her. "Your pride is your enemy on this floor. I don't want kill-shots. I don't want headshots. You see a Hound winding up for a [Lunge]? You put an arrow in its front leg. That's it. Your job is to cripple the charge. A three-legged dog can't break a tank's stance. You are on crowd control."

I heard her sharp intake of breath. To ask a high-ranked archer to aim for the legs... it was the ultimate insult to her skill. It was the equivalent of telling a master swordsman to just poke with the hilt.

"...Fine," she bit out, her voice tight with resentment. But she obeyed.

"Twins! You are on 'peel' duty. If any Hound, by some miracle, gets past Alex or me, you intercept. Fast and clean. Do not let them touch Kaelen."

Two silent nods from the shadows in our circle.

"Gideon. You're with me. Wait for the pile-up."

The snarling reached a crescendo. From all four alleys, a tide of black and grey fur erupted.

F-Rank Wild Hounds, their eyes glowing red, their movements low and fluid, charged into the plaza. There were dozens of them. Their pack-AI instantly identified the largest, most armored targets: me and Alex.

They lunged.

"Brace!" Alex roared.

CLANG! CLANG!

The first two Hounds slammed into his shield. Alex grunted, his feet sliding back an inch on the stone, but his stance held, Kaelen's shield-buff absorbing the worst of the impact.

A third and fourth Hound lunged at him from the side.

TWANG!

Seraphina's arrow, fired with reluctant precision, struck the lead Hound in its right shoulder.

Its lunge collapsed into a clumsy, sliding tumble that slammed harmlessly into Alex's greaves.

The second Hound hit, but Alex, now only facing one full-force impact, held his ground easily.

"It's working!" Kaelen yelped, his hands glowing as he sent a [Lesser Heal] pulsing over Alex.

"Focus, Kaelen!" I barked, as I caught a lunge on my own shield. CLANG! I didn't have Alex's tower shield, but my E+ stats and superior footing allowed me to deflect the blow, redirecting the Hound's momentum into the path of another."

"The battle became a brutal, grinding rhythm.

Alex, the rookie tank, was at the center of a storm. He was no longer a nervous boy; he was a wall. He was the very definition of a "Tank."

He held his shield, endured the impacts, and trusted his team.

The Hounds, snarling and frustrated, couldn't break his stance. Seraphina's arrows became a rhythm of their own—twang, thwip, thwip—each one crippling a charge, ruining the Hounds' coordination, and saving Alex from being overwhelmed.

One of the Hounds, smarter than the rest, saw an opening and darted between Alex and me, aiming for the "soft" center—Kaelen..

SHNK!

Finn's dark blade emerged from the ground's shadow, severing the Hound's throat.

Freya took down another that tried to flank from the other side. The "peel" was flawless.

We were untouchable. We were a perfect, defensive machine.

But it was hard.

Alex was sweating buckets, his shield arm trembling from the non-stop, repetitive impacts. Kaelen's face was pale, his mana bar ticking down steadily from the constant stream of heals. Seraphina's fingers were visibly aching from the sheer speed and precision of her repeated shots.

[Wave 1/3 Cleared.]

[Wave 2/3 Incoming.]

A new wave of Hounds burst from the alleys.

"Alex, your stamina!" I called out, parrying another clumsy, one-legged lunge.

"Holding at 60%, Chief!" he grit out, his teeth clenched.

"You're doing perfectly, Alex," I said, my voice cold and even, but the praise was clear. "You're a tank. This is the job. It's not glorious. It's not heroic. It's work. And you are doing it."

That simple, direct acknowledgment seemed to fuel him more than any potion. He slammed his shield back into its rooted position, a defiant roar tearing from his throat.

"Gideon," I said, my gaze falling on the pile of twenty-plus Hound corpses now stacked in front of Alex's position. "The pile. It's time."

Gideon's unsettling smile returned. He stepped up to the edge of the corpse-wall, his hands glowing with a sickly purple-black light. "[Corpse-bloom: Rot-Field]."

A vile, shimmering miasma erupted from the dead Hounds, spreading outward in a 10-meter radius, coating the ground just as the second wave of Hounds charged in.

The new wave, howling and fast, ran straight into the debuff zone.

[Status Effect: Taint. -25% Speed.]

[Status Effect: Rot. -20% Attack.]

The effect was instantaneous. The Hounds' fluid, high-speed lunges became clumsy, telegraphed leaps. Their snarling attacks, which had been rattling Alex's shield, now hit with muffled thuds.

"Now, Seraphina," I said, a cold smile on my face. "Switch to kill shots. The "struggle" is over."

Seraphina stared for a half-second, her mind catching up.

The debuff had turned a high-threat encounter into a shooting gallery. A slow, appreciative, and utterly terrifying smile spread across her face.

"With pleasure, Chief."

TWANG!

TWANG!

TWANG!

Arrows rained down, each one a lethal, piercing strike to an eye socket, a throat, a heart.

The "peelers" and "tank" were barely needed. Gideon's debuff, combined with Seraphina's DPS, turned Wave 2 and Wave 3 into a systematic extermination, just like Floor 1.

[Floor 2: Cleared.]

[Time: 18 minutes, 22 seconds.]

[Bonus: Stance Mastery (Tank) awarded to Alex Vonstel.]

[Bonus: Crowd Control Mastery (Archer) awarded to Seraphina Croft.]

[Teleporting to Floor 3 in 60 seconds.]

The team collapsed. Alex sat on the ground, his shield beside him, his arm shaking uncontrollably, but he was grinning from ear to ear.

He'd done it. He'd tanked a C-Rank level threat (in numbers) and hadn't gone down.

Kaelen was on his knees, meditating to restore his mana, but he looked... proud. He had kept his target alive under immense pressure.

Seraphina was the last to move. She slowly un-nocked her final arrow and slung her bow over her shoulder.

She walked over to me, her boots crunching on the Hound-corpses-turned-to-data. Her face was a complex mask of exhaustion, lingering pride, and a new, heavy dose of... confusion.

She had been insulted. She had been forced to do "boring" work. And she had just participated in the most efficient, flawless, and mana-conserving dungeon floor clear of her entire life.

She stopped in front of me, her gaze meeting mine. Her resentment was still there, but it was now warring with a grudging, infuriating respect.

"Your strategies are... deeply unsatisfying, Michael Wilson," she said, her voice tight.

"But they work," I replied, not smiling.

"...Yes," she conceded, the word tasting like ash in her mouth. "They work."

I turned away from her, already analyzing the next floor. "Good. Then get used to it. We're not here to be heroes. We're here to be efficient."

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