NOVEL WEB Chapter 7: Chapter 7: The Abyss Tower – Forbidden Floor Zero
"You thought you were climbing up.
But there are floors that lie beneath the roots of heaven.
Where fallen gods scream… and forgotten truths bleed."
—Carved on the Gate to Floor Zero
[Transition Zone – Between Floor 8 and 9]
As the victory screen flickered from Sage's last massacre, a black fracture opened beneath the arena's ruins.
It didn't feel like a portal.
It felt like the Tower itself had been broken open from underneath.
Sage narrowed his ocean-blue eyes, flecks of crimson sparking in the glow.
"This isn't the next floor."
The system didn't respond.
No alerts.
No objectives.
No exits.
Just dragging gravity, pulling his feet downward.
[ERROR: FLOOR 9 ACCESS DENIED]
[UNAUTHORIZED TRANSFER – DESTINATION: FLOOR 0 – "The Dead Heavens"]
Warning: You are entering an anti-system zone.
Auto-map disabled.
Leveling disabled.
Evolutionary traits temporarily vulnerable to external tampering.
Sage exhaled. Calm. Cold. Ready.
"Tch. They want my trait.
Then they can try taking it off my corpse."
He let go — and fell.
[The Abyss Tower – Floor 0: The Forgotten Divine Grave]
He landed in silence.
No sky.
Just an endless white desert of broken weapons, decaying god-flesh, and whispers that crawled beneath the skin.
Everything reeked of blood and memory.
The ground pulsed like something alive.
"So this is what the Tower keeps buried…"
He walked.
Every few steps, the sand formed shapes — images from his life.
• His first dungeon kill.
• The moment he awakened.
• That time he looked in the mirror, and the man staring back wasn't human anymore.
Sage ignored it all.
Until he saw himself.
[ERROR: Hostile Entity Detected – "Sage Hwan (Imperfect Clone)"]
A version of him stood across the field.
Same face. Same glossy white-blue hair.
But its eyes were hollow, and it grinned like a beast trying to remember what being human felt like.
It spoke first.
"So I'm the trash they scraped out of your subconscious.
Leftovers from your first dungeon bloodlust."
"You're not me."
"I'm what you'd become if you stopped pretending you were still human."
Sage cracked his knuckles.
"Then let's remind you why I don't pretend—
I just kill better."
[Imperfect Sage – Combat Initiated]
The clone moved like a monster.
Feral. Unhinged. Every movement borrowed from Sage's lowest moments — the time he tore off an Awakened's limbs in a rage, the time he broke a dungeon boss's skull with a telekinetic grip and kept crushing it for 30 minutes.
It wasn't technical.
It was brutal.
Sage was forced into defense, for the first time in the Tower.
[Form IX: Fist of Zero Entropy – Ineffective]
Warning: Target shares base martial flow. All forms mirrored.
Switching recommended: Chaos Flow detected.
Sage smiled.
"Fine."
"Then I'll invent something right now."
[Unlocking – Form X: Heavenless Howl]
It wasn't clean. It wasn't symmetrical.
It was rage.
Raw, adaptive, unrefined but growing — just like his trait.
A telekinetic storm built around Sage's body — unstable, grinding, howling like a dying god's scream.
He moved.
CRACK!
His elbow buried into the clone's ribs — shattering ten bones with one chaotic pulse.
He grabbed its leg, telekinetically twisted it backward, and stomped it through the sand.
"You're me at my worst?"
"I'm me at my free-est."
He punched the clone's jaw — and with a surge of evolving energy, the clone exploded into shrieking light.
[System Notice: Floor 0 "Defiance Trial" Passed]
Core Trait Mutation: "Modern Martialist – Heavenless Variant"
New Passive: Anti-Divine Flow – Reduces all divine interference by 75%
Telekinesis Trait Evolved: Thoughtform Projection – Control Matter through Martial Will Alone
New Title Acquired: "The Heavenless One"
Ascension Route Updated: "Break the Chain"
[Aftermath – Unknown Observer's Log]
Somewhere beyond the Tower, a cloaked being watched through a fractured mirror.
"He was never supposed to reach Floor 0…
He wasn't supposed to survive the clone."
A second figure, voice feminine and dark, whispered:
"He didn't just survive. He grew. He... broke the floor."
"If he gets to Floor 50..."
"The gods fall. Again."
Sage – Alone on the Broken Horizon
He stood still, watching the silent white winds carry the last particles of his imperfect self into oblivion.
He closed his eyes.
"No gods. No mercy.
From here on… I climb to erase the sky."
SNEAK PEEK:
Sage returns to the normal Tower — but nothing is normal. The system tries to "repair" his trait forcibly. Meanwhile, top-ranked Awakened are sent to assassinate him... but they don't realize: they're not climbing with him — they're hunting something now outside the system.