The chat was still rolling.

-SeoulTowerFan: is he making a signal system???

-GhostClimber_: two taps three taps two taps... morse?

-RealMvpStream: not morse. something simpler

-KangMinFanatic77: PLEASE WORK

-user_49182: some of these randoms are going to get people killed

-Watchdog_KR: he needs like 50 people minimum to move those blocks

Watchdog was right.

The blocks were too heavy for standard mana-based lifting even with strong climbers. It needed distributed force... multiple climbers channeling into coordinated push-pulls along the same vector. Without communication, without party UI showing HP or mana bars or positions, that meant proximity, eye contact, and pattern.

I had figured out the pattern in my previous life after losing twelve people to learn it.

’...’

The staff-user.

I was going to call him Staff in my head until I learned otherwise moved to my left without being asked.

He had figured out that I wanted a flanking position. Smart.

I looked at him long enough to hold up three fingers, then pointed at the nearest harpy cluster overhead.

He understood. Three targets, air side.

I held up two fingers and pointed at myself, then down at the base of the nearest block.

Two ground-side. Me and whoever else I could pull in.

I started moving toward the block cluster, keeping my steps measured, not running. Running signaled panic to every climber on this floor. Panic spread like fire in silence. I had seen it.

The grey-geared group to the northeast had already moved a block. I heard it before I saw it ... a deep, grinding rumble that traveled through the stone plain and up through my boots. They were coordinated, efficient, moving a mid-sized column piece into position near the foundation.

The harpies reacted instantly.

Three peeled off from the upper scaffolding and dove.

They were fast ... faster than they looked from below. Wings folded into dives, then snapped open at the last second to brake just before impact, talons first. Two slammed into the grey-geared group’s formation. The third banked hard and swept wide, scattering a cluster of unprepared solo climbers who scattered in every direction.

One of them ran directly into a second harpy coming from the left.

It didn’t end well.

I was already moving.

Staff had read the dive before I had. He was already at a forty-five degree angle, staff raised, channeling and the light that came out of it was a pale blue column that caught the lead harpy across its left wing joint and sent it spiraling sideways into one of the standing stone columns with a crack I felt in my teeth.

This was good...very good.

I hit the second one at the bottom of its dive. It had locked onto a female climber ... silver armor, rapier, frozen in place for one second too long. I came in from her right side, blade drawn, and took the harpy’s extended talon at the wrist joint. Mana-edged steel through the joint cartilage. It shrieked ... even the shriek was wrong through Babel’s Curse, coming out as something that vibrated in my chest cavity instead of my ears and pulled back, wounded but not killed.

I let it go. Killing it now wasn’t the priority. Scaring it back to the rafters was.

I turned to the silver-armor woman.

She was staring at me. Eyes wide. Breathing hard.

Young... maybe nineteen. She had the stance of someone trained but undertested. Someone who knew the forms but hadn’t yet been broken by the moment where the forms stopped working.

She was going to be broken on this floor. Everyone was. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The question was whether she survived it.

I held up my blade horizontally between us, then tilted it down at a forty-five. Military signal for "move to flanking position, hold." She blinked. Then she reset her stance and moved to my right without a word.

Good instincts. She trusted the signal.

I filed her away. Rapier was her name in my head now.

The chat exploded.

-TowerWatchKR: DID YOU SEE THAT HARPY TAKE

-KangMinFanatic77: HE SAVED HER

-GhostClimber_: Staff user is actually insane

-user_83421: why is no one else stepping up tho

-SeoulTowerFan: because they’re terrified and they can’t talk

-Watchdog_KR: Kang Min is building a squad out of nothing

-RealMvpStream: this is what a real ranker looks like

I did not react to the comments. I kept my face flat and my eyes moving.

The grey-geared group had recovered from the harpy attack. Two of their members were wounded. I could see one sitting down, another standing over them. They had healers.

They were organized but they were operating completely independently of everyone else on the floor, which meant they were solving their section and only their section.

That was a death sentence for the scenario.

The bridge blueprint in the sky was a complete structure. Every section had to be built. Sections required specific blocks that were distributed across the entire plain. No single group could clear this alone. The grey-geared team didn’t know that yet, or they were ignoring it.

Either way, I needed to reach them.

But first.

I looked at Staff. Held up five fingers. Then pointed at the block to our south, then traced a path with my finger around the left side, up to the foundation platform.

He studied the gesture. Then nodded slowly.

Then he pointed at himself, at me, at Rapier, and held up three fingers, then pointed upward.

He was asking: three of us for the air cover while the block moved?

I shook my head. Held up two fingers and pointed up. One finger and pointed at the block.

Two air. One push.

He thought about it. Then nodded.

We were communicating. It was slow, it was imprecise, and at any moment the harpies could dive and kill everyone who wasn’t paying attention. But it was working.

It had to keep working for ten hours.

The timer read 09:41:27.

Somewhere behind me, three climbers who hadn’t found a group yet were attempting to move a block on their own. The block didn’t budge.

One of them opened their mouth to shout instructions ... the screeching demonic sound ripped through the air, and every harpy in the upper scaffolding turned its flat, almost-human face downward.

I was already running toward the three before the first harpy folded its wings.

The first hour of Floor 26 had begun.

[LiveStream Viewers: 1,891,447]

-KangMinFanatic77: IT’S STARTING

-GhostClimber_: god this floor is brutal

-Watchdog_KR: 214 in. how many make it out

-SeoulTowerFan: ...don’t ask that

-RealMvpStream: Kang Min. Please.