Chapter 43: [43] : The Floor of Betrayal, Weaver of Lies

Floor 7 was basically a joke. It was a massive room filled with swinging pendulum blades, spike traps, and pressure plates. A normal guild would have spent hours carefully mapping out the safe path and disabling the traps one by one.

Declan just grabbed Sloane and Kendra by the backs of their collars and used Void Blink three times in a row. They skipped the entire room in less than five seconds and landed right in front of the door to Floor 8.

"I think my stomach is still back on the spikes." Kendra groaned as she leaned against the cold stone wall.

"You are fine." Declan pushed the heavy iron door open. "Let us keep moving."

They stepped into Floor 8.

The environment was completely different from the rest of the Crimson Spire. There were no stone walls or lava pits. The moment they crossed the threshold, a thick milky white fog swallowed them up.

It was so dense that Declan could not see his own boots.

"Sloane? Kendra?" Declan called out.

No answer. The sound of his voice did not echo. It just got eaten by the fog.

A blood red panel appeared before his eyes.

[Floor 8: The Floor of Betrayal]

↳ Trial Objective: Face your deepest desires

Somewhere in the fog, Sloane was completely frozen.

She was not in a dungeon anymore. The cold stone floor beneath her feet had turned into smooth clean white tiles. The smell of ash and sulfur was gone, replaced by the sharp sterile scent of rubbing alcohol and bleach.

She was standing in a hospital room in Sector 4.

"No." Sloane whispered. Her hands started to shake. "This is not real. It is a game mechanic. It is just a mechanic."

But it felt incredibly real. The hum of the heart monitor next to the bed sounded exactly like she remembered.

Lying in the hospital bed was a young girl with pale skin and almost no hair. Her eyes were closed. She looked so fragile, like she was made of thin glass.

"Mia." Sloane choked out as tears instantly blurred her vision.

She ran to the side of the bed and grabbed the girl’s hand. It was warm. It felt exactly like her little sister’s hand.

"She is running out of time, Sloane."

Sloane spun around. Standing in the corner of the hospital room was a creature that definitely did not belong there. It looked like a tall thin man wearing a sharp black suit, but its face was just a smooth featureless mirror. It had eight long spider legs sticking out of its back, twitching slightly.

A red name tag floated above its head.

[Weaver of Lies]

↳ Level 45 Boss

"What do you want?" Sloane demanded. She stepped in front of the bed, shielding her sister from the monster. Her hands glowed with green healing magic, even though she knew it would not do any damage.

"I want to make a trade." The Weaver’s voice echoed in her mind. It sounded smooth and comforting, like a trusted doctor. "You are playing a dangerous game, Sloane. You are following a walking glitch. The system hates him. He is going to die, and he will drag you down with him."

"Declan can handle himself." Sloane replied with her voice shaking.

"Can he?" The Weaver pointed a long sharp finger at the hospital bed. "Can he save her? You have hundreds of thousands of Origin Points in your treasury. But points do not buy real world medicine. They do not fix failing kidneys."

Sloane looked back at Mia. A sob caught in her throat. She had taken the corporate medical debt just to keep Mia on life support. That was exactly why she ended up in the debtor’s prison in the first place.

"I can offer you a cure." The Weaver spoke softly. "The Grid is bleeding into your reality. The system can rewrite her sick cells just like it rewrote your nerve damage. I can make her perfectly healthy."

Sloane swallowed hard. "You can do that?"

"Yes." The Weaver promised. "All you have to do is turn around and walk out of this dungeon. Leave the Warlord behind. Let the Spire deal with him. Betray him, and your sister lives."

A golden system prompt appeared in front of her face.

[Accept the Weaver’s Bargain?]

↳ Reward: Complete cellular restoration for target Mia

↳ Condition: Abandon Party Leader Player V

Sloane stared at the prompt. Her hand hovered over the yes button. It was everything she ever wanted. It was the whole reason she endured this miserable toxic life.

She looked at Mia’s peaceful sleeping face.

Then, Sloane closed her eyes and let out a long heavy sigh.

"You almost had me." Sloane whispered.

She opened her eyes. The desperation was gone, replaced by cold ruthless calculation.

"But you made one massive mistake." Sloane reached into her inventory and pulled out a heavy forged tier crossbow she had saved from the Black Vanguard loot pile.

"What mistake?" The Weaver asked, tilting its mirrored face.

"I am the Quartermaster of the Iron Bastion." Sloane sneered as she leveled the crossbow right at the monster’s chest. "I do the math. Declan is literally breaking the rules of the universe. He bends reality over his knee for fun. You are just a Level 45 bug stuck in a tower."

Sloane pulled the trigger. "My boss pays better."

The heavy steel bolt slammed into the Weaver’s shoulder.

The hospital room instantly shattered like broken glass. The illusion collapsed, dumping Sloane back onto the cold stone floor of the dungeon.

Across the room, the thick white fog was clearing up.

Kendra was sitting on the ground, hyperventilating and clutching her head.

And in the center of the room, Declan was standing right in front of the Weaver of Lies.

The boss looked terrified. Its eight spider legs were backing up, scraping against the stone.

"You are not supposed to be awake!" The Weaver hissed. "The illusion was perfect! I offered you absolute power! I offered you the world!"

Declan just looked bored. He had his hands in his pockets.

"You offered me a digital crown." Declan stated casually. "I already have a real one."

When the system tried to trap Declan in an illusion, it failed miserably. The game code could not handle his physical body. His fifteen percent real world synchronization rate meant his brain was operating on a different frequency. The system tried to feed him fake signals, and his mutated DNA just treated it like a bad pop up ad. He literally glitched right out of the mind trap.

"You cannot ignore the trial!" The Weaver screeched. It lunged forward, raising two sharp scythe legs to impale him.

Declan did not even pull out his cleaver. He did not use a skill.

He just raised his bare right hand. His new Eclipse Sovereign stats kicked in. He grabbed the incoming scythe leg and casually snapped it in half like a dry twig.

The Weaver screamed in pain.

Declan stepped forward, grabbed the monster by the front of its sharp black suit, and punched his other hand straight through its chest.

He did not use magic. He just used raw absurd physical stats.

He ripped his hand back out, holding a glowing purple core.

The Weaver of Lies froze, let out a glitching distorted sound, and collapsed to the floor. It dissolved into blue pixels a second later.

[Floor 8 Cleared]

Declan tossed the core into his inventory and looked over at his party. Sloane was lowering her crossbow, wiping tears from her eyes.

"You good, Quartermaster?" Declan asked.

Sloane took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah. I am good."