Reincarnated With The Degenerate System-Chapter 241: Calm Before the Storm Part 3

The Dragon Ritual changed the entire playing field, and I would be a fool not to capitalize on it.

It was time to put it to use, and climb the tower.

With Hayes firmly under my control and the Association’s assigned monitors now functioning as my personal information filters, I now had freedom.

There were no restrictions, no oversight, and no one breathing down my neck about rules or floor clearance protocols. Even if the main branch of the Association caught wind, it would already be too late.

From the 21st to the 30th floor, monsters fell, traps were dismantled, and boss rooms cleared with mechanical efficiency. My team moved like a single organism.

Officially, though, we had cleared only one floor—thanks to Hayes carefully feeding the public just enough information.

The 30th floor marked another threshold though.

Monsters here weren’t just stronger, they were different in nature—more cunning, more territorial, some moving in coordinated patterns that suggested genuine intelligence rather than simple predatory instinct.

Not just that—the boss also used spawns, making the battle harder and far more dangerous.

Fortunately, I anticipated this. Which was precisely why I didn’t rush in empty-handed.

Over the previous weeks, between climbs and preparations, I gathered relics. Not the common equipment that dropped from cleared floors, but actual relics.

Equipment alone wasn’t enough though.

Magic became just as important. Rhea and the others used formations where one caster directed raw mana from the rest, amplifying attacks far beyond normal limits.

Fire could scorch entire floors, lightning jumped between targets in lethal chains. From the 30th floor onward, bosses never stood a chance.

Then we arrived at the 40th floor.

Nothing could have prepared me for what waited on the other side.

No labyrinth. No sprawling ruin. No hidden objective buried somewhere deep inside a complex environment.

Just a single mountain rising from a flat expanse of grey stone, completely alone with no surrounding terrain to give it any sense of scale.

It simply went up and up and up until the summit disappeared somewhere above the cloud layer, swallowed by pale mist that made it impossible to see the top.

My team fanned out behind me, taking in the sight without a word.

Then the feeling hit me.

Starting at the base of my spine, a slow crawling pressure spread upward and settled between my shoulder blades.

My dragon bloodline, usually a steady source of confidence, was doing something it never did before. It was recoiling.

Not dramatically, and not in a way anyone watching would notice, but I felt it clearly—a subtle contraction, like an animal pulling back from something it recognized as genuinely dangerous.

My expression stayed neutral, but my mind was already running.

Before this moment, whenever unease crept in before a fight, I dismissed it as overcaution. Nerves. The natural response of a mind that hadn’t fully caught up to how strong my body had become.

This was different though. The dragon bloodline wasn’t prone to false alarms. It was ancient and attuned to threats at a level that bypassed conscious reasoning entirely, and right now everything it was telling me pointed up at that peak and said one thing clearly.

Be careful.

Turning to face my team leaders, I kept my voice steady.

"Gather around."

They moved quickly—Rhea and the others who held command positions forming a loose semicircle around me.

"Something is up there," I said. "I don’t know its exact strength yet, but my instincts are telling me this one is different from everything we’ve faced so far."

Pausing for a moment, I let that settle before continuing. "This is the first time I’ve felt genuinely threatened going into a fight."

The air between us shifted. They understood what that meant coming from me.

Rhea spoke first, her voice calm. "How do you want to handle it?"

"I go up alone first, assess the situation, and engage if I can win. If I can’t—" I let that hang for a moment. "If I can’t, I retreat and we reassess together."

"And if you don’t come back?" someone asked from the back.

"That’s exactly what this conversation is about."

Looking at each of them in turn, I made sure every face was paying attention before I continued.

"If I’m not back within thirty minutes, assume the worst. Nobody follows me up that mountain. Everyone retreats and get out of the tower, regroups, and waits." I ordered.

My eyes settled on Rhea specifically. "You’re in charge if that happens. Keep everyone together and don’t let anyone make an emotional decision."

She nodded once. No argument.

"Regarding the formation magic," I continued, "if anything comes down from that peak and you have to engage—open with everything. Full mana relay, Rhea leads the cast, everyone feeds simultaneously. No holding back and no waiting for it to move first."

They all exchanged glances, then slowly nodded in unison.

Turning back to the mountain, I stood there for a moment and just looked at it.

The crawling sensation along my spine hadn’t faded. Standing here and staring up at the peak only made it stronger—a low persistent signal that my blood was broadcasting, warning me about whatever waited at the top.

For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t certain how this battle would end.

But uncertainty was just another variable.

Taking a breath, I cast my wind magic and launched upward.

The ascent started smoothly, air currents wrapping around my body and carrying me up along the face of the peak at a speed no conventional climb could match.

Within seconds the grey expanse below shrank to nothing and my team became small figures at the mountain’s base.

Cold hit fast after that. Sharp and biting, the kind that came purely from altitude, the air thinning as the mist thickened around me until everything disappeared—the rock face, the sky, everything—leaving only the sound of wind and the steady pulse of my bloodline keeping me warm.

One minute passed. Then two. Then five.

Nothing above. Nothing below. Just the mountain, the mist, and that feeling growing stronger with every meter I climbed.

A hundred people on foot would never survive this section. Beyond a certain height there were simply no footholds, the rock face completely sheer and smooth with nothing to grip.

At this altitude a single mistake meant a fall that ended things permanently, the ground so impossibly far below that nothing would survive the impact.

The tower didn’t hide this floor’s challenge behind complexity. It just made the approach lethal by design.

Ten minutes in, the mist finally began thinning.

Breaking through the cloud layer, the summit opened before me—a wide flat expanse of pale stone with a sky above it so dark and unnaturally blue that it felt less like atmosphere and more like the edge of something beyond normal space.

The air up here was aggressively dry. Every breath stripped moisture from my throat, so I activated the nano suit immediately and let it handle hydration while I focused on what was ahead.

Landing softly, my boots met stone without sound.

Silence stretched across the summit.

"You actually made it." A playful voice echoed all around me.

A pause lingered before it continued. "And to think you got that strong so fast... what have you been eating? Dragons for breakfast?"

Mist at the far end of the summit shifted and a figure slowly emerged from within .

Seated with one leg crossed over the other, his posture was completely relaxed, the posture of someone who had been waiting a very long time.

Golden armor covered his frame, elaborate and layered, every piece of it radiating power.

His face came into full view and I recognized that smug look immediately.

Of course I did. Of course it was him.

"So I’ll take it you’re the final boss?" I asked, already summoning my Moonlight Dragon Spear.

The Monkey God’s grin stretched wide. "I didn’t want this, but those fools trapped me in this tower. I would rather fight and kill them."

"You hate them so much, huh? Then why not just throw the fight? Wouldn’t have to dance to their tune," I suggested sarcastically, though my spear was already aimed at him.

He shook his head with a long sigh. "Human... that’s not right. What should I call you?"

"Ace," I replied.

"Ace... I don’t want to be their tool, but I won’t let you best me either. Still, I’ll tell you—the secrets of this tower, and why it showed up in your world."

Curiosity got the better of me.

Lowering my spear slightly, I gestured for him to continue.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The casual posture didn’t change, but something in his eyes did.

"I wasn’t always a prisoner. I was a god. The kind your world prays to in temples and shrines—a real one. I had my own domain, my own people, my own world that I watched over for longer than your civilization has existed."

"A god," I repeated.

"A god," he confirmed, with absolute confidence. It was simply a fact, the same way someone might say they were a farmer or a soldier.

"Then one day, without warning, everything changed. Towers appeared. Gates opened. Monsters poured out."

"Same as us," I answered.

"Exactly the same." He nodded slowly. "And just like your world, mortals in mine awakened. Everyone scrambled to understand what was happening and why."

His jaw tightened slightly. "But we were never meant to find the real answer."

That caught my attention.

"What do you mean by real answer?"