Runebound Reverse Tower of The Dead-Chapter 151: Switched Positions

A slew of notification filled Kael’s vision. But he immediately disregarded them.

They stacked over each other like a bad hand of cards, lines and numbers and titles trying to demand his attention at the exact wrong time. His eyes flicked across them out of reflex, loot, contribution, rewards, and then he shoved the whole mess into the back of his mind. Reading was a luxury. Breathing room was a luxury. Standing still in a tunnel full of survivors with knives in their hearts was suicide.

He didn’t need the system to sing him praises to know what just happened. He could smell it. He could hear it in the last crackle of electricity fading into silence and in the wet, cooked stink hanging in the tunnel like fog.

He didn’t need to carve and dismantle the basilisk anymore, the moment he killed it, all its materials were immediately transferred to his inventory.

That was the only clean part of this whole floor. The Tower loved efficiency when it benefited itself. One second there was a living catastrophe, the next the "valuable" parts were gone, sorted, counted, neatly packaged into a window only he could access. No messy butchering. No time wasted carving through scales the size of fists while enemies lined up behind you.

It also meant something else, something Kael felt in his gut even before he saw the next faces. There’s nothing to "share" on the ground. Nothing to point at. Nothing to pretend was communal. If they wanted a cut, they’d have to take it from him directly.

What was left on the train rails was nothing but burnt bones, smoldering skin and ruined cartilage.

The rails looked like a butcher’s grate. White-hot scorch marks ran along the steel, and the basilisk’s remains were twisted into something unrecognizable. Ribs like warped beams. A skull cracked open and blackened. Bits of cartilage fused to the metal as if the creature had melted into the infrastructure. Smoke still curled lazily upward, and every time a breeze from the tunnel shifted, the smell punched Kael’s nose: burned meat, hot metal, and something bitter that clung to the back of his throat.

He didn’t expect the electricity to do that much damage. Even he was surprised at how terrifying the ’cooking’ process was.

He’d expected a kill. A collapse. Maybe a few convulsions. Not... that. Not the way it had lit up like a living wire trap and screamed like the whole tunnel was inside its lungs. The Tower didn’t hand out "justice." It handed out consequences. Kael had just weaponized a city’s corpse.

Not only did he eliminate the Basilisk using the dormant electricity system, he also eliminated a great portion of the Snakes’s faction.

Leaving but four fortunate members that decided to follow Kael on the platform instead of on the rails.

That part almost made him laugh, if his mouth wasn’t still dry from smoke. The clever ones survived, not because they were strong, but because they’d been cautious enough to stay off the obvious death line. Or lucky enough to hesitate at the right time. Same thing, really. Luck and caution wore the same face in this tower.

One of them was Petrov who was completely stupefied by what just occurred.

Petrov stood like a statue carved out of disbelief, his chest rising and falling too fast, eyes flicking between the dead basilisk and the railings as if he expected the world to "undo" it. Kael saw the moment the reality landed: this wasn’t a fair fight. This wasn’t a boss kill that could be claimed by a clan’s strength.

It was a lever. A trap. A single action that turned a raid into a slaughter.

It was just one small action.

A lever he pulled from an old backpack, placed onto a place that seemed to fit, then turned on.

The boss died because of it, his members died because of it.

And seeing the notification window. The lion’s share of the loot all went to Kael.

After all, he delivered the finishing blow, and if the Tower accounted for the ’damage’ he caused, he was bound to be the highest contributor.

Kael didn’t need to open the reward screens to understand the logic. The Tower was a miserly accountant. It rewarded impact, not effort. It rewarded the final shove, not the long grind. And Kael had just shoved an entire metro system’s worth of power straight into the basilisk’s throat.

Which meant Petrov wasn’t just looking at a dead boss.

He was looking at his own loss made permanent.

Looking back, and then forward, "FUCK HIM UP! HE GOT THE LOOT!" Petrov howled as he rushed Kael.

The shout tore through the tunnel and pulled everyone’s attention like a hook. Petrov’s shock snapped into rage so fast it was almost impressive. He didn’t even bother pretending this was "justice" or "honor" or revenge for dead clanmates. He went straight for the truth.

Loot.

His boots pounded the platform, and the other surviving Snake members moved with him, weapons raised. One had a stone axe, another had something cruder and heavier, and their faces all wore the same look: the kind of hunger you got when you believed the world owed you what another man earned.

Kael this time didn’t back down, didn’t run away. Didn’t even flinch from the two incoming Snake members.

His body was still buzzing from the shock of everything, but the buzzing wasn’t fear. It was clarity. He’d been running for days, running from goblins, from clans, from bosses, from consequences. Running had kept him alive. But running also taught people that if they chased long enough, the pray would always move.

Not this time.

"I think it’s about time to show you the difference between us," Kael said as he took a step forward.

He stepped into them, not away, and that alone made the two Snake fighters hesitate a fraction. They expected a sprint. They got a wall. Kael’s gauntlets hung heavy at his sides, chain slack between wrists, and his posture was calm in a way that didn’t belong in a tunnel full of death.

One of the snakes raised a stone axe up and sent it crashing down on Kael’s face.

It wasn’t even a clean swing. It was anger disguised as strength, overhead and obvious, meant to split his skull and end the problem. The axe head whistled through stale air, and for an instant Kael saw the man’s eyes, wide, confident, already imagining loot drops spilling out of Kael’s corpse.

The latter simply raised his arm up, and the axe reacted.

Stone didn’t clang. It cracked. The impact rang through the gauntlet and into Kael’s forearm like a hammer strike, but the tool held, and the axe didn’t. The head split down the middle, fragments exploding outward. One shard skittered across the platform, another bounced off the wall and vanished into the dark. The man’s hands were suddenly holding a handle attached to nothing.

It was painful, a bit, after all, the metallic gauntlet wasn’t damage proof, but it was more than enough to stop a crude axe in its track.

The sting traveled up to Kael’s elbow, a bright reminder that he was still flesh beneath steel. But compared to broken bones and mana collapse and basilisk tails, it was barely a complaint. He didn’t even step back.

Without wasting a breath, Kael grabbed the man by the face.

The steel gauntlet clutching tightly on his head.

His fingers wrapped across cheekbones and jaw like a vice, thumb digging into the side of the skull. The Snake’s breath turned into a wet choke, hands flying up instinctively to pry at the gauntlet. He couldn’t. His nails scraped metal and slipped uselessly.

The second Snake member that was rushing in to help hesitated when he saw his comrade being held up with one arm.

That hesitation was the only reason Kael didn’t immediately have to deal with a blade in his ribs. The man’s feet slowed, his weapon lifted, but his eyes kept flicking between Kael’s grip and the dangling body like his brain couldn’t accept the physics.

"How many fucking points did he put in strength?" he couldn’t help but mutter as he saw the tragically comical scene.

Kael almost appreciated the line. Almost. It was the closest thing to honesty you got from a man about to die.

"Burn," Kael muttered as he released the energy from his gauntlet.

It was just a word.

But it came with the activation of the fire rune.

Kael didn’t shout it. Didn’t dramatize it. He spoke it like you’d speak a command to a tool you trusted. Internal Energy surged through the runes, and the gauntlet’s palm flared with contained heat. The man’s eyes widened as he realized, too late, that Kael wasn’t just holding him.

He was aiming.

And with that word, the man’s head blasted apart as if it were popcorn.

The burst wasn’t a clean burn. It was pressure and flame and ignition in one brutal instant. Flesh popped. Bone fractured. Burning blood sprayed outward in hot droplets that sizzled as they hit the platform. The body went limp before it even understood it had died, knees buckling as it fell like a dropped puppet.

Kael let go and stepped aside as it hit, boots splashing through gore. He didn’t look down. Looking down was for people who cared.

Kael cared about the second Snake member and Petrov, and the way the tunnel was suddenly full of eyes.

"I’m the Hunter now!" Kael smiled.