The teleport from Floor 2 was jarring, a non-sensory lurch as the Tower's system deleted one virtual environment and loaded the next. We materialized in a corridor that smelled of mildew, damp stone, and the faint, metallic tang of bat guano.

"Ugh, delightful," Seraphina muttered, wrinkling her nose as she stepped away from a patch of glowing moss. "A sewer."

"It's not a sewer," I corrected calmly, my eyes scanning the architecture. "It's a labyrinth. Floor 3."

The walls were made of ill-fitting, rough-hewn stone, barely illuminated by the same sickly green moss. The corridor split ahead of us, one path leading left, the other right. From the darkness above, the high-pitched skree-skree of F-Rank bats echoed, their sonar bouncing off the stone.

"So, what's the grand strategy here, Chief?" Seraphina asked, her voice dripping with the same sarcasm she'd been marinating in since our "unsatisfying" victory on Floor 2. "Do we poison the air and wait for them to fall on our heads?"

"We move," I said, ignoring her.

"Alex, front. Kaelen, stay on him. Twins, scout. Gideon, Seraphina, rearguard. We're not here to fight bats. We're here to find the exit."

"And which way is that, oh prescient one?" she pressed.

My mind was already filtering through the data. 'Floor 3: The Stone Labyrinth. In Tower of Ascendance, this floor was a notorious resource drain.

It's a 50x50 grid of identical corridors, designed to confuse and separate teams. There are exactly 240 F-Rank bat swarms, 30 F-Rank Slime clusters, and 12 illusory wall traps.

The correct path to the exit takes, on average, forty-five minutes if you don't get lost. The other teams are, at this very moment, probably picking 'left' or 'right' at random, burning mana on useless trash mobs.'

"This way," I said, pointing to the right corridor, a path I knew to be a long, winding, but ultimately correct route... for the first section.

We moved for twenty minutes. The silence was broken only by our footsteps and the occasional, swift thwip of Seraphina's bow as she silently took down a bat swarm that got too close. My team, for all their flaws, was efficient. Alex's shield-work was becoming steady, his nervousness replaced by a focused determination. Kaelen kept his buffs on Alex, his eyes nervously scanning the shadows.

But the team's morale, particularly Seraphina's, was dropping with every identical, moldy corner we turned.

"This is pointless," she finally snapped, after we dispatched another cluster of F-Rank Slimes with a single [Corpse-bloom] from Gideon. "We've been walking in circles. We're no closer to the exit than we were when we started."

"She's right, Chief," Alex added, his voice hesitant. "My map interface is just a jumble of static. This place is designed to get us lost."

"We're not lost," I said.

I had led them to this specific, unremarkable dead end on purpose. The corridor just ended in a flat wall of grey stone.

"You're not lost?" Seraphina let out a short, cold laugh. She gestured to the wall. "Then forgive my poor archery skills, but that looks like a dead end. Or is this another one of your 'efficient' strategies? Do we stare at it until it gets bored and moves?"

Her voice was loud, echoing, sharp with the frustration of a noble being led by a commoner who refused to explain himself. Her pride was screaming. She wanted a heroic battle, and I was giving her a damp, boring walk.

"It is a dead end," I said.

"Then you failed," she spat.

"No. I was looking for it."

I walked past her, my footsteps echoing in the sudden, tense silence. Alex and Kaelen exchanged confused glances. Gideon just watched me, that unsettling, curious smile on his face.

I stood before the wall. To them, it was identical to every other wall we had passed—damp, covered in moss, and smelling of decay. To me, it was a beautiful, glaring mistake.

My mind raced. 'Tower of Ascendance, version 1.03. The dev team for the "Rookie Challenge" expansion was rushed. The art asset for this specific corridor junction, maze_wall_D-17.tga, was mapped with the wrong collision data. It's tagged as 'destructible_wood' instead of 'static_stone.' A bug. A glitch in the matrix. An error they patched in year three of the game's life, but this Tower... this is Day One code.'

I ran my hand over the stone, my fingers tracing the faint lines between the blocks, my eyes scanning the "runes" that were nothing more than decorative textures.

"Seraphina," I said, my voice calm, "you said my strategies were unsatisfying. You're right. They're not about glory. They're about facts."

"What are you talking about, Wilson?" she asked, her patience clearly gone.

I turned to her. "I've been looking at the runic patterns on these walls since we entered. They're not just guiding scripts; they're structural integrity wards. And they've all been carved with perfect, mundane precision."

"So?"

"So, this one is flawed," I lied smoothly. I tapped a specific spot on the wall. "Look. The glyph for 'stasis' is carved slightly too deep. And the energy conduit for 'reinforcement' is misaligned. It's not visible to the naked eye, but the mana signature... it's all wrong. It's unstable. This isn't a wall."

I stepped back. "It's a cover-up. A builder's mistake, hidden by a weak illusionary ward. They tried to patch it, but they can't hide the flawed energy flow from someone who knows what to look for."

The entire team stared at me. Kaelen and Alex looked at me with a new, dawning awe. This went beyond simple strategy; this was a level of magical perception they couldn't even comprehend. Seraphina... she was speechless. Her mouth, which had been set in a permanent sneer, was now slightly open.

"You... you can see that?" she stammered. "You can sense a flawed rune just by... looking at it?"

"I sense mana," I said, letting the ambiguity hang. "This wall is a lie."

I turned to the only person who mattered in this equation. "Alex."

The big tank, who had been listening with rapt attention, snapped to focus. "Chief!"

"I need you to break that wall."

Alex blinked. "Break... break stone wall, Chief?"

"It's not real stone. It's a facade. Behind it is the real path. I need your strongest attack. All your E-Rank strength. Don't hold back. Use [Shield Bash]."

"Are you insane?!" Seraphina burst out, finding her voice. "He'll shatter his shield! He'll break his arm! It's a solid stone wall, you commoner fool!"

"No, it's not," I said, my voice cutting through her panic. I looked only at Alex. "Do you trust me, Alex?"

Alex looked from Seraphina's furious, logical protest to my calm, unwavering gaze. He had followed me through the Labyrinth. He had trusted my commands against the Goblin horde. He had held the line against the Hounds. My "hunches" had delivered flawless victories.

His expression hardened, his doubt evaporating, replaced by the blind, beautiful faith of a true tank.

"Yes, Chief. I trust you."

He planted his feet, aimed his tower shield at the "flawed" rune I had pointed out, and took a deep breath. His E-Rank mana flared, a solid, earthy aura enveloping him.

"Alright," he roared, his voice echoing. "[Shield Bash]!"

He charged the three steps, his entire body, all 200 pounds of muscle and steel, slamming into the wall.

KRA-BOOOOOOM!

It wasn't the thud of steel on stone. It was an explosion.

The wall didn't just crack. It shattered. It dissolved into a shower of pulverized rock, plaster, and a shimmer of data as the illusionary ward broke. A massive, dark hole was punched clean through the end of the corridor, revealing a narrow, descending passage on the other side.

A cloud of ancient dust rolled out, smelling not of mildew, but of something dry, old, and undisturbed.

Alex stood in the breach, his shield intact, his arm tingling but unbroken. He stared at his own feet, at the rubble, and then back at me, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated awe. "It... it really was fake."

My team was frozen. Kaelen looked like he was about to faint. The Twins materialized from the shadows, their usually impassive faces showing visible shock.

Seraphina... she was just staring. Her bow was held loosely in her hand, her knuckles white. Her mind was frantically trying to process what she had just seen. The strategy against the Goblins. The coordination against the Hounds. And now, this. This... miracle. This act of pure, impossible perception that defied all logic.

She finally looked at me, her eyes wide, her voice a small, trembling whisper.

"How... how in the hell... did you know?"

I dusted a piece of virtual plaster from my shoulder, my face a mask of calm, academic confidence.

"I told you," I said smoothly, the lie tasting like victory on my tongue. "The runes were flawed."

I stepped past her, into the dark, secret passage that would let us bypass the entire, resource-draining labyrinth of Floor 3. "Now, stay close. We've saved ourselves forty minutes. Let's not waste it. This path leads to the floor's guardian."

(To be Continue)

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