Chapter 151: « Fable Of The Glutton’s Oven [2] »

[Time Remaining: 06:12:44]

[Escort Targets: 12m — CRYING]

[Hostile Entity: 9m — ACTIVE]

[WARNING: Do not approach Hostile Entity without engaging Escort Protocol]

[Foundation Integrity: N/A]

The inside of the gingerbread house was bigger than the outside.

That was a Tower thing ... dimensional expansion of interior space on themed floors. I had seen it before.

It still looked wrong every time, the way a bag that holds too much always looks wrong. The interior stretched back at least forty meters, with a ceiling that climbed to ten, and the walls were lined with shelving that held jars of preserved things I chose to look at only briefly before looking away.

The oven was at the far end.

It was enormous — a freestanding iron structure the height of two people, burning orange through every seam and vent. The heat from it reached me at the doorway, immediate and serious, the kind of heat that makes the air between you and the source visible.

In front of the oven stood the witch.

I had expected deformity in the horror-fairy-tale sense — warted nose, claw hands, the theatrical ugliness of illustrated children’s books. What I got was something else. She was tall, maybe one-eighty, wearing a heavy grey coat that had been patched and re-patched so many times it was hard to identify the original material. Her hair was white and roughly tied. Her face was lined and exhausted and currently pointed directly at me with an expression of someone who had just opened a door to find a debt collector.

She had a wooden spoon. She was gripping it like a weapon.

More relevantly: the wooden spoon was burning at the tip, carrying fire that looked less like cooking fire and more like shaped combat magic. The flame was emerald green. That was not decorative.

She pointed the spoon at me.

I didn’t move. I looked at her face. Then at the two children in the cage to my right.

The cage was ornate — iron bars twisted into candy-cane patterns, hung with decorative chains. Two children sat inside it. Small, wide-eyed, dark-haired, dressed in clothes that looked like they’d been designed by someone who had read "poor peasant children" in a story brief and done their best. They were crying with reliable dedication. Tears tracking down round cheeks. Hands gripping the bars.

I looked at their hands.

Their knuckles were white from gripping. The fingers were slightly too long. The nails were slightly too sharp. And at the corner of each small mouth, catching the orange oven-light at just the right angle — a thin, clear thread of drool.

Not directed at the candy walls. At me.

That confirmed it.

[WARNING: HOSTILE ENTITY IN RANGE — ENGAGE TO PROTECT ESCORT TARGETS]

[Penalty accruing for delayed engagement: -200 points/minute]

The System UI was flashing in the upper-left corner of my vision with the red urgency it reserved for objectives going wrong. I let it flash.

The witch tracked my eyes moving from the children back to her. Something shifted in her face. The weapon-readiness dropped by a fraction. She was reading me the way people read strangers who don’t behave the way the situation calls for.

I pointed at the children. Then at my mouth. Then held up two fingers and made a slow, questioning motion with my hand — eating gesture, two of them.

Her eyes narrowed.

I pointed at myself and tapped my chest twice, then pointed at her and did the same thing — you and me, same side.

She stared at me for a long moment. The green fire at the tip of her spoon flickered.

Then she stepped forward and looked past me through the open door. Saw the 88 climbers in the clearing. The fire flared.

I turned and made the flat-palm hold signal — the one the survivors of floor 26 all recognized — and projected it as large and clear as I could. Then I turned back to the witch and kept my hands visible and my sword sheathed.

She looked at my hands. At the sword. At my face.

Then she said, in a voice that had the texture of someone who had been alone in this house for a very long time: "You’re the first one who hasn’t drawn steel at the door."

Her voice was a rasp. Like smoke damage that had never quite healed.

"How many groups have been through here?" I asked.

"Seven," she said. "Before this cycle reset. Seven groups. Every single one of them saw the children, heard the crying, and came straight at me." She looked at the oven. "I put six groups through alone. The seventh had a climber who wouldn’t stop fighting and I had to seal them out of the scenario entirely." A pause. "They were very unhappy about that."

"What happens if the children get out?"

She looked at me directly. "They eat the floor. Then they eat the floor above. Then the one above that. The Tower contains them here as long as the oven stays hot and the cage stays sealed. If the cage opens—" She stopped. "You’ve seen gluttony demons before?"

"I’ve seen what they leave behind."

She accepted that without questioning it, which told me she was too tired to be curious.

"What do you need?" I asked.

"I need those things in the oven," she said. "I’ve been trying for three cycles. I can’t do it alone. They’re too strong at this range and my binding magic only works at distance — the moment I get close enough to physically move them, they break my spells and I have to reset from the doorway."

"How many climbers?"

"As many as are willing to be bitten," she said flatly.

Behind me, the stream was going.

💬 KangMinFanatic77: IS HE TALKING TO THE WITCH

💬 SeoulTowerFan: the system is penalizing him RIGHT NOW and he’s just standing there chatting

💬 GhostClimber_: -200 points per minute and he does not care

💬 Watchdog_KR: wait he figured out the twist already??

💬 TowerWatchKR: the drool. HE SAW THE DROOL

💬 RealMvpStream: I keep saying it

💬 user_48821: what’s happening

💬 user_29441: he’s allying with the witch I think??

💬 KangMinFanatic77: THE ESCORT TARGETS ARE THE DEMONS

💬 SeoulTowerFan: WHAT

💬 GhostClimber_: WHAT

I walked back to the door.

Eighty-eight climbers looked at me. Half of them had weapons drawn from when the Golems came out. The System UI was still flashing penalty warnings for anyone reading their own interface. Commander had their arms folded, watching me with the expression of someone who had already made peace with not understanding my decisions in advance.

"The children are the demons," I said. "The witch is the Guardian. We need to get them into the oven."

Silence.

Then, from the back: "The children."

"Yes."

"Into the oven."

"Yes."

A longer silence.

"That seems—" someone started.

"Bad," someone else finished.

"They’re not children," I said.

"Look at the System escort markers. They’re pulsing irregularly. Standard escort targets have a steady pulse. These are cycling between two different states — that’s what you see when an entity is disguised." I pointed at the house. "Go look at their hands if you need confirmation."

Three climbers went to the doorway and looked. One of them came back faster than the others. "Their nails," he said, and stopped.

"Yeah," I said.

Junho was already looking at me with the expression of a man recalculating his understanding of the floor from the ground up. "How do we move them without getting eaten?"

"Carefully."

"That’s not a plan."

"It’s the beginning of one."

The witch stepped through the doorway behind me. Several climbers raised weapons immediately and she held up both hands, wooden spoon sideways, the international gesture for I am not currently attacking you.

"I can hold their binding for thirty seconds at range," she said. "If I start the binding, that thirty seconds is the window. After that they break it and I have to start over, which takes two minutes."

"Two minutes of free demons," Commander said.

"Yes."

"How big do they get?"

She looked at Commander with the expression of someone asked about the size of a natural disaster. "Bigger than the house."

Commander looked at the house.

"Right," they said.

The chat had arrived at full chaos.

💬 KangMinFanatic77: THIRTY SECOND WINDOW TO SHOVE DEMONS INTO AN OVEN

💬 GhostClimber_: this is the most insane floor I’ve ever watched

💬 SeoulTowerFan: the witch is helping now??? I can’t keep up

💬 Watchdog_KR: operational window: 30 seconds. consequences of failure: unkillable demons eat the world

💬 TowerWatchKR: casual tuesday on floor 27

💬 user_83421: someone in the back is still eating the candy trees

💬 SeoulTowerFan: IN THIS ECONOMY

💬 RealMvpStream: Kang Min is making a plan. stop eating the trees

I pulled Commander, Junho, Plate, Rapier, and four of Commander’s team into a fast circle and laid it out.

The binding would freeze the children in place for thirty seconds. In that window, we needed to open the cage, physically carry each demon child across forty meters of house interior, and deposit them into the oven before the binding broke. Two demons. Two teams. One target each. The oven door opened outward — the witch would handle that before the binding started. The rest of the group formed a corridor inside the house to clear any path obstruction and contain the demons if the binding broke early.

"What happens if it breaks while we’re carrying them?" Rapier asked.

"They transform," the witch said from behind me.

"Into what?"

"Something large," she said, in the tone of someone who had watched it happen and was choosing brevity over accuracy.

"Define large."

"Not fitting-through-the-door large."

Rapier looked at the door. Then at me. "Great."

"Everyone inside," I said. "Corridor formation along the left wall. Two carry teams on the cage. Witch opens the oven. On her signal, we go."

The 89 climbers moved into the gingerbread house with the shuffling, slightly absurd energy of a large group entering a space sized for a smaller one. The candy-jar walls and the smell of gingerbread and the orange oven heat hit everyone simultaneously. Several people looked at the shelves. One person was almost certainly going to eat something off them. I didn’t have time to prevent it.

[WARNING: Engaging with Hostile Entity — Escort Protocol Violation — -200/min]

[WARNING: Escort Targets not secured — -300/min]

[WARNING: Deviation from Scenario Objective — PENALTY ACCRUING]

The System was not happy. The penalty counter in the upper corner was climbing fast enough to be visible as a blur. We were accruing deductions at a rate that would leave us with a technical failure on the floor even if we cleared it, unless the True Clear condition triggered a retroactive correction — which it would, if I was right about the condition.

I had to be right.

The witch moved to the oven and pulled the door open. The heat that came out of it was a physical force — everyone in the front third of the house felt it as a simultaneous step backward that nobody consciously decided to take. The interior of the oven glowed white-orange. Whatever was burning in there was beyond a standard wood fire. Floor magic, sustained and ancient and very deliberately maintained.

She took her position at the far end of the house, wooden spoon raised.

"Ready?" she said.

"Ready," I said.

She spoke three words in a language the Tower used for binding — I had heard variations of it before, always with the same sharp, consonant-heavy structure that sounded like it was being pronounced against resistance. The emerald fire at the spoon tip flared, expanded, and shot forward in two threads that hit the cage bars and passed through them.

The crying stopped.

The children went rigid.

[BINDING ACTIVE — 00:30]

I was moving before the timer finished displaying.

The cage door had a latch that looked decorative and was — a single pull and it swung open. I went in first, grabbed the nearest child by the back of the coat, and pulled. It was heavy. Much heavier than a child its apparent size should have been, the bone-density of something that had been compressing an enormous mass into a small form for a long time. I got it over my shoulder and moved.

Plate had the second one. He had picked it up with both hands under the arms, holding it at arm’s length in front of him like a bag of something that might leak. His face had the expression of a man being extremely professional about a situation he had many feelings about.

The corridor had formed correctly. Climbers on both sides, weapons ready, watching the demons in our arms for any sign of the binding breaking. The witch’s timer was running on my peripheral UI — twenty-two seconds, twenty-one, twenty.

I ran.

The oven was forty meters away and I covered thirty of them in twelve seconds before the first problem arrived.

The binding on my demon flickered.

Just once. A single interruption, half a second, and in that half second the child in my arms made a sound that had absolutely nothing to do with children — a low, resonant vibration that I felt in my molars rather than heard, a sound that communicated appetite on a frequency that bypassed rational thought entirely.

Every climber in the corridor took a step back.

I kept running.

The binding restabilized. The timer read nine seconds.

The oven was ten meters away.

I made a decision about physics and committed to it.

I threw the demon.

Not elegantly — a two-handed forward release at roughly chest height, directing it toward the open oven door with the same mechanics as pushing something heavy across a surface rather than an actual throw. It worked on the forward momentum I had built and the demon’s own mass and the fact that the open oven door was a two-meter-wide target at close range.

It went in.

The oven doors swung back from the force of entry and the fire inside surged. A sound came out of the oven that I was not going to think about in detail.

[BINDING — 00:03]

Plate was three seconds behind me. He arrived at the oven door, assessed the situation, and performed what I can only describe as a two-handed chest press — releasing the second demon at point-blank range directly into the open furnace with the expression of a man depositing something at a returns counter.

It went in.

He slammed the oven door.

The entire house shook.

Whatever the demons became inside the oven — and the sounds coming out of it in the next thirty seconds were a convincing argument for not opening the door to check — the fire handled it. The oven had been built for exactly this. The witch had kept it burning through however many cycles this floor had run, maintaining the temperature required to contain something that could eat entire floors if given the chance.

The shaking stopped after forty seconds.

The oven went quiet.

[PENALTY WARNINGS — CLEARED]

[True Clear Condition — IDENTIFIED]

[Floor 27 — ASSESSING...]

The witch lowered her spoon. She looked at the oven. Then at the empty cage. Then at the eighty-nine climbers standing in her gingerbread house, many of whom were only now fully processing what they had just done.

"That’s the first time," she said. Her voice was different — the smoke-damage rasp was still there but something underneath it had loosened. "In seven cycles. That’s the first time."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then, from somewhere in the back of the corridor: "Can we eat the walls now?"

The witch turned to look at whoever had said that.

"I mean the emergency is over," the voice continued reasonably. "And the walls are right there."

The witch looked at the walls. Then back at the climber. Then, slowly, at the jar-lined shelves.

"I suppose there’s no reason—" she started.

A significant number of climbers immediately moved toward the candy walls.

💬 KangMinFanatic77: THEY ARE EATING THE FLOOR

💬 SeoulTowerFan: IMMEDIATELY

💬 GhostClimber_: the demons are barely cold and they’re eating the house

💬 Watchdog_KR: Kang Min’s face right now

💬 TowerWatchKR: that is a man at peace with humanity

💬 user_48821: IS THE WITCH ALSO EATING

💬 SeoulTowerFan: SHE IS EATING HER OWN WALL

💬 RealMvpStream: she’s been on this floor for seven cycles. let her have it

💬 KangMinFanatic77: Kang Min is just standing there watching everyone eat the gingerbread house

💬 GhostClimber_: this is beautiful

💬 user_83421: wait did Plate just eat the cage bars

💬 TowerWatchKR: yes

💬 user_83421: the iron cage bars

💬 Watchdog_KR: apparently they’re candy cane

💬 user_29441: OF COURSE THEY ARE

[Floor 27 — TRUE CLEAR CONFIRMED]

[Reasoning: Escort Targets correctly identified as hostile entities. Guardian correctly allied. Floor containment maintained.]

[All Penalty Deductions — REVERSED]

[Bonus Applied: Tactical Deduction Clear — x1.5 reward multiplier]

[Floor 27 — CLEARED]

The exit gate opened at the edge of the forest, golden and patient.

I stood near the door and watched the scene in front of me. Eighty-nine climbers dismantling a gingerbread house with focused enthusiasm. The witch sat in the center of it looking at her walls disappearing with the expression of someone watching a sunset — a long, tired appreciation for something ending. Grey had found a jar of what turned out to be actual preserves and was eating them with a spoon she had produced from somewhere. Commander had a piece of the ceiling and was eating it with the contained, dignified expression they applied to everything. Junho had found what appeared to be a structural support beam that was made of nougat.

Rapier appeared at my side. She had a gumdrop from the exterior wall.

She held it out.

I looked at it. Then at her.

"The floor’s cleared," she said. "You’re allowed."

I took it.

It tasted like strawberry. It was aggressively good in the way that Tower confectionery always was — calibrated to be the best version of its own flavor, as if the Tower had decided that if it was going to use food as environmental design it was going to do it correctly.

The chat caught it.

💬 KangMinFanatic77: HE ATE IT

💬 SeoulTowerFan: KANG MIN ATE THE GUMDROP

💬 GhostClimber_: HUMANITY RESTORED

💬 Watchdog_KR: this is the best floor I’ve ever watched

💬 TowerWatchKR: he looks like he doesn’t want to admit it’s good

💬 RealMvpStream: he absolutely does not want to admit it’s good

💬 user_48821: it’s good isn’t it Kang Min

💬 KangMinFanatic77: IT’S GOOD AND HE KNOWS IT

The witch caught me looking at her from across the house. She was sitting against a wall that now had a Plate-shaped cavity in it. She looked like someone who had been carrying something heavy for a long time and had just been told to put it down.

"What happens to you now?" I asked.

She thought about it. "I think I stop," she said. "The Tower keeps the guardians going as long as the threat does. If the threat is resolved—" She paused. "I’m not sure. I’ve never gotten here before."

"Do you have a floor pass? A way forward?"

She looked surprised at the question. Then she looked at the exit gate, golden and open at the forest’s edge.

"I don’t know," she said.

I looked at the gate. Then at her.

"Only one way to check," I said.

She stood up slowly. Brushed gingerbread crumbs off her coat. Picked up her wooden spoon — the fire at its tip had gone out, leaving it just a spoon. She looked at it for a moment. Then walked toward the gate with the cautious pace of someone who had been told good news and wasn’t fully trusting it yet.

The gate accepted her.

She stepped through.

The chat went quiet for a single beat.

💬 KangMinFanatic77: ...she made it through

💬 SeoulTowerFan: oh

💬 GhostClimber_: oh that’s good actually

💬 Watchdog_KR: corrupted former climber confirmed. she just needed someone to finish what she couldn’t

💬 RealMvpStream: Floor 27. The floor where we ate a house and freed a guardian

💬 TowerWatchKR: and shoved demons into an oven

💬 user_29441: and Plate ate the cage

💬 KangMinFanatic77: most important detail

I took one last look at the stripped-down, significantly eaten interior of what had been the gingerbread house. The oven was cold now. The cage was empty. Outside, the candy-trees were probably half-dismantled by the climbers who had eaten their way through the forest on the way back to the gate.

This was the furthest anyone from this country had ever climbed.

’Shit...I need to move fast.

I’m nothing close to 100 let alone the 600th floor.’

---

[Floor 27 — CLEARED]

[True Clear: Tactical Deduction — Guardian Alliance — Containment Maintained]

[Climbers Cleared: 89 / 89]

[Bonus: Full Survival — x1.2 additional multiplier]

[South Korea Tower Record: Floor 27]

[LiveStream Viewers at Clear: 3,744,881]

---

💬 KangMinFanatic77: 89/89. EVERYONE MADE IT

💬 SeoulTowerFan: FULL CLEAR

💬 GhostClimber_: after floor 26 taking 83 people... 89/89 on 27

💬 Watchdog_KR: the easy floor after the hard one. Tower design

💬 TowerWatchKR: still. they all made it

💬 RealMvpStream: this is what he does

💬 user_48821: what do you mean

💬 RealMvpStream: he finds the real floor underneath the fake one. every time

💬 KangMinFanatic77: every single time

💬 user_29441: how does he know

💬 RealMvpStream: ...

💬 RealMvpStream: good question