Chapter 247: Convergence

The factory floor dissolved into light.

Nathan didn’t even have time to shout. One second he was standing on grated iron. The next, the floor was gone, the walls were gone, the whole damn factory was gone. And he was falling through a void of silver and green.

Then he landed.

On popcorn.

He sat up. Looked down. He was sitting in a seat. An actual stadium seat. The kind with the fold-up bottom and the cup holder attached to the armrest.

"What the—"

He looked around.

It was the stadium. The exact stadium they’d been fighting in before the Tower swallowed them whole. The same banners. The same screens. The same thousands of seats stretching in every direction.

Except everything was wrong.

The banners were melting. Literally melting, dripping down the walls like wax. The screens flickered with static, showing fragments of images—a child’s face, a woman’s smile, a man’s scream—before cutting to black. The seats were warped, twisted, stretched like someone had grabbed the whole stadium and pulled.

And the aisles were full of people.

They had no faces. Just smooth, blank skin where a face should be. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Sitting in the seats. Standing in the aisles. Wandering around like they were waiting for something.

[You have entered Layer 5] ℯ

"Yeah, I noticed," Nathan muttered.

---

The rest of the raid party appeared around him. One by one. Popping into existence like they’d been dropped from the sky.

Garrett landed in a seat two rows down. Red appeared in his lap. The Mad-Sheep did not appreciate this.

"Get off, Red. Off!"

Dillon appeared upside down. He crashed into the row behind Nathan, then rolled onto the floor. Cloudy materialized on his chest and immediately started crackling with panic.

Elise landed gracefully in the aisle. Because of course she did. The Frost Golem appeared beside her, took one look at the melting stadium, and made a sound like grinding ice.

Kaito appeared with his sword already drawn. Arthur appeared with his shield up. Han Seo-jun appeared halfway inside a seat, which was awkward.

Amara appeared at the top of the stairs. Her spirits swirled around her, agitated, whispering.

Smithy appeared in the front row. He adjusted his glasses, looked around, and pulled out his notebook.

"Nathan," Elise said. She was staring at the faceless crowd. "These people."

"I know."

"They’re memories."

"I know."

Amara walked down the stairs. Her spirits were darting between the faceless figures, passing through them like smoke. Her expression was tight.

"The souls being processed," she said. "This is their memory. Their lives. All of it, just... echoing."

Nathan activated [Hunter’s Insight].

Big mistake.

The layer lit up in his vision. Thousands of threads. Thousands of memories. A boy playing with a dog. A woman laughing at a joke. A father teaching his daughter to ride a bike. A first kiss. A last goodbye.

It was beautiful. It was horrible. And it was loud. So loud his head felt like it was going to split open.

He cut the skill off. "We need to move."

"Which way?" Kaito asked.

Smithy pointed. "Down. The threads converge downward. Follow the souls, find the core."

"Then let’s go."

---

They moved through the faceless crowd.

The echoes didn’t attack them. They just stood there. Murmuring. Occasionally turning their blank faces to track the raid party as they passed. It was worse than being attacked. It was like walking through a graveyard where the dead kept watching.

Then they heard footsteps.

Nathan held up a fist. The raid party stopped.

Ahead, in a section of the stadium that had been stretched into a long, distorted tunnel, seven figures were crouched over a cluster of pods.

Blue skin. Small black horns.

The grey-robed cultists.

They weren’t wearing robes anymore. Their hoods were gone. Nathan could see their faces—sharp features, pupil-less eyes, expressions ranging from cold to terrified.

They were harvesting.

Silver-green threads were being pulled from the pods, fed into a device that pulsed with pale blue light. The same light as the crystals. The same light as the Tower.

Goliath stood at the center. Watching. Rell was beside him, holding the device. And Shinny was at the back.

Her hands were shaking.

"Guys..." Nathan said quietly. "On me. Nobody attacks until I say."

---

Goliath saw them coming.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t draw a weapon. Just straightened up and turned to face them like he’d been expecting this all along.

"The so called Bunny King," he said. "I was wondering when we’d meet."

"You know me?"

"Everyone knows you." Goliath gestured at the raid party. "The Archer who killed the Shepherd. The one who cleared the Masterclass Origin

The one who’s now trapped in a Tower of my making."

"Your making?"

"My ritual. My Tower. My Lord." Goliath smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. "You’re welcome, by the way. You and your little party are going to be part of the fuel."

Kaito drew his sword. Arthur raised his shield. Garrett’s knuckles went white on Volcan.

Nathan didn’t move.

"What are you doing to those people?"

"Harvesting." Goliath gestured at the pods. "The Tower’s soul-forge is efficient, but slow. My device accelerates the process. Every memory we extract, every soul-thread we feed into the core, brings the Lord closer to completion."

[Lord Creation Progress: 56%]

"We’re at 56% now. By the time we’re done, we’ll have saved ourselves months of waiting."

"Saved yourselves months," Nathan repeated. "While you kill thousands of people."

"They’re... already dead," Goliath said. "They were dead the moment the Tower formed. The only question is whether their deaths serve a purpose. And they do. They serve us. They serve Me."

"That’s bullshit," Dillon said.

"It’s survival."

"It’s murder."

Goliath’s eyes flicked to Dillon. Then back to Nathan. "You brought a comedian to a rescue mission?"

"He’s not wrong," Nathan said. "You’re murdering people."

"I’m saving people. My people. The last remnants of a world that Babel destroyed." Goliath’s voice was flat. "You think I want to do this? You think I enjoy harvesting souls? I don’t. But my species is dying, Bunny King. And I will do whatever it takes to make sure we don’t go extinct."

"Even if it means becoming the thing you hate?"

Goliath didn’t answer.

---

Shinny stepped forward.

"We shouldn’t be doing this," she said. Her voice was quiet. But it carried.

Goliath turned. "Shinny."

"They’re not just fuel. They’re people. They have families. They have—"

"Shinny." Goliath’s voice was harder now. "We’ve discussed this."

"We discussed the Lord. We didn’t discuss this." She gestured at the pods. At the faceless echoes. At the silver-green threads being ripped from unconscious bodies. "This is what Babel did to us. This is what the Towers did to our world. We’re becoming the thing we swore to destroy."

Goliath’s jaw tightened. "Our world is dead. Our people are dead. There is no ’thing we swore to destroy.’ There is only survival. And this..."

he gestured at the Tower.

"...this is how we survive."

"By killing thousands?"

"By surviving." Goliath’s eyes were hard. "Do you have another suggestion? Should we lie down and die out? Should we let our species vanish from existence because we were too moral to save ourselves?"

Shinny didn’t answer.

Amara stepped up beside Nathan. Her spirits had stopped swirling. They were focused on the pods. On the souls being harvested.

"Their memories," she said quietly. "I can feel them. They’re screaming. The threads being pulled—they’re not just being extracted. They’re being torn. These people aren’t dead. They’re being unmade."

Goliath glanced at her. "The Spirit Hunter. I’ve heard of you. You people commune with spirits. You understand the value of sacrifice."

"This isn’t sacrifice. This is murder."

"Semantics."

Kaito stepped forward. "You’re not walking out of here."

Goliath didn’t move. But Rell did.

He raised the device. And the shadows behind him shifted.

Constructs. Dozens of them. Sleeker than the ones in the factory. Faster. Their armor was lined with pale blue energy—the same tech as the blue-skinned faction.

Nathan counted. Thirty. Forty. More.

"You brought an army," he said.

"I brought a guarantee." Goliath smiled. "I knew you’d come. I knew you’d interfere. I planned for it."

Arthur stepped up beside Nathan. "What’s the play?"

Nathan looked at the pods. At the device. At the army of constructs. At Goliath. At Shinny, still standing at the back, her hands shaking.

Then the ground shook.

Not from the constructs. From something else. Something deeper.

The faceless crowd in the stands turned as one. Their blank heads tilted toward the center of the arena. Their murmuring stopped.

And then, from below the cracked glass ceiling, something rose.

---

It was massive.

Built of silver-green threads. Humanoid but not human. Its body was a lattice of memories, faces flickering across its surface like reflections in water. It had no face of its own. Just a blank spot where a face should be.

[DING! Layer Guardian Detected: Memory Giant]

The Memory Giant raised its hand.

It didn’t attack. It just stood there, its body humming with the thousands of souls it was made of.

And every soul was screaming.

"It’s the guardian," Smithy said. "The layer’s defense mechanism."

"It’s not attacking," Dillon said.

"Yet...," Nathan said.

Goliath’s smile faded. For the first time, he looked uncertain.

"Memory Giant?" he said quietly. "Could this be... a fragment of the Lord’s consciousness?."

"It’s looking at us" Smithy said agitated.

The giant turned. Its blank face swept over the raid party, over the blue-skinned faction, over the pods, over the threads. Then it spoke.

Its voice was not one voice. It was thousands. Thousands of voices speaking in unison.

"WHY."

The word echoed. The stadium shook.

"WHY ARE YOU HERE."

Goliath took a step back. Rell raised the device higher.

"WHY ARE YOU TAKING THEM FROM ME."

The giant raised both hands. The threads around it—the ones being harvested, the ones being extracted, the ones feeding the soul-forge—began to pulse. Faster. Angrier.

"THEY ARE MINE."

The constructs didn’t attack. The raid party didn’t attack. Nobody moved.

Because The Giant wasn’t looking at the raid party.

It was looking at Goliath.