My Charity System made me too OP

Floor 400 – Relay Core Perimeter Zone

Everything was moving.

Even the walls.

Not breathing. Not alive.

Pulsing.

The moment they crossed into the Choir's Spiral Relay, the laws of rhythm changed. The Tower's baseline pulse—once clean and steady—now danced to a spiraling beat. Every corridor curved. Every corner echoed twice. And time itself felt just a little... wrong.

"Sector map is useless," Kael muttered, swiping his hand through a flickering hologram. "This place isn't looping. It's curling."

"Like a song winding tighter," Roselia added, her eyes scanning the glyph-warped floor.

Aris took the lead, baton extended, motion smooth and slow. "Then we move like we're in a spiral. Center's the core. That's where we end it."

They moved in a tight formation—quiet, deliberate.

Until the lights changed.

First white.

Then blue.

Then black.

And then came the sound.

Not an alarm.

A chorus.

Faint, dissonant voices humming in unison.

The Spiral Hymn.

Contact.

Three Choir constructs rounded the far bend—twisted humanoid forms with elongated arms and inverted joints. They moved without footfalls, floating on soundwaves.

"Echo Walkers," Kael whispered. "They phase between beats. Only visible when they breathe in."

"Then hit them when they exhale," Aris said.

Leon nodded, unsheathing dual blades. "Finally. Something I can stab."

Combat engaged.

Leon vanished into motion—ducking low, slicing upward. His blades passed through one Walker harmlessly as it faded—then caught the second as it pulsed into phase, slicing it in half with a burst of harmonic energy.

Roselia launched a counter-beat seal, slamming two more Walkers into the wall as they tried to flicker-step past her. She followed up with a burnwave glyph, etching it mid-air with a flick of her wrist. The pulse detonated on sync, clearing the hall.

Aris moved straight through the chaos, baton spinning, striking only when the enemy's rhythm broke. Her movements were sharp, precise—each strike rewrote their tempo and shattered their cohesion.

Kael stayed near the rear, broadcasting interference bursts that staggered the enemies' phasing rhythm—like slamming static into a perfect song.

Within ninety seconds, the corridor fell silent again.

Echo Walkers: down.

But not gone.

Their remains disintegrated into black mist that swirled upward… toward the ceiling.

"Feedback loop," Kael said grimly. "The Spiral's pulling energy from every unit we kill."

Aris wiped her baton on her coat. "Then we don't give it time to recycle."

They pushed deeper.

The closer they got to the center, the more warped the world became.

Ceilings twisted like coiled wires. Doors shrank or grew depending on tempo. Roselia nearly stepped through a passage that wasn't there two seconds later.

"This is a rhythm weapon," she said. "The floor itself is built to kill anything out of sync."

And then—

They heard the voice.

Faint.

Melodic.

"Come closer."

Not hostile.

Not aggressive.

Inviting.

Leon froze mid-step. "Tell me I imagined that."

Kael checked his readings. "It's everywhere. Center-pulse broadcast across every surface. It's not just playing a signal—it is the signal."

Aris narrowed her eyes. "That's not the Choir. That's a person."

Roselia whispered, "Another Conductor?"

"No," Kael said.

He turned the display toward them.

One life sign.

Human baseline.

Pulse rating: 95/95.

Location: Center Spiral.

"It's not another Conductor," he said.

"It's the Original."

Floor 400 – Final Perimeter Layer, ~300m from the Core

Every hallway now pulsed in unnatural ways—walls flickering like memory shards, floor panels rearranging themselves mid-step. Even the air shimmered with residual beat distortions, creating low-frequency hums that tugged at the back of their minds.

Kael's voice cracked over the internal comms. "I'm losing the map entirely. The Tower's orientation is collapsing into a single rhythm vector. If I'm reading this right—gravity's curving toward the Spiral Core."

Roselia crouched low, drawing a glyph seal on the ground. "Then we stick together. One misstep and we could fall upward."

Leon grunted. "Not a fan of floors that forget they're floors."

Aris kept her gaze forward. "No distractions. Everything after this is designed to break sync. If the Spiral can't kill us, it'll try to confuse us."

They moved in tight formation.

That's when the mirror corridor appeared.

It stretched ahead: a perfect reflection of them. Not just in shape—but in motion.

Every step mirrored.

Every blink, matched.

Kael raised a hand—and his reflection copied perfectly.

"Okay," he whispered. "I really don't like this."

Suddenly, the reflections broke sync—just one beat off.

Then two.

Then they attacked.

Perfect duplicates of the team, twisted by Choir energy, surged from the mirror corridor.

No hesitation.

Just precision.

Roselia blocked a bolt of her own seal-tech from a mirrored version of herself. "We're fighting our own tempo shadows!"

Leon roared as he clashed swords with a copy that moved just a fraction faster than him—barely enough to keep him off rhythm.

Kael ducked behind a crumbling console, trying to find a counterbeat.

"Originals—build a new sync point!" he shouted.

Aris slammed her baton into the mirrored version of herself. Their eyes locked. Cold. Mechanical.

And then—

She dropped her rhythm entirely.

Faked a misstep.

The mirror Aris overcompensated—and exposed a hole.

Real Aris struck hard—shattering the copy in a burst of collapsing tempo.

"Shift rhythm!" she yelled. "Go erratic—break your own beat!"

Leon blinked. "For once, I love chaos!"

He dropped into a wild, off-beat style—sloppy but unpredictable. His copy faltered. He took it down with a slash and a boot to the head.

Roselia rewrote her seal pattern mid-cast, causing her mirror-self's counter to explode in reverse.

Kael used the brief opening to overload the hallway projector—severing the illusion entirely.

The mirrors cracked.

The last echoes faded.

Silence again.

But it didn't feel like victory.

Not yet.

Just ahead: The Spiral Gate.

A circular opening stood in a domed chamber—glowing black and gold, shifting patterns across its edges.

A single choir sigil pulsed at its center.

They stepped close.

And a voice echoed through the entire chamber.

No longer faint.

No longer kind.

"Welcome to the center of the Spiral. Your rhythm ends here."

Kael's scanner blinked red.

Roselia's sealband froze.

Leon raised his blades.

Aris said nothing.

She stepped forward—

—and the gate opened.

Inside:

The Spiral Core was vast. A cathedral of noise and light and contradiction.

Walls folded into themselves.

Choir symbols floated mid-air like punctuation marks in a song with no melody.

And in the center…

A figure stood alone.

Human.

Tall.

Unmasked.

Wearing a long coat threaded with harmonic conduits—each pulsing in sync with the Spiral itself.

They turned.

Eyes glowing with rhythm flame.

Kael whispered, "That's not Daen."

Aris stepped forward, voice low.

"No. That's the one who created Daen."

The figure raised a hand—no malice, no anger.

Just invitation.

"Step forward," the Original said, their voice layered with multiple tempos. "If you survive me, you may ask your question. If not... your song ends in silence."

Aris gripped her baton.

Leon tensed.

Roselia's seals began to glow.

Kael started syncing the suppression counterbeat.

This was it.