My Charity System made me too OP

Tower Level 401 – Private Operations Deck

The chamber was dim.

Only one screen glowed—a map overlay showing the descending spiral. It pulsed like a wound. A door that had stayed sealed for who knew how long. And Leon was the one staring it down.

Aris leaned against the far wall, quiet.

Kael reviewed his tablet again, still double-checking for failsafes.

Roselia stood at the center console, adjusting her seal interface.

But it was Leon's voice that broke the silence.

"All right. We're going in."

Three sets of eyes turned toward him.

He didn't flinch.

"We've cleared the known. Spiral's down. Core's gone. That thing beneath us? It's not just another floor. It's something the Tower was built on—and built to forget."

Kael spoke first. "It's not mapped. No elevation sync, no support systems. It could be infinite."

Leon turned his gaze toward him. "Then we map it as we go."

Roselia arched a brow. "And if it's alive?"

Leon's voice was calm. "Then we fight until it stops breathing."

He looked at Aris last.

She gave a nod.

No words.

That was all he needed.

Descent Chamber – Substructure Access Shaft

The elevator was nothing like the rest of the Tower.

Old.

Mechanical.

Chains groaned and twisted like bones. Dust drifted like ancient ash. No rhythm lights. No pulses.

Leon stood at the front of the platform, arms crossed, eyes fixed downward.

Kael adjusted the side controls. "Thirty seconds until breach."

Roselia double-checked her glyphs.

Aris locked her baton across her back, then stepped beside Leon. "You sure you want to lead this part?"

Leon didn't look at her.

"I didn't break half the Choir and lose half my team just to stop when we hit dirt."

A beat passed.

Then the elevator jerked—

—and began its descent into The Hollow.

Substructure One: The Hollow

It was like stepping into a graveyard.

The metal became stone.

The lights? None.

Just bioluminescent fungi and scattered pieces of broken tech. Corpses long since rotted down to armor scraps were strewn across ancient floors.

Roselia scanned the environment. "No pulse. Nothing on comms. Like this place is outside the Tower's network."

"Because it is," Kael whispered. "We're beneath the architecture. This place wasn't built by system protocols."

Leon crouched beside a shattered Choir helmet, picking it up and turning it over.

"This one's old. Pre-rhythm tech."

He stood, voice steady. "Keep formation. Two wide, one shadow. Aris, take rearguard."

No one questioned him.

They advanced through twisted tunnels where machinery had turned into bone.

Cries echoed down from the deeper shaft.

Not human.

Not Choir.

Something else.

Leon raised a fist. The group froze.

Then it came—sliding out of the darkness like a ripple in flesh.

A thing of metal and sinew. No face. Just a pulsing core in its chest.

Kael's eyes widened. "That's not a Choir unit. That's…"

"Tower junk come to life," Roselia muttered.

"No," Leon said. "That's what's left of the first Ascenders."

It turned its head—no mouth—and screamed with the frequency of a corrupted sealwave.

Leon didn't wait.

"Formation four. I take point!"

He charged.

The Hollow Awakes

The battle was brutal.

Leon struck fast—cleaving through the corrupted unit's outer shell—but the thing kept moving even with half its chest ripped open.

Roselia pinned it with binding glyphs, but they burned off in seconds.

Aris covered the back, taking down two smaller crawler constructs that emerged from the wall.

Kael began decoding its rhythm pattern—"This one's synced to a decaying system loop—it keeps resetting itself! We need to kill it all at once!"

Leon growled, "Then we overwhelm it."

He switched his stance.

Feet planted. Arms raised. A low hum began to build in his chest.

"Kael," he called, "channel the spiral residue through my blade."

"You'll burn out."

"Do it."

A beat passed.

Then Kael shouted, "Done!"

Leon's sword lit up with a deep black-and-gold glow—the same color as the Spiral Core.

With a shout, he slammed it into the creature's chest—

BOOM.

The shockwave blew the others back.

When the dust cleared, the Hollow was silent again.

Leon stood at the center, chest rising and falling, blade buried in the floor.

Kael looked around.

"I think… you just broadcast a signature the whole Hollow felt."

Roselia added, "Let's hope we didn't wake something worse."

Aris stepped forward and said nothing.

Just stood beside Leon.

Together, they looked down into the deeper dark.

Another passage had opened.

Downward.

Endless.

Leon exhaled.

And said, "We keep going."

Substructure One – The Hollow, Depth Sector B

The air grew thicker the deeper they went.

Not with pressure or sound.

With heat.

It clung to their skin. Drenched their gear. Made the steel floor beneath them hiss with every step.

"This is no longer Choir," Kael said, wiping sweat from his brow. "No rhythm distortions. No synthetic signatures. The energy here is... raw."

Leon moved ahead, squinting into the darkness beyond their light orbs. "Raw like the planet itself."

Roselia stepped beside a fractured wall and pressed her hand to it. A deep rumble resonated beneath her palm. She pulled back with a hiss. "The stone is alive."

Aris said nothing but unlatched her weapon anyway.

They kept walking.

Then the tunnel opened.

A vast chamber. A crater buried in the Hollow.

At its center, a molten pool churned, surrounded by black stone spires and obsidian shards. Scorched remains—neither metal nor Choir—lay scattered near the rim.

Kael's scan blinked. "This place predates the Tower."

"How do you know?" Leon asked.

"Because the signal it's putting off isn't artificial. It's… elemental."

Just as he said it—

The molten pool surged.

A pillar of flame erupted skyward—and from within it rose a colossal figure of magma and armor, veins of glowing gold pulsing through cracked obsidian skin.

It had no eyes. No mouth. Only a chest core—pulsing like a heart of fire.

Leon stepped forward instinctively.

And the thing spoke directly into his mind.

"Your kind built your kingdom atop my prison."

"Now the fire remembers."

The creature raised a molten arm—and the chamber shook.

Kael shouted, "It's a core elemental! An original! We're standing in a sealed forge-cradle—!"

Leon didn't wait.

"FORM UP!"