My Charity System made me too OP

The man circled, trying to reset the rhythm.

Leon matched his steps, never letting the space widen.

A faint twitch in the man's shoulder telegraphed the next move.

Leon moved first.

He closed the gap in a single stride, deflecting the incoming strike with his forearm.

The clash rang sharp, but Leon was already inside the man's guard.

A short, precise elbow to the chest knocked the wind out of him.

The man staggered.

Leon followed, hooking his ankle behind the man's leg and shoving forward.

The impact rattled the floor.

This time, Leon pressed his boot against the man's chest before he could rise.

"Enough," Leon said flatly.

The man froze, eyes narrowed, then gave a sharp nod.

"…You've passed."

The pressure in the air faded, and the onlookers around the edge of the platform murmured quietly.

Leon stepped back, already glancing toward the far gate that led deeper into the tower.

Leon didn't waste time after the council chamber.

The next floor gate shimmered in front of him—no guards, no ceremony, just a faint hum that told him it was waiting.

The rest of the team caught up. Roselia looked at him like she was expecting a speech, but Leon just stepped through.

They emerged into a plain courtyard of white stone. The air here felt clean, sharp, but heavy in a way that pressed on their lungs.

A few figures were scattered around, training. Not sparring—training. Each movement shook the air, bent the light, made the ground respond.

One of them stopped mid-strike and looked over. His eyes lingered on Leon for barely a second before returning to his routine.

Milim frowned. "They're ignoring us?"

"No," Naval said quietly. "They're measuring us."

Leon didn't slow down. There was no welcome, no guide, just the sense that everything here ran on silent rules.

Rules you either understood, or you didn't belong.

Somewhere ahead, the next trial would appear. But unlike the lower floors, it wouldn't announce itself.

Leon just kept walking. The others followed.

The floor would test them soon enough.

They walked until the courtyard gave way to a network of narrow walkways suspended over nothing.

No walls. No rails. Just a thin strip of stone stretching forward, curving in strange patterns.

Far below, there was no ground—only a slow swirl of black and silver mist.

Halfway across the first span, a sharp tone rang in Leon's head.

A voice—not human—spoke directly into his mind.

"Proceed without hesitation. Stopping is failure."

Before he could answer, a section of the path behind them crumbled away into the mist.

Roselia's eyes widened. "It's a moving collapse."

Leon didn't turn around. "Then we don't stop."

They broke into a run.

The walkways began to shift under their feet—stone plates sliding sideways, tilting, even flipping entirely. Some led back to where they started, some into dead ends that disintegrated instantly.

From somewhere in the mist below, thin spears of light shot upward, cutting through paths at random.

Naval cursed under his breath. "They're trying to make us think too much."

"They want instinct," Leon said. "Keep moving, adjust only when it's in front of you. Don't plan more than two steps ahead."

One wrong turn sent Milim toward a section that started breaking apart immediately, but Leon grabbed her arm, swung her back, and they kept moving.

The path narrowed until it was barely the width of one foot.

The voice returned.

"One among you must jump."

They all looked at each other.

Leon didn't hesitate. He stepped forward and leapt off the walkway into the mist.

The fall wasn't a fall.

The instant Leon's body sank into the mist, his momentum stopped, and the world around him inverted.

The mist became a floor, solid under his feet, while the walkways above flipped into the ceiling, their stone slabs hanging upside down like some strange chandelier.

The others were gone.

In front of him stood a single figure—tall, wearing a half-mask of polished black glass. Their presence was heavy, like the air itself had been weighed down.

"You jumped without knowing," the masked figure said. Their voice echoed strangely, as if multiple versions of it overlapped. "Do you trust fate that much?"

"I don't trust fate," Leon replied. "I trust that standing still here is worse than moving forward."

The masked figure tilted their head. "Forward then."

They raised their hand, and the mist-floor between them split into shifting tiles, each one glowing with symbols Leon didn't recognize. Some pulsed slowly, others flickered fast.

"One wrong step ends the trial."

Leon crouched, scanning the patterns. The flickering tiles were too irregular to predict—they were traps. The slower ones synced, faintly, to his heartbeat.

He exhaled, then stepped onto one.

The tile dimmed, and the next in line lit up.

The masked figure began walking as well—mirroring him from the other side. The gap between them closed with every move.

Leon realized something unsettling—if they landed on the same tile at the same time, there would be no space for both.

Which meant one of them would have to move off-pattern.

And off-pattern probably meant death.

Leon didn't slow.

The glowing path ahead shifted faster now, the tiles pulsing like a heartbeat in panic. The masked figure matched his every move—perfectly in sync, like a reflection that had learned how to walk toward him instead of away.

The gap was down to five tiles.

Four.

Three.

Leon's mind raced. If he tried to skip a step, he'd land on a flickering tile and be done. If he hesitated, the figure would force him into a collision.

Two tiles left.

The masked figure's steps were almost soundless, but the air around them shimmered—pressure building, like the tile they'd meet on wasn't a floor at all, but a blade waiting to close.

Leon's eyes narrowed. He activated Timeline Drift, letting the rhythm of the tiles blur. In that half-phase state, the pulsing slowed just enough for him to see the micro-delays between the flickers.

At the final tile, both he and the figure stepped forward—

—but Leon stepped half a beat late.

His foot touched the tile just after the masked figure's, passing through its surface before the trap could trigger. For an instant, it felt like walking through water—then he emerged on the other side, the figure behind him.

The masked figure didn't turn. They just said:

"…So you've walked a path not meant for you."

The mist around them dissolved, revealing a massive archway of obsidian ahead.

Leon stepped toward it.

"You've passed the Gate of Parity," the masked figure said. "The next floor won't give you mirrors."