Ethan spawns on Floor Zero with nothing but rags and a countdown timer. The system offers no weapons, no tutorials, and no mercy. He faces a juvenile Ulfen that treats him as prey, realizes blunt force fails against its skull, and deliberately takes a pounce to the chest so he can stab a bone shard into its throat. The kill unlocks Beast Assimilation and ten mana, but the skill drains him fast and leaves him starving. He learns quickly that beast meat accelerates recovery and bumps his base stats, turning survival into a gruesome feeding loop. He hides in trees to conserve energy, gets swarmed by monkey beasts that treat him like a toy, and survives night encounters by triggering assimilation for sensory edges. The trial escalates when a pack of mature Ulfens tracks him. He howls to trick them into fighting a Graveback Bear, escapes the clearing, but runs straight into the surviving wolves. They recognize the deception, pin him to the dirt, and eat him alive while the timer shows twelve hours remaining. The system flashes errors as his vision blacks out, then he jolts awake in the basement with a wolf tattoo and a congratulations screen. The tower reveals the truth. He failed the objective, but as the final candidate who survived past three hours, the system cut its losses and granted the title anyway. He now holds an S rank summoning skill and a second beast slot, but his first summon materializes as a hyperactive infant that smashes into wine crates just as heavy footsteps descend the stairs. Mark is coming down, and Ethan has no way to explain the wreckage or the power humming under his skin.

Ethan stops waiting for luck and uses a daily Tower Token to enter Floor One voluntarily. The Rocky Plains bake under a blinding yellow sky with no sun, no shade, and no weapons provided. He summons infant Wolfy, immediately gets chased by a rock armored Lithoserpent, and realizes direct combat is suicide. He adapts by exploiting terrain, dismisses his beast to save mana, and sprints until the worm loses interest. He hunts a Skyrend Hawk next, acquires it as Talon, and uses its vision assimilation to spot threats through heat distortion. The grind becomes systematic. He feeds beast meat to his summons to accelerate growth, dumps reward stat points into mana to extend skill duration, and learns Beast Link to coordinate attacks without verbal commands. He pushes toward the floor center and finds the Boss Beast, a twenty meter Lithoserpent Burrower that shatters stone with its body. His bait strategy collapses when the boss clamps his left arm and grinds bone to splinters. He screams through the decimation, uses Wolfy and Talon to knock the serpent onto a jagged stone spike, and secures the kill. His arm is ruined, but he refuses the ascent prompt. He stays to let his beasts feast on the boss corpse, knowing the tower resets physical damage upon re entry. The gamble pays off. His beasts jump in rank, his mana pool expands, and his combat instincts harden into muscle memory. The tower has turned him into a legitimate threat for an E rank, but reality demands cash and official clearance. He steps back into Brooklyn with a hidden S rank skill and a hunger for gate payouts, unaware that a routine C rank raid is about to seal its entrance and spike to B rank difficulty.

Ethan joins a Brooklyn C rank gate raid for quick cash, but the moment the squad steps inside, the entrance vanishes and a system voice announces a Gate Takeover. Difficulty spikes to B rank. The cavern splits into tunnels, and veteran Titled groups march in with flashlights and formation drills. Ethan gets paired with a trembling red eyed A rank girl who radiates zero intimidation. They push forward until the tunnel collapses and they fall into a breeding ground, crushing sticky ant eggs underfoot. The swarm responds instantly. D rank Earthshard Ants flood the chamber, and Ethan realizes conventional fighting will get them buried. He activates Talon assimilation for wide vision, uses Beast Call to draw the horde, and runs. When the Ant Queen emerges and corners them, he makes a desperate gamble and triggers the girl latent entity. A crimson aura detonates. The possessed A rank moves at blinding speed, catches a charging commander mid strike, and slams it into the ground until it stops twitching. The power burns her out fast, leaving her comatose, but the slaughter clears a path. Ethan dismisses his beasts to conserve mana, drags the unconscious A rank and a battered B rank spearman toward the exit, and gets ambushed by a hostile C rank Titled named Rina who wants his loot. He feigns surrender, lets her draw her bow, and summons Wolfy directly behind her. The Ulfen tears through her guard, and Ethan executes her to complete a system objective demanding a hostile Titled death. He stumbles out of the gate dragging two high ranks and a bloodied spear, stepping straight into a media frenzy and Association containment teams. The payout is secured, but the demon host waking up beside him has already decided she is not leaving his side.

Ethan collects his gate earnings at the Association branch and forces the red eyed girl to take physical cash to avoid digital tracking. The move draws attention. Detective Holt intercepts him earlier in the lobby, closes the distance in a blink, and drops a suffocating aura that warps his shadow into a monstrous silhouette. Holt probes him with linguistic variants of his title, catches the micro flinch, and correctly guesses Lord of Beasts from scent and reaction. Ethan plays dumb, reveals only beast assimilation, and walks out with an E rank ID that masks his S rank summoning skill. The street hierarchy offers no such subtlety. Mace, a hardened Titled gangster, lifts Ethan by the throat outside a bodega, shrugs off a full force punch to the chin, and warns him to stay out of Brooklyn operations. Ethan swallows the humiliation, knowing his tower grind will close the gap, and retreats to the Black Howl. He brings the A rank girl, Elara, down to the basement. Mark confronts him over his disappearance and shifting demeanor, fearing the Title is erasing the brother he knew. Ethan diffuses the tension with a familiar grapple, hands cash to Clarissa to settle old debts, and grounds his supernatural ascent in street level loyalty. The basement is no longer a hideout. With a demon host sleeping on his air mattress, a Bloodhound tracking his title, and a gangster controlling the borough, Ethan low rank facade is a ticking clock. His next tower run will not just be about stats. It will be about surviving the crossfire closing in from every direction.