Tower Zero: The Bottom Floor. Tower Zero Saga, #1

The System abandoned this world five hundred years ago. The towers stand silent. The dungeons sleep. On the Bottom Floor of Tower Zero, something wakes up with no name, no memories, and no purpose - except the warning etched into its own stone: Do not let them find you. It learns quickly. No notifications. No stats. No second chances. Just essence, density, and the slow work of becoming something more. Then the refugees come. Broken people fleeing a hunter that has exterminated every core it finds.
They don't want loot. They want safety. And the core discovers a truth that changes everything: it can protect them. But every soul it bonds makes it stronger - and easier to track. Now the hunter is learning to follow soul traces. The Purifiers are investigating. And the core faces a choice it was never meant to make: hide forever and watch them die, or fight a war it cannot win to save the family it never expected to find. TOWER ZERO is a dungeon core LitRPG where the real progression isn't levels.
It's connection.