Chapter 221 — Back to the Water
He told Yveth two days before he actually left, mostly because he’d learned by now that surprising her with it never went over well.
"Region Three," she said, not looking up from her ledger. "Again."
"Properly, this time. I’m ready for it."
"You said that last time too."
"I was wrong last time. I’m not wrong now." He sat down across from her, waiting until she finally set the quill aside and looked at him properly. "I’ve spent months making sure of that."
She studied him a long moment, the sharp, assessing look she always gave him before deciding whether to push back or let something go. "How long?"
"I don’t know exactly. Two months, probably. Longer if the floor demands it."
"Two months." She said it flatly, though something behind it wasn’t really about the number. "You know I don’t worry the way I did the first time. I just want you to actually come back in one piece instead of dragging yourself through my door half-dead again."
"I don’t plan on repeating that particular entrance."
"Good plan." She almost smiled. "Go on, then. Pack properly. Eat something before you leave, and not just bread and whatever you can carry standing up."
He ate well that final morning, Rilla setting out a plate without being asked, Pella hovering nearby with the same restless energy she always carried whenever he was about to vanish underground for an extended stretch.
"Bring back something interesting," Pella said. "A story, I mean. Not another injury."
"I’ll try for the first one."
"Try harder for not-the-second."
He packed properly that morning too, and found himself, halfway through loading his usual gear, simply pausing to consider how much of it he didn’t actually need to carry on his back anymore. He set the bulk of it aside — extra rations, a second bedroll, most of his spare supplies — and tucked all of it, piece by piece, into the quiet pocket of space tucked behind his own awareness instead.
Lighter this time. Considerably lighter.
He kept only his sword, a single day’s rations, and his water skin on his actual person, the rest sitting weightless and waiting wherever that strange, borrowed corner of space actually was.
He left the Foxglove with his pack feeling almost empty, and found the walk to the checkpoint carrying none of the nervous weight it once had. The guard checked his badge and clearance mark with the same brisk efficiency as always, and waved him through without comment.
The descent felt different almost immediately.
He moved through Floor One’s wide, familiar corridor at a pace that would have seemed reckless months ago, and found nothing about it actually was. His stride had changed somewhere along the way — not faster exactly, just surer, each step landing with the confidence of someone who’d walked this exact stretch of ground more times than he could easily count.
Floor Two passed in a similar blur of easy, practiced movement. A Blindfang Lizard tested him briefly near the transition point, and he ended the exchange with a single clean strike before the creature had finished deciding whether to commit to its attack at all.
This used to take me considerably longer to clear.
He thought about his very first descent, cautious and uncertain, checking every shadow twice before trusting it. He thought about Reya’s old advice, Torv’s careful lessons, the whole long accumulation of small, hard-won competence that had settled into him so gradually he’d barely noticed it happening.
Floor Three’s rougher cavern passed the same way, the goblin colony’s old territory quiet and undisturbed as he moved through it, no need to engage anything that didn’t actively block his path. He crossed Floor Four’s wide, root-tangled chamber at a steady, unhurried clip, Water Sovereignty handling a Mudscale Crocodile that surfaced near his route with an ease that would have been unthinkable a year earlier.
He made camp that first night just past Floor Five’s edge, and pulled a proper bedroll out of the stored space rather than unpacking anything from his back — the small, simple convenience still enough to make him grin a little every time he used it.
Five floors in a single day. That used to take me the better part of a week, moving carefully.
He wrote a brief entry before sleep, more out of habit than any real need to record much.
First day back toward Region Three. Floors One through Five cleared without serious difficulty — nothing that even properly tested me. I think I understand now, in a way I only partially grasped before, exactly how much the past months actually built.
He slept deeply, and woke the next morning to a body that felt rested rather than merely recovered, and pressed on with the same steady, confident pace.
Floor Six’s water pocket barely registered as an obstacle, Gillbreath settling into his lungs the moment he needed it, no transition at all. Floor Seven’s oppressive scale still impressed him properly, the Deeproot Guardian’s known territory given the same wide, deliberate berth he always offered it, though he noticed, passing it, that the old unease he’d once carried past that stretch of ground had softened into something closer to respectful caution rather than genuine fear.
Still not ready for that. But considerably less far from it than I used to be.
Floor Eight and Nine took him the better part of the remaining week, ground he’d walked and fought through so thoroughly months ago that very little of it surprised him, though the sheer scale of both floors still demanded proper, unhurried travel rather than anything faster. He crossed paths with a lone Ironhide Troll near the old mining chamber where he’d once fought the Ironhorn Minotaur’s distant cousin, and ended the fight in considerably less time than the memory suggested it should have taken.
He reached the ramp down to Floor Ten exactly seven days after leaving the surface, the familiar, warm, impossible light spilling down from above well before he’d actually cleared the final stretch.
He stepped into the settlement’s ordinary noise, and found himself genuinely struck, for just a moment, by how different this arrival felt from every previous one. No exhaustion dragging at his legs. No urgent need for rest before he could properly function. Just the plain, satisfied tiredness of ground properly covered, same as any traveler reaching a waypoint on an ordinary road.
He bought a meal at the same stall he always favored, and found the vendor recognizing him this time.
"You’re the solo one," the vendor said, sliding a portion across. "Haven’t seen you in a while."
"Been busy up top."
"Looks like it did you good." The vendor studied him a moment, the same frank, unbothered assessment everyone down here seemed to offer. "Heading back into Three?"
"Tomorrow. Figured I’d actually rest here tonight first, for once, instead of pushing straight through."
"Smart. Most people learn that the hard way, same as you probably did."
He ate slowly, settled on the same low bench he always favored, watching the settlement breathe around him exactly as it always had, and found a room at the inn once evening properly settled in, paying for a night’s rest without the usual urgency of a body running on fumes.
He lay there a long while before sleep took him, turning over the week’s steady progress with quiet satisfaction, and thought, drifting off, about everything still waiting past the ramp ahead — the same flooded stretch that had nearly ended him once, now his to properly, finally walk on his own terms, with a full night’s rest behind him rather than exhaustion pressing at his back.