Chapter 222 — Eleventh Floor, Properly
The waters past Floor Ten’s ramp carried the same mineral-heavy cold he remembered, and Arlen let Gillbreath settle into his lungs the moment he waded in, the transition so familiar now it barely registered as a transition at all.
He swam toward the stretch he remembered best — not out of any need to prove something, just the plain fact that it was the most direct route back into Region III’s deeper water.
This is close to where it caught me.
He noted the thought without letting it slow him. The kelp forest opened ahead, dim and drifting, and within the hour a shape cut through the water toward him with the quick, darting urgency of something hunting rather than merely patrolling.
A Flood Serpent, considerably smaller than the one that had given him Riverblade months ago, closed the distance fast.
He met it without hesitation, Water Sovereignty redirecting its first strike into open water, and finished it with a single committed cut before it had properly recovered its bearing.
That’s it?
He turned the body over once, confirming the kill, and found himself almost disappointed by how little effort it had cost him. He remembered a creature just like this one testing him badly, the first time he’d come through here with Ilyana’s team at his back and nothing solid of his own to draw on.
He pressed deeper, and the pattern held.
A Prismatic Serpent crossed his path an hour later, its confusing scatter of refracted light no match for Hunter’s Eye’s clean, cutting awareness. Two strikes ended it, clean and economical, nothing like the careful, multi-step fights his memory insisted this creature demanded.
A cluster of Deepwater Leeches swarmed him near a cracked outcrop, more numerous than the guild bestiary suggested was typical, and he cleared the whole knot of them with a single pass of Emberstorm’s gathered heat, the water itself boiling faintly at the edges of the blast before it dissipated.
I used to burn through half my reserves clearing something like that.
He surfaced at a familiar air pocket to catch his breath out of habit rather than need, and sat there a moment turning the morning over with quiet, genuine satisfaction.
Months of ordinary contracts. I didn’t realize how much they’d actually added up to until right now.
He thought about the wolves on Floor Nine, five Rank Fives handled alone without more than a proper, earned effort. He thought about Neris’s steady, patient training, about the realm breakthrough that had finally caught up to where his Mana side actually stood. All of it, together, had quietly built into exactly this — ground that used to test him severely now passing beneath him with something closer to ordinary competence.
He pushed on, and found his first genuine test of the day waiting in a wider stretch of open water past the kelp forest’s edge.
Three Ironclaw Lobsters, considerably larger than the ones he remembered from the guided trip, scuttled across the riverbed in a loose, defensive formation the moment they noticed him. Pack behavior, or close enough to it — territorial creatures banding together rather than scattering.
Rank Four, maybe Five if that center one’s as big as it looks. Three at once, though.
He didn’t retreat from it. He circled instead, studying the formation the way months of patient, deliberate contract work had taught him to study anything before committing.
The lead lobster charged first, claws snapping, and he met it with Bulwark Strike, the quick combination of raised stone and driving spike catching it mid-lunge and staggering it hard enough that its two companions hesitated rather than pressing their own attack immediately.
He used the hesitation. Steadfast Guard’s passive hardening absorbed a glancing strike from the second lobster while he finished the first with a clean, decisive cut, and turned immediately to meet the third before it could flank him properly.
It was the second lobster that gave him real trouble, its shell considerably tougher than its companions’, shrugging off two solid strikes before he finally found the gap along its underside with Stonespike’s sharper, narrower cousin driven up from the riverbed beneath it.
He finished all three within a few minutes, breathing a little harder than he had all morning, and surfaced properly this time, genuinely satisfied rather than merely confirming a habit.
That one actually asked something of me. Good. I was starting to wonder if the whole floor had gotten easier, or if I’d just gotten stronger everywhere at once.
He harvested what was worth harvesting, the shell fragments dense enough to be worth the weight, and tucked the lot into his stored pocket of space without a second thought, grateful all over again for not having to manage the bulk of it on his back.
He pressed further through the afternoon, the terrain gradually opening into a wider stretch he half-remembered from the guided trip, and found a lone Cave Shark tracking him at a distance for the better part of an hour before finally committing to a pass.
He met it with Lightning Strike this time, curious to see how it fared against something closer to his actual current level, and the bolt caught the shark broadside with enough force to stagger it badly, the finishing strike considerably easier to land than he remembered from his first encounter with this exact species.
Everything’s different now. Not the floor. Me.
He made camp that evening at a defensible air pocket, the same careful habit he still kept regardless of how confident he’d grown, and pulled a proper meal from storage rather than fussing with anything freshly caught tonight.
He wrote briefly before sleep, the entry considerably more settled than anything he’d managed on his last trip through this exact stretch of water.
First day properly back in Region Three. Everything that nearly broke me months ago is manageable now — not effortless, but manageable, the way a hard contract on the upper floors is manageable. The lobster pack actually tested me properly. That felt good, honestly. Proof the floor’s still got something to offer even now.
Tomorrow, deeper. Toward where it happened.
He closed the journal, and let the water’s quiet, distant current settle around his small, secure pocket of air and light, sleep coming easier than it ever had on this particular stretch of ground before.