Chapter 225 — The Lake Itself
He woke well-rested for the first time in longer than he could easily remember, the waystation’s quiet warmth settling comfortably around him, and found himself, over a modest breakfast, actually curious about the lake he’d always treated as little more than a stopping point before.
I’ve crossed this floor twice now and never once properly looked at it.
He mentioned as much to the innkeeper on his way out, and the halfling shrugged, unbothered.
"Most people treat it that way. Rest, resupply, move on. Can’t blame them — the lake’s not dangerous exactly, but it’s not nothing either." He gestured vaguely toward the water. "Deeper sections past the settlement’s safe radius still see traffic from whatever’s living further out. Nobody’s mapped it properly in years."
"Worth exploring?"
"Depends what you’re after. Materials, maybe. Nobody’s bothered documenting the deeper fish stock in any detail, if that interests you."
It did, more than he expected. He spent that first full day simply swimming the lake’s wider circumference, mapping its rough shape in his own head the way he’d once mapped the Verdant Crown Forest’s outer stretches, back when the whole world had still felt impossibly large.
The lake proved considerably more active than the waystation’s calm shoreline suggested. A school of Glowfin Fish scattered ahead of him in loose, shimmering clouds, harmless and quick, more curious about him than afraid. A cluster of Stonefin Fish grazed along the lakebed’s mineral-rich silt, their stone-plated scales catching the ambient light in dull, scattered glints.
He paused a long while near a shallow bend where the current pooled calm and clear, watching a pair of Glowfin Fish circle each other in some slow, unhurried ritual he couldn’t properly interpret. It struck him, watching them, how easy it was to forget that this whole strange, submerged world kept going whether anyone was there to see it or not — fish courting, currents shifting, stone wearing slowly smooth, all of it continuing in the dark regardless of guild maps or adventurers passing through.
He found his first real fight of the day near the lake’s eastern edge, where the water deepened sharply into a drop-off he couldn’t properly see the bottom of even with Hunter’s Eye’s sharpened clarity.
A Flood Serpent, considerably larger than the one he’d dispatched his first day back in Region Three, surged up from the drop-off with real aggression, and Arlen met it properly this time rather than simply ending the fight quickly — testing Water Armor against its first strike, curious whether the layer would hold against something genuinely committed.
It held, dulling the impact to something manageable, and he finished the creature with a combination of Riverblade’s close cut and Lightning Strike’s decisive follow-through, satisfied with how cleanly the two worked together now.
He spent the second day exploring the drop-off itself, descending carefully, Water Armor thickened properly around him the deeper he went, exactly as the ability had promised. The pressure increased the further down he pushed, and he found himself genuinely grateful for Water Sovereignty’s full range as he navigated terrain considerably more demanding than the lake’s calmer shallows.
He encountered a pod of Ironclaw Lobsters nesting along a rocky shelf partway down, territorial enough to contest his passage, and cleared them with the same patient, methodical approach he’d used against the pack on Floor Eleven — Bulwark Strike opening gaps, Riverblade and Lightning Strike finding them.
He surfaced that evening with a modest haul of materials worth the effort, and found the waystation’s trader genuinely pleased by the variety.
"Lake stock," the trader said, examining a Stonefin scale with real interest. "Don’t get much of this through here. Most people just pass through without bothering to actually fish the place properly."
"Figured I’d make use of the rest day."
"Good instinct. I’ll give you fair rates on all of it." The trader counted out payment without any particular ceremony, the same honest, unhurried business Arlen remembered from his last visit here.
He spent that evening’s meal talking with a pair of travelers he hadn’t met before, a mapmaker’s apprentice and her older companion, both of them passing through on their own slow survey of the lake’s eastern shoreline. They traded stories easily enough, the apprentice delighted to hear about the lobster nest and immediately sketching a rough note about it in her own journal, and Arlen found himself, for the first time in days, simply enjoying ordinary company rather than the quiet solitude of his own thoughts.
He spent the third day pushing further along the drop-off’s edge than he had the day before, curious now rather than merely passing time, and found the lake’s deeper reaches considerably stranger than its calm surface suggested — ancient, worn stone formations jutting from the silt at odd angles, old enough and smooth enough that he suspected water alone hadn’t shaped them.
He didn’t investigate too deeply. Whatever the formations actually were felt, in some instinctive way he couldn’t properly articulate, like something that belonged to a different kind of exploration than the one he’d set out to do this trip.
Not today. Maybe not this whole stretch. Something for later, once I understand this region properly on its own terms.
He encountered one final fight before the day’s light began its slow fade — a lone Deepwater Hydra, smaller than the one he remembered fighting solo months ago, its multiple heads darting and weaving with a speed that demanded his full attention rather than any single ability carrying the exchange.
He handled it carefully, Water Armor absorbing what it could, Tidal Lance picking off heads one by one as they overextended, and finished it with a combination he was growing increasingly confident calling on without conscious thought — his various pieces, water and fire and earth alike, settling into something that felt less like separate tools now and more like a single, coherent way of fighting.
He returned to the waystation that final evening, tired in the satisfied, earned way three days of genuine work left him, and ate well, and slept deeply, content with how thoroughly he’d finally come to know a stretch of ground he’d twice before simply passed through.
He wrote briefly before sleep, the entry shorter than most, mostly practical.
Three days spent properly exploring the lake itself, rather than just crossing it. Good materials, a few real fights, and some old stone formations near the drop-off’s edge I’m choosing to leave alone for now. Not today’s business.
I like this region more, the more of it I actually see. It’s not just a gauntlet between Floor Ten and whatever’s deeper. It’s its own place, same as everywhere else down here.
He closed the journal, and let the waystation’s familiar, dry warmth settle around him one final night, already thinking, with the same patient curiosity that had carried him through every deliberate stage of this life, about Floor Thirteen waiting beyond the lake’s far shore.