Chapter 165 __ water

Chapter 165: Chapter 165 __ water

He woke to the lake’s patient, dripping quiet, and spent the morning testing Current’s Grasp properly before breaking camp — willing small currents to bend, to gather, to push gently against a floating scrap of driftwood he’d fished from the shallows for exactly that purpose.

Modest, for now, he thought, watching the wood drift obediently against the water’s natural flow. Might grow with use, the way most of them do. Worth testing further once I’ve got a real reason to.

He packed his gear and pushed on, the lake’s far shore finally resolving out of the dark as he circled its edge — a wide, flat stretch of stone that climbed gradually toward a passage considerably narrower than anything he’d yet found on this floor.

He moved through it carefully, senses stretched wide, and found the terrain shifting again the deeper he went — the standing water thinning, the passage’s walls growing rougher and more mineral-veined, patches of pale crystal beginning to catch what little ambient light reached this far.

Region shifting again, maybe. Or just another pocket within this one.

A Deepwater Leech attached itself to his boot somewhere along a shallow crossing, and he dealt with it without much ceremony — a quick, practiced flick of his blade before it could properly settle, the creature too small and too common to bother harvesting.

Further on, a cluster of Razorfin Fish darted through a narrow channel, their blade-like dorsal fins catching the light in quick, silver flashes, harmless unless provoked. He let them be.

It was past midday when he found something worth the pause — a wide, shallow pool fed by some unseen trickle from higher in the chamber, and coiled at its edge, sunning itself against the pool’s faint warmth, a creature unlike anything he’d yet encountered on this floor.

Water Serpent, unless I’m misjudging the guild’s description badly. Rank Four or Five.

He studied it carefully from a distance, weighing the fight against what little he actually knew about it. Its scales carried a deep, almost oily blue-black sheen, and its length, coiled as it was, suggested something considerably longer than he’d first assumed.

Water-based, presumably. Might answer well to Current’s Grasp, if I can actually manage a fight against something that’s had considerably longer to master its own element than I have mine.

He approached carefully, staying low, and the serpent’s head lifted before he’d closed half the distance, dark eyes fixing on him with an alertness that suggested sunning had been the furthest thing from genuine vulnerability.

It struck first, faster than its coiled stillness had suggested it could manage, and Arlen threw himself sideways, Hawk’s Eye tracking the strike’s full length as it passed close enough to feel the air move against his cheek.

Fast. Faster than the salamander, faster than the crocodile. This one’s earned its rank properly.

He called on Storm Step to put distance between them, and the serpent pursued with a fluid, uncanny grace, its body moving as easily across the stone as it presumably did through water. He backed toward the pool’s edge rather than away from it, a deliberate gamble, and found the serpent following him into the shallows without hesitation.

Good. Water’s where I actually have something to work with.

He called on Current’s Grasp the moment the serpent committed to another strike, willing the shallow water around its coiling length to surge and drag against its own momentum. It wasn’t much — the ability still young, still modest in what it could actually accomplish — but it was enough to throw the strike’s timing off by a fraction, enough that Edgeline Strike found true purchase along the serpent’s flank rather than glancing uselessly aside.

The creature recoiled with a furious, hissing shriek, and struck again almost immediately, faster than the wound should have allowed. Arlen caught the second strike on Aura Ward, the impact staggering him a step despite the technique’s absorption, and pressed forward before the serpent could recover its own balance.

He gathered heat along his blade, Ember Touch’s warmth building fast, and drove it into the same wound his first strike had opened. The serpent’s shriek rose sharper, and it thrashed hard enough to send a wave of displaced water crashing against his legs, though he held his footing through Stonebound Stance’s steady, grounding support.

Almost there.

He called on Current’s Grasp once more, this time not to disrupt the serpent’s strike but to drag the water beneath its coils away entirely, robbing it of the fluid grace that had made it so difficult to properly track. It faltered, momentarily unbalanced on the suddenly exposed stone, and Arlen drove the finishing strike home before it could recover.

The Water Serpent’s massive length went still, and Arlen stood over it a long moment, breathing hard, genuinely satisfied by how thoroughly the fight had tested everything he’d gathered across the past several days.

That’s the real value of these abilities, I think. Not any single one being enough on its own. All of them, working together, covering for whatever the others can’t quite manage alone.

He harvested what he could — the scales dense enough to interest a craftsman, he suspected, and a generous portion of meat besides — and made camp not far from the pool, the day’s effort settling into his shoulders with the particular, satisfied ache of a challenge properly met.

He ate slowly that evening, curious as always, and found the meat rich, faintly briny, unlike anything he’d tasted from the floors above.

The warmth arrived partway through his meal, low and familiar, spreading outward with the same patient certainty it always carried.

A name surfaced, whole and certain.

Tidecaller’s Focus.

He sat with it a long moment, testing the edges of understanding bundled with the name, and found something considerably more substantial than Current’s Grasp’s modest touch — a felt sense of genuine command over moving water, strong enough, he suspected, to properly redirect a current rather than merely nudge it.

Two water abilities in two days. Might be worth testing that fusion question sooner than I planned, if they keep arriving this close together.

He turned the thought over carefully, weighing patience against curiosity, and decided, for tonight at least, simply to rest and let the question settle properly before acting on it.

He pulled his journal from his pack and wrote a short entry by the low firelight.

Water Serpent, properly earned — fastest fight I’ve had since the Duskstalker, and the closest a solo hunt has come to genuinely testing everything I carry at once. New ability afterward: Tidecaller’s Focus, stronger water command than yesterday’s Current’s Grasp. Three water-adjacent abilities now, counting the original Water Affinity. Feels like a pattern building rather than coincidence.

I keep finding new reasons to think carefully about what fusion could actually build, given enough patience. Not tonight. Soon, maybe.

He closed the journal, settled into his bedroll, and let the pool’s quiet, undisturbed water carry him toward sleep, the vast, unexplored dark of Floor Six stretching out around him exactly as indifferent and enormous as every floor before it — though considerably more familiar now, he thought, than it had been even a day earlier.