Chapter 177 — The Long Floors

Chapter 177: Chapter 177 — The Long Floors

The first six floors passed in the comfortable, practiced rhythm Arlen remembered from his earliest party dive — familiar ground, easy pace, Grennig anchoring the group without needing to be asked.

Floor Seven’s oppressive scale earned a wide, deliberate detour around the Guardian’s known territory, Ilyana’s chosen route clearly built with Arlen’s report firmly in mind, and by the time they’d cleared it without incident, three full days had already gone into simply reaching this point.

"Floor Eight next," Osric said, as they approached the descent. "Don’t let the number fool you into thinking it’s a quick stretch. Getting bigger the deeper you go isn’t a rumor."

Arlen understood the warning properly within the first hour.

Floor Eight opened into terrain considerably larger than anything above it — a sprawling network of caverns connected by passages wide enough for a wagon, the ceiling in places climbing high enough that even Nightsight’s passive clarity struggled to properly resolve it. The party moved at a steady, unhurried pace, and Arlen found himself, watching the others work, genuinely impressed by how little the sheer scale of it seemed to trouble them.

"You’ve all done this before," he said, some hours in, watching Kess navigate a branching passage without a moment’s hesitation.

"Dozens of times," Kess said. "Doesn’t make the floor smaller. Just means we know which of these fifty identical-looking passages actually leads somewhere useful."

They fought sparingly through the day — a cluster of Deep Miner Spiders that Grennig dispatched without breaking stride, a wandering Ironhide Troll that the whole party handled together in a brief, efficient engagement that left Arlen genuinely admiring how smoothly five people who trusted each other could work without needing to discuss a single tactic aloud.

"You’re not even talking to each other," he observed afterward, watching Osric calmly reload a fresh ward while Rurik finished dragging the troll’s body clear of their path.

"Don’t need to, most days," Osric said. "Years of exactly this. You’ll get there too, eventually, with enough people you trust."

They made camp that evening still well within Floor Eight’s considerable expanse, and pushed on again the following morning, the floor’s scale showing no particular sign of relenting.

"How much further?" Arlen asked, midway through the second day.

"Depends on the route," Ilyana said. "This one’s fairly direct, as these things go. Some parties take twice as long, depending which passages they favor."

"Do routes change often? Tunnels collapsing, that sort of thing?"

"Rarely, honestly," Osric said. "Passages hold steady for years at a stretch, this shallow. Most experienced teams take the same road every time, precisely because it’s already proven safe and efficient — no sense risking an unfamiliar route when a known one works fine. That’s part of why you don’t run into other adventurers as often as you’d expect, even on a floor this size. Everyone’s spread across their own habitual paths."

"Then how did I find the Guardian? If routes don’t shift that often."

"Bad luck, mostly," Ilyana said, with a small, wry smile. "Or good luck, depending how you look at it. You’re new enough that you haven’t settled into a habitual path yet — you’re still picking your way through unfamiliar branches most experienced adventurers stopped bothering with years ago, simply because their own preferred route already works. Sooner or later, taking enough unfamiliar branches, you were bound to find something nobody else currently walks past."

Arlen turned that over, satisfied by the explanation’s plain, unglamorous logic. "So it wasn’t the floor being strange. It was just me being the one person still exploring instead of commuting."

"More or less," Osric said. "Give it a few more months, and you’ll have your own habitual roads too. Whole Depths starts feeling less like exploration and more like a very long walk to work."

They reached Floor Eight’s final descent late on the fifth day since leaving the surface, and Floor Nine, when it opened before them, proved larger still — a vast, layered cavern system that climbed and dropped in uneven tiers, bridged in places by natural stone arches that Arlen found himself testing carefully before trusting his full weight to them.

"Getting tired?" Kess asked, noting his careful pace.

"Not tired. Just remembering a lesson about ground that isn’t always what it looks like."

"Fair enough. Nine’s honest, though, mostly. Whatever’s under your boots here is what it looks like." Kess grinned. "Mostly."

They fought more here than they had on Eight — a pack of Cave Direwolves that tested the party’s coordination properly, Rurik’s raw strength anchoring the center while Ilyana’s frost-touched spear picked off stragglers with brisk, practiced efficiency, and a solitary Titan Beetle that took the combined effort of nearly everyone to finally bring down, its shell proving considerably tougher than anything Arlen had faced solo.

He fought alongside them rather than at any particular distance, finding the rhythm of shared combat returning to him faster than he’d expected after so many weeks alone — covering gaps where he saw them, trusting Grennig’s shield to hold where it needed to, adding Edgeline Strike or Ember Touch wherever an opening actually presented itself rather than trying to carry more of the fight than his place in the formation called for.

"Good instincts," Ilyana said, once the beetle finally fell. "Solo work didn’t cost you your sense of a formation. That’s not always true, for people who’ve spent as long alone as you have."

"Didn’t want it to," Arlen admitted.

They made their final camp of the descent deep within Floor Nine’s uneven terrain, seven full days now since leaving the surface, and Arlen found himself, settling in for the night, genuinely struck by how little any of the last two floors’ considerable danger had actually threatened the party as a whole.

Not because it’s easy, he thought, watching Grennig double-check the perimeter with the same careful, practiced thoroughness he brought to everything. Because they’re properly equipped for it. Difficulty’s still there. It’s just not close to the edge of what they can manage, the way it kept being close to the edge of what I could manage alone.

"One more day," Ilyana said, settling by the fire. "Final stretch to Ten tomorrow. You’ll want to be properly rested for it — not for danger’s sake. Just because it deserves your full attention, the first time."

Arlen nodded, turning that promise over with quiet, genuine anticipation, and found sleep coming easily despite seven days of steady, demanding travel — the accumulated satisfaction of ground properly covered, dangers properly shared, and something considerably stranger than either still waiting, patiently, at the very edge of tomorrow.