Chapter 179 — Past the Last Ramp

Chapter 179: Chapter 179 — Past the Last Ramp

They left the settlement’s warm, impossible light behind them on the morning of their ninth day, and Arlen found the transition considerably more abrupt than anything he’d experienced on the floors above.

The ramp down from Floor Ten narrowed quickly, the worked stone giving way within a few hundred yards to something rougher and more deliberately water-carved, and the air itself changed character almost immediately — cooler, heavier, carrying the particular mineral dampness of a place that had known standing water for longer than anyone could properly measure.

"Region Three proper," Osric said, gesturing at the passage ahead. "You’ll feel the difference before you see it, most days. Water finds its way into everything down here eventually."

They reached the first genuinely flooded stretch within the hour — not the shallow pools or narrow streams Arlen had grown used to on Floor Six, but a proper, dark expanse of standing water stretching beyond what even Nightsight could comfortably resolve.

Ilyana called a halt at its edge, and the party settled into an unhurried, practiced routine Arlen hadn’t seen from them before.

"Breathing draughts," she said, producing a small case of sealed vials from her pack. "Region Three doesn’t forgive anyone who tries to push through its deeper stretches on held breath and good intentions alone. Everyone takes one before we go further."

She handed Arlen a vial of his own, the liquid inside pale and faintly luminous, and he turned it over with genuine curiosity.

"What’s actually in it?"

"Compressed essence, mostly, from creatures that breathe water naturally," Osric said. "Alchemists further up the settlement brew them specifically for expeditions this deep. Lasts a few hours, gives you proper gill function rather than just holding your breath and hoping. Costs a fair bit, but considerably less than drowning."

Arlen uncorked the vial and drank, the taste sharp and briny, and felt, within moments, a strange, unfamiliar pressure settle into his chest and throat — not painful, simply different, his body adjusting to something it had never been asked to manage before.

"Test it in the shallows first," Kess advised. "Don’t just dive in trusting it blindly."

He waded in carefully, and found, submerging his head beneath the water’s dark surface, that breathing came as easily as it did on dry land — strange, disorienting for the first several breaths, but genuinely, comfortably functional.

"That’s remarkable," he said, surfacing.

"Gets less remarkable the fiftieth time you use it," Grennig said, already wading in himself with the same unbothered efficiency he brought to everything. "Come on. Current’s manageable here, good place to learn the basics before it gets properly difficult."

They moved through the flooded passage together, and Arlen found the experience considerably stranger than any dry terrain he’d navigated — his movements slower, more deliberate, the water’s resistance demanding an entirely different kind of physical awareness than anything Floors One through Nine had asked of him.

"Watch how Grennig moves," Ilyana said, swimming easily alongside him. "Low, deliberate, using the current rather than fighting it. Most newcomers waste half their strength just fighting the water instead of working with it."

Arlen adjusted his own strokes, watching Grennig’s steady, economical movement, and found the difference immediate — less exhausting, more controlled, his progress through the water settling into something considerably closer to genuine competence.

"Better," Kess said, approving. "You’ll get properly comfortable with it in a few days. Everyone does, eventually."

They surfaced periodically at small, natural air pockets scattered through the flooded passage’s ceiling, and Arlen found himself, resting at one such pocket, genuinely curious about the whole region’s practical logistics.

"How do you actually explore something like this properly? Half the ground’s underwater. Can’t map it the way you’d map dry passages."

"Differently," Osric said. "Cartographers who work this region specialize in it specifically — current patterns, depth soundings, air pocket locations. It’s a whole separate discipline from surveying the upper floors. Takes considerably longer to properly chart, which is part of why Region Three’s maps stay so incomplete even generations after Floor Ten was first properly settled."

"And the creatures down here? Different from what’s above?"

"Considerably," Ilyana said. "Some adapted specifically for the water, some that simply learned to tolerate it because the alternative was extinction. You’ll want to stay alert in ways that don’t translate directly from the upper floors — sound carries strangely underwater, and plenty of things down here hunt by vibration rather than sight."

They continued deeper, the flooded passage eventually opening into a wider, calmer expanse where the current finally settled into something gentle enough that swimming felt almost restful. Pale, bioluminescent fish drifted past in loose, unhurried schools, and Arlen found himself, watching them catch the faint ambient light, genuinely struck by how different this whole region felt from everything above it — not dangerous in the immediate, pressing way Floor Seven had been, simply foreign, demanding an entirely new kind of competence rather than a stronger version of the old one.

"First creature worth documenting," Kess said, pointing toward a shape resolving slowly out of the deeper dark — long-bodied, eel-like, drifting with lazy, unhurried grace. "River Charm Eel. Harmless enough, mostly. Won’t bother us if we don’t bother it."

"Do you catalogue everything you find down here?"

"Try to. Region Three’s still being properly documented, same as the map situation. Every confirmed species, every behavior pattern — all of it matters for whoever comes after us."

They made camp that evening at one of the larger, more stable air pockets, a natural stone shelf rising just clear of the water’s surface, and Arlen found himself, settling in alongside the others, genuinely grateful for the unhurried, teaching pace the whole day had carried.

"This is different from every other dive I’ve done," he admitted, working through a modest, dry meal. "Not dangerous, exactly. Just entirely unfamiliar."

"That’s rather the point of Region Three," Osric said. "Difficulty here isn’t always about raw combat strength the way it is above. It’s about competence in an environment that doesn’t forgive carelessness, even from someone considerably stronger than whatever’s actually trying to hurt them."

"Good lesson to learn properly, with people who already know it," Ilyana added. "Better than learning it alone, the hard way, the way you managed everything else so far."

Arlen thought of the pit trap, of the Rotwood Treant’s near-misses, and found himself nodding in genuine agreement. "I’ve had enough of learning things the hard way for a while."

Kess laughed, warm and genuine. "That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said all week."

They settled in for the night not long after, the flooded passage’s distant, patient current audible even from the dry shelf, and Arlen found himself, drifting toward sleep, already looking forward to whatever the region’s deeper, stranger reaches might teach him next — not with the anxious, careful calculation of solo work, but with the genuine, unhurried curiosity of someone finally being properly shown around rather than simply surviving on instinct alone.