Chapter 185 — Home

Chapter 185: Chapter 185 — Home

The climb back from Floor Ten took a full five days, and Arlen found the stretch considerably less demanding than the descent had been weeks earlier — familiar ground now, the fragmented tunnels of Floor Nine and Eight passing beneath them with none of the careful, deliberate mapping the outward journey had required.

They fought sparingly along the way — a wandering Ironhide Troll on Floor Nine that Rurik dispatched almost absently, a cluster of Cave Wolves on Floor Six that scattered before the party’s approach — and Arlen found himself, counting the days as they passed, genuinely struck by how differently five days felt now compared to the anxious, uncertain pace of his very first solo trip through this same stretch of ground.

Twenty-eight days, near enough, since we first left the surface, he thought, climbing the final ramp toward Floor One’s familiar, worked stone. The better part of a month. Longer than I expected, when this whole trip began.

They surfaced together at last through the familiar checkpoint archway, blinking against ordinary daylight for the first time in nearly a month, and Arlen found the sun’s warmth on his face carrying a strange, disorienting weight after so many weeks spent entirely without it.

"Feels strange," he admitted, standing at the archway’s edge while the guard processed their return. "Being back up here."

"Always does, after a stretch like that," Ilyana said. "You’ll adjust within a day. Everyone does."

They parted ways at the guild hall’s entrance, Ilyana’s team already turning their attention toward whatever paperwork and planning their next expedition demanded, and Arlen found the farewell considerably warmer than he’d expected given how plainly practical their earlier conversation had been.

"Take care of yourself," Kess said, pulling him into a brief, genuine embrace. "And actually use whatever you learned down there, rather than just carrying it around out of habit."

"I intend to," Arlen said.

He made his way toward the Foxglove afterward, the familiar streets of Aurenholt’s adventurer district settling around him with a comfort he hadn’t quite expected to feel this strongly, and found Pella spotting him through the common room’s window before he’d even reached the door.

"He’s alive!" she called, loud enough that half the room glanced up. "Properly alive, not the half-drowned rumor Rilla kept insisting she’d heard."

"I wasn’t half-drowned," Arlen said, stepping inside. "Just gone longer than usual." ℯℯ𝑙.

"A month, Arlen." Rilla emerged from behind the counter, her usual quiet composure carrying a genuine edge of relief. "We’d started wondering whether the Depths had finally decided to keep you."

"Region Three takes longer than the upper floors," Arlen said. "Learned that properly, this trip."

Yveth appeared a moment later, and rather than her usual sharp opening volley, she simply studied him a long moment, taking in the state of him — leaner than when he’d left, considerably more sun-starved despite a month spent nowhere near actual sunlight, but steady on his feet and genuinely, visibly well.

"A full month," she said finally, echoing Rilla. "I’d started planning what to do with your room."

"Charitable of you."

"I was going to rent it out properly, not throw your things in the street. Some standards." Her sharp expression softened, something warm and genuinely relieved settling beneath it. "Sit. Eat. Tell me everything, or as much of it as you’re willing to share."

He settled at his usual table, and found himself, over a meal considerably better than anything the dive had offered, recounting the trip’s broad shape — the flooded passages, the strange, permanent settlement at Floor Ten, the waystation’s own smaller miracle, the vast, sobering scale of things moving in deeper water that even Ilyana’s team knew better than to disturb.

"And the dark elf," Yveth said, once he’d finished, something sharp and curious in her attention. "You mentioned her before, once. Now twice more?"

"Ilyana thinks it’s worth reporting properly. I agree, though I don’t know what it actually means yet."

"Strange world you’ve decided to make your living in," Yveth said, though her tone carried genuine fascination rather than any real concern.

He spent the following day simply resting, the accumulated fatigue of a full month’s steady effort finally catching up with him properly now that there was nothing left demanding his immediate attention, and it was on the morning of the second day that he finally made his way back to the parkland’s familiar, secluded bend.

He settled at the channel’s edge, alone at last, and reached inward for the first of the trip’s gathered understandings.

Riverblade answered first, and he tested it carefully against the water’s surface, willing it to gather and compress the way its bundled understanding had promised. A thin, cutting arc of water lanced outward, striking the channel’s far bank with enough force to gouge a shallow furrow into the packed earth.

There it is. Properly earned.

He tested Tidal Lance next, and found it answered with the same immediate, obedient clarity — a thrown bolt of compressed water, considerably more forceful at range than Riverblade’s close, cutting precision.

Different jobs. Both useful. Both exactly what I was missing.

He called Gillbreath last of the water-adjacent gifts, submerging his face into the channel’s shallow current and finding his breath settle into easy, comfortable rhythm without any potion’s assistance at all.

No more coin spent on vials, at least for Region Three. Small mercy, considering everything else it cost.

He turned, finally, to the ability he’d been most looking forward to properly testing, and reached inward for Lightning Strike with genuine, mounting anticipation.

The warmth of understanding rose to meet his call, and he directed it toward a fallen branch resting at the channel’s edge, curious rather than reckless about the actual scale of what it might produce.

A bolt of pale, crackling energy lanced from his outstretched hand, striking the branch with a sharp, splitting crack that sent fragments scattering across the grass.

He stood there a long moment, staring at the scorched, shattered wood, genuinely startled by the sheer, immediate force of it.

That’s what I’ve been missing. Not a slow burn. Not a careful cut. Something that simply ends things, the instant it arrives.

He tested it twice more, calibrating the force more carefully each time, and found the ability considerably more demanding to sustain than his other attacks — a real cost attached to it, the same way Ember Touch had always asked something of him in return for its heat.

Costly. Worth it, though. Would have shortened that fight with the Treant by half, probably, if I’d had this instead of relying on fire alone.

He spent the remainder of the morning simply practicing, refining his control over each of the four new abilities in turn, and found himself, by the time the sun had climbed well past midday, genuinely satisfied with everything the trip had ultimately given him — not just the abilities themselves, but the accumulated competence underlying them, a full month of proper, patient instruction finally bearing its full, tangible fruit.

He made his way back toward the Foxglove as the afternoon settled into evening, already turning his thoughts toward the work still waiting ahead of him — Floors Eight through Fifteen, properly explored on his own terms this time, and whatever else this long, patient, ever-deepening gift still had left to teach him.