Chapter 197 — Tenth Floor, Briefly

Chapter 197: Chapter 197 — Tenth Floor, Briefly

The ramp down to Floor Nine’s final stretch had taken him longer than he expected, and by the time the familiar broad, worn incline finally opened up ahead of him, Arlen understood, with the particular clarity of a body that had simply had enough of counting, that the better part of two weeks had gone into these two floors alone.

He didn’t mind it, exactly. Every day had bought him something — ground properly learned, fights properly won, two new abilities worth the weight he now carried alongside everything else. But he felt it in his legs regardless, climbing the last stretch of ramp toward the warm, filtered light spilling down from Floor Ten above.

He stepped off it into the settlement’s familiar noise, and felt something in his chest ease at the sight of it — rooftops, river, market square, the whole vast, contained miracle exactly as he remembered.

Still strange. Good strange.

He made his way toward the market without much urgency, the promise of something properly cooked pulling at him harder than any single errand. He found a stall doing brisk business in something rich and spiced, paid a fair price without haggling, and settled on a low bench near the square’s edge to eat it slowly, watching the settlement breathe around him.

A cartographer worked at her stall a short distance off. Two children chased each other between a pair of merchants arguing cheerfully over the price of dried fish. He’d forgotten, somewhere in the last two weeks of tunnels and fights, how much he simply liked sitting somewhere and watching a place carry on without needing anything from him.

He bought a second portion once the first was gone, and made his way to the guild outpost afterward.

"Back again," the clerk said. "Restocking?"

"Checking the Region Three maps, mostly. And picking up a few more potions, if you’ve got them — figured I’d rather carry extra than assume I won’t need them."

The clerk pulled both without much ceremony, counting out a modest handful of potions and naming a fair price for them alongside the map’s unchanged details. "Region’s slow to update, same as always. You’ll want to be careful regardless. Maps don’t tell you what’s actually moved in since the last survey."

"I’ll be careful."

He left the outpost with his pack a little heavier and his coin purse a little lighter, and spent the rest of the afternoon simply wandering — the apothecary’s crowded shelves, the jeweler’s careful, glittering display, the ordinary rhythm of a place that had built itself an entire life this deep beneath the world.

By evening, his legs had made their opinion plain enough that he gave up arguing with them and found a room at the settlement’s modest inn, paying for a single night without much thought beyond the simple relief of a proper bed.

He ate a third, quieter meal in the inn’s common room that evening, and found himself, turning over the maps he’d studied that afternoon, genuinely weighing the question rather than simply deciding it out of habit.

Two weeks on Eight and Nine. Properly explored both, this time, the way I never managed the first pass through with the team. He thought about his supplies — still generous, thanks to the fresh potions and the modest resupply he’d just finished. He thought about his body, tired but not depleted, the accumulated ache of two weeks’ fighting already easing under a night’s proper rest and Vitalflow Endurance’s steady, patient work. I could turn back here. Climb home, rest properly, come back to Region Three another time.

He turned the thought over a while longer, weighing it honestly.

Or I could keep going. I’ve got the supplies. I’ve got the maps. I know the terrain, at least as far as Floor Fifteen — I walked all of it once already, even if it was guided. It’s not unknown ground. It’s just ground I haven’t walked alone yet.

He thought of Ilyana’s team, of how effortlessly they’d moved through water that had cost him real, deliberate effort just to keep pace with. He thought, too, of everything he’d built since then — Water Sovereignty, Gillbreath, Lightning Strike, all four water abilities gained on that very stretch of flooded floor, all of them tested and proven since in fights the team had never even seen.

I’m not the same adventurer who walked through there the first time. I don’t need them holding my hand through it now.

He finished his meal, the decision settling into place with the same quiet, deliberate certainty that had carried him through most of the choices in this life — not reckless, not rushed, simply weighed and chosen.

I’ll rest here tonight. Properly. And in the morning, I’ll head for Eleven.

He made his way up to his rented room once the common room’s evening business had settled into its quieter rhythm, and found the bed considerably more comfortable than anything two weeks of cavern floor had offered him.

He lay there a while before sleep took him, turning the decision over one final time the way he always did, testing it for any weakness he might have missed in the comfortable warmth of a full stomach and a soft mattress.

He found none. His supplies were sound. His body was sound. The terrain ahead was terrain he already knew, at least in its broad shape, and he’d grown considerably since the last time he’d walked it.

Two weeks to properly clear Eight and Nine, he thought, drifting toward sleep. Region Three’s bigger still. I should expect this next stretch to cost more time than less, the deeper I actually push.

He didn’t mind that either. He’d learned, across months of exactly this kind of patient, deliberate work, that time spent properly was never time wasted — only time spent carelessly ever cost him anything he couldn’t recover.

He closed his eyes, the inn’s modest room settling into quiet around him, and let sleep take him fully, the settlement’s warm, impossible light still glowing faint through the thin curtain over his window.

Tomorrow, he would descend again. Not guided this time. Not at anyone else’s pace but his own.

He fell asleep without any particular unease about that, the same patient confidence that had carried him this far settling comfortably over him — confidence he would only later understand had not yet been properly tested against exactly what waited for him, alone, in the water below.