Chapter 198 — Eleventh Floor

Chapter 198: Chapter 198 — Eleventh Floor

The ramp down from Floor Ten narrowed quickly, worked stone giving way within a few hundred yards to the rougher, more deliberately water-carved passage Arlen remembered from months earlier, and the air itself shifted almost immediately — cooler, heavier, carrying the particular mineral dampness that meant Region Three was close.

He reached the first flooded stretch within the hour, the same dark, standing expanse he remembered stopping the whole party the first time through. He didn’t bother with the breathing potions tucked in his pack. Gillbreath answered the moment he waded in, water settling into his lungs as easily as air, no transition at all beyond the simple decision to trust it.

Small mercy, at least. One less thing to manage down here.

He swam the flooded passage with the same steady, deliberate strokes Ilyana had once drilled into him, and found the going easier this time — not effortless, but familiar, his body remembering the rhythm even after weeks spent entirely on dry floors.

He surfaced at an air pocket he half-recognized, rested a while out of habit rather than genuine need, and pressed on.

The first sign that something had changed came within the hour.

A shape moved through the water ahead of him, low and fast, considerably larger than the schools of small fish he remembered scattering harmlessly out of the party’s path the first time through. He went still, watching, and understood, studying the creature’s size and the deliberate way it held its position rather than fleeing, that this wasn’t going to be the kind of encounter he was used to down here.

Cave Shark, probably. Bigger than the one that gave me Gillbreath.

It didn’t flee. It circled instead, slow and patient, the same unhurried assessment every genuinely dangerous predator seemed to bring to a fight before committing to one.

It’s not afraid of me.

That, more than anything, told him something Ilyana’s easy confidence through these same waters had never quite made him properly understand. A team with two Elite-realm members and three Veteran-realm fighters didn’t just handle danger here. They simply didn’t register as prey to most of what lived in these floors — the water’s larger predators reading the party’s collective strength the way a wolf reads a mounted patrol, and choosing, almost without exception, to let it pass unbothered.

He wasn’t a mounted patrol. He was one man, alone, in water that didn’t care how far he’d come to get here.

The shark committed.

He met it with Water Sovereignty gathered fast, a thin, forceful current redirecting its charge just enough that its jaws closed on empty water rather than his shoulder, and drove Edgeline Strike into its exposed flank as it passed. The blade connected, deep, but the creature barely slowed, spinning with a speed that caught him fully off guard and forcing him into a clumsy, underwater retreat that cost him precious rhythm.

Faster than the last one. Considerably.

He called Lightning Strike the moment it came around for a second pass, the bolt crackling out through the water in a wide, punishing arc that caught the shark broadside and left it thrashing, stunned, long enough for him to finish it with a committed, two-handed strike through the same wound his first had opened.

It went still, finally, and Arlen surfaced at the nearest air pocket, breathing hard despite Gillbreath’s steady support, his whole body humming with the particular, adrenaline-soaked exhaustion of a fight that had genuinely tested him.

That’s Rank 4, at best. And it nearly outpaced me.

He rested longer than he wanted to admit was necessary, and pressed on once his hands had properly stopped shaking.

The pattern held through the rest of that first day — a Deepclaw Crab that ambushed him from a rock crevice and very nearly caught his leg before Duskveil’s quiet, thinning presence bought him the half-second he needed to escape its first strike. A cluster of Deepwater Leeches that swarmed him in numbers considerably higher than the guild bestiary’s notes suggested was typical, forcing him to burn through Cinderburst just to clear enough of them to keep moving. A Riverfang Crocodile that took the better part of twenty exhausting minutes to finally put down, its hide shrugging off strike after strike until Stonespike, driven up from the shallow riverbed beneath it, finally found the gap steel alone hadn’t managed.

He made camp that evening at a defensible air pocket, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with distance covered and everything to do with how much every single fight had actually cost him.

Rank 4. Rank 5, maybe, on that crocodile. Nothing here should be testing me this hard.

He turned the thought over slowly, working through a modest meal with hands still faintly unsteady.

Unless it’s not the monsters that changed. It’s what they see, coming toward them.

He thought of Ilyana’s easy, unhurried confidence through these same waters, of how rarely anything had actually challenged the party directly, and understood, with a clarity that settled uncomfortably into his chest, exactly what that confidence had actually been built on. Not just skill. Presence. Five capable fighters, two of them radiating a kind of strength that most of this region’s wildlife simply knew, on some old, instinctive level, not to test.

I don’t have that. Not yet. Maybe not for a long while yet.

He didn’t panic at the thought. He simply sat with it, the way he sat with every honest, uncomfortable truth about himself, turning it over until it settled into something he could actually use rather than something that simply frightened him.

Doesn’t mean I turn back. Means I stay careful. Means I don’t assume anything here’s going to give me the same room to breathe that it gave a team built the way theirs was.

He wrote a brief entry in his journal before sleep finally claimed him, his hand steadier now than it had been an hour earlier.

First day in Region Three alone. Four real fights, every one of them harder than I expected going in. I think I understand now what Ilyana’s team’s presence was actually doing for me the first time through here — not just backup. A kind of quiet the water itself seemed to keep around them. I don’t have that yet.

Pressing on regardless. Careful. Slower than I planned. But pressing on.

He closed the journal, banked what little light he’d allowed himself, and let exhaustion finally drag him down into sleep, Floor Eleven’s dark, patient water settling around his small, defensible air pocket like something that hadn’t yet decided whether to let him pass through it easily a second time.