Chapter 226 — Thirteenth Floor

Chapter 226: Chapter 226 — Thirteenth Floor

The passage beyond the lake narrowed quickly, the open, drifting kelp forest giving way to something tighter and more deliberate — carved, almost, in a way that made Arlen slow his pace and study the walls more carefully than he had anywhere else in Region III.

Maze tunnels. That’s what the map called this stretch, if I remember right.

The guild chart he’d picked up at Floor Ten’s outpost confirmed it, a tangle of branching passages sketched in considerably less confident detail than the floors above — more guesswork than survey, the cartographer’s own notes along the margin admitting as much.

He moved through it carefully at first, Earthen Grip pressed lightly through the water-worn stone to catch whatever vibration might warn him of trouble ahead, and found the going slower than Floor Eleven’s open water had allowed.

A school of Abyssal Pike darted past him within the first hour, more nuisance than threat, scattering the moment he so much as glanced their way. He let them go, saving the effort for whatever actually warranted it.

The first real fight found him an hour later, in a wider chamber where three passages converged — a solitary Riverfang Crocodile, larger than the one he’d fought days earlier, clearly claiming the junction as its own territory.

He didn’t try to bypass it. The chamber was too narrow, the crocodile too well-positioned, and he’d learned, across months of patient work, that some fights simply needed fighting rather than avoiding.

He opened with Tidal Lance, two quick bolts aimed for its exposed throat, and the crocodile thrashed sideways to avoid the second, closing the distance with surprising speed for something its size. He met the charge with Water Armor thickened properly around his forearm, the jaws closing on cushioned resistance rather than flesh, and answered with a driving Bulwark Strike that caught it broadside and staggered it long enough for a clean finishing cut.

Good. That’s the kind of fight I wanted more of.

He pressed deeper into the maze, the passages branching and rejoining in patterns that would have left him thoroughly lost without the map’s rough guidance, and found the terrain gradually opening again as the day wore toward its underwater evening.

A pod of River Titan Toads ambushed him from a side passage he hadn’t properly cleared — five of them, considerably more than the guild bestiary’s typical pair, their bulky, water-pressure attacks forcing him to work for every exchange rather than lean on any single ability.

They came in coordinated waves rather than a single rush, two holding back while three pressed, and he had to earn it properly — Steadfast Guard absorbing what Water Armor’s thickened layer couldn’t quite catch, Emberstorm clearing two of them in a single controlled burst, Lightning Strike finishing a third before it could properly flank him.

The last two broke off once their pod thinned past what their instincts apparently tolerated, and he let them retreat rather than chase, breathing hard, genuinely satisfied with how close the fight had actually run.

He made camp in a defensible alcove once he found one, the maze’s narrow, winding geometry making proper rest considerably harder to find than the open lake’s calm shallows had offered.

He ate a meal pulled from storage, and spent a quiet while afterward simply testing his various pieces against each other, curious whether the day’s genuine fights had shifted anything in how they sat together.

Water Armor and Water Sovereignty are closer now than they were three days ago. Not fused. Close, though.

He reached for them both, holding the question the same patient way he always did, and felt nothing quite answer yet — close, but not ready, the same frustrating, familiar pattern earth’s three pieces had taught him to expect from anything that didn’t want to rush.

Fine. It’ll come when it comes.

He wrote briefly before sleep, the entry practical rather than reflective.

Floor Thirteen’s maze tunnels, first day. Slower going than Eleven or the lake — narrow, winding, genuinely demands care rather than just confidence. Riverfang Crocodile and a pod of River Titan Toads both gave me real fights, the toads especially. Water Armor’s sitting close to Water Sovereignty now but hasn’t joined yet.

He slept lightly that night, the maze’s unfamiliar geometry keeping some old, careful instinct half-alert even in rest, and woke the next morning to press on with the same patient, unhurried determination.

The second day held a similar rhythm — a solitary Abyssal Pike mistaking him for easier prey and paying for the error quickly, a cluster of Ironclaw Lobsters bypassed entirely when the passage proved too narrow to justify the fight, a brief, tense standoff with something large and shadowed that retreated into a side tunnel before he got a proper look at it.

Didn’t chase that. Good instinct, probably. No sense hunting something I can’t even identify from a glimpse.

He pressed through the maze’s remaining stretch over the following day and a half, the passages gradually widening as he went, old carved stone giving way once more to the kind of natural, water-worn cavern he remembered better from the rest of Region III.

He fought twice more before the maze finally opened into something broader — a lone Deepclaw Crab that barely slowed him down, and a brief, sharp exchange with a creature he didn’t recognize at all, serpentine and quick, that fled the moment he landed a solid strike rather than press its luck further.

Didn’t get enough of that one to learn anything from it. Next time, maybe.

He reached the maze’s far edge on the evening of his third day within it, the terrain ahead opening into a wide, kelp-choked expanse that promised, from what little he could make out in the gloom, something considerably larger still waiting beyond.

He made camp there, tired in the honest, satisfied way real work always left him, and wrote one final entry before sleep claimed him properly.

Floor Thirteen, mostly cleared. Three days of narrow, demanding work — good fights, careful pacing, nothing that outmatched me but plenty that actually asked something real of me. Floor Fourteen ahead, from the look of the terrain opening up.

Good pace. I’ll think about heading back to Ten once I’ve properly seen what’s past this edge.

He closed the journal, and let Region III’s patient, ancient quiet settle around his small, secure camp, already looking forward, with the same unhurried curiosity that had carried him this far, to whatever waited beyond the maze’s final stretch.