Chapter 233 — The Long Middle

Chapter 233: Chapter 233 — The Long Middle

The next month folded into a rhythm he’d long since stopped needing to think about.

Down to Eleven, through to Twelve, deeper still toward Fifteen and the strange, patient quiet of its ancient pillar field, then back again — resting at the waystation some cycles, pushing straight through to Floor Ten on others, selling what was worth selling, restocking what needed restocking, and descending once more.

He fought more than he could easily count across those weeks. Packs of Deepclaw Crabs, solitary Cave Sharks, the occasional Flood Serpent bold enough to contest his passage. None of it tested him the way the early days of this trip had. All of it kept him sharp.

It was near Floor Fifteen’s deepest crevice, past the pillar field’s sparse, tapering edge, that something new finally found him.

A long, ghostly shape drifted up from the crevice’s dark mouth, a lure of pale, bioluminescent light bobbing ahead of a wide, toothed jaw — an Abyssal Anglerfish, larger than anything he’d fought at this depth, clearly built for pressure that would have crushed anything living closer to the surface.

He fought it carefully, the water around the crevice noticeably heavier even through Water Armor’s steady protection, his chest aching faintly with every breath despite Gillbreath’s steady support. Riverblade and Lightning Strike worked together to finally bring it down, and he surfaced afterward genuinely relieved to leave the crevice’s crushing depth behind.

The warmth arrived that evening, settling low and dense through his whole frame rather than any single point, like something bracing his bones from the inside out.

A name surfaced.

Depthbound Grace.

He tested it, diving deliberately back toward the crevice’s edge, and found the familiar pressure easing considerably, his breathing steady, his limbs loose rather than straining against the weight of all that water above him.

Useful. Considerably useful, the deeper this region goes.

He pressed on, the weeks accumulating steadily, and found his second new ability waiting in a stretch of Floor Thirteen’s maze he’d always passed through too quickly to properly explore — a side passage flooded with faint, crackling light, home to a creature he didn’t recognize at all, flat and broad-winged, gliding through the water with slow, deliberate grace, its skin mottled with faint, pulsing veins of pale light.

A Storm Ray, he decided, watching it a while before engaging. It discharged current in short, defensive bursts whenever he closed the distance, and he found himself genuinely struggling to land a clean hit through the crackling haze surrounding it.

He finished it eventually, patient and methodical, and the warmth that followed settled differently than Lightning Strike’s sharp, offensive gather — spreading instead through his skin like something building a wall rather than a weapon.

Lightning Ward

the name arrived, certain and whole.

He tested it against a residual charge still clinging to the dead ray’s hide, and felt the current wash harmlessly across his skin rather than biting through it.

Good pairing with Lightning Strike, eventually. Offense and defense, same source.

The third discovery came later still, well into his final weeks underground, from an encounter he hadn’t expected at all — a Silt Worm, thick and pale, burrowing through the lakebed’s decayed matter near Floor Twelve’s lesser-traveled edge. He’d nearly passed it by entirely, mistaking it for harmless until it reared and spat a stream of corrosive bile that forced him into a hasty retreat.

He ended the fight with Emberstorm, the worm’s segmented body proving considerably less resilient than its unpleasant defense suggested, and found himself, harvesting it, genuinely curious about a creature that apparently thrived on consuming whatever rot and poison settled into the lakebed’s deepest silt.

He ate carefully that evening, more out of habit than any real expectation, and the warmth that followed arrived strangely gentle, settling low in his stomach with none of the urgency most of his abilities carried.

Iron Stomach.

The understanding came slow but complete — a considerable strengthening of what he could safely eat, poisons and spoiled meat and things no ordinary person should touch all rendered harmless, or close to it, by whatever this ability actually changed in him.

He laughed quietly to himself that night, genuinely amused.

Rilla’s going to be thrilled. No more getting banned from the foraging basket.

He spent the remaining weeks pushing the same patient, steady rhythm — Eleven through Fifteen, back to Ten, deeper again — and found himself, somewhere in the accumulated middle of it all, genuinely missing small, ordinary things he hadn’t expected to miss this much.

He wrote Yveth a letter midway through, handing it to a guild courier passing through Floor Ten on unrelated business, more out of a simple wish to reach her than any real expectation it would arrive quickly.

Still down here. Longer than I planned, though not longer than I can manage. Found a ruin, found a heat vent, found more strange gifts than I know what to do with yet. Missing your cooking more than I expected to — my own has gotten better down here out of necessity, but it’s not the same without someone complaining about my technique while I work.

Home soon. Properly soon, this time.

He didn’t know when or whether it would reach her, courier routes through the Depths being considerably less reliable than anything on the surface, but the act of writing it settled something in him regardless.

He tested his accumulating abilities against each other during the quieter stretches, Depthbound Grace and Water Armor sitting close together now, both built around enduring pressure rather than striking against it. Lightning Ward and Lightning Strike recognized each other immediately, offense and defense drawn from the same crackling source, though neither seemed ready yet to properly merge.

Getting crowded in here. Good crowded, though.

By the time his final week in Region III arrived, he understood, without needing to count the days precisely, that he’d given this trip everything it had asked for and then some — the pillar ruins properly explored, three new abilities earned through genuine, hard-fought encounters, his body and his kit both considerably stronger than when he’d first crossed back into this flooded, patient world two months ago.

He made one final descent to Fifteen’s edge, more out of a simple wish to see it again before leaving than any real need, and stood there a long while, watching the dark, open water stretching toward whatever came next.

Not this trip. Next time, maybe.

He turned back, and began the steady climb toward Floor Ten, ready, finally and properly, to go home.