Chapter 245 — Seventeenth Floor

Chapter 245: Chapter 245 — Seventeenth Floor

The boundary into Seventeen announced itself the same way most transitions down here did — gradually, a slow accumulation of small differences that only added up to something definite once he was fully past them.

The ash-dusted stone of Sixteen gave way to something harder, paler, faint veins of crystal threading through the rock in delicate, branching patterns that caught what little ambient light reached this deep. The air carried a dry, mineral sharpness entirely unlike Sixteen’s damp, heavy stillness.

This is it. Properly the last stretch before Eighteen.

He moved through the opening passage carefully, Hunter’s Eye sharpening against unfamiliar shadows, and found the terrain opening within the hour into a wide, fissured cavern, its walls studded with small, scattered crystal growths — nothing like the formations the archive had described for Region IV proper, but a clear, unmistakable preview of what waited further ahead.

A shape detached itself from one of the crystal clusters as he passed, blending so completely against the pale stone that he nearly missed it entirely. Small, quick, six-legged, its carapace the same faint, glassy sheen as the formations around it.

Vein-Stalker. Rank Five, if the guild notes are right.

It came at him fast, low and darting, and he met it with a clean strike before it closed the distance properly, the fight ending almost before it began. He stood over the fallen creature a moment, mildly surprised by how little resistance it had offered given its documented rank.

Lucky strike, maybe. Or they’re simpler than the rank suggests.

He pushed deeper, and found the second encounter considerably less forgiving.

A larger Vein-Stalker, easily twice the size of the first, erupted from a crevice he’d walked directly past without noticing, its aggression immediate and sustained in a way its smaller kin hadn’t shown at all.

Outside documented territory, maybe. Archive mentioned something about that — aggression beyond species profile.

He gave ground rather than meet the charge head-on, Storm Step carrying him clear, and answered with Tidal Lance aimed for its exposed flank. The bolt struck true, but the creature barely slowed, pressing forward with a ferocity that made him properly commit to the fight rather than treat it as routine.

He called Bulwark Strike, stone and current driving together into its path, and felt it stagger for the first time, giving him the opening to close and drive his blade home through the same weakened point.

It took two more exchanges before the creature finally went still, and Arlen stood over it afterward, breathing harder than the earlier fight had left him, genuinely puzzled by the disparity.

Same species, considerably more dangerous than its rank and its smaller cousin both suggested it should be. Worth noting properly.

He wrote the encounter down carefully that evening, more thorough than his usual practical entries — not because he suspected it connected to anything larger, simply because it felt, in the honest, careful way he judged most things, like the kind of detail someone studying this floor properly would want recorded.

Vein-Stalker, second encounter — considerably more aggressive than documented, outside what I’d expect from its typical territory based on the archive’s notes. Worth filing with the guild once I’m back at Ten.

The warmth from the larger creature’s meat arrived that night, sharp and quick, settling into his legs with a restless, coiled energy that made him want to move even sitting still.

A name surfaced.

Quickstrike Reflex

He tested it, calling the ability and finding his own reaction time sharpened considerably, a strike he threw at a loose stone landing before he’d properly finished deciding to throw it.

Useful. Properly useful, against anything fast enough to otherwise get the first move.

He spent a while longer that evening simply sitting with the new ability, running through familiar motions and noticing how much sooner his body seemed to anticipate each one now. It reminded him, distantly, of Hunter’s Eye’s own early days — not a dramatic transformation, just a small, persistent sharpening at the edges of something he already trusted.

He pushed on the following day, the crystal formations growing denser the further he went, small clusters giving way to proper outcroppings that jutted from the cavern walls in increasingly deliberate patterns.

He encountered a cluster of Ashen Moths midway through the day, pale, fluttering things that scattered harmlessly at his approach, more curiosity than threat, and let them be rather than waste the effort. A little further on, a solitary Silt Crawler had apparently wandered this far from Sixteen’s wetter ground, out of place and sluggish against the drier stone, and he ended it quickly rather than let it suffer whatever slow, mismatched end this unfamiliar terrain would otherwise have given it.

It was late in the day, pushing toward what he judged to be Seventeen’s deeper half, that he found something that made him stop entirely.

A faint, resonant hum carried through the stone itself, barely perceptible at first, growing steadily clearer the further he walked toward its source. He followed it cautiously, Earthen Grip pressed lightly against the ground to track whatever was actually producing it.

He found a small cluster of creatures gathered around a particularly dense crystal formation — compact, fast-moving things, considerably smaller than the Vein-Stalkers, moving with an eerie, coordinated precision that made his instincts prickle even before he’d properly identified them.

Haven’t seen anything matching this description in the archive’s main text.

They scattered the moment he got close, vanishing into crevices too narrow for him to follow, and he stood there a long moment, genuinely curious, before deciding not to pursue.

He made camp a careful distance from the formation, the resonant hum still faintly audible even from a distance, and wrote a brief entry before sleep, more curious than concerned.

Second day on Seventeen. Found something unusual near a dense crystal cluster — small, fast, coordinated creatures I don’t recognize from the archive, gone before I got a proper look. Worth asking about once I reach an outpost that might know more.

He closed the journal, and let the crystal-studded cavern’s strange, humming quiet settle around his small camp, sleep coming slower than usual, some old, careful instinct keeping part of him faintly alert even in rest.

He woke the next morning with Eighteen’s threshold somewhere close ahead, the terrain’s crystal growth thickening with every step, and found himself, pressing on, genuinely eager for the first real sight of what the archive had spent an entire week describing to him secondhand — Region Four, finally, properly, almost within reach.