Chapter 28: The Uncharted Depths
In the unnatural quiet of the Hound's chamber, Azazel accessed his inventory. The violet space revealed a stark reality: three potions left, and half their rations gone. The near-total wipe of their healing supplies was a brutal audit of the battle's cost.
"Reginleif," he said, closing the portal. His voice was matter-of-fact, the strategist overriding the bruised survivor. "I know the smart move is to go back up. We're low on everything. But mapping this place, from the twenty-first floor down… that's pure value. For us, and for the guild. Intel no one else has."
Reginleif was silent for a long moment, her fingers unconsciously tracing the edge of her new green scarf. Finally, she nodded, her expression grim but resolved. "Okay. But we encounter anything that even smells like another boss, we leave. Immediately. No heroic last stands. Deal?"
"Deal," Azazel agreed.
The descent to the twenty-first floor felt like crossing a historical boundary. The familiar damp, organic cave-stone of the upper dungeon was gone. Here, the walls were formed of seamless, geometric panels of a smoky, purplish crystal. The air was dry, cold, and hummed with a high-pitched frequency just at the edge of hearing. It felt less like a cave and more like the interior of a dead god's machine.
They hadn't taken ten steps when the ambush came—not from ahead, but from the walls themselves.
Shardscale Serpents. They peeled away from the crystalline surfaces, their sleek bodies a perfect camouflage of sharp, interlocking crystal scales. They moved with a fluid, terrifying speed, striking not with a hiss, but with the sound of scraping glass. Their fangs dripped a luminescent venom that promised madness.
Azazel didn't have a blunt weapon. But he had a new spear. As the first serpent lunged, he didn't try to pierce its glittering side. He stepped in, reversed his grip, and swung the reinforced dwarven steel shaft like a bat.
CRACK-TINKLE.
The sound was of shattering quartz. The serpent's body, hard as mineral, snapped in the middle from the pure, concussive force. It fell in two twitching halves, its venom sizzling uselessly on the crystal floor.
"Wow," Azazel breathed, looking at the spear with new respect. "The scales didn't even stand a chance. Damn."
More serpents emerged, a dozen at least, a kaleidoscope of lethal glass. Azazel planted his feet. This time, he didn't summon tendrils. He thought of a net. Of roots.
"You Shadow: Fang Net."
The darkness didn't shoot out. It bloomed from a point at his feet, expanding rapidly across the floor in a circle of inky black. Where it passed under a serpent, thorny, barbed hooks of solidified shadow erupted, not just coiling, but biting into the crystalline scales, locking the creatures in place with a vicious, anchoring grip. His control was different now—less about raw power, more about intricate, cruel precision.
Reginleif was already a ghost in the chaos. Using the frozen serpents as stepping stones and pivots, she ricocheted through the immobilized swarm. Her moonstone dagger and her own blade flashed, a silver-green blur that found the base of each pinned skull with unerring accuracy. Crack. Crack. Crack. Azazel moved with her, a slower but devastating partner. A single, powerful thrust of his spearhead punched through serpent skulls with final, wet crunches.
In minutes, the chamber was still again, littered with glittering, lifeless fragments.
As they collected the more intact crystal scales, Azazel grinned, hefting a bag. "Reginleif, how much do you think we could make off these?"
"A lot," she said flatly, not sharing his enthusiasm. "If we don't collapse the local economy by flooding the market with a rare mid-depth resource."
Azazel's grin vanished. "Oh. Shit. You're right. I completely forgot about the whole 'economy' bullcrap." The large-scale consequences of their looting were a blind spot his survivalist mindset had missed.
His Mythic has completely changed shape, Reginleif thought, watching him stash the scales. Was it the near-death experience? Or was he never using it right to begin with? She'd heard of Darkness Mythics—always rare, always feared. They were supposed to be about fear, consumption, annihilation. But his now had a feral, bestial quality to its bindings, and a cold, artistic control over ice. It didn't fit the legends. It was as if the Mythic was adapting to him, not the other way around.
They spent the next few hours mapping the twenty-first floor. Azazel's notebook filled with precise, measured diagrams of the crystalline corridors, hazard zones, and mineral deposits. His lines were clean, his annotations minimal and tactical. It was the work of a professional.
Finally, as he sketched a particularly complex junction, Reginleif broke the long silence. "Who taught you how to map things? Why is it so… detailed?"
Azazel, deep in concentration, answered without thinking. "Oh, I learned it when I was helping an arms dealer move product through contested jungle territory. I was the navigator and the accountant. Had to map routes so we didn't get ambushed by rivals or the local militia. Had to account for every bullet sold, every bribe paid."
He finished the line and froze. The quiet of the dungeon pressed in.
Reginleif's voice was low, strained. "Wait. You were working with… a merchant of death?"
Merchant of death. The term, so familiar from his own world's headlines, hit him like a splash of cold water. Shit. Said too much.
"Yeah," he said, closing his notebook with a snap, his tone deliberately casual. "It was a long time ago. Come on. Let's see what the twenty-second floor has."
The transition was even more pronounced. The crystalline panels gave way to walls of fitted, granite-like stone, veined with pulsating bands of faint gold light. The air grew warmer, thicker, carrying a faint, sweet-rot spore smell. It was architecturally impossible—a dungeon floor that felt like the basement of an ancient, sunken fortress.
"Okay," Azazel murmured, staring at the new environment. "This is the last floor we check. And have you noticed? The dungeon has completely changed its theme on us."
Reginleif ran a hand over the warm, rune-etched stone. "Yes. Since the twentieth floor. It's not generating natural caves anymore. It's generating… structures. Chambers. Like we've passed through the wild outer layers and reached its engineered core."
"Yeah," Azazel agreed, a rare note of sober reflection in his voice. "I wanted to push to the bottom, but… that boss made me realize I'm actually weak. I kinda knew it, was just forcing my way through. Almost getting killed by a giant flaming dog… it's a shitty way to die. I've got plans. Can't afford to be monster food."
"You got that right," Reginleif said, her gaze distant. "I still have things to do. I can't die here either." The truth is, she thought, the Sky's Loom only shows me one clear path right now. The lines of wind all flow toward him. So I follow. Until the winds show me a different way. I've always followed the wind Evan seems I was a child.
Their reconnaissance was cut short by the floor's residents.
First, Echo Wisps—floating, shrieking orbs of chaotic light that darted like insane fireflies. Their very presence made the air vibrate with disorienting noise and sudden, blinding flashes that seared afterimages into the eyes. A wave of lethargy washed over Azazel as one passed too close, sapping his will to move.
Then, from porous vents in the stone, emerged Luminous Myconids. They were humanoid shapes of soft, glowing fungus, moving with a slow, deliberate grace. They puffed clouds of sparkling, hypnotic spores that smelled cloyingly sweet and made the world swim. One opened its cap-like head and released a dense spore-burst aimed to choke and blind.
"Wisps are mine! Myconids are yours! Wind their spores away!" Azazel barked, shaking off the mental fog. He couldn't silence the wisps' magic, but he could break their bodies. He became a whirlwind with his spear, using the long shaft to swat the shrieking orbs from the air like deadly insects. Each connected hit produced a satisfying pop and a fizzle of light.
Reginleif countered the Myconids with their natural enemy: air. She didn't just create a breeze; she summoned a localized gale. With sweeping gestures, she funneled the choking spore clouds back at the fungal humanoids, disrupting their formations. She then darted in, her daggers a flurry of slashes that sliced through soft fungal flesh, her green scarf fluttering behind her like a battle standard. Where spores clung to her, the scarf' faint shimmer seemed to dissolve them into harmless dust.
The fight was chaotic, a battle against perception and biology, but without a centralized, overwhelming threat. They worked as a unit: Azazel creating space by shattering wisps, Reginleif purging the air and cutting down the disoriented Myconids. Soon, the chamber was filled with fading light-motes and the earthy smell of dead fungus.
They stood panting in the sudden quiet. The twenty-second floor stretched on, mysterious and promising greater danger.
Azazel looked at the dark archway leading further down, then at their depleted state, then at Reginleif. The deal was clear.
"We're done," he stated. "We map this chamber as the entry point, and we leave. Now."
Reginleif simply nodded, relief in her eyes. No argument.
They turned their backs on the uncharted depths and began the long, cautious ascent through the conquered floors, past the geode, the swamp, the merged halls, and the silent, empty battlegrounds, carrying with them maps, scales, treasures, and the hard-won knowledge that they had reached their limit—for now.
The surface, and the fortress city, awaited.
End of chapter 28