To get to the final section—and to the second floor after that—they first needed to get past the Lake. And all the mists swirling all over it.
It went maybe a few dozen miles, Avery concluded, after squinting at it and running around a bit and squinting some more. A clutch of bridges linked one end to another, with a fat leafy island in the middle. Pretty simple.
The bridges themselves were almost unreasonably thick. Good quality spirit steel. Little rust to them—though there were chunks broken off in the middle, melted off or blasted off, it looked like. The parts that lasted though still looked sturdy enough.
Zane took a step, inspecting it. It held his weight well enough, without protesting. That was not a small amount.
He figured it would do.
They went on ahead.
***
ᴇᴠᴇʀɢʀᴇᴇɴ ɢʀᴏᴠᴇ
ᴛᴇᴍᴘʟᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ᴛʀᴇᴇ
A little war room was in session.
High Priest Lan Arandor watched all of this unfolding. A projection thrown up in the middle of the grove. Black lines marred his temple.
"You needn't worry, Your Holiness," said Scout Teal, a smiling bespectacled half-elf. "We may well be about to witness the end of Zane Walker! He hasn't got a clue what he's walking into."
"Tell me," said Lan. "What am I seeing?"
"That isn't just any Lake, your Holiness," said the Scout. He cleared his throat. "At the peak of the last Chaos Cycle, a vicious Monster outbreak occurred right here. Hordes of carcasses buried at the Lake's bottom stitched together, reanimated by a wellspring of savage Yin essence! They snuffed out the Dwarven Navy in a matter of hours—thousands of Core warriors. In a blink!"
The scout nodded confidently. "Zane Walker has just stepped foot into a killing field. And not just any killing field. Through extensive scrying, we've ascertained that the Monsters of this region primarily target the soul."
"I see," said Lan Arandor slowly. "But he's got a rather large soul, hasn't he?"
"Only if he can make use of it. Otherwise it's even worse—a big soul makes for a big target," said the scout. His smile widened even more. "He'll be a walking beacon in there! And his greatest weapon won't help him…"
"His body," intoned Lan. "Right."
"It is very impressive, as we've seen. He has imbibed the S-tier Godbeast Bloodline 'Titan Rhino,' and from all we've reviewed he's gotten it up to Bone Tempering. He's stuffed it with so much steel his muscles alone could approach a Sky-grade treasure!" said Teal. "Attacking that directly will be difficult… but his soul is another matter. We've reviewed every recording battle we could get our hands on up until mere days ago. Every soul attack we could find, he's had to take head-on—he's relied on his girth so far…"
Teal chuckled. "That false sense of security will doom him in the end, I predict! The big trees make the loudest falls."
"Hmm," said Lan, stroking his chin. "Promising."
"It isn't that impressive," said Val, off to the side.
"Pardon?" said Teal.
"His body," Val muttered. "It isn't that impressive."
Lan frowned at his son for a second. Then—
"By the Earth Mother—what is it I always tell you? It won't do to underestimate the enemy! To defeat them you must assess them precisely as they are. Put aside your ego. The man's a physical specimen—just look at him!"
At that moment Zane was struggling to fit through the gate to get onto the bridge. It was only wide enough to fit a dwarven truck. He frowned at it, shrugged, and inched on through sideways.
"It's no good pretending otherwise. Such hubris will only come back to bite you!"
"Tch!" Val darkened, turned away.
Lan grimaced. His son was overflowing with talent, it was true. His cultivation soared while he barely tried, and he could outduel most any of the other Chosen, hardly practicing—but the Heavens did not give his son sense in equal measure. Val still had an adolescent's maturity. The lustiness and pettiness of youth. He acted positively moody at times. It gave Lan headaches.
There were times when Lan wished he had taken a harder hand with the boy, but he took after his mother so, and Lan couldn't bear it. And here they were.
"If it's any consolation, my prince," said the scout. "I strongly suspect he won't last the hour!"
"I'll enjoy this," said Val, gnashing his teeth. His dainty eyelashes fluttered in rage.
***
Zane and crew started their way across. It smelled of damp earth and musty stone. Here and there the water rippled, exposing boat-sized air bubbles that popped up, burst crisply, sloshed back in—as though breathed by some enormous beast hidden deep below the surface…
His friends shivered a little, came closer instinctively, and felt warmer for it. It was warmer next to Zane, like he was giving off some kind of body heat. He was confused at first. He didn't feel much difference.
Then the Monsters came.
The first Monster flickered out in front of them—he saw it first as a patch of weird air, warbling the Astral Plane. He frowned at it. Weird.
Avery was thinking the same. "What the.. "
Then it attacked.
It flickered out of nothing. A billowing black cloak swishing into being, ten-foot-tall, tattered, riding on some invisible harsh gale. A patch of faceless dark with a gaping void of a mouth. Its arms were gnarled, little more than eroded bones, as though plucked from long-dead creatures. Zane felt it then—a wintry-cold presence gushing from it, frosting the air…
A second flickered out to the left. A third behind it, a fourth swarming in on him—
𝔽𝕠𝕘 𝕎𝕣𝕒𝕚𝕥𝕙 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣)
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟚𝟞𝟘
They all felt quite strange to Zane. Like they were barely there, weakly anchored to the physical world. He did feel them pretty strongly in the Astral Plane. These things were mostly essence and Law, held together by soul… they were like some of the things that had attacked him in the Red Moon Pagoda, he felt.
Their presences trailed crackling voids in the Astral Plane. He felt how it affected his friends—even just being near them made them feel involuntary spikes of fear, of hopelessness…
Then the air began to bend in front of them. Twisting, falling in—those gaping maws dropped open. And screamed.
Out raged a blistering soul attack. Four tornados of pure sucking force ripping through the air linking to one big vacuum—
Reina gasped. Threw up a shield—it passed right through. And hit Zane right in the face.
It was enough power to rip souls straight out of bodies. Even souls like Zane's would've had some trouble, he thought.
Only… Zane had dealt with this kind of stuff before. Pretty recently. It was why he hadn't really been concerned when he saw these things pop up.
It felt like those attacks in the Red Moon Pagoda too—just not nearly as strong. It kind of tickled, actually.
Zane frowned at them.
Then his eyes began to glow crimson.
A red glow rose off his skin… and the image of a Red Moon blew out of him.
And a new power rocked the Astral Plane.
Swallowing up that chunk of bridge, lighting up the fog in that bloody-bright hue—eclipsing the Wraiths in the glow of it, the sheer scale of it. A celestial power rising in the middle of the lake…
The Red Moon Pagoda took Zane's soul. His aura. And projected it like rays off the sun.
…There was a lot to project.
The Fog Wraiths choked right off. At first they were just baffled—for a moment those hollow mouths hung open. Then they turned away, hissing, like it hurt just to look at him. And then they started to shiver, and whimper, stood frozen there—like they couldn't even bear to move.
He had been wondering when that Pagoda would come in handy, actually.
They really were mostly just energy in the Astral Plane. Zane considered them. Could he just…?
He reached out with his soul—with Emperor's Will. Grabbed hold of one, by its head. The other, by the end of it. And twisted that tattered cloak like he was drying a towel.
It shrieked as it came apart. And dissolved, smoked away in his grip.
𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕖𝕧𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕖𝕕!
𝔼𝕞𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕠𝕣'𝕤 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕝 𝕌𝕟𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕞𝕠𝕟 𝕀𝕀𝕀 -> 𝔼𝕡𝕚𝕔 𝕀
Huh. He blinked. That was easy.
He promptly scooped up the rest of them, and squished them one by one.
He looked back around at his friends—everyone seemed fine, if a bit frazzled.
They ambled on.
***
ᴇᴠᴇʀɢʀᴇᴇɴ ɢʀᴏᴠᴇ
ᴛᴇᴍᴘʟᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ᴛʀᴇᴇ
Silence.
A little twitching. In Lan Arandor's face.
Then—"You said that was supposed to end him!" said Val.
"What was that?" snarled Lan. He rounded on his scout, face tinged red.
"Err," blubbered scout Teal, face all white. "Ah. That…"
"That was the Red Moon Pagoda!"
"It… appears so, Your Holiness—"
"How the hell could you not have known that Zane Walker had the damned Red Moon Pagoda?! Is my Scouting Department composed of blind men?!"
"Err—"
"And how could he possibly have mastered it to that degree?! That shield could stop a Nascent Soul attack!"
"I… he never showed that capacity—"
Lan looked like he wanted to fume more. But in the end he just gritted his teeth, and took a deep breath, and pinched the bridge of his nose. At last he spoke.
"No. This… is not necessarily your fault. Every time we see Zane Walker he manages to surprise us. This is a man of endless depth," said Lan. His eyes narrowed even further, almost to slits. "We must be prepared for anything he can muster. It is no wonder he's ranked first! This man is ready for any occasion."
Meanwhile on the projection, Zane tripped over an exposed plank, flailed for a bit, caught his balance, frowned at the plank, shrugged, and kept walking.
"To master the Pagoda to that degree—his soul has to be even bigger than we thought," continued Lan. He looked as if he was running calculations in his head. "Heavens! Everything about him must be massive…"
This thought did not sit well with Val, who was looking at Reina walking happily next to Zane. His face went a little queasy.
"No—this is a good thing," said Lan slowly. "Every encounter tells us something new! Soon we will know the full scope of the enemy. Then we can plan accordingly."
Lan narrowed his eyes. "So that when the time comes to bring down the elephant, we must make certain we use a spear of sufficient size."
"Your Holiness," gasped the scout, trying to recover. "If I may—I grant you, that was a shock. But those Monsters were merely an appetizer! The worst is yet to come… he's not out of the woods yet, not by far!"
***
Zane liked this section. It was a lot more pleasant than the last one.
At first a few big ghost-clusters came up to bother them. But after he squeezed a few of them dry, most of them ran screaming. Now almost none of them dared him anymore. It made for a good breather. They walked on ambling.
In the meantime—
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝟚𝟜𝟞 -> 𝟚𝟜𝟟
He was making good progress there. Getting closer and closer to Level 250.
They came across some shipwrecks along the way—a surprising amount littered around the edges of the bridge. He took little detours to explore them. Mostly they had steam engines, no sails. When he broke inside of them, though, ripped some big latches off some old vaults, he found good caches of precious metal lying around.
It made for a lot of easy munching for Zane.
𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝔹𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝔹𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕀𝕀 -> 𝕀𝕀𝕀
***
Soon they were coming up to the island in the middle of the Lake. They saw it up ahead hazed in mist.
Instantly Zane could tell it was different from the rest of the place. The sheer aura pouring off it… they heard a deep groaning thumping. In the distance, past outlines of skeletal white trees, lurked giant lumbering shadows. And even farther—looming over it all—a coiling shadow heaving over the trees…
Its aura rose over everything else too. It was a familiar kind of aura—one that made Zane frown. He had only felt that kind of aura once before.
Then he saw the dots. A few fat red ones on the beaches—and more, deeper in. Each was a lot fatter than usual. That usually meant Bosses, and a lot of them.
"Incoming!" cried Avery.
And the waters all around them began frosting over.