Just up the stairsโ
๐๐ ๐ฆ ๐๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ฃ๐๐: ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ ๐ ๐-๐
โ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ ๐ธ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ค
They stood right outside the door of itโtwo pale walls. Giving away nothing. You couldn't see much beyond either.
The Mini-Map showed a void beyond. Like its sight was blocked.
Avery marched up to it and squinted at it for a bit.
"Uhh," she said after a little while. "Yeahโthat thing's packed full of Monsters. And they definitely don't look like they're from here."
According to her it was a bunch of Ogre-things. Meaty, spiked-club-wielding, drooling, red-eyed types. Cracking knuckles. All in the Level 270s.
"Yeah. Something tells me it's not a coincidence they're here," said Avery, wrinkling her nose. "They want to give you the business."
"Hmm," said Zane.
A pause.
"Soooo," said Avery. "What now?"
"I will give them the business," said Zane.
He felt no need to rest right now. He was fresh. And after the Guardian these sounded like light work. Nothing that could trouble him.
He cracked his knuckles.
It was time to clean house.
***
Grand Chieftain Helgax licked a fat drop of drool off his fangs. He was hungryโas were the rest of his Blood Guard. As was tradition, these twenty of his race's most elite warriors had starved themselves for ten days and ten nights before coming here. So their bloodlust would be at a peak. So they would fight like hungry rabid animals.
They were rabid enough as it was.
The Chained One had given them this great honor. To portal down in secret from their dens in the 64th floor and crush a certain target. An uppity human man, it was said.
It was in the nature of Ogres to crush. There was nothing they liked to do better. This man of flesh and blood was, said the Chained One, a great hope of forces of the livingโa man who could rise to one day be a powerful force at the peak of this Chaos Cycle, when the Jailbreaks came, and the Monster Waves could take to the world once moreโฆ
He could not be allowed to live.
Helgax had brought his very best. The very elite of the Blood Guards, bred from birth on the bloody battlefields of Lygar where one in ten survivedโbut only by slaughtering the other nine.
He appraised them with cracked red eyes, baring his teeth in a leery grin.
Spiked steel clubs were clutched in fists big enough to crush human heads. Bone-necklaces hung round their tree-trunk necks, strung up with skulls. Their panting filled the air with noxious fumes. Dozens of red eyes, grinning slicked teeth, fat gobs of leaking droolโฆ Purebred killing machines.
If they manage this feat, they would be greatly rewarded, the Chained One had promised! Helgax himself would receive a promotion to Monster Knight.
The thought alone was enough to drive him to slobbering frenzy. To receive a Bloodlineโa splinter of a Heavenly Demon Bloodlineโto receive a Weapon Soul to boot, to gain greater sentience and rise from the ranks of the rabbleโit was any Monster's most fervent desire.
So there his brethren waited. In ancient halls that once belonged to a mighty dwarven kingdom, halls lined with statues of their heroes and kingsโall crumbled now. Broken. The ones left intact, his Blood Guard had smashed. They liked the sounds of breaking.
Thenโas oneโthey stiffened. And their panting grew heavier, quicker, making the hall a den of poison smokeโtheir ugly grins widened.
Their prey was coming. Stood before the grand doors.
It was a strange thing. Usually when approaching the unknown, humans would have a scent of cautious fear about them. A nervousness. Helgax could smell it from miles off. But this manโฆ reeked of nothing.
Helgax frowned. It did not matter whether this human feared or not. Once he fell under Helgax's club, once he felt their overwhelming might, once the screaming began, once he realized he was trapped in a chamber of deathโฆthen the fear would come into him.
Helgax snorted gleefully.
The doors cracked. Started opening wide. And his brethren could hardly contain their slobbering; acid spittle dripped in wide hissing pools, melting chunks of floor. Their clubs started flaring with Earthen Laws, one by one, base Bloodlines burning in their veinsโฆ
The man that stepped through was so large he might have been an Ogre himself. So wide he seemed to swallow up the space of the entrance. Rippling with muscle. Glowing brilliant-blue Chains wrapped his big fists. His eyes were pits of absolute black.
The man's eyes narrowed. And he got to work.
Helgax was right.
There was a display of overwhelming might.
A crushing. A screaming. BANG-BANG-BANGโwhole bodies' worth of blood splattering down the halls...
Then the fear began.
***
Helgax limped his one good arm over the blood-slicked stone floor, crawling as best he could, whimpering. It was the only part of him that had not been crushed to pulp.
He was not even thinking thenโhe just had to get awayโ
The hallway had been pristine at the start of it. Now every last inch was painted with many coats of deep red. The color of Ogre blood.
Then he heard the sounds coming closer. THUD. THUD. THUD.
The aura pouring out of that man was like nothing Helgax had feltโit might even compare to a Monster Grand Knight.
The Chained One had sent them to die.
Helgax shrieked, thrust out an armโ
An incredible force crashed over him. And he saw no more.
***
Reina brought up the rear cautiously, coming to get a look at the aftermath. Then Evan. Then Avery, eyes wide.
Zane scratched his head. Looked back at the hall, then back at his friends. Frowned. He had gotten blood on his head.
At least it was quickly vanishing. Going to essence. Pouring into him.
๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐ -> ๐๐๐
"Uh. Y'know, big fella..." said Avery, blinking at him. "All I'll say is I'm sure glad you're on our side! 'Causeโฆ"
She whistled.
He glanced back down the hallway. It did kind of look like a horror movie. And there was lots of screaming... Hmm.
Reina, meanwhile, had no reservations about it. They wanted to kill him. They were waiting to ambush him. They deserved what came to themโshould have gotten worse, in her mind. She was very pleased it went the way it did. Somehow the caring part of her brain, which was most of her, quieted down when things tried to hurt Zane. She got too angry.
Zane enjoyed dominating. But Reina liked seeing him like that tooโit was her favorite version of Zane.
***
They made it through the wrecked hallway and into the next zone.
๐๐ ๐ฆ ๐๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ฃ๐๐: ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ ๐ ๐-๐
โ๐ ๐ช๐๐ ๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ค๐ฆ๐ฃ๐ช
They turned a corner. Now the walls were made of pure gold. At the far end of this new hallway, a massive vault door was built deep into the precious metal. Covered in thickset locks. It had some kind of array seal over it. But that had lost most of its power by now. Thick streams of essence billowing from the other sideโฆ
Treasure. Tons of it.
Only, something guarded the door.
๐พ๐ฃ๐๐๐ ๐น๐ฆ๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ (๐๐ ๐๐ค๐ฅ๐๐ฃ)
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐ ๐
These dwarves really liked their golems. They built them chunky. This one was made out of some kind of solid gold. Gemstones made the joints, each a little fountain of power.
It came to life at the sight of him.
Here he went again.
Zane made to roll up his sleeves. Then he realized he was already shirtless. He shrugged, and waded in.
This one had pretty interesting powers. It could consume its own gemstone joints for energy. And it had so many cores, it could draw on a lot before it sputtered out.
The thing with absolute strength, though, was it had a way of making everything else irrelevant.
In the end it didn't matter what powers this new shiny Warden had. Zane took out his chains and crushed it flat in five brutal strokes. When you crushed pretty much anything, they came out looking about the same.
Zane blinked at the flattened, sparking, groaning remains. He was still only breathing slightly heavy. His health hadn't even gotten under 75%.
He did not find that very hard either.
It was getting difficult to escape the conclusion that this First Floor had nothing left for him. He had outgrown it.
Reina was a little surprised too how easy things were going downโฆ with how the Monsters had treated him, she would've expected them to stack stronger resistance. Maybe they already hadโmaybe they just hadn't thought he would grow this fast. Maybe they'd underestimated his Fourth Evolution.
Whatever the case, it was clear they were not ready for this new Zane.
Which was all the better.
Down the hall, there seemed to be one last section. The final stretchโwhere Reina suspected they kept their nastiest stuff.
Before then, though.
Treasure.
***
Zane tore the locks off the Dwarven Royal Treasury with a few casual swipes, grabbed the giant metal door, ripped it off its hinges, flung it casually behind them like a frisbee. It careened through the entrance hall, slammed through the grand doors, crashed to a halt somewhere in the far distance.
They went on through.
You would expect the dwarves to have tons of great steel. But what they came across still surprised him.
It was a warehouse so big you couldn't see where it ended any which way, even upโa maze of shelves stacked high to the ceiling, all glitteringโฆ Zane's head was swimming. Everywhere he lookedโrows upon rows of silver, gold, diamond.
A good chunk of itโlikely most of itโwas not good enough to be worth taking a bite of anymore for him. His body had reached too high a level. These were mostly Mortal-Grade S-rank Spirit Steelsโnothing to him now. They kept walking, blinking at all the shiny, came across shelves of F-rank Earth Steelsโbut even those wouldn't do much for him anymore.
But the shelves went on and on. And soon, when they got to the furthest depths of it, they found the good stuff.
***
Stacked at the very end in great gleaming cubesโฆ
๐๐ฅ๐๐ฃ๐ค๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐๐ฃ๐ [๐ผ๐๐ฃ๐ฅ๐ (๐ป)]
โ๐ฃ๐๐๐-๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ ๐ธ๐ค๐ฅ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐๐ ๐น๐๐๐ฅ ๐๐โ-๐น, ๐ ๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ฅ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ฃ๐ฅ ๐๐ฆ๐ฅ๐๐ฃ ๐ฝ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ ๐.
A shelf full of it. Stacked alongside blocks upon blocks of C-grade Mithril.
Just looking at it was making Zane hungry.
It was almost too muchโeven Reina was having trouble wrapping her head around it all. He wasn't sure he could finish it all if he tried.
He sure would try though.
After she got over the initial shock of it, Reina told him, with some excitement, she wasn't sure they would ever come across another stash like this. Even in the next few floors. They had better stock up while they couldโand being Reina, she had brought lots of storage capacity to spare. Avery and Evan both got Interspatial Rings and scampered about lugging in steel by the rack-full.
For Zane, meanwhile, it was time for an experiment. To see just how much raw steel could fit in one Zane.
A dwarven kingdom's royal treasury, undergroundโฆ he got a suspicion Reina was right. This could be one of the richest stocks they'd find in a long time. He would seize this chance.
Now that he thought about it, he had pretty much walked the realm. He had gone through the entrance, and crushed their Wardens. Gone through their cities and wrecked their fortresses. And stormed the castle now too. He had conquered all it had to offer him.
Now he got to claim his reward.
***
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
The notifications came in a torrent.
It took a full day and a full night to hit Zane's limit. And they did find out that he had one.
A notification popped up at a certain pointโ
๐๐ช๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ โ๐๐ก ๐๐ ๐๐๐ค ๐๐๐๐ ๐ฃ๐๐๐๐๐๐!
๐๐ก๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ ๐ฅ๐ : ๐๐ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ก๐ค ๐ฅ๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐๐๐
It was a bottleneck he never thought he would hit.
In the meantimeโ
๐น๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ฆ๐ค๐๐๐ ๐๐ -> ๐๐
Four Levels of Behemoth Muscle. By now it was safe to say he had reached full-on overkill again. There was nothing here he felt he could not lift. He felt he could pick up a whole rack of steel blocks and sent it crashing into the ceiling if he liked. He could no longer gauge his strength adequately by the things of this realm. Only strong Monsters could offer his fists resistance now.
โ๐ ๐๐ ๐ค๐ค๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ค ๐๐ -> ๐๐
Nine Levels. If he leaped hard enough his head would go shooting through the ceiling. He had to stop Leveling every few hours to learn how to walk againโand even then it took a while to stop crashing into thingsโฆ.
๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐๐๐ โ๐๐๐ ๐๐ -> ๐๐
He had gotten a lot of blood on him today. None of it his own. He was curious to see if anything left here could even make him bleed now.
๐น๐๐ค๐ฅ๐๐ ๐ ๐น๐ ๐๐ ๐๐ -> ๐๐
He knew he should not feel unbreakable. That was dangerous. Yet even he could not understand the limits of his body right now.
It was a good thing he had hit some cap, anyway. He felt stuffed to the point of bursting. He had so much raw physical energy inside of himโit was almost too much. He did not know what to do with it allโฆ
Zane looked down at his hand. He knew the Monsters were watching him too. All this came because they tried to break him. He wondered what they were thinking, seeing what they had created.
He wondered what they were thinking, knowing he was coming for them.