The grass went up to Zane's thighs. The vines were thick as his arms, the flowers as big as Evan wasโEvan had trouble seeing, so he just scampered after Zane's legs. Everything was in monstrous proportion.
The jungle came alive with a great hissing, a shrill screeching, a buzzing so loud it sent clumps of dirt jumping down the meadow.
Huge shadows drifted across them. Moths whose deep-blue wings spanned some thirty-odd feet, splattered with hypnotic swirling patterns. Their eyes had twenty sides. Each one seemed to be staring at them, glimmering greedily.
๐พ๐ฃ๐๐๐ฅ ๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ฃ๐ (๐๐ ๐๐ค๐ฅ๐๐ฃ)
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐
Then the underbrush began to rustle. Red gleams shone through the murk. Light slicking off of fangs tipped vivid venom-green.
๐๐๐ ๐ฃ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฃ๐ก๐๐๐ฅ (๐๐ ๐๐ค๐ฅ๐๐ฃ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฅ)
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐
Spikes jutted out of bark-scales. Muscles bulged all down a freight train of a body. And half a dozen more came through, sagging into the ground, trailing ditches wide as riverbeds.
Then from behind them came a rumbling, a stomping, and yet more huge beasts broke through the underbrushโ
๐๐๐-๐ผ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฃ ๐น๐๐ ๐ ๐ (๐๐ ๐๐ค๐ฅ๐๐ฃ)
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐
Twelve-foot-tall flowers, crawling around on pale fleshy roots as though they were octopi. Their petals were vibrant yellows and reds and purples. Their mouths lay at the center, where the pistil should beโrows and rows of spinning jagged teeth, drooling puddles of hissing acid sap.
It was as though half the Jungle had smelled their blood. And come to feast.
Zane took in all those hostile auras around himโall those Nascent Souls. The most Nascent Monsters they'd ever come across. All clumped in one big horde. Hemming them in. Closing in fast. As Reina and Evan and Avery huddled close, nervous, backing up to him in a little circle, trying to keep them all in their sightsโthose auras swelled like rogue waves. Threatening to swamp them, to sweep them off the face of the realmโฆ
Then Zane's Axes dropped into the world.
A size bigger than before, a thick slab of steel, a muted gray, yet pureโnot a single blemish in that alloy. The color of the bones of the Titan Rhinoceros.
Just by looking at it, you could tell it was immensely durable. The same way you could tell that about Zane at a glance. It simply gave that same sense.
The Axe burned blinding hot at the edge, slicked with a purple so hot it wounded the air around it, cast a warping halo that turned everything within a five-foot-radius into a slurry of warbling colors...
Zane's body powered up. Coursing for the first time with Nascent Soul strength. And instantly he felt the difference. His essence jumped out to him first. It was imbued with a sense of himself, a denser fuel, and it ran through every part of himโpowering every muscle fiber, every tendon, coursing through his bones, his skinโgranting all of him a new strength, a sense of utter steadfastness. Endurance. The power to last.
More than ever, Zane's body embodied his soul. Himself.
That sense flared in his Soul Weapon too. The tip of his Axe flared with Stormfire intensity, shining so bright it felt like staring at a sliver of sun. Its power had a new solidness, a new thicknessโit could not be compared to his essence before this. It was akin to the difference between coursing water and mere mist.
And at last his full aura blasted out of him.
Rising to confront those of all those Monsters, closing in in their wide circle, pouring in the pressureโฆand it was like those rogue waves ran straight into a cliff face, unyieldingโbroke against itโand all they could do was retreat, flee backโ
Zane's aura stood unmoved. It made its mark on the world. It was in every sense the essence of Zane.
He looked around. Flexed his fist. Nodded.
For a moment the Monster wave sloshed at the front. Stuttering, hesitating at the sight of him. At the feeling. Unsure just what to do about him.
Then one of them screeched. Another snarledโ stompedโand their innermost natures, the hatred at the bottoms of their twisted souls, took hold again.
They rushed him.
The Great Mothra hissed, sprayed a glitter cloud as dazzling in the Astral Plane as the physical. The Man-Eater Flowers began to charge, teeth making vicious spiraling whirlpools, gobs of sickly digestive fluid splattering out, dissolving all they touchedโout came the serpents too, jaws unhinging, scythe-like fangs sharpened to the tiniest of pointsโ
Avery and Evan cried out, stood at the ready, bracing for impact. Reina marshaled her healing, breathing fasterโ
Zane struck. With a very old Skill.
Rising Storm Slash.
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
โ๐๐ค๐๐๐ ๐๐ฅ๐ ๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐๐ค๐ [๐๐ช๐ฅ๐๐๐+ (๐) -> ๐๐ช๐ฅ๐๐๐ (๐ผ)]
And the ends of his Axes shot to thermonuclear heights.
He clamped his fists around his Chains. Braced hard. And exerted himself in fullโhe heaved in one massive pull.
He bellowed.
His Axes moved.
It was not a sudden thing. His new Axes were tremendous weights at the end of those Chains, carrying a tremendous inertia. Even Zane had to tap into a good deal of his strength to move them. But when Zane heaved they stirred, like great beasts waking from long slumbersโฆ
They moved, and shook the world.
There was a vast shrieking, the sound of pure ripping. A shriek that drowned out all other sound. And the air itself split in two. The world split down the middle, shredding up at the tip of Zane's Axesโand everything in it split too.
One blinding purple line carved through the air making an arc. A single flat dimension, a single color, imposing itself over all that chaos. Making things brutally simple.
A beat.
Then the Serpents. The Moths descendingโthe flowersโeven the great trees behind themโthey did not just come apart. They were blasted apart. They were separated with such force it was like their halves were shot out of cannons pointing opposite ways. Thick lakes of bubbling fluids, winding translucent intestines, strange green-purple-veined organs dangled useless in the airโyou could see all these things for just a second.
Then a blaze of furious purple swallowed them all up. Then they were mere memories, lost to the force of the destruction.
The light faded.
There was nothing left.
It looked a lot like the last floor actually. Ash and slag, a wide circle of it, a vast blackened clearing cut out for hundreds of feet around. The trees at the far ends were toppled over, blackened down their lengths, wobbling as they were trying to lean as far away as they could from the source of all that destruction.
From Zane.
A sea of raw essence poured into him.
๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐ -> ๐๐๐
Zane blinked. He wasn't sure how many Nascent Monsters that was, but it had to be at least two dozenโฆ That was almost three Levels. He almost would've expected more.
It seemed all that essence condensed could only make a little of his. It was a difference in the quality of their Nascent Souls.
He looked around, inspecting his handiwork. He was pleased.
He turned around to three pairs of blinking wide eyes behind him. Wellโtwo pairs that he could see. Avery had taken to preemptively putting on sunglasses when he seemed about to do his thing. She slowly pulled them off. Then it was three. "Wellโฆ dang!" she said, inspecting the ashes. "You really gave them the business, huhโฆ"
"I do not think this floor will be very hard," said Zane.
***
They went around and collected all those dropped Weapon Souls. They mostly went to Zane's friends, who he thought needed them more. After how many it took Zane to level his Soul Weapon once, he figured these would not make much of a difference. And he had a feeling a lot more was coming his way anyways. Evan and Avery and Reina all got a few Levels each there.
Unlike the last floor, this one was not barren. The forest was actually teeming with treasures. The nice thing about wrecking all those Monsters was all the stuff they had been guarding was not guarded anymore. So as they ambled about, they kept picking up treasures as they went.
The first was something called 'Sap of the Ancients'. One out of every twenty or so trees seemed to have a deposit of itโit collected over the course of thousands of years, apparently.
After drinking a few vials of it, it got his friends up to the high 280s. Zane got another level too.
๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐ -> ๐๐๐
***
It turned out Zane was right. It was pretty easy going through all of the next section.
First, he turned to his mini-map. Saw where the compass was pointing. Took out an Axe. And just threw it in that direction.
It sliced straight through a giant treeโwhich burst into Stormfire and collapsed to ashes in a matter o blinks. Then another. Then another. It just kept going, mowing down trees like common grass, vanishing into the distance. There was much booming, and shaking, and exploding. It seemed nothing that Zane's Axe came across could do much to resist.
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
โ๐๐ค๐๐๐ ๐๐ฅ๐ ๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐๐ค๐ ๐๐ -> ๐๐๐
It made for a neat little path for them to follow. They went along it.
Whenever a Monster thought it was a good idea to trouble them, Zane sliced it. The more they went, the fewer Monsters thought it was a good idea. There was oneโa weird butterfly with giant fake-eyes on its wings. It decided to stay high up and just spray them with glittering soul attacks. But Zane's Red Shield Pagoda shucked it off. It was much closer to hand now that his soul was so present in his body. Blocking came easy. And these basic Nascent Soul attacks still could not come close to him.
He tossed his Axe. Missedโthe Axe raced deep into the sky, exploded a cloud layer, and kept going. He frowned. Chucked his Axe again, harder, and this time only missed by a few yards. The thing was weirdly nimble.
He turned to Evan.
"Bird," said Zane, pointing at it. "Help."
Evan gave it a good bink. Shot a nice big hole right in the middle of its wing. And as it started screeching and dropping, Zane chopped it in two.
Nice.
Along the way, they kept collecting Levels.
So many trees here were thick with yellow dots. They gathered some more sap, slurping them as they went.
๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐ -> ๐๐๐
Lots of fruit all around. There were Golden Apples full of light essence that helped Evan Level especially. Every so often they'd come across a small gnarled wizened tree, all-white bark and white leaves, which contained something called a 'Fruit of Knowledge'โa bushel of Earth A-ranked Law treasures. Like better Law Fruits. They pocketed them.
It was turning out to be a nice stroll. Like a little hike in some nature preserve, except the nature preserve was of a time when dinosaurs still roamed. It was a pretty cool place once you got past all the Monsters.
They came across a clearing with something called a 'Yellow Spring of Reincarnation.'
Taking a dip in it healed a lot of their soul fatigue. Zane was still out of commission in terms of comprehension. For Fire specificallyโeven his soul could only take being burned so often. He felt Steel, Rhinoceros Bloodline skills might come a bit easier. But he was still a little tired there too.
The spring helped restore a lot. It felt like waking from a deep restful sleep.
They moved on.
Soon they ended up at the end of the section. The choke point of the jungle. Before them lay the biggest tree they had come across so far, towering so high its canopy struck deep into the clouds.
The tree came to life. Two eyes and a mouth materialized on the bark, looming tall over Zane and friends. The Monster roared, branches quivering, sending little jet streams scurrying across the air.
๐ผ๐๐๐๐ฃ๐จ๐ ๐ ๐ ๐๐ฃ๐๐๐๐ฅ (๐๐ ๐๐ค๐ฅ๐๐ฃ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฅ)
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐
Its aura flared out. Blanketing the world.
Zane's flared out too. And crushed its aura nicely.
It stared at Zane. Zane stared back at it.
It shrieked.
Rising Storm Slash struck twice.
๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ก!
๐ผ๐ค๐ค๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐ -> ๐๐๐
They moved on.