Chapter 21: From Questions to blade
The descent to the fifteenth floor was a plunge into a new kind of silence. The cramped tunnels of the fourteenth floor gave way to a single, vast cavern. The ceiling was lost in shadow, but the floor was a forest of massive, softly glowing crystal formations—amethyst spires, milky quartz columns, and jagged clusters of citrine. The air hummed with a low, resonant frequency that vibrated in their teeth. It was beautiful, and utterly fucking deadly.
They'd taken only a dozen steps into the crystal forest when the ground trembled.
Not an earthquake. A footstep.
From behind a cluster of violet crystals, it emerged. Then a second from the right. A third from the left, cutting off any easy retreat.
Crystal Trolls.
They were hulking, ten-foot-tall humanoids, their bodies seemingly hewn from the very cavern. Their skin was a rough, translucent rock, through which a slow, muddy light pulsed like a heartbeat. Chunks of amethyst and quartz were embedded in their shoulders, knuckles, and spines like crude armor. Their eyes were pits of glowing gemstone, and their mouths were crevices that ground together with the sound of grinding stone.
No roar, no challenge. The center troll simply bent, ripped a stalagmite-like crystal from the floor, and hurled it like a javelin.
"Move!" Azazel barked.
They dove apart. The crystal spear shattered against the ground where they'd stood, exploding into a cloud of razor-sharp shrapnel. A fragment sliced a line across Azazel's thigh. It burned with a deep, cold pain. Poison? Crystal toxin?
The fight was immediately defensive. The trolls were slow but relentless, their movements causing the very floor to shiver. They swung massive, crystal-studded fists that could pulp stone. Reginleif was a darting shadow, using the forest of crystals for cover, but a backhand swipe from a troll caught the edge of her cloak and sent her spinning. She hit a quartz column hard, the breath knocked from her lungs, a sharp pain blooming in her side. Ribs.
Azazel tried You Shadow, but the trolls' own shadows were faint, disrupted by the inner light pulsing through their stony bodies. The darkness could barely cling. Black Ice was useless—there was no moisture to freeze, only solid rock and crystal.
He ducked under a crushing overhead smash, the wind of the blow ruffling his hair. The troll's fist impacted the floor, sending cracks radiating outwards. Azazel lunged, driving his kukri into the joint of its knee. The blade scraped and sparked, digging in an inch before being stopped by solid crystal. It was like trying to stab a fucking mountain.
"We can't cut them down!" Reginleif yelled, gasping as she rolled away from a stomp that would have flattened her. She flung a Piercing Feather. It struck a troll's chest and shattered, doing little more than chipping the surface.
Azazel's mind raced, cold and clear despite the adrenaline. Blunt force? We don't have it. They're immune to our shit. Their own strength…
A plan, desperate and brutal, formed.
"Reginleif! Potion! Now!" he shouted, his voice a raw snarl.
As he yelled, a troll swung a backhand at him. He didn't dodge fully. He took the brunt on his raised arm, feeling a sickening crunch. Agony lanced up to his shoulder. Arm broken. Perfect.
He used the force of the blow to spin himself backwards, stumbling towards Reginleif. She was already reaching into the violet shimmer of his inventory tool, her fingers closing around a small green vial. She tossed it to him.
He caught it with his good hand, bit the cork out, and downed it in one gulp. A wave of warmth, laced with a bitter herbal burn, flooded his system. The screaming pain in his arm dulled to a deep, manageable throb. The bone wasn't healed, but it was stabilized, held together by a web of accelerated knitting and magical reinforcement. He could move it. He could fucking fight.
"Get the two on the left to chase your ass!" he roared. "Lead the big bastard to the middle!"
She didn't question. She snatched a loose chunk of crystal and hurled it with all her might at the face of the nearest troll. It pinged off harmlessly, but it got its attention. She let out a sharp, insulting whistle and bolted, not away, but weaving between the crystal formations, leading the two trolls on a clumsy, earth-shaking chase.
The largest troll, the one that had thrown the spear, focused on Azazel. It saw wounded prey. It lumbered forward, raising both fists to smash down in a hammer blow that would turn him into paste.
This was the moment.
Azazel didn't back away. He ran forward, directly under the troll's raised arms. He slid between its legs, his injured arm screaming in protest as he used it to push off the rough crystal floor.
Enraged, the troll turned, its movements causing the cavern to groan. It saw Azazel standing now, directly between two massive, closely-set amethyst spires. A narrow channel.
The troll charged. It was a goddamn juggernaut of pure, stupid fury.
Azazel stood his ground until the last possible second. He could feel the vibration in his teeth, smell the dust shaking loose from the ceiling.
Then, he dove sideways, into a crevice behind a quartz cluster.
The troll couldn't stop. It couldn't even turn.
It barreled into the narrow channel between the two giant amethyst spires.
It got stuck, its immense bulk wedged. It roared, a sound of grinding rocks, and pushed with all its might.
The spires, under immense pressure from both sides, held… then shrieked… and shattered.
Thousands of tons of crystalline structure collapsed inward. The troll was caught in a cataclysm of its own making. The falling monoliths of amethyst struck its head, its shoulders, driving it to its knees and then flat into the ground. The resonant hum of the cavern spiked into a deafening cacophony of breaking crystal.
When the dust and shimmering crystal dust settled, the troll was nothing but a vaguely humanoid shape buried under a mountain of purple rubble, its inner light snuffed out.
The two remaining trolls, having cornered Reginleif near a wall, stopped. They turned their glowing pits of eyes towards the destruction, then back to the humans. A low, confused rumble passed between them.
The fight was gone. The dominant one was dead, crushed by the environment. Their primitive instincts registered a threat they didn't understand.
With a final, grating grumble, they turned and shambled away, melting back into the deeper crystal forest, leaving the intruders and their fallen kin behind.
The silence that followed was absolute, ringing with the aftermath of the collapse.
Azazel slumped against the quartz, clutching his throbbing, potion-stabilized arm. Reginleif limped over, a hand pressed to her ribs. They were battered, drained, but alive.
Without a word, they found the exit on the far side of the cavern: a rough-hewn staircase leading down into darkness, past the roots of the crystal forest.
The sixteenth floor waited below. They shared a single, exhausted look that spoke volumes—no victory cheer, just the grim acknowledgment of a costly, ugly win—and began the slow, painful climb down.
---
The sixteenth floor was a welcome change—a straight, wide tunnel carved through dark, sedimentary rock. The oppressive beauty and resonant hum of the crystal forest were gone, replaced by a simpler, damp silence. The air smelled of wet stone and something faintly musky.
Azazel leaned against the wall, gingerly testing his potion-bound arm. A deep ache radiated from the bone, but it held. "First time I've fought giants made of fucking rock," he grunted, more to himself than anyone.
Reginleif was checking the strap of her dagger sheath, her movements tight with residual pain from her ribs. "Me too. But Azazel… how long have we been down here?"
He looked at her, his expression flat. "I don't know. I thought you were keeping track."
"I can't," she said, frustration edging her voice. She looked up, her eyes searching the featureless tunnel ceiling as if for a sun. "I don't feel sleepy. Not at all. It should be deep night by now on the surface, but my body… it feels like it's still afternoon."
Azazel was silent. That's the right question, he thought. Asking me about time. The observation clicked into place with others—the way people on this planet moved, the length of the days, the guild's operating hours. It had felt off, a subtle dissonance he'd chalked up to culture shock.
It's not just culture. It's like those people are living on a different clock. A slower one. And in here… does time even move? Or does it just stretch?
"So what do we do?" he asked, pushing off the wall. "Keep going forward, or go back?"
Reginleif considered it, her thief's pragmatism warring with curiosity. "We made it this far in what feels like a very short time. It's… weird. And the way you fight," she said, her gaze sharpening on him. "You're always thinking three moves ahead in a second. You see the weakness, the angle, the trap, before the monster finishes its roar. Is it just… a survival instinct?"
Azazel let out a short, humorless laugh. "Haha. You might have a point."
And that's normal, his mind argued silently. You need to think fast and be on your feet when you're in a fight. It's the basic rule. See, assess, act. That's what kept you alive in alleys, in warzones, on Earth—
The thought slammed into him like a physical blow.
Oh, shit.
I never fucking asked what planet I'm on.
The sheer, staggering oversight left him cold. He'd been so focused on the immediate threats—monsters, money, survival—that he'd ignored the fundamental geography of his existence. The name from the book he'd skimmed surfaced in his memory: Noctyra. But was that just a story? Was it this world's name, or some fictional setting from a mangled Earth book?
He needed to test it. Now.
"Hey," he said, his voice deliberately casual, a mask over the sudden churn in his gut. "What's the name of the planet?"
Reginleif blinked, her head tilting in genuine confusion. "Planet? What is that? That's a weird kind of word."
Azazel stared at her. The confusion wasn't feigned. It was the blank look of someone confronted with a nonsense syllable.
Are you fucking serious right now? She doesn't know what a planet is.
A cold wave of vertigo washed over him. The implications were vaster than any dungeon. He forced his voice to stay level. "I mean… what is the name of this world? The land. All of it."
"Oh." Her confusion cleared, replaced by mild incredulity. "Noctyra. That's the name the Ancient Sage chose to give this world. We learned it in history books back in… well, everybody knows that." She narrowed her eyes. "Why did you ask me that?"
Azazel's mind raced. A cover. Fast. "I read it in a book in the library," he said, the lie smooth and immediate. "Wanted to see if you were smart enough to know it, thief."
Her eyes flashed with annoyance, but the oddity of the question was buried under the mild insult. She opened her mouth to retort.
A new sound cut through the tunnel—a skittering, chittering noise, multiplied. It came from ahead, from the shadows where the tunnel curved. Not the heavy step of a troll, but the swift, countless scurrying of many small things.
From the darkness, a tide of fur and gleaming edges poured into the dim light.
Blade-Tail Rats.
They were the size of large terriers, with greasy, grey-brown fur and pink, twitching noses. But their tails were not flesh. From the base of their spines erupted a foot-long, serrated blade of bony keratin, sharp as a dagger and held aloft like a scorpion's sting. Dozens of beady black eyes fixed on the duo, and the skittering became a aggressive, metallic scraping as they raised their bladed tails, ready to swarm.
The philosophical crisis about time and planets evaporated. The present was a tunnel, and it was full of knives on legs.
Reginleif's daggers were in her hands. Azazel shifted his weight, his good hand gripping the kukri, his injured arm held close.
The moment of uneasy questioning was over. The only answer that mattered now was the one they would carve through the coming horde.
End of Chapter 22