The air shifted again as they crossed into Floor 4.
Gone was the eerie stillness of the orb chamber. Here, everything felt tight. Tense. Alive.
The stone underfoot was smoother than before, but cracked. The ceiling above hung low, threads of mana-stiff roots dangling like nerves. The passage sloped downward at a shallow angle, then opened wide—and that's when they saw it.
The entire chamber was broken.
A massive underground cavern stretched before them, crisscrossed by jagged, uneven walkways of broken stone and collapsed debris. Thin paths hovered over a deep, silent void. There were no handrails. No room for hesitation. Just footing—and fate.
"We're walking across that?" Mira whispered.
"No," Conner said. "We're surviving it."
Taz was the first to step forward. He crouched low, checking the pressure on each slab, gauging which ones would hold and which were waiting to give out.
"This one's still stable," he called back. "But nothing ahead looks reinforced. Stay light."
Neive's summon padded ahead, tail low, ears flat. Even it looked wary.
The others moved one by one. Joey brought up the rear, armor-light this time, no molten gauntlets—just a thin mesh of condensed plates floating near his arms, ready to snap into shape on impact.
Katie walked near Conner.
"You feel it?" she asked.
He nodded. "Something's watching. But not from above."
He pointed down—toward the cracks below the platforms.
The silence wasn't natural.
It was waiting to break.
They made it across the first two sections before the dungeon struck.
A low rumble.
Then one of the walkways behind them crumbled completely, vanishing into darkness.
Briggs turned. "What was—"
Something launched up from the pit.
It moved like a spider, but its limbs were too long. Too thin. It had no eyes—just a smooth skull-like head and a mouth that split four ways.
[Hostile Identified: Abyssal Leaper | Level 6 | Group Threat: Moderate]
It hissed once, then lunged straight at Mira.
Joey intercepted it mid-air—barely.
His plates snapped into full guard, but the creature's claws dug in deep. It hissed, then jumped again—this time vanishing downward and rebounding off a lower wall like it was climbing air itself.
Katie cursed. "There's more!"
Conner's Scope Eye flared—dozens of red signals below the walkway.
"They're swarming the underside."
The fight wasn't neat.
It couldn't be.
There was no room to dodge, no space to fall back. Each person had only the stone beneath their feet and the allies beside them.
Three Leapers launched up at once.
Conner fired mid-spin, tagging one directly in the neck and sending it spiraling backward.
Katie summoned twin frost disks and sliced through a second, but staggered as the feedback hit—too much mana too fast.
Mira fell backward—one claw ripped across her shoulder, nearly sending her over the edge.
Briggs caught her just in time.
And that's when it happened.
A fourth Leaper came from above—not below.
It pounced from a hidden crevice near the ceiling, claws angled to strike.
Briggs shoved Mira aside—and took the hit.
They both went over the edge.
"No!" Luc shouted, racing toward the edge.
Joey grabbed his shoulder. "Wait!"
But it was too late. Luc jumped after them.
...
Seconds passed.
No scream.
No sound.
Just a pulse.
Then—
[Emergency Skill Awakening Detected – "Shock Line Grapple" (C-Rank)]
[User: Luc | Type: Movement | Status: Stabilized | New Skill Affinity Established]
A line of searing blue energy erupted from Luc's outstretched hand and latched onto the underside of a nearby stone slab. The light hissed as it solidified—part magic, part tension, like a high-voltage tether.
Luc gritted his teeth and swung, slamming hard into the wall and scrambling up with his free hand. Blood ran down the side of his face, but he didn't let go.
Behind him, Briggs clung to Mira with one arm locked around her chest, the other jamming a makeshift climbing spike into a crack in the stone. He hauled her up as Luc's tether gave them just enough time.
They made it.
Luc collapsed on the edge, breathing hard.
Joey rushed over and grabbed his shoulder, steadying him. "You good? That was... seriously close."
Luc looked up, dazed. "I don't even know what I just did. It just—happened."
Conner nodded slowly. "You reached for something. And your Trait—or your will—answered. That's how most real skills awaken."
Mira groaned and sat up beside them. "I thought we were dead."
"You were," Briggs muttered, half-grinning through the blood on his lip. "But I like a challenge."
The platforms ahead narrowed.
Not by design—but erosion. The ancient stone slabs curved into spirals and forks, some ending in jagged drops, others vanishing completely into the void below.
They weren't walking now—they were balancing. Calculating.
Briggs was limping. Mira was pale. Luc's newly awakened skill left his arm trembling.
Conner didn't miss it.
"We need to regroup on that next ledge," he said, pointing ahead. "Get our footing back."
Joey scanned the lower layer, jaw clenched. "What's the odds the swarm comes again?"
"Better question," Katie muttered, forming a small ice spike between her fingers. "What if they never left?"
She was right.
The first hiss came from the wall itself.
A Leaper burst from a crack just two meters away from Alia, claws aimed straight for her chest. She screamed and stumbled back—right toward an edge with no barrier.
Neive's summon moved first—rushing in from the side and knocking the creature aside mid-leap. It clawed the beast's throat open in a vicious, clean motion.
The next four came seconds later.
Chaos.
The platforms trembled under shifting weight.
Leapers began launching from below, rebounding off the undersides of the walkways in unnatural arcs. The team scattered—some forward, some back. No one stayed still.
Taz was the first to get cut off.
A chunk of the stone beneath his foot cracked and dropped, sending him sliding toward a lower ledge. He caught himself—barely. But he was alone now, separated from the group by a wide gap and two Leapers pacing the edge.
"Taz!" Conner shouted.
"I'm fine!" he called back—but his voice shook. "I've got cover. I just—I can't get back to you right now."
Joey moved to follow, but Katie caught his arm. "If you jump that, you're leaving all of us exposed. Don't."
"She's right," Conner said quickly. "We can't break formation."
"Then what?" Joey snapped. "We just let him fight alone?"
Taz yelled again—louder this time. "Stop talking like I'm already dead!"
The group froze.
Taz was panting, blade in hand, crouched low.
"Don't you dare put me in the Samuel box," he hissed. "You all keep going. I'll catch up."
Neive's gaze hardened. "You sure?"
"No. But I'm not useless."
He stepped forward, gritting his teeth as he parried a lunge from one of the Leapers, then kicked it off the ledge with a roar.
"I'm not dying here," he said.
Conner didn't want to say it. But he had to.
"Move out," he ordered. "Stay tight. Watch the gaps."
Katie hesitated. "He'll be okay?"
Conner met her eyes. "He's already winning."
They pushed forward.
One more Leaper jumped the gap. Joey caught it in mid-air and crushed its skull between two iron plates.
Another landed near Mira—this time, Luc stepped in and slashed it across the chest with a sharpened piece of conduit. The thing shrieked and rolled off the edge.
The walkways didn't end—they twisted and shifted, as if they were reacting to each movement. The dungeon wasn't random.
It was improvising.
By the time they reached the far wall, only five of them were together: Conner, Katie, Neive, Joey, and Luc. Mira and Briggs had fallen behind, locked in another path. Taz was still down on the lower ledge.
They were split—scattered across different parts of the floor, separated by collapses and unstable bridges.
"Where the hell do we go from here?" Luc muttered, wiping blood from his chin.
Conner looked around.
And saw something.
Far up, tucked into a crack in the wall—just barely visible—was a narrow tunnel. Square-shaped. Artificial. Something not carved, but built.
"The dungeon's got more than one exit," Conner said. "That's one of them."
Neive narrowed her eyes. "So what, we wait here and hope everyone else gets lucky?"
"No," he said. "We move. We clear a path forward. And we open it from the other side."
Far below, Taz faced down his second Leaper.
This time, he didn't hesitate.
He ducked under its swipe, rolled once, and jammed his blade into the soft part of its side—where Conner's arrows had hit earlier.
It screamed and tumbled back into the dark.
Taz stood there for a second, panting, smiling.
Then he looked up at the path above him.
"I'm coming," he muttered. "One ledge at a time."