Dominic leaned against the camp wall and rolled his shoulders while the others cleaned up after steak night.
"Vertical ruin," he said, gesturing upward. "Think stacked city blocks. Balconies, broken bridges, hanging staircases. The elite mob came down on us from above."
Jake rubbed his bandaged arm and gave a faint smile.
"Worth it."
Janet shot him a flat look.
"It was not worth it."
He corrected himself.
"…Educational."
Still, the numbers didn't lie.
Joanne — Level 28
Jake — Level 29
Jack — Level 28
Janet stood a hair from Level 30.
Alex did too.
Dominic?
"Three or four hairs away," he declared proudly.
Joanne muttered, "There's no such thing as a fractional hair."
"You're just jealous of my hair count," Dominic shot back.
The progress was real.
The danger was realer.
Janet wiped her hands on a cloth and cleared her throat.
"I think," she began carefully, "it's time."
Everyone looked at her.
"If we're going to keep building this place together, and diving with this place as our anchor, you should know what we are."
She looked at Phong.
"Class."
Trust.
Not transactional.
Not sponsored.
Not monetized.
Trust.
Phong nodded once.
He already knew Dominic was a Judgenaut.
Frontline tank.
Brutal counter mechanics.
Rare class.
Built for area denial and zoning.
Could hit like a truck when the conditions lined up.
Alex was Mind Blade.
Even rarer than Dominic's class.
Psychic rapier manifestation.
Telekinetic precision.
And everyone knew he was a Level 1 Farmer.
The rest had stayed private.
Janet went first.
"Valkyrie."
She said it plainly.
No drama.
Battlefield control.
Aura buffs.
Rally and inspire.
A class born to command.
Jake followed.
"Rift Striker."
Spatial burst class.
Short-distance phasing.
High-risk engagements.
Jack scratched the back of his head.
"Stone Warden."
Defensive sub-tank.
Terrain manipulation.
That fit, Phong thought.
Joanne hesitated for a second, then smiled.
"Spellshot."
Ranged caster hybrid.
Precision artillery.
Dominic grinned.
"Four Js and a tank."
They laughed.
Something shifted quietly in Phong's chest.
The layers of community deepened.
Then he mentioned Little Fireball.
"Imprinted on me," he said casually.
Janet's eyes widened.
"That is dangerous foreshadowing."
Dominic barked a laugh.
"Monstrous Phoenix 2.0."
Alex rolled her eyes, but she smiled.
---
They were washing dishes when it happened.
The lizardman emissary approached in deliberate steps.
Two warriors followed behind him.
Each carried a limp human body.
Unconscious.
Mud-soaked.
Armor cracked.
Dominic's posture snapped tight at once.
Thassir inclined his head slightly.
"Found near lake bank."
His tone stayed neutral.
"Normally… food."
Matter-of-fact.
"But Camp Stymphalian is honorary vassal."
On paper only.
Mutual-respect treaty.
"So we bring to farmer first."
He jerked his chin toward the bodies.
"If friend, we take bonktato for trouble."
A pause.
"If foe, we dispose."
No malice.
Just ecosystem logic.
Dominic stepped forward slowly.
Recognition hit.
"…The French."
Phong felt it too.
Three girls.
One guy.
Vertical city ruin.
Pictures with Alex.
Now two unconscious girls.
The other two?
Missing.
Alex moved first.
"Bring them inside."
No hesitation.
Janet was already clearing space.
"Bedding ready."
Joanne grabbed water.
Jake moved in carefully and helped support one of the bodies.
The lizardmen laid them down with surprising gentleness and stepped back.
Watching.
Assessing.
Dominic spoke quietly.
"One of the three girls is probably dead."
No one argued.
"The guy probably stayed behind to buy time for these two."
Floor Two did not forgive hesitation.
These two had escaped.
Climbed back up.
Crossed biomes.
Collapsed near Lake Baratok.
Wrong lake.
Right camp.
Sympathy Enoki came out immediately.
Twenty caps per person.
Correct dosage.
Cooldown respected.
Alex crushed them into paste and fed it slowly, careful not to choke them.
Janet checked their pulses.
Stable.
Exhausted.
Severe mana depletion.
One had a fractured rib.
The other had shallow cuts along her thigh and shoulder.
"No internal bleeding," Janet murmured.
"Lucky."
Dominic folded his arms.
"They ran."
"Good instinct," Alex said quietly.
Thassir stayed where he was.
"Payment?"
Phong stepped forward.
"Bonktatoes. Fair."
He handed over a crate.
The emissary nodded once.
Business concluded.
Before leaving, he added calmly, "If more come, we bring."
Then the lizardmen disappeared back toward the lake.
Dominic exhaled.
"Floor Two's ."
Phong stood still for a moment.
This was exactly why he had chosen vendor life.
Why he had chosen farming.
Why he had chosen soil over sword.
Divers climbed vertical cities.
Fought elite mobs.
Lost friends in stairwell ambushes.
Escaped with fractured ribs.
And sometimes they did not escape at all.
That was diving.
Dungeon life had never been romantic. Not really.
The stories were romantic. The world glorified them.
Forbes lists.
Highlight reels.
Banners.
Sponsor deals.
Speeches.
But what Janet pulled out of those two unconscious girls that night?
That was the part nobody streamed.
She spotted it first.
"Wait," she muttered, leaning closer to the French girl with the fractured rib. "That's not dried blood."
Under the skin near the collarbone, tiny raised bumps.
Subtle.
Moving.
Janet's jaw tightened.
"Hold her."
Alex steadied the girl at once while Janet prepared a second Sympathy Enoki paste.
Sympathy Enoki's cleansing effect did more than close wounds.
It purged simple infections.
Maybe parasites counted.
The effect hit immediately.
The girl convulsed once, weakly.
Then small dark shapes forced their way out through pores and shallow cuts.
Tiny.
Shell-backed.
Tick-sized.
Parasitic snails.
They dropped onto the bedding and tried to scuttle away.
Phong reacted instantly.
A Bonktato vine snapped down and pinned them.
He scraped them into a glass jar and sealed it.
Silence followed.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Jake swallowed.
"…That's new."
Janet checked the second girl.
Same thing.
Three more forced out.
All contained.
"Where," Joanne whispered, "did they get those?"
No one answered.
No one wanted to.
Phong carried the sealed jar carefully to the boundary line.
---
Thassir arrived when summoned.
He studied the jar closely.
His scaled face did not change.
"Lake parasite."
"Explain," Phong said.
"Snail," the emissary replied. "Native to Baratok. Lay eggs disguised as ours."
"Disguised?"
"They mimic shell pattern. Egg predators eat. Snail hatch inside."
Nearby trolls made a low, disgusted sound.
"But…" Thassir continued, "they don't exist on the shallow shore."
The emissary gestured vaguely across the lake.
"They prefer ragged stone formation. Sharp. Vertical. That side."
That side?
Then it hit Phong.
Floor Two side.
What Thassir meant was this: half of Lake Baratok had not shifted upward.
The lake had shifted only in part.
The shallow shore connected to Floor One.
The jagged, deeper rock formations remained anchored to Floor Two.
Two halves.
Same lake.
Different floors.
"Dungeon does not burp whole biome always," the emissary added calmly. "Sometimes only part."
Phong absorbed that slowly.
He had assumed Shifting was crude.
Whole sections.
Whole regions.
But this?
Selective displacement.
Partial overlap.
A lake existing across two floors at once.
Spatial anomaly?
Absolutely.
Physics?
Irrelevant.
The emissary handed the jar back.
"You handle."
Translation: not their problem unless it spread.
Phong walked back toward camp in silence.
He sent Selena a DM immediately.
[Parasitic snails native to Lake Baratok.]
[Mimic lizardman eggs.]
[Only present on jagged stone formation (Floor 2 side).]
[Shallow shore shifted to Floor 1 doesn't host them.]
[Lake exists partially across floors.]
He stared at the typing indicator.
Nothing.
Minutes passed.
Still nothing.
He could picture her perfectly.
Lab coat.
Hair tied messily.
Staring at the screen with wide eyes.
Muttering theories out loud.
Vanessa was probably watching with resigned affection.
He typed one more message.
[Don't lose your mind.]
Then he locked the screen.
If spatial anomalies could split lakes across floors, then everything they thought they understood was surface-level.
Phong turned away quietly.
"Watch them in shifts."
Janet nodded.
"We'll rotate."
Alex squeezed his hand once before heading back to the girls.
Dominic took perimeter duty without being asked.
Jake sat nearby, quieter than usual.
Joanne and Jack spoke in low voices.
Community was crucial for events like these.
Phong walked toward the outer rows.
Sunflowers.
Carrots.
Garlic mines.
Bonktatoes.
He checked the soil moisture.
Adjusted irrigation.
Corrected chili angles.
Routine.
His breathing steadied.
The divers were leveling.
Guilds were climbing.
Bosses were roaring.
And here, a Level 1 farmer tended his plants while two survivors from Floor Two slept under his roof.
Neutral ground.
Not a fortress.
Not a guild.
But a place where you did not automatically become calories, figuratively or literally.
He pressed soil gently around a carrot sprout.
Life grew quietly.
Even in a dungeon.
Especially in a dungeon.
---
Back near the center of camp, Alex stepped away from the bedding area.
She had finished her watch over the girls.
"They're stable," she said quietly.
"No fever spike."
"Breathing steady."
"They'll wake."
Phong nodded.
He walked to the lime-oak guardian and plucked two Snow Limes.
Crushed them gently.
Added water.
No ice needed.
The liquid chilled itself.
He handed her the glass.
Snow Limeade.
She took a slow sip.
Cold vapor brushed her lips.
A faint 20% speed buff shimmered briefly across her status panel.
She sighed softly.
"You're thinking hard."
"Yes."
"About the lake?"
"Yes."
She leaned lightly against him.
"The dungeon isn't random."
"No."
"It's layered."
"Yes."
She studied him.
"And that doesn't scare you?"
He thought about the jar of snails.
The split lake.
The Sky Emperor's roar.
The Phoenix wiping out guilds.
Olen grinding through 1,200 monsters.
Two unconscious girls barely hanging on.
"It does," he admitted. "But fear doesn't plant carrots."
She smiled faintly.
"Idiot."
"I prefer earnest."
They stood quietly for a moment.
Camp Stymphalian breathed around them.
Trolls muttering near the ridge.
Lizardmen patrolling the waterline.
Treants silent in the distance.
Two French girls resting under guard.
Little Fireball tucked safely inside the coop.
Dungeon life was not easy.
It was not heroic.
It was parasites under the skin.
Fractured ribs.
Spatial physics laughing at textbooks.
Alex finished her drink.
"They seemed to look up to me," she murmured.
"The girls?"
"Yes…"
She paused.
"I didn't even remember their names... I was different then."
"Self-esteem."
"You were waiting to say that, weren't you?"
"Maybe."
Phong gave a small shrug.
So he had been right.
Alex was afraid.
Afraid meeting her again would ruin the memory the girls had of her.
She looked at him.
"You're still choosing not to level?"
"Yes."
"Even now?"
"Yes."
She nodded slowly.
"Good."
He glanced toward the bedding area.
"If they wake up," he said quietly, "we'll hear their story."
"And if more follow?"
He looked toward the lake.
"One step at a time."
The lime-oak rustled gently overhead.
Not violent.
Not defensive.
Just present.
And in a dungeon where lakes split across floors and parasites hid inside eggs, presence mattered.