Next morning, when Phong saw the lime-oak tree had produced yet another sapling, he knew he had delayed the inevitable long enough.
War had gotten in the way.
Too many things had gotten in the way.
But the plan was still the plan, and if Camp Stymphalian wanted to survive what was coming next, then Floor 2 could not stay half-finished forever.
So after he spent part of the morning planting more crops around the scorched patch to replace what had already gone out as salary for the mercenaries, Phong made the next call: they would finish the second camp.
The group was kept small on purpose: Phong, Alex, Dominic, Janet, Séline, and Camille would go.
Alexei stayed behind. So did the three Js and Emma, all of them still in desperate need of a rest after herding the Mushroomires in their migration. Nyx, Bruno, and Rico were left out too. Phong did not want one of the animals or the raccoon turning a careful setup into another public incident. He also didn't realize he had started grouping Rico into a category of his own instead of treating the raccoon the same as Bruno or Nyx.
Little Fireball ignored all of that logic and burrowed into Phong's hood anyway.
They did not use the usual route, for that would have been stupid.
Phong's face had been on too many screens recently. Risking his appearance in public or anywhere near watched paths right after Josh's failed push toward troll territory was asking for trouble. So instead, they used a lizardman vessel to cross Lake Baratok and approach floor 2 that way. As of now, Shifting might be the only exception to the absolute void behind the golden gate.
The trip was quiet.
The lake stretched wide under the cavern glow, dark and still in some places, rippling with hidden life in others. The vessel cut through patrolled water way cleanly while the lizardmen guiding them barely spoke. Behind them, the shorelines of Floor 1 slid past in long bands of stone, root, and mist.
Alex sat beside Phong near the center of the craft.
She was still recovering, but much better than before. The worst of the Berserking Strawberry crash was gone now, leaving only the slower aches behind. She caught him watching her once and gave him a look.
"I'm fine."
Phong did not even pretend to believe her fully. "You're better."
"That too."
Dominic, seated near the front, glanced back over one shoulder. "Save the flirting for after we unload."
Janet snorted softly. Séline looked unimpressed by all of them. Camille, as usual, said nothing, though the slight shift at the corner of her mouth suggested amusement.
By the time they reached the far side of Lake Baratok, the air had changed.
This side of the shoreline felt more settled now. More claimed in a way that was hard to put into words.
The site sat in a natural pocket between lake and forest.
Behind it rose the crescent sweep of woods, thick and dark and curved enough to act like a natural shield around the back of the camp. In front, the ground broke sharply into a jagged cliff that overlooked the lake below, giving them a commanding view of the water and anything foolish enough to approach from that direction. The only roads that led to camp were two small trails between the lake and the crescent shaped wood. And in either case, the mutated plants of Phong's second camp would have the high ground to turn them into choke points.
It was a good place.
The scenic values were horrible, the strategic values were through the roof, and that was precisely why Phong had picked this place over the Wraith Fortress.
The shoreline nearby was fully under the control of the Kamohai and the lizardmen. Their patrol signs were easy to spot once one knew what to look for. Stones were clearly marked, the reeds near shore were cut short to make sure nothing could sneak up on the defended shoreline. A watch post hidden well enough between reefs of sunken rock that most humans would miss it entirely.
Farther back, in the trees, signs of the Tortura had appeared too.
They had already moved into the woods and begun building tree houses. Rope ladders, wooden platforms, support braces, holes made strategically among walls to remind everyone they were first and foremost proud archers. The Tortura's tree houses looked more like a watch tower than cozy settlement.
The moment Phong stepped into the clearing, the defensive plants reacted.
The growth lines shifted, vines eased back, bonktatoes lowered their club-like root cluster, chili heads tilted away from friendly movement. The whole defensive spread seemed to part just enough for him to walk through, as if the land itself recognized its farmer.
Dominic saw it and shook his head once. "No matter how many time I watch this, it still give me goosebump."
Janet shrugged, reaching for his hand.
Phong ignored both of them and walked to the center of the camp site, the lime-oak sapling was in his hands.
Alex came to stand beside him while the others spread out, checking the edges of the clearing, marking where new structures could go, where watch lines should be drawn, where fire pits and stores might fit best once the camp marinated. Unlike with camp Stymphalian, this time they didn't have an abandoned ruin to use as a reference. This time, they had to do everything by themselves.
Phong crouched and pressed the sapling into the soil. The moment the roots touched dungeon earth and the planted system he had already prepared below it, the tree began to grow. Well, grow might not be the right word. It rapidly expanded.
The trunk thickened almost immediately as roots spread under the ground in visible pulses. Branches pushed upward and outward, leaves unfurling in a rush of green and silver touched by the strange light of Floor 2. In less than a minute, the sapling had become a decent-sized tree, sturdy enough to cast shade and old enough in appearance to feel like it had been standing here for at least a decade.
Phong felt the moment the root of the clone linked back to the original.
The lime-oak connection reached across floors, across distance, tying this valley camp on Floor 2 to Camp Stymphalian on Floor 1.
Phong took a deep breath, realizing that he might just find another exception to the absolute void between the dungeon floors. Alex looked up into the branches and let out a quiet breath. "It's linked?"
Phong nodded.
"Yeah."
Behind them, Dominic turned back from the treeline and saw the full grown tree.
"Well," he said, "that was quick. Does this mean it's official?"
It was.
This was no longer a temporary foothold, no longer just a borrowed clearing with plants and hope holding it together.
This was a real, albeit unfinished, camp.
Little Fireball fluttered up into one of the lower branches immediately, using her tiny talons to scratch the branch a few time. Then, as if to say she was not impressed by the comfiness of the lime oak, Little Fireball flicked her tail up and flew back into Phong's hood. Janet laughed under her breath at that.
Séline and Camille went to check the soon to be choke holds - the places where the forest and the lakeshore nearly met - to inspect further. Dominic started muttering about where the gym room should go. Alex remained beside Phong, watching the tree as if she understood better than anyone what this meant to him.
Phong stood at the center of the clearing and looked over what the second camp had become. Then, he named it:
"Camp Orthrus."
Dominic glanced over from where he had been marking out where heavier supplies should go. "Keeping the Greek myth thing alive, I see."
Phong shrugged. "Camp Stymphalian. Camp Harpy. Nemean. Might as well stay consistent."
Alex, standing beside the newly grown lime-oak, nodded once. "Orthrus fits."
Janet smiled faintly. "Two-headed watchdog. Very welcoming."
"Exactly," Phong said.
Once the name settled, he moved right into work.
Phong asked the lizardmen again for help with the practical side of construction. Lodgings first, then irrigation. The clearing had good shape, but shape alone did not make a camp livable. They could keep Othrus simple, like a defended outpost, and lived mainly at camp Stymphalian. But that was not what Phong wanted. He had a plan for the camp system: segmented design, where they could simply move to another camp via the Lime-Oak system if one camp was somehow invaded or destroyed.
The answer came quickly.
But the one who showed up were not only lizardmen. The Kamohai rushed in too the moment they heard Phong needed manpower. Or more precisely, the moment they heard manpower meant food payment.
That part traveled faster than diplomacy ever did.
Within the hour, the clearing had become a proper work site. Lizardmen measured water routes and argued calmly over the best angles to draw from the nearby shore without making the lines too easy to sabotage. Kamohai hauled timber, stone, and bundles with almost suspicious enthusiasm for labor, though every time one of them asked about meal shares later, the reason became very clear.
Dominic watched a pair of sharkfolk carrying beams together and muttered, "I'm never going to get used to this."
"You don't need to," Alex said. "It just has to work."
And it did.
While the others handled broader construction, Phong started planting again: dill, basil, tomatoes were his first priority. The reason was simple: these plants had never mutated on Floor 1.
That old question came back to him now while his hands worked the soil. Months ago, when he had first stepped onto Floor 2, he had proposed a hypothesis to Selena: Maybe there was a limit to how many plants could mutate on one floor, maybe dungeon pressure only twisted so much life at a time, and once enough of that "space" was filled, later plantings stayed stable unless something changed.
It had been only a hypothesis.
Selena had not disproved it. That part was true. But she also had not come back with the kind of layered answer she usually did either.
That had been strange enough already.
Lately, her silence in the group chat had been stranger still.
Less talkative.
Less sharp.
Less present.
For Selena, that was unusual enough to bother him.
So while the others worked, Phong wiped the dirt from his hands, stepped aside near the base of the lime-oak, and messaged her.
The response did not come at once. But when it did, it opened into a video call. The caller: "Vanessa". This didn't reassure Phong one bit, because he now knew for certain that there was a problem, and Selena didn't want to trouble everyone at camp because of it.
Selena looked terrible.
She looked like she had not slept in a week. Dark circles under her eyes, hair tied back carelessly instead of with her usual neat efficiency, even the way she tried to reach the phone held by Vanessa looked worn thin. If Phong had looked bad because of the war against Josh advance, then Selena was at least thrice as worse.
Phong frowned. "You look awful."
Selena gave a weak, humorless huff. "Nice to hear from you too, farmer with NPC wardrobe."
"I'm serious."
"I know."
He looked at her for another second, then asked more quietly, "What happened."
Selena rubbed at one eye with the heel of her hand and leaned back in what looked like a lab chair.
"Josh happened," she said.
That answer was enough to make Phong's expression flatten.
Of course it was Josh.
Selena went on before he could interrupt.
"He tried to force the team effort toward mapping the area around Lake Baratok and Death Peak." Her voice had that dry, frayed edge people got when they were too tired to even hate something properly. "Not because it was the best research target, but because he hoped the Japanese teams might expose Camp Stymphalian to the world if they started surveying aggressively enough."
Phong's jaw tightened.
That tracked too well.
Josh had tried rousing the media against camp Stymphalian, tried to exposed the plants with drones and cameras. But even so, immediately tried to use a skirmish and live witness was too big of an escalation, even for Josh's standard.
Turned out, his campaign against the Death Peak was the third attack.
Between the media and the war, Josh had also tried to use his connections with researchers and scientists, trying to guide the human quest for knowledge toward camp Stymphalian. The bastard was only stopped by Selena tireless work, and they didn't even know.
Selena continued, looking more annoyed the longer she explained.
"I've spent the last month fighting that push back. Every meeting, every proposal, every time someone bribed by Josh tried to redirect attention there, I had to kill it."
"How?"
"By lying with just enough truth."
Phong stayed silent.
Selena lifted a hand tiredly. "I kept arguing that the area between Lake Baratok and Death Peak is a well-known ruin zone among divers. that the main concern there is slimes. That... if resources are limited, mapping effort should go elsewhere where there's actual unknown value."
Phong nodded at that.
It was a good defense.
More importantly, it was boring.
And boring saved secrets better than brilliance ever did.
Selena let out a long breath. "It worked. So far."
That explained her silence in the group chat, and her half-presence when she was presented with new hypothesis and knowledges regarding things she would have absolutely lost her mind over if she wasn't exhausted. Things like the mutation of dungeon plants, the floor-bosses, or the biology of Mushroomoids. Selena had been carrying this alone in the background while everyone else was putting out more visible fires.
Phong looked at her more carefully now and realized something else.
"You didn't look like this when you came to camp."
"No."
"Or when we went to New York."
"No."
That made him frown deeper. "Why didn't you say anything."
Selena gave him a tired look that somehow still managed to be sharp.
"Because at camp you already had six other crises. In New York you had fuel, surface visits, interviews, Emma joining the team, and whatever weird social death you were trying to survive." She folded her arms. "I wasn't going to add 'by the way, I'm fighting off an intelligence dragnet around our home' on top of that unless I had to."
That was either fair but annoying or annoyingly fair, and he didn't know which it really was.
Phong looked down for a moment, then back up at her. "You should've told me sooner."
Selena's face softened just a little.
"Probably."
He could hear construction in the background of Camp Orthrus. Lizardmen calling measurements, Kamohai hauling bricks and beams. Dominic arguing about practice routine with an unimpressed sharkfolk. But for a moment, all of that felt far away compared to the tired woman on the screen trying to keep her friends safe without saying even a word.
Phong exhaled slowly.
"Alright," he said. "No more carrying that alone."
Selena gave him a faint, tired smile. "That sounds nice in theory."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
He thought for a moment, practical instincts shifting again.
"We need a better long-term distraction for that region."
Selena nodded. "Yes."
"Something that keeps attention away from Lake Baratok and Death Peak without looking too intentional."
"Yes."
Phong's eyes narrowed as ideas started moving behind them. He was still thinking when Alex stepped near enough to catch the look on his face. She took one glance at Selena on the screen, saw how bad she looked, and her own expression sharpened.
"Josh again huh?" Alex said.
Selena answered with a tired nod. "Josh again."
Alex leaned slightly into frame, one hand resting on Phong's shoulder. "We'll deal with it."
There was nothing dramatic in the words. But in a strange way, that made it stronger, more believable. At least, Selena seemed to buy it. She looked at both the farmer and his girlfriend for a second, then finally let some of the strain leave her face.
"Good," she said quietly. "Because I'm running out of polite ways to say 'no, please stop trying to accidentally expose our monster-farm alliance to a foreign government.'"
Phong snorted.
That got the first almost-real smile out of her in the whole call.
Still, beneath all of that, Phong realized once again that every piece of what he had built rested not only on plants and monsters and luck, but also on tired people like Selena holding the wrong kind of attention away by sheer will.
Phong sat at the edge of Camp Orthrus, right where the ground gave way to the jagged cliff overlooking Lake Baratok.
Below him, the lake stretched out in a dark sheet of slow-moving light. The cavern roof reflected in broken ripples, and the patrol lines of lizardmen and Kamohai were only faint signs now, easy to miss if one did not know where to look. Behind him, the camp was alive with work: Kamohai built the foundations for houses, Lizardmen started working on the pipe and the water wheels. Dominic, Séline and Camille helped clear the borders. The Tortura were weaving rope ladders so they could access camp through their watch towers.
Phong sat still and let the weight of it settle on his shoulders.
Selena's exhausted face still lingered in his mind.
It reminded him of the month she had spent fighting off pressure from people who had no idea how close they kept wandering to a secret that could get all of them killed and his plants used as tools to fulfill the ambition of imperialists.
He rubbed one hand over his face and stared at the lake again. Then, a soft step approached from behind. He did not need to turn around to know it was Alex. Phong rolled his shoulder once, about to turn to face her. Alex's voice chimed right beside his ears: "Delivery."
Phong looked up just in time to see Little Fireball hop from Alex's hand and straight into the hood of his hoodie.
The chick circled once in the fabric behind his neck, made a pleased little chirp, and settled in her favorite spot.
Phong huffed softly. "Thanks."
Alex came to stand beside him, then lowered herself to sit nearby. She did not crowd him at first, just stayed close enough that her presence was there without asking for anything. For a few breaths, they both looked out over the lake.
Then Alex asked, "What's your plan."
Phong glanced sideways. "For?"
"Now that you know what Selena's been doing." Her voice stayed calm, but he heard the edge under it. "How are you going to keep them off our back?"
He let the question sit for a second.
Then he answered honestly.
"I'm not sure."
Alex did not react badly to that. She just waited.
Phong rested his forearms on his knees and looked back at the water.
"There's only so much planning can do," he said. "Only so much alliances can do. We don't have endless resources." He exhaled slowly. "And I don't want to ask the Sky Emperor for more."
That part felt especially true.
He had already leaned too hard on powers bigger than himself. Too many favor, too many moments where survival came because something ancient and terrible decided to be generous for a reason Phong still did not fully trust.
They needed something else.
Something dirtier. More human.
"We need a distraction," he repeated what he had said to Selena earlier.
Alex's eyes narrowed slightly. "Big one."
"Big enough to drag public attention away from Death Peak." He looked out over the lake again. "At least until January."
She followed the thought at once.
"Because after that the media starts hyping the league."
Phong nodded.
"By March, all those machines will be pushing the divers tournament too hard to focus on one ruin zone and one mountain." He rubbed at his jaw. "If we can keep them looking away until then, we buy time."
Alex went quiet.
Phong did not have the answer yet, and that bothered him. A man could only build so much safety with half a plan and a dozen borrowed allies before the cracks started showing.
Alex reached out with both hands, cupping his face, and pressed her forehead against his:
"Phong, you're but a young man. It's okay to not have an answer immediately. Your worth is not measured by how useful you can be, you know?"
He did not know how to answer her when she put it like that either.
She continued anyway:
"You know Selena does that willingly, right? She does so because she like camp Stymphalian too, and she see you as her friend. So stop beating yourself over nothing, alright? We will find a way, we will help her, everyone in camp want the same thing. That much is certain. Understand?"
Phong nod instinctively, then his eyes widen.
The lake below them rippled once.
Then the surface began to freeze.
Phong straightened immediately. Alex was already on her feet before he fully rose.
Neither of them spoke.
The freezing spread outward in long, pale lines across the dark water. Thin sheets hardening over the surface in patterns too deliberate to be natural. It wasn't random, it wasn't the weather, it was something far more powerful and ancient than lizardmen magic.
Little Fireball lifted her head from his hood and chirped once, sharp and alert.
Then a figure appeared on the horizon.
At first, it looked like Alex walking on the lake.
That was wrong enough to freeze the breath in Phong's chest for one stupid half-second. Then the details sharpened.
White hair, full plate armor, bright and cold and too perfect, shaped like a knight's war gear from an old story. In one hand she carried a silvery white spear, long and regal, the blade held in the mouth of a sculpted tiger head worked into the weapon itself. And above that face, twitching lightly as she moved, were two tiger ears.
No one needed an introduction.
The White Tigress - the Pillar of War - had come in human form.
And she was lore walking toward them like the final boss of a game.
Phong felt the hairs at the back of his neck rise. The White Tigress reminded him of Em. Unlike the Sky Emperor who had never showed up, unlike the Horns of the Earth who prefer the bull form, White Tigress assumed a human visage this time, just like what Em did when it first appeared to them.
Alex's took a half step forward, standing between Phong and the floor boss. Her psychic constructs bloomed into a half circle, the psychic Dragon Slayer roar to existence in her hand. She knew too well that it would be in vain if the Pillar chose violence. Yet, Alex did it anyway, because standing still watching danger slowly crept toward her loved one wasn't really who she was.
The floor boss kept walking toward the cliff.
For every step she took, the water rose beneath her boot and froze into a perfect stepping stone. One after another, each slab catching her weight at exactly the right time, each movement smooth enough to feel rehearsed by the lake itself.
It should have looked impossible.
Instead, it looked elegant.
That somehow made it worse.
White Tigress came closer, her gaze passed over Alex. Then settled, very briefly, on Phong's hood.
Neither of them noticed that.
They were too busy watching her approach.
By the time she reached camp, the air around them had gone colder. It was not painfully cold, but it was enough to remind them that this thing in front of them was not human, no matter how much armor and shape she borrowed.
The white tigress lifted her eyes to Phong.
"You ended two of my favorite wars, farmer."
Her voice was calm, almost pleasant. That did not help at all. On the contrary, that made it worse.
She let the words hang for a moment, then added, "That's impressive."
A pause.
"Some may even call it suicidal."
The lake held still beneath her.
The frozen steps gleamed pale in the cavern light.
And at the edge of Camp Orthrus, with Little Fireball in his hood and Alex standing tense at his side, Phong looked at the floor boss who had come to collect her debt.