Chapter 18: The Third Floor
"Third floor," Zangika said. "According to the guild association rookie guide — venomous snakes, large-bodied constrictors, and a two-headed boss specimen at the end of the floor."
"Let's go."
The moment they descended, Karn noticed the layout had changed. The walls opened up — the cramped corridors of the second floor gave way to something wider, more natural. Rock formations jutted from the walls and ground at irregular angles, and above them the ceiling rose into a hollow, jagged space. Stalactite-like protrusions hung down in clusters. Dark gaps between them. Plenty of them. The kind of gaps a large body could move through without being seen.
"Thermal reading on," Karn said.
The HUD shifted — the cave rendered in layered heat signatures, every warm body registering as a glow against the cold stone. The floor spread wider than any previous level. More space, more darkness, more places to be in.
"You know what else is big?" Zangika said.
"Don't."
"My chest."
"You are doing this because of Bietrus."
"Why would I stop? It's working perfectly."
"Focus on the snakes."
* * *
Kracy's ChildThey hadn't walked far before the first heat signature resolved into a shape.
Deep purple scales. Thick body. Longer than anything Karn had seen outside of footage, and even that hadn't prepared him for the actual width of it — the way it filled the passage it was resting in.
"That's an anaconda," Karn said.
"No," Zangika said. "That's a child."
Karn looked at it again. "What does an adult look like?"
"The adult female — Kracy — is what you'd call anaconda-class. This is one of her children. I used a familiar name because it translated cleanly."
"And the father is the boss."
"Two heads, two penis—" she started.
"Two heads, yes. What else?"
"In snake anatomy, some species possess two—"penis
"I know what you're saying."
"Two. And he mates daily. Continuously. With two females at the same time. He has up to ten wives."
The snake in front of them opened its mouth.
"Hold on," Karn said, holding up a hand toward it. "I'm still hearing about your father."
It spat acid.
Karn stepped sideways and watched the stream hit the stone floor behind him. Where it landed, the rock dissolved instantly — not slowly, not gradually, but all at once, a circular hole several inches deep carved out in under a second. He stared at it for a moment.
"Ok, your father's game is impressive. Let's kill you first and I'll hear the rest after."
He activated air walk, pushed upward off nothing, and landed on the snake's head. The creature thrashed sideways — he pushed off again before the movement reached him, came down behind it, and held out his hand.
The spear materialised.
"New pressure configuration — ready?" Zangika asked.
"Let's test it."
The snake's tail came around low and fast — the tip glowing faintly as mana gathered in it. It connected with the spear shaft with a detonating bang that sent the sound bouncing off every rock face in the cave. Karn was pushed back two steps, the force travelling up through his arms and into his shoulders. The snake hissed — a wet, resonant sound that pressed against the ears.
He steadied. Charged the weapon.
Two lines of water — thin, precise, barely visible — traced outward from the spear tip. He swung it in a controlled arc, the lines bending with the motion and merging into a single curved blade of pressure. It hit the snake across the head and chest in one connected movement.
SHHHHH.
The cut was clean. The snake dropped without a sound — and the arc kept moving, crossing the cave and hitting the cliff wall on the far side. A section of rock sheered away and fell.
Karn turned around.
"You killed three more," Zangika said.
"What?"
"The arc travelled. They were behind the cliff. I didn't expect them to cut that easily."
Karn looked at the cliff. Then back at Zangika's HUD overlay. Four targets gone.
"What did you put in the spear?"
"The core from that water-type high-class monster we collected last floor. Running mana through a core that already carries the water attribute amplifies the output enormously — the pressure isn't just physical anymore, it carries the mana signature of the attribute. Which means it cuts through living tissue the way mana weapons cut through mana-reinforced material." A pause. "You're welcome."
Karn stood with that for a moment.
(In this world, channelling mana into a weapon while maintaining the precision and focus to use it in actual combat was considered an advanced technique. It required years of dedicated practice — childhood training, ideally — because the mental load of sustaining mana flow while tracking a moving fight was significant enough to overwhelm most adult practitioners. The fact that Zangika was doing it through a spear nozzle and a tech interface, automatically, was not something either of them had announced to anyone.)
"Now tell me the rest about the father," Karn said, stepping over the snake's remains and moving deeper into the floor.
"Ten wives. Daily. Simultaneously with two at a time."
"Ten."
"Ten."
"So what this guy does, every single day, is—"
"Yes."
"All day."
"Without stopping."
"Biologically, yes."
Karn was quiet for a moment.
"I'm not going to lie. I respect it and resent it equally."
"Guys like that are not meant to keep living," Zangika said sympathetically.
"Why are you agreeing with me?"
"Because I know why you're saying it. The man who has been single his entire life with only his own hand for company."
"You are rubbing salt directly into an open wound."
"I would love to rub—"
"Let's focus on the snakes."
* * *
The Other PartyThey moved deeper — collecting stones from the kills, mapping the floor, running the spear through the smaller groups of Kracy's children who appeared at intervals. The cave grew wider as they went, the ceiling higher, the rock formations denser. Karn began to understand the layout: the snakes used the ceiling gaps as highways, moving overhead between the stone protrusions, dropping down when they had an angle.
Thermal tracking made most of them irrelevant.
"I'm hearing something," Zangika said.
"What kind of something?"
"Combat. Active. From the next section."
They moved toward it.
When the passage opened into a wider chamber, the scene resolved fast. A party of four — two men, two others — in a rough fighting spread around a snake that dwarfed everything Karn had encountered on this floor so far. Its scales were heavier, darker, a deep violet-grey that caught no light. When it moved, the ground trembled slightly.
A Kracy. The real one.
One of the fighters — a man, built wide, sword drawn — lunged forward and swung for the neck. The blade connected with the scale and skidded sideways with a spray of sparks, leaving nothing.
"Scales holding strong," the fighter next to him said.
"Sam — the tail."
Sam turned a half-second too late. The Kracy's tail swept around and glowed as it moved — mana gathered and discharged on impact. It caught all four of them simultaneously, sweeping them across the chamber and into the far walls. Two of them hit stone and didn't get back up. Sam and the other man — Damon — slid to the floor coughing, blood on their lips, pushing themselves upright on shaking arms.
"Two are gone," Zangika said quietly.
"Which two?"
"The two the author didn't name."
"What?"
"Nothing."
Sam and Damon pulled themselves to their feet. Both looked badly hurt but neither dropped their weapons.
"We can do it," Sam said.
"If we try hard enough," Damon agreed.
The Kracy came out of the settling dust, head low, moving with the deliberate patience of something that wasn't threatened. It struck once — a short, controlled bite-and-pull — and both Sam and Damon's swords went sideways as they blocked. The force drove them backward across the stone, both screaming, feet scraping, the snake pressing forward without slowing.
Then it ate them.
Karn watched.
"Fatality," Zangika said, with the flat tone of someone reading a system notification.
"Is something wrong with me," Karn said, "or have I seen enough of this that I just... don't react anymore?"
"That's what happens when you've watched too much gore."
"That's not it."
The Kracy finished and turned its head.
Karn had already moved.
He dropped from the upper ledge like a thrown stone — silent, committed, the spear already drawn back. An Assassin's Creed drop. The Kracy heard something and spat — the acid stream arced upward. Karn rolled sideways mid-fall, letting it pass, activated sky walk at the last second and redirected himself sideways and down, closing the remaining distance in a burst.
Then the Kracy vanished.
Not faded — not stepped back. Vanished. The thermal signature dropped from the HUD completely.
"What the—"
"Vanisher," Zangika said. "Inherent skill. Adult female Kracy develop it as they grow. The ability doesn't just cloak the body — it erases heat signature and presence entirely. She's not suppressing it. She's deleting it."
The impact hit from behind — enormous, the force field absorbing the bulk of it but not all — and Karn was launched forward and sideways, hitting the ground rolling, already trying to establish where the attack had come from.
"Thermal — can't we get a read on her at all?"
"Negative. The skill covers it. Mana detection?"
"We don't have that."
"No. But I can read air pressure displacement. She's large — she moves air when she moves. I can predict trajectory from the disturbance pattern. It's not reliable, but it's something."
"Do it."
"Above you. Acid incoming."
Karn dropped and rolled sideways. The acid hit the floor where he'd been and carved another hole.
"Pressure says she's directly above your head. Mouth open."
He raised the spear straight up and held position.
The bite came down.
The jaws closed on the spear shaft. The impact drove Karn's arms down and shoved him back several steps, his feet dragging furrows in the stone. He held.
"Now — fire into the jaw."
A compressed burst fired up through the shaft and into the mouth. The Kracy screamed — a sharp, rolling sound that bounced off every wall — and recoiled, releasing the spear and vanishing again before Karn could track her.
"Laser," Karn said.
"She moved again. No line."
"Then we make her come to us. Give me the program."
"Ready. Three diagonal arcs — left, right, center — then two upward. The diagonal spread forces her to commit to a position to avoid them. The upward arcs catch her overhead trajectory if she tries to come down after."
Karn charged the weapon.
The water built — dense, mana-laced, the core in the shaft humming with built pressure. He swung.
First arc — diagonal left. SHHHHH. It cut across the cave and something screamed — invisible, the scream trailing blood that appeared in mid-air and hit the stone.
Second arc — diagonal right. Another scream. A gash opened in the air and blood followed gravity downward, tracing the outline of a body that still refused to fully appear.
The Kracy boosted her speed and dodged the third diagonal — Karn felt the air rush past him as something enormous moved through the space to his left.
He swung the final two arcs upward, overlapping at the same point.
Both struck the same location — just below where a head would be, at throat height.
The Kracy appeared.
For a moment she was fully visible — the dark scales, the enormous body, the wounds from the first two arcs already bleeding freely. Then the head separated from the body cleanly, and both parts dropped.
The cave went quiet.
Karn stood still, breathing.
"Aah." He rotated his shoulders. "That was way stronger than I expected. Way stronger."
"Adult female. They're significantly more capable than the children." Zangika paused. "The skin is valuable. Scales especially — they're a crafting material. And there's a white stone in the body cavity."
He walked over. The white core sat in the remains, different from the green and black ones he'd collected before. Cleaner. Almost luminous.
He collected it, then used pressurised water to strip the scales methodically — not fast, but thorough. The material came off in large sections, each one rigid and slightly iridescent. He stored them in the void space.
* * *
A different party found the chamber some time after Karn had left.
One of them crouched at the edge of the largest damage zone, running a hand along a clean arc cut carved into the stone floor.
"What happened here?"
"Big fight," someone else said, stepping around the Kracy remains. The body was stripped almost completely of its scales — careful work, not a battle aftermath. "Look at these marks. Whoever was here was using mana with the weapon. These arcs — the cut depth, the arc radius — that takes serious focus to produce."
Their mage crouched over one of the arc scars and pressed a hand to it. She stood after a moment, expression unreadable. Water presence, she said — but mixed with something else. Mana, yes, but carried through something technological. She had never felt a signature like it.
"Four bodies," another member said, looking at what remained of Sam and Damon's party. "Looks like two died in the fight, two died later. Someone survived. Or someone helped them and then left."
"Whatever happened here," the first one said, standing, "it was something else."
* * *
Nine"We are completely cooked," Karn said.
"We won't know until we see how it goes."
"Zangika. There are nine of them. I can count — three are in the air, four at ground level, and two hanging back at distance for ranged acid. Nine. Covering every angle. What is there to find out?"
"Whether we survive."
Karn exhaled slowly.
"Nine Kracy children. All of them vanished."
"Positions unstable. Vanisher skill active across all targets."
Nothing in the thermal. Nothing on the HUD. Just an empty cave and nine snakes somewhere inside it.
* * *
Karn vs. Nine Kracy — Shadow Nexus CombatKarn stood still.
Spear lowered. Breathing slow.
The cave was completely silent — not the quiet of nothing, but the quiet of nine things choosing the right moment.
"Say directions."
"Air pressure puts four above, three mid-level, two at distance. Positions shifting. I can't give you exact timing — only general trajectory when they commit."
"Good enough."
A ripple — barely anything, more felt than heard.
"RIGHT—"
Karn didn't turn. He fired a burst sideways and used the recoil to throw himself left — vanishing from his position in the same instant a tail came down and detonated the stone where he'd been standing, the force vibrating through the floor.
He landed low, already spinning the spear.
CLANG — something invisible hit the rotating shaft and the impact registered as both a sound and a pressure wave across his forearms. Acid sprayed from the same direction — but the rotating water spinning off the spear caught it and deflected it outward in a wide scatter, none of it reaching him.
"Above — one diving."
He reversed the spear and fired downward — the force kicked him upward. Mid-air. Spear swinging wide.
The arc extended past the weapon — a water blade that followed the swing's path and kept going beyond where the spear stopped. It caught something invisible at head height and split it open. The body appeared only in the moment of its fall, dropping visible to the cave floor.
"One down."
No pause. The air shifted from three directions at once.
"Surround — three incoming, mid-level."
Karn drove the spear into the floor and opened the water output full. It erupted upward and outward, spinning — a tight vortex forming around him, the pressure building fast. When the tails came in from three angles simultaneously, they hit the outer edge of the spinning water and the force was redirected — not blocked straight, but angled, each tail pushed sideways by the curved pressure rather than stopped dead. He felt the vibrations through the spear shaft but none of the impact reached him.
He moved inside the vortex. Controlled. Waiting.
"Left — low. Committed trajectory."
He dropped the vortex instantly — released the pressure, let it collapse — and a tail swept directly over his head, close enough to feel the displaced air. He was already inside its reach. The Kracy flickered visible for a half-second as the Vanisher skill struggled to reset while she was mid-strike.
Enough.
He stepped in close and drove the spear tip forward at point-blank range — a focused jet, narrow, directly through the scales into the body cavity. The Kracy convulsed, the skill dropped entirely, and she collapsed fully visible.
"Two."
Distance — a rush of air and then acid streaking in from both long-range positions at once.
"Two long-range — simultaneously."
He didn't dodge both — not enough time. He whipped the spear sideways in a wide horizontal arc, the water lashing out curved and fast — a high-pressure whip that hit the first stream of acid mid-flight and split it, then continued outward and struck something invisible past the acid's source. A scream. The pressure wrapped around something for a fraction of a second and then tightened, the water cutting clean through.
A body appeared. Dropped.
He reversed immediately — the second whip, sharper, faster, snapping in a tight arc across the second long-range position.
CRACK. Another body appeared and dropped.
"Four."
Five remaining. The four overhead descended together — not individually, all at once, tight formation, the air pressure dropping as four bodies committed to the same vector simultaneously.
"Simultaneous dive — four targets."
Karn stepped forward and fired backward — the burst launching him forward like a thrown object, closing distance toward the dive rather than retreating from it. He met them mid-air and spun the spear in a full rotation, water pouring out in a continuous ring — a circular blade that expanded outward as it spun.
CLANG — one deflected off the rotating shaft. SLASH — one caught the outer edge and opened along the flank. A graze across his shoulder plate where the third clipped him. The fourth overshot.
He landed, rolled, heard the fourth coming in from behind immediately.
He drove the spear backward without looking — a point-blank burst at the angle of the sound — and felt it punch through something. The weight hit him anyway as the body fell, knocking him forward a step.
"Six."
Three left. The cave went still again.
"They've stopped moving," Zangika said. "Waiting."
Karn lowered his stance and began spinning the spear slowly. Then faster. Water began to flow — not outward, upward this time, rising in a spiral from the tip and building into a column. He kept building it. Wider. More pressure. The cave floor started vibrating under it, debris and loose stone pulling toward the base of the column.
"Invisibility requires stable positioning," Zangika said. "Force them to move."
The tornado expanded until the air itself was visibly distorted — pulling at the walls, tearing at the stone, disrupting the pressure in the entire chamber.
Two flickers. Two positions.
"There — and there."
Karn collapsed the tornado inward — all of it, at once, the pressure imploding into a single burst. Two bodies were flung outward by the release, visible now, tumbling across the cave floor.
He was already moving to the first one — a short burst for acceleration, closing distance instantly — and drove the spear through the head before it could recover.
"Seven."
The second was on its feet — moving, no longer hiding, running at him with its mouth already building acid. The third came from the side at the same moment. Both of them visible, both committed, both past the point of strategy.
Karn raised the spear and started spinning the water outward — a rotating barrier. Both acid streams hit it and scattered. He stepped through the mist of deflected acid and swung continuously — left, right, up, down, each swing extending a water arc further than the spear itself reached. The first Kracy was shredded mid-charge, each arc cutting deeper than the last, the body appearing only as it fell.
"Eight."
The last one was directly in front of him — no distance, no angle, mouth open wide, acid point-blank.
Karn didn't dodge.
He stepped in. Grabbed the lower jaw with his free hand — the force field taking the edge off the contact — and forced the mouth upward, tilting the acid stream into the ceiling above them. With his other hand he drove the spear forward at full pressure and held the trigger.
The jet punched through the skull and out the back.
The body dropped.
Silence.
Water dripped from the ceiling where the acid had hit stone and eaten through it. The cave floor was scattered with nine bodies at various angles, half of them having only appeared in the moment of their death.
Karn stood still.
"All targets eliminated," Zangika said.
A pause.
"That was efficient."
Karn exhaled.
"These things are annoying."
"Then let's kill more next time," Zangika said.
"Yeah."
He looked at the bodies. Then at the spear. Then at the hole in the ceiling where the acid had eaten through.
"My love," Zangika said softly.
Karn dismissed the spear and kept walking.
End of Chapter 18