[Chapter 120. The Truth About Strength]
The interdiate travel drone settled silently onto the balcony, its anti-gravity engines emitting a final, high-pitched whine before cutting out. The balcony overlooked the vast eastern expanse of the tower's territory, where the sun was currently bleeding across the horizon in a violent display of color. It painted the endless canopy of the forest below in deep, bruised violets and brilliant, fiery crimson. Searanox dismounted from the machine’s chassis with a heavy thud, and within seconds, the drone dissolved into a cascade of dancing, blue-white sparks—recalled back into his storage space with a flick of his intent.
"Staring into the distance again?" he asked, his voice cutting through the quiet evening air. He didn't need to wait for an answer; he already knew what drew her gaze toward the eastern treeline.
Iris turned to face him, her movents fluid and graceful, though there was a noticeable sluggishness to her shoulders that betrayed her exhaustion. "I was just wondering if they had found it yet," she admitted softly, her tail flicking once in a nervous arc.
"They found it," Searanox replied, moving toward the stone railing. "I t them at the entrance, gave them their promised rewards for clearing the Burrowing Depths, and gave them my approval to enter. They should be halfway through the clear by now." He leaned his weight against the cool stone, the chill of the evening air seeping through his heavy coat. "But more importantly, how was your dungeon, Iris? Which variant did you encounter?"
"I see. So they actually made it," she murmured, more to herself than to him. She looked down at her hands, noting the faint tremors in her fingers and the gri trapped beneath her fingernails, then looked back out at the forest. "It was... very dusty, Searanox. A lot of stone and ancient grit."
Searanox gave a slow, knowing nod, shifting his weight as he looked out at the fading light. "Ah. You got the earth-attuned instance. The easy one."
Iris’s head snapped toward him, her eyes widening in genuine shock. Her ears pinned back slightly against her skull. "The easy one? What do you an, 'the easy one'? That beast nearly brought the entire cavern down on top of !"
"It is exactly as I said," he replied, pushing himself upright and turning to face her fully. "In the grand hierarchy of elental variants, the Earth Elental Dire Wolf doesn't actually do much. It flings a few rocks around, and yes, it occasionally brings down half the ceiling if you provoke it, but apart from those structural tantrums, it’s really just a glorified punching bag with a lot of health."
Iris’s mind imdiately flashed back to her struggle with the stone wolf—the crushing weight of the impact, the sheer terror as the cavern walls began to fracture and collapse. It hadn't managed to kill her, but "easy" was the last word she would have used to describe the encounter. "I see..." she said, her voice sounding small even to her own ears.
"It’s just as dangerous as the water variant, really," Searanox continued, seemingly oblivious to her internal turmoil. "The earth one makes you dirty with dust, and the water one makes you wet. Neither is particularly life-threatening if you keep your feet. The Ice and Fire variants, however... those are problematic. They tend to destroy half the dungeon’s infrastructure while you’re still fighting them, making the environnt itself your primary enemy."
Iris followed him as he began to walk away from the balcony and back into the grand foyer of the tower. "Is that why it’s sotis freezing cold or boiling hot when you enter those portals?"
He nodded, his boots echoing on the polished stone. "Exactly. The environnt adapts to the master of the floor."
Iris paused, a mory of a specific sensation from her research files surfacing. "Searanox... what does it an if my hair starts to stand on end? If the air itself feels like it’s vibrating?"
Searanox stopped dead in his tracks. He turned his head slowly to look at her, his expression uncharacteristically grim. "Death," he said, the word hanging heavy in the air between them. "That would be the Lightning Elental Dire Wolf. I have only faced that specific variant once." He let out a short, soft whistle. "What a bitch that fight was. Fast as fuck. And its electric breath..." He let out a short, sharp laugh that held no humor. "It’s like a thunderstorm condensed into a single room."
Iris remained silent. She had never witnessed a true thunderstorm herself; the System’s internal knowledge base described them as catastrophic, chaotic natural phenona, but they had remained distant abstractions to her until this very mont.
"I see..." Her voice was barely a whisper, a soft breath that hardly disturbed the stillness of the foyer. "I was just lucky, then. I just got the 'easy' one." The words trailed off, barely ford, as a cold realization settled in her gut.
As they reached the center of the foyer, beneath the high, vaulted ceiling, Searanox turned back to her with a flat, direct gaze. "Iris," he said, his tone professional. "I want you in the Tidal Terrace next. Clear it cleanly, without taking unnecessary damage, and then you can finally move on to the Webbed Tunnels. You need the experience."
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His hand rested on the center stone of the teleportation array. A bright, violet flash engulfed his form, and in an instant, he was gone.
His absence was imdiate and absolute, leaving the foyer feeling unnervingly quiet. Iris stood there for a long ti, her shadow stretching long across the floor. Her tail, which had been swaying with a modicum of confidence only monts before, drooped and curled protectively around her leg. The gulf between them had never felt quite so vast—it wasn't just a difference in raw strength or level, but a staggering gap in experience and perspective.
To hear him dismiss the Elental Dire Wolf—a creature that had pushed her to her absolute physical and ntal limits—as nothing more than a "punching bag" that simply got his clothes dirty... it twisted in her stomach like a physical blow. It made her feel small, insignificant, and woefully unprepared.
The empty foyer felt vast and freezing. She stood in the center of the stone circle, her voice trembling as she spoke into the darkness. "All I want... all I have ever wanted... is to be useful to you," she whispered, her words lost in the cavernous, unfeeling space.
In the late afternoon of the following day, the four won finally returned to the tower. Their steps were heavy and dragging as they climbed the stairs beneath the freestanding archway and stepped onto the dark gray stone foundation of the atrium. A thick cloud of uncertainty hung between them; they moved in a hesitant huddle, debating in hushed tones whether they should seek out Iris first or gather their courage to approach Searanox directly with their report.
As they entered the main atrium, fate made the decision for them.
Searanox was already there, standing in the center of the room. He was in the process of unloading a massive haul of raw materials from a recent dungeon run of his own. "I see you have returned," he said, his voice echoing off the high walls. He didn't bother to glance their way, his attention remained fixed on the inventory before him.
"We cleared the dungeon, Master," Lana announced, stepping forward. She held Wavebreaker at her side, the shield still bearing the faint scratches from the Alpha’s tusks.
The others trailed in behind her, moving slowly from the shadows of the corridor into the open space of the atrium. Searanox remained focused on his task, thodically adding to a growing pile of loot on the floor—heavy plates of monster armor, bleached bones, serrated claws, and various other beastly remnants that slled of old blood.
After a long, awkward silence where the only sound was the clatter of materials being stacked, Searanox finally turned to face them. "And what exactly did you bring back for ?" he asked, his tone flat and transactional.
Carn stepped forward, shrugging the heavy backpack off her shoulders with a grunt of exertion. As she approached him, she reached into a side pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch and a single, glowing E-Grade Skillstone. "It isn't much," she admitted, her voice cautious. "The reward chest was remarkably light this ti."
Vanessa stood fuming in the back of the group, biting her lower lip so hard she thought it might bleed. She still couldn't stomach the reality of their situation—after all that work, after the terror and the blood, they were expected to just surrender everything they had found. It felt like a robbery.
Searanox extended his armored hand, and both the pouch and the stone vanished into his storage ring in a blink of light. "Just twelve silver coins and a single Skillstone?" he scoffed, his gaze returning to the girls. "That is a pathetic haul for a full clear."
"No," Carn said quickly, her gaze dropping to the polished stone floor. Her voice quieted significantly, losing its usual clinical, confident edge. "There... there was sothing else in the chest."
Searanox tilted his head slightly to the side, his interest visibly piqued. "And that was?"
Carn took an involuntary half-step back before answering, the words seemingly catching in her dry throat. "Y-yes, there was... there w-was also a s-scroll. A parchnt tied with a black ribbon."
"And what exactly happened to this scroll?" he asked. His eyes flicked from Carn to the other three. Lana’s fingers were fidgeting nervously with the rim of her shield, while Sarah traced idle, aningless patterns on the stone floor with the toe of her boot. Even Vanessa, usually the most defiant, found herself twisting the corner of the Empty To’s leather cover between her fingers.
"It d-disappeared the mont I opened it," Carn stamred, the admission clearly weighing heavily on her conscience. She had been the one to insist they thodically catalog every item in the chest, ensuring nothing was hidden or pocketed by the others. "I unrolled it to read the contents... and then it simply went poof. It dissolved into white ash." She made a small, frustrated vanishing gesture with her fingers.
"It went 'poof'?" Searanox repeated, his tone flat and entirely unimpressed.
"As it vanished, I heard the System’s voice in my head," Carn said, her gaze remaining fixed on the floor. "It said: In the southeast lies sothing of interest to your benefactor."
She reached into her tunic and held out the crude, hand-drawn map Iris had given them, her hand trembling slightly. Searanox completely ignored the map in her hand, instead looking off into the distance toward the east.
"Your benefactor..." he mumbled, the words sounding more like a private thought than a response to her. "What could possibly interest in the Tidal Terrace?"
After a long mont of silence, he looked back at them, his expression unreadable. "You can give that map back to Iris," he said, making a sharp, dismissive gesture with his hand. "You are all dismissed for the evening. Iris will let you know when you are scheduled to enter the next dungeon."
Carn quickly stored the map again, taking a hesitant step back toward the exit. "I’m sorry, Master. The loss of the scroll... it won't happen again."
"It is fine," Searanox said, his voice sounding distant and lost in thought. "I will ask Iris about the specifics of that scroll. Mistakes are unavoidable in the field, Carn. There is nothing wrong with them, as long as you have the sense to learn from them."
Before he could change his mind or demand anything further, all four of them rushed toward the center stone of the atrium. In a collective flash of violet light, they vanished, retreating to the safety of their own quarters.
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