“Miss Houjo?” Dario called out in his sweetest tone of voice, sounding almost like a little boy as he tiptoed over the mound of stone, careful not to cause another collapse. His years of experience on treacherous heaps of garbage was coming in handy here, allowing him to avoid rocks with bad footing.

  Even he couldn’t see through this much dense rock, but from the obvious traces of her Ki, he thought Nika was still alive. He followed those traces, creeping over the pile of broken stone to where the Ki was thicker, then began to dig, huffing and grunting as he heaved rocks to the side.

  Dario jerked back and nearly shat himself when he lifted a flat stone and found an open-eyed face staring right past him. But he gathered his courage, clearing some more of the debris and looking her over. It looked like she hadn't even take a wound. Some things just weren't fair.

  “Miss Houjo?” he said softly when she didn’t react to his movements, only staring up at the ceiling with hollow eyes.

  Just a few hours ago, he would’ve had to admit to feeling some envy for her, after she announced that she was aiming to go all the way to the seventh floor. To have all those advantages and such an awesome adventure in front of her. But now it was becoming clear that even someone with her privileges could have… issues.

  He was almost finished with clearing the remaining debris from her body, when she finally spoke up.

  “It was all a lie.”

  The words came out more slowly and in a lower pitch compared to before, like all the color had drained from her voice. She was still staring up at the ceiling as she spoke.

  “Even the rhyme. By the pillar, I always loved that rhyme.”

  “What rhyme? You mean the little song about the stages of cultivation?” Dario asked, turning to look at her. To his surprise, she cleared her throat, her voice turning to a higher pitch as she began to recite.

  “First we have fun as two become one;

  Then we toil to fill our coil.

  What now twirls must later swirl;

  Before we pack until it cracks.

  The final steps are one in two;

  that have the old beheld as new.

  All the blind must twist the mind

  until the eye and all align.”

  “Mmm,” Dario grunted with a frown, “The way I was taught it is a bit different. The second part is the same, but JeeJee always started with ‘The dream must start within our heart; with words so sweet, clear of deceit. Next we vore to become more; then we toil to fill our coil.’ The rest is the same, I think.”

  He paused, considering, but then he shrugged.

  “Never could make much sense of it. I thought it was just a silly song. You’re saying there’s some hidden meaning to it?”

  “It is meant to be a puzzle,” Nika said absently. “Two becoming one, or ‘voring to become more’, from your version of the rhyme, refers to the process of absorbing a Koto.”

  “Wait, so it really is a riddle? In that case there might be a clue…” he paused for a moment, scratching his head. “But you know what’s weird? This means everyone’s basically always been skipping a step in their cultivation. Sounds a bit like a giant shortcut. Would it be possible to take it even further and start by jumping straight to Coral?”

  She turned her head to look at him, frowning. “I have never heard of anyone skipping steps. Even for those born on the third floor, there are no known cases of anyone not starting off by going down to the Basement to integrate a Koto. Without its effects on the seams and the volume of Ki one is able to handle, I suspect that ascending to Coral and beyond would be impossible. But it doesn’t matter,” she said glumly after a short pause. “Don’t you realize what this means? For us?”

  Dario nodded eagerly as he looked over at the entrance to the stone maze.

  “Treasure,” he breathed, rubbing his hands excitedly. “Great, big, shining heaps of it! I mean, just think about it.”

  He was practically vibrating as he turned to Nika, who was giving him a slack-jawed look. “I found a skull and a smooth piece of stone, which could have been from a fancy house or something like that. People used to live here. There’ll be ruins and, well, I don’t know what else, but there’ll be treasure, too. There has to be!”

  She blinked, looking like he’d just proposed to cook and eat her favorite pet. Then she pushed herself up until she sat upright.

  “What are you… No! That’s not what I meant at all. We’re doomed, you fool! Everything we were taught about this world may be wrong. But more importantly, we are stuck in a cave with no way of finding out what the hidden requirement of this floor is. It’s an impossible task!”

  Now it was Dario’s turn to look confused.

  “Well, yeah, but isn’t that the same on basically every floor? It’s just like that - a mystery. We have to go on a quest to solve the puzzle. I thought you wanted to go all the way up to the seventh? I’ll bet there’ll be a bunch more mysteries to solve before you’re done.”

  “I…”

  A wild grin began to creep back onto his face, eyes bright with excitement even as Nika frowned and stammered, seeming lost and confused.

  “Look, I saw a bit of light, remember? At the time, I thought it must be coming from another hole in the ceiling, right? But now, I’m thinking it might be coming straight from the pillar. It runs through all the other floors, so why wouldn’t it be here as well?”

  Her gaze turned down at her hands, then up at the ceiling before finally looking back at him. All the anger seemed to have drained away, leaving behind only confusion and, he thought, a bit of shame.

  “If there were cities,” he continued, “they should have been closer to the pillar, same as on our floor. So if that’s right, all we need to do is punch a great big hole through those walls, and we’ll be on our way.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He leaned forward, flashing an eager grin as he reached out his hand.

  “What do you say?”

  Nika looked smaller than before as she lay there with her clothes torn in places, half-covered by dust and small pieces of debris, her eyes shifting uncertainly. She began to mutter things to herself that he couldn’t hear, but he could see the change coming over her as she took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment and then set her jaw. When she looked back at him, there was still some doubt and uncertainty in those eyes, but also stony determination.

  His grin widened when she finally grabbed his hand and he gave a confident nod as he pulled her free. Together, they made their way back, taking some time to wash up and mend torn clothes before packing their things and setting out for the maze.

  Nika remained quiet and gloomy, often looking back up at the ceiling and shaking her head as she muttered to herself. That was not at all the right mood for setting out on a treasure hunt, so Dario took it upon himself to cheer her up by whistling and singing.

  “A nice big of pile of treasure, that’s what gives me pleasure! A hoard big enough to sleep on, that’s what keeps me going strong,” he sang cheerfully, then going on to whistle a merry tune.

  “But sleeping on the artefacts might give me a… heart attack. Nothing good it does forebode, cause you never know when they miiiiiiiiiiiiiight-”

  His voice cracked when trying to reach a higher note, but that didn’t stop him from turning theatrically to Nika while cupping his two hands together.

  “Explode!” he shouted as he made the accompanying gesture, stretching out all of his fingers as he waved his hands.

  “Kindly desist,” she sighed, a defeated look on her face.

  “Hey,” Dario said, pretending to be offended as he pulled his pack tighter. “What do you have against traveling songs? They bring a cheerful mood to our adventure.”

  When there was no answer from Nika, he shook his head, but still went on with a spring in his step as he guided them through the maze. With his Ki reserves at only a tenth of their total, he used only a small trickle of it to light their way, revealing only what was right in front of them.

  He pointed at a tiny crack in the wall through which he could spot a trace of light, looking expectantly over at Nika, who seemed reluctant as she stepped up to the wall.

  “It’s basalt, and a thick layer of it. You’re sure it’s through here?” she asked, running her hand over the wall’s surface.

  “Yep. That’s where the light’s coming from.”

  She shrugged, pushing her heavy Ki into motion, wrapping it into a pointed shape around her right hand. “I expect this will take a while.”

  The ground shook as she slammed the fortified hand into the wall. Dario watched with crossed arms and a satisfied smile as she began taking the wall apart bit by bit, until he heard something in between the blows.

  “Hold on for a moment.”

  They both stared down the hallway, focusing on their hearing, until the chittering of armored feet on stone became audible.

  Dario whispered a curse as he met Nika’s eyes. “Must be the noise. Should we draw it out first?”

  She nodded.

  Without enough Ki for Dario to hide them or to trick it with illusions, they just let the beetle run at them, dodging as it lunged. He leapt over it as Nika managed to twist around and kick it behind them down the hall, and then they ran through the corridors to get out into the open again.

  Once they were out, they readied themselves, waiting for it. Dario took a few steps back, not seeing any need to pretend that it wouldn’t be Nika doing all of the work.

  But he cursed when just a few paces behind the first beetle, a second one came skittering out.

  “Keep it occupied while I take care of this one,” Nika called out.

  Dario’s wide eyes locked onto the second beetle, a wicked black horn sticking out of its billowing black shroud as it went straight for him. He pumped some of what little he had left into his eyes, watching the twisted insect carefully.

  The protective cloud was Ki, that much he felt sure of, but he had no idea what kind. It was different from anything he’d seen before. Instead of focusing on the cloud, he began to scan its body instead, looking for any weakness, but then the beast was on him.

  He dodged, dragging his dagger gently over the black cloud, thinking maybe it triggered only with fast movements or sudden pressure. It sank in a bit further, but the beetle was too agile, turning to snap at him with sharp mandibles.

  Dario danced back, turning around it in circles, but it stuck on him. He was going to get caught sooner rather than later. Nika was still pounding the other one to mush. That would take a while longer still. As he looked frantically around at his surroundings, an idea came to him.

  He feigned to the right, kicking stones over the ground to confuse the beast, then dashed suddenly to the left, racing along the water and leaping over fallen boulders and shards of stone to make his way higher up. The tall obstacles slowed the beetle down and he got up onto a cliff of sorts, no higher than he was tall, waiting right at the edge for it to come at him.

  When it was on him, Dario lunged to the side and then pivoted, twisting around the beast so that he could kick at it from the side. The beetle was heavier than he’d hoped, but they were close enough to the edge that his kick pushed its right half over the edge. With half of its feet not finding purchase on the stone, shoving it the rest of the way off was easy.

  A loud splash echoed up and he leaned over the edge to see if it would swim. A line of bubbles rose to the surface and Dario pushed a bit more Ki into his eyes to see deeper. He cursed; the beetle had sunk but was now wriggling its way over the floor of the lake, heading to the shore.

  He dashed out again, tracing the beast’s route to wait where it would come out of the water. Just a few meters to the right, there was a wide slab of stone sticking out from the shallow water, leaning up to the side of a boulder. That gave him an idea. Scrabbling up the boulder from the other side, he then cast a trickle of light into the water right at the base of the slab, tossing in some stones for good measure.

  The dumb changed its course immediately. Dario put his shoulders behind the slab and began to heave.

  “Move, damn you,” he grunted, feet sliding over the damp boulder as he failed to get it to budge.

  The beetle moved slowly closer. At this rate he was going to have to rush to the shore and wrestle it himself.

  “Hrrgghh.”

  His face turned red as he hooked his feet into cracks in the boulder and put his back into it. The slab moved slightly up, but it was still not enough. But then he remembered what Nika had said and pushed Ki into the seams that ran through his back and arms, flexing his muscles as he did so for a final push. It brought only a small additional benefit, but that bit was all that was needed. The slab of stone reached a tipping point and crashed into the water with a great splash before sinking to the bottom.

  “Yes!” Dario shouted, watching with his hands on his knees, panting, as the beetle failed to get out from underneath the weight of stone.

  Nika ran up and hopped nimbly up the boulder when she spotted him.

  “Have you finally decided to exercise? Where is the beast?”

  He nodded in the direction of the water as he caught his breath.

  “Ah,” Nika said as she went to stand beside him, the only trace of battle a smudge of ichor on her knuckles. “You have theorized that the shroud would protect it only from blows, but not from environmental factors such as water. Over time, the beast should drown. A clever solution.” She nodded approvingly. “I must confess that experimenting with weaknesses did not occur to me. Though overwhelming it with force did help to, ah, alleviate some of my frustration.”

  Dario looked over to where she’d been fighting, spotting a jagged hole in the ground, painted with splashes of ichor and broken insect feet.

  “I believe an apology is in order,” she said, facing him as she straightened her back. “I am sorry you had to witness my… lapse in judgement. It was a dire revelation indeed, but still, I acted without poise or self-constraint. There is no excuse. Please accept my sincere apologies.”

  Her face was serious as she clasped one fist with a hand in front of her and bowed.

  Dario waved it away, still breathing heavily.

  “Everyone has a bad day now and then. Think nothing of it, err, Miss Houjo.”

  She looked up at him, seeming to hesitate, but then she cleared her throat.

  “Please, call me Nika.”