Ian had to admit that he was enjoying the challenges set by the fourth floor. It was not simply a test of martial skill.

  There were all kinds of rare and powerful beasts scattered across the land. Gathering their remains allowed one to trade with the fey. You could barter away just about anything with them due to how their odd magic worked, but consent was a major part of fey culture. They would not make deals with those who were mentally compromised, as there was no merit in it. They wanted the people they dealt with to be at least capable of seeing the broad strokes of what they were giving up.

  Right now, Ian was harvesting crystals to finish a new war club he had commissioned from the fey. What made these crystals special was that they converted mana into kinetic force when they struck something. Because of that, they had to be carefully secured and grown directly into the weapon so they would only direct their force at whatever he was swinging at. The more mana he pumped into the club, the more force would be released on impact. It was a crude weapon, but sometimes you just needed to hit harder.

  Ian had once seen a winter fey champion wielding a claymore made entirely of the stuff, and he had known immediately that he needed something similar. To his dismay, the blowback from a weapon made entirely of the crystals had broken his arm the first time he swung it. As a result, that crystal war hammer now sat in his bag of holding, waiting for the day he was tough enough to wield it safely.

  After carefully extracting the last crystal he needed, Ian picked up the bag he had been storing them in and wandered back toward town. As he walked, his thoughts drifted to his brief trip to the fifth floor.

  Early in his stay, he had found one of the many trials required to advance downward. The challenge had been to fight a fey champion, and fortunately it had not been the one wielding the crystal claymore. Ian, being mastiff-kin, was naturally larger and tougher than most, and he was accustomed to fighting opponents who were faster than him. He had easily proven his martial prowess. Since then, he had occasionally seen the fey practicing reenactments of how he fought, clearly studying his style so they could dismantle it in the future. He had not lingered after that. Ian had wandered down to the next floor alone.

  His visit there had lasted barely five minutes before he was forced to retreat back to the fourth floor.

  The fifth floor was something the dungeon referred to as the Fey Wilds—a place where truly wild things roamed. Creatures so powerful that the line between biology and magic grew indistinct. The entire floor was a forest of ever-shifting colors and weather patterns. It was honestly beautiful, but also dangerously easy to get lost in. There were paths laid out through the woods, but Ian suspected that the best rewards lay far from them.

  He had left the path after spotting a massive spike of metal jutting out of the ground. Once he had harvested it, he had been attacked by a horse-sized spider. Its legs had punched through his armor as if it were tissue paper, and its body was composed of interlocking plates of razor-sharp chitin. Only his greatly enhanced toughness had allowed him to retreat back to the stairs. Even then, the spider had hurled itself at the doorway, desperate to reach him. The only reason it had stopped was because Ian had finally met Steve.

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  Ian shuddered at the memory. Steve was a pangolin of immense size and bulk. While not as large as some of the dinosaurs on the third floor, it was far too fast for its mass. It had blitzed the spider, crushed it, and then calmly sat down to eat it like a piece of fruit.

  Ian shook his head, forcing himself back to the present. Since then, he had spent his time making proper use of the fey artisans. The gear they could create was leagues beyond anything he had ever owned. It was also the first time he had ever seen climate-controlled plate armor.

  “You look happy,” Zeke piped up from beside him. He was dragging the body of a massive lizard with metallic scales behind him.

  “As do you,” Ian noted.

  “Yeah, I got lucky,” Zeke admitted. “This is a rock eater. Their scales take on the properties of any minerals they eat. This one was feeding on mithril.”

  Ian whistled in approval. “What are you going to use it for?”

  “I was going to offer it to the mages,” Zeke said. “One of them could probably get a combat robe made from this. Mithril is a great conductor, so they might be able to channel mana through it to harden the fabric.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Ian approved.

  “You still haven’t told me what you were grinning about,” Zeke reminded him.

  “Climate-controlled armor,” Ian mused.

  Zeke grinned back. “You lucky bastard. I haven’t been able to find what they want to add that to my armor.”

  “But you did get that crazy crystal they used to turn the tip of your spear into pure plasma,” Ian noted. “That thing is absurd. You’ll need to be careful with it.”

  “I also got a better tower shield,” Zeke bragged. “Primeval hydra bone. It self-repairs, is twice as durable as steel, and a lot lighter.”

  “I need one of those,” Ian muttered. “I didn’t think about that. Their bone plates really were everywhere.”

  “One of the other legionnaires got a full set of plate made from it,” Zeke continued. “It also repairs itself with mana, and it can calcify his wounds so he doesn’t bleed out if he gets stabbed while wearing it. It doesn’t heal, but it prevents blood loss.”

  “Damn,” Ian said. “I wonder what would happen if he got a compound fracture.”

  “I don’t,” Zeke replied with a shiver.

  “You should,” Ian corrected him. “You should plan for every eventuality. It’s gruesome to think about, but abilities like that usually come with risks we need to mitigate.”

  “We are not testing it,” Zeke protested. “Anyway, you should worry about your own party. Crag got an entire tower shield made of those crystals. He was cackling madly while polishing it the last time I saw him.”

  Ian groaned. There was no way he was ever going to separate Crag from that shield, no matter how much it hurt him to use it.

  “Oh, and the assassin had a dagger made from it too,” Zeke added.

  “That’s not as bad,” Ian sighed.

  “Until you realize it’s basically a stiletto,” Zeke said. “I’m pretty sure it’s designed to do horrific amounts of damage very quickly.”

  “Maybe I should be more worried about this floor,” Ian admitted.

  “At least she didn’t find shadow ice,” Zeke said. “That stuff only half exists in reality, so it ignores armor.”

  “I hadn’t heard about shadow ice,” Ian replied.

  “The fey call it frozen shade,” Zeke explained. “You can only get it in deep winter. It gets so cold that shadows can freeze. You need a place that’s both extremely dark and absurdly cold, and then you have to bring it back without letting it thaw so it can be processed.”

  “How did you find out about that?” Ian asked.

  “Our cryomancer did,” Zeke said tiredly.

  “I think we’re all going to be monsters by the time we leave this floor,” Ian observed.

  “Maybe,” Zeke agreed. “But if it’s this easy to get gear here, what horrors are waiting on the next floor?”

  “I only saw two monsters down there before I came back,” Ian admitted. “And all of this might barely be enough to deal with what’s waiting. If that spider was just an average creature, we’re in trouble. If it was above average, then this gear might be overkill.”

  “Then I’m planning for the worst,” Zeke said firmly.

  “Best-laid plans and all that,” Ian agreed as they finally reached the settlement.