Once he entered the floor itself, Nova could feel his essence constrict to his body. It happened instantly—a sharp, uncomfortable sensation like his skin had suddenly shrunk. He tried to push his essence outward as a test, but it refused to move once it reached the edge of his skin. An invisible wall seemed to encase him completely.

He breathed slowly, adjusting to the strange limitation. The sensation reminded him of being trapped in a small, claustrophobic box.

'But I can still move essence to my rings and equipment, luckily. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to feel… that Millie isn't on the eighth floor either…'

A cold knot formed in his stomach. The mental connection to the rings Anny had given Millie remained silent. No response. No signal. Nothing.

"She's further down," Nova mumbled, turning to Anny with a worried expression. His eyes betrayed the fear he was trying to control. "If… she's still alive."

Anny stepped closer to him. Her drakeling form towered over his adult height, but her voice was still gentle.

"Don't start thinking like that. She has enough food to last weeks, and she knows how dangerous the monsters would be. She's still in the entrance, I'm sure of it."

"Yeah…" Nova took a deep breath, clearing his mind. The air tasted stale in his lungs. He rolled his shoulders, trying to release the tension building there. "You're probably right."

He wanted to believe her words. Needed to believe them. But the silence from the rings ate at him with each passing moment.

Anny looked down the corridor ahead, scales glinting in the dim light. "I just don't understand what could have caused her to be moved that far down."

"Does it matter? Will you stop before finding her?" Nova's voice came out sharper than he intended.

Anny turned to face him fully. Her reptilian features were difficult to read, but her tone carried the weight of difficult truth.

"...If we don't hear anything from her on floor nine, we… can't take that risk, Nova."

Nova stood in silence for a long time after that. His eyes fixed on a point in the distance, unseeing. A war was being fought in his head, between logic and love. Every instinct screamed to charge ahead, to descend as fast as possible. But reason whispered caution—to lose both of them would doom not just Millie, but countless others who depended on them.

"We will figure something out…" He swallowed hard. "Would you stop me if I go?"

"I will probably try. But if you do go, I'll follow."

"No, you should go back and make sure the—"

"Don't you dare." Anny cut him off with a growl that echoed off the stone walls. Her clawed hand reached out, gripping his shoulder firmly. "If you can go to such selfish lengths for someone you love, I'm doing the same."

The statement hung in the air between them. Nova felt the conflict drain from his body, replaced by a strange comfort despite their dire situation.

"...Let's leave it for now, then. We have a floor to beat."

"I'll go first."

Anny drew her sword with a practiced motion. The manticore blade slid from its sheath with a soft whisper of metal against leather. As she held it, the air around the blade subtly distorted, as though the metal carried a weight beyond its physical mass.

The troll-skull shield was still on her arm, having tightened around it as she transformed. She tested its weight, making small adjustments to the straps that held it in place.

"Remember, no essence leaving our bodies on this floor," Nova said, drawing his own salamander-infused blade. The metal warmed in his grip, responding to his internal essence.

"That won't be a problem for me," Anny replied with confidence. "Let's see what's waiting for us."

They advanced cautiously down the corridor, alert for any sign of movement. The passageway widened as they progressed, opening into a chamber with a high ceiling. Stalactites hung from above like stone teeth, dripping water that echoed in the silence.

The first attack came without warning.

A massive form crashed down from the shadows above—an enormous spider with eight thick legs ending in curved barbs. Its body was armored with plates that resembled burnished steel, reflecting the blue crystal light in metallic flashes.

Eight eyes glowed like embers in its face, tracking their movements with predatory precision. Despite the essence limitation, Nova could still sense its strength—somewhere around twenty thousand Soul Power.

Beside it, two more spiders descended, slightly smaller but no less deadly. Their mandibles clicked together in anticipation, venom dripping from needle-like fangs.

"Armor spiders," Anny muttered, studying the creatures with a prepared stance. "Their shells are reinforced by essence, supposed to be extremely tough."

Nova readied himself for a difficult battle, but Anny stepped forward with confidence. She held her sword slightly differently now—her grip shifted, her stance widened. The air around the blade began to shimmer with a strange distortion.

The lead spider lunged at her, mandibles spread wide to deliver a venomous bite. Its massive form moved with surprising speed for its size, covering the distance between them in a heartbeat.

Anny didn't raise her shield. Instead, she brought her sword around in a sweeping arc that seemed paradoxically both slow and impossibly fast. The weapon appeared to gain mass as it moved, trailing distorted air in its wake like ripples in reality itself.

Nova watched in fascination as the blade met the spider's armored front. For a split second, there was resistance—the creature's twenty thousand Soul Power manifesting as a physical barrier against the strike. But only for a split second.

The blade cut through the armor as if it were paper, cleaving the massive spider from front to back in a single, devastating stroke. The two halves of the creature fell apart cleanly, dark ichor spilling onto the stone floor in a steaming flood.

The other spiders hesitated, sensing a threat beyond their comprehension. In that moment of indecision, Anny was already moving again. Her sword swept through the air toward the second spider.

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The creature tried to leap away, but Anny was experienced enough to understand its pathing. Where the spider should have been safe, the blade found it. There was another flash of resistance, another moment where the creature's inherent power tried to save it, then the manticore sword passed through its body, bisecting it with surgical precision.

The final spider fell just as quickly. Again, Nova sensed a form of unnatural command that had power over the beasts. They couldn't flee, could only charge forward, no matter how one-sided the fight looked.

'But these ones seemed to hesitate more than most. Perhaps the power loses its effect on stronger beasts…'

Nova stared at the carnage with a newfound appreciation for Anny's abilities. In his seventh life, he had seen plenty of people demonstrate sword dao. But still, few had reached such a height, and none in the same direction as Anny.

'It was always about speed or sharpness, never about weight. Some could cut space itself, some could clean a forest in the blink of an eye. But none could wield a mountain in such a tiny blade.'

"That was... impressive," he managed, stepping around the bisected corpses. "I've never seen anything quite like it."

Anny cleaned her blade with a practiced motion, wiping the dark ichor from the metal with a cloth she pulled from her belt. "Glad you finally realized. Did you understand the dao any better?"

Nova stepped over a severed spider leg, careful to avoid the puddles of ichor spreading across the stone floor. His brow furrowed as he tried to reconcile what he had just witnessed with everything he knew about the physical world.

"It doesn't make sense," he admitted, shaking his head. "The other sword dao I've seen made some sense."

She sheathed her blade with a smug smile. The air around it stopped distorting as she released her grip, returning to normal.

"Heavy sword cuts stronger," she stated matter-of-factly, shrugging her massive shoulders. "It makes sense."

"Yes, but stuff can't just increase in mass because you want it to." Nova gestured with his hands, trying to explain his confusion.

"Says who?" Anny challenged, twisting her scaled face into what looked like a smirk. She spread her clawed hands wide, as if inviting him to identify the authority that established such rules.

Nova opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. He ran his fingers through his white hair, disturbing its usual neat arrangement.

"Well... No one, I guess," he conceded reluctantly. "But it's breaking the logic I rely on to use magic, the laws of physics. That's why it seems strange that it can work like that."

"Keep your logic, Nova," Anny said, her tone softening slightly. She tapped her temple with one clawed finger. "I'll do the heavy lifting for us in the future."

She stepped forward, kicking at the remains of one of the spiders with the toe of her boot. The segmented leg rolled away, leaving a trail of viscous fluid on the stone. Anny wrinkled her nose, flaring her nostrils.

"Damn, this blood stinks," she complained, stepping back from the spreading pool of ichor.

Nova glanced at her curiously, not sensing anything in particular. "Oh yeah? Not feeling the urge?"

"Not in a million years for this stuff," she replied with disgust, wiping her boot against a cleaner section of the floor. The motion left smeared marks on the ancient stone. "But who knows, maybe we'll encounter something else here? Let's go."

Nova nodded, adjusting his grip on his salamander blade. The weapon still radiated a gentle heat against his palm, ready for the next challenge. His gaze swept the chamber once more, checking for any movement among the spider remains before turning toward the passage ahead.

They pressed onward, moving through a series of interconnected chambers. Each space presented new challenges—narrow passages where they had to proceed single file, rooms where the floor was covered in a sticky substance that slowed their movement, areas where the ceiling dropped so low that Anny had to crouch in her drakeling form.

In a particularly large chamber, they encountered a pack of large bone hounds—skeletal canines with exposed musculature and no skin to cover it, standing at nearly two meters in height.

The creatures moved with unnatural speed, coordinating their attacks with an intelligence that suggested they were used to hunting in packs. Each hound carried approximately fifteen thousand Soul Power, making the pack a serious threat.

"I'll take the flanks, you push through the center," Nova called, already moving to position.

Anny nodded, adjusting her grip on her sword. The bone hounds circled warily, looking for openings in their defense. One lunged forward, testing their resolve.

Anny didn't even bother with her shield. Her sword moved in a wide arc that seemed impossibly heavy. The air compressed before the blade, creating a visible shockwave that struck the lead hound before the metal itself made contact. The creature's skeleton shattered under the impact, bone fragments scattering across the stone floor.

Three more attacked simultaneously from different angles. Anny spun her sword, trailing distorted air as it moved. The blade passed through all three hounds in sequence, cutting through bone and sinew with ease.

Nova faced the pack leader—a larger specimen with wickedly curved teeth and glowing red eyes. The creature feinted left, then darted right with blinding speed.

He pivoted on one foot, angling his body just enough that the hound's lunge carried it past him. Then his sword burst forward, piercing the creature's throat and severing all but the bone in its neck. It fell to the ground, already dead.

'I don't think my blade would survive slashing their bones apart like that, so I'll stick with cutting flesh. I'm surprised the tier five blades are holding up so well, though.'

The remaining hounds hesitated, sensing the tide turning against them. They began to regroup, growling warnings as they gathered near a dark tunnel.

"They're regrouping for an attack," Nova observed, readying his blade.

"Not for long," Anny replied. With shocking speed for her size, she closed the distance to the retreating pack. Her massive form crashed into their midst like a battering ram, sending bodies flying in all directions.

Her sword became a blur of motion, each strike carrying that strange, impossible weight that defied normal physics. Bone cracked, muscle tore, and within moments, the last of the hounds lay still on the chamber floor.

Anny stood amidst the carnage, barely breathing hard. "That was more like it."

Nova approached, clapping his hands in awe. "I'm once again impressed," he admitted freely. His eyes moved to the manticore blade, studying its surface. "How is the blade handling all that force?"

Anny curtsied at his compliment, looking surprisingly graceful for her build. Then she checked her sword, studying its blade closely.

"Still looks good to me," she concluded after a thorough inspection. A smile crossed her reptilian features as she met Nova's gaze. "You'll have to give my compliments to the chef."

Nova chuckled. "I'll be sure to let him know. I'm sure we'll need something stronger after we leave again, though."

Her eyes lit up at the prospect of even better equipment. "I'm looking forward to it! This one is fine, but I feel like it will snap if I use my full strength."

"Yeah, I wouldn't try it," Nova cautioned, patting the salamander blade at his own side protectively. "You're not getting mine."

"I'll be more deadly than you without it anyway," Anny retorted, puffing up her chest with pride.

Nova raised an eyebrow. "Oh, let's not get too cocky here. We were evenly matched when we were bare-handed, and I'm stronger with a sword."

Anny's expression changed. The golden flecks in her irises seemed to brighten momentarily. "Give me some blood, then."

The chamber fell silent except for the distant dripping of water. Nova stared at her, caught off guard by the unexpected request.

"...What?" he managed, not sure if he had heard correctly.

Anny blinked rapidly, as if coming back to herself. She turned away, suddenly seeming smaller as she avoided his gaze.

"No, never mind," she said quickly. The words tumbled out unusually fast. She busied herself with adjusting her shield straps, clearly embarrassed. "...I just think, I'd be a fair bit stronger with some blood… We were going to test it, right?"

Nova studied her for a moment, noting the subtle changes in her posture and the way she refused to meet his eyes.

'Did the blood cultivation have more of a negative effect than she admitted? Or did she just not notice it before now?'

"...Sure," he said finally, keeping his voice casual. "Let's test it."

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