Floors six through ten blurred together.
Not because they were forgettable—but because they were efficient.
The Crystal Cave no longer felt like a dungeon resisting invaders. It felt like a system being dismantled by people who understood it better than its creators ever intended.
Jax stopped micromanaging early.
By the sixth floor, he no longer needed to call formations. The Vixens moved instinctively—spacing flawless, angles covered, magic layered with a precision that would have impressed veteran A-rank teams.
The familiar PING of level-ups echoed frequently now.
Too frequently.
Skills refined mid-combat. Mana pools expanded between engagements. Movements that once required focus now happened without thought. Fighting creatures stronger than anything they had ever faced before pushed their growth faster than any grind they had known.
Zee's barriers no longer flickered under pressure.
They held.
They adapted. Reinforced themselves mid-impact as her mana control deepened, her Legendary skill responding more fluidly with every cast.
Llandra's arrows no longer searched for targets.
They arrived at them.
Her perception had sharpened to the point where she loosed shots before enemies fully emerged—reading vibrations through crystal, tracking mana displacement, reacting to the faintest scrape of claws against stone. More than once, the others realized she had killed something none of them had ever seen.
Bunny stopped asking if she should hold back.
She didn't.
Her hammer strikes reshaped the battlefield. Shockwaves cracked crystal growths loose from ceilings, collapsing ambushes before they formed. She laughed more now—not wildly, but with the confidence of someone who knew nothing in front of her could stop her.
Nyxian changed the most.
At first, her fighting had been flashy—dominant, cruel, intoxicating.
By the eighth floor, something else emerged.
Control.
Her whips no longer lashed wildly. They guided. Herded enemies into kill zones. Pinned monsters just long enough for Bunny to crush them or for Llandra to end them cleanly.
Echo mirrored her shift, no longer merely reacting—anticipating.
And behind them all, Jax watched.
Not with worry.
With calculation.
Shadows multiplied behind them like an industrial operation.
Each floor added new workers, new laborers, new links in a growing chain of command. Jax no longer summoned everything forward. He didn't need to. He considered using some of the excess as cannon fodder—but chose not to.
The chemistry forming within the team mattered more.
Through the iPoints bond linking them as a unit, even when Gryph or Fang struck down enemies, the entire party shared in the rewards. Skills improved. Rare and Legendary abilities stabilized. The cave wasn't just being cleared.
It was being reorganized.
By the eleventh floor, the shadows no longer felt feral.
They felt… assigned.
Floor fifteen broke the pattern.
No enemies awaited them.
Instead, the cavern opened into a vast circular chamber carved from obsidian crystal, its surface etched with symbols older than the Kingdoms themselves. At its center stood a raised stone dais—and embedded within it, a massive crystal door sealed by glowing runes.
Around the chamber's walls ran wide exhaust-like tunnels, as if heat or steam once vented from this place.
But the room was silent.
Empty.
Waiting.
The runes rearranged themselves, forming a stepped pyramid. Around it appeared large stone pieces—familiar, yet alien. Chess-like, but shaped according to myth rather than function.
"This isn't a mana lock," Zee said quietly. "It's… ceremonial."
Llandra stepped closer, scanning the symbols. "I've seen this. In old elven records."
Jax waited.
"The Trial of Order," Llandra continued. "Not strength. Not speed. Judgment."
The symbols shifted again.
List the powers of the world—in their proper order.
Zee frowned. "And if we're wrong?"
"We don't advance?" Bunny guessed.
"We're expelled from the raid," Zee finished.
Nyxian groaned. "Of course it's a thinking puzzle."
Seven symbolic pieces lay before them.
Gods. Plants. The World. Man. Demon Lords. Animals. Beasts.
Eight slots.
Seven pieces.
Llandra hesitated. "I remember this… but not like this."
She tried.
Gods on top.
Next Demon Lords.
The World.
Beasts.
Man.
Animals.
Plants.
Leaving the bottom chamber blank.
The system rejected it.
She tried again. Again.
Gods on top.
The World.
Demon Lords.
Man.
Beasts.
Animals.
Plants.
Nothing on bottom.
Rejected a second and final time before punishment after a 3rd attempt.
Panic set in.
This wasn't skill. This wasn't combat. This was memory—history she couldn't fully recall.
Llandra broke.
Tears fell as she whispered apologies, convinced she had failed them all.
Jax stepped in, placing his hands on her shoulders, pulling her into a steady embrace.
"This isn't on you," he said gently. "None of us knew this. And I'd have failed it alone."
The door opened.
Everyone froze.
Standing in the doorway—tail flicking proudly—was Echo.
The room trembled.
Echo and sniffed around the room and climbed through one of the exhaust chambers that led to the next room, not toward the outside. He opened the door.
The little rodent did it and actually was useful for once, Jax thought.
Jax didn't want to leave without grabbing a souvenir. He grabbed the Gods chess piece from the top of the board, and in a balance as he stretched to reach it, used his other hand at the top of the pyramid while putting the chess piece in his storage, like he did with the beasts they had been capturing.
One his had reached the top of the level, the room shook, and exclaimed they got the riddle right.
It runs out, the observer was the top of the pyramid, even higher than the gods, or demon lords. For if they they were able to observe, they couldn't judge. The rest of the order didn't matter.
Well it didn't matter since they hacked the system beforehand anyway, but that was good to know for the future.
The trial ended.
The path forward opened.
They stepped through together.