The world turned to dust around me, a hundred streams of smoke blowing away in a floating expanse of black, and I fell.

There was silence and the sensation of weightlessness. I tried to pull in a breath and found that the air was gone. Then I fell softly into wet mud, taking in the smell of rain and dirt and old blood.

The pain of the burgeoning levels inside me was a dull, buzzing weight; potential energy unspent, like static electricity looking for something to leap to. It shifted inside of me like my stomach after spending hours at banquets, resting heavily on each of my attributes.

Littlebird hopped back and forth in the sudden downpour of rain, no longer staggering as if it were drunk. It seemed to need the power of the dungeon to fuel it.

A hole sundered the sky above us, looking up and out of the dungeon into a black void beyond the world. A headache built the longer I stared at it. With a twitching eye, I pushed myself to my feet and looked away. Mud — real mud, not the mud of half remembered chambers — clung to my clothes.

As I staggered forward, I considered the state of the dungeon. Surely none of this was normal. The stacked zones I had applied earlier seemed to be reverberating through the dungeon, shattering the chambers, and killing the Titan had been the last straw for the path I was on.

Holes pock-marked reality around me. Dozens of dead versions of the Gale Titan littered the ground, ranging in age and size. All of them were larger than any version of it I had seen. The rivulets of water formed by the rain was streaked with their blood.

“God damn it Dale.” I said, eyes scanning the horizon. If he hadn’t pushed me, I would be on a normal path, and not accidentally tearing the dungeon down around me.

An already opened exit awaited me only a dozen feet away. Another group — maybe even Dale’s — had torn through this section of the dungeon. I grimaced. That might have meant that I was walking directly toward tehm.

But first, I needed to get rid of the dull buzzing pain inside of me. As if in response, a System prompt appeared.

[Warning: 10 attribute points available!]

It was a new warning, but the pain was an old feeling. It was the same as the moment before forming my core — as if every last meridian and inch of my body overflowed with power. It wasn’t in my meridians though; it wasn’t even in my Dantian. I had the intuition that if I hadn’t already formed my Dantian and reinforced my meridians to such an extent, the pain would be much worse.

Still, the power seared me; it was as if it was begging to be used, raw potential alight inside of me.

[Feng Sai][Level 30][Anti-Light Insurgent]

[Health: 80%][Spheres: 20]

[STR 24][CON 20]

[INT 14][WIL 21]

[AGI 20][PER 15]

[Cultivation:]

[Anti-Light Herald of the Last Storm] [5% Second Realm, Core Formation] [CON +10]

[Zones:]

[Slow][Accelerate]

[Carve][Slaughter]

[Skills:]

[Anti-Light Herald Martial Art X] [STR +10, AGI +10]

[Identify 4] [PER +4]

[One Cut, One Kill 3] [STR +3]

[Meditation 2] [WIL +2]

[Pain Resistance 2] [INT +4]

[Death’s Descent 1] [STR +1]

[Danger Sense 1] [PER +1, INT +1]

I briefly considered putting power into Constitution; the memory of the golem Titan firing a beam of power that nearly incinerated me made me consider it. But cultivation would give me constitution on its own as I refined my body further.

My health had recovered a lot in the time since my last encounter; I wasn’t sure how much of that was the constant refinement of my body through cultivation, pushing my recovering into the realm of the superhuman, and how much was the application of my own stats.

I had so many questions and so few answers; even the origin of the System itself was still mostly unknown to me. The formation that enabled its power clearly suffused most of Bloodstone, and whoever created it had covered this world with their legacy as well, but I had never heard of any record of an Anti-Light sect.

I needed to cultivate faster. To become an inner disciple of the Grim Tempest. To gain access to their resources, control of the Feng Empire, and the power to defend myself. Especially from people like Dale.

The storm above had faded to a light trickle, the rain tickling my face as I chewed over how to invest my attributes. In the end, there was only one real option.

[Time until dimensional rebound: 66 hours]

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The power fighting inside me redoubled. I bit my lip and bent forward.

I could barely cut through the chitin shell of the Sandshears. I need Strength. I could barely survive the attacks of my enemies — I needed Constitution. But defeating those enemies was just a means to an end, and that end was to protect my own people — my own slice of the Feng dynasty. Above all else, I needed to cultivate. I dumped all 10 points into Willpower.

I knew it was a mistake the moment I confirmed it. The latent power from leveling rushed through my entire body with the feeling of pins and needles.

Absorbing qi from the air around me was so second nature to me that I did it the same as breathing. Now, it poured into me. The qi inside me slammed, compressing until it was almost solid and needle thin. It raced through my body, slamming into my meridians as it moved too fast to control. I could assert control over it — moving it away, in controlled patterns, but it obeyed so quickly that I couldn’t process the movement.

My Willpower far outstripped my Intelligence.

I stood and stepped forward. Even my body responded jerkily, like a puppet on strings too powerful for it.

The System gave me no more warnings and no explanation. With focus, I was able to wield my Willpower to force myself into a straight line. It left my qi rattling around inside of me.

It was time to leave the dungeon.

Each chamber pulled me through different environments, encapsulation of moments in the Gale Titan’s life. It had pulled me through the plateau cliff and the desert. But now I was somewhere entirely different; a rain slicked mountain, surrounded by corpses. My own path through the dungeon felt abnormal compared to this.

As I approached the shimmering exit to the chamber, Littlebird stepped in front of me, circling the side a few times, pecking and pulling at the hole in the world. The warping lights within it bent and twisted.

Then Littlebird shot through. I followed a step behind.

On the other side of the door, the dungeon was still piecing itself together, ground expanding outward around me to fill in the void. I stood on a stretch of dirt a few dozen feet wide, where it simply ended, falling into the sky.

Below me.

Clouds blanketed the empty void below me. My stomach half lurched before I realized I wasn’t falling. I was standing on an island floating in the sky. A conglomeration of dozens of islands, connected together by massive arcs of wood, like the roots of a monstrous tree.

Far larger than any previous chamber, a chain of islands stretched out as far as I could see. Huge, abnormal trees with sky-blue bark grew upward before curving back down, digging into and connecting the floating islands in a chain of archways. They formed gigantic bridges, walkways between the islands. Their branches hung beneath, swaying in the wind, falling down farther than the trees were tall.

[Warning: You have reached the Core Chamber.]

I nearly jumped when Littlebird landed on my shoulder, talons sinking into my skin. It flicked its head back and forth as it took the world in, suddenly vigilant.

Other doorways into this chamber flickered on distant floating islands. Not all of them were level, forming downward or upward archipelagos that spread out from a massive central island featuring a mountain.

Nettled plants clung to the edges of the island, stiff against the wind. Thick grasses laid almost flat across the island in rich greens, making my footing soft as I walked forward. Everything pointed toward that distant central mountain. Vast, distant shapes hovered below many of the bridges formed by the archway like trees. I started spamming [Identify] as I moved toward the nearest tree, a feeling of awe growing inside me.

[Azure Thief, Level 39]

It was an odd name for a tree. The bark was rough and creased, red sap oozing from the cracks. Even the trees here outleveled me. Where the trees didn’t curve around to islands, they stretched out like great hooks reaching into the sky. I dug my fingers into the cracks of its bark, leaning forward to stare over the edge only once I was sure of my foothold.

Far, far below, a forest sprawled out. Chunks of the earth were missing, ripped away, as if the island chain descended and stole them. Tiny Azure Thieves grew down there too.

The dungeon chamber seemed to be pointing me to the center of the island.

I dug my fingers into the side of the bark and began to climb. The tree stretched nearly fifty feet long and five feet wide, providing plenty of footing, if the incline wasn’t too steep to walk across. I scrambled up and onto the tree instead. Littlebird jumped up and down ahead of me, chirping irregularly as its eyes scanned the sky.

Every movement sent the qi inside of me condensing and springing, trying to aid my movements as it raced through the meridians in my limbs. Instead of digging into the bark with the tips of my fingers, I ripped chunks out of the wood, slamming my hand into crawl across the side.

Half away across, a monster floated over the edge of the tree.

[Cloudeater Dragon, Level 72]

I stared at the monster. It stared back, eyes blinking the wrong direction, closing from either side over gorgeous blue gemstone eyes the size of my fist. But it wasn’t a dragon at all. It was a turtle, a dozen feet across, its lower body covered in billowing clouds that rolled off of it. Its scales were a shiny, metallic white, and it’s shell was the same. It bobbed up and down in the wind.

I watched in horror as its head stretched forward on a massive neck. My hand gripped my sword. The monster’s eyes didn’t leave me as its mouth gaped open, revealing a toothless beak sharpened to a deadly edge.

Then it bobbed down and stripped the leaves from the Azure Thief tree, chewing on them placidly, mouth open and making mushing noises. It continued to stare at me.

After a pause, I continued scrambling forward, nearly upside down as I reached the other side and flopped into the grass. The giant turtle spun to face me, but otherwise continued eating.

Dragons were among the most dangerous creatures in the world; apex predators that absorbed the qi of lesser beings and channeled it into themselves. How one ended up here was a mystery to me.

And, if the monster was just an herbivore, how had it reached level 72? Did it level from killing the [Azure Thieves?]

I admired it. The beauty of its scales was remarkable; as was the placidity of such a creature living in a hostile world. It still carved out a niche for itself all the same.

When it died, I barely even processed what had happened until it was already over. One moment, it was staring at me, sunlight glittering off its eyes. The next, a streak of black separated its neck from its head, sending it tumbling down into the world below. Its body wobbled unstably in the air, continuing to float away despite the head now missing.

The memory of the Gale Titan circled up and around the other side of the island, floating in midair as it stared at the monster corpse floating away.

I put a hand to the handle of my sword. The Gale Titan’s memory hadn’t attacked me in any of the previous chambers. But something about this one felt off. It reminded me of the roc I had seen outside the dungeon hunting for levels.

[Memory of a corrupted Roc, Gale Titan, Level 79]

The broken wing of the Gale Titan hadn’t been healed. Instead, a boiling storm cloud roiled off its left side in the shape of a wing. Lightning crackled in its shadows. Its feathers were deep black.

The bird’s eyes narrowed. I didn’t speak bird. But I recognized that look just fine. It was the look of someone savoring a kill.

Littlebird began to call out. This time, I listened, and started to run.