<~> CHAPTER 54

The rest of the floor went without incident. We ended up staying on this floor for a total of two nights but the first night was after our grueling trek through the hot floor, so that only kind of counts. We still had to deal with occasional attacks from the bloody rabbits and those annoying hawks but for the most part, the trip to the stairs was quiet and without incident. I took one last look at the artificial sunset over the beautiful lakes of the tenth floor and followed the group up the stairs.

Eventually all of us reached the top of the stairs and the scents that met me were ones of oil, brass, and grease. The sounds of clicking, ticking, and tocking filled this place and it took me a minute to adjust to all of the sounds coming from all different directions. This floor seems to be a maze-like floor similar to the bloody halls but with dark oiled brass and steel for walls instead of rusted metal. In a way, the two floors seem like they may be connected. The walls here are made of interconnected gears and springs all moving in a rhythmic clicking that could look similar to the bloody halls if the parts had been left to rust away.

I shook my head in irritation. "I will not be able to hear the monsters on this floor. Too noisy."

My friends looked at each other in confusion. "What do you mean?" Maxwell asked.

I twisted my ears back to dampen the sound and rubbed my eyes. "There is lots of noise all around us. No one sound is loud but there are a lot."

Maxwell, Piper, and Aria started having a conversation but I was honestly too distracted to listen in.

("Are you okay, Helena?") Luna asked.

("It's not too bad, I'll probably get used to it but the noise is a little irritating. It's not giving me a headache the same way it did when I first got my improved hearing but it is very annoying.")

("Would being in your human form help?")

I sighed. ("Unfortunately, I don't think so. My hearing isn't as good in my human form but it's good enough that there wouldn't be much difference. I'll be fine, I just need to power through it.")

I cleared my throat and got everyone's attention. "I will be okay but I will not be able to hear the monsters coming."

Everyone nodded and Maxwell pointed Aria out. "You will be our scout on this floor then. The .... on this floor aren't that dangerous."

I turned to Luna. ("What kind of monsters are on this floor? What did he say?")

("Clockwork monsters. They're moving pieces of metal made to look like humans and a few other creatures. They can be dangerous if you aren't careful but they're fairly fragile. The biggest issue with them is that they move in unpredictable ways sometimes. Unfortunately, there are no living monsters for you to eat on this floor.")

I caught something Aria was saying that interested me and listened in, "The monsters on this floor sometimes carry daggers. If we find some, I want to use them instead of this sword."

Maxwell nodded. "That's fine. At this .... it would be better if you were using weapons you are better with."

I didn't get the sense that Aria thought he would deny her, but she's still paying lip service to the idea that we're escorting her up. Her current gear was a mishmash of stuff she'd collected, mostly from the bloody halls, but she never did find weapons that were more appropriate for her. Daggers and a short bow were her weapons of choice from what I was told. She can use a sword, and some matchups are better for it, but daggers seem to be her primary weapons if she can get away with them.

Maxwell once again led us through the hallways of this familiar looking floor. The more time we spent here the more it felt reminiscent of the bloody halls but without the impending sense of dread that I felt there. I also didn't keep hearing clicking that sounded out of place, no, just the normal repetitive ticking and tocking on this floor that was making me mildly irritated.

Aria reconnected with our group and gave Maxwell some of those hand signals, indicating which way the monsters were and how many of them there are. Just like the bloody halls, you apparently only had to mostly go in the right direction, and assuming something doesn't make you get turned around, this floor is pretty easy to navigate. Since that was the case we decided to confront some of these mechanical monsters.

When we turned the corner and started to fight with the clockwork monsters, we completely smashed them to pieces in minutes. While they were agile, they usually moved in predictable ways so they were easy to deal with. Occasionally they did something odd but it wasn't hard to dodge them regardless most of the time. This room had three of them before we destroyed them all. A human ballerina clockwork that had a thin dagger most of the length of Aria's forearm, a clockwork rabbit that I assume was a replica of a bloody rabbit and a... frog. I don't know what else to say about the frog, it had a spring that catapulted a metal tongue out, but the thing died so quickly I didn't get much of a look at it. Aria of course took the dagger which luckily came with a sheathe that I had to pry off the collapsed pile of brass that used to be the ballerina before I nearly cut it in half. The axe was only getting more lethal as we headed up and its only weakness is that sometimes it's hard to swing fast enough for some of the smaller agile monsters.

Aria was delighted by her new dagger which she was able to attach to the belt she was using to keep her ill-fitting armor on. She had gotten a lot more comfortable around me, even in my wolfy form so I didn't need to walk on eggshells around her to avoid her freaking out. It was pretty refreshing that she had come to accept me as I am, even if she still does think my eyes are creepy. I can't really blame her though, I still think they're kinda creepy. I've just gotten used to them.

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Eventually we came up to something that could only be described as a 'puzzle' room. There was a large chasm in the ground that looked about four stories deep. It was pretty far down but you could still see the bottom and falling might not kill you at this distance. There were rotating handles that you used to align moving walkways to build a meandering bridge across the gap. I was quite hesitant to start playing with the handles since I wasn't the best with puzzles but it seemed that the group had elected Luna to be the one to solve this for us. She took one look around before seemingly putting it all together in her head and it was only a matter of waiting for her to turn the cranks.

The next step was much scarier. Maxwell pulled out a long length of rope that we began to tie around our waists. Naturally, I had to change to my human form for this. Both because I needed something to attach the rope to and also because if I was the one who fell, the chances of the four of them stopping my heavier wolf form would be a lot worse.

The five of us slowly walked across the makeshift bridge. None of us spoke, it was nerve-wracking enough to cross the gap without any handholds but we made our way along the bridges in a sort of crouch walk in case we had to grab the edge of the bridge to stop someone from falling. After a tense thirty minutes of slow walking, we finally made it to the other side where we took a much needed break to calm down after that. I'm not exactly afraid of heights, but damn does it feel like it when you're crossing such a scary looking pit without even handrails. Though, thinking about it, I'd probably be the most likely to survive a fall like that. Not that I'd want to test it out.

"This is the halfway point," Maxwell said. "There is always something like this in the middle of the floor but this one was one of the worst." He shook his head with a grimace on his face. "I would rather just fight another monster or something." Maxwell's speech was becoming more understandable to me over time. I still had trouble with a few things Aria said, since she tended to speak faster than the others, but I was quickly approaching fluency. It was still easier to understand them than to form my own sentences though.

"Good thing we have Luna here to take care of that shit," Piper said with a laugh.

Luna smiled and her tail swayed behind her. She clearly liked the praise. I think she often worried about holding the group back, so things like this helped buoy her self-esteem. It actually had been pretty impressive the way she worked out the puzzle so quickly. It seemed like another thing that reminded me of video games from my previous world. I didn't play them much but I had seen stuff like this at friends' houses. It had been fun to watch other people play them sometimes.

We got moving and ran into more of those clockwork enemies. At this point, the fights were kind of only a distraction from trying to find our way through the maze. None of the enemies had been very threatening and the only reason we had sought a few of them out was because Aria was hoping to find a second matching dagger from another of the clockwork ballerinas. Since we were making such fast time through the floor anyway, Maxwell didn't mind the detour. Especially since Aria was doing most of the heavy lifting by scouting out our fights this time. I was able to tune out the ticking eventually but it was still too confusing to use my hearing to narrow any of the monsters down. There was no way I could differentiate the ticking the monsters made from the ticking in the walls.

Aria came back with an interesting look on her face that I couldn't place, and started whispering something to Maxwell. Maxwell looked conflicted before eventually leading us a little bit away from the hallway that Aria had just scouted for us.

"Aria found another floor boss room and it has a chest in it," he told the rest of us.

I glanced at Luna before looking back at Maxwell. "What kind of monster is it?

"A giant .... .... like the ones we've been fighting. It looks like it's made of a .... .... metal," Maxwell replied.

I turned to Luna who repeated what he said nearly verbatim since it was getting harder to pick out the words I was missing. ("A giant humanoid dancer like the ones we have been facing along with smaller dancers nearby. It looks like they are made from a silvery blue metal instead of the regular ones.") My first thought was Maxwell's sword, but that was more like a magical glow than a special kind of metal. I wouldn't know until I saw it.

I shrugged. "A chest would be good. These monsters are not very strong. We could probably fight the floor boss without... a problem," I said, struggling to articulate my words.

Piper nodded. "Even if we can't use what we find, we're getting closer to the surface. If we have to move some of what we find to my bag, I'm sure it won't be a problem with the floors above us."

Maxwell sighed. "I'm worried about the .... ...."

("Lost Halls,") Luna told me before I asked. ("It's the name of the sixth floor. The dungeon actively tries to separate groups there. None of us should have trouble with the enemies but the maze is extra difficult to navigate and it can be a very time-consuming floor to traverse.")

"The monsters near the boss have matching daggers made from the same material. I want to try for them. A chest might give me some equipment to replace this .... too," Aria said gesturing to herself.

"Luna?" Maxwell asked.

Luna frowned. ("Tell him I'm okay with it, Fire isn't the best against these enemies but I should still be able to do damage.")

"Luna says she is okay with fighting it," I told Maxwell, Luna nodded to acknowledge that I was speaking for her.

"Fine. Let's take a break and make a plan on how to .... it then." Maxwell sat down and took a gulp of his canteen.

Looks like we're doing this.