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On the way down, I had considered ways for how I could break my fall. The first I tried right then, utilizing momentum to throw my entire body not upwards – I didn’t have enough thrust with the skill to do that – but sideways. I arced through the air, falling with each moment till I slammed into the side of the hoodoo.

Now, the follow-up plan had been to utilize my gauntlet and the spikes to dig into the stone, sort of like Errol Flynn with his dagger in canvas sails. This slowed my descent by pushing into the wall and carving furrows into the rock while triggering the Wall Clinging skill from the party’s spider orb.

Problem was, I had no functioning right arm, not at the moment. As such, I had to utilize my other hand and the shield, which was not at all as useful. Even with the wall grip of the party orb helping to slow me down a little, the built-up momentum of my freefall was sufficient to keep ripping my fingers and hands clear – when I managed to get my fingers near the wall at all.

Rather than waste the fall, I started sucking it up, pulling stores of energy from my fall into me. It slowed my acceleration a little, but not enough that I was not still falling fast to the ground, bouncing off the angled column of stone that was the hoodoo, arm with the shield gripping, bouncing and being torn up with each movement.

If I had been the lucky type, I might have gotten caught on something, had the big shield jam in an outcrop of rock. Hang from it till I could heal and then haul myself away. Unfortunately, this was not my lucky day and I kept falling, all the way till we hit the ground.

Which, by the way, was the next floor.

***

The tenth floor. I had always planned on getting down that far, but the way I had intended to show up was certainly not anywhere similar to the reality. The tenth floor was a strange place, built out of the bottom floor of the soaring bridges and the hoodoos and spirals of the ninth. Where the ninth might be considered a transition, the tenth had its own biome, its own monsters that took full control of the floor itself.

There were a few things that made this floor difficult. For one, it was another dark floor – not entirely midnight black, but twilight. Dark enough at least that one had to choose between moving through the floor utilizing a dark sight enchantment, or making oneself a target via lanterns and lights.

While I had some skill in fighting in the dark or without my vision – you would be surprised how much you learnt playing with your eyes closed or blindfolded – there were practical limits to that. I certainly had no desire to wrestle oozes or slimes, for example, and when creatures had multiple limbs, quills and thorns and acidic skin, the less contact, the better.

All of which meant that I had plans for the tenth floor, most of it involving utilizing my team to help safeguard me on the way through. None of which mattered right about now.

I lay on the ground beside the broken and shattered body of the ninth-floor guardian, half of my own bones broken, my body ablaze with pain and only the sound of stones slowly rolling back together to accompany me.

Stones, rolling back together, because the damn floor boss’s orb had not broken, and was slowly regenerating.

As they say on this planet, Abasi’s whips and Mahdi’s promises; I was in trouble.

Once I had established that in my mind, I started trying to focus. When you reach a certain point with injuries and pain, when it became overwhelming, your existence stopped being contained. You’re unable to focus on any single thought; it’s just the pain itself.

The advantage of my own skill, especially with my vaults, was that once opened, my healing vault would continue to dump into my body. Eventually, it would either run out or I would be healed and be able to contain it.

However, that was not what I was trying to focus upon. Pushing aside the moments of white blindness, when consciousness threatened to fade away into the edges of agony, I reached inside. Touched the controls to my other vault and flipped the switch.

Pushed momentum out, across the entirety of my body.

All-encompassing misery wrapped me up as I started to move again. Not by my own force, not with muscles and tendons and will but through the skill. It pushed me onwards, scraping my skin across rough dirt, the smell of slightly muddy soil and guano filling my nostrils as I was pushed towards the stone imp’s body.

On and on, slowly picking up speed. At first a tiny crawl, until I was moving at a decent clip. I cut off the pouring of energy once I thought I was moving fast enough, head raised a little to peer through space to see the upcoming pile of rock.

Only to misjudge movement and direction and smash my face – thus far, mostly untouched – into the rock. Momentum was killed and a lightning bolt of suffering ran through my body, along my bones.

I lost consciousness for a time, so great was the influx of signals. Not long – you never blanked out that long – and so I came back to a plethora of signals, all of them from a symphony of aches that leaned more towards Iron Maiden and KISS than gentle crooners like Nat King Cole.

When I managed to wrestle control from the pain, putting it back in its corner where it wailed in constant interruption of focus, I began to crawl upwards. Utilizing bursts of momentum at an angle to help shift me over the rock, across and up it as I hunted for the core.

Usefully, the clatter of rock – small at first, because it was still reforming, still healing like me – led me to where it was. There was no hiding for it, no way for it to secrete itself from me. I managed to worm my way over, to stare down at the glowing brown-green crystal that was the creature’s heart.

By this point, nearly all the energy that I had, all the will and focus that had dragged me here, from decades of building up the mental fortitude to keep pushing, was exhausted. At this point, I could barely think straight, since I had reinjured myself numerous times by forcing movement.

Rather than anything elegant like reaching out and grabbing it, I just sent one last pulse of momentum through me, and then fell on the orb. Face first, tucking it right next to my throat and chest with my head, so that I broke the orb’s enchantment and sentience and killed it.

Victorious, I finally let myself succumb into unconsciousness.