The staircase to Floor 7 felt colder than it should have.
Gun stepped through first, then Luna, then Jack, with Waver following as he had simply decided the tower now belonged to him, too.
The light faded.
The world changed.
And Gun immediately frowned.
"...You have got to be kidding me."
A sea of sand stretched out in every direction.
Not a small wasteland.
Not a few dunes.
An endless desert under a blinding sun, with heat rippling off the ground and dry wind dragging dust across their boots. The horizon looked empty no matter where he turned, and the sky burned a pale white-yellow above them.
Gun stared at it for a long second, then clicked his tongue.
"So after a normal city floor," he said, "they give us this crap?"
Luna shielded her eyes and looked around. "It is huge."
Jack had already squinted toward the distance. "Much bigger than the last floors."
Gun threw up one hand in disgust.
"I already miss the city."
Waver, as usual, said nothing.
They started walking.
And walking.
And walking.
The desert went on forever.
The heat started to become annoying after only a short while, and the silence was worse than the weather. Every few minutes Gun would glance at the sky, then back at the sand, then forward again, waiting for something to attack.
Eventually, something did.
A wind rolled in from the side.
Then harder.
Then harder still.
Gun stopped and narrowed his eyes.
"Oh, great."
The wind became a full sandstorm in seconds.
The entire desert vanished into brown-gray chaos.
Visibility dropped so fast that even Luna's silhouette became hard to see. Sand lashed at their faces, and the world itself seemed to turn into a roaring wall of grit.
Gun raised an arm to shield his eyes.
"Move close!" he shouted.
But the storm swallowed his voice.
And then the enemies arrived.
At first it sounded like skittering.
Then the shapes came through the sand.
Spiders.
Hundreds of them.
The size of cars.
They burst out of the storm in waves, their legs scraping across the dunes like knives on stone. Their bodies were black and dust-colored, and their eyes glared through the storm like points of red glass.
Jack swore. "That is too many."
One spider lunged at Luna.
Gun cut it down with a single slash.
Another came from the side.
He parried it.
A third burst out of the sand directly behind him.
He barely dodged.
More kept coming.
Too many.
And because they were spread out by the storm, they started getting separated from each other. Gun could hear Luna fighting somewhere to his left, Jack to his right, and Waver somewhere farther ahead, but the storm kept swallowing their positions and breaking their formation apart.
Gun's jaw tightened.
"Waver!"
No answer.
The sandstorm roared too loud.
Another spider slammed into him from the front.
Gun sliced it apart, then hissed through his teeth as two more took its place.
That was when Waver's voice suddenly came through all of their heads at once.
Telepathic Waves.
"Can everyone hear me?"
Gun blinked.
Luna's voice came next, but not through the air.
Through the link.
"Yes."
Jack sounded surprised even inside the shared channel. "That's useful."
Gun let out a breath.
"Finally."
Waver's voice stayed calm.
"Move toward my position. Do not spread out any further."
The team started working back toward each other while the spiders kept attacking. With the telepathic link active, coordination became far easier. Gun could hear Jack warning about incoming threats before they hit. Luna could call out openings. Waver could direct movement through the sandstorm like he was running a battle map in his head.
That made all the difference.
Gun cut down two spiders with a single clean sequence.
Jack flashed through another cluster with lightning-fast precision.
Luna's Graceful Flame orb hovered near Gun and helped stabilize him while he kept striking.
The spiders kept falling.
Then the sandstorm got worse.
A new sound rose through the wind.
Deep.
Heavy.
Predatory.
Gun felt it before he saw it.
A lion burst through the storm.
Then another.
Then another.
They were huge.
Much stronger than the spiders.
Each one looked like it could tear through several of the car-sized monsters without slowing down, and their movement was more coordinated too. Harder. Smarter. Their bodies moved through the sand with terrifying force.
Gun gritted his teeth.
"Seriously?"
One lion leaped toward Jack.
Jack barely dodged.
Another hit the ground near Luna and sent sand flying everywhere.
Gun blocked a claw strike from a third and realized instantly that this wave was much worse than the first.
He looked around, then snapped, "Waver!"
"I know."
"Use the ice prison."
A beat of silence.
Then Waver answered, "Agreed."
A moment later, thick walls of ice erupted around them, forming a sealed defensive box in the middle of the sandstorm. The lions slammed into the outside of it, but the barrier held.
The team took a breath.
For the first time since the storm started, they had room to think.
Gun reached into his coat and pulled out the two rare scrolls he had been saving since the lizard boss fight.
He looked at them for a second, then at the others.
"We use these now."
Jack nodded immediately. "What do they do?"
Gun opened the first one.
Light surged into his mind.
Mirror Slashes
Creates a five-meter field around the user.Every attack used inside the field is mirrored behind the user for a second hit.The field remains active until the user receives a clean hit from an enemy.Mirrored attacks cannot pass the five-meter barrier range if the attack is longer.
Gun's eyes widened slightly.
Then he grinned.
"That's good."
He opened the second scroll and handed it to Waver.
Waver read it once.
Then his brow lifted.
Ice Daggers
Throws five daggers made of ice that track the enemy.If a dagger hits, it freezes the target for one second and chains to the next enemy.Each dagger can chain up to three times.
Waver stared at the scroll for a moment.
Then he looked at Gun.
"That is also useful."
Gun nodded. "I thought so."
They started building the next strategy immediately.
Waver would use his ice walls to box the enemies in.
Jack would blind them with Flash.
Once they were blind, Waver would throw the Ice Daggers and stun the lions.
Then Gun would flash-step in, activate Mirror Slashes, and tear through them with repeated mirrored hits.
Luna would keep Graceful Flame on Gun the entire time so he could keep fighting longer.
Simple.
Deadly.
Exactly what they needed.
Waver waited until the storm thinned just enough for his timing.
Then the ice walls shifted.
The lion pack lunged.
Jack moved first.
Flash.
A burst of light and lightning blinded the nearest lions just long enough to throw them off.
Waver followed instantly.
Ice Daggers.
Five frozen blades shot outward and struck true, chaining through the pack and freezing multiple lions in sequence.
Gun vanished.
Flash Step.
He appeared in the middle of the stunned pack and activated his new ability.
Mirror Slashes.
The air around him sharpened.
Every sword strike he made now duplicated itself in mirrored afterimages from behind him, turning each attack into two.
The lions barely had time to move.
Gun cut through them with brutal speed.
Slash.
Mirror slash.
Slash.
Mirror slash.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Luna's Graceful Flame orb hovered near him and kept his body steady while he fought through the pack. With the support buff, he could keep going without losing rhythm.
The lions that recovered from the stun found themselves already wounded.
Badly wounded.
And once they tried to fight back, Gun's parries became effortless.
Too late for them.
The storm floor filled with dust, blood, ice shards, lightning flashes, and the sound of monsters dying.
When the last lion finally dropped, the desert went quiet again.
Gun exhaled and rolled his shoulder.
"That was ugly."
Jack let out a slow breath. "Effective, though."
Luna nodded, eyes still on the battlefield.
Then the ground shook.
A deep tremor rolled through the sand.
Gun turned.
Something huge was moving beneath the desert.
The dune near them split open.
A massive serpent erupted from the sand in a violent surge of dust and broken rock.
It was enormous.
Long enough to coil around a building.
Thick enough to swallow a carriage.
Its scales shimmered with a dark, toxic sheen, and its eyes burned cold and hateful as it rose into the air.
A system prompt flashed above it.
WASTELAND'S SERPENT
The boss came straight for Gun.
Gun stepped forward and met the strike head-on.
He parried the first hit.
Then countered.
The serpent's body slammed forward again, but this time Gun's Mirror Slashes kicked in.
One attack became two.
Two became more.
The boss's huge body made the skill absurdly efficient. Every single slash Gun landed got mirrored behind him, which meant the serpent was eating damage almost twice as fast as normal.
It recoiled.
Then tried to reposition.
Waver raised one hand and trapped part of its body in a frozen prison, stopping the movement long enough for Jack to act.
Jack stepped in and unleashed Thunder Bolt.
Lightning screamed across the serpent's body.
The monster convulsed.
Then collapsed.
Just like that.
Dead.
Gun stared at the corpse for a second.
"…That was easy."
Luna blinked. "It should not have been."
Jack looked at the body, then at Gun. "It probably was because of the earlier waves."
Waver nodded once. "The floor's difficulty was distributed."
Gun folded his arms.
"Yeah. We almost got buried by the monsters before the boss even showed up."
That explanation made sense.
Without the new scrolls, the storm floor would have been a disaster.
Without Waver's crowd control, they would have been overwhelmed.
Without Jack's blinding and Luna's support, Gun would not have had the space to do what he did.
They all understood that too.
The serpent's body broke apart and dropped its loot.
A common scroll.
A rare scroll.
And a staff wrapped in strange dark material.
Gun picked it up and read the item name.
Fang Staff
An item infused with the serpent's poisonous power.Poison, in perfect dose, can become cure.Grants the user a 50% boost to all healing abilities.
Luna's eyes widened.
Then she looked at Gun.
He turned the staff in his hands once and glanced at her expression.
"…You want it."
She hesitated only a second.
Then nodded.
Gun handed it over.
Luna accepted it carefully, almost in disbelief.
"Really?"
Gun shrugged.
"You were the one keeping me alive this whole time."
She looked down at the staff again, clearly appreciating it more than she expected.
Gun glanced at the battlefield one last time.
He had not even realized the serpent was poisonous.
He had never taken a hit from it.
Which meant he had won the floor without ever learning that detail firsthand.
He smirked faintly.
"Guess I didn't get tagged enough to care."
Jack looked at him. "That sounds like you."
Luna laughed softly.
And the three of them, with Waver beside them, stood in the middle of the desert while the storm finally began to fade.
The tower had thrown spiders, lions, and a serpent at them.
They had answered with teamwork.
And for the first time in a while, Gun felt like the floor had not beaten them.
They had beaten it.