Chương 14: The Floating Island

The floating island was small. Zero noted this first, because small meant limited cover, resources, and options if the team that had left obvious traces behind turned out to be a threat. He landed and assessed the perimeter in the first thirty seconds: roughly two hundred meters across, grey stone, sparse silver grass, one cluster of low rocks at the eastern edge, and one tree that grew stubbornly at the center. The qi density also had dropped sharply at the island's boundary.

His spiritual body registered the reduction and reduced its own workload accordingly, the process now smooth enough that he only noticed it by the absence of continuous effort. Miho landed beside him. She checked her sword hand and looked at the four figures who emerged from the large tree at the island's center.

"Competitors," Zero whispered to Miho. She nodded. He ran Identify across them in sequence. Four results, all similar in structure. Unknown Contestant Level: 11 Species: Human Class: None Threat: Low Unknown Contestant Level: 10 Species: Golem Class: None Threat: Low-Moderate Unknown Contestant Level: 10 Species: Dark Elf Class: None Threat: Low Unknown Contestant Level: 9 Species: Halfling Class: None Threat: Low He filed the threat levels.

Low across the group, with one moderate, and none of them moving toward weapons. Their postures were observational rather than prepared. He noted the distinction. The one at level 11 stood. He was perhaps twenty, with an open, organized face and the particular posture of someone who had been practicing looking unthreatening for long enough that it had become genuine. He kept his hands visible as he walked toward them, which Zero recognized as the cultivator-world's non-aggression signal.

"Competitors?" he asked. Miho nodded.

"Team Solace, unofficially." He inclined his head.

"I'm Ren." He indicated the others in turn without breaking eye contact.

"Tova, Sable, and Finn. We're not here for conflict."

"I know," Miho said. Ren looked at them over.

"Did the labyrinth give you trouble too? How did you get past Team Carrion?" A pause.

"There's… a labyrinth?" Zero asked. Ren's expression changed in a way that Zero had never seen before.

"Everyone who has entered the Cloud Sea falls to the lower labyrinth at some point," Ren said.

"It is the penalty route for failing the crossing. The labyrinth is lightly saturated with qi, weak enough for people to cultivate enough to survive by the time they exit on the far side of the Cloud Sea." He paused.

"Team Carrion has been ambushing teams at the exits. They position themselves at the chokepoints and steal from whoever comes through while they're still recovering from the labyrinth's qi pressure."

"We did not enter any labyrinth," Miho said. Ren looked from Zero's half-shifted form, to Miho's feet, still wrapped in qi.

"You flew," he said to Zero.

"And you… cloud-stepped?" Miho nodded"The whole way?"

"Yes." Ren was quiet again. A shorter pause this time, the recalculation faster now that the initial variable had been processed.

"The labyrinth entry is triggered by an uncontrolled descent through the Cloud Sea's qi layer," he said, mostly to himself.

"If you entered with controlled flight, then you would bypass the trigger entirely." He looked at them with an expression of awe.

"You skipped the penalty route."

"We simply had the means to cross directly," Miho said bluntly.

"I understand that now." Ren glanced back at his team, a brief check, then back.

"About Team Carrion, they have taken a significant amount of resources from teams coming through the labyrinth exit. They have been operating there since the third day. Every team we are aware of has passed through the labyrinth, including us." He paused.

"You are the first team we have encountered who came out of the Cloud Sea from above." Zero processed the implication.

"You want to be on our good side." Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Yes," Ren said.

"And I am not going to pretend otherwise, because I suspect you would figure that out regardless." Zero looked at him.

"You are honest because deception would be detected?"

"I am honest because deception makes for worse alliances than transparency, and you detecting it later would cost more than the advantage it might briefly provide, so yes." Zero noted this. Ren was the second person, after Miho, who had given him an answer that contained a correction to his own framing.

"What would you like to exchange?" Zero asked.

They sat on the grey stone, with Team Solace arranged in the loose formation of people who had been traveling together long enough to settle into each other's positions without discussion. Ren spoke for his team, which the others seemed to accept without resentment, which told Zero something about how their arrangement had formed.

Their deal was to exchange information: Zero and Miho would tell them about what they had done in the sect, and in exchange, Team Solace would tell them about the three teams to take careful note of: Team Axiom, Team Throne, and—-"Team Carrion," Ren said.

"The leader is called Ross. Blood attribute, moderately powerful at close range, and strategic enough to avoid overextension. He has been careful to take only what he can carry and leave before retaliation is organized. He does not fight battles he cannot win quickly."

"His team?"

"Thresh: insectoid, physical combatant, very fast at close range. Lyra: Tiefling, curse user, primarily supports the others by disabling exits and retreat options. Ghent: half-giant, gravity manipulation, crowd control." He paused.

"They function as a unit. Separating them reduces each member's effectiveness significantly. They know this, and avoid situations where separation is likely." Zero filed the structure: a team built around forcing unfavorable engagements, with one member who controlled the environment, one who controlled movement, one who controlled the close-range kill, and the leader who directed the whole.

"Team Axiom," Ren continued.

"Is a high-combat team, with consistent performance, and no obvious weaknesses that we have identified." He paused.

"We do not have full information on Axiom's capabilities, as they do not exchange information."

"And Team Throne?" Miho asked. Ren's expression moved into something adjacent to reluctant.

"…Loud," he said.

"They all have high-individual-power, but no apparent coordination or strategy. They make a lot of noise with whatever they do."

"They are playing for the gods," Miho said.

"I think so too." Ren looked at Zero, "Your turn. What has your team been up to in these twelve days?"

"We were dropped inside the Heavenly Cloud Sect," Zero said.

"And spent twelve days in the outer grounds, restricted with no formal instruction. We left this morning as 'Respected Outsiders', and given permission to cross the Cloud Sea from their viewing platform." Ren absorbed this.

"The sect treated you well?" Miho snorted.

"The sect merely tolerated us until they had acknowledge our effort. They will not assist us going forward, but they will not obstruct us. And, the record of our standing there will persist." Ren looked at Miho with the expression he had been using throughout the conversation, which was one of sustained and genuine recalibration.

"You built reputation in a sect in twelve days, as outsiders, with no formal access to instruction."

"Miho taught us," Zero said. Ren looked at Miho, who did not respond.

"Your team is," he said, and then stopped, and chose a different word than whatever he had started with.

"Unusual."

"Yes," Zero said.

"Is that a characteristic you are willing to maintain in future interactions?" Zero understood the question underneath that question: was his team was the kind that could be reliably predicted to behave as they had behaved in the sect? Or was the sect behavior an anomaly? He considered how to answer it accurately.

"We do not take unnecessary risks," he said.

"We do not abandon objectives we have committed to. We give accurate information to people who give accurate information to us." He paused.

"Whether that makes us predictable depends on what you are predicting." Ren looked at him for a moment before speaking, "That is… the best description of a team's character I have received so far." Zero did not know what to do with those words, so he moved on instead.

"What is the next objective?"

"The Jade Obelisk. We arrived in Shenhua as our entry point and have been working outward from there." He glanced at Sable.

"Sable heard about the Obelisk during our time in the city." Sable had not spoken yet. She was slight, with the particular stillness of someone who processed more than they produced, and when she spoke her voice was precise.

"It is a structure from some local legends. The walls supposedly carry old imprints from practitioners across the region's history." She paused.

"I don't know where it is, though."

"Imprinted walls," Miho answered to Zero's confuse face, "are techniques embedded in stone through cultivation. Like sword marks, palm prints, and movement traces. The task likely requires comprehending at least one." Sable looked at her.

"You know this type of structure?"

"My world has similar ones." There was a moment where all four members of Team Solace recalibrated again, which Zero was beginning to recognize as their collective response to new data. They did it without speaking, in the faint adjustment of postures and expressions that indicated information being redistributed through a group.

"Our objectives align," Ren said.

"Not entirely," Zero said.

"We will both be attempting the same task at the Jade Obelisk. That is competition."

"Yes," Ren said.

"I meant that our immediate objectives align. Exchanging more information is useful to both teams. What happens at the Obelisk is a separate matter entirely." Zero considered the new context, "Agreed."

The exchange continued for another twenty minutes. Zero gave Ren the crossing method in enough detail to be genuinely useful: the viewing platform location, the cloud-step and flight approach, the qi saturation levels and how his spiritual body had processed them. He described the serpent encounter without embellishment. Ren gave him the labyrinth layout: major junctions, the Carrion ambush positions, the exit timing, the qi-recovery period that made teams vulnerable after emergence.

Zero filed the labyrinth information not because he intended to use it now, but because it described a system he had not known about and systems were worth understanding even when they were not immediately relevant. At one point Ren said, "The system window for your team. What is your final objective?"

"Reach the Gate of Ascension," Zero said.

"Same." Ren paused.

"Do you know the route?"

"No. We know the objective and the immediate task."

"Nor do we. The world is larger than the system has described." He looked at the Cloud Sea.

"That is a consistent pattern, I have noticed. The system describes destinations, but not the distance between them." Zero thought about this.

"Enigma's system withholds information in proportion to its value," he said.

"What is expensive to discover is not given freely." Ren looked at him with the expression again.

"You have a good read on the system." Zero nodded, deciding to keep quiet about the title he had earned during the tutorial. After all, it was already a genuinely useful exchange. Ren had given him real information. Zero had given Ren real information. Neither had given anything that would constitute a tactical vulnerability. Both teams left better-informed than they had been at the beginning. This was what Miho had meant about exchange having to be real to hold.

Miho had been quiet through most of it. Zero had registered her silence not as disengagement, but the particular watchfulness she used when she was observing something she did not yet have enough data to assess, which Zero remembered her doing the same during the orientation phase. She looked at each member of Team Solace at intervals, which meant either she had not found whatever she was looking for, or had found it and was still deciding what it meant.

When the information exchange reached a natural pause, she stood without announcement and moved to the island's eastern edge, where the cluster of low rocks provided the partial concealment Zero had noted on arrival. Ren watched her go.

"She is not leaving," Zero said.

"I know," Ren said. A moment later, the soft sound of paper tearing was heard. A small pulse of purple light appeared briefly over the eastern rocks, too faint to register to anyone who was not already looking for it, and then faded. Ren noticed something. His gaze went to the rocks, then to Zero. Seeing Zero's indifferent expression, he decided not to comment. Finn, the halfling who had not spoken until now, leaned forward slightly.

"How many of you are left?"

"Four," Zero said.

"Same as every other team." Finn Frowned, "What happened to the other two? Where are they?"

"Right here." All four of them turned towards the sound of Viria's voice. She had her sword at her hip, and the look of someone who had been waiting with forced patience for longer than she preferred. She took in Miho at the rocks, then Zero, and finally Team Solace.

"Right," she said.

"And you are?"

"Team Solace," Tova, the golem, said quietly.

"Team Zero," Viria said.

"But you probably already heard that." Ren looked at her and nodded, a look of exhaustion crossing his face. He clearly didn't want to explain everything again. The elf smiled.

"You don't need to tell us everything you guys discussed. Zero can summarize, since I missed it." Ren let out a quiet sigh of relief. Yukito, quietly, sat down beside Viria. Zero filled them in.