The ascent had not been the smooth, calculated process Aleric had expected.
Behind the closed, heavy slab of the First Gate, Valerius had made a critical mistake in judgment. In a last-ditch effort to open the gate, he had sent out a raw, unstable burst of mana—a flare so uncontrolled that it had acted like a homing signal to every Void-Phage within a kilometer. As the gate closed, Aleric's last sight of the hallway had been of Valerius being enveloped by a shimmering cloud of glass-thin wings, fleeing into the dark side tunnels.
Then, the lift surged.
Driven by the unstable surplus of waste-mana, the gears below shrieked with a high-pitched, metallic pain. The floor beneath Aleric's feet vibrated with such force that the air around him seemed to be ripped apart by static. With a bone-jarring crash that sounded like a thunderclap through the shaft, the platform came to a stop against a docking station far above its intended destination.
Aleric stood stock-still, his knees slightly bent to absorb the shock. Dust and old soot fell from the ceiling like black snowflakes and covered his immaculate shoulders. He didn't move until the last sound of the crash had dissipated. He didn't glance at the three other students who had leapt onto the lift at the last moment; he didn't offer them solace or even acknowledge their ragged breathing. He gazed only at the walls of the landing.
Audit in progress, Aleric thought, his mind moving with the cold, rhythmic speed of a falling guillotine. Temperature: 4 degrees lower than the Phage tunnels. Pressure: 0.1 atmospheres higher. We have overshot the Hall of Echoes by thirty-two meters.
He looked out into the gloom. This wasn't the testing floor he had mapped. This was a place of raw obsidian and rusty iron grates. The walls were lined with heavy cells, their bars etched with suppression runes that had long since faded into a dull, sickly grey. Aleric walked to the edge of the platform, ignoring the groans of the survivors, and touched a finger to a scorch mark on the docking stone.
It was the residue of the surge—a frantic, jagged burn.
The system did not fail, he realized, a cold sense of appreciation for the architects entering his ledger. The professors had anticipated the panic of the students. This floor is a waste-bin. It is a strategic design choice—a gravity-trap for those who would seek to force the Labyrinth with noise instead of precision. We are in the filter for the unrefined.
Ignoring the terrified whispers of the students who were now huddling together, Aleric turned toward the dark corridor. He did not ask them to follow; he did not care if they stayed.
"Summoning."
Tracker and Unit 06 stepped out of his shadow. The two stood like statues, featureless and unblinking, their red-tinted eyes scanning the dark space for physical traps. Aleric followed them, his eyes fixed on the floor. He saw the faint, pulsating blue of the Academy's primary mana conduits running beneath the obsidian stone. To him, they were the only rational path in a world of ruin and decay.
He followed the logic of the pipes, knowing they would ultimately lead him to a pressure-relief gate. The other students, having no plan of their own and afraid of being left behind in the dark of the "Dead Floor," began to fall into his wake like lost ghosts. Aleric did not lead them, but merely walked, and they followed the sound of his steady, rhythmic footsteps.
At the end of the long, damp corridor, a massive iron door adorned with the seal of the "Right Floor" came into view. It was the exit—the way back onto the approved course. But the course was unclear.
A heavy, rhythmic thud echoed through the hall, followed by a wave of atmospheric pressure so thick it felt like breathing lead. A silhouette detached itself from the shadows of the gateway. It was the Grave-Titan—a hulking mass of stitched muscle and mana-saturated bone, standing twice the height of the iron door.
The Titan did not roar. It simply existed, and in that existence, it released its Aura of Terror.
It was a supernatural frequency, a psychic vibration that would penetrate beyond the level of conscious awareness and destroy the human ego at its most fundamental level. The students, following Aleric's example, sank down upon their knees. Their eyes grew wide and glassy, their chests constricting as they felt an artificial, paralyzing fear.
But Aleric himself did not flinch. He stood his ground, his red eyes locked intently upon the veins of mana that pulsed through the body of the Titan.
He drew upon his own inner resources, spinning his own aura at a local, high-velocity frequency just outside of his own flesh. He generated a field of counter-vibrations, a constant spinning field of energy similar to that of a planet's magnetic field deflecting solar winds.
As the waves of artificial fear washed across him from the Titan's body, they slid harmlessly past him, like water passing across polished stone. The frequency of fear had no impact upon Aleric's nerves at all; his own heart pulsed steadily at a rhythmic sixty beats per minute.
"An unexpected variable," Aleric breathed, conjuring a Mana Ball from his coat. "Yet even a titan is beholden to the laws of structural integrity. Tracker, Unit 06—pincer formation."
The Titan took a step forward, its glowing blue veins pulsating with hunger, seemingly perplexed by the one soul that did not cower before it.