After nearly a week of navigating certainty traps, silenced corridors, and monstrous bone-constructs, the vanguard finally reached a place where the bone pillars converged into an enormous circular chamber. A stillness deeper than any before pressed down on them. Artorius' breath tightened. Something immense moved beyond the bone walls.
The Psychic Royal Dragon floated beside him, his wings barely moving, eyes blank. "I believe for this foe we must work together." Then the bone wall vibrated. A low, resonant hum pulsed outward like the groan of a mountain shifting in its sleep. Dust cascaded down. Lines spread across the rib wall, glowing faintly, forming spiral patterns. Something on the other side was waking.
"Yeah, I think that's also best," he nodded his head. Cracks split the ribbed walls like shattered stone, glowing faintly. Artorius's heart pounded in his chest as he felt it, a rising force. Something was waking. "This one's not going to be easy."
This foe was shaping out to be much deadlier than the mini-boss he faced in the muscle warren. Entering the sight that greeted them confirmed that.
It was colossal. A dragon without flesh, made entirely of bone chained together. It filled the chamber with its size alone. A skull crest crowned its head, carved like an ancient war helm. Empty eye sockets burned with marrow-light. Its teeth were daggers of perfect ivory, unblemished by age.
[Vertebral Leviathan — Level 49]
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It opened its eyes as they entered and just stared at them with out letting out any roar of challenge. Artorius swallowed hard, it was at the level cap. "Prepare yourself, Artorius. You will not fool this creature with improvisation."
The beast's spine contracted with a crack like shattering stone then the entire creature lunged. Artorius leapt aside, narrowly avoiding a hammering strike of its skull. The blow crushed the bone floor into powder.
He called upon crystal and spears of them shot towards it, detonating against the Leviathan's ribs. They hit with perfect aim but the Leviathan's body rotated, redistributing force down its spine. The attack did no damage. It had known the strike was coming the moment Artorius twitched his wrist.
The Psychic Dragon raised a claw, and the air shimmered. A silent shockwave burst outward, a psychic compression that should have crushed the Leviathan's skull inward. Instead the Leviathan's ribs folded like blades of a fan. The shockwave passed through harmlessly. No wasted motion. No surprise. No error.
"Wonderful," Artorius intoned, "this thing is going to take a while to bring down."
The Leviathan lashed its tail. Not too fast, not too slow but exact. A perfect arc of bone, timed to the falling of dust particles in the air, cutting toward Artorius' throat. He ducked barely in tone and that would have most likely hit him if he wasn't slowly coming to understand probability. He slammed a palm to the ground and called upon fire.
A pillar of flame roared upward, engulfing the Leviathan in a tornado of heat. Bone blackened. Cracks spread. But even as Artorius watched the flames curved away, sliding harmlessly along the Leviathan's spine. It simply aligned itself with the path of least resistance.
The Psychic Dragon teleported, appearing behind the Leviathan in a blur of violet energy. He thrust a psychic blade toward the beast's spinal column and the Leviathan's vertebrae clamped shut. The blade shattered like glass. Emotionless, the Psychic Dragon observed, "It adapts to predict psychic intent. Your thoughts, too, will fail if they are not precise."
Artorius dodged another sweeping strike, but the Leviathan's movements didn't feel random. They were heavy but inevitable like falling stones in a perfectly timed avalanche. Every attack seemed to be coming down like it was a conclusion.
Artorius felt like he was slowly starting to understand as he watched the leviathan every attack made had certainty as if the outcome was already made. "I see," he whispered to himself. Where in the skinland he came to realize the endlessness of possibility, in the muscle warren he understood the randomness of possibility, here he learnt the inevitableness of possibility.
The Leviathan rose up to its full height. A mountain of skeletal inevitability. A hundred vertebrae bones rotated as its jaws split apart. "Let's end this!" Artorius called out as he charged right at it. The creature powered up a great attack but he seemed to not care at all as he fly up and powered up his own great attack.
Combining the words of power to create Plasma, a great giant ball of roiling ionized mass appeared. It burned like a miniature star, roiling and sizzling with concentrated light, flame, and electricity. Its energy hummed against the bones of the chamber, sending shockwaves through the massive vertebrae of the Leviathan. The creature's empty sockets glowed brighter, as if calculating, measuring, predicting the inevitability of its own defense. But Artorius did not hesitate. He could see the outcome in the threads of probability, and he believed in its certainty.
He dove down with the great mass of energy without a care in the world right into the jaws of the creature. "TAKE THIS!" he roared. The Psychic Dragon hovered above his expression of coldness cracking as he watched in disbelief.
The Plasma sphere entered the mouth of the creature which couldn't close it in time as it had been building up its own attack. And then there was an explosion. A soundless shockwave ripped through the chamber first, followed by a violent, roaring blast of light and fire. The Plasma sphere detonated inside the Leviathan, its energy tearing apart the dense bone.
Everyone was flung away by just the blast but the Leviathan's body shattered like glass, cascading through the chamber. Its skull cracked in a thousand places, splinters of ivory shooting outward like deadly projectiles. The creature writhed once, an impossible wave of skeletal horror, then collapsed inward on itself.
Artorius stood up from where he was tossed to amidst the storm of shattered bone, panting, sweat mixing with dust and ash. His lance and wings scorched, his flesh was blistered by the Plasma detonation, but he couldn't help laughing, a low, wild, and unrestrained sound. "That should teach you about Inevitability!"
Then he got his messages; You have slain [Vertebral Leviathan — Level 49]
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] → Lv. 34
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Archetype: [Leader] → Lv. 34
Stat gains: +1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Even though the Psychic dragon participated in the fight, he got the lion share of the exp since he seemed to be in the insane one. The Psychic Dragon descended beside him, wings folding neatly. "That was very risky," it only commented.
The soldiers and dragons of the vanguard, who had watched from the perimeter, stepped forward cautiously. Their eyes wide, some trembling, all aware that what had happened was beyond anything they had trained for.
Artorius rose to his full height, chest heaving, lance in hand. "The final obstacle is gone. We advance to the next layer!"
-
Descenting into the Organ Depths they were greeted by a sigh, one that was long, cavern-filling exhalation, deep and warm and resonant, as if the corpse of Zytherion dead dragon king momentarily remembered being alive.
The air washed over them in a gentle wave, yet the force of it made even the dragons brace their wings. The lanterns they carried flickered and bent backward under the pressure. Artorius froze at the ledge. Below them stretched a world that no map could contain.
A kaleidoscopic valley of organs, mountains of heart-tissue, prairie-like stretches of vascular membranes, rivers of glowing enzymes, towering lobes of alien organs whose purposes no living creature could name sprawled in every direction. It was as if they were staring into the exposed anatomy of a god rendered on full display for them.
Everything pulsed with slow, rhythmic motion. Everything glowed with internal bioluminescence. Everything was alive despite death. Sheets of vascular membranes stretched like prairies, twitching in peristaltic waves that traveled for miles. Rivers of enzyme fluid glowed with internal starlight, radiating heat so intense the air around them warped. Towering lobes of alien organs loomed in spiral patterns, each one pulsing with luminescence like trapped nebulae.
Artorius had seen horrors, wonders, miracles, and nightmares in this corpse. But the Organ Depths were something else entirely. It was a cosmos of flesh and color. An alien ecosystem born from the heart of a probability-bending emperor. The vanguard said nothing. They could not. Their awe was complete.
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Bioluminescent vapors drifted above the anatomy-scape, colored in impossible hues greens that hummed, blues that crackled like lightning inside water, reds so deep they seemed to consume the color spectrum around them. Looking at them too long made soldiers sick, their depth perception warping as the vapors bent the visible world into spirals.
As they descended further, the vibrations in the air began to feel more like whispers. Artorius couldn't tell if it was the pulsing of the organs themselves or something far more subtle. Looking around, there was nothing immediately trying to kill them. The silence was startling. The Bone Realm was oppressive, heavy with inevitability. The Muscle Warrens had been chaos incarnate. But here… it felt like they had stepped into a sacred place.
The soldiers moved carefully, eyes wide, scanning every ripple of light and color. The first major organ they noticed was one they could not even name, its shimmered reflected every step they took. Its outer membrane rippled with waves of shifting color, like a sea of gemstones.
Fluid rivers, thin as creeks yet glowing like liquid starlight, fed into its lobes. The soldiers stared in mute awe. Artorius felt the air vibrating slightly. Every pulse of the organ seemed to release microscopic sparks that floated upward, dissolving in midair.
The organ stretched for miles. Titanesque folds rose like hills; deep grooves ran like trenches filled with viscous multicolored fluid. Every few seconds, the entire organ contracted inwards, releasing shockwaves of biochemical energy that rippled through the valley.
The membrane plains stretched endlessly, like a grassless prairie, but the "grass" was not grass at all. It was a delicate weave of tendrils and veins that pulsed with rhythmic precision. Each movement seemed deliberate, each breath timed perfectly to the fluctuations of the organs beneath them. The whole of it, the land, the air, the space felt as though it was alive, aware of their every step.
Artorius noticed something unsettling, the flora, what could be described as flora, was perfect in its growth, its leaves too symmetrical, its tendrils too uniform. Even the rivers of enzymes that flowed like liquid light glowed with a strange regularity. It felt unnatural, as if everything had been arranged, almost as if there was a conscious force at work, orchestrating the growth of this entire realm.
The first threat came softly. A breeze of shimmering green swept across the plains, bending the membrane grass and making the glandular spires hum like distant flutes. The wind carried a sweet fragrance, soft and comforting like warm honey. Some inhaled once just a relaxed sigh. They didn't scream. They didn't collapse. They simply… changed.
Their bodies became translucent, glowing faintly. Their bones dissolved into thin lines of light. Their organs became drifting shapes inside a glass-like body that swayed in the wind. Then the breeze blew again. And they scattered into the air like pollen. No remains. No body. Just sparkling motes drifting away.
Predators abounded as creatures thrived here and those were not ordinary ones. Most if not all were in their level 30s and 40s. From Protean Mawlings, amorphous, tentacled predators emerged from enzyme flows. Neurovores, spider-like parasites that eat nerve signals. They disable movement by severing neural impulses, making victims limps collapse before being fed on.
Enzyme wurms, semi-transparent serpentine forms of gelatinous tissue. They slid along the ridges and through the rivers of fluid, reacting instantaneously to the vibrations of footsteps. Lumen Serpents, translucent and shimmering with internal bioluminescence, slithered through ducts and fissures, striking not at flesh but at motion patterns.
Hazards were constant and were extreme: Vortex currents of blood and stomach acid would come rushing in lift and hurl soldiers, shockwaves from pulsing tissue obliterated the land they walked on, and psychic resonance assaulted minds with unbearable agony. The very organ itself seemed to correct, punish, and test anyone who dared enter.
Temporal Fractures occasionally rippled through the halls, accelerating or reversing the flow of time locally, leaving units temporarily out of sync with each other aging soldiers into frailty or regressing wounds, only to have reality snap back violently.
They reached the deepest portion of the region yet: a sprawling labyrinth of veined conduits and twisting passageways that pulsated like digestive tracts. Soft peristaltic motions squeezed and released, guiding flows of glowing liquids whose chemical scents mingled into sharp, intoxicating blends.
The dragons gagged at the humid heat. Membranes stretched in slow, rolling waves, forcing the vanguard to keep moving. Stopping meant getting caught in the contracting walls. The army staggered forward through tunnels illuminated by bioluminescent sacs, each glow a different color, each color carrying a different emotional effect.
They passed through fields of respiratory tissue, vast lung-like expanses that expanded and contracted slowly, drawing in and exhaling shimmering fogs of nutrient-rich vapor. Each breath reshaped the terrain hills rising and collapsing, valleys forming and vanishing. Timing movement with the breaths was critical. More than one squad was lifted miles into the air on a sudden inhalation, only to be scattered like leaves when the exhalation came roaring back.
They came by the Pancreatic Floodlands, where rivers of corrosive secretion surged unpredictably across flatlands of slick, pearlescent tissue. The liquid did not burn it rewrote everything. Armor softened into organic mush. Stone turned pliable. Flesh briefly gained regenerative qualities before dissolving outright. Crossing required constant magical stabilization and dragon-borne lifts. Even then, losses were inevitable.
Days, perhaps weeks passed the Organ Depths did not obey ordinary time. Hours stretched to lifetimes in enzyme fogs, then collapsed to seconds between pulses of tissue. The deeper they went, the more vibrant the world became. Organs grew larger, more irregular and just looking at them seemed as if they were looking at symbols, living equations written into flesh.
They passed by shimming lakes made of prismatic liquid, their surface broken only by gentle ripples. The pool glowed with refracted internal light, projecting swirling rainbows on the cavern ceiling miles overhead. It was mesmerizing, nearly hypnotic and very deadly. Some were foolish enough to drink from it and at this point Artorius believed they deserved death if they were that stupid after all this time here.
In one area they found forests of fungal tissue, colonies of pulsing growths that resembled coral, brain, and muscle all at once. They grew impossibly fast, bending light and space. The danger was that anyone who touched it risked having their minds absorbed into the colony.
They traversed a field of glowing blood rivers, their currents thick with clouds that disintegrated matter. One wrong footfall could trigger a cascade. Soldiers trusted Artorius' instincts implicitly, moving as extensions of his mind. Still they suffered many losses as the dangers here were the most deadly. Each step deeper in was a negotiation with the anatomy of a god.
It was clear to him as they traveled this place that this was the very source of all the probabilities. He looked at the rivers, the pulses, the vast kaleidoscopic organs and realized that all these different probabilities existed because there was a cause.
If there was no cause, no source, no beginning then there could never be endless probabilities which could be random or inevitable. It was as if everything finally clicked for him and he connected all the dots.
Now he just needed to let it all come together and then he was there. Looking at the progress he made he had to say he was quite pleased.
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Class: [Storybook Squire] → Lv. 34
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] → Lv. 35
Stat gains: +1 STR, +1 CON, +1 DEX, +1 Per, +1 CHA
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Archetype: [Leader] → Lv. 35
Stat gains: +1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Class: [Storybook Squire] → Lv. 35
Stat gains: +1 Str, +1 Con, +1 Will, +1 Char, +1 Luc!