CHAPTER 32: The Law of Monopoly and Gravitational Drop

The doors of the western armorers' guild slammed shut with a crash. The interior smelled of expensive tobacco and hot iron. Instead of a workshop, it resembled an aristocratic palace. In the middle of the room stood a massive anvil made of solid iron. A true monument to their craftsmanship pride.

Silas stood before the long counter. He placed the emerald core of the Toxic King on it. The stone throbbed.

The main guild master did not even rise from his chair. He wore a silk doublet. He looked at the loot with a gleam of greed, but then twisted his mouth into a mocking smile. His two companions snorted quietly.

"Beautiful pebble, Silas," the master threw. "But you must have lost your minds. You want to buy our independence?. Our steel is a legend. We forge weapons that survive generations. That anvil has not been scratched by any axe for three hundred years. We are the elite of Oakhaven.".

I yawned. I raised my left hand. I grabbed my chin with my hand, and supported my elbow with my right arm. I thought for a fraction of a second about their pathetic sense of worth. On logic, a discussion with these people was a waste of time.

I pushed Silas aside. With a leisurely step, I approached their legendary anvil. Shnee stood by the wall, resting her hand on her rapier hilt. She watched me with cold calmness.

I placed my open hand on the cold iron. I pumped raw force into the block.

A grind resounded. The breaking metal sounded like snapping bones. The hard monolith exploded. The anvil weighing hundreds of kilograms simply crumbled into fine dust. The gray residue settled on the marble floor around my boots with a quiet rustle.

A dead silence fell in the room.

The guild master turned pale. He opened his mouth, but did not make a sound. His men backed away abruptly, crashing into the armor racks.

I brushed my hand against my coat. I shooed away a fly circling above the destroyed pedestal.

"Your steel is shit," I said calmly. "Silas has the documents. You will sign everything. From today, you forge exclusively on my terms. If anyone objects, I will check if your skulls are as hard as this scrap.".

The armorers immediately grabbed their quills. They dipped them in ink with trembling fingers. The economic takeover was finalized.

We left the humble armorers in their own workshop reeking of fear. The city forged steel on my terms, so there was no point in wasting more time on the surface. We returned to the dungeon and went straight down to the fifteenth floor.

The surroundings changed drastically. The corridors stretched endlessly. The stone walls and rotting floors resembled a disgusting labyrinth without any logical layout. I walked for a while in this thick dark, shooing away an exceptionally intrusive fly with my hand, until I finally stopped in the middle of a blind alley.

I raised my left hand. I grabbed my chin with my hand, and supported my elbow with the right. I thought in silence about the structure of these walls. On logic, wandering through these convoluted corridors and looking for stairs for the next five floors was an extreme waste of time and burning of calories. I always preferred the shortest paths.

"Walking is boring, Shnee," I threw with a casual, Brazen chill. "We are cutting the route.".

I did not wait for her reaction. I compressed a massive charge of pure force in my right boot. Instead of striking a monster, I simply stomped with all my might into the center of the basalt floor.

The roar was deafening. The thick rock under our feet cracked like a dry branch. The entire floor collapsed inwards, crumbling to dust and pulling us into a deep abyss.

We started falling in free flight through the massive breach. Gravity immediately claimed its due. The momentum pressed our clothes into our bodies. I quickly realized that we had broken through several floors at once, and the wide drop shaft was not empty.

Swarms of underground, winged beasts flew at us from side holes and dark nests. They resembled overgrown bats with razor-sharp claws. They intended to tear us apart in the air.

"Take them down!" I shouted to Shnee, falling with my hands in my pockets.

The elf reacted with a flawless, murderous instinct. Instead of panicking over the loss of ground, she used the momentum. A powerful wave of raw, classic frost burst from her hand and rapier blade. Extreme cold hit the attacking monsters. The winged beasts froze mid-flight, turning into heavy blocks of ice.

When the frozen beasts passed my position, I released short pulses of pressure. I hit the icy torsos with pure force. The monsters shattered into thousands of pieces, falling down like sharp hail.

We fell through the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth floors in an absolute frenzy of destruction, leaving above us only a cloud of gray dust and crushed bones.

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The bottom was approaching at a terrifying speed, but I had no intention of slowing down. Instead of panicking, I compressed a massive charge of pure force in my legs. When we hit the floor of the twentieth floor, there was no dust cloud or crumbling stone. The crash was deafening, resembling a collision with an anvil, and my boots rang hollowly against something that was certainly not ordinary rock.

The shock absorption took the impact. Shnee landed right next to me, bending her knees soundlessly. I straightened up, brushing the remains of the crushed monsters off my coat.

I looked ahead. A forest surrounded us, but this place drastically differed from anything growing on the surface. The tree trunks were perfectly smooth, slender, and black. They shone in the dark like polished lumps of coal. Needles sharp as razors hung from the branches, looking like they were carved from glass. The air in this biome was absurdly heavy, and it smelled sharply of burning resin and ozone.

A grinding growl came from the thicket of black trunks. A pack emerged from the shadows. Ten wolves. Their bodies were not covered with fur. They consisted entirely of blocks of shining coal and hard minerals. The beasts' eyes glowed with dead light.

One of the predators jumped without warning. It aimed straight for the elf's throat. Shnee reacted with murderous grace. Her rapier whistled in the air to slice the beast in flight. The clink was piercing. The blade slipped over the smooth side of the wolf with a powerful grate. It did not leave the slightest scratch. The force of the recoil threw the elf back. She had to brace her boots against the ground to keep her balance. Genuine surprise flashed in her diamond eyes.

A drop in temperature hit the carbon structures. The monsters' joints immediately covered with a layer of thick ice. It completely blocked their movements. The wolves began to stumble. They grated and squeaked as their compressed bodies lost stability. The ice brutally expanded their connections.

The rest belonged to me. I compressed charges of pure force in my hands. I fell right into the middle of the pack with a predatory smile. I did not use weapons. I struck with hard hands directly into the frozen parts of their bodies. The collision of my physical push with the brittle points generated destructive resonance. Vibrations tore the beasts from the inside. The carbon wolves exploded one by one with a hollow snap. They crumbled in the air into thousands of sharp fragments. They fell to the ground with a dry rustle. The slaughter was complete. It was conducted in flawless symbiosis. Freezing and implosion. After two minutes, only black gravel and heavy cores lay on the path.

"Beautiful teamwork," I assessed coldly. I cracked my neck. I threw the loot into the pouch. We left the gravel behind and moved deeper into the Iron Forest. The air became colder. The black trunks around us grew unnaturally thick. Suddenly the earth trembled.

Powerful roots burst from the black ground with a deafening crash. The earth bulged. The Crystal Thorn grew before us. The boss of the twentieth floor.

The clink was piercing. It sounded like a collision of two speeding trains. The elf's rapier simply slipped off the smooth armor. It did not leave a scratch. The recoil force was huge. Shnee had to brace her boots to avoid falling on her back. The boss ignored her. He turned heavily and aimed at me with his other arm.

I did not draw my weapon. I raised my left hand. I grabbed my chin with my hand and supported my elbow with my right arm. I thought in silence. I coldly analyzed the situation. On logic, punching a block of carbon harder than steel made no sense. The monster's armor was extremely rigid. But it was still an overgrown weed. Diamond weeds still pumped juices from the roots to move. I bent my knees and made a soft dodge. The diamond fist hit the floor right next to me. It showered sparks.

"Bad logic, Shnee!" I threw firmly. I watched her prepare for another cut. "Do not hack the armor! It is too hard for outside strikes! Hit the roots!".

The girl understood my thought process in a fraction of a second. She asked no questions. When the boss tried to tear his wedged arm from the ground, Shnee jumped to its base. Instead of pushing with the blade, a wave of raw frost burst from her hand. Extreme cold hit the powerful roots. The temperature dropped below zero in a millisecond. The laws of physics acted flawlessly. The freezing juices inside the carbon fibers expanded violently. The thick shell had no chance of withstanding the expansion from the inside.

A loud snap came from inside the Crystal Thorn. Then another. The monster stiffened. A dense network of deep cracks began to appear on its smooth armor. The diamond coating crumbled. Pure frost literally tore it from the inside. The boss began to sway. He completely lost his terrifying durability. He was bursting at the seams. I lowered my hands and smiled with Brazen chill. The Crystal Thorn swayed on its frozen roots. The monster made a dry sound. It sounded like breaking thick branches. Ice did its job.

I raised my left hand. I grabbed my chin with my hand and supported my elbow with the right. I thought briefly about his compromised structure. On logic, the brittle material only required one precise application of force to lose cohesion. I needed no weapon for this. I lowered my hands. I opened the valves in the weaves. Sapphire Slime poured from my pores. It coated my right hand and forearm. I reached deep into the power of the soul and activated Gōtai. The blue matter darkened instantly. It took the color of absolute black. My hand turned into a shining monolith. Raw sapphire sparks aggressively jumped around it.

I took a soft step forward. I stepped right under the falling arm of the desperate treant. With a predatory smile and Brazen chill, I delivered one powerful punch. I struck with my black fist straight into the middle of the monster's cracked chest.

Pure force met brittle structure. A deafening roar resounded. It sounded like a falling mountain crushing a glass cathedral. The Crystal Thorn simply broke. The diamond armor and carbon insides exploded under the push. They fell apart into millions of sharp pieces. They covered the floor of the Iron Forest with a loud rustle.

A massive core of essence fell to the hard ground. It glowed with cold light. I extinguished Gōtai. The pitch black absorbed back under my skin. The sapphire sparks went out with a quiet hiss. I bent down and gathered the heavy loot into the bottomless pouch.

Shnee lowered her rapier. She stepped closer. Her boots crunched on the diamond rubble. There was no shadow of former fear in her eyes. She watched me with predatory respect and absolute devotion. She understood her role in this perfect machine of destruction. She was the deadliest blade in this world, cutting off mobility and freezing obstacles. But I was that unstoppable force that crushed absolutely everything in their path. We operated in flawless symbiosis.

"Clean job, Shnee," I threw calmly. I waved the falling dust away with my hand. "Gather the smaller stones. We will see if the next floors have anything harder to offer us".