The group had decided to push through the night, slowly and carefully, but not stopping to make a camp. Between Jin's sightless perception, Liraz's tremorsense, and Karam's new [Lantern of Hope], they seemed to be able to keep navigating through the darkness without attracting too many monsters.

Karam glanced back at his little construct again, enjoying the warm glow the floating paper lantern gave off as it hovered slightly behind and above his right shoulder. The paper was a relaxing cream color that formed a round ball with little ridges running horizontally around it. It reminded him of the festival lanterns they would make for the New Year celebrations. He idly wondered if he could conjure it in different shapes or colors if he focused enough on it, but he resigned himself to trying later in private once they weren't trying to walk through a swamp in the dark.

They had debated about using the light at all, but had decided they would have to since the darkness here was almost absolute without it. The endless cloud cover hadn't diminished in the slightest as it refused to provide stars to see by. There were a handful of bioluminescent plants they had come across, but they seemed to attract monsters as well, or in one particular case, the glowing plant was a monster.

He was grateful for the light, though, and even found an interesting combination as he conjured his [Meditation Candle] within the lantern to combine their effects. It didn't do everything it could with them not meditating yet, but it still helped by increasing the range of the light and providing more healing to everyone nearby.

None of them were exactly tired yet, which was another reason they kept pressing forward, but he was looking forward to keeping watch on his own once they did stop to rest. His [Candlelit Vigil] Talent made him the natural choice for it and would drastically reduce their overall sleep time. It was just one more way he could prove his usefulness to the group.

He had been getting plenty of practice with his other healing abilities, though. Finding himself grateful for the critical role he'd been able to fill, even if it meant feeling a bit awkward about being surrounded by his friends as they walked to try to protect him. It was hard to watch as the others fought, with most of his activity happening once the fight was already over, but he knew that was expected for anyone gifted with healing abilities.

While he had spent a lot of time on the first floor wondering if they would survive it, he now began to let himself wonder what might happen if they survived the whole tower. If he managed to get out of the tower again, he could get transferred to the Pleasure Sect now; they'd probably expect it, actually, since that's where most of their menders ended up. He didn't know many Lovers, but he had heard that their Sect Leader, Petal, was a nice enough man who cared about how his members were treated.

Karam glanced over at Hadia, remembering how she mentioned being a Lover before transferring to the Service Sect. She seemed to have a disdain for it, but then again, she seemed to disdain most of the Sects and the system as a whole. He had debated asking her about her time there and why she had transferred. His main question regarding the rumors around her was whether they were actually true about the scars on her face being self-inflicted, but the possibility of her saying 'yes' was what had held him back from prodding. He didn't want to imagine what a person might have had to go through to do something like that to theirself.

As the hours stretched on, an agreeable silence had fallen upon the group. Clover wasn't complaining anymore, apparently having come to some unspoken agreement with Jin after vanishing into her dimensional space. It had been a surprise to the group to see the Familiar simply vanish like that instead of merging into the Summoner in a more visually obvious way, like most other Familiars. When Boxey had almost drowned from slipping into the swamp—revealing that the Terror Mimic couldn't swim despite seemingly being made of wood—Liraz had decided to merge with the Familiar simply so she wouldn't have to resummon it again from an accidental misstep. That looked much like when she absorbed her slime back up as the large chest seemed to melt and get sucked up into her palm.

Karam glanced over at Jin's currently green hair. He thought it looked good on her, especially with how it brought out the color of her eyes. It made her look more like the Emerald version he had stitched before they entered the tower. He hoped she would live long enough to retrieve that embroidery, even if the rest of them didn't.

He shook his head, trying to dispel those negative thoughts. Now that Basima was gone, Karam noticed how much she had been contributing to raising their mood while trapped in this death game. She would likely have been the one filling this silence with laughter and dancing. She had been a light for all of them when things had seemed darkest.

Karam looked back at his lantern again as he wondered if it was his turn to try and fill that role.

A loud ping came from Jin's bracelet as she led the way now with her perception, and a few moments later, the rest of their bracelets made the same noise, vibrating and pulling them slightly more to the left. That was the fourth time it had announced they were getting closer and gave a small course correction. They had no idea how many more times they would need, but they were already starting to think this floor was bigger than the last.

He used his nose again to press one of the runes on it and see what time it was. According to the small display of the shop, which he currently had little interest in, it was maybe an hour before dawn would normally arrive outside of the tower. He couldn't wait to get to their base where they could all finally relax a little. Despite being Crystal Caste now and not as affected by extreme temperatures, he still didn't enjoy feeling cold and wet as they trudged through the dark swamp.

When Liraz suddenly slipped in the soft mud, his arm snapped out to help catch her. "Are you alright, Miss Li?" he whispered as he stopped walking to try and steady her.

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She nodded and signed, "Just squishier than I expected." A large yawn escaped her, which Karam immediately replicated before chuckling softly.

"I know we've been pushing, but we can't sleep yet. I think we can go for at least three whole days before getting really tired now that we're Crystal."

"We still shouldn't push that hard, though, unless we have to," Hadia interjected from a few feet ahead, where she had stopped to make sure they were okay. "But luckily, we should only need about five hours of sleep each night to feel refreshed."

"We need less sleep?" Jin asked quietly as she also came back for them.

"A perk of ascending," Hadia explained. "Stronger bodies. No more need for bathroom breaks. Less sleep required. Next Caste we won't need to breathe anymore, so that'll be interesting."

"I still want to sleep," Liraz quietly replied with a tiny pout, conjuring and holding one of her slime pillows to her chest. "How much further to the base do you think it is?"

"Hopefully not much longer, Miss Li," Karam replied, giving her a smile and remembering that she was roughly the same age as him, helping him not feel like the baby of the group despite his size.

His prediction proved right about a half hour later when they noticed the door to their new base set between the roots of a massive tree. Its size alone had caught their attention as it stood like a giant sentinel over a small island that held a cabin made of stone and wooden beams woven within the arching root, its upper branches hung heavy with weeping vines and dark emerald leaves that almost seemed protective of the home beneath it. The roots surrounding it like a living web also seemed to dig deep into the waters surrounding the island, and it appeared as though their first challenge in claiming their base would be in reaching it.

"Kinda wishing we had spent the points on a raft now," Jin muttered as they all took in the scene of their new home for the foreseeable future. "That tree looks like a cross between a mangrove and a weeping willow to me. And what are the odds that something in the water around it wants to eat us? I'm not so sure I'm going to enjoy dealing with this swamp camp."

"Should we try building a bridge across?" Alim signed at them, already eyeing the moat as if calculating how much wood they might need.

"Unless you've got a ritual that can, I don't think I want to spend the time on it," Jin replied with a raised eyebrow.

"There are some for raising Earth walls from the ground, but I might be able to adapt it for this."

"Don't your new boots allow for waterwalking, Miss Jin?" Karam pointed out, glancing down at them. Then he looked at Liraz and added, "Miss Li might also be able to make something with her slime, right?"

Jin followed his gaze down to her boots before giving a shrug and saying, "Guess I'll go scout it out then and see if anything tries to ambush me for breakfast while you all figure out a bridge or raft solution." With that, Jin took off running across the water straight towards the front door.

Instead of discussing the possible bridge construction options with Alim and Liraz, who immediately began signing with each other at a speed Karam simply couldn't follow yet, he watched Jin approach their new home, waiting to see if she would need him to help heal her upon her return. He had seen enough past Seasons to share Hadia's distrust of any large body of water, especially the murky kind, and he was expecting a monster attack at any moment.

Because of that knowledge, it wasn't a surprise when the attack came. What was a surprise, however, was what attacked Jin. All of them were momentarily stunned, and his own jaw dropped open in disbelief when the base smacked Jin backwards through the air away from it with an ear-splitting crack of a whip-like vine.

"Son of a bi—" Jin yelled out before her words were cut off by falling into the water with a loud splash.

Liraz was the first to respond, quickly creating a lasso of sticky slime and tossing it to where Jin emerged from the water, breaking the surface with heavy sputtering and more swearing.

As they all tried to help pull Jin back to their muddy shore, Hadia asked, "I wasn't imagining the base attacking her, right? Did that actually just happen?"

"No, Miss Had—"

"Hey! I warned you about that 'Miss' shit, Kar; I'm with Jin on that. Now, do you remember any past Season with a base that attacked its own Sect like that and not just a monster waiting to ambush like the last floor?"

He shook his head as he stepped back to let Jin stand back up with Hadia's help.

Alim then signed, "Do you think the tree is actually a monster guarding the tree?"

Jin interjected, signing as she answered, "No. My aura touched it, which let [Poker Face] tell me what it is, and with Clover actually merged, my [Draconic Insight] let me know what its attunements, strengths, and weaknesses are."

"So what is it?" Karam asked while signing one-handed.

"It's a Cultivating Guardian Home. Attuned to Covenant and Radiant magics, apparently. It's exceptionally strong against Water and Plant magics, while weak to Void and Light, oddly enough," Jin explained, then turned to him with a rare smile that he wasn't entirely sure he should be happy about. "I think that means I'm going to need your help in getting past it, big guy."

Karam let out a soft groan as he realized he very much did not like that particular smile. He had liked being the healer in the back, useful but not in the thick of it, and further from the monsters' teeth. "I'm not sure my little lantern will be enough to get past that thing. Are you sure it's not a monster?"

"Yup," Jin said with a firm nod. "My Talent only works on magic items and myself, so it's definitely not a monster. That said, I have no idea why it attacked me, so we need to test that it wasn't just me it was hating on."

"Could be that it knew you could deal Void damage," Hadia pointed out. "Maybe it only attacks people with the things it's weak against, so sending Kar next won't be a good test."

Jin's grin turned positively wicked as she replied, "Then thank you for volunteering, Lady Smashes-Things-With-Earth-Maces."

"Shit," Hadia said with a click of her tongue and crossing her arms. "I totally walked into that one, didn't I?"

Karam could only try to stifle his laugh with his hand and hope he wouldn't need to heal Hadia too much in a few minutes.

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