Stepping onto Floor 40 was like stepping into an ancient cosmic hall where the laws of nature had been tossed into a dice cup and rolled anew.
Spanning twenty square leagues of folded underground space, the Gravity Shift Caverns defied all mortal shape.
Huge pillars of black dark rock connected the floor to a vaulted ceiling four hundred arm-lengths above. Yet “floor” and “ceiling” were entirely meaningless distinctions here. To the left, an underground river flowed horizontally along a sheer upright cliff face, its turquoise water clinging to the stone without spilling a single drop. To the right, floating dark rock boulders the size of royal pavilions drifted lazily through the air like sleeping whales. Massive stalactites grew sideways, and clusters of glowing blue quartz pointed in every possible direction.
At the entrance threshold, a polished black glass monument bore a warning carved in deep, glowing golden runes:
‘The Earth is not beneath your boots. The Earth is wherever your will demands. Step boldly, or fall forever.’
Over the preceding forty-eight hours, more than eighty elite parties had entered Floor 40.
Nearly seventy of them had been wiped out within five minutes of crossing the threshold. For fighters who had spent their entire lives training on flat mountain terraces, the sudden popped joint of gravity was a total psychological nightmare. Students would leap to strike a phantom beast, only for the gravity vector to invert. It sent them hurtling screaming into the ceiling four hundred arm-lengths above.
