Logan woke to a status update he had to read twice before it made sense.
```
[ Tower Points earned by Sky and Earth Groups: +8,240 ]
[ All six units have reached level 10. ]
```
Three hours. That was all it had taken.
Each Tier-1 Mythic came standard with forty base stats across the board, twice what a Legendary carried. Turned loose across open ground with nothing to slow them down, the two groups hadn’t so much hunted as scoured, covering more distance in three hours than Billy’s team had managed in a full day back when he’d still been Rare-rank.
Logan stood, rolled the stiffness out of his neck, and looked at the six of them waiting by the gate.
"Alright." He pulled a fresh Treasure Compass from his ring. "You six are with me. Time you got names."
Billy leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. "We holding the fort again, boss?"
"With what you’ve all got now, nobody’s taking this base. I need you here more than I need you with me."
"Fair enough." Billy didn’t look bothered by it in the slightest.
Logan let the compass go. It spun once and settled, pointing due south, pulling harder than any compass he’d used before.
They found the entrance two hours later, a crack in a hillside wide enough to walk through standing up, cold air breathing out of it like the hill itself was exhaling.
```
[ Hidden Dungeon Found: The Sundered Reliquary ]
Danger Level: 10 (Legendary)
```
Logan’s mouth went dry for a different reason than usual. Legendary-rank. A full tier above anything he’d cleared before.
He looked at the six of them, forty base stats each, and felt considerably better about the odds than the panel alone would have suggested.
"Let’s see what’s in there."
The passage opened almost immediately into something too large to have been carved by hand, roots the size of tree trunks growing straight through solid stone, moss glowing faint green wherever it caught what little light existed down here.
Something massive stepped out from behind one of the roots before they’d gone twenty feet, bark-skinned and vaguely man-shaped, vines whipping loose from both arms.
```
[ Rootbound Warden (Tier-1/Rare) ]
```
The plant-themed Mythic didn’t wait for an order. It planted both feet, and roots erupted from the stone floor in a wide ring, spearing up through the Warden’s legs before it had finished raising its arms.
"Root Network." The words came out steady, almost gentle, nothing like the violence happening at the end of them. Wherever stone met soil down here, it could feel the ground the way Logan felt his own hand, and strike through it from anywhere the roots reached.
The Warden thrashed once and went still, pinned through both legs by growth that hadn’t been there a second earlier.
```
[ Rootbound Warden (Tier-1/Rare) killed. ]
```
Logan looked over the one responsible. Bark-armored, moss growing in the seams of it, flowers opening and closing across its shoulders in a slow private rhythm, seed-pods for eyes that blinked slower than anything should.
"That’s a hell of a talent." Logan turned it over in his head. "You’re Thistle."
"Thistle." It said the name back like it was testing the weight of the word, voice low and rough like wind through leaves. "I accept this name."
```
[ Verdant World-Root ]
Name: Thistle
Rank: Mythic
Talent: Root Network. Anywhere stone meets soil, he can sense and strike through it as easily as through his own limbs.
[ Active Skills ]
> Bloomstrike (Mythic)
> Overgrowth Snare (Mythic)
> Thorncage Barrier (Mythic)
> Bloodroot Drain (Mythic)
[ Passive Skills ]
> Everseed (Mythic)
> Photosynthesis (Mythic)
> Deeproot Anchor (Mythic)
```
They pushed deeper. The root chamber didn’t end cleanly, three separate openings leading on from where they stood, and Logan took a second to actually think it over before picking the widest.
It paid off. Tucked into a hollow where two roots had grown around each other like laced fingers, a small chest sat half buried in old leaf litter.
Logan knelt and opened it carefully, half expecting teeth.
Nothing bit him this time. Just glass, four small vials packed tight in straw.
```
[ Potions Acquired ]
2x HP Potion (Tier-1/Rare)
2x MP Potion (Tier-1/Rare)
```
"Good," he muttered, tucking them into his ring. "Nice and normal, for once."
The roots gave way to something harder underfoot, and the walls started throwing back light instead of swallowing it.
Crystal grew in uneven shelves along every surface, and something crawled out from between two of them, faceted and glittering and easily twice the height of anyone in the group.
```
[ Prism Sentinel (Tier-1/Rare) ]
```
It didn’t so much attack as detonate, both fists slamming the ground hard enough to send a spray of crystal shrapnel out in every direction.
The crystalline Mythic stepped into the spray instead of away from it, and every shard that struck him simply became part of him, absorbed into the surface of his own body with a sound like a hundred tiny bells.
"Fracture Bloom," he said, and his voice sounded like two rocks grinding together, pleased with itself. Whatever hit him hard enough to break skin got claimed instead, added to his own mass, turning every attack against him into fuel.
He drove one enormous fist through the Sentinel’s chest without breaking stride.
```
[ Prism Sentinel (Tier-1/Rare) killed. ]
```
He was already bigger than he’d been thirty seconds ago, new facets glinting across both shoulders where the crystal shrapnel had settled in.
"You’ll do that a lot, I bet." Logan grinned up at him. "Shard."
"Shard," the crystal giant repeated, and something like satisfaction crossed a face that had no real features to show it with.
```
[ Eternal Quartz Behemoth ]
Name: Shard
Rank: Mythic
Talent: Fracture Bloom. Damage that breaks his surface gets absorbed instead, growing his mass with every hit that lands.
[ Active Skills ]
> Prism Fist (Mythic)
> Shattercrown (Mythic)
> Refractive Beam (Mythic)
> Crystalline Prison (Mythic)
[ Passive Skills ]
> Growing Lattice (Mythic)
> Hardlight Skin (Mythic)
> Resonant Shatter (Mythic)
```
The tunnel sloped down after that, and down kept meaning down until the air turned damp and heavy, and then they were wading, ankle-deep and then knee-deep in black standing water that hadn’t been there a hundred feet back.
Something long uncoiled from beneath the surface, scaled and vast, water sheeting off it in sheets that didn’t seem to want to fall.
```
[ Drowned Leviathan (Tier-1/Rare) ]
```
The water-Mythic didn’t retreat from the flood. He sank into it instead, and the moment he did, the whole chamber seemed to grow heavier, pressure building until Logan felt it in his own ears.
"Crushing Depths." He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Anywhere he claimed carried the weight of the deep ocean floor now, crushing for anything that wasn’t him, nothing at all for anyone he chose to shelter.
The Leviathan’s scales started cracking before it even finished rising out of the water, folding in on themselves under weight that had no business existing in a cave. It went still and sank.
```
[ Drowned Leviathan (Tier-1/Rare) killed. ]
```
"Tide," Logan said, watching the water around the newest Mythic settle unnaturally calm despite the pressure still radiating off him.
"Tide." He inclined his head, water running off him without ever quite touching Logan or the others nearby.
```
[ Abyssal Tide Sovereign ]
Name: Tide
Rank: Mythic