The last gray fog of the copy faded, and Loki remained sitting for long minutes, doing nothing, until he felt the wall behind him vibrate gently, as if the whole place is breathing.
He stood up slowly, his joints protesting with an almost audible sound. The room had disappeared, and the new staircase extends in front of him, much shorter than its predecessors this time, only a few tens of steps, ending with a simple stone door without decorations.
He stopped at the first step, and looked at his palm.
The numbers had not changed, of course, because he had not seen numbers at all for weeks. He did not summon the window, and it did not appear on its own, exactly as everything of this type stopped since his entry to the second floor.
But he felt something.
His fist was closing with greater tightness than he was used to, and his legs were not trembling after all this exhaustion as they would have trembled at the beginning of the journey. Even his breathing, despite all the wounds, was deeper than he expected.
"There is supposed to be a number for this somewhere," he said to himself, in a hoarse voice. "Why do you not appear right now exactly?"
No one answered. He did not expect anyone to answer.
He thought about it for a second longer, trying to understand if this absence is intentional or just a malfunction in a system he does not understand in the first place. He did not reach a satisfactory conclusion.
"Okay," he said finally, and shook his hands as if pushing the idea aside. "Let us leave this matter until we get out of this place. I have enough puzzles now."
He climbed the remaining steps, and pushed the stone door.
The fourth floor was not a room, but a wide cave, its ceiling high enough to disappear in darkness, and its floor dry sandy making a slight creak with each step. A strange smell filled the place, sharp, resembling the smell of reptiles or something close to it he could not determine precisely.
He stopped at the threshold, his senses alerting immediately.
He heard it before he saw it, a huge crawling friction coming from the depth of the cave, slow at first, then accelerating.
It emerged from darkness, a snake of a size Loki did not imagine possible, its body the width of a whole tree trunk, its scales dark shining with a faint blue light similar to the light of the floor itself, as if it is part of it. Its eyes narrow, yellow, fixed on him immediately without blinking.
"Damn," Loki whispered, retreating an instinctive step. "Okay, this is much bigger than I expected."
The snake did not wait, rushed toward him with a speed that completely contradicts its size, its head swaying at a strange angle before striking.
Loki threw himself aside, felt the wind of its rush touch his back, and its huge head collided with the stone wall behind him with a force that left a clear crack in the stone.
"Strength," he muttered as he stood up quickly. "Great, exactly what I needed."
It did not give him time to think more. The snake turned with amazing speed for its size, and struck again, this time from a different angle, trying to trap him with the cave wall.
Loki remembered, in a fraction of a second, a lesson he learned the hard way on the third floor: Direct expectation is not enough when the opponent knows your pattern, but this opponent was not a copy of him, but a creature following its own instincts. The trick here was not to break its expectation, but to read it accurately.
He watched the movement of its head for an additional moment instead of rushing immediately, and noticed a pattern: Each strike is preceded by a slight coil in the back part of its body, preparation for the thrust.
When it struck a third time, Loki was ready this time, he did not dodge randomly, but slid directly under the snake’s jaw, closer than he expected to dare, and thrust the knife into the soft part under its head.
The snake screamed, a sound that shook the entire cave, and its tail hit Loki from behind with a force that threw him several meters.
He collided with the sandy ground, the air flying from his lungs, but he felt something else too. The pain was less than he expected from a blow with this power.
He stood up faster than usual, without the delay that would have happened weeks before.
The snake was writhing now, angry, its dark blood flowing from the wound under its head, but it did not weaken, but seemed more ferocious.
This time Loki did not wait for its attack. He rushed first, trying to exploit the moment of its anger before it regains its focus.
He jumped on part of its coiled body near the ground, climbing quickly toward its head, while it was twisting trying to get rid of him. He felt its rough scales under his hands, sharp enough to cut his palms, but he continued climbing.
When he arrived close enough, he thrust the knife again, in its eye this time, with all that remained of his strength.
Another scream, higher than the first, and its huge body twisted violently throwing Loki far again.
This time he did not stand up immediately. He lay on the sand, panting, looking at the snake as it writhes in agony, its blood covering a large part of the floor now.
It took a full minute before its movement finally stopped, its huge body settling in an unnatural twisted position, then slowly transforming into gray fog similar to the copies he faced on the previous floor, but slower, heavier, as if its huge size needs longer time to fade.
Loki remained lying until the last trace of it disappeared.
He finally sat, examining his hands wounded from the scales, and a new wound on his shoulder he did not notice when exactly it happened.
"Okay," he said in a tired voice, but it was not the same fatigue he felt after the goblin weeks ago, something different, lighter in a way he cannot explain accurately. "That was easier than I expected. A little."
He did not completely believe his own sentence, but he did not lie in it either.
He looked around, and found a new door forming at the far end of the cave, without a plaque this time, only an empty door, partially open, waiting.
He stood up, wiped the snake’s blood off his knife blade with a movement that has become completely automatic now, and walked toward it, leaving the snake’s cave behind him silent as it was before his entry.