The Croak Wood taught patience the hard way.
Team Nemean moved through the shifting forest with more discipline now. The Tortura lessons had sunk in—nobody wandered, nobody trusted the quiet, nobody stepped where they had not checked the roots first. Even Jake, who normally liked to drift where his instincts pleased, stayed inside the rhythm Dominic set.
As they moved, Séline started sharing more of what she had felt when the copy of dǒu had passed through her. At first, she struggled to explain it, then she found words.
"Mana doesn't move like muscle," she said, while they crossed between two giant trunks whose bark still looked wet from the night's slithering. "That's the mistake."
Joanne glanced over. "Go on."
Séline flexed one hand, looking at her own fist as if it had disappointed her personally. "With the body, force feels direct. Chain the joints right, rotate right, snap right—hit lands." She frowned. "Mana is slower than that. It needs to move from where it gathers, then travel through you, then out."
Dominic nodded slowly. At level thirty seven, after everything they had fought, all of them knew mana had weight. They knew it changed the body, changed the way skills felt. But none of them had ever tried to put language on the exact way it moved.
Séline did.
"At lower level, our mana was thin," she said. "So the delay was too small to matter. We could act like the body came first and mana just followed. But after evolution at level thirty, the mana got thicker, heavier, more viscous."
Emma, walking a little behind them, picked up on it first. "And kinetic starts losing to magical amplification."
"Human speech?" Dominic chimed in, not because he was stupid, but because he had learnt his high school curriculum in Spanish, so English definitions didn't register immediately for him.
"Physics start losing to magical bullshit after level 30."
Séline looked back and nodded once. "Yes."
That was the missing piece—or at least part of it. Kinetic force from clean modern movement, from snapping the body into the strike, still mattered. But the thicker mana after level thirty had started to outgrow momentum and chain of body, slowly making faster equal harder an outdated thought. If mana had to travel, then how one gave it time to travel might matter more than they realized.
By the time they stopped for a short water break, Dominic had already decided to test it. He planted Eyeless Heaven down beside him and rolled one shoulder.
"Hit me."
Jake laughed. "That sounded bad."
Dominic ignored him.
Séline stepped up first and threw a normal punch—clean, explosive, the kind of strike drilled by modern combat logic. Hips, shoulder, chain, snap. It landed squarely into Dominic's guard, and he took it without issue.
"Again," he said.
Séline frowned, then tried the other way. This time she slowed it down—not sloppily, not hesitating, but simply letting the motion stretch longer, like she was giving something inside her body more room to catch up. The punch came in less sharp, less sudden.
Then it hit.
Dominic's expression changed. The blow crashed into his shield and his feet left the ground.
Jake swore.
Dominic was thrown backward by the same attack from Séline, boots scraping through dirt before he landed and rolled once, then came back up with shock all over his face.
"That," he said, "felt very different."
Séline lowered her fist slowly, staring at it now with renewed interest.
Alex, who had been watching with narrowed eyes the whole time, finally spoke. "That's the same logic as inner force in wuxia."
Everyone looked at her.
She shrugged. "In the novels I'm reading, slower attacks mean more power. The old masters always did that." She frowned slightly. "It was never explained properly though. It was just treated like a thing the strong could do."
Joanne snorted. "Classic."
Dominic picked up Eyeless Heaven again and dusted himself off. "Alright," he said. "Now spar."
That part went worse for Séline—much worse.
Against Dominic, Alex, and Jake, she got destroyed. Not because the new idea was wrong, but because fights were still fights. Slower punches carried much more weight now, yes, but Jake slipped around them too easily. Alex cut angles too well. Dominic just pressured her until the space to set those heavier strikes never opened right.
After the third exchange, Dominic stepped back and lifted one hand. "Your punches hit harder," he said. "A lot harder."
Séline clicked her tongue, annoyed and breathing a little rougher than she wanted to show.
"But," Dominic continued, "speed is still a huge advantage. A fight still ends in one clean hit if the other side is strong enough."
Jake pointed at her. "Hard to use your new world-shaking punch if someone stabs you first."
"Thank you, Jake," Joanne said dryly.
"I'm being supportive."
"You're being Jake."
Séline rolled one shoulder and looked down at her own hand again. "There's still something missing," she said.
Camille glanced at her sister. "You think dǒu should be better than this."
Séline nodded. "The fighting style tied to a Secret shouldn't be incomplete. If dǒu is real, then it should be the best way to fight with mana." Her brow furrowed. "This is part of it. Not all of it."
Dominic considered that, then let the matter rest. There was no point forcing an answer while standing in the middle of Croak Wood with only scraps of insight and a long road ahead. Some things had to sit in the body before they became real.
So they kept moving.
The next morning, after one more night beneath the shifting groans of the forest, Team Nemean finally saw the edge of Croak Wood. Light opened ahead through the trunks—real open ground. The sight alone changed the team's mood, not relaxed but sharper. The edge of one danger always meant another was waiting.
Then Dominic heard steel—a clash, then another. Not loud enough to be a full battlefield, too regular to be an accident.
He raised one fist at once. The team stopped, weapons came half up.
Dominic listened for a few breaths, then said quietly, "Careful."
Nobody questioned him. Divers killing each other in the dungeon, outside the reach of cameras and surface law, was normal—ugly, but normal. Walking blind into someone else's fight was how people ended up dead or blamed.
So they approached with care. The forest thinned enough for them to see the field outside, and what waited there was not a simple fight.
It was a standoff—a true Mexican standoff, spread across open grass under the pale light of Floor 3.
On the east side stood a team led by a woman in ornate plate armor. Her hair was platinum blonde, bright even from this distance. A crown rested on her head, not decorative but worn with the confidence of someone who had long ago stopped caring whether lesser people found it arrogant. A white cloth was tied across her eyes.
Séline saw her and went still. "No way."
Camille looked over. "You know her."
Séline's voice dropped lower. "That's Jeanne de Valois."
That name hit Emma first, then Alex, then Dominic.
France's strongest diver, one of Europe's Elite Four, and more than that, one of only three known cases in the world where a diver's class had taken the name of a human hero rather than a broad title or combat role.
Jeanne d'Arc.
The woman stood like a saint and a warlord at once, even while blindfolded.
On the west side stood another force, this one led by Yue Ting.
Emma recognized her immediately—China's Taoist Master, the first diver in the modern world to establish stable footing on Floor 3. Yellow talismans floated around her in layered circles, drifting like living wards between attack and prayer. Even standing still, she looked untouchable in a way that made Jake uncomfortable and Joanne deeply interested.
And then there was the third party.
One lone man.
He stood in the middle, caught in a pincer between France and China, and yet somehow he did not look like prey. He was bald, a kashaya hung off him like a cape, and he stood with the quiet calm of someone who used to be surrounded by hostile people.
Alex squinted, then whispered, "Is it me or does that baldy look strangely like Phong?"
That made the whole team focus harder, and once they did, they saw it too. Not exact, not enough to call him Phong by mistake, but the bone structure, the shape of the face, the line of the jaw—there was enough resemblance to make the thought stick. He was more muscular than their farmer, carried himself with more direct dominance, more certainty. But the facial features were close enough that if someone told them they were related, none of them would laugh.
Jake muttered under his breath, "Maybe we're just bad with Asian faces."
Emma did not take her eyes off the field. "Or maybe not."
Dominic studied the scene in silence—Europe's finest on one side, China's finest on the other, one unknown bald monk-looking man in the middle. Whatever this was, rushing in would be stupid.
So he made the only reasonable call. "We watch first."
Team Nemean stayed inside the edge of Croak Wood, hidden by giant trunks and shadow, and waited to see who would move first in the field ahead.
The bald man spoke first. "My, my. France and China all over again." He rolled one shoulder and grinned like this was all a bad joke told just for him. "Just my luck. If there is a US team here for my throat too, I can truly say history has repeated itself."
His voice carried cleanly across the field.
Jeanne de Valois did not sound amused. "You are alone, Mister Trần." Her blindfold did not make her look less imposing—if anything, it made her look more certain. "Hand over the Lín secret and you will be under France's protection."
Yue Ting gave a soft laugh. "Do not listen to her, baldy Vân." The Chinese leader lifted one hand, talismans circling like tame spirits around her. "Asians should trust Asians."
Then she tilted her chin slightly, looking toward Jeanne with open contempt. "Besides, do you really think she has a chance?"
As she said that, a character appeared behind her head, hovering there in golden light, steady and terrible.
Qián – Foresee. No matter your mother tongue, you knew what it meant on the first look, just like with Dǒu. Seemed like it was a shared characteristic across the Nine and their clones.
Emma sucked in a breath. Alex's eyes narrowed at once.
So that was one of the Nine.
Vân looked between them and laughed. "I am all for gender equality." He spread his hands wide. "So ladies, put your faces where I can punch them."
Jake had to bite his lip to stop a sound from escaping. Joanne pressed both hands over her mouth, Jack looked like he was suffering in silence, and Dominic's shoulders shook once.
Alex, on the other hand, looked personally offended. "I refuse," she whispered, "to accept that this weirdo is related to Phong."
That almost broke the rest of them. Almost.
Across the field, the French side reacted badly to Vân's words. Several divers looked ready to rush in out of pure outrage, but Jeanne lifted her lance slightly and stopped them with one motion.
"Stay back," she said. Her tone left no room for pride. "Vân is the most annoying kind of opponent." She turned her blindfolded face slightly, not toward her own people, but toward the air as if she could feel the lines of the battle already. "Other than me and Yue Ting, none of you here can break his defense."
Then she moved—no warning, no count. She charged.
Sword in one hand, lance in the other, Jeanne de Valois crossed the field like a white storm given human form. As she ran, phantoms began to rise around her—French cavalry, old armor, war banners, riders from another age, from the days of Jeanne d'Arc. They did not ride beside her but overlaid on her, layer after layer of history climbing onto her body like a second army made of memory and will. Her outline grew larger, heavier, and yet cleaner. By the fifth step, the movement of one woman sounded like the march of many.
Dominic's eyes widened. "Damn."
Vân, absurdly enough, sounded delighted. "This is chuunibyou as fuck," he announced loudly, "but why not?"
Then he brought both palms together in front of his chest. "Phật Đả Kim Chung."
(Buddha-forged golden bell.)
As he said the name, his praying hands rose from chest to brow, and with that motion a bell of golden mana formed around him. It rose from the ground and sealed around his body, vast, luminous, and solid enough that even from the tree line Team Nemean could feel the pressure in it.
Jeanne hit it the next second.
The bell rang, and the sound tore across the battlefield. Jake doubled over with a curse, Jack grabbed his own head, Dominic went to one knee with his jaw tight. Camille and Séline both flinched hard, Janet looked ready to throw up.
Only Alex, Joanne and Emma stayed mostly steady.
Across the field, France and China's lower divers suffered the same—men and women staggered, clutched their heads, cursed, or dropped to one knee. Yue Ting stood untouched.
Alex forced herself upright and narrowed her eyes. "It's not just defense," she said through the spinning in everyone else's heads. "That bell makes anyone whose main stat isn't intelligence go sick."
Emma nodded once. "A status effect tied to the impact."
Vân took the chance at once, dashing forward out of the golden bell with startling speed, closed fingers held together as if his hand itself were a blade.
"Kim Đỉnh Phật Đăng!"
(Lotus lamp on the golden peak.)
Purple mana surged from him in a sudden burst and formed a spinning lotus lamp in the air. A tiny flame burned at its center, serene and beautiful for exactly one heartbeat, then the lamp spun. Dozens of mana slashes burst from it every second, lancing across the field toward Jeanne in a rain of purple cuts.
The French leader did not retreat. She twirled her lance, and foot soldiers rose from the ground this time, not cavalry—phantom infantry in old French armor rushed ahead and planted their shields into the earth in perfect order. The purple slashes struck them in a storm of sparks and shattered mana, but the spectral line held long enough for Jeanne to keep advancing.
Vân laughed and rushed in too, clearly intending to meet her head-on.
That was when Yue Ting entered—no rush, no shout. She simply stepped in and took control of the sky. One finger pointed forward, and behind her, the Bagua symbol of heaven, Qián, brightened until the air around it trembled. Yellow talismans flared and spread in layered circles. Her voice came calm and severe, like a temple bell at dawn.
"Endless heaven, infinite earth. I command thee. Lend me thy dao."
Lightning fell—not one bolt, but rain. The whole field flashed white as streak after streak of lightning bombarded the golden bell around Vân. Each hit rang it again, each strike forced it lower. The ground under him cracked, then cratered, then gave out completely as the barrage drove him down.
The bell held—barely—but Vân still crashed into the dirt hard enough to throw up dust and broken turf.
Yue Ting stepped onto the air itself. Not metaphor—she simply stood there above him, robes and talismans stirring in the aftermath of her own spell, eyes fixed downward with cool disdain.
"Taoism against Buddhism," she said. "Let us see which is truly superior."