“Okay,” Josh said, as his laughter died down. He wiped tears from his eyes. “Okay. Woo. Right.” He coughed, gathered himself, and nodded. “Monsters spread the Jungle, even underground. But there still seem to be an awful lot of monsters down here.” He looked at Beor. “I thought delvers were normally safe?”

Beor shrugged.

“Strong and silent only gets you so far, friend,” Josh said dryly. “Going to need a real answer here.”

Beor paused a long moment. “Monsters supposed to be rare,” he said at last. “Delvers don't need guards. Sometimes need to fight, but no guards.”

Josh nodded. “That's what I thought.” He pointed to the moles. “Those, though, are a bit too much for a handful or unguarded delvers to deal with.” Sure, their group had handled them easily enough, but they were ready for them. Delvers would be busy gathering materials, or mining, or mapping the tunnels. “Do we think something's up?”

Ruth leaned on her hammer. “Isn't that why we came this way? I thought we were deliberately hunting monsters.”

“We are,” Josh said. The delvers had mentioned worms down here, and they had been avoiding the area. “Just didn't think it would be a problem this big, did I?”

“The question remains, where did the monsters come from?” Darius asked. He waved at the moles. “These are not freshly Jungle-touched. They were not normal creatures that were living here and were corrupted. They had to come here from somewhere else.”

“But if they came from the direction of the pit, someone likely would have seen them,” Josh said. That was hardly guaranteed, but the pit was pretty active. He felt confident that any monster would be spotted. It wasn't as though monsters made any attempt to hide, anyway.

“So... another entrance,” Ruth said. She looked the other direction. West, away from the pit. “Seems simple enough.”

“Except it doesn't make sense.” Darius suddenly looked supremely annoyed, as though he had been enjoying a game of checkers and then someone told him it was actually chess. “The pit goes down deep. Deeper than the Jungle could possibly have reached anywhere else. There's nowhere else monsters could have come from.”

“Hey, hey,” Josh said, holding up his hands for calm. “It doesn't have to be something crazy. Maybe the monsters did come from the pit, and nobody noticed. Or maybe they're just from the early days, before people settled here, and they were wandering around underground.”

Beor shook his head.

Ruth smiled at him. “Something to add?” She sounded genuinely curious, which was probably better than what Josh could have managed. It was definitely better than what Darius could have managed.

Beor hesitated, then nodded. “Tunnels new.” He shrugged. “New-ish. They weren't here when the place was settled, a few years back. The tunnels broke through into the pit recently.” He shrugged again. “Sort of recently.”

Josh felt something cold in his gut as he processed exactly what the man had just said. “Wait. The pit didn't have any tunnels branching out from it in the early days? It was just a straight shot down with smooth walls?”

Beor nodded.

“The monsters only broke into the pit after people started delving down here. In other words, when there were enough humans around to make it worth the effort.”

Beor nodded.

Josh turned to Darius. They both had grim expressions on their faces.

“There is definitely a source of monsters down here,” Darius said. His eyes were hard. “I've looked over the reports. Delver deaths have increased, but the time span is too short to make any firm statements on an actual trend. Still, we should try to shut it down.”

“Any idea on the source?”

Darius shook his head. “I can't imagine. Everything we know about the Jungle tells us that the mana should only exist on the surface, where humans dwell. It can sink below ground, but only with difficulty. The pit is one of the rare exceptions, and I'm quite sure that's because it's so wide open.”

“Well, what could it be?” Ruth asked. “As far as I know, monsters only come from three places.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “They're corrupted by the Jungle's magic, they're born from other monsters, or they fall out of dungeons.” She thought for a moment, wiggling her fingers. “Or some crazies start up a lab to breed them, but I guess that's more of the first two.”

Josh grinned. “You seen many mad science labs?” he asked jokingly.

“Eight,” she said, not at all jokingly. She gave him a level stare. “Dad liked to personally lead the teams that burned those places out.”

“Okay...” he said slowly. “And he brought you with him on those little hunts?”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Some bitterness leaked into her face. Josh didn't like seeing it. Ruth was usually endlessly cheerful at all times. “No, of course not.” Her smile was very bitter. “Can't risk any harm to his precious little girl!”

Beor cocked his head, as if he wanted to ask something, but he remained silent.

“Wouldn't that be our luck,” Darius muttered. “We run halfway across the world away from the City, and we find some cackling Slaver or Necromancer or whatever doing mad science experiments.”

Josh couldn't help it. He snorted in disbelief. “This is not halfway across the world.”

“That's your problem with what I just said?”

Ruth sighed. “Look, I think we might all be a little on edge right now. Josh, do you have the mana for another Stonesense? Just to make sure we're heading in the right direction.”

Josh sighed. “Yeah, sure. I'll take a longer look this time.” He had plenty of runestones on him, so he had no problem crushing another to give him the boost. “I'd really appreciate it if you could figure out how to make more magic items,” he added. “I'd like to have a bigger mana pool.”

She shrugged helplessly. It was going to be much harder without an actual [Crafter] class, even though she technically still had all the necessary skills. Besides, Josh wasn't sure if the items he wanted could be made purely with runes anyway. They might need another class, one that used different types of magic creation, to do it. Infusion magic, like how Darius made his shroud focuses, was likely a key component.

Well, another reason to look into those unclassed kids. And another reason to look for more bloodstones.

Once Josh extended his Stonesense Aura, he could feel the entire network of tunnels. Most of them extended below, which he noted, but ignored for the moment. There were a few more tunnels above, but not many. It seemed they were at the top of the tunnel network, such as it was. He could even feel more tunnels being dug, clearly the result of more monsters. Some of those tunnels would end up permanent, but most would collapse, or even be filled in by other monsters. If every underground monster left behind a permanent tunnel, this entire region would have collapsed into a sinkhole years ago.

He focused his sense upwards first, past the tunnels. There were more air pockets, places where the ground had been folded like clams around pearls. Some of those pockets were tiny, but Josh wasn't worried. Bloodstones were pretty hard to destroy by accident. He doubted the Eight unleashing their full power on the region would have so much as cracked one.

Of course, that didn't mean that there actually were any bloodstones in those little time capsules. Even in the Old World, people didn't just casually walk around with a handful of unique bloodstones in their pockets. Among other things, bloodstones attracted monsters. Best to leave them safe behind town walls.

The problem was, all those towns had been overrun, all those walls broken. Monsters had rampaged throughout the world and eaten every human and every bloodstone they could find. By the time the Eight had realized they needed to start searching the ruins for treasure, it was already too late. There was nothing left to find. The Jungle was always hungry.

Of course, that's what he had thought before he found a unique bloodstone in the middle of the Jungle. That changed his expectations more than a little.

“Here,” he said, pointing directly above him. “Just a couple feet up.” He pointed to another spot on the stone a few feet away. “There, but farther up.” He pointed out two more places.

Ruth, finally getting the hint, used her gravity reversal rune-chain to flip onto the ceiling and mark the targets in chalk. She even asked him for exact measurements, which she then wrote down dutifully. That was helpful.

Beor blinked when Ruth landed on the ceiling. Other than that, he didn't comment. Josh didn't know if he should be worried about the man or not. On the one hand, not having the new guy constantly asking questions was nice. On the other hand, Beor's last boss had been completely blindsided when someone offered a better deal.

Josh made a mental note to try to figure out exactly what Beor wanted, and what he thought of what was going on.

Ruth broke into two of the pockets Josh had detected by the time the buff from his runestone lapsed, and he had to drop his Stonesense Aura. The first, the bigger one, dropped a car onto the ground of the tunnel with a crash like a falling building and a choking cloud of dust. It filled the entire tunnel, to the point that they had to crawl around it.

At first, Josh was ecstatic with the find. Surely, if anything would have a bloodstone, it would be an old car. There was even a corpse in the driver's seat. All of them ignored it—even Ruth, for all her complaints about being sheltered, had seen plenty of bodies in the Jungle—and searched through the seats and boot.

They found almost a thousand dollars in practically worthless Old World currency, a few dozen Tower tokens which were decent collector items but otherwise worthless, and a bunch of ancient supplies. The water bottles were probably still good, but Josh wouldn't trust any of the rations. Even the water wasn't worth dragging up out of the pit.

Beor pushed the car out of the way and into a bigger chamber while Ruth continued working. Beor had actually put points into Strength, unlike Josh and Darius. Besides, the car's wheels still turned well enough.

The second pocket rained down some dust and a dried up bush. Josh and Darius stared at it as it bounced on the ground. The light from Ruth's helmet on the ceiling made the shadows play oddly.

“That's a sharp start, that's true,” Josh said dryly.

Darius sighed. “If you were expecting to strike gold on our first day, then I think you will be inevitably disappointed.”

“Didn't want to strike gold, wanted to strike red.” Josh sighed. “But yeah, no use mucking about. Knew this was unlikely from the start. Even before the monsters showed up.” He made a face. “There are a couple tunnels leading up. You think the monsters found the stones already? Can they sense things through rock?”

“They can certainly sense something. They would be digging blind otherwise, and I suspect that these tunnels would be even more of a mess than they already are.” Darius shrugged. “However, as to whether they can sense bloodstones, I don't know. I don't believe that there is even a solid theory on how monsters sense bloodstones.”

“Always assumed they smelled 'em.”

“Perhaps.”