In hindsight, Josh thought that maybe jumping into an underground river wasn't the best idea.

He knew that it had to lead somewhere. The people who built the refuge wouldn't want a river flowing through their little stronghold unless they knew where both ends went. Though there was the possibility that they had put a gate on it somewhere downstream, he suspected they'd want to avoid impacting the local ecosystem any more than they already had. He would have free passage until the end of the line.

He was right, mostly. The tunnel didn't have any gates or grates or even sharp rocks. It was even big enough for him—and he was a big guy. He suspected it had been widened some time in the past. But it was still dark, his mind was still on fire, and he could hardly summon the intelligence to lift his head above the water every once in a while to get a new breath. The elf struggled in his grip. Josh refused to allow him to escape. It was the only other thought in his head. If he escaped, Josh was dead.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Josh was dumped out into another large cavern. This one had a massive underground pool, a reservoir for all the water rushing in from above. It was about the size of a football field, well-lit with luminescent mosses and fungi. Josh recognized the touch of someone with an Herbalist-type class. They had carefully selected and cultivated their seeds eighty years ago or more, and everything had just continued growing ever since.

Josh managed to push through the pain in his mind long enough to swim to the shore, still clutching the elf. The lake was deep, and he could see drainage grates at the edge. However the builders had engineered this system, they had clearly decided that this was enough water, and any more could safely wash back into the ecosystem. Josh was hardly an expert, but this could probably keep the entire City hydrated for a decent amount of time.

When he climbed up onto the stone shore, he found that there wasn't really anything else in the cavern. A few crates, but nowhere near as many as were up above.

He pushed that aside and checked Mizuno. He had stopped struggling, and Josh threw him onto his back onto the stony bank. His eyes were wide, his skin pale, and he wasn't breathing. He looked shocked at what had happened to him.

Josh groaned and fell over. The elf was dead. Shrouds didn't protect against drowning, and his physical stats clearly hadn't been up to the task of fighting both Josh and the water at the same time. He hated killing people, but this was hardly his first time. And he had no doubt that Mizuno deserved it.

Red mist did not rise out of Mizuno's corpse. Josh wouldn't gain any experience for murking him. That was the way of things. Humans received experience for killing monsters, monsters received experience for killing humans. He had thought that perhaps Mizuno was lying, that he was some sort of strange monster... but no. He was human. Or close enough, at least.

Still nursing his headache, Josh rose to his feet, his clothes dripping water from the lake. He patted down the elf's corpse, and was surprised by what he found. There was the shroud focus of course, likely better than the one he already had. But everything else Mizuno was wearing was also magical. As he stripped them off, he found that they all had runes stitched into their seams or inscribed onto small leather armor pieces sewn into the clothes.

He used his Identify skill on them. He didn't receive much information—his skill wasn't high enough rank to learn anything specific—but he confirmed that they were magical equipment, with level requirements and everything. That meant they weren't just made with rune magic, but also infusion magic. They'd be powerful, and maybe Ruth could learn some new runes.

There was a strange bracer with a number of burned-out gemstones. It had clearly been magical, but now it didn't register as anything. That happened sometimes. Josh wondered what it had been for a moment. Some sort of protective item that had been overwhelmed? Something else entirely?

Josh changed out of his own clothes into the new ones, then put his wooden armor back on over the top. The clothes wouldn't provide him any benefits until he infused his mana into them, and he couldn't do that while still suffering manaburn. Still, there was nowhere else to store them.

The irony was that Mizuno had an enchanted ring that Josh thought might be a storage artifact. Unfortunately, he couldn't use it yet, not until his mana had recovered. That would definitely be his first priority.

He went over to the crates. A quick glance through one told him they were mostly filled with water purification and testing equipment. He dried off his new clothes as he searched through them.

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Nothing was magical. This far away from the mana of the Jungle, nothing would have lasted long without a human putting their own mana into them constantly. Clearly, whoever had built this place had done their research, because there weren't even unpowered magic items. Everything here was pure technology and non-magical chemistry.

On the one hand, that was a good thing, because a water elemental would have definitely condensed in the lake by now if there was enough magic for it. On the other hand, he wouldn't have this pounding manaburn headache, because he would have recovered already. Oh, and now his missing fingers were throbbing too. That was just great. It was probably because they were warming up from the cold water.

There were more tunnel exits from this chamber. He even found a map on the wall which was most of the ways legible. The first thing he did was confirm that there wasn't a direct route from the first chamber down to here. There were a bunch of residential caverns and more storage areas in the way.

He was staggered by the scale of this place. There were dozens of chambers, each big enough to hold at least a few dozen people. Even with high-level advanced classes to dig the place out, surely someone would have noticed this amount of construction. He knew that things had been mad at the end, but this was just impossible. As far as he could tell, the place hadn't ever even been used. There were no signs of habitation, and the only opened boxes were the ones he had looked at.

This whole thing was too confusing, and his head hurt too much to think about it. He could understand how the place was empty. The entire world had died, it wasn't a surprise that something had gone wrong and no one had managed to get to their safe haven.

He hadn't been there at the end, but he had heard more than enough. By the end, every community and city was hunkered down, trying to weather the storm of monsters and the hungry, hungry Jungle. Hordes of low-level monsters had swept over villages, breaking through defenses by sheer weight of numbers. Draconic monsters—not the true dragons like Flamebreak—had been too strong for anyone to handle, and had killed every hero and champion that tried to protect anyone.

The world had drowned. That was what the elf hadn't seemed to understand. The world had drowned. It already had died. When the Eight Immortals defeated the Tower, it burned up most of the magic of the world. Even eighty years later, it still hadn't recovered to the same level as it had been at the Fall.

This was why they had managed to survive so long with one City and eight classes. During the Fall, the base level of monsters had been sixty. Any newborn monster would breathe in the mana of the world and reach that level within a year. Then they didn't reset with the solstice, meaning soon every monster in the world was level sixty at minimum. They only got stronger by killing humans.

When the magic levels dropped, many of the high-level monsters killed each other over territory, as they were wont to do. Except since their replacements were limited to the weaker magic, they were at a far lower level. And of course the Eight had spent the first few years burning out every monster nest within spitting distance of the City to make sure that there was nothing too dangerous around nearby. Now they traveled around the world, killing off any especially powerful monsters that were still alive.

Josh rubbed his head with both hands. He needed to focus. He was tired, his brain was on fire, and he needed to get out of here.

From the map, he could see that there were multiple exits from the cave complex. Most were easier to get to than the one he had been dragged into. That one was labeled “First Mine Entrance,” answering a few questions. Most of the rest seemed to be new exits carved by Mages with earth powers. Maybe Champion Geo Wizards. Those boys could move loads of rock with the precision needed to dig stable tunnels.

The problem was, most of the other tunnels led away from the village. Josh wanted to get up there as soon as possible. Had Mizuno been telling the truth? Had the elf been killing the entire town, just in case he had mentioned the dragon to them?

He rubbed his forehead again. Everything about that sentence annoyed him on an existential level. Since when were elves real? And Josh was a dwarf, apparently? Except that might be a racial slur?

Mizuno had also mentioned more worlds. That seemed more important than some lad with pointy ears.

He had far too many questions that he did not have time to answer right now. His first priority needed to be to just get up to the surface, breathe in some mana, and finally be able to think again. Then he could save the town.

At least he knew where his friends would be. Ruth wouldn't let them run away if there was any chance of saving anyone. Not that Josh expected Mary or Darius to actually try to run. Mary was always up for helping if it involved blowing up monsters, and Darius hid a good heart under his prickly exterior.

Josh double-checked the map, found the correct tunnel, and started jogging up it. He winced as the increased pace made it feel like his brain was bouncing around inside his skull. He just needed to get up there as soon as possible.

Everything would be fine.