ding

Skill [Detach] advanced to level 2

Skill [Accelerated Healing] advanced to level 3

I winced again as I experimented with my new spells. At least the constant self-harming was going to boost my health skills. Perhaps with [Survivor 2] I could eventually boost my health and recovery high enough to use my new spells with impunity, but right now these small-scale experiments were all I felt comfortable with.

The clean-up seemed to be going well, and now a couple of [Spatial Archmage] elves had shown up and were working to restore the portals. I watched the process with interest, finally finding out at least a part of why they cost so much to operate; the portals the elves created were small, not even large enough to walk through upright, and they needed to be enlarged by some sort of process that involved copious amounts of high-level monster cores in order to fit the standardised containers. Very high level; they were all a minimum of level fifty. I wasn't sure why they didn't just use smaller containers, but given that I'd seen whole corpses back in the Emerald Nest, presumably they wanted to be able to ship them prior to disassembly.

That implied that a pedestrian network with smaller portals should be easy enough to set up. I wonder why they didn't? Perhaps the core-powered process was also required to make the portals permanent. Or maybe they gradually shrunk over time and needed the occasional monster core top-up.

In any case, it wasn't long before we had connections back to Synklisi and the Emerald Nest, as well as wherever the other portals went, presumably other original settlements or maybe newer dwarven outposts. The delvers who had no further work to do started drifting through, but I wasn't sure what to do myself; I wasn't helping with the clean-up, but neither had the dead reappeared, and even though Erryn could talk to anyone, chances were good that she'd use me. Should I hang around just in case, or make my way home? If I did hang around, how long for? I couldn't wait forever.

I decided to go home. With my level-up of [Detach] my maximum link count had increased to two, so I could leave a teleport point here and still be able to experiment with the skill back in the village. If Erryn did send me a message, I could be back here soon enough. If it was urgent, she could tell the relevant party herself.

I left a lump of toe in the middle of the floor, fired off [Shelter] to hide it, which thankfully didn't have a constant mana drain when used in that way, and joined the queue for the Emerald Nest, limping slightly on my suddenly painful foot.

"You're in the wrong queue," came a female voice from behind me. I double checked, but yes, this was certainly the Emerald Nest portal. Then it occurred to me whose voice it had been, and I decided I should pay attention.

"Which queue should I be in then?" I asked Tilyana, who was watching me with her usual smile.

"Not all the earth mother's children are as independent as we. Her continued silence concerns them greatly."

I wondered if talking to Tilyana for any length of time would give me mental stat boosts? What other children? Only one option sprung to mind. "The slime?"

"And others of the first dungeon," she agreed, nodding. The first dungeon? I suppose that was a logical name for it, if it was where Erryn was born, but I'd not heard it referred to as that before.

"You think I should return to Synklisi? Why? Can't they just ask what's going on at the guild?"

"You and they are more alike than they and us. You can see what it is they see, which we cannot. They will need your help to weather their coming storm."

That slime did say something about wanting to talk to me because my mind hadn't been messed with. Would they trust information about Erryn coming from me more than coming from the guild? I didn't really see why, but Tilyana had proven her ability to know things she shouldn't know, and I didn't mind making a side trip on my way home, just in case. I joined the Synklisi queue, contemplating another visit to that slime, and hoping I would once again get away intact.

Tilyana herself wandered back out of the portal room, apparently having turned up solely to shift me from one queue to another, and at exactly the right time to do so too. If I thought [Mana Perception] did strange things to my brain, whatever were her skills doing? Was that why she was always so mysterious? She was on some sort of permanent System-fuelled psychedelic drug trip?

It didn't take long to get to the front of the queue, and I stepped through into Synklisi. On the other side, someone immediately came running up to ask who I was, why I was with the delvers, why I was unaccompanied, and where my guardians were... Dammit, couldn't they drop that rule for two seconds?! This whole situation was kinda the definition of special circumstances! I explained that I was a delver, rank three even, that I'd rushed through as reinforcements for the Emerald Caverns and was just returning, and that I was booked into a dorm at the delvers' guild with my guardians, which he was welcome to check. Thankfully, that somewhat mollified him.

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I didn't actually know where Vyre and his squad were. They hadn't been in the portal room waiting, so must have been out helping the clean-up somewhere. Maybe sniffing out buried dwarfs under the rubble or something. I kinda hoped they'd catch up, or I was going to have trouble getting back home from here...

I briefly concentrated on my abandoned lump of toe, and found I could still get a feel around it with [Mana Perception], despite the distance and the fact it was hidden with [Shelter]. And the fact that it was a lump of toe. Yup, these skills were strange.

Stepping out into the street, I could see a commotion outside the delvers' guild. The doors were closed, and a group of delvers were hanging around outside. In the presence of the great dungeon, my [Mana Perception] was once again useless, but after getting close enough, [Soul Perception] showed a very familiar spherically shaped soul present inside the building. The slime was on the surface again. Tilyana's insight had proven accurate once more.

With the door being closed, I detached a hand and tossed it through an open window before firing [Redistribute], my new spells proving useful already. By the time I had eyesight, I saw the slime staring down at me, along with a couple of random guild officials. One of them looked like the guy I'd met back in Dawnhold. Simeon, I think his name was.

"...What the?" he asked, not elaborating any further.

"Tilyana asked me to come," I answered once my mouth was fully indoors, still sprawled on the floor while my legs finished transferring. I wonder what the people outside made of this trick, watching a random pair of legs standing upright and dwindling away to nothing. Ah, no, not upright. A sudden bump on my knee informed me that one of them had fallen over. I really should lie down before using this skill.

"That's really not the problem here," he continued, cradling his face in one hand.

"Peter!" exclaimed the slime possibly known as Liv, finally snapping out of her stupor.

"Hi... Liv?" I said, torn between using her most recent name as a question or a greeting.

"Yes, that's me," she answered happily. "What happened to Mother! These people don't know!"

ding

Skill [Redistribute] advanced to level 2

Cool, at least my spells were advancing faster than [Analysis]. Perhaps that was the levelling bonus from the class. Or the fact that I was using them for things that were actually important...

I pulled myself upright out of my undignified heap and took a proper look around. Well, I trusted in Tilyana for my class, so I may as well do so again, and tell her exactly what happened. "There were corrupted soul remnants in the Emerald Caverns' dungeon."

Liv's eyes opened wide, while Simeon and the other guild official took on the unfocused look of people not permitted to understand the information. "But Mother purified them all more than half a millennium ago! How can they be back? Is she okay?!" exclaimed Liv.

Wait, Liv knew what they were? They'd been around before? "Erryn seemed pretty out of it while they were around, but she woke up enough to have us destroy the dungeon core. Once we were done she seemed much better, but then she went silent after taking all the corpses somewhere."

"Corpses? People died? And it was bad enough to need to destroy the core? Bad enough that she couldn't destroy the core herself? Wait..." Liv did her shrinking trick again, her slime shivering slightly. I couldn't say I was an expert at reading sentient slime emotions, but Liv didn't exactly make things difficult, and I was pretty sure she was scared. "Then those remnants were... I know what she's doing! We have to stop her!"

Grabbing me by the wrist again, she turned around and dragged me out of the building, leaving the two guild officials standing around in a blank daze. Goodness knows what their memories would look like when they came back to their senses, but Liv seemed to think whatever was going on was important, so I could worry about those two some other time. Or maybe never. Hopefully, they wouldn't even remember that I'd been there.

Liv burst through the front doors, ignoring the wide-eyed spectators, and pulling me back towards the dungeon. The guards immediately locked on to us, but Liv didn't even try to smuggle me past them this time. "Wait here! I'll be back in a couple of minutes."

I watched her running to the teleporters in confusion. We weren't going into the dungeon? She was just stopping to pick something up? One guard asked what was going on, but at this point I was as clueless as them. The best I could do was to inform them that Liv wanted to help the earth mother, and seemed to have some sort of plan.

The other guard started screaming. The two of us looked over to see what was going on, only to see an absolutely massive wolf, taller than I was, covered in white fur that looked far too bright given the lighting, with fangs that looked like they belonged on a sabretooth tiger and four glowing pink eyes. Liv was sitting on top, stroking its head.

Somehow, I felt that the situation was running away from me here. I hadn't the foggiest what was going on anymore, and while I kinda trusted Tilyana and her magical knowledge, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to let myself be blindly pulled along by Liv. Not that I got any say in the matter; as the wolf charged towards us, she extended an arm and scooped me up as they passed.

"This is Zephyr," she said as the wolf sprinted down the main street, both of them ignoring the shouting delvers and screaming civilians. "He invented bosses, you know. Who's a good boy!" she added, while scritching at Zephyr's ear. He barked happily in response.

There was no response I could possibly make to that, so I decided to switch subject to something more important. "What's going on? Where are we going?"

"To stop mother!" exclaimed Liv, snapping back to serious mode. "And the mana up here is a bit thin for poor Zephyr. You can do something about that, right?"

"To stop her what?" I asked yet again, hoping if I repeated the question enough I would eventually get a straight answer, while using [Expert Mana Control] to boost the mana density around us. I had to hand it to the wolf-monster thing; he was fast.

Zephyr, Lumenfang, level 20

Not exactly high level compared to Liv, or even compared to the monsters I'd seen in the Emerald Caverns, but still higher than anything in Dawnhold. He'd already made it out of the city, where he'd turned towards a distant mountain. I had no idea what was there. I didn't even know what direction we were running in, although between [Clock] and the position of the sun in the sky it seemed to be somewhere northwards.

"To stop her from killing herself!"

Well... I couldn't get a much straighter answer than that...