Torn between worry and relief, Sláine noted that this hallway was also bereft of the structural markers signaling the tunnel mite's influence. When she voiced that thought, Red - as usual - had her own commentary.

"Could be they haven't gotten around to building here yet. Or..."

"Or?"

Red clicked her tongue. "There's something else competing with them."

They found that something else in the first room they came across, long and rectangular with channel of water cutting through the middle. Once it must have been a freely flowing canal, but now it lay stagnant, corpses floating in a putrid off-color liquid. Rodents, mostly. Grey mice and normal-sized rats.

Hearing a splash, Sláine stopped in the doorway to touch her markings.

[ Inspect ] -> [ Water ]

[ Polluted water teeming with bacteria, microbes, and disease. The favored habitat of toxic slimes and jellies. ]

"...What the fuck is a microbe?"

"Oh honey."

Suddenly, Sláine became conscious that Red still had a firm grip on her hand. Would it be safe to pull away? Red didn't seem to notice her awkwardness, instead pointing and murmuring, "Look there."

She'd never have seen it were it not for the slight ripples and its faint sheen in the dim, omnipresent light. It was small, rounded, and took on the same murky color of the water around it.

Its body glooped forward, absorbing one of the dead mice before settling in to digest.

[ Inspect ] -> [ Jelly??? ]

[ Sewer Slime ~ Servant of the Rotting Swarm. A gelatinous construct whose entire body is essentially its digestive system. When it reaches a certain mass, it divides into two separate slimes. ]

"Well then," Sláine said. "How do you even kill that? Stomp on it?"

"I wouldn't; that'd totally ruin your shoes. Watch this."

Finally (and blessedly) releasing Sláine's hand, Red crept to the other end of the chamber, peering around a bend before approaching the edge of the channel. With a flick of her finger, Red summoned up a thin sheet of shadow, broken up into segments like a comb that stretched across the waterway.

It followed her as she walked back across the room, and Sláine watched the shadow scoop up each slime it touched and, with a rhythmic plop, contract in on itself. Sticky strings of slime spaghetti squeezed through small holes in the shadowy orbs before the darkness fell and reformed itself.

Like a potato masher, Sláine thought.

As Red did her... Red thing, Sláine leaned against the wall and tried to entertain herself.

[ Inspect ] -> [ Floor ]

[ It appears to be a plain stone floor. ]

[ Inspect -> [ Wall ]

[ It appears to be a plain stone wall. However, you get the sense that something seems a little… off. ]

[ Congratulations, Detection has reached Level 2! Be careful around here; if you’re getting experience in that, it means there’s hidden things around. ]

…Maybe it’d be best not to lean against it, then.

“Hey Red,” Sláine called, joining the woman just as another slime bubble popped. “Aria said there’s something weird about this room.”

“Not surprised. The Rotting Swarm loves places with secret nooks. I’ll scout around.”

Sláine watched her finish up, the leftover half-rotting corpse pile bobbing gently at the near side of the hall. “That was effective. Disgusting, but effective.”

"Better than doing it by hand! Those were little guys though; babies. Can't do that with the bigger ones."

Huh. “Are they scavengers, then?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Red approached the wall then, studying it before experimentally patting various spots on the stone. “Mm, not by a technical definition. When they’re young, they poison the water they're in, killing anything that tries to drink from it. Bigger slimes...” She rapped lightly with her knuckles. "Will absorb their prey and digest it whole.”

Another rap-tap, then an awful grind filled the room, stone passing across stone as a passage opened before her.

"Aha!" She exclaimed, then stuck her head inside.

Not questioning her wisdom, Sláine followed along behind. There wasn't much to see, the narrow hallway terminating sharply after just few feet, but nestled at the end was squat wooden box with a rusty metal padlock. Red crouched before it.

“The hell?” Sláine asked, and Red turned her head this way and that before prodding at the strange container.

“Treasure chest. You find ‘em hidden away in various spots around dungeons.”

“What, seriously? That’s stupid. If the point of a dungeon is to kill adventurers, why would the Fears put valuables inside? Especially in…” Sláine gestured. “Weird little boxes?”

Red chuckled. "That’s a good question. Think about it for a second — what is the motive of the Fears? No — of any System?"

"To... create a world that functions how it thinks it ought to?"

"Right. And because every System has a different idea of how the world's supposed to be, there's always some level of inherent conflict."

And out of conflict, wars are born. Sláine understood all that. But — "How’s that relevant?”

"I'm getting there! Such impatience."

"I value directness."

Red snorted then, her horridly colored hair bouncing as she shook her head. “While some people have different names for 'em, what we call the Fears all generally believe that because emotion shapes reality and fear is the strongest emotion, we all oughta just give up and live in terror-town, right? Become that which eats you so you don't get eaten yourself?"

"Yes," Sláine replied, distaste etched into her tone. "And so, their legions wage constant war against the rest of polite society, who then must figure out ways to fight them back. Etcetera etcetera. Is that what this is about? How Arpege has used 'dungeons' to contain the spread of the Fears in their land?"

"You're on the right track! See, when you actually put your mind to it, you're actually pretty quick on the uptake, buttercup."

Sláine sighed as aggressively as she could. "Get on with it."

"So." Red shifted her position, leaning her back against the chest and crossing her arms behind her head. "Imagine a river. It'd be impossible to stop that river flowing just by getting a village together and having them attack it with buckets, right?"

Sláine nodded.

"You can’t build a dam yet, but you can make something that can limit how much water is coming through at once. Like, uh, a nozzle. Now instead of a huge flowing river, you've got a much faster but narrower jet of water coming out of a small hole. Are you following me so far?"

"Wait," Sláine replied. "Wouldn't such a device simply cause the river to flood, especially when there are heavy rains?

"I — Look, I don't know shit about water. Let's pretend that doesn’t happen, alright? Point is, imagine your water is somehow condensed to a smaller jet with more force to it. Now picture that you've got a person who can, um. Magically absorb water and take care of it all by standing in front of the jet."

"...Why couldn't that person have just stood in the river?"

"Because they couldn't deal with that much at once! Crimmeny! Stop criticizing my analogy."

"But it's a functionally inappropriate — "

"Anyway,” Red interrupted, her tone brokering no argument. “These people — adventurers — can absorb jets of water but not entire rivers because that's just how it works. And the Protocols are the ones who put the nozzle in place and keep it working. If you have enough adventurers, you can keep switching people out when they get tired and ta-da! River gone!"

"But what happens to the water they've consumed...?"

"They vomit it into the Protocols. Now," Red waved her hand, as if to signify everything she'd just laid out wasn't allowed to be picked at anymore. "The water wants the adventurers to fuck up and make a mistake. Sure, it could just make more water, meaning that it comes out with more force and overwhelming people, but... what are other ways?"

Sláine stared at her.

"...Make the adventurers want to overextend themselves! People will take risks if the potential reward is good. The shiny prize makes them wanna push their limits, and... pop! Goodbye, adventurer."

"...What, this was all to illustrate the temptations of greed? You could have just said that!"

"My explanation gave everything context!"

"Whatever,” Sláine grumbled, then switched tracks. “We didn't put ourselves in harm's way to find this thing, though. You just… did."

"That's because I have [ Specialist ] skills. Glory to the thieves of dungeons and all that! It could have gone pretty badly otherwise."

Sláine sighed, leaning against the wall and looking down at the chest. "So basically, dungeons have chests in them to act as lures, and humanity collectively decided screw that, we're going to figure out how to steal it anyway?"

"Yep! Though, it’s always possible to make a mistake. Getting incapacitated by a mishandled trap or having a giant monster summoned to your location... there's little fear more potent than of success suddenly flipping to failure, isn’t there?"

"Huh." A pause. "Well, as gripping as that all was, are you gonna open that?"

"This?" Red rapped the lid of the box with her knuckles. "’Cuz it’s trapped too, and I don't think I can safely disarm it. Keeping all my limbs is kind of a priority."

"...Putting theory into practice, huh? Hm." Sláine contemplated it. "Why can't I do it?"

"Eh?"

"Open it for us. I'm strong. I can probably take it."

"As much as I'd love to see you soak up a whole-ass explosion, you need special [ Skills ] to crack one of these bad boys."

Sláine opened her mouth, about to say there was one she could acquire exactly for this purpose — [ Trap Breaker ] — but for once she decided to make a responsible decision and not just solve all her problems with her halberd.

Instead, she mused, "There are other benefits for the fears. Like, making two people argue what to do about a chest for so long that a monster comes along and surprises them."

As if sensing a dramatically appropriate opportunity, Red and Sláine both heard a sound resonate through the prior chamber.

Glub, glub.

"Oh," Red said. "Fuck."

>> Curse yourself and your big damn mouth