Nine miles further north in the Esper mountain foothills...
“Ye’ll have to forgive me, lass, but that looks a wee bit ominous,” the Mick pointed out solemnly.
We’d killed every spawn within a half-mile of the hive with extreme prejudice, making sure none of the olthoi that had and might spawn upon them would be coming to the relief of the bulbous mass of the new hive sitting on the side of the mountain here.
There hadn’t been any olthoi among those Summons near this hive.
It was covered with veins of purple-red that looked pretty out of place for an olthoi hive, which tended to the black and greenish-yellow kind of hues. The ground around and before it for hundreds of meters was strewn with crystals, stones, and sands of the same hue, pushed and piled up outside the entry like mine tailings.
I eyed the Rose of Celdon on my finger. The color was remarkably similar.
The Mick and Scouts noticed my gesture. “Harlune found something, and the olthoi bit off something a mite extra when they went in after it?” Rogar asked calmly, staring at the main tunnel to the place. It didn’t even have any olthoi milling about the entryway, and didn’t look meticulously maintained like it should, somehow ragged and coarse… and there were none of the mushroom and other fungi growths about which the olthoi encouraged.
“Kopf, up with me. Olthoi tunnels formation.” The lugian Royal Guard, on indefinite loan for his services and happy to engage in Prismatic harvesting, had his Axe Lapis flipped around to use the Hammer side of its head, now gleaming with the toxic green hue of Olthoi Slayer underneath the hard white of its Soulfire Enhancements.
He was definitely looking to earn himself some Lost Light, but that was for the future. He stepped up with the Mick to take center lead together.
Olthoi tunnels averaged five to ten feet wide, depending on their primacy, and the winding nature of them with so many turn-offs meant it was easy to be swarmed from multiple directions if you were unwary. That meant a true exploration had to include the side tunnels, chamber by chamber, plotting things out, and blocking off pathways that looped back and connected to other chambers.
Nobody was worried about being trapped anywhere with me there. I could open a pathway through the stone with minimal effort and great speed, making it impossible for us to be buried or pinned in place, as well as easily capable of blocking off olthoi reinforcements.
Our local Markspace map was up, and I had Physical, Acid, and belatedly Fire Protections and Resistances up on everyone as we headed in, to see what there was to see.
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Olthoi with red crystals growing out of them like spikes and breathing fire instead of acid were not among what we’d been expecting, and they were zealously aggressive in charging at us and trying to kill the intruders to the hive.
None of them were Summons, either, which was heartening, as it meant we didn’t have to watch for respawns as their glittering carapaces were cracked, shattered, and pierced through. The burning stuff that had replaced their acidic blood flamed on contact with the air as it fell to the gritty, sandy floor of purple-red sands.
The normal olthoi ecology of slime, goo, and resin seemed to have been replaced by jutting stands of sometimes-sharp quartz crystals placed here, there, and everywhere, easy to get caught on and eager to cut any exposed skin not at least as tough as leather. Mass Barkskin was used to reinforce everyone’s hide, although that didn’t stop the crystals from scraping loudly on armor, sometimes actually igniting for a few minutes after they did so.
Side chambers had olthoi chipping away mindlessly at the stone, their pedipalps all tipped with ruby-hued crystals. They seemed to be ingesting the stone and carrying it away internally… but we hadn’t seen any going outside to deposit their loads, so where were they dumping them?
The stones they ate were reduced to molten sludge inside them, which cooled rapidly. Perhaps not oddly enough, they also coalesced into the red quartz crystals as they did so, which I loaded up with some trepidation, really wondering what was going on.
“There’s definite a Fire basis to them,” I confirmed when Selena asked me. “I’m not sure of the particular bias. I imagine that the olthoi nibbled on them as they do trace elements in their other hives, and the elemental imbalance grew to be too much and took them over. Instead of a standard olthoi ecology, they are attempting to form one based on the growth of the crystals instead.” I carefully put my hand on one wall, shaking my head.
“There’s a lot of earth and fire power in the stone here. That also looks like it was cleared by picks and tools, but smoothed out considerably by olthoi pincers.” I nodded at the wall, and Kopf, the most experienced with stone out of the others, grunted his agreement.
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“So, there were some sort of mine here, the olthoi went into it, an’ there were magic here that took them, as opposed ta being taken by them,” the Mick said gleefully. “Aye, an’ no wonders there be none outside. Looking and feeling as they do, they are basically a whole new species of olthoi, an’ wouldnae the other olthoi set upon them as rivals?”
“Entirely likely. Just like black and red ants,” I agreed with him. “That means there’s a young Queen, whatever brood she’s been able to start and support, and whatever protectors she brought with her, down here in the hive’s tunnels, as always near the bottom and the birthing pool.”
“Aye, it’s likely quick going down, just follow the chambers with the pick patterns on them,” the Mick agreed. “As I dinnae wanna be swarmed from the sides, I’ll prefer we be clearing the side chambers as we go. The olthoi be not outside harvesting, so what’s under here is what we be facing… but we dinnae know how big these mines are. If they be expanded t’ provide a different kind o’ food, this place could be a mite large.”
“There’s been nothing to vivify but the olthoi themselves,” Mizaya pointed out, watching the passage out of this expansion chamber carefully. “That’s very strange for the bugs, compared to the other Dungeons we were training in.”
“Aye, so it is,” the Mick agreed. “Careful and patient. We got a built-in map, we’ve got a tunnel digger with us, and we’ve not seen anything like the Baishi Hive puts out. We’ll see how much tougher they get as we go.”
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It turned out that was quite a bit tougher. Their carapaces became more crystalline, thicker, stronger, and if still vulnerable to blunt trauma, the olthoi were stronger, hit harder, and the flames they exhaled were almost viscous in their thickness and ability to cling. Armor Firebanes were hurriedly added to everyone’s attire (except the one who didn’t wear any armor… and I wasn’t worried about fire damage, anyway), and Brilliant Enchantments on the Bows and Weapons were deployed to crash through the significantly enhanced natural armor of the creatures as we continued exploring and pressing into the place.
They weren’t any faster, but they were definitely stronger and heavier, to the point Kopf had to grunt to take their crashing charges, and crystals extruded from their carapaces cracked and shattered upon Scutum and Clan as the Shields ate some impressive impacts. The olthoi were enduring more and more punishment as we pushed in, cleaned out side chambers, and made sure there was nothing behind us, and only occasionally in front of us.
There were no nictitating membranes dividing up the place, but there was a dust in the air that had everyone dropping Masks over their mouths so as to take care and not inhale. The grit and dust of the place was slowly getting into everything, and I took to cleaning everyone off with Prestidigitation just to remove the stuff.
The mine also never cooled off, although that didn’t surprise anyone. The glowing lights of the crystals were spooky in a different way than the phosphorescent fungi and goo of a normal olthoi cave, giving the impression of flames in the shadows waiting to materialize, to reach out and burn us if we passed too close to them. When some of those shadows were olthoi the crystals were burning on top of, instincts turned out to be right!
I’d Shaped up a big bowl of the local reddish stone and filled it with water, which everyone had dunked their waterskins in and drunk from, especially when I chilled it down. All of them had Masspacks of their own Artificing by now to store the water in, and we’d been going through it fairly steadily. Thirst seemed to be a side-effect of the dry air, grit, and earth and fire mana present here.
I was perhaps the least surprised when the reddish hue of the bowl’s stone darkened to almost black when I chilled it down.
I tapped a cluster of red quartz crystals off the Wall with a minor Shaping, one of dozens tossed on my Disk as open loot. As before, like every time I’d handled the stuff, it lit up under my fingers, and I as held on, burst into flame at my touch, bright and steady, if not very hot.
“The stuff likes ye,” the Mick noted, and I inclined my head, testing out Investing the cold portion of my Ice and Fire nature.
The fire snuffed out instantly, and the quartz paled in color to a delicate pink at the touch of frozen mana affecting it. The bright red hue returned instantly as I heated up my grip again.
“Are those actually valuable, or just curios, Lady Magos?” Hundig asked with interest. After all, we’d passed hundreds of them during out explorations, and I could harvest them with basically a wave of my hands, no chipping them off the walls required.
“The ones I’ve been taking have enough mana in them as a totality to be worth at least a goldweight in pyromana as a whole,” I informed them. “If the crystals are broken off or separated, they drop in mana almost instantly, so they’d only be useful for larger projects and almost nothing individually. You might be able to use some of the larger individual crystals as focuses or gems in fire-related objects, but not much beyond that.” I pointedly touched my Rose of Celdon to one of the smaller crystal formations, and there was a bright burning spark. The whole crystal went instantly white, drained of color and pyromana.
I held up my Ring, staring at it. “Maybe five gold of energy there, but it went right into a secondary Matrix. Does anyone mind if I keep draining random crystals that don’t have much salvage value down?”
The Roaches looked around at one another, and shook their heads. “Take as ye like, lass,” the Mick just nodded to me, and I nodded back, going around the walls and draining a dozen jutting crystals to whiteness as I did so. “Am I correct in believing they’ll fill back up?” he asked.
“Yes, although I don’t know how long it will take. At least a day, I’d imagine.” I eyed the Rose of Celdon on my hand. “Very small bits here, and these are just minor extrusions of the main mana vein. I imagine that I could fill it up very quickly off wherever the primary vein this Ring’s stone was made from happens to be.”
“Well, now, that be sounding like something found deeper in this bug’s hole we be in,” he nodded. “We should be about finding it now, I reckon?” he raised his voice. His Roaches groaned at him in good-natured complaint as they got to their feet, and it was time to move out again on our intrepid exploration into a very different kind of olthoi hive.