The leather satchel looked old but was still relatively clean. At least, it didn’t have any kind of mold or moss growing on it. Yuriko fell into deep thought when she saw the lettering. Many planes used Wojan as their secondary language, but she didn’t know of any that used it as their primary language.

Not that she knew much about other planes and nations. Learning about them was tedious. Well, she barely spoke Wojan, though honestly, that language was much simpler than Verdanian. A necessity for a lingua franca, she supposed.

Still, this meant that the plane was inhabited by a civilisation and that it had regular contact with other nations. It meant she wouldn’t have to venture into the Chaos Sea alone!

Her eyes lit up at the thought. Now all she needed to do was get there and look for passage.

“Oh, Ancestors!” she yelped.

She barely had any coins on her. She had a silver crown in her safe pouch, which was now ensconced inside her backpack rather than around her neck. She had a silver mark’s work in pennies and some copper marks in her coin purse. Hardly enough to buy passage across planes. If she remembered correctly, a gold mark was the minimum fare to ride an Arkship!

“I’m not even sure they’ll accept Imperial coinage out here.”

Well, nothing she could do about it right now. She’ll figure things out once she gets to that point. Hmmm, now about these potato balls…

There were a dozen of them, and it looks like they’ll keep for a while. She should still consume them first, she figured, since the redbones should last practically forever.

The more important thing was how to get out of these tunnels. The question of why the Skybeast tossed her in here still weighed down on her. If that thing was still there when she attempted to get out of the sinkhole, she’d likely get caught and tossed down again.

Maybe it wanted her to get rid of the ants? These tunnels meant that the Skybeast wouldn't be able to get at them. Well, she wasn’t here to do that rotting beast’s bidding.

Hmm, these potato balls are actually good. Munch munch. She washed them down with a gulp of water, slung the satchel over her shoulder and followed the tunnels where the antmen came from. Admittedly, aside from sunlight, she could survive here easily.

The tunnel wound downwards for a while before emerging in a cavern. There were some water puddles inside but it was much safer to drink from her condenser canteen. There were some mushroom caps near the moss though.

She found two tunnels. One sloped upwards while the other was level. She picked the one headed up. An hour later, the tunnel had reversed direction and had been going downwards for several minutes now. There were no branching tunnels and no caverns so far.

She heard the clicking of antmen's feet and as soon as they caught sight of each other, they charged her. She left half a dozen decapitated bugs by her feet. This patrol didn’t carry any supplies, though she did find a flint knife secured on a piece of wood. Most of the others bore wooden and stone clubs.

Well, she left them with the corpses and moved on. After another hour, she found herself in another cavern with multiple tunnel exits. She marked the one she came out from by carving an arrow using her Animus blade on the wall at eye level. Having been fooled by the tunnels before, she picked one at random, carved another arrow just inside the tunnel and continued.

This one went even deeper into the earth. By the end of the day, her time sense told her that it had been twelve hours since she woke, so she set camp inside a cavern, ate a couple of potato balls, did her evening ablutions and meditated. After she set the alarm stones, she went about healing the cracks in her Anima.

Her flared Anima reached up to eighteen inches now. Good progress, she supposed. Another twenty-two left to reach a pace. That wasn’t the only requirement to advance to Knight, of course. The other concern was her Animus reserves. Her body should also be at its peak, otherwise, advancement would fail. She still hadn’t gotten to the point where she could use Body Forging again.

There’s more you need to achieve Actualization. But you’re a bit far from it now.

Yuriko just shrugged. Damien lapsed back into silence.

The next day, all of the tunnels inexplicably led deeper into the earth. She half wondered if they changed direction when she walked them since the transition from an upward slope to downward was abrupt.

She fought and killed five patrols and retrieved another dozen potato balls. A single ball would do for a meal and she did her best to ignore that the food sometimes wriggled in her mouth. Cleaning her teeth had been a conundrum until she realized that if she could create an Animus blade then she could definitely create an Animus toothbrush. It was easier said than done, though, and she had to experiment for quite a bit to get the bristles just right.

Eventually, the tunnels led into a gigantic chamber. The darkness hid the ceiling but from how thick the stone columns were, it was probably several hundred paces.

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“Swarm fodder!” she muttered. She was much deeper underground than the bottom of the sinkhole!

There was some bioluminescent moss near the ground and on the stalagmites. The light wasn’t much but it illuminated the broad mushroom field. Brown-capped fungi with milky white stems covered the entirety of the cavern floor. Antmen walked amongst the shrooms and gently plucked the larger ones and put them on baskets slung on their backs.

Her entrance had not gone unnoticed considering she had her Anima flared. The farmer ants took one look at her then ran. They were different from the ones she fought before, half the height and thinner.

Click clack!

The usual variety of antman approached from the side. Yuriko glanced at the retreating farmers then at the hostile soldiers. Maybe she shouldn't kill them…no, there was no use in trying to be merciful. Not when the soldiers tried to kill her on sight. Even if she left, they’d only pursue her.

As the first one came close, brandishing a wooden club, Yuriko sighed and walked past it. Its weapon was bereft of an Animus glow and it was absolutely no threat to her.

Boink!

The club bounced off her flared Anima. She ignored them and followed behind the farmers. The soldiers tried to dogpile…er antpile…on her, but they weren’t that heavy. When one tried to entangle her legs, she kicked it off.

By the time she crossed the cavern, she left a trail of trampled mushrooms. The antmen were in another pile, disarmed and with broken limbs. The farmer ants went into a bigger tunnel, nearly twice the size of the ones she normally travelled in. It was relatively short and straight, and it led into an even bigger chamber. This one was even bigger and filled with large white oblong ant eggs.

There were more soldiers here and none of them used Animus. Well, there were a few. Those that used their own form of Empowered Strike were given no mercy. Still, she tried her best not to squash the eggs.

“So what’s this about?”

She followed them into another chamber where the antman queen probably was. Well, there was a queen, alright. But only half of one.

The queen was several times larger than the soldier ants, but why were grey tendrils driven into her body? She also didn’t have a head. Instead, some strange shadowy things pumped something into the carcass. Even more grotesque, the queen’s posterior continued to lay eggs. Farmer ants laid potato balls next to the queen, on a large pile of spoiled food.

“What in Chaos?” Yuriko exclaimed.

The creature attached to the queen heard her and turned to look.

It was an eye. A singular eye with a crimson iris, atop a predator’s jaw. Long tentacles connected it to the ceiling, to the ant queen, and to a familiar obsidian obelisk behind it. The eye blinked.

It felt as if someone took a brick and hit Yuriko between the eyes with it. “Ack!”

Even worse, the creature approached her, making the ant queen corpse walk. The farmer ants and the soldier ants ignored the fell creature but did their best to surround and restrain Yuriko.

With her head throbbing, Yuriko gritted her teeth and waited. It wasn’t that bad, actually. The creature came closer despite the ants in between. The moment a tentacle came into contact with Yuriko’s flared Anima, it sizzled and scorched.

Kyaaaah!

The monstrosity staggered back, screeching in pain. It gestured with its tentacles, but it wasn’t until it made the ant-queen corpse swing its arm at her that the soldier ants charged.

By now, Yuriko had recovered from whatever that thing did. Animus blades formed from her fingertips and she jumped over the antmen and stabbed at the thing. It flinched and glared. Pain blossomed in her mind, but she grunted and drove the blade into the giant eye.

A moment before the tip could strike, the creature screeched. Yuriko staggered back as blood dripped out of her ears.

“Chaos!” she yelled and lunged.

This time, the tip penetrated the pupil. She wrenched the blade to the side. Black blood sprayed out. The creature collapsed along with the ant queen’s corpse. A moment later, the rest of the ants collapsed and started twitching.

Yuriko winced as she touched her ear. Her ear stopped bleeding already but she needed to use Recovery as soon as she could. She stepped past the possessed queen and walked to the obelisk.

It was corroded. The symbols were defaced and the top bit looked like it had melted. She touched the surface and wasn’t surprised when nothing happened.

“What have I gotten myself into?”

There was another tunnel behind the obelisk and she ventured inside. This one headed upwards. After creating some distance, she placed the alarm stones around her and circulated the Recovery pattern. Her ears felt hot, as did her forehead for that matter.

While she waited for the process to finish, she wondered what that thing had done to her. Her Anima hadn’t shielded her from its attacks at all.

On the contrary, you would have fallen unconscious without it.

Huh. Well, thank the Ancestors for it then. What was that though?

Damien didn’t answer.

Yuriko rolled her eyes. She had a feeling that the old man didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know everything.

Afterwards, she followed the tunnel. After another hour, it maddeningly sloped downwards again! Oh Ancestors, how was she going to get out of these tunnels?

The next cavern left her wide-eyed. Green, yellow, white, and red jade were embedded on the walls. They weren’t raw ore. The jade was in small rectangular plates and there was writing on them. Yuriko walked up to a wall and touched a plate. It was cold to the touch. She tried to jiggle it loose but it wouldn’t budge. What were the words? She didn’t recognize the language. It certainly wasn’t runescript.

All in all, there were a hundred and twenty eight plates. Thirty-two of each colour. The writing was unique to each one.

“Damien, what are these things?”

Cenotaphs.

“Huh?”

A memento of the dead. Nothing interesting here. Leave.

The air did feel a bit colder now that he said that. Yuriko shook her head and obeyed. Damien used his serious voice rarely. There was another tunnel at the back, this one leading upwards. She followed it, half expecting it to turn downwards at any moment. But no, this one spiralled slowly up, and eventually, she found herself back at the sinkhole.

The Chaos streams were bright above. It was a Half Moon tonight. She didn’t see any antmen, so she camped near the tunnels and set her alarm stones around her. She also didn’t see the annoying Skybeast.

She built a fire pit and set the stew pot with a redbone and water. She ate when it was ready. When she saw the jade, she couldn’t help but think of the wealth she had found. But she threw the avaricious thoughts out of her mind. There was a hard line that she would never cross, even in the face of temptation. Besides, it wasn’t as if she needed that much coin anyway.

Oh yeah, she needed it to buy passage…well, too bad then.