As they woke up, they quickly noticed that there were a large amount of seagulls on the mast. Too many seagulls, with each one bearing a look that seemed to contain a threat of murder. Before any of them could react, they all flew towards the prow, darting like arrows until they reached a massive black mountain. Each of the peaks in this mountain - nay, a mountain range - looked ominous and had no discernable features, each one sharing the same glossy black surface. As the crew steered towards it, they all had different opinions on what they should do. “I’m just saying, that thing kind of looks like a bigger version of the stove I made. How about we check this thing out and see what’s going on? It’s clearly lost-civilization era technology”, said Victor. Levi remained silent, but judging by her facial expressions she was not a fan of this idea. “I think we should just move onward. This is clearly uncharted and possibly of ancient origin, much like Victor implied. We should report this to the authorities and let them decide what will happen”, said Silk. “Bundo thinks the crew should try to cook one of the birds on the stove and then put it on the mountain”, chimed in the diminutive elf. After much ruckus and deliberation, they decided that the island was indeed worth “checking out”, as Victor said. After hooking the ship onto the mountain, they began climbing up onto the peak.

Ten minutes later, everyone was now on the summit, each of them looking at a massive hole on the peak of the tallest mountain. “It kind of looks like a slide. How about we go in?” said Victor. “Words cannot describe how terrible an idea that is”, retorted Silk. Before Victor could retort or have Levi back him up, Bundo’s body was seen careening down the tunnel like a slide, flailing his arms in excitement while he retracted his prosthetic leg to better aid his motion. Victor was the next to jump in, with Silk also being forced in as a result of Victor grabbing her ankle at the last second. Levi simply sighed and followed along, somehow managing to stay balanced on her knees while sliding at a considerably more controlled pace. Fluffy leaped out of her pack right before she hit the surface of the obsidian chute, walking off into the direction of the shoddily made ship.

Meanwhile, Bundo and Victor had what seemed to be some sort of competition on who could slide down faster and more carelessly, with each of them one upping each other. Silk seemed to be doing the best out of the bunch, yelling obscenities at Victor for pulling them into this mess while still remaining calm about the situation. On the other hand, Levi appeared to have stumbled in the middle of her attempted knee-slide and was now careening down the slope face-first, making odd slapping noises as she collided with the walls of the tunnels face-first. After a couple of hours of the non-stop raging, the improbably moronic race to what could be their doom, and the repeated noises of Levi having her face slammed into the various bends in the tunnel, they shot out of the corkscrewing passage and piled on top of each other in a heap. After sorting themselves out and untangling themselves, they all agreed to never talk about this again (Victor attempted to sneak out mid-agreement, but was caught by Silk and dragged by the ear back to the oath-making) and explore whatever the place was.

As it turned out, Victor’s hypothesis was soon proven correct, with the telltale markings of ancient Omnic Empire technology being strewn about. Odd, angular glowing lines etched into the stone were placed equidistant from one another, the tunnel’s cylindrical smoothness being quickly replaced by hexagonal tiling and chiseled surfaces. Across the entrance to the chute from the bottom of the hole lay an odd monolith of sorts. On it’s side was one very interested Victor dragging along his satchel, making odd noises while observing it’s structure. “One by three by nine in terms of length-width-height notation… complex material structure to sub-micrometer at least in terms of geometric precision…” “Just leave him, he’ll do this for about an hour or two and write about it in his diary”, explained Silk. Being the one who had been around him the longest, she had a fairly regular idea of what his habits were like and what exactly he was currently doing. Levi looked incredulous at that, having joined the group only three years ago and still not in what Victor called “my weirdness acceptance phase”. As the crew decided to split up and focus on what interested them about this apparently undiscovered place, Victor’s scrabbling on his notebook became more frantic as he attempted to glean more about the monolith’s purpose and mechanics.

Currently, Levi was busy exploring the forest of pillars east of where they entered the place, attempting to find an exit or a clue about the place’s layout. While inspecting for what she hoped was a way out that didn’t involve roughly three miles of climbing up a winding slide, she instead found some air holes and shafts that looked like some sort of ventilation system. Moreover, she found a small window looking out into the ocean of clouds that they sailed upon. As suspected, they were fairly deep down in the ocean and as such had very little light, barely enough for even her cat-like eyes to see in. What she did see intrigued and partially horrified her, as not three feet away from where she stood some sort of squid-thing was floating about in the atmosphere layer without a care in the world. Using some sort of bladder to slowly amble in seemingly random directions, it lightly bumped into the window with a light donk before turning and pushing off the window. In an odd moment of thoughtlessness, Levi waved good-bye to the thing as it did who knows what outside her eyesight’s range.

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While Levi was observing the odd-looking thing, Bundo was busy screwing around in a small alcove containing a statue of some sort, rough and angular while depicting a monster straight out of his uncle’s folktale stories. Depicting some sort of bat-like abomination with bony ears, a sharp beak-like snout and numerous teeth that looked more like needles that fitted together into a solid plate of ivory, it was a dead ringer for the mythical Skin Eater that gave him many a nightmare. After his uncle told him that story, his mother beat him over the head with a rolling pin for telling him such a mature story. As the legend goes, it had a vicious snarl, parts of its wings that acted like fingers to manipulate weapons or tools, and an angular head that seemed streamlined for flying at high speeds. Shaking himself out of the childhood fears, he started breaking what would be the human equivalent of a cold sweat as he saw the other alcoves containing statues of other creatures of the night, slowly looming and each containing plaques written in some unknown language. He was going to find out what was going on here and why ancient folklore straight out of his uncle’s storybook of horrors were in an Omnic Empire’s spooky island pronto.

Meanwhile, Silk was busy trying to find a good spot to read. Not her romance stories or anything of the sort, but reading historical documents that might provide some context for wherever Bundo and Victor had dragged them into. As it turned out, the monolith Victor was so busy studying was labeled “MONUZUKA AKCHANTO ~ SKIZALKLU HOCHUTRASKA”. While Victor knew the general meaning of the words, it was up to Silk to understand the context and relevance of the words - Victor wasn’t good with normal words, and was even less well-versed in a dead language. While he said it was some sort of “primary addition machine”, it was more accurate to say it was a central memory bank - one of the legendary Ancient Repositories that somehow made rudimentary decisions based on their purpose. “Hey Victor, any luck on understanding what this is?” she queried while the still-rambling Victor was in the middle of prying off a hidden panel at the base of the monolith. “This addition machine --” “you mean central memory repository” she admonished “yeah the thingy, this doodad of a machine seems to be one of those mysterious decision-making devices. Apparently, this is a much dumbed-down version of one, working on some sort of crude version of the ones in the museums. This one is probably a proto-version that might give me some hints on the fundamental concept behind it. Some huge discovery like this might aid us on our adventures.”, Victor said while ending his explanation. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just sell it?” “maybe after I’m done studying it. For now, I’m claiming my right to fill up my workshop with stuff like you did with your library room. These things are really light anyways, probably enough to float on the atmosphere, so it’s not really that difficult to bring.” Silk, knowing where this was going from their many years of Victor asking to bring big things to study, took out a remarkably well-hidden sword from behind her back and began the arduous task of chiselling stone with a Thief's Blade.

Thirty minutes, a thousand slashes, and five well-placed kicks later, the chunk thumped onto the ground lightly with an elated Victor strapping the thing to his back like some moronic hermit squirrel. Victor himself noted on this, saying “Hey, I look like one of those shell-hidey mice back in the slums. Isn’t that cool?”. “Bundo agrees. Very cool! Also, Bundo appears to have found evidence that my childhood nightmares are based on very real beings!”. Victor responded with a “oh thanks Bundo for backing me up. Silk was kind of mean about the whole - excuse me, what?”. “Yup! The Skin Eater, the Locust Mind, and even the Dust King are all depicted in statues found here! Silk looked at it after chopping the Addition Machine for you and said the statues listed defense protocols.” Victor, well aware of the horrific bedtime stories that elven tradition held, immediately dropped his bravado and cheery attitude into an emotionless mask. “Bundo. Get Levi and go to the ship immediately. There should be an escape hatch roughly 5 metres away from the entrance we got into given that this seems to follow Omnic Building standards. It’s highly dangerous, hence why Levi wanted to find another way out, but at this point we are most likely in grave danger. I’ll join up at the ship in one hour”. Bundo had only seen Victor act like this in the most dire circumstances or when he decided to make some odd harebrained scheme, dropping the generally goofy attitude in order to get to a solution immediately. Quickly complying, he gathered the rest of the small crew and looked for some sort of entrance to the “escape hatch”.

Victor was not having a good day. It might have started out all right, discovering an Omnic island less than a week into his adventure and finding a clue to how the Addition machines worked, but figuring out why this island seemed abandoned immediately put a damper on the whole situation. The fact of the matter was, assuming from Silk’s interpretation of the defense protocols, this place was most likely used in an attempt to capture creatures and contain them. This would also explain the tunnel, probably from the Dust King’s famed ability to transmute things into an ashy powder. As he watched his friends find a panel and have Silk carve it out, Victor looked forward and steeled himself for a fight. He might not be the prodigy that Silk was in terms of the blade, but he still knew a trick or two when it came to street fighting. Assuming that this island had risen a couple of days ago given it’s cragginess and lack of life growing on it, this meant that there was a high possibility of whatever they were containing to be here. Hearing a horrific shriek and some screams confirming his thoughts, he took out some knives from his rucksack and stood side by side with Silk unsheathing her blades. He then put himself into a crouch stance, poised and ready to stab. “Reminds me of our street brawls back in the slums, doesn’t it Silk?” “yeah.”, she replied. “ Let’s get ready to rumble”.