I slept for several hours, curled up in the cave that the Luminara Butterfly had led me to. When I finally woke, the light outside had dimmed, signaling that I’d been out long enough for the sun to dip below the horizon. The dual moons had risen, washing the entire area in their refracted glow.

A cool breeze flowed through the cave, giving me goosebumps. Outside, the air was humid and sticky, but within the dark confines of the cave, the temperature had dropped several degrees to a pleasing coolness. It was a welcome relief to wake up without being drenched in sweat and feeling overheated. I stretched, checking my bandages to make sure the Redveil Herb paste was doing its job.

All my cuts had scabbed over. The blood had stopped flowing, but I was still left with nasty wounds that dotted my body. I wasn’t in great shape, but I was definitely doing better than when I had crawled into the cave. At the very least, the bleeding stopped and all my wounds were covered.

Feeling more rested and rejuvenated, I stood up to try and gauge how injured I was. The gash in my side made me hesitate to lift my arm for fear of tearing the scab and restarting the bleeding. While I could hobble along well enough, I found I couldn’t rest too much of my weight on my left leg without it threatening to collapse beneath me.

I squeezed my way through the crevice, but as soon as I emerged, something caught my eye. Tracks on the ground were scattered around the mouth of the crevice, leading straight to my hiding spot. The prints were much too large to belong to any animal I felt capable of fighting off in my current state. I crouched down to get a better look at the tracks and guessed that they’d been left some time in the night. It was only luck that the crevice had been too small for whatever animal that had left the tracks to squeeze through and finish the job the Dreadboar had started.

With my heart pounding, I ducked back through the crevice and into the cave. It probably wasn’t all that safe for me to head into the forest right now. I needed more time to recover after the whole Dreadboar fiasco. So, instead of heading out to the forest where an unknown creature was stalking me, I ventured deeper into the cave.

A narrow path led me deeper into the cave, slowly widening as I walked until it was large enough that I could stretch out and not touch the walls. As I hobbled along, barely going at my walking speed, my eyes caught some markings that decorated the walls. At first, the markings were barely noticeable, but they became more pronounced the deeper into the cave I walked. The walls slowly morphed from natural cave walls to what looked like man-made expansions, and that drew my attention just as much as the odd markings.

I couldn’t read the language of the markings. It wasn’t like what the codex gave me. But their intricate designs and swoopy characteristics caught my attention and brought a little hope along with them. They were signs of civilization.

Someone had to have painted those markings. Someone had to have expanded the cave walls. There had to be people in this cave system. Maybe whoever had left the markings and expanded the cave would have medical knowledge that extended beyond just smearing Redveil Herb paste on my wounds.

And maybe they’d also have clothes. My naked bits dangling in the breeze didn’t make me feel too comfortable walking through the cave. What would people think if I greeted them as I was? I was naked, covered in strips of cloth that had been torn off my cotton shorts. The red paste of the Redveil Herbs I painted my wounds with gave my skin a mottled appearance, almost like I had an infectious rash. I was sunburnt and had wounds on my side and on my legs and cuts up and down my body from all my misadventures since leaving the capsule.

All in all, I was in a horrible state and desperately hoped to find people who could help me out.

With the possibility of civilization ahead of me, I found myself speeding up slightly. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lights as I ventured deeper into the cave. The air was thick with silence, broken only by the slap of my feet against the cave floor and the occasional drip of water from the ceiling. Every once in a while, I’d pass a chamber that had been carved into the cave walls. When I did, I’d duck my head inside, hoping someone would be there, but finding each room devoid of all life.

As I passed the rooms, I tried guessing at their original purpose: living quarters, production areas, possibly storage facilities. With the first few rooms I passed, I was able to con myself into believing they were only temporarily empty, and all the people would return any minute.

The next few rooms saw me making excuses. Maybe they were still under construction. Maybe these were storerooms on the fringe of whatever city had been built underground and weren’t used often enough to require someone to always be around.

But as I passed more and more rooms, each empty and covered with years of dirt and grime and silt, I slowly allowed myself to realize that whoever had once called this cave system home had left long ago.

With each empty room, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to them. What caused the people who lived here to abandon this place? Were they wiped out in some catastrophic event? What made them uproot their lives and ditch their former home? Who the hell expands a naturally formed cave system to create an underground complex, and then just leaves it barren.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

After what felt like hours of exploring, I finally reached the end of the winding cave path and stepped into a large chamber. The entire area was blanketed in silt that had accumulated over the years, but even that couldn’t mask the majesty of the sight.

The walls of the chamber were adorned with elaborate murals depicting scenes of daily life – hunting trips, feasts, and celebrations. My eyes flowed across the murals, trying to take everything in. Despite years of erosion, the beauty of the murals remained, and I stood there, captivated the by artistry, lost in contemplation.

In the middle of the chamber, the ceiling opened to the sky, letting in faint light from the planet’s two moons. It had to have been man-made. There was no way it was a natural formation to allow the light from the moons to drench a single tree that stood tall and alone in the center of the chamber.

Its gnarled branches tried to reach for the sky, but they hung limp and dead. The trunk was rotted and broken, covered in thick layers of decay. I walked up to the tree and pushed against the trunk with my right hand. Chunks splintered from the tree. The entire tree had rotted through, making me feel like the husk would tip over with only the slightest bit of exertion.

The ground around the tree was littered with what I could only assume was religious iconography. There were tiny statues covered with strange symbols scattered about, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of what they represented. Maybe the statues had been used in ceremonies? I brushed my eyes across them, looking for anything that might be useful to me, but found nothing important. Despite what the artifacts might have told me about the history of the people who had once called this place their home, I set them aside and ignored them. There was little to scavenge here. Everything was so rotted or covered in decades of silt that it seemed pointless to search further.

I slowly hobbled away from the tree and traced my eyes over the edge of the cave complex. There were a few rooms scattered about. Some had bits and bobs of machinery and tools scattered about, but everything I found was rusted or corroded by the passage of time. I spent half an hour scouring the rooms, searching for anything that might help me survive on this strange planet. If I could salvage something from this cave complex, I’d consider myself a lucky man.

But everywhere I went, I was met with failure. Each piece of metal and machinery I picked up crumbled in my hands. They were all so rotted and pockmarked with rust as to be next to useless.

I finally found something amid the refuse and debris in one room. Small flashes of metal caught my eye, and I bent down to focus on them. The codex spun to life and black letters flashed across my vision.

[PLASTEEL]

Often considered a marvel of modern engineering by early spaceflight civilizations, Plasteel is a polymer alloy that is renowned for its exceptional durability. It does not rust or corrode, even when exposed to moisture, salt, or acidic conditions for extended periods of time, making it suitable for a wide range of applications. This advanced material combines the lightweight properties of polymers with the strength and resilience of traditional metals, creating a substance that is both versatile and enduring. Adventurers and archaeologists alike prize the discovery of Plasteel objects, viewing them as a bridge between the past and present, and a glimpse into the technological prowess of those who came before.

The color of the metal was a mix of grey and blue, reflecting the dim light of the cave. It glimmered in my hand and seemed to have a faint sheen to it when the light hit it just right. I pocketed a handful of the metal, thinking about all the crude tools I could fashion from them. There wasn’t much there; only enough to fashion a few spear points and maybe a dagger or something. There was a slab of the metal that was about as long as my forearm, while the rest of the pieces were only about the size of one of my fingers. They were the only things I’d found in the entire cave complex that hadn’t been completely rusted through.

I carried the metal in my hands as I walked further into the cave complex, trying to find another exit out to the forest. If I could find something like that, I might be able to keep away from whatever animal had tracked me to the cave yesterday. As I delved further in, I kept finding scattered and disjointed symbols that dotted the cave walls.

The symbols weren’t like the language the codex used to speak with me. I didn’t even know what language the codex used as I had no memories of ever having learned a language. The markings I found were a combination of intricate swoops and dashes and curved lines. They seemed foreign and unintelligible, but something kept drawing my eyes back to them as I ventured deeper into the cave system.

I kept exploring but couldn’t find anything of interest in the few rooms I deigned to wander into. Every so often, the markings would pop up on the walls and, slowly, I started noticing a pattern that emerged within the cryptic words and markings. It was like my mind was slowly deciphering their meaning without any conscious effort on my part. It had to have been the codex, hard at work, translating for me. I still couldn’t understand the markings – possibly because most had faded over time – but I was slowly getting a feeling of familiarity from them.

Over the next two hours of traveling through the cave complex, the codex drip fed me fragments of information about the history of the people who had once lived here. They were known as the Akatoshi people, and this cave had been their grand capital. According to the outdated records the codex tapped into, hundreds of thousands of people had once called this place their home. I say outdated, because the codex gave me information about the Akatoshi as if they still held the cave. The information included several sights that I might want to visit.

None of the information was current. All the spots the codex told me about had long been abandoned and the only thing that remained was decay and years of silt buildup. But despite all that, the codex did provide a wealth of information once it translated the writing from the walls.

I could almost see the scenes the codex spoke about: a bustling society thriving in the heart of an underground city. The codex painted a picture of their lives, their struggles, and their successes. It didn’t give me any information on how they’d declined, or what caused their once bustling capital to decay. Instead, it treated the Akatoshi people as if they were still living in the underground complex.

I spent hours exploring the cave system, struggling to find anything I could use but finding only the history of the people who had once called this place home. My initial excitement at finding a civilization, hoping they could heal me and do something about all my wounds, had turned to frustration as almost everything I found was way too degraded to be of any practical use.

I finally turned away from the cave and retraced my steps back through the winding path I’d taken to reach the central chamber of the former Akatoshi capital. The murals, once so captivating and beautiful, now felt like a hollow prize that I couldn’t even take with me.

I finally reached the cave entrance and squeezed myself through the crevice to emerge in the forest. The sudden brightness of the dual moons compared to the darkness of the cave made me squint as I looked around. The forest loomed ahead, and a bit of nervousness had crept into my thoughts as I scanned the area for any signs of the beast that had been tracking me the day before. I steeled myself and set off, hunger and thirst driving me from the cave as I pushed into the forest once more.