Amelia and Hummer. Not the duo Amelia had expected when she set out on this trip. She had not expected anyone to be with her this late in the journey, but life loved to throw surprises in her direction, just to keep her vigilant.
Ed used to love giving her unexpected challenges and sudden complications. Usually called it training, but Amelia suspected in many ways she was simply a tease. Not that Amelia disliked it then.
Now, though, she was not so sure how she felt, with a civilian by her side, an innocent she would need to protect against the harm that would inevitably come their way.
Amelia was lost in thought as they climbed down the ladder to Floor 4, but from the moment her feet hit the ground, those thoughts completely disappeared.
“Wow,” was the only word she could muster out of her mouth.
Hummer reached the ground a moment later, and her reaction was identical. The two women stared out at the Floor 4 dungeon in all its bright magnificence.
The entire area around them was a sprawling landscape, almost completely open, with luminescence as far as the eye could see.
Gigantic vines hung from the ceiling, much higher up than Amelia ever realized. Above where they stood, the ladder went up about one story. But in the main area, it must have been ten. Floor 3’s elevation must have varied a lot more than the maps implied, because it never seemed quite so stark. There were little inlets and tunnels into other parts of the floor, but judging by size alone, this area was likely the majority of the space.
Where Floor 3 was winding, dark, and claustrophobic, Floor 4 was a wide open, well-lit garden of fungi and plants. Mostly fungi; the mushrooms here towered halfway to the ceiling, or dotted the walls in clusters of thousands. They were bio-luminescent, glowing in blues, reds, greens, yellows, and purples. A full rainbow’s worth of color, this far deep underground. It shocked Amelia as much as it impressed her.
“Fantastic,” Hummer said. “It’s all been worth it.”
“What do you plan to do here?”
“I was just going to walk around, maybe look for treasure,” she said. “What were YOU going to do?”
“Take my revenge on the North Sunwell Company.”
“Oh.”
“Care to join me?” It was not an offer Amelia ever wished to extend, but she knew this place would be highly dangerous. Leaving Hummer alone was a foolish move.
“Yeah, why not? I like a little revenge here and there.” She winked at her and began to walk down the stone-laid pathway in front of them. “What is it, exactly, that we’re doing here?”
“If I tell you, there’s no going back.”
“Uh, yeah? I already said yes.”
“Just checking,” Amelia said. She began to follow Hummer down the path, which looked like it was intentionally created to help people walk through the terrain, yet abandoned for years or even decades. Mushrooms had sprouted up through the gaps where layers of rock once laid. “I’m looking for a secret facility,” she explained. “Supposed to be where they make and ship out synth, that horrible mana drug.”
“Ugh, I remember when you told us about that,” Hummer said. “Synth sucks. It’s so addictive you only need to take it twice to hook you, or something like that.”
“It’s killed many innocent people, so I will kill many guilty people in return.”
“Killing... So you’re a murderer.”
“Yeah.” When Hummer looked relatively unfazed by her admission, she asked, “You?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been in combat before, like real combat, but I didn’t kill anyone.”
“That will probably change today.”
Hummer nodded, slowly, and kept from talking for the next several minutes. True to her name, as they walked, she hummed a tune that Amelia vaguely recognized. Pretty voice.
They passed a cluster of mushrooms, where small animals nibbled on them and then bolted away the moment the two women drew near. A few insects stayed, though, not a care in the world to the notion that they might be caught and eaten. One pale, ugly butterfly finished its business with one mushroom and then fluttered over to another area, where—
SNAP.
A carnivorous mouth-plant closed itself and crushed the insect. Amelia heard a faint buzzing sound for a second, and then it stopped completely.
“I’ve never seen a plant that can eat things before,” Hummer said, grimacing.
“Me either.”
The nature here was beyond anything Amelia had ever seen, even in the wide, beautiful continent of Sunwell, and yet she could not allow herself to fully enjoy it, because she knew she had a much more important goal to reach. Maybe another time.
Now, where was this facility located, exactly?
Floor 4 had not been properly mapped much at all, and so it was much more of a guessing game. Fortunately, most of it was in plain view.
She turned on her Scan Module and attempted to switch onto a mana concentration filter, but she had never tried it before, so she did not know how it would turn out.
Mana concentration mode... Are you sure you’re ready for this?
It’ll look a lot different.
I can turn it on with only one eye, if you feel bad with it.
“I’ll be fine,” Amelia said.
“What did you say?” Hummer asked.
“Nothing. I’m talking to my Access Core.”
“Oh, more golem stuff.” Hummer giggled.
Then, suddenly, the mana concentration filter came on, and all her surroundings went black except for a three dimensional heat map of soul energy that emanated from every living being in the entire floor.
The most obvious place to look would be somewhere with an excessively high mana concentration. That would imply many glossal employees, or perhaps many crystal ferns, were collected in that single spot. Luckily, glossal beings had souls much more powerful than simple plants or fungi, so those concentrations would stick out more.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
That was, if Amelia could actually find her way around. With nothing but the heat map to guide her, she was effectively blind in half her field of vision. Hummer was likely giving her another strange look, but all Amelia could not even see it.
“Turn it off in one eye, please,” Amelia said, defeated.
See? Access Core knows best.
Restoring partial vision.
Please do not attempt laborious physical activity while the filter is on.
Your depth perception is currently limited.
Her view of the “normal” world returned, and to some extent the heat map view remained. It was an odd mix where her two sets of vision, from her real eye and false eye, both displayed vastly different depictions of the same event, yet layered right on top of each other.
Now, finally, Amelia could tell where she was going, and found one suspiciously clustered concentration of mana over in the southeast corner of the area.
They ventured through the vast fields of mushrooms and other plants, occasionally running into vendor beasts, or jumping when a camouflaged animal suddenly emerged from the piles of moss.
It was peaceful, enough to put Amelia at disease even when she knew she should have felt relaxed. How could such a wonderful place even exist in a city controlled by one of the most exploitative, evil organizations in the whole world? There must have been something else going on here, she thought.
Hummer, at least, was able to fully enjoy it, no reservations. She spread out her arms and spun around in a circle, like a child experiencing her first summer picnic.
In fact, their winter picnic had been completely ruined, and that was the only reason they were down here in Floor 4 now.
“Legend has it,” Hummer said as she motioned to the half-decayed path below them and the immaculate fungi forests around them, “that the Dungeon Core created all this. Not just the layout, but the whole thing. This was created to be the jewel of its empire, so to speak, and it kept the whole place in balance and even let glossal beings navigate it with ease.”
“You sound like Mino.”
She laughed. “I do, don’t I? It’s just... I’ve wanted to come down here all my life. I’ve read about it in books and seen it in paintings, and finally I’m seeing it with my own eyes.” She stared off at the scenery for a moment before saying, “That Dungeon Core must have been very curious. It had the power to shift and alter any part of the dungeon as it pleased, but it chose to create this mushroom garden. Almost like a peace offering to anyone who made it this far down.”
“Sounds unlikely.”
“And, I guess, mushrooms are pretty amazing mana batteries, if you really think about it.” She bent down and plucked one cap up off the ground. “They have roots that go super deep underground, and they absorb all the nutrients in the soil, including the mana. If these things were funneling mana up from the surface and storing it all down here, it makes perfect sense. That core probably needed more mana than the whole city combined uses today.”
Ah. Now it also made sense why the North Sunwell Company had never razed this place to the ground. It was a storehouse of energy, a reserve in case anything went wrong with their other sources. Something like a farmer’s revolt in the rest of Sunwell. And whenever that inevitably happened, they could tap into Floor 4 while they burned the seditious peasants to the ground.
The target mana concentration was nestled in a different area, accessible only by a short tunnel through a deep wall. She might not have even noticed the tunnel if not for the map filter view, so she felt confident that this was, indeed, the correct place.
They went through the tunnel, and Amelia kept her left hand on her belt, where her four remaining knives still hung. She was not sure if she would actually need them, but it was better to be safe.
“Do you think Phelia and the others are going to be mad at us?” Hummer asked. “If they find out where we went?”
“I expect them to.”
“That sucks.” She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t want anyone to be mad at me. It might cause drama around the hostel, and I hate drama.”
“It happens. You have to accept it.”
“...You’ve got a way with words sometimes, Miss Bluewood.”
“People do say that.”
They entered through to the other area, a small enclosure packed to the brim with mushrooms and hanging vines... And the real culprit behind the mana concentration.
“A mushroom tree,” Amelia said with a tinge of frustration. “Dammit.”
“Not the facility, huh. Well, at least it’s beautiful.”
That much was true. In this small area, almost every inch of the floor was covered in bright, multi-colored fungi, and right at the center was the single towering structure the size of a house.
They stepped underneath the cap of the mushroom tree, and suddenly Amelia felt a washing-over sensation, as if her insides were being cleaned just by standing here. The sheer power of mana pouring out from the tree into her body was enough to soothe her aches and pains.
After so many months functioning below her full capacity, it felt absolutely amazing to experience what it was like to be fully operational again. Even if it was temporary, even if it would likely result in even more system issues when she woke up tomorrow morning, in the moment she loved it.
The two of them were of the same mind. They walked up to the mushroom’s stem and sat down against it. Then, in unison, they sighed.
They heard the faint, but distinct sounds of scratching on walls and rumbling sounds that let them know a melanoid was roaming nearby. Just one, and likely not going to discover them anytime soon, but it was fortunate that they knew to be prepared about it.
Hummer laid the back of her head against the mushroom’s stem. “I’m awestruck,” she said. “I want to spend a week here. A month.” Her stomach gurgled. “But first, it’s time for some lunch.” She took a sandwich out of her pack and began munching on it. “Do you have anyth—oh, sorry.”
One day, others would finally grasp that she did not eat food, but she was willing to be patient until they did.
They sat, and Hummer ate, and Amelia looked around at the vibrantly luminous display on the floor and on the walls and through the small tunnel.
It made sense, if the Dungeon Core really created Floor 4 as its own garden. This small enclosure, nestled off through an obscure opening in the side of a wall that just so happened to contain one huge mushroom, felt precisely like some higher power had designed it in order to let those that discovered it appreciate its beauty that much more.
Perhaps the Gods had done it, instead. Amelia knew little about them, and it seemed Fleettwixt had essentially wiped religious worship out of the city, relegating its holy sites to tourist traps. But some outer villages in Sunwell still believed. One day she would learn more about them. If the Gods were as powerful as was said, she would make sure to bring their prominence back.
“Hey,” Hummer said suddenly. “I’ve been meaning to ask something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you and Mino have, you know, a ‘thing?’” she asked. “A ‘thing thing?’”
“What are you talking about?”
“What’s going on between you two? I’ve been kind of sensing something there, and I was just wondering about it. Feel free not to answer if it’s weird.
“There’s nothing,” Amelia said. “I have no interest. She’s an owner, and I’m a customer. That’s it.”
Hummer scoffed lightly. “Geez.”
“I don’t want to play coy.”
“Well, you certainly didn’t play coy here,” she said. “Damn, I really thought I sensed something there. Well, does that mean you have someone else? Outside the hostel, maybe?”
Amelia did not reply. She would not, could not tell Hummer about her girlfriend, and about her master plan to discover her ultimate fate. The revenge mission was one thing, but it was absolutely imperative not to spill that crucial information in case it came back to haunt Ed’s own goals, whatever they might have been.
Hummer noticed this non-response and shrugged knowingly. “Well, if you won’t tell me that, will you at least explain this whole revenge plot?” she asked. “Why are we trying to destroy synth, again?”
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. Her fists tightened and her breaths became heavier. This woman, who had insisted so greatly on tagging along on her mission...
When Amelia still did not respond, the woman tilted her head to the side. “Amelia, are you okay? Was my question too personal?”
“I don’t trust you,” Amelia replied.
“...Oh.”
She stared at Hummer for a moment, trying to see that glint of conniving treachery sparkle in her eyes. It never appeared, and instead her head drooped.
“I get it,” Hummer said. “You’re trying to destroy the North Sunwell Company, and you think I’m on their side. Because I’m a noble, and my family is the reason why all these horrible things have happened. I wish I could change that, but I’m not strong enough.”
A noble—Wait, what?