"Everything here is connected with Obsulyte ore deposits, these things made outer space travel possible with the amount of energy they have, like jacked-up batteries. How did they run out when they self-regenerate themselves, and being as big as they are to power a city, let alone this small ass trap system?", Lass looked at the system.
"Beats me. I'm telling you what I know. This place is awkward as hell, the old and new mix makes it feel like they perfectly adapted it to the environment its set in to better work for themselves. Demon demi-humans were...smart, I guess? Obviously, there were doctors, engineers and staff in their society, but up until a few years ago when they were supposedly wiped, they weren't exactly known for much more than their aggression and the fact that violence was most likely the option number 1 for anything that came at them."
"I'm more siding with the fact that they found this place set up and then...enhanced it with modern-day technology? I have been at this loophole where I'd make a weapon for a gig, then look at it and say that I'd add this, then that, until I make it a circus show enough for me to just throw it away and restart according to the details of the gig again. These upgrades largely feel like additions to what was already made, at least to me."
"Could be...anyway, the panel also confirmed my suspicion for the exit being closed off, how, I don't know, but I don't want to go back to find out. So, I guess forward is the only option we have." Anya briefly paused, "Say, big guy. Sorry for being such a bother."
"Are you? You got us into trouble twice now, this time, yet again, really bad as well, although better than what happened at Kaci. I'm not saying I'm not to blame for following after stupid shit like this, but the common initiator has always been you just trying to get us into the shit. And this constant nagging and trying to get under my skin, why can't you just back off? That talk from Kaci to Delpha? You knew very well that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place when Risa was pissed, and you asked...that. I don't care what you thought then, it made me feel so uncomfortable, to the point that I wanted to jump off a bridge right then and there. Sometimes I level with you completely, and I like that, other times you go way off into your own sunset and expect me to follow...seriously, what the hell?"
"Rough times made me a bit unhinged, I guess. Look...I just don't want you to get lost in your head. Back when I was little, I had a friend with Terna...god, that bloody name of his I tried so hard to forget. His name escapes me right now but...he wasn't happy. His mother took hold of what he wanted to do in his life and trained him for it like hell until he despised the very thing he wanted to do and I slowly watched him go mad, overthinking everything to its core and constantly being stuck into his head. He would talk to me about some of those things, the only person he would open up to, even from his own family, brother and sister included. Some really...dark thoughts. As well as some really awful shit he did to himself behind everyone's back. He was the class clown, mind you. Always saying stupid shit while pissing off the teachers and making classes at school wildly more bearable...even then, that same class clown that made everyone laugh and smile gradually lost his smile as well. He was constantly nagged as well, but when he became more and more sad, he was straight up, beaten up, by others. That's when I stepped in to protect him, from one of the many beatings, and when we became friends. His emotional state was a mess, spiking happiness when he was anywhere outside of his home, especially with us, and dropping below ground when going back. He...he didn't just hurt himself. He nearly sacrificed himself, not telling anyone about this stuff except me, which made me honored beyond belief, honestly. I was very much unable to do every single one of the things I wanted to do to help him, due to my dad having me...I had it bad too, my own fair share."
Anya paused briefly, tearing up in the process, as Lass stood there and let her finally vent for herself, knowing very well that unrest and her heavy drinking made her go way beyond herself. Still, he wasn't opposed to hearing her in the first place, as she did to him, pushing the other facts of her condition aside.
"God damn alcohol gets this out of me right now...damn. The truth really is, instead, I stopped talking to him after a while. With everyone...but especially him. I loved him like a brother, that not meaning that I didn't love all of my friends, but he especially, needed someone to talk to. After about a month of stopping my talking with him I...I was informed by his sister during school, crying as she heard the news from her mother that...he was hospitalized. And from that point onwards, when I went at the hospital, the only thing I did was look at him through the window of his room and never talked to him again. I don't know why, but even after I moved, I wasn't regretting it. I was like...afraid of him. I don't know why but I was. When seeing him the way he was..."
Lass stopped her with an understanding look on his face as he tapped her shoulder, "Its fine. Whatever happened then, won't happen now. So long as we mess up together and make it out together. First, before we get our asses kicked by Risa if she finds out. We will talk over this once you're a little more sober as well, ok?"
Anya seemed to get happy again, "Ok."
"Oh, and mutt, one more thing."
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For not letting me dwell on my head for too long. I appreciate it, as I do you."
"Well, isn't this more awkward than it should be? At least not many will bat an eyelid when she comes around with her age. Nevertheless, embarrassing." Mellistar said in a condescending way.
Lass exhaled deeply, not knowing exactly what to do, "Pipe down and let her do it anyway. She's all over the place, sure...but it's still an outlet. Let's just move." he whispered at Mellistar.
Their moment of sincerity out of her erratic, drunken behavior being over, despite its genuine nature, was brought to a temporary halt as they both moved out of the area and down the dark corridor of the open door. Before them in the next room laid a set of a total of 4 more panels, this time without a screen but a small, wide port on each individual one. At the front of each panel was also a specific symbol that represented some form of class, or otherwise position with very easy-to-understand drawn sketches. Behind all of them was a set of another 4 waterfalls that each had a different coloring going through their water, the two on the far left and right glowing red as the other two did blue and green. The room itself had small carved paths along its floor, right underneath what looked like a small layer of glass for them to walk on, spanning all the way from left to right and across, and up until the dark corridor they followed. A mix of colored water currents passed through several paths, many of them meeting with others in their way, but their colors remaining the same as small gates prevented each separate water current from mixing with one another.
"Alright. What now?" Lass looked around.
"You tell me. This place honestly looks intricate and well-made for whatever I had in mind as well. And those panels...they sure are something for an old place like this. I thought there'd be more spikes and shit here since someone clearly watched one too many movies and also loves them spikes when they made this."
"The drawings look all too easy to understand. Two warriors left and right with red, one very rich person counting money on the inner left and one other person sitting on a throne on the inner right. Now...what the hell are we looking at exactly?"
Anya pulled her phone out, "Give me a moment to look it up with my data."
Lass facepalmed, "How do you even get a signal here?"
"Again, plot armor. That and the fact that it's not as ancient a place as I thought it'd be. Plus, you can't expect me to be an open information log all the time, let me do a back-search on these real quick." she took a photo of the images on the panels.
"Whatever helps get this over with?" Lass waited.
"Alright, so, that was easy. These are drawings of high-ranking positions in the Corosta and demon demi-human society...before the genocide and everything. Left and right red ones are the two generals, one for external affairs and one for internal affairs, the gold on the left is the head of the logistics for the country's economics and the right one with blue is the old king. It was sort of a mixed monarchy that they ran back then."
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"And the slots are for keycards held by each and every one of those people?"
Anya put her phone away, "I mean, yes? It's very likely, though we can't exactly confirm it."
"But that would also mean that these 'ruins' aren't exactly that light of a subject...that's why all those people died. This is just the second of god knows how many rooms to go by the looks of it, but it feels like this was a repurposed area to be used by the Corostan government to store whatever in here. That whatever being something they really wished no one would see." Lass observed.
"Funny how you think that they'd let what they didn't want to be seen outside city borders. If you want to hide something, you keep it close and concealed to not have anyone stumble on it later. Right?"
"Or burry it as far as you can to not have it found? In either case, something prompts the demon demi-humans to change their tactics, rapidly, not that long ago. How far back are the genocides of the World War? Some couple decades?"
"They haven't stopped in some far-out Insinian countries or states yet as far as I'm aware. But yeah, you have a point. This feels more like a treasury than ruins...weird. What the hell would they conceal this hard here?"
"Do we really want to find out? Anya, screw it, let's just back off and brute force our way out the door. I'm sure we can find another way out of here because this could be much more serious than we thought. Less we want to have our hands on a dead governments secrets that many wanted and are willing to hang us for it, it's not worth it."
"But the end price I found out about in the books here...could it still exist, despite this being revamped to Corosta's new storage house?" Anya thought out loud.
"What exactly are we even after here?" Lass wondered.
Anya moved towards the panels, taking out her chainsaw blade, "Yeah, screw it."
"What the hell are you about to do?!"
"More of my expert 'hacking', if you remember." she revved her blade up, cutting inside the blue waterfall's panel.
"Mutt, you drunk ass, stop!" Lass ran after her.
Before he could successfully prevent her from doing yet another wrong choice, Lass paused immediately at the sight of exposed wires, Anya having penetrated the outer layer of the panel and gotten to its inside system. Avoiding any sort of nudging or violent movement so as to not break something that would make their situation worse than it should once again.
Lass tried to coarse her otherwise, "Mutt, listen. Put the cables and wires down, back off and let's go back. You'll get a drink as a reward, ok?"
"Nice try, big guy. But I'm already drunk! Now was it blue or red that I wanted...hmm. Doesn't help that I'm seeing 3 blues and reds." she held on to one blue and one red wire.
"We're doomed, right?" Lass gave up hope, "Screw it, I choose violence.", he drew his sword and prepared to attack Anya into submission.
Just before he was given enough reason to switch on the offensive, the door laying closed behind the panels and waterfalls beeped, lighting up an indication of the same color and sketch on the panel Anya was messing with the cables on. Signaling that it was successfully activated, Anya smugged at Lass before putting the panel's wires back down and moving on to the next.
"See? I told you so."
Lass's face turned grim, "You bloody, drunken idiotic mutt."
"What? It worked."
Lass lifted three fingers up, "Three, two, one." he progressively lowered each one.
Just then, the blue symbol on the door turned red, as did all the other symbols on it, lighting in an instant as a heavy, rejection siren sound echoed throughout the entire room. The door they initially entered from also lowered its barricade, locking them inside as Lass didn't take his eyes off Anya while she looked around all surprised.
"Yeah, I hit the countdown perfectly this time.", Lass angrily said, "You thought you could hijack a government's treasury by playing a movie star and acting like you were hijacking a bloody car? What the hell is wrong with you? Did you seriously think that'd just be it? An entire sophisticated and advanced security system taken down by playing mix and match the RGB wires?!"
"I guess even plot armor has its limits." Anya sighed, "Welp, shite. A for effort though?" she rubbed her forehead.
Lass looked at Anya with an even angrier look, "Right, 'Mrs. Expert in Everything', what does 'Welp, shite.' stand for in this situation?!"
"Well in dungeon and ruin exploration language, it means we 'messed up'. Now 'we messed up' can be enhanced to a better sentence that provides a greater understanding of our situation, given that this story is mainly 16+."
"Which is? Oh, please, enlighten me more with your bullshit." Lass sarcastically said, trying to humor the situation to relax from the red lights and sirens.
"Something along the lines of 'We're fucked'. But hey, I learned that evolved form of a dictionary back in junior high, so that checks out. Anyways, I can bet you right now, this room had a trigger and stuff. Now as to what that trigger was...I guess I found it. Oops." Anya still remained chillingly calm, almost as if she was unaware of what was going on.
"Great, just great. What now?" Lass drew steel and prepared for the worst.
"Considering the door closed both at the front and back, one of two things will happen if said bozo made a stereotypical dungeon-like place with spikes and whatever. The ceiling will descend, with spikes or not and we die, or, the floor opens with spikes on the bottom or not and we...well, we die. That's the long and short of it, its Obsulyte infused spikes, we fear them for a reason."
The giant room's floor started to break, splitting in two and lowering to the sides, revealing a seemingly bottomless abyss. As the floor was drawn backwards, the gates from some of the concealed water paths opened, mixing the colored flows into one as they were slowly being taken inside the hidden contraptions underneath. Shortly after, a massive burst of mix colored water was heard, a reaction happening within the entire current, that blasted outwards from the front and back of the room as the class floor shattered, the fragments of glass as well as Lass and Anya being dragged along as well, forced down the giant hole.
"Ah. The pit it is.", Anya shrugged, as she started to fall down, yawning in the process as she enjoyed the breeze on her face.
"I'll do my part again, I guess." Mellistar forced Lass's hand that was holding his sword to make a move
"Hnga! Thanks!" Lass pinned his sword in the steep angle between the floor and the hole's wall as he dropped, "Gotcha!", he grabbed Anya by the tail.
Anya blushed red, fully waking up again as she looked up at Lass, "Kyah!!! W-What a-are y-you doin b-big guy?!"
"Not letting you drop and die. Even though with all that's happened, I'm considering it," he struggled a bit, slowly managing to pull them both upwards and bringing Anya to his chest level slowly, "Come on, grab on the ledge and pull me up next! Move around a bit!"
"N-Not t-to say i-its bad b-but..."
"But what? You wanna die?" Lass said with a straight face.
Anya blushed whole, crossing her legs, "T-Touching the b-base of m-my tail is like...the base is sensitive! You're making me feel so weird!" she yelled as Lass fully understood what she was talking about.
Lass blushed back, "What the hell?!"
Out of sheer shock, Lass simultaneously dropped Anya and stopped holding on to his sword, sending them both in a free fall, Lass falling right below Anya as he had managed to somewhat pull her up above her before dropping. Between the few remaining drops of water along their fall, after a long while, they both crashed on a somewhat rough surface that hurt them both but still managed to survive the fall nonetheless. Investigating further as they slid down at an angle from their dropping point, it appeared as if a massive, bony pile of bodies, some with flesh still on them to break their fall, had managed to stop most of the force of the landing. Doing so only because of sheer numbers and the fact that some were fresh, the mountain of bodies contained all sorts of both normal and demi-human skeletons, and the small hill-like pile they created being slowly decreased in size the further out they went, revealing that the cause of death was indeed a massive spike trap similar to what they had already encountered many times in there before, killing all those unfortunate to land there first.
"J-Jeez...sorry big guy. I should've probably told you that Wolven demis, or any tailed demis tail is like...that. Sorry." Anya blushed, "At least we survived the fall...somehow..." Anya looked around, "Uh big guy? Lass, are you ok?!" she worryingly called out, realizing the spikes and bodies she was surrounded by.
Lass slapped Anya's ribs, mumbling as he struggled to breathe before she realized where her friend was at.
"Ghet ofh mhy fhace, mhutt!" Lass mumbled.
"Kyah! What the hell, big guy?!" Anya jumped up.
"Give me a goddamn break, mutt! You ass wasn't my first option anyways, especially where my life's at right now! And you should've probably told me all of this shit when you made me feel uncomfortable as hell on our way to Delpha, don't you think? But no, you just had to pick out my fantasies instead, not making the subject about you 'because you care so much' as you cared for bringing our asses here!"
"I won't say a word..." Anya looked away as she ignored Lass's words, still being embarrassed about what had just happened.
"Neither will I..." he reluctantly agreed, before realizing something, "I won't until you start this conversation again. So from now on, pipe down with shit like this, and act like something between a normal person and whatever you are."
"Oh, come on!" Anya got flustered.
"Nuh, uh! You don't get a say now, mutt! You will do as I say like a good doggo, or I will do as I wish. Capisce?"
"What, you're a Medalian now?" she looked at Lass being as serious as he could be, "I-I...I understand..." she submitted.
"Good. Now you will follow me, I'm done playing games." he got up, "Where the hell kind of shithole did we step into this time, now?" he looked around.