No sooner had Varrin commented on our reunion, than a series of System messages appeared.

You have successfully defended against the Doomed Aspirants!

Your Dimensional Magic skill has increased to level 32!

Your Mystical Magic skill has increased from level 17 to level 19!

Your Physical Magic skill has increased to level 22!

Your Blunt skill has increased to level 27!

Your Shields skill has increased to level 26!

Your Heavy Armor skill has increased to level 21!

Your Leadership skill has increased from level 19 to level 21!

After the endless wave of skill-up notifications following The Pit, I’d convinced my UI to condense the text when receiving multiple levels at once. It was satisfying to see a wall of notifications, but it was inefficient for taking in gains at a glance. I doubted that many Delvers had that issue.

It wasn’t quite the same haul as we’d gotten from the boss rush, but 9 skill levels for a day of work was damn good. I was a little sad that Mystical Magic had stalled 1 point shy of an evolution, although I was certain we’d find more opportunities to rank up at the cost of severe threat to life and limb. I suppressed the notifications for my level 20 Leadership evo until I was certain we had a few minutes to look them over.

“Welcome to our humble kill box,” I said. “Careful where you step. We have a few traps with mechanical triggers. No idea if they’re still working, but better safe than sorry.” I eyed the floor. “There are also desiccated bug guts everywhere.”

Etja let out a hiccup that was half sob. She idly wiped some centipede off the front of her robes–to little avail–with a hollowed-out expression on her face.

“I hate it,” she said. “I hate it here.”

Nuralie pointed out the traps–there were exactly 2 remaining–while Xim hurried over to Etja to perform emergency Bathwarden duties. The cleric handed over her enchanted marble of cleaning, and Etja accepted it with a strained smile. She then stared at the ground as Xim began picking some of the larger chunks from her hair.

Varrin produced a towel to wipe the worst of the gunk from his face, studying the bodies we’d yet to dump into our corpse pit as he went over his hair. It had grown to a nice length, and the goo gave it a bit of volume. Overall, he was having an unfair amount of success looking good while covered in the blood of his enemies. I had no idea how his hair had survived Clockwork’s flame bath–unlike my own–but I assumed it had to do with his armor, which was a Ravvenblaq heirloom of superb make.

“You had a bug problem as well?” he asked.

“Literally crawling out of the walls. You?”

“The door teleported us to an underground cave system.” Varrin pulled out a new towel and worked on cleaning between his gauntleted fingers. “It was probably a hundred miles deeper than this place.”

“And it was full of bugs?”

Varrin nodded.

“Not the humanoid kind like these,” he said, waving toward one of the corpses, which was already hollowed out and blackened by the Delve. “But yes, giant insects.”

“What was your objective?”

“To reach our allies before it was ‘too late’,” he said, tone grim. “The cave was part of a large hive.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “Sounds straightforward.”

Varrin tossed his towel to the ground and pulled out another. His armor was enchanted to clean itself over time, so he was already looking quite a bit tidier.

“It was a very large hive,” he said defensively. “What was your challenge?”

“Oh, you know. Identifying an invisible soul thread moving through a four-dimensional space that channeled an artificial soul construct.”

Varrin had begun wiping down Kazandak’s hilt but paused, raising an eyebrow.

“I see.”

“Then I had to learn how to sense the fourth-dimensional axis and use Shortcut to travel to an adjoining space that shared a three-dimensional location and coordinate with Nuralie to simultaneously press buttons in both locations while being unable to communicate.”

“Ah.”

“After that, it was pretty easy,” I continued. “Just sit back and watch a show. We got some cool rings out of it, too.” I thought over the encounter in my head for a moment. “We might have been able to fight our way out, but it probably would have involved dealing with several hundred Grade 10 enemies at once.”

“That does sound mildly complicated.”

“I’m surprised yours didn’t involve a puzzle. This whole Delve is a puzzle.”

“There… may have been a non-combat option.”

“Yeah?”

“We found some pillars, but could not determine what they were for.”

“Pillars? What kind of pillars?”

“Elemental pillars,” said Etja as she continued to stare at the ground, eyes haunted. “There was a pattern to them, but I wasn’t able to figure it out. Manipulating the mana inside did something, but it didn’t help.”

“I think we were incapable of a key part of the solution,” Varrin added. “Etja could manipulate the mana, but none of us have elemental powers.”

“So you went with the ‘fight several hundred enemies at once’ route.”

“It was more of a ‘slay several thousand enemies throughout an endless, week-long battle’ solution.”

I glanced between Varrin and Etja. The pair were fairly healthy, but their resources were bottomed out and Etja looked like she was on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Shog was missing half of his feathers, covered in gore, and his posture was a bit hunched. He was also currently digging through the corpse of the centipede for some reason.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Welp,” I said, clapping Varrin on the shoulder, “they couldn’t have picked a better group for a murder spree.” He gave me a solemn nod. I took a breath and made a mental note to sign everyone up for therapy after this. “How did you end up finding us? Once our challenge was finished we ended up in this room facing down an exponentially growing horde of Grade 14s. You all showed up right before it started to get unmanageable.”

“Etja used Incorporate to absorb memories from the bugs,” said Varrin, back to cleaning his sword. “The hive was large, but it still had boundaries. Her Total Recall evolution allowed her to memorize everything she learned and find paths that avoided dead ends and nests.”

“I have to live with those memories,” said Etja. “Bug memories. For the rest of my life.”

Nuralie had gone over to the mage and gently rubbed her on the back.

“When it was faster to go through the walls than follow the tunnels,” Varrin continued, “we would capture one of the larger burrowing insects and ride them through.” Varrin tilted his head toward the giant centipede. Shog had pulled a large orb from its center and was studying it. “This room we’re in is at the center of the hive.”

“That’s just wonderful,” I said, then turned to Xim. “What was your challenge?”

“Waiting,” said Xim.

“Waiting?”

[We could have left at any time, but she would not let us.]

“We were taken to the most beautiful chamber,” Xim said. She looked up from her work on Etja’s hair for a few seconds, a reminiscent expression on her face. “It was filled with divine treasures that spoke to me, whispering truths I could barely comprehend. They could understand me as well, so I spent some time chatting with them, unraveling their messages.”

[She stood muttering at inanimate objects for several days.]

“The door to leave was always there,” Xim added. “The trap was that the treasures promised divine knowledge that would take lifetimes to unravel. I might have gotten lost in it if Grotto hadn’t pulled me out of the trance.”

[I used Commandment to apply the Distracted status so that she was forced to listen to me.]

“After that, I realized most of the treasures were false idols. But there was one treasure that was real and benevolent. It told me to wait until I heard the call of my allies before leaving.”

“The call of your allies?” I asked.

[I began having seizures once you started taking significant damage.]

“It was exquisite,” said Xim. “The gods communicate with us in such mysterious ways.”

Grotto glared at the cleric, his black octo-eyes thin slits of irritation.

“If we’d left any sooner, we would have had to find our way to you, instead of being transported directly here.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

[She doesn’t.]

“Faith guided me.”

Shog floated over while we chatted, sniffing the orb he’d dug from the centipede. It was excreting a glowing green liquid and covered in a thousand fine whiskers. The c’thon ran a feeler through the goo and tucked it behind his beard to taste it, then interrupted us when he scowled and spat.

“The worst part of our challenge was that all of these insects are divine spawn,” he said. “I could not consume a single one!”

Shog flicked the orb toward the ground with a casual gesture, but it hit hard enough to kick up dirt and create a small crater. I really wanted to find out what his stats were.

“Wait, divine spawn?” I asked. “Like what we faced in The Cage?”

Shog crossed his arms across his chest. At least, I thought he did. They disappeared behind his ‘beard’.

“The bitterness is balanced by a slightly sour undertone,” he said, “and there is a tantalizing umami flavor, creating a sense of haute cuisine distinct from when I last attempted to dine on such victuals.” I gaped at Shog as he went on, but Varrin heaved a sigh. “However, the texture and aroma mingle to form an unmistakable bouquet evocative of avatar. It ruins the otherwise complex and alluring palate.” Shog’s tentacles twitched and he made a deep, purring growl. “This culinary affront fills me with a towering fury.”

“That’s uh, good to know,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were such a gourmand.”

“It is most of what he spoke about while we were together,” said Varrin, his tone resigned.

“I am passionate about my food.” Shog ran his eyes up and down over Varrin with a thoughtful gaze. “You would probably be too salty.”

“Jokes about eating our friends aside,” I said, “this is a major problem. Why would there be an avatar here?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Etja. Between the cleansing marble and the grooming from the other women, she was starting to look a lot less befouled. “The Delve Remnant we fought was called The King’s Pit. That was the Delve that the Delve Core, Cage, managed before he went to work inside of The Cage.”

I snapped my fingers.

“I knew I remembered that name from somewhere!”

“The Cage drew a lot of its power from the avatars trapped inside,” said Etja. “When the wards keeping them locked up started to fail, they really messed with the place.”

“Like that room with the Bloom,” I said. “It had grown flesh plants everywhere.”

“Maybe Cage had practice using chained-up avatars as a power source.” Etja broke her staring contest with the dirt to glance up at me. “The one inside The King’s Pit could have gotten loose and corrupted the whole Delve.”

“That is a terrifying thought,” I said. “It’s also a lot of speculation.”

“I think the idea has merit,” said Varrin. “We initially followed the hive’s tunnels downward. The deeper we went inside this moon, the denser the ambient mana became.”

“Divine mana,” Etja added.

“Why go down?” I asked.

“You always go down in Delves,” Varrin grumbled. I had to give that one to him.

“And we feel confident we’re on a moon at this point?”

“There are hundreds of miles of underground here,” said Varrin. “What else could it be?”

“We could have been teleported somewhere new when we walked through those doors.”

Varrin grunted.

“Perhaps. But the moon theory addresses this environment and answers several questions.”

“I’m not sure most moons are full of bugs,” I said. “Then again, I haven’t visited any, so I can’t be certain.”

[Then you three believe an avatar is being used as a power source for this Delve?] Grotto thought to us. [And that it has begun to break its containment.]

“Since the divine mana gets stronger as we go down,” said Etja, “we think it might be buried in the middle.”

“That’d be one big egg,” I said. “With a gooey demigod center.”

“Why would the System use divine spawn as challenges?” asked Nuralie. “If they are not supposed to be here, it makes little sense.”

[A Delve will often put unexpected resources to use.]

“Or it’s a feature, not a bug,” I said. That drew a couple of confused looks.

“Oh, I get it,” said Etja. “‘Bug’ like you described to Umi-Doo.”

I nodded, thoroughly appreciating how little humor a joke held once it was explained.

“Yeah,” I said. “The Delve might intentionally encourage the growth of divine spawn to serve as monster fodder.”

“We won’t know more until we investigate,” said Varrin. “Did you discover anything about these creatures your group fought?”

“A bit,” I said. “Some of the items we looted carry certain… implications.”