The natural rock walls and ceiling of the tunnel gave way to smooth-cut stone when we stepped out of the corridor. The chamber we found was too large to see its bounds through the ubiquitous mist, but the stone lights were still visible far above us when I looked up, their illumination becoming small, spectral blooms in the haze.
From within the fog were rows of glowing green lights which slowly pulsed with the timing of a giant’s breathing, long and slow. On the floor were a mess of spiraling black tubes that looked like thick electrical cords or cables. I bent down to touch one, expecting to find rubber or plastic housing, but instead finding its surface hard and slick with moisture, like some sort of polished crystal. The edges curved out to meet the ground, looking as though the floor had been cast into this shape, or that the shape itself had grown from the ground.
As we moved toward one of the pulsing emerald lights, we found a large crystalline object floating in the middle of a column-like structure. Its surface was made of something so clear that the only way I could see it was that the fog abruptly ended. It was as if a cylindrical beam of force descended from the ceiling to trap this massive crystal and protect it from the corrupted air outside.
We all stared at it in wonder for a few seconds, then watched as a small bead of emerald liquid formed at the bottom of the crystal, then dripped down into a black grate beneath. One of the large tubes was set into the base of the structure, and it wound its way further into the underground facility.
We walked around for at least twenty minutes and found no end to it. There must have been thousands of the crystals hovering down here, slowly leaking their magical lime kool-aid into what I now suspected were hoses. But, where were the hoses taking the liquid? Was it being gathered somewhere? Was there an entire swimming pool of the stuff? Or, maybe a lake? I had no idea how long the fluid had been accumulating. There certainly didn’t seem to be any people down here monitoring the place.
“I’ve never heard of something like this,” Xim said, her eyes wide and drinking in the sight. It would have been beautiful, had I not been covered in filth and inhaling toxic gas with every breath.
That was beginning to wear on me mentally. My health regen made up for all the toxicity I’d built, but it didn’t negate it, it just healed the damage faster than it accumulated. My blood vessels felt like I was on a slow I.V. drip of pepper spray, my guts squirmed, and my eyes were bleeding. Just a little bit, though. The others looked like they felt worse than I did, except for Xim, who had taken everything that had happened so far in stride.
At one point Sayil tapped the barrier with the tip of a sword. It didn’t make a clink or a scraping sound as though it were made of glass or plastic. It didn’t make any sound at all. The point of his sword just stopped. Against Xim’s protest he leaned into it, putting his weight behind the blade, but it didn’t budge. He inspected the edge afterward, but it was undamaged.
We eventually found the far wall to the complex, which was perfectly flat, ascending upwards out of sight. We followed along it until we came back to the tunnel we’d entered through. Then, we continued to follow the wall until we ended up back where we started, more or less.
“Dead end?” Sayil asked.
“We’ve checked the other rooms,” said Varrin, looking around as if he could see anything more than twenty feet away, aside from the glowing lights. “There has to be an exit.”
“Maybe it’s hidden,” said Xim, “like an illusory wall or a secret switch.”
“Not in a Delve this low level,” said Varrin.
“Not that I’m an expert,” I said, “but it seems like this one is a bit unusual so far. At least, based on your reactions.”
“That’s true,” said Xim. Varrin nodded reluctantly.
“Something like that… Atrocidile,” Varrin said, throwing a lot of stank on the word ‘Atrocidile’, “is beyond what I would expect from a Creation Delve, no matter the difficulty. And these chambers are the type of things you find in a special Delve or a mid to high level platinum.”
“The objective,” said Xim, “mentioned that the mana accumulation had been interrupted by something. That’s what we’re trying to find and fix. What if this would be a higher level platinum, or even a special, if it were allowed to accumulate to maturation? It said the reward was an early mana distribution as well.”
Sayil’s eyes narrowed as she said this, and his hands balled into fists. He glanced at Varrin, then turned and walked away a few steps.
“If that’s true, then everything we’ve assumed based on this being a Creation Delve would be wrong,” said Varrin. “The layout so far has been simple, like you would expect from a low-level Delve.”
“Higher level doesn’t necessarily mean higher complexity,” said Xim. “That’s just true more often than not.”
I’ll admit that I wasn’t smelling everything they were stepping in with this conversation, but I had a pretty good idea. If I was understanding them, it was like we were in a late-game area, but all the monsters were scaled down to our level.
“So,” I said, “the magic batteries that run this place are set to low-power mode?”
“Maybe,” said Xim.
To be honest, I was surprised she understood that question. I guess they had batteries here? We weren’t speaking English, but my idiomatic English expressions still got across. Sometimes.
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” said Varrin. “Let’s walk the wall again. We’ll each keep contact with it and look closely for any irregularities that might indicate a hidden door.”
And that’s what we did. I slid my hand along the wall as we walked, while Varrin and Xim did the same. Sayil dragged the sheath of one of his swords along the bottom, which made an unpleasant scraping sound. We made our way back around again, finding nothing.
“What about the center?” I suggested.
There was a brief debate over how to tell where the center even was, and it was decided that we would count steps from one wall to another, while also counting the rows of floating crystals. We started at one wall and walked half the steps toward the middle, counting the pillars along the way. We didn’t end up exactly between pillars at the halfway point, but were close enough to feel confident that the pillars were spaced equidistant from one another. Then, we took a walk up the center row.
After another few minutes of walking we found a wide, spiraling staircase that led further down. There were dark and sticky streaks of blood on the steps, with three-toed footprints about the size of my hand pressed into them. The shape reminded me of a lizard of some kind, and I hoped we weren’t about to run into a pack of acid-spitting dilophosauruses. I stopped and considered how I knew the name of that particular dinosaur, but was interrupted when Varrin began making his way down. The rest of us followed.
The staircase had narrow stone walls, also smooth like the walls above, and I wondered if this was some sort of cement, since it lacked any perceivable bricks or blocks. As we descended, the fog slowly dissipated. There was still a serious haze going on, but I no longer felt like I had a fog machine blasting full-force from two feet away.
I rubbed at my eyes, clearing away some of the blood and tears as I adjusted to the humidity dropping from one-thousand percent to two-hundred, and when I took a good look around I realized this room was even more impressive than the last.
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In every direction were endless rows of densely packed plants, like a cultivated field, ready for harvest. The plants sprouted out of soft, spongy soil, with thorny stalks that were bright orange, gnarled, and twisting. The thorns were the size of my thumb, and the tips glistened and dripped with what was either the accumulation of moisture from the fog, or its own deadly poison.
At the top of the stalks, about four feet off the ground, was a bright yellow flower, with long, drooping petals that splayed open to reveal a bright glowing green crystal, like a miniature version of the ones from above. Off of this crystal wafted a vapor that ascended toward the roof, adding to a densely packed cloud above us; the poison we’d been walking through the entire Delve.
As I looked farther out into the room, the stalks disappeared into the mist, but the light from the glowing crystals sprouting atop them could be seen for what must have been a half-mile. There had to be a hundred thousand of these things. Maybe more. My jaw hung open at the scale of this underground facility, and a drop of something wet landed on my head.
I reached up and felt a cool, moist spot of something oily. I brought my fingers down and saw the tint of green from the liquid. I looked up, but the ceiling of the room was too high to make out through the fog, so I knelt down and felt the soil. It was damp. I stood and looked out over the field, sighting the occasional drip of some liquid from above.
“The big crystals upstairs,” I said, “are watering all this.”
“Are they growing more?” Xim said, awe in her voice. “It’s so much! What are they doing with it?”
“Nothing,” said Varrin. “Whoever built this place died before our ancestors were making stone tools.”
That got me curious, but before I could say anything I heard a low thud, and the others crouched. I quickly followed, trying to peer between the stalks to see what had made the sound. The thudding continued, moving closer. It sounded like someone was pounding at the soil with a sledgehammer. Out of the mist came a nine-foot-tall humanoid creature with shining black skin and glowing orange eyes.
That was a theme in this place, I mused, everything was glowing. It was like I’d stumbled into some sort of cornfield rave, but had forgotten my neon hula-hoop and was regretting taking the blue pills the nice man by the porta-potties had given me. Well, at least I was shirtless and covered in mud, so, dressed for the occasion.
The thing moved smoothly while walking, but came to sudden stops and moved in quick, jerking motions. As I watched, it reached out with a hand that sprouted into a dozen thin fingers and gently gripped one of the crystals. It leaned in, turning its head from side-to-side, as if to appraise the crystal, then twisted and snapped it from the stalk. It dropped the crystal into a small opening in its chest, then continued on down the row, head turning from side to side as it surveyed the other plants.
It came down the row close to us, and Sayil and Varrin both slid their swords from their sheaths as it drew near. When it was twenty or so feet away it stopped, head swiveling in our direction. It craned its neck and looked exactly where we all crouched. It was tall enough that the stalks did nothing to hide us, and we all tensed, ready to hop into action the moment the creature moved a step closer. It slid its eyes over the four of us, then turned back to a nearby crystal, glancing at it for a moment, then moving on. We all let out a breath as it stomped down the row, then disappeared back into the fog.
“What in all the hells was that?” said Sayil.
“Harvester,” I said, drawing a curious look from Xim.
“You’ve seen something like that before?” she asked.
“Not exactly. Where I come from we use machines to harvest crops. Based on the way that thing moved and acted, I don’t think it was alive. At least, not in the usual sense.”
“Are your machines that intimidating?” Sayil asked.
I imagined a farmer from the feudal era coming into contact with a combine harvester.
“I suppose that if you were seeing them for the first time, from this close, and had no idea what they were, then yes, they probably would be. Maybe more, in fact.”
“I see,” said Sayil.
“Regardless,” said Varrin, “it wasn’t hostile. Not yet, at least. Let’s move on and keep trying to find our objective.”
“Whatever that is,” grumbled Sayil.
“Maybe it’s that ‘harvester’,” said Xim.
I shook my head.
“It’s just a gut feeling, but I don’t think so. This whole place seems very intentional. The set up above is some sort of magical hydroponics, and all this down here is the crop. Having an automated harvester makes sense, it doesn’t seem out of place. If anything, harvesting the crystals helps the facility by making room for the next batch.”
Xim nodded and Varrin gave me a look I couldn’t quite decipher. I suspected that he was reevaluating me, since I was talking like I knew what the fuck I was saying for the first time, rather than asking questions that made him wonder whether I were secretly three toddlers in a trench coat, pretending to be a Delver.
“Do any of you know what those crystals are?” I asked.
Sayil shook his head and Varrin furrowed his brow.
Xim set her chin on a palm, then said, “I think it’s a crystalized form of poison essence.” She gave me a slight smile. “Just a gut feeling.”
“That… can’t be,” said Sayil. “It’s too much.”
“Delves often contain resources we can’t imagine,” said Xim.
“If that’s the case we should take as much as we can carry,” said Varrin.
“Wait, what’s poison essence?” I asked.
“Arlo,” said Varrin, which surprised me, since he used my name instead of calling me ‘esquire’, “you’re telling me that you can figure out what that thing was, along with the ultimate purpose of this entire facility, but don’t know what an essence is?”
“I feel like it wasn’t that hard to take a stab at what’s going on in here,” I said. “But, yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”
At this point, Varrin didn’t even look disappointed, he just looked confused.
“It’s the pure form of something,” said Xim. “Or, the most basic form, depending on how you think about it. Basically, a poison essence can be shaped into any type of poison, if you know what you’re doing. The Atrocidile essence we got earlier could be used by a mana weaver to shape an infant Atrocidile, or any specific part of an adult Atrocidile, with shape and size variations running the gamut of what is possible in an unmutated adult.”
“You can make babies with it?” I said.
“With the right essence, yes. Those aren’t very valuable, though. I mean, in the wider scheme of things. I’m sure the Atrocidile essence is worth a heap of notes, since the creature was unusual and a little strong. But the more generic an essence is, the more valuable.”
“Since you can make more things out of it?” I guessed.
“Yes!” Xim said, a bit too loudly. “Sorry. But, yes. A poison essence can be used to make any type of poison, which can mean tons of things. What even is poison? Is it limited to things that are poisonous to humans? To deeplings? To the weaver that’s shaping it? How do you define when someone is poisoned, as opposed to some other form of harm caused by ingestion or contact with something that harms you biologically? Maybe you can make compounds with poison essence that are revolutionary-”
“We get it,” said Varrin. “What she’s saying is that if those really are poison essences, there’s enough here to buy a kingdom, and then crash the poison essence economy afterward.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Xim. “But we can’t carry all of this out with us. There’s too much.”
“What about the inventory?” I asked.
“Of course we’d use that,” she said. “But how much do you think all this weighs?” she waved a hand out over the field.
“I have no idea.”
I stepped to the closest stalk, then gingerly tapped the crystal on top. It tingled when I touched it, like it had a small electric charge running through it, but it didn’t hurt. I took a hold of it, then twisted like I saw the harvester do. It popped off with a slight crunch, and I hefted it. It was about the size of a spice grinder, a little longer than the width of my hand, maybe two inches in diameter at its thickest point. It might have weighed a quarter pound. If there were a hundred thousand in the room, that would be twenty-five thousand pounds. I had no idea if a hundred thousand was even a good guess.
I opened my inventory and placed the crystal inside. The capacity now read 1/200. I also had my chips in there, and I didn’t know if those counted towards weight. I went to the next stalk and popped the crystal off. It was a little bigger. I popped it into my inventory and there was no change. I was able to get four more into my inventory before it went to 2/200. So, five to an inventory slot. Slot? Unit of weight? I needed to figure that out. In any event, I had a rough guess. I could carry 198 more ‘slots’ worth, which was a little less than a thousand of the crystals. That was assuming I didn’t want to carry anything else.
The others had started doing the same thing, twisting crystals off the stalks and putting them into their inventory. I looked around for the harvester, concerned that it might be upset that we were stealing from its field, but it wasn’t anywhere in sight. We all looted to our heart’s content for a time, and when we’d all filled up our inventories, leaving room for chips and other surprises, we’d only cleared a space that was around thirty feet wide and twenty-five deep. A sliver of what was around us. I thought about what Varrin had said, and couldn't help but imagine the rows of crystals as a field full of hundred-dollar bills that I didn't have the room to pick up.
I really needed a bigger inventory.