I was able to find several tunnels, so I selected the one the water was flowing toward. Whether this was the right direction or not, I couldn’t say, The luminescent algae didn’t exist uniformly across the Deep, so there were areas with light and areas without. As long as I had my Light spell, it was rather either to navigate through and didn’t feel much different from traveling in a dungeon.

The landscape was unique though. There were mushrooms the size of trees, and there were various other plants of exotic and strange colorization. In short, it sounded like life. The Deep was its ecosystem, and unlike the dungeons which were relatively silent except for my party and the occasional mobs, this place was lively. I could hear the sounds of slithering, crunching, clicking, and even bird calls, although it was hard to say if there were any birds down here or if it was something else.

The biggest problem being in this unfamiliar environment was that I didn’t know what was a threat. In a dungeon, it was fairly easy. If it was alive, it was likely to attack you. Down here, there was a lot of life, and some of it was hostile and some of it was not. I had to leave my Map and Sense Life up, looking for red. I wasn’t sure how this feature worked, but anything that seemed to wish me harm turned up as red, while allies were green and neutral life was yellow. Without this, I assuredly would have been having more trouble.

That’s because a few things that had seemed harmless turned out to be hostile. There was a large and beautiful plant that had ended up in my path, and if it wasn’t glowing red, I might have walked right by it. I watched as strange over-sized mole-creature walked by, and then plant latched out and swallowed it whole. So, even the plants were dangerous in this place. I wanted to just throw some fire at it, but that worried me as well.

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Caves could be deceptively dangerous. There could be flammable gases that could ignite, plus the amount of oxygen was questionable. I didn’t think given my current constitution that I would be brought down easily by carbon dioxide poisoning, but I didn’t want to change it either, so I tried to remain as cautious as possible.

Of course, even being mindful of the red dots didn’t stop me from being attacked eventually. The beast that came out at me looked like a hairless rat, except that it was the size of a small car. I was able to defeat it easily with a single swipe of my blade.

That blade wasn’t Alysia. At that point, it had been only a short time before that she had been still acting as a drill. I didn’t want to wait a night for her to recover, so I had continued cautiously while she slept, using a spare blade. As I cleaned it, I noticed a bit of a rumbling sound.

I glanced around, frowning. Something big was moving, and it was heading in my direction. I squinted into the darkness. One of the biggest problems with the Light skill was that it created a light circle around me, but beyond that circle was darkness, and the light prevented my eyes from ever adjusting to said darkness. An orb could spread light to an entire cave, although the lighting might be dim.

Light was bright, but it only spread so far. Of course, the reason I remained on light is that it went only one way. If I used an orb in this dark world, then I would stick out like a sore thumb to everything down here.

That said, I started to see various red lights appearing at the very edge of my light. I started to realize they were eyes, and those eyes belonged to none other than the kin of the naked rat thing I had just killed. There was a stampede of hundreds of them coming right at me!