Jie ran after her friends down a wider tunnel. She sensed many other creatures around them, but most of them were too weak to be any real threat and everything seemed to be trying to avoid the behemoth's attention.
They dropped down into a rectangular room and kept running until they reached a much larger rectangular room. It had a hole in the floor with a pipe heading downward at an angle back along the way they'd come with webbing crisscrossed inside it.
"Are we going in there?" Pan Tian asked.
They all looked at each other. Jie couldn't blame them. She had no desire to try and slide down into who knew where surrounded by more of the things skittering in the darkness or through the webbing... but they could all still hear the behemoth digging its way down to them. Its long claws carved through the stone with slow but relentless fury.
Nobody said anything. All of them saw the fear on one another's faces. Pan Tian nodded and leaped down the pipe. Xue followed right after her.
"This one thinks you should go first. This one will not slide," Ithilix said.
Jie nodded and jumped into the hole. The instant her shoes touched the bottom of the pipe, she slid downward. The muck beneath her feet broke apart and her feet slipped out from under her. She slammed onto her back and rocketed down the steep angle of the pipe as Ithilix ran after her. The behemoth finally broke into the room they'd all been standing in and ripped it to shreds.
There was a bright flash ahead as Pan Tian cried out and attacked something with her claws of light.
Jie hurtled after her in the darkness, wishing she'd gone first to clear the way.
"Watch out it goes do-oooooown!" Pan Tian cried from up ahead, her voice echoing up the pipe.
Moments later, Jie saw what she'd been talking about as the pipe she was in connected to a massive one heading straight downward. Jie shot through the opening, arced through the air, and grabbed a handhold on the other side of the pipe leading down.
The muck she'd grabbed for a handhold broke under her grip and she plummeted downward. Her fingers carved a path on the side of the pipe and helped to slow her descent. But it was a long way down. Far further than anything they'd been in so far.
Finally, she fell through the bottom of the pipe and into an enormous one running horizontally across at a very gentle angle. Once again, Jie used a lightning step platform to break her fall. Even so, she landed on her feet with a bone-jarring thud next to Pan Tian and Xue. Both of whom were covered in muck.
"I... hate... this place..." Pan Tian said between panting breaths as she flicked unidentifiable gunk off her claws of light.
Xue stood to one side and shook himself vigorously, splattering Jie and Pan Tian with filth as he did so.
Jie and Pan Tian both glared at him and stepped away from him. Thankfully, the behemoth's roars sounded much further away now and Jie doubted even it could sense them through all this metal, rock, and... whatever else...
A moment later, Ithilix walked out of the pipe, across the ceiling, down the wall, and over to them. Out of all of them, she was by far the cleanest.
"I need to find a way to emulate that ability," Pan Tian said, "maybe some enchanted shoes or something."
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"This one does find it very useful from time to time," Ithilix said, "is everyone alright?"
They took a moment to look themselves and each other over. Other than a few bumps and bruises, mostly from debris raining on them, they were alright.
"I don't think I'll ever feel clean again," Pan Tian complained as she scraped black gook off her arm and flicked it off her gauntleted hand, "not with a thousand baths. Ugh."
"At least we're safer from the behemoth," Jie said, "I think we should keep going before we slow down though... it dug through a lot of stone with no issue, and I don't want to stop moving just yet."
The others looked upward and shuddered. They ran down the tunnel, with Jie side by side with Pan Tian. She scanned for traps and dangers while Jie kept alert for anything that might try to eat them. Though most things fled from the light of their lanterns.
A large gelatinous mass attacked them, and Jie blasted it to pieces with her finger of light attack. The other creatures kept their distance even more after that, but Jie could still feel countless eyes upon them. And even the soft light of their lanterns carried incredibly far in the total darkness of the sewage tunnels. It would be all too easy for creatures to ambush them down here, Jie thought.
The smell was terrible, but Jie expected it'd been far worse when it carried the waste of an entire city.
The roars and furious digging died down into a tense silence. Whether it meant the behemoth had given up on them or was trying some new way to get at them, Jie wasn't sure and it set her nerves on edge.
***
Eventually, they slowed down and Pan Tian led the way more cautiously. Now that they seemed to have escaped the behemoth, the ever-present threat of traps seemed worth paying attention to again.
They passed several ladders leading upward. Though some of the rungs were missing. But they continued onward as none of them wanted to emerge anywhere near the behemoth. Pan Tian returned to making notes of their path, but Jie had the sneaking suspicion that for once Pan Tian was just as lost as the rest of them.
Still, they could easily backtrack to one of the ladders... provided they led to the surface and not just another layer of pipes...
Some sections of pipe had faded hieroglyphs. Usually consisting of lines like tally marks next to other symbols that made no sense to Jie. Like birds or weird squiggly lines. As they walked, Jie cultivated, restoring her energies after the fight with the noctilith. The dungeon was a dangerous place, and she wanted to be as close to her peak as she possibly could be for whatever they might encounter.
***
After a while, Jie saw a faint white light ahead. And Ithilix's antennae quivered.
"This one senses spiritual medicine," Ithilix said.
"We'll investigate, but let's be careful. Keep your auras veiled. It could be a trap to lure in prey. Or something nasty the arak left for us," Pan Tian said.
They pressed on more cautiously, dimming their lanterns as much as they dared as they approached the light. They turned a corner and saw it directly ahead. Jie's skin prickled and a sense of unease grew with every step down the pipe.
"Is anyone else feeling like something isn't right?" Pan Tian whispered.
"I feel it too. So, does Xue, I think," Jie whispered back.
"Ithilix, any thoughts?" Pan Tian asked.
Ithilix's antennae twitched. "This one thinks it's a ward of some kind designed to create an unpleasant, fearful feeling," she said.
"Hmm... probably something put in by the arak to keep noctilith and whatever else dwells down here from getting at the spiritual medicine..." Pan Tian mused, "still... we'll be careful."
They crept closer and soon turned their lanterns off entirely as the light ahead was more than enough to see by. Though the feeling of unease had long since grown into a sense of terror that weighed on Jie. The others were shaking, but they pressed on without a word, so Jie did the same while using her spirit sense to search for any hidden enemies as best she could. She felt a variety of presences ahead of them. A collection of spiritual medicine ranging from the Adept rank to the early Elementalist rank and some kind of creature at the ninth star of the Adept rank as far as she could tell. There were some other, stranger auras that felt somewhat like items too...
Not that it meant much with how skilled some things were at hiding. Especially when they were more powerful. The Elementalist spiritual medicine worried her too... particularly as the fight in the grove had taught her that plants were not always passive.
The light came from panels someone had affixed between the thick pipes that ran over the ceiling of a larger chamber, some of which had been broken at some stage. The light was warm like sunlight and beneath the panels were tables with a variety of spiritual medicine planted in small trays filled with soil held above a layer of water beneath them. Beyond them was an orderly desk and a neatly made bed.