Just like that, they were ready to leave once again. Emergency supplies were prepared in minutes, weapons were sharpened and put into their sheaths, and the two others were left behind in the shop while they went down the street at a good pace.
It wasn’t night just yet, though the sky had started to darken from more than just the gray clouds above. In an hour or two, the summer sun would fall beneath the horizon, and the night would begin in full.
Elijah hoped to be done before night was too far along. If they were able to acquire what they needed and allow him to repeat the technique used before, it would be a great boon.
“What are you two doing here?” he heard Olivia shout at them as they entered the city center and approached the pillars. Some twenty guards were stationed at the Dungeon entrance, many more than there normally were but these circumstances weren’t normal either. “If you’re hoping to get in a third this week, Elijah, I can’t help you. Shit’s closed down until they’ve gotten a proper team in there.”
“Good evening to you too, Olivia,” Elijah said, the head guard just shaking her head. “And, yes, I’m hoping to get in. This time without you possibly getting in trouble for it.”
“What the fuck do you mean by—” Olivia began to respond, in the most polite fashion currently possible for her, before seeing the shine of the emblem Elijah pulled out of his pocket. “Well. Should I ask who you’ve killed to have that on you?”
That she didn’t sound like she was joking but just uncaring told volumes about how much recent stress had hit the woman.
“You heard about the old Royal Healer dying?” Aleksi said, the guard narrowing her eyes in response. “Somebody got approached after their ‘heroic actions’ yesterday and was given the position for the next six months.”
“That… Why do I even try to follow along with whatever happens in this city anymore?” Olivia complained, a hand over her face while she muttered some ugly words. “Whatever. If you want an entry into the Dungeon, I can grant it. Just come over to me after you’re done, and fill out the forms that stop me from having my ass handed to me in the morning.”
They promised to do as much, before heading to the Dungeon entrance. The gate wasn’t raised as they approached, the guards there instead guiding them to the sizable hole cut through it. Most of it seemed to have been done by the monsters from the day before, yet it had clearly been widened to allow for the Royal Guards who’d been there earlier today easier access.
And that blood on the edges…
He could at least console his mind, with the fact that the off-coloured stains didn’t seem to have human origin.
The first thirty minutes of walking through down into the Dungeon proved as boring as usual. As they continued down the easy descent, the density of Mana steadily increased with the regular levels as well, matching what Elijah had felt days before.
When going past the initial caverns, and further down the next layer where the worms had previously attacked, there was only one difference to notice.
Or maybe calling them piles of differences was better?
“Half-decayed worms and fliers,” Alekii commented, poking the nearest pile with the tip of his axe. The shell of the first created offered no resistance, caving in instantly. “The Dungeon reclaiming whatever it can get from them?”
“I suppose so,” Elijah replied, grimacing as the pile began to fall apart from the giant’s poking. The creatures were more liquid than anything else now, their insides emptied out and steadily pooling onto the rocky ground around them. “Let’s go before it gets worse.”
That there was a pile of monsters every fifty meters or so said a lot about how the population of monsters had skyrocketed recently. There would barely be a quarter of the amount seen on this floor alone, making Elijah wonder if those floors below had simply been pushed up and stayed here, or if the depths just had increased its population count so massively as of late.
The running theory of Dungeon Break, a theory that had been proved many times before, was the emergence of a much stronger beast much further below that pushed everything upwards as an attempt to claim a larger area of its own. This then snowballed until the tighter spaces further up weren’t enough to host so many creatures, making them spill out en masse.
Not the greatest thing in the world, and it brought enough corpses that the Dungeon wasn’t able to clear out the organic matter before the stench felt unbearable. While Elijah had learned to ignore the smell, having worked with herbs fouler than rotten eggs, the giant wore a constant grimace.
“It’ll improve once we go down further,” Elijah promised, as they found the entrance to the next floor. It was here that they’d stopped last time, already having filled up their bags, but that wasn’t their main goal anymore. “The Snarethorn should start appearing once we’re down there.”
Otherwise, it was about the same as what one could expect from the floor they already stood on. Piles of corpses, maybe a few more of those half-trees that sprouted, and, finally, the first type of plant that was somewhat hostile to anybody that got too close.
“Right,” Aleksi said, looking down the tunnel leading to the next floor warily. “Say if you feel anything.”
The giant was worried about the Dungeon interacting with them again. It was a risk that Elijah hadn’t thought much about, honestly. Their last encounter in the depths had happened with him forming a very temporary bond with the mind of the Dungeon, though calling it that felt weird. It was alive in the same sense that the Sundrop Flower in the house was alive. Sentient but primal, able to talk like a person but still lacking the true edge of intelligence.
Dangerous, regardless, and Elijah was ready to turn around the second anything hinted at that mind focusing on them.
Steeper than expected.
They delved further down, having to watch their footing as the steeper parts of the tunnel almost had them falling. There were enough holds and crevices that it wouldn’t be impossible to get up, but watching one’s footing was paramount. Elijah was just happy that this kind of steepness was all he personally had to manage, knowing the tales of what it was like further down. After the 10th or so layer, there were several sections where a person would need to climb down a completely vertical wall, filled with razor-sharp edges and no place that could fit a rope comfortably.
It was great that the torture of getting down wasn’t a long one for the two either, as barely a minute needed to pass before they reached flat ground again.
The air was even thicker with Mana here than it was on the other floor, Elijah needed to breathe for a few minutes as his senses adjusted to the sensation. He had to focus on muting the feeling of magic, to reach a new baseline or feel himself constantly surrounded by a world exuding the same energy as a certain Earth Mage he’d met earlier that day.
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Breathing to even out the pressure inside, channeling through your body to accelerate the process, and isolating parts into your sight to let it see what is hidden.
By the end, he felt like weight was put off his body, Elijah standing a little taller than usual as his back wasn’t hampered too badly.
“So the thing that finally let you have good spinal health was being in a deadly Dungeon hundreds of meters below the surface?” Aleksi questioned, getting a staredown in response. “Just saying.”
“Keep moving,” Elijah ordered, not bothering to entertain the chuckling giant as he looked around. “We should be able to find some of them here.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Aleksi promised, slowing down as a putrid smell once again began to reach them. “There’s more than worms down here.”
The flying insects and the foxes that had stood by the giant centipedes on the surface were in piles like on the other floor, fur and wings melting like ice and dropping onto the floor gradually. Elijah was disgusted by the sight, though he was likewise happy that the guards had been down here as well. They had reached somewhere close to the edge of what had been cleared, and seeing that the area had still not been repopulated meant they were without having to worry too much.
“What are you doing?” Elijah asked when the giant walked over to the nearest pile. He frowned when one hand ripped off the liquidized head of one of the foxes, before picking out the fangs that had sat in its mouth. “Put that down before I have to bring out the disinfectant, please.”
“I doubt that there’s much disease still alive in this thing,” Aleksi assured him, though it meant little to Elijah when he watched the giant take the last teeth of the fox before throwing the head away and returning to him. “Take a look at these.”
He did as asked, taking one from Aleksi’s palm and studying the fang. It was bleached white, the original surface already absorbed by the Dungeon air, and not too hard to break in two. Elijah needed to put as much effort into breaking it as he would for a hard-boiled egg.
The Mana inside the powder that came from it, though… with the fleshy parts already gone, he was left with mostly Poor Man’s Calcium. Not the typical variant of it either, since this had a higher density of Mana inside it than Elijah could personally boast of.
“The body parts of monsters further down are worth a lot because of the Mana they’ve got inside them,” Aleksi reminded him. “Used for magical reagents in rituals, lots of types of alchemy, and, in our social group specifically, as an added boost to productivity when transmuting powders.”
He was collecting them for Jack to use.
Elijah should’ve realized, wondering what the giant could’ve seen in the teeth. This… wasn’t a bad idea at all. Though they hadn’t been able to talk much about it before they left, one of the discoveries during the man’s time at the smithy was the varying costs when transmuting one material into another. It wasn’t just the amount that needed to be altered that decided the cost of the process, but also the difference in composition, the difference in density, and how much magical power was already present in the original material to supplement with.
That last part was discovered when the man noticed the amounts of pollen he could alter into gunpowder changing based on the age of the pollen. Since the material gradually lost Mana when not connected to its original source, the connection was made and Elijah had been asked to make a recent batch every now and then to help him. Not the hardest request in the world, but it wasn’t sustainable.
This wasn’t either, but it had more than five times the density that the pollen produced by the plants in the shop could boast about, so he was sure that the younger man wouldn’t complain too much about not getting into the dungeon himself.
They filled a small bag with the teeth until they had about a kilo to work with, putting it away and continuing once again.
Piles decreased as they moved further into the area, the half-trees likewise becoming more and more dense until it seemed like they were surrounded by a miniature forest. The glowing blue moss could still be seen on the ceiling twenty meters above, but the branches of the plants almost reached just as high.
Low visibility.
Not a fun environment to be in, when looking for a type of plant that was known for its ability to hide well.
It hid so well, in fact, that Aleksi wasn’t the first to discover it while walking ahead a few meters. Elijah was, using not his eyes or magical senses, but instead his left foot.
“Snarethorn!” he announced loudly, feeling the softness under the shoe for a moment before what felt like a thorned whip slapped onto his left leg. Painful but manageable, until Elijah was forced to balance and instinctively tried to pull away from the plant.
It lived up to its namesake by instantly retaliating, tightening the hold around his leg enough to draw blood while trying to increase its hold on the limb by going further and further up.
Elijah gritted his teeth, pulling out his dagger to cut off the plant from its stem but Aleksi was faster. A swing of the axe cut off the tendril that had latched out from the ground, and another halved the flat plant that had been hidden in a small crevasse.
The few parts of the plant that continued moving shut down at that, the vital parts unable to supply the energy required for normal operation.
“Thanks,” Elijah said, slowly unwrapping the vine from his foot while trying to avoid scratching his skin further with the sharp thorns. A quick application of healing paste was then able to close up most of the wounds, at least ending the bleeding in most places. “Let’s see if this pain was worth it.”
Unlike most other plants that had a generally identical structure throughout its entire body, the Snarethorn was more advanced in that aspect. Different sections of the body performed different tasks. There was the main chunk in the center, handling the vine that could be moved at will, the layer around it that was focused on absorbing and processing the feed that came from successful kills, and then the energy storage that kept everything nice and safe while also connecting to the roots below to firmly have it in place.
And, finally, there were the brains of the entire operation. Calling it the heart or sac didn't sit too far from the truth either, Elijah supposed. It was located below everything else, just where the roots started, and it was what controlled most of everything else along with storing the seeds for future Snarethorns that could be shot out through the vine.
It was the part that made the plant ‘smart.’ Not smart to the point where it was at the level of the fake animal in his shop, or the Dungeon that controlled the place they stood in, but enough that it was a step above the common herb.
“Enough seeds to start with,” Elijah commented, counting the twenty balls in his hand. They were spiky, ready to pierce his skin if he tried crushing them, but he had no intention of trying such a thing. They were too valuable for his future project. “Should be enough to work within the shop.”
“So the first half of our work down here is done?”
“Looks that way.”
“Good.”
While there was a mild desire to explore further in, to see if enhanced herbs could be found, Elijah instead followed Aleksi to the tunnel that would lead them upwards and into the previously visited floors.
They didn’t go up just yet, however, settling down just before it as Elijah began to feel the surrounding air.
Thick enough to drink, ready to be used by anybody willing.
“Since I have some experience with it now, the entire process should take less than two hours,” Elijah explained as he made himself comfortable. Aleksi just stood above him, looking amused by the attempts to find comfort next to stalactites that were ready to impale him if given the chance. “I don’t expect anything to come at that time, but if you could watch out until I’m done it would be appreciated.”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand my role here,” Aleksi replied, waving away the explanation as he put down the axe. “I’ll let you know if anything is coming to kill us and take care of whatever it is while you finish what you’ve started.”
That sounded good enough for Elijah, as he began to isolate himself from the outside. His eyes were closed, the sound was tuned out, and the smell of the cavern became nothing in his inner world. There were only his thoughts and the Core floating around, waiting to be called upon.
Let’s do this.