Elijah could feel his muscles tense. Not from strain or overuse after a long day but the type that came from stress. He could feel it in his back as he stood upright a little more than usual, in his stomach as they walked, and in his hands as he gripped the bags that would soon be filled to the brim with an assortment of herbs and various other items that needed to be harvested tonight.
Not many others could be seen walking through the main streets tonight. A little unusual, though it was nothing that he cursed. The quiet air was a boon in many ways at the moment.
They moved from the poor district of the city and over to the richer center. Still middle-class, of course, but the quality of the buildings increased dramatically. The stone tiles were less crude, and more even in their placement, and the roofs were still intact and well-colored. Inside each house next to the road, the magical lights conjured for regular use were easy to spot, as the rays flew out from the windows and into the slight mist that gathered in the street. Not thick enough to impair vision but just enough to allow for the lines of light to be seen clearly.
It did hide the dungeon from view until they turned a corner and ventured into the very center of the city, however. Not a hard task to fulfill, of course, as the large open space around it didn’t leave much opportunity for light sources to illuminate the structure.
Even if most of the magical construct was hidden deep beneath the surface, the very top had been modified to look more appealing. Several large arches surrounded the entrance into the dungeon, beautiful carvings made in each of them that depicted the creation of the country. Elijah had never cared for them too much, though even he had to compliment the white-and-gray coloring.
The arches were also practical, of course. The one at the very front was equipped with a portculis, which allowed the guards there to easily block the entrance during the hours when nobody was allowed to enter. And that wasn’t all, the space between the front arch and the one to the right of it was slightly wider to allow for an office to be settled there. Though it was cleverly hidden in plain sight, the guards had somewhere to sit while on break, and it also allowed for a certain guard captain to do her administrative duties while being close to her men if anything needed to be done quickly.
Tonight, however… There was a peculiar sight.
As the dungeon was the home of countless magically-manifested herbs and beasts, it was both a boon and a danger to the surrounding area. Plants might stay in place and grow peacefully, but the monsters were attracted to the scent and noises of life above. Though the regular trips inside by warriors limited the numbers that the beasts could grow to be, some would often still slip by and make their way through the top floors and over to the dungeon entrance.
Tens of guards were meant to be ready in that situation, killing any monster with brutal efficiency. A single man could easily deal with one beast, of course, but the monsters rarely walked alone, hence the need for those dozen guards at the entrance at any moment of the day. The metal mesh might hold most out during the off-hours, but the beasts had a habit of simply tearing it apart and going through regardless.
And yet, as he and Aleksi walked up to the dungeon’s entrance, Elijah could only count three heads. A fraction of the normal amount and a clear sign of something being wrong.
“Elijah!” a guard at the entrance to the dungeon shouted as they approached. “Glad to see you’re on time today. And hello to you too, Aleksi. Didn't expect to see you today.”
“Somebody had problems with their back and needed help carrying bags,” Aleksi explained, getting a polite laugh out of the guard.
“Can I ask why there are so few of you tonight?” Elijah asked Fred. “Did too many of you drink before your shift again?”
“Ah, no, we aren’t making that mistake more than once,” Fred assured him. They all remembered how Olivia had gotten a few years ago when half hadn’t shown up to do their job and the other half had shown up seeing double. “We actually have… just about everybody on the job today. Not here, though. They’re running around town pulling down all those wanted posters we put up today.”
What?
“Why?” Aleksi asked a low laugh leaving the old giant. “Seems a little counterproductive of you.”
“For sure, but orders are orders and we don’t have much of a say in whatever goes on above. Even when nothing gets explained to us,” Fred said. “Oh, right, Elijah, Olivia told me to pass a message on to you. She wants you to pull down the poster she put up in your shop.”
“I’ll do it when we’re done with this excursion,” Elijah promised, trying to move things along. Fred seemed to get the message, the guard leaving his relaxed position next to the arch to help the two other guards get the metal mesh a meter or two upwards so they could get inside. When they did, he and Aleksi stepped through and into the cave. “We should be back up within the next three to four hours.”
“Long trip,” Fred commented. Very observant, though the guard likely just remembered Elijah’s old estimates of one to two hours. “Are you planning on going deeper than usual? Not sure Olivia would like that.”
“No, we’re still staying on the top floors. It’s just that the extra bags will take more time to fill.”
“Oh, I see. Move along then.”
The two other guards wished them good luck, which they were thanked for before he and Aleksi ventured down into the dungeon. The first hundred meters or so of the cave system was decently close to a spiral staircase of sorts. The walls and ceiling looked like a very natural structure, the stone as far from flat as possible as jagged edges and tips filled the surface. Leaning on anything would cause a multitude of cuts that would require one to go back up and get treated.
A common mistake for a tired beginner in this area, but both Elijah and Aleksi were far from beginners.
“Any notices about crawlers recently?” the giant asked him as they hit a depth of about fifty meters. They knew that from the fact that the bioluminescent moss had started to show up consistently, illuminating the cave around them relatively well. The soft blue glow did create shadows on some of the far-away spots of the area, though, giving ample place for ambush monsters to hide.
“None that I was made aware of yesterday,” Elijah explained, continuing to walk through the tunnel at a steady pace. They still had another half kilometer of walking before their first harvest area would be revealed. “Keep an eye out anyway, though.”
“Was already planning to. Hard to trust your blind eyes only.”
His ‘blind eyes’ worked perfectly well when Elijah ventured down here alone most times, but calling them as much in comparison to Aleksi’s was perhaps not too far from the truth. While he had to narrow his eyes to see in the darkness and find the more elusive plants, the entire area seemed perfectly well-lit to the giant.
A byproduct of the old alchemical treatment he’d gotten five decades ago, along with the steady use of enhancement concoctions that had been consumed during the war. An already-strong man had become taller and better built than any normal person could ever hope for, along with his senses getting increased to the point where they rivaled weaker elves.
Darkness could look like day, and a breathless whisper could be heard from the other end of the room. A great boon in combat and war, little able to sneak up on the giant, but a terrible curse during day-to-day life. Elijah could easily remember the first year of their living inside the city, where the giant could only sleep when collapsing from exhaustion.
The mental image seeped into the forefront of his mind for a few precious seconds, until Elijah’s magical core twisted itself around and sent signals directly into his head.
What?
“What is it?” Aleksi asked when Elijah stopped in his tracks. His feet had stopped listening to his commands, as he began to focus entirely on the swirling happening within. “Are you alright?”
It’s alive.
Elijah didn’t answer, taking a deep breath to get himself calmed down. This… He’d known that the dungeon would be full of life, he’d known that for a fact for the last many years due to having come down here so often, but with his magical senses restored that fact reached a higher level of truth.
It wasn’t just the plants and the monsters that radiated with life down here. The very air that they both breathed in was filled to the brim with it, filled with intent, filled with a mind.
Everything around them was alive. The dungeon was alive.
“I’m fine,” Elijah finally answered, as a large hand gripped his shoulder. “The effects of releasing my core are just more severe than expected. It’s like a sudden rush between the ears.”
“Serious enough to go back up?”
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“No. We’re sticking to the plan.”
The released magical core was partly the reason they were down here, after all. The official reason for Elijah’s second trip into the depths this week was because of a mishap with the gathered herbs the day before. Olivia certainly believed it was a mishap that caused the lack of a finished product.
Whatever the case, it also gave Elijah the chance to test out his magical abilities once again in an environment that harbored no prying eyes. Quite the perk, though there was one more quirk about dungeons that made it so utterly perfect for anybody wanting to test out the magical arts.
The extreme density of mana already present in the air.
Any spell formed and shot out into the world had push-back due to the air and everything else resisting its efforts. If a Wind Mage tried to push air around, the regular air would fight tooth and nail to take the energy inside the conjured version and distribute it evenly until it was spread so thin that it was practically impossible to control.
A way to think of it was to imagine the spell as a high-density gas and the world around them being a low-density variant. The higher the amount of mana in a spell, the higher the density and the higher the pressure that came with it. An exponential curve when it came to how much control was required to maintain anything outside of the body.
But increasing the mana density in the air around them alleviated that issue. Not entirely, of course, but enough that ordinary mages could push themselves much further than normal. And more frequently as well, since the higher amounts in the area around them allowed their core to refill rapidly.
The perfect testing ground, as long as you weren’t killed by any beasts that roamed the dungeon.
And it only got better the further a person went into the dungeon. The air was thick at the top of the dungeon when compared to the outside world, but it would seem like nothing when put next to what could be expected at the bottom. Elijah had never personally gone down more than a few floors, but he’d heard the descriptions. When warriors ventured down far enough, there wasn’t even a need for the bioluminescent plants to light up the world, the wild mana in the air giving a constant swirling of colors that could be seen with the naked eye.
The level of density required for such a thing was unthinkable, yet it was easily accessed down there. With the potential that it brought, Elijah could almost consider going down there with an escort one day.
Not now, though. Right now, this density at the very top was more than enough for him.
“We’re getting close to the first stop,” Elijah announced as he studied the tunnel around him. More than just the moss had started to pop up, a few purple flowers and jagged vines sprouting from the walls. Neither of those were useful to him, but they were a good indicator of when he needed to keep an eye out for the hidden treasure. “Say if you see golden petals.”
“Will do.”
It did take another three minutes of walking before they reached a point of interest. The cave tunnel had changed from a tight fit into a much wider area, nearing the description of a fully-fledged cavern. It was five meters in height at the lowest and easily fifteen at the highest, along with being around fifty meters from one end to the other. A massive place with a massive surface for plants to grow.
“There’s a group over at the edge there,” Aleksi pointed out as they stepped into the world of flowers. Most of the area was taken up by the purple petals still, but some select spots had useful ones. “Good handful.”
“Well-spotted,” Elijah said, carefully wading through the other plants until he reached the designated spot. As described, there were about twenty fully-grown flowers, but with nearly a hundred buds hiding beneath.
A side-effect of this area already having been harvested the day before. The plants usually taken hadn’t had the chance to grow back to their full might just yet. A pity, but… Elijah had an idea of how to solve this issue.
First cutting out the heads of the flowers and putting them into their prepared bag, he put his palm into the center of the golden growth.
The issue was a lack of time to grow naturally, so he just had to accelerate the process a little. Not easy to do fast when it was a group of flowers this size, but the helping push of the dungeon came in handy here.
“Grow,” Elijah whispered to the plants, before letting threads of mana grow from his fingertips and connecting them to the root systems of the flowers.
Channeling of [Accelerate Growth] has been activated! Current cost: 12MP/sec
A high cost if this was a single plant, but this was easily forty. And with the same speed of growth that Elijah had caused back in the house, the flowers twitched around as pulses of energy traveled through them to rapidly grow their masses. Processes that would’ve taken days took seconds, and buds only starting to consider sprouting instead instantly unfurled to show their beautiful coloring to the world.
A week of growth put into fifteen seconds. Elijah felt some satisfaction seeing what he was able to do, but his body didn’t feel the same way as his shoulders sagged.
“Aren’t you the one saying I should take it easy normally?” Aleksi questioned as he helped Elijah up from the ground, holding his body in place while he got in some long breaths. “You’re not twenty again, just because you can feel your magic.”
“I know,” Elijah replied as he looked at how much mana he had left in his reserves.
Mana: 180
And more is growing back every second.
The wave of weakness dissipated after a couple more breaths, and the veins of mana in his body were refilled and operational once again. The lackluster channeling through them greatly annoyed Elijah, but he knew that steady practice would bring back the levels that he had worked towards in the old days. At least partly. Five decades without a lick of energy inside had likely caused some amount of damage he couldn’t detect.
Regardless, he harvested the forty grown petals as well, making sure seeds were present so they could grow back within the week, and then it was onto the next spot in the cavern. More golden flowers were cut and bagged, and more spots received the previous dose of accelerated growth as well. After the first mishap, Elijah did get slightly better at pacing himself. Instead of forcing the growth into only fifteen seconds, he pushed it to thirty.
A simple solution to an outsider, but such fine control over his output took considerable will. The only reason Elijah could even deviate so strongly from the standard form of the spell was because of his past experiences with doing such a thing. When he’d been the one with the task of producing massive amounts of herbs while moving, he had done it by connecting to several hundred plants at once and having them have a month’s worth of growth in only a day or two.
A few years of doing that had made him pretty decent at this. Better than most other Biomancers, though it was only in this single aspect. With just about everything else, he was very far behind.
The cons of living on the street for the first many years, I suppose.
Dwelling on his military past brought him no amount of happiness, however, and Elijah honed back into the task at hand. It took only twenty minutes before the cavern had been emptied of useful flowers and they could move on.
“Nearly full with one bag already,” Aleksi commented as they did, making sure to not put too much pressure on the gathered flowers. They needed to be unspoiled if Elijah was to work with them properly. “How long does it usually take to fill them all up nowadays?”
“An hour, usually,” Elijah replied, equating it to three thorough cavern harvests. “With the Biomancy, I could push the normal trip down to forty minutes.”
“But not the one we’re going on.”
“Indeed.”
An hour was spent repeating the same cycle of going further and further into the dungeon, picking out the obvious flowers and herbs, and then putting them into the bags. A quiet operation with no prominent issues other than mildly tired bodies.
And, normally, that hour of work was everything that needed to be done. The top floors had everything required to make basic healing supplies. Everything that Elijah was supposed to bring out tonight.
But they had no intention of settling with the standard, and the duo eyed the tunnel ahead. It went down at a rather steep angle, promising that anybody missing their footing would tumble for nearly a full minute.
“You ready?” Aleksi asked.
“Of course,” Elijah replied, following behind the giant as they began the trek down into the deep. The entire path was still illuminated, of course, the bioluminescent moss persisting in their presence on the walls of the dungeon. If anything, they seemed to increase in strength the further down they went, the plants feeling the effects of the thickening mana as much as Elijah did.
Was it always so hard to breathe?
“I can hear your heart beating faster than it should,” Aleksi commented, slowing down in their descent just slightly. “Stop before you inherit my consequences.”
“You make it sound like this reaction is intentional,” Elijah countered, stretching his fingers as static filled the digits. The dull sensation of being on fire while freezing at the same time was terrible, yet Elijah knew he should’ve still been fully able to move around like a normal human being. “I’m adjusting to it. Slowly.”
“I’d hope so,” Aleksi muttered, making Elijah narrow his eyes at the giant. Not for long, however, as they both heard the sounds of rocks shifting in the distance. The echoing was impossible to miss. “There’s at least two of them at the end. Small in size but they’ve noticed us. Be ready for a third.”
Short observations and orders. Practicality above subtlety. The nostalgia kicked some sense into Elijah’s body as he brought out a hunting knife from his belt. It wasn’t the biggest in the world, but it had been sharpened enough to cut through flesh as if it were butter, and Elijah was ready to force it through the soft surface of a beast if needed.
And it would perhaps be, as the slope they stood on began to even out, the walls spreading out to alert them of the end of the tunnel. Instead, they had an even larger cavern than those before it, the place spanning several hundred meters in every direction, pillars oddly strewn across it to hold up the weight of the ceiling.
The most important aspect of the cavern was the increased scale of the plant life. Instead of only having flowers and vines that went up to one’s knees, this floor possessed the underground version of trees. Branches adorned with wide leaves made it hard to see the entire floor, the trees gathering and obscuring too many parts to be safe from hidden monsters.
This included their current spot at the entrance of the floor, a large grouping of trees sitting to their left and right. A sadistic placement that left people susceptible to surprises, to the point where Elijah considered that it was intentionally done by the dungeon.
“On the right.”
That was all Elijah needed to know before they both hurried forward, keeping an eye on the tree to their right as they increased their distance to the overhanging branches. Even without the enhanced sight of the giant, he could see how they were shaking unnaturally.
An unseen enemy was climbing above them.
Multiple enemies.
“Get ready.”