On the other side, Jonas immediately checked the locator, to confirm the zone was a normal one, as hinted by the Gate’s shape back in the trunk.

Location

Zone: Krilziar (tier 2)

Locale: Gate to Donerkal

Recall: Grailburg, Gate to Earth

Recall: available

Gates: 3/3

Tier 1: Zolferras

Tier 2: Donerkal

Tier 3: Vuneras

Fast travel: 1 charge, 4 days until next

Fast Travel was ticking again, as expected. Which was a good indication of normalcy since they were in an enclosed volume, with only a few Power Crystal lighting the strange room they were in.

“Is that… wood?”

Jonas knocked lightly on the “walls”, with a muted sound.

“Feels like.”

“Okay, so we are in some… what, inside a tree?”

The loud cracking to the side made Jonas turn his head toward Jonathan.

“Found the exit,” the Calculating Barrier said, pointing to a large fissure that had appeared in the wooden structure.

The team approached the hole in the wooden structure. It sloped slightly upward, and they started. Halfway up, Jonathan motioned for a stop.

“Sound. Weird cracking,” he said.

Jonas strained his hearing. Jonathan had the best Focus… and yes, there was a sound. It was coming from behind, and he struggled briefly to figure out what it was before realization came.

“Balls! Wood’s smashing together behind!”

The team instantly spurred to action, careful climbing forgotten. Thankfully, the fissure was only a few dozen more feet, before turning and leading to an open area. They half-spilt into the place, as a massive crash behind indicated that the wood opening was smashing close.

The giant mushroom in the middle of the area seemed surprised, as surprised as a faceless mushroom could look like.

Spring Recycler

Level 76 elder

Health: 3398

Mind: 1242

Endurance: 485

Aether: 3059

“Guardian up,” Ira announced needlessly.

Jonas hoped that the fact that they’d come from “behind” didn’t cause problems. Although they’d stumbled on a 75-80 lair, presumably, unplanned additional critters intruding could be a problem.

Spring Recycler releases spores. -4 vitals/sec.

Both Jonathan and Ira had engaged the 6-feet tall mushroom-shaped creature. Flaps opened, bluntly striking at the Barriers despite the lack of arms or any limb. The mushroom seemed to crawl on a mat of small fungal tendrils on the ground.

A part of Jonas’ mind noted that all of his vitals ticked down. He was losing health, endurance, aether, or mind seemingly randomly every second. The poisonous effect seemed a bit strong for a 76 elder, which presumably meant the rest of the attacks would be weaker.

The fight was not going to be dangerous at 76 compared to the ones they’d just done in the trunk, so that was merely a good training.

The notification caught Laura by surprise. The spore indication vanished abruptly from her view, and a mass of smoke poured out of her unexpectedly, coalescing scant feet away.

Spores reach maturity.

Spring Spawn

Level 76 veteran

Health: 1162

Mind: 425

Endurance: 166

Aether: 1046

“On it,” Jonathan instantly announced.

“Additional ‘shroom first, before any other spores mature,” Jonas ordered before switching his own target to the new mushroom.

He peered at the team's descriptors checking their individual ones, and confirming that at least one of the “spore” status was gone. The thing probably meant that a team would only face as many additional enemies as there were members.

Unless, of course, they killed the guardian fast enough. Those statuses tended to lose efficacity once the critter responsible was killed. Except when they did not.

Spring Growths × 3: 6273XP/6 contributors = 990XP.

You have completed Krilziar Compost Heap lair.

“Well, that was a surprise,” Ira said, flicking his claymore to clean it from the mushroom goop that covered it.

Laura pulled at the rusted metal ball next to the decomposing elder mushroom. It split open rather easily, and she recovered the contents.

Red Leathery Gloves

Hands

Quality equipment

Requires: Level 61

Provides: +12 defence rating, PRE+7, +67 aether

“Bleh,” she commented before shoving the sickly brown-and-red fingerless gloves into her bag.

Meanwhile, Guss was trying to find the fissure by which they had come into the giant roots forest. The healer did remember the location and how they ended up in the fight against that elder mushroom, but the massive root was full of finger-deep depressions, none of which felt particularly special.

“Can’t find the exit?” Ira asked.

“No. It’s like it doesn’t exist,” he replied.

Jonas felt like smacking his forehead.

“Well… we can use the Gate back because we came through. But there’s no special guarantee we can get TO the Gate itself,” he said.

“What?” Alton exclaimed.

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“I think the same rules apply. We need to do every lair of this zone before we can open that wood fissure again,” he elaborated.

“Balls!”

“Well, once we’ve finished scouting the zone, it will be a Recall to Gatepost instead of coming back to go for the next zone.”

“That is going to slow down massively the scouting,” Ira noted.

“I think the Duke made the right choice when giving us permissions to start scouting. That is going to consume a lot of Fast Travel options for everyone if we need to consume a charge every time we go back to the trunk,” Jonas said, counting the Fast Travel charges.

“I think we’ll have to alternate between normal zone hunting and scouting the trunk,” Alton noted.

“Meanwhile, let’s see what this zone looks like. Beyond a tree’s underside with murderous mushrooms.”

Once Jonas stepped out from the quasi-canopy made by the root network, he could see more clearly the surroundings. They were in the middle of a cluster of fat trees.

“Now those are weird. Not just big. Weirdly shaped.”

“They look as large as they’re tall. And those roots…”

The dominant tree in the cluster was the one they’d just came out, but there were other trees, half its size surrounding it. Stuff like thirty feet wide and thirty feet tall, with two-feet high space between the tree and the ground with spindly roots as legs. Jonas spotted even more of the weird fat trees beyond, but those were dwarves, maybe twelve-fifteen feet in all dimensions, inches above the ground. And the leaves were tiny.

There were also a handful of brown-red mushrooms, a few feet tall, widely dispersed around.

Spring Sprout

Level 78 veteran

Health: 1193

Mind: 434

Endurance: 624

Aether: 713

Jonas tried to see the sun. Its rays were slanted, but he couldn’t guess if it was morning or evening. They had learned not to take that for granted now, when changing zones, with Outapis being highly shifted from Gatepost time.

“You know what? Let’s deal with those quick to make sure they don’t bother us, then go back to camp in there. We have a perfect ceiling above us,” Alton said, cutting Jonas comment.

“Sleep in the middle of a compost heap? Well, we did it in a bear cave once, so why not,” Ira replied.

They’d made their way out of the cluster, finishing a few mushrooms they’d missed yesterday. It felt a bit strange going outward from the inside of a lair, even one that seemed as small as this one. The last time they’d done so, Cowen’s team had cleaned it out before they even had a chance to do the full floors in reverse.

Jonathan hadn’t spotted any buried sphere or anything, so it did seem that the so-called Compost Heap was a single-guardian one. Once cleaning the last of the veteran groups and one lone elite that wasn’t a guardian, they’d gone outside of the tree clump into a vast plain. More tree clusters seemed to sprout all over the place in the distance.

“Now what?” Ira asked as he bent to fetch the bits remaining as the last spring sprout decomposed.

Compact Fibres

Basic item

Requires: none

Provides: cooking component

A bunch of the mushrooms had yielded the funny looking bundles. They smelled and felt slightly off, like equal part sweet and fleshy. Alton, the team’s culinary adventurer, had tried it to see what it tasted like, and it was extremely salty, for some reason. Worse than the salted fish dish they’d tried once at the Frozen Boar, and that one had made them horribly thirsty.

Jonas turned, surveying the plains.

“No idea. In a normal setup, we’d be near the zone border. Here, we could be in any place. Next to the Plaza, a mile from the border, take your pick.”

“Then let’s pick a direction, and go.”

“Lucky.”

Transit: Krilziar - Modrossa

Integrity: 100%

Active

Stability: 100%

Lairs: 1/2

Jonas fetched his notebook automatically, before realizing that he didn’t have any place to record Krilziar’s specifics. The “great line” booklet meant little in this completely unknown zone.

He still checked for the Modrossa mention, failing to find it in the master zone list, before deciding on where to note the list of findings for the zone so far. Thankfully, the booklet provided blank pages at the end for general note-taking.

“Will they hate you for tearing those before turning in the book?” Laura enquired.

“Tearing. Oh. Well, the Archivists are in the know, so… you’re right. This page is for the Duke and maybe his brother, not directly the Archives.”

“Well, I suppose it’s not the first time they’ll see a book in that state,” Jonathan commented.

“I bet people take all kind of notes outside of the Labyrinth stuff all the time,” Ira quipped.

Jonas shrugged before jotting down the tier-two connection. With a single lair done, they couldn’t check at least what the other side looked like, but hopefully, the name would be on a list.

“How many names are there, by the way?” he suddenly asked.

“What do you mean?”

“All the zones have those weird names. Do they ever repeat?”

“You’re the guy who reads all the books. You tell me,” Alton snorted.

“More cats.”

“It’s either cats or crawling plants,” Guss replied to Ira.

Striped Nomad

Level 59

Health: 470

Mind: 179

Endurance: 410

Aether: 0

“I prefer those plants. They’re higher levels and give more experience,” Ira said in return.

“Yes, and some have teeth larger than those lions,” Guss insisted.

“Fine. Let’s kill that thing and hope it does have some real meat at least,” Ira grumbled.

Jonas found himself distanced by the various rushing team members. A level 59 normal creature stood no chance of doing anything serious against the team. Even Laura seemed to agree with him as she declined the rush.

Jonas threw her a glance.

“For once I agree with Ira. Using hammers on those walking plants is more fun than giant cats. Cats, I leave to Alton I think,”

“Guss said those were at the Royal Menagerie,” Jonas said.

“Not with the stripes, they aren’t. I asked him,” she replied.

“At least most tier two zones have almost normal creatures. The striped lions are mundane, but all those mushy walking plants…” Guss added, coming back as the three melee fighters were already finishing the fight against the cat, not needing more than simple regeneration boost.

“They’re still giving better experience, as Ira said,” Jonas countered.

“Lair dives are better anyway,” Guss replied.

Striped Nomad: 472XP/6 contributors = 75XP.

“Yes, but we’re not diving into a lair at the moment,” Jonas replied, skimming the notification.

“It’s moot anyway, we’re on a mission, not trying to get experience after all,” Laura countered.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t get some,” Jonathan added, coming back from the already decomposing corpse of the striped lion.

“But she's right. Focus on one thing at a time. Right now, it’s finding more Gates. We have two tier-two and a tier-three so far, but we haven’t finished the zone border. So let's find more Gates. There could be up to six,” Jonas concluded.

The night fell with ponderous slowness, but an inevitability. One moment, it was still bright blue, and minutes later, the first stars were starting to show up as the blue slowly deepened. This took the team by surprise, so they ended up dropping their bags and stopping. Thankfully, there were no hidden aggressive creatures waiting around, so they could relax from the day.

“Nice zone, though,” Ira said as the rest started to pull out camp gear.

“True. Although the mix between weird trees clumps and plains makes it feel more like two zones jumbled together,” Alton commented.

“I don’t know you, but I’m going to skip on that ‘plant meat’ myself this time,” Guss said.

“Rations?” Laura offered.

“We’ll find someone interested in exotic foodstuff back in Gatepost. That is if the Archives don’t want physical stuff from unexplored zones,” Jonas said.

Jonathan raised his hand. For a few seconds, Jonas thought he was going to ask something specific, but the man was trying to get their attention. Once everyone had turned to him, he pointed out toward the distant border of a tree clump.

Out in the plains, a small light shone.

The whole team was crawling across the grass, inching toward the flickering light of the campfire. Jonas had initially entertained the idea that the light might be some exotic creature making its way across the plains, but its explanation was simply prosaic.

A Professionals’ campfire, at the end of the day.

They stopped as a handful of figures started to be visible, silhouettes against the small fire. There appeared to be four of them, by Jonas’ reckoning. Seated on their haunches, with small sticks grilling some meaty food over the flames. From the smell drifting, definitively not the local plant-based supplies.

Two of the Professionals were making odd noises, which Jonas thought for a second were some singing. But the odd tongue and lips clicking sounds were interspersed with almost normal consonants and coming fast in response to each other, and he realized they were simply discussing… something.

There were weapons laying not far from the fire, and one of the four wore something that looked half ringmail, half banded metal stripes. The other one Jonas could probably identify was wearing huge billowing cloth wraps – either an aethercaster of sorts or a healer. More likely the latter, as the last two didn’t look like healers, as they were covered in striped leathers. Including a couple of red-brown leathers that looked a bit like the glove from the mushroom guardian and might be local treasures.

They watched the interplay of people relaxing around a fire for the evening for a bit, then Jonas signalled discreetly for everyone to back away.

“Okay. Professionals… but weird ones? Black people?”

“Yea. You might not have seen many black people in London. I saw a few when I was in the Americas, but I don’t think these are from there…” Jonas said.

“Aren’t there rumours of a fifth Gate? Babbage talked about that one, right?”

“Yes. The Irishwoman at Luther’s company also spoke of the fights in Southern Africa, when the Cape Colonies got destroyed. I think that’s what those are.”

“So… we’re in the African sector?”

“Most likely. This is a tier two zone. That’s probably one of their basic zones. Not too far from home,” Jonas surmised.

“Just in case you are asking, no, I do not have enough Gauge Enemy to get their level or even name,” Jonathan added.

“When does that happen?” Jonas asked, curious.

“For Professionals, you need 4 ranks for the level total. At that point, I would already get full Potentials and the like from critters. And you can get their highest Profession at 6, so it’s not a good way to guess the general tier either. I’m only rank 2 with my Core’s help.”

“Well, they’re probably some tier two or low tier three doing the rounds of the zone to level. That’s what makes sense for them,” Jonas replied.

“Why does the skill work differently between Professionals and creatures?” Laura asked Jonathan.

“No one knows, according to the skills books. But that’s why few people ever raise it above 7 with gear or Milestones. At that point you get any critter’s skills as they use them and when they might use them again, so why go further anyway. A Professional, you can always grab the full descriptor by grasping their wrist if you need the information.”

“So what do we do?” Ira injected.

“If we’re too close to their home, there are probably more teams going around, and we were just lucky it’s taken us so long to find one. We can't count on this being a remote, under-used zone. If we go looking for more Gates, we run the risk of getting there right when a team comes out. So, I’m calling this out. Let’s grab back our gear, and we Recall right now.”