Chapter 43 – Floor 5: Part 4

Mathew walked down a poorly lit and narrow set of concrete steps leading to the pit's entrance from the base. Oscar led the way, his hammer ready, while Alivia and Ken brought up the rear. Colonial Nielson had spared several of his soldiers to escort them.

The temperature was rising, and the air became more humid as they finally left the staircase and came to a cleft in rock. There had been a gate here, but the metal fragments and shattered remnants of stone spoke of its destruction. There were a few entrances to the Pit from the base; most of them were still sealed, but this one was among the first to fail.

Mathew could see traces of rust and corrosion on the metal bars that had punctured the stone to support the gate, and he suspected there was more than a power outage that caused the seal to break.

“We’ll leave you all to it.” One of the soldiers said, giving them a quick salute as he and his companions practically fled.

The damp air smelled of rot and earth and a faint spice that Mathew couldn’t identify. He could taste it on his tongue.

Not speaking to each other, the group wriggled their way through the cleft in the rock. It was narrow enough that Mathew was forced to turn sideways, but it was smooth and not even his loose clothing caught on anything as he pushed through.

What greeted him was the disturbing sight of the Pit.

A mile-wide cavity in the earth stretched before them. Their company stood on the edge, where the personnel from the base had erected scaffolding that ringed the perimeter and led down into the depths. The walls of the Pit were utterly smooth and made of hard rock. It was as if something had bored a hole into the surface of the Earth, perfectly round and even.

It was unnatural, and as Mathew leaned over the edge of the railing, he could see that the army had installed lights at regular intervals for at least a few hundred feet before it ended in darkness. He couldn’t see the bottom, and many of the lights flickered as the power seemed to be intermittent.

The ‘spicey’ smell that was assaulting Mathew’s noise grew more potent, and rather than the air being drawn into the bottom of the Pit, the reverse was true. A draft was coming up from the bottom of the hole, carrying waves of bright blue Aether.

It was thick in the air, and Mathew felt like he could reach out and grab it. No wonder the Mimics were worth so much Aether when they died; the place was saturated with it. The mana within his body responded to the Aether, cycling through his body, and he felt an intense yearning for it.

“Steady.” Oscar said, placing a large, callus-covered hand on Mathew’s shoulder. The smithy was sweating. A sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. Alivia had her eyes closed, a euphoric expression on her face as she took in the ambient Aether.

Ken, on the other hand, was frozen stiff. He was staring at his surroundings with an expression of a prisoner awaiting the executioner. The teen was pale, and his lip trembled slightly.

Turning away from the edge with a shudder as Mathew finally realized how far down it was, he checked his wristband on a whim. He had zeroed out his Aether before coming to the Pit, and, as expected, the shop and level-up tabs were greyed out.

But to his surprise, he now had a small amount of Aether banked once more. It seemed that they could absorb some of the Aether here, only a few parts a minute, but it could accumulate.

“Let’s get going, this place isn’t safe.” Oscar said, shaking Alivia out of her stupor.

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She was about to respond, her expression telling that it would have been a nasty comment when she shut her mouth with a click of her teeth. Oscar was right; this was no place to daydream.

Ken was eager, immediately leading the way down the first flight of scaffold steps. Trying to keep quiet so as not to alert the entire place of their presence, the scaffolding wasn’t cooperating. Each step made a clatter, and with the four of them working their way down, Mathew expected the echoes of their approach to be heard at the bottom.

But nothing attacked them on the way. The Pit seemed as deserted as the base above. After nearly fifteen minutes of walking, they reached the end of the scaffold platform. The Pit continued to descend beneath them, but whoever had constructed the walkway had evidently decided this was far enough.

There was a cave to their right, carved into the rockface, and Mathew could see in the artificial light installed that it curved downwards. This was one of the warrens Nielson had told them about. A maze of tunnels led to the bottom of the Pit.

Oscar led the way forward, hefting his hammer, with Ken following closely. The teen was gripping a knife in his hands as if his life depended on it, and even Alivia had her card deck ready. In the rear, Mathew kept an eye on the path behind them. Even though they hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary on the way down, Mimics could be anything.

Mathew had to be careful of his footing as they walked through the tunnel. The floor was mirror-smooth and unblemished. With every step, the air grew more humid, and the feeling of the Aether began to permeate their skin. It was intoxicating, and they had to fight the effects or lose themselves to the feeling.

Aether was addicting, something every player in the Tower learned. It wasn’t just the sensation of levelling up, the euphoria of getting stronger, more intelligent or the feeling of increased closeness to the gods; it was something more. It was like a drug, endless possibilities made into reality.

In the distance, Mathew could hear the trickling sound of water, the steady dripping of liquid. The earthy smell grew stronger, but the ‘spice’ overpowered everything. It was in his mouth, on his tongue and at the back of his throat.

The sloping passage gradually evened and opened up to a large chamber. The sound of dripping water was replaced by words whispered in the darkness. Mathew couldn’t understand what they were saying; they were incomprehensible, but he felt he could recognize them if he was closer and listened harder….

“What the hell is that?” Alivia whispered, her voice harsh in the silence. The sound of her speaking shook Mathew out of the stupor with whispers had brought, and he realized what she was referring to.

The chamber was large and utterly cluttered with bones. They were everywhere, some small from animals while others were taller than any human Mathew had ever seen before. They covered the ground, and the Champions stopped at the edge of the field of bones, staring at a creature in the center of the room.

It was a giant blob of flesh with hundreds of mouths filled with teeth. The whispers were coming from it, the incomprehensible words ushering from its mouths in a jumbled mess. The size of the creature dwarfed anything else around them, and it was far bigger than the Mimic Truck Mathew had faced on the last floor.

It was slowly crawling across the ground, gobbling up the bones on the ground in some of its mouths and sucking them clean.

“It looks like one of the Mimics when I burned it.” Mathew replied quietly, not wanting to disturb the creature.

“Do we try to avoid it?” Oscar asked, to which Ken shook his head. The teen’s eyes were locked on the monster, but he pointed at the bones on the ground, indicating that the noise from their crossing would immediately alert the blob.

“Then we kill it.” Alivia responded, her expression hardening. She was holding the deck of cards in her left hand while her right was placed on the top card, ready to draw it. Taking a deep breath, Mathew thought he heard her whisper something before she drew it.

“Yes! Fireball!” She whispered.

Mathew felt a flare of mana from her as she tossed the card out. It flared with a bright red light before turning into a ball of fire that streaked toward the creature. The creatures stopped and shrieked in the last instant before the fireball reached it, its mouths opened wide.

The horrid wailing pierced Mathew’s mind, and he covered his ears with his hands, but it did nothing to stop it. It was inside his head, driving him mad.

Thankfully, it cut off when a deafening roar of the fireball’s detonation exploded in the center of the chamber. With a loud ‘Whoosh,’ all the air in the tunnel was drawn toward the fire. A rush of superheated air accompanied the blinding light.

Mathew and the others dropped to the ground as the flames flared fiercely, and then died.

Alivia had a smug look on her face as she climbed to her feet. Where the creature had stood, nothing remained but a burning pile of flesh. The overpowered spell had blown the monster into bits.

Before she could speak, no doubt intending to gloat, another shriek came from the tunnel further down.