Maria returned to Heltania Undercity and when she arrived, her friends were already waiting for her in one of the city’s popular cafes chatting with each other.
“Hey guys!”
“Mary, you’re finally here! It sure took you a while this time,” Lizzy said as she moved over to the side and gave her friend a seat.
“There wasn’t much to inspect, but there was a lot to see. I just like watching all the plans I made a while ago start to show their fruits. It just feels pleasant, y’know?” Maria replied as she took a fork and nabbed one of the cakes on Lizzy’s plate.
“Hey!”
Since she was now here, Amanda pulled out the map that their group had made of the First and Second Layer of the Underworld. The First Layer’s map centered around Heltania Undercity while the Second Layer’s map centered around the entrance between the two layers.
There were many parts that still hadn’t been explored and still needed to be mapped, but the area around the point from Heltania Undercity to the Second Layer’s entrance had been thoroughly mapped out. There were a lot of markings on the First Layer’s map that showed the numerous mining veins they found, monster nests, and unique Underworld resource areas.
“We’ve explored a good amount of the First Layer around Heltania Undercity, but judging by the size of the planet, I'll assume the Underworld should be just as big as it, so we definitely haven’t explored every place yet,” Amanda said as she tapped her finger on the map.
The parchment they were using to make the map was magical so they didn’t need to add anymore pages to it and just needed to swipe their hand on the map to move it around, much like the electronic maps in the real world.
After fighting with Maria for the last fruitcake on her plate and unfortunately losing, Lizzy turned her attention back to the map on the table. Despite all the exploring they did, there was still a lot of blank areas that they couldn't cover. With Maria back, she thought that it was time to up the ante a little and aim for something bigger than what they were currently doing.
"Let's try and map everything on the First Layer!" Lizzy exclaimed enthusiastically.
Amanda gave her friend a glance before saying, "...While your enthusiasm is great, Liz, let's not get too ahead of ourselves. I'll assume that the First Layer is as big as planet Vanhal, so just imagine how much exploring we'll have to do if we want to completely map out the first layer. It would take months to complete and I don't mean in-game months, but IRL months!"
"Yeah, I know, but it's always good to have some kind of objective in mind, no?"
"That's true, but let's tone down the scale a bit, okay? How about we set the objective to completely exploring the area 100 kilometers around Heltania Undercity?"
"100 kilometers? Isn't that a little too small?"
"100 kilometers around the city isn't small, Liz," Emily quipped. "I think staying underground has completely messed up your sense of distance."
"Come on, just think about it! It's not like the entire 100 kilometer area around the Undercity is explorable! All we have to do is explore the caverns and paths that are in front of us!" Lizzy protested. Her words did have some sense in them, so she continued, "The Underworld is just one massive dungeon! 100 kilometers in every direction really is too small when you think about it! I mean, look at how fast we explored the 20-kilometer area around the city? The only reason why it took a bit long was because of the Underworld's overpowered monsters, but now that our levels, equipment, and skills have caught up, we managed to explore the 50-kilometer area around the Undercity very quickly!"
"Y-Yeah..."
"When you think about it. It...does make sense..."
Seeing that her friends still weren't convinced, Lizzy continued on, "We even went around the Underworld's Second Layer because it got too 'easy' on the FIrst Layer, remember? Come on! We gotta at least try for something big! Wouldn't it be awesome if we have a complete map of the First Layer? When the other players start discovering the Underworld later on, we can sell our map data for a lot of money!"
"Liz, you're asking us to circumvent the entirety of the planet's underground with just our small team of 4 people! It's much easier said than done!"
Over the past weeks since they seriously started exploring the Underworld, Maria and her friends had leveled up a lot and obtained enough power that they were able to hold their own against the monsters in the Underworld’s Second Layer. The monsters that used to be overpowered on the First Layer have now become ordinary mobs for the girls, so what Lizzy said held some truth.
Amanda, Emily, and Lizzy had basically shot their levels up well above the rest of the player base while Maria had caught up to the average level of the regular players. With Amanda's own insistence, she, Lizzy, and Emily all took down their names from the Level and Power Ranking Leaderboards to keep their sudden surge in strength a secret.
It was prudent to keep their actual levels and Combat Power a secret since it could raise some suspicions about what they were doing. Maria already had enough flak from the infamy she had gained because of the recent events. As her friends, Amanda, Emily, and Lizzy didn’t want to put her on the spotlight anymore, so they quietly took down their names from the rankings before their levels jumped to the absurd number that they were at right now.
A few people noticed that their names were now gone, but with so many other high leveled players quietly deleting their names from the leaderboards, nobody thought too much about it and just went about their way. Keeping their levels a secret would keep people from scrutinzing their activities which was a good thing for them.
The Underworld was still Maria and her friends’ secret hunting grounds and they didn’t want anyone finding out about it just yet. The only entrance to the Underworld was currently at Heltania City, but they didn’t know about any other possible entrances that were hidden across the planet.
If they kept the Underworld a secret, nobody would be looking for its entrances which would extend their private use of it a little bit longer, but they obviously didn’t expect to hold onto the secret of the Underworld for very long. The Underworld was definitely related to the planet’s Main Story Quest so eventually, the rest of the players would find out about it. If someone found it ahead of time like Maria did, then that was their luck. For now, however, the girls wanted to keep things under wraps since it was beneficial for them.
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Lizzy thought that it was too bad that she couldn’t bring her Guild’s elite forces to the Underworld and have them train there, but there wasn’t anything she could do. Besides, it was her idea to keep the Underworld a secret in the first place so she couldn’t complain.
The girls continued throwing ideas back and forth to each other about what they should do now while they waited for the next stage of the Main Story Quest, but things were going nowhere since Lizzy was being a little too unrealistic with their goals.
After some time, however, Amanda finally condeded, to the surprise of her friends, but she added a little twist to Lizzy's argument, “What Lizzy said is true. We're much stronger now than when we first arrived here in the Underworld and I forgot to take that into account. Since it's like that, how about we split up and explore the Underworld with expedition teams of our own?”
"Eh?"
"I'm sure that'll be more than enough of a challenge, right?"
"Y-Yeah..." Lizzy replied a little sheepishly before she raised her hand and asked, trying to change the topic because she was a little scared to explore the Underworld by herself, “I like the new objective and all, but what about the Second Layer? We still haven’t found the Third Layer’s entrance! Shouldn’t we secure that first?”
Amanda shook her head and said, “No, I don’t think we should.”
“Why?”
“It’s because I think we won’t be able to find the Third Layer of the Underworld until we progress further into Vanhal’s Main Story Quest.”
“...What makes you say that? Isn’t there that Universal something that the devs wouldn’t stop going on about?”
“It’s the Universal Code,” Emily chimed in.
“Yeah, that whatever-Code. Even if the Main Story hasn’t progressed to that point, we should still be able to find it because the entrance is still in the game, right?”
Amanda sighed before she began explaining, “It doesn’t work exactly like that, Liz. Sure, the entrance is there, but we won’t be able to find it unless we start digging up around the Second Layer.”
“Huh?”
Amanda then turned towards Maria and asked her a question, “Mary, how did you first discover the Underworld?”
Seeing as she was called, Maria perked up and answered her friend’s simple question, “It was all just a coincidence. I wanted to build an underground city because I thought it sounded fun when my head craftsman said something about the dwarves building a city inside of a mountain.”
“See Liz? Maria didn’t find the entrance to the Underworld naturally. She had to excavate it.”
“O-Ohh…”
“Just think about it. We’ve been searching for the entrance to the Third Layer for so long now but we still haven’t found it. The only logical explanation would be that the natural entrance is being barred behind the Main Story Quest, so the only way to find it would be to open one ourselves just like Mary did when she first found the Underworld.”
“...Then why don’t we?” Lizzy thoughtlessly asked.
“Who’s going to do it? You?”
“Ah…” Lizzy finally realized that they couldn’t even if they wanted to.
She wasn’t going to unreasonably ask Maria if her NPCs could help and even if they could, Maria wasn’t going to allow it. The monsters on the Second Layer were much too powerful for her NPC subordinates who weren’t proper fighters. They could easily die if a monster horde from the Second Layer suddenly attacked them.
“Alright then. Since we aren’t going to look for the Third Layer, exploring the rest of the First Layer it is then!” Lizzy declared while pointing her finger into the air. “But do we have to go separately? I don’t like the idea of going around alone in the dark…”
Emily agreed with Lizzy’s words and said, “I agree with Liz. I think it’s best if we just pair up into two teams and have two expedition crews follow us. Even if we have the map, it’s still pretty harrowing to explore the vast Underworld by ourselves in perpetual darkness…”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Amanda said after thinking about it for a moment. “Fine, we’ll pair up into two teams. One team will explore the area east of the city while the other team will go the opposite direction and head west.”
“Nice! So, who’ll be in team 1–”
Amanda quickly interrupted Lizzy and said, “I’ve already decided on the teams. You just have to pick which direction you wanna go.”
“E-Eh? Okay…well, who’s going with me?”
“Emi’s going with you. I’ll be going with Mary and act as her support.”
Lizzy thought about the team compositions and nodded. Even though she acted thoughtlessly most of the time, she still had a good head on her shoulders. She and Emily would be great together since their classes complemented each other while Amanda should obviously go with Maria because their overpowered friend could act as any role; a healer, a support, an all-round DPS, and even a sturdy tank.
Amanda’s class fell into the mage category so she was a long-ranged DPS and support. Paired up with Maria who could act as the melee DPS, tank, and healer, their party composition was even better and definitely much more balanced than Lizzy and Emily’s combination.
Also, it wasn’t just about party composition, Amanda specifically made sure to separate Lizzy and Maria because knowing those two hooligans, they’d just rush head first into whatever area they found interesting without any hesitation. So, Emily was there to reign in Lizzy while Amanda would be there to reign in Maria. Once they picked which direction they wanted to go, the two parties began rounding up the NPCs that would go with them on their expedition and parted ways.
“Alright, Mary, let’s get to exploring,” Amanda said after their preparations were finished.
“Yeah!”
The two girls along with their NPC expedition crew exited the city through the western exit and began walking into the pitch black passageway ahead of them. Since it was only the Underworld’s First Layer, they didn’t have much to fear, especially since each of them were powerful enough to fight toe-to-toe with the monsters on the Second Layer. If there was anything to worry about, then probably a monster horde or a named boss monster.