Aznod stood at the gate of the sixty-first floor of Fyor, a thick material covering his body similar to a hazmat suit. As he had helped find the material needed to allow them to survive on the sixty-first floor, Aznod had been invited to join an expedition after it had been determined that the initial area around the portal was safe.
To his right was a much smaller hazmat suit, the top of the helmet pushed up by a pair of horns. Petra had been invited as well, due to her history of clearing the floors quickly. “What do you think is the cause for this energy?” Petra said as she looked at the pink mist filling the air.
She had tried to expand her World Shadow to claim this floor, but found the energy being devoured as soon as it left her protective suit. This was… problematic for her, as Thelsa would no doubt need every layer of Fyor in order to truly complete her shadow world.
Aznod hesitated for a moment, before taking a guess. “There are two possibilities, though they are rather similar. Either this energy is being released by a special mineral akin to tidestones, or there is a primordial artifact on this floor with the theme of devouring, and it had caused the air to become like this.”
“If it’s an artifact, why wouldn’t it eat the ground?” Petra asked, the two walking further away from the gate. Although they had been invited to the expedition, they were both essentially given the freedom to do as they wished. After all, who would restrain the husband of one member of the Greater Pantheon, or the daughter of another?
“If I had to guess, it would be because the power developed a distaste for the soil.” He answered thoughtfully. He knew that he could just ask Udona for the correct answers, but that would spoil the point of discovery. Besides, there could be new ingredients to be found in a world such as this.
“Maybe… though, how are we going to fight in these things if there are any monsters around?” Petra asked worriedly, looking down at her hazmat suit. In fact , that was an excellent question in Aznod’s eyes as well.
“Hopefully, that will not be an issue.” Aznod said, looking up at the pink mist that blocked out their view. “Petra, do you have any method of locating the next gate in these circumstances?”
Petra simply shook her head. “I’ve got two ways that I normally use, but neither of them will work here. We need to get rid of the energy in the mist, or else we’re moving blind.”
“Oh, come on, it’s not that bad!” A pale-skinned girl ran over in front of Aznod and Petra, her blue eyes all but shining at them. Unlike the two of them, she wasn’t wearing any form of hazmat suit. Also unlike the two of them, she hadn’t been invited to join, but rather invited herself to join. “Just think of it as an adventure, right?! When’s the last time that you two went on real adventures?”
“I live a life of almost constant fighting and training. I’d say I get adventure enough.” Petra smirked slightly, shaking her head at the energetic Lifre.
“Lifre… why do you not need a suit?” Aznod asked hesitantly, seeing that Lifre’s body wasn’t being devoured by the mist.
“Huh? Oh! I ate it! Now my skin has the same kind of property as that suit, so I can run around here however I want!”
Petra and Aznod looked to one another when Lifre said that, silently determining that she would be the one to fight if they really had to enter combat. “In that case… do you have a way to find the gate?” Petra asked hopefully. “Or, maybe the source of this mist?”
Lifre blinked, tapping her chin in thought. “Hmm… let me check.” She said, before condensing a thick, golden book from her energy. “No, no, no, not that one, not that one, why did I write about that? Eh, I’ll think about it later. Oh! Here it is!” Lifre smiled brightly, placing a hand on the page that she had turned to.
When she pulled her hand away, she revealed that she was now holding a compass, causing the other two to look at her in confusion. “To what does your compass point?” Aznod asked.
“Dunno!” She said with that same smile. “This is one of my plot devices. It’s a compass that points to wherever I need to go to advance the story.”
“...You’re a writer, so I guess the fourth wall just doesn’t exist for you, does it?” Petra asked hesitantly, causing Lifre to laugh. “Either way, let’s let the others know that we have a destination. Does your compass tell you how far away it is?”
Aznod nodded his head, turning to head to the expedition leader while Lifre shook her head. “Nope! I could triangulate its position if I go about a million kilometers in the wrong direction, but at that point the compass might try to tell me to go somewhere else! I find it’s better to just listen to the compass, for the sake of the story.”
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“Right…” Petra nodded her head helplessly. Personally, she didn’t feel like spending years of her life in a hazmat suit following a slime girl on an endless mist-filled meadow. When Aznod returned, Petra looked at him with hope in her eyes. “Please tell me you have a way for us to quickly travel without needing to walk? Teleportation spells won’t work in this mist.”
Aznod smiled slightly, nodding his head. “Udona prepared something for me before I came here.” As he said that, he retrieved a magic card from his inventory. To Petra’s surprise, the card didn’t dissolve when it came into contact with the pink mist.
Aznod threw the card forward after activating it, the card shining brightly. Then, a moment later, darkness covered them. The light from above was blocked out by a large aircraft. Internally, Petra thought it looked like a spaceship with its sheer size, but that wasn’t really a surprise. After all, the floors of Fyor this high were so big that you could fit entire solar systems in them. “You know how to fly that, right?” She asked, to which Aznod nodded his head.
“Of course. Additionally, she told me that the airlock should be able to prevent any of the mist from entering the ship. Though, I would still keep the suits on, just in case of any damage.” Petra nodded sullenly when she heard that, though Lifre was already running for the lowered ramp.
The expedition team climbed aboard the craft, Aznod making his way to the front to sit in the pilot’s seat. This was a ship that he had obtained with Udona in Fragments of Acidia, and Udona had recreated it in Deckan, replacing the outer coating with the material that Aznod had discovered to be effective against the local energy. Thus, he was confident in being able to fly wherever they needed to go.
“Lifre, would you mind providing directions?” He asked with a smile. Lifre nodded her head quickly, her body immediately warping to turn into a much larger version of the compass that she stored at the center of her being. “That’s… not what I had in mind, but it will do, I suppose.”
There was a hum from the engines as the ship lifted off the ground, Aznod taking it higher and higher into the air. “We can only see a few hundred meters in front of us. This ship is rated as F-4 class in Fragments, but I’d rather not test its inertial dampeners if we were to drive directly into a mountain.”
The others widened their eyes, quickly nodding their heads in agreement as Lifre’s chuckle emerged from the giant compass. “Heheheh… splat.”
“Yes, Lifre. Splat indeed.” Aznod said with a sigh, activating the sunlight engines and flying to an altitude of more than one billion kilometers. “If there are still any mountains this high, we can only blame our bad luck.” He said, before driving forward, slowly increasing the speed of the ship.
Lifre continued to diligently point the way forward, the expedition leader leaning in from behind. “I suppose that this is considerably safer than wandering around on foot. What exactly are we looking for, though?”
“If I knew the answer to that, I assure you that I would inform you of it.” Aznod sighed, shaking his head. “Lifre’s compass points to our destination. However, that destination is an abstract concept of ‘where we need to go’. It could be taking us to the source of the mist, the gate to the next level, this layer’s level sphere, or even just a powerful monster. We won’t know until we arrive.”
Those words were certainly not as helpful as what the expedition leader had wanted to hear. He couldn’t even tell how fast the ship was going, because the outside just appeared to be a blur of pink mist. It wasn’t until Lifre let out a loud ding that Aznod decelerated, seeing the needle on the compass now pointed directly behind them.
“Above or below?” Aznod asked, given that they might be looking for something embedded in the ceiling of this layer. Lifre flipped over onto her side, the arrow of her compass pointing almost straight down.
With a nod, Aznod began to descend, finding that the mist had grown thicker and thicker as the ship lowered. “It seems Lifre has brought us to the source of the energy pervading this floor.” He said with a sigh, though Petra’s face had become more serious.
“Aznod… do you have anything to clear the mist beneath us, even if it’s just for a moment?” She asked, clenching her fists in her hazmat suit.
Aznod hesitated to answer, thinking it over. “If I release a condensed energy pulse downwards, it should be able to expel the mist before it is consumed. Though, it will use more than sixty percent of the ship’s energy reserves.”
“Do it.” Petra said without a second thought, staring out the window. “And make sure to activate the cameras below us.” Every nerve in her body was screaming of danger, and she couldn’t simply shake that feeling.
Aznod nodded his head, manipulating the console in front of himself. “Building the charge in the lower shields. Activating landing cameras. Expelling charge in three, two, one.”
Petra’s eyes were glued to the screen when the countdown finished, the pink mist dissipating. When the blast reached the ground, Petra’s eyes widened, as did the eyes of everyone else in the ship.
There was a massive, circular pit in the ground where the energy had struck, its edges writhing with jagged teeth that seemed to be formed from mountains. Pink mist shot from the center of the mouth, quickly obscuring view once again.
“We all just saw that, right?” The expedition leader asked, his gaze shaking.
Petra nodded her head. “So… when the primordial artifact activated… it merged with the ground. That’s why the soil contains a material that is safe from being devoured… because it is part of the thing’s body.”
“Coool!” Lifre’s voice spoke up from the compass, which immediately turned back into the pale, petite girl. “I’mma go poke it with a stick!” She declared, a golden sword forming in one hand.
“Is that wise?” The expedition leader asked, his nervousness evident even beneath his hazmat suit. “I don’t mean to doubt your ability… but you saw the scale of that thing. Can you take it on by yourself?”
Lifre blinked, looking at the man. “I don’t know!” She admitted, before a wide smile filled her face. “That’s what makes it fun! Let’s see who eats the other one first, right?”