The slime and demoness duo continued further and further through the bubble-filled skies, a chorus of explosions following behind them. At this point, Petra had all but become numb to the blasts. Lifre had a talent for skirting the very edge of danger, allowing herself to enjoy the thrill of the scenery without actually placing herself in immediate harm.
Of course, with that said, she was able to notice over time that the groups were becoming less and less dense. When this fact became apparent, she took note of all of the isolated bubbles floating in the sky. A chill ran down her spine, realizing that Lifre hadn’t given up on her goal of searching for the source of the predator bubbles.
Petra gulped thickly, ready to pull the two of them into the shadow world again at the slightest indication that something was wrong. With less obstacles in their way, they were able to begin vastly increasing their speed, the surroundings starting to blur around them. Soon, Petra noticed that there were only isolated bubbles around them, some of them ranging from mere centimeters to over five kilometers wide.
There were times when they came close enough to cause these isolated predators to pop, but their greatly enhanced speed allowed them to actually outrun the explosion of black energy by simply continuing to travel in a straight line. Of course, that also meant that they were going far too fast for their voices to reach one another, and were forced to rely on mental communication.
There’s something up ahead. Petra suddenly spoke up, sensing something stir within the shadow world. It was never a good thing to find something that was capable of upsetting the World’s Shadow, so she had to be cautious. Lifre nodded her head, but only increased her pace. Merely a few minutes later, they had arrived at their destination.
On the ground before them sat a massive pool of what looked to be tar, spreading out like an ocean as far as the eye could see. Every now and then, a black bubble would rise from the tar-like substance, before shifting and shedding its black color, becoming translucent like the other bubbles.
“I don’t like this.” Petra said, clenching her fist. “Lifre, we’re not poking that. There’s something wrong here.”
Lifre had already drawn her bow, looking back at Petra with an exasperated expression. “Fiiine, what are we doing, then?”
“I’m taking us to the shadow world. There’s something wrong with this location.” As she said that, the two vanished, wrapped in darkness and disappearing. Within the shadow world, Petra was immediately able to tell what the problem was, her red face going several shades paler. Meanwhile, Lifre looked around in confusion.
“What’s wrong, Petra? You took us somewhere else? Was it really that dangerous there?” She looked at the giant valley beneath their feet, nearly a million kilometers away, as well as the deep canyons that ran through it.
“I… didn’t. This is the same place.” Petra gulped, turning to look around. This valley ran to the ends of the horizon in all directions.
“You mean that tar pit wasn’t part of the landscape?” Lifre tilted her head. Thanks to the Keeper. Petra, and Dana, Lifre had some understanding of how the World’s Shadow worked. By default, it would copy all natural and manmade structures created at the time of its conception, whether they were mountains, buildings, or even entire oceans. However, it would not by default copy supernatural energy sources or creatures, and the person with the World’s Shadow had to instruct it to do so.
“That’s right. It’s either a solidified energy construct…” Petra froze, not wanting to finish that thought. Thankfully, or unfortunately perhaps, Lifre picked up on her intention.
“Or it’s a creature. A single bubble that massive? What, are all those predators just its kids or something?”
“It’s… possible.” Petra couldn’t deny the claim, as they was certainly where her mind was going as well. “I’m going to take use back there, and I want you to scan it. I know you’re better at that than I am, so try not to provoke it. We need to determine what we’re dealing with before we decide how to proceed.”
If there was a single creature that large, constantly spawning these smaller bubbles that could even endanger older gods, that alone could be reason to abandon colonization of this floor. At least, until such a creature was able to be eliminated.
Lifre nodded her head, crossing her arms and putting away her bow. When the two returned to their former location, she immediately swept her senses over the creature with her World Sight, pursing her lips and furrowing her brow. “That’s… strange.” She said, causing Petra to wonder what she had discovered.
“This creature, and it is a creature, by the way… its mana content is too high. I’d say that at least ninety percent of its makeup is pure mana, and it is using that mana inefficiently to convert into these bubble predators.”
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Petra hesitated when she heard that, not sure what to make of it. Following the natural process of evolution, a creature like this should not be both so powerful and so wasteful at the same time. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
“Just once…” She nodded her head. “I scanned a Lightborn once, curious how they worked. It was a lot like this, made almost entirely of mana that was being used to produce other effects.”
Petra’s eyes widened at that realization. It had been a long time since the Lightborn had played a major role in the world, but they could still be seen in various places of Fyor as a minority. However, she was well aware of their origins. “You mean that this thing is a giant mana siphon turned into a creature?”
“That seems like it would be the most plausible answer, yeah.” Lifre nodded her head in agreement. “But what would have been able to create such a giant siphon?”
“What about those other bubbles--”
“Bombubbles.”
“I’m not calling them that.” Petra huffed, shaking her head. “Would it be possible that they were able to create something like this, if they were given enough mana to work with?”
Lifre paused, thinking it over. “It’s… possible.” She nodded her head. “There’s not a vein here for mana that I’ve seen, but there is one other major source of mana in this area.” As she said that, she glanced off into the distance. Even with its massive height, the mana pillar of this world couldn’t be seen from their current spot. “But for that energy to reach all the way here before forming a siphon…”
Petra wasn’t sure how it was possible, either. If a mana siphon of this scale were to occur, it would be closer to the spire itself. “Well… are the other bubbles--”
“Bombubbles.”
“Still not calling them that.” Petra groaned. “Are they also siphons?”
Lifre shook her head at that question. “I’ve scanned them a few times. They appear to be normal energy lifeforms.”
Petra could only think of a few possibilities. The first was that there was a civilization that existed here in the past, or at least some form of sapient species. If that were true, their collective thoughts and fears of the bubble creatures could have been enough with a surge of mana to give rise to something like this.
Another possibility was that there was simply no other form of life on this layer than the bubbles in this area, so the siphon had nothing that it could fuel itself with aside from these creatures and their primitive thoughts.
The third option was… a combination of the two, which would imply that the bubbles themselves were a sapient race, and they had just not noticed until now. With those thoughts in mind, Petra began to go over what she could observe. Any structures in the area could have reasonably been blown away long ago due to the repeated blasts of these bubbles, leaving nothing to be discerned in the present day.
However, the actions of the bubble creatures did not really strike her as those of intelligent beings. They avoided the predators on sheer instinct, but didn’t otherwise act aside from merely blowing up whenever anything other than one of their own came close to them. If anything, the predators showed a higher level of intelligence, able to mix in with their prey and consume them.
“Maybe there’s another one of these things for the Bombubbles?” Lifre suddenly asked. Petra blinked, finding it unlikely, but certainly not impossible. They had already established that the other bubbles weren’t the result of a mana siphon, but if it was a collective consciousness, it might have enough mana fluctuations to trigger a siphon.
Petra scanned the area with her eyes, looking for other clues that could answer her question. As her eyes shifted, they suddenly widened. “There’s somewhere that we haven’t considered yet.” She said, and Lifre looked over in interest.
Petra’s head tilted back, eyes turning upwards to look at the sky high, high above them. Even as gods, the sky was so far away that simply the atmosphere itself was enough to obscure their vision. If there were traces of civilization on the ceiling, they would never know without heading up there to check.
“Oh, that’s right!” Lifre’s eyes widened in realization. “These guys are all about floating all over the place. It would be normal for them to live up at the top.”
The slime girl grinned, grabbing Petra’s arm again. Before the demoness had even a moment to realize what Lifre had in mind, the two were sailing into the air. The air pressure shattered against their skin again and again in rapid succession.
They ascended so fast that Petra could feel the heat of it, a cone of flame appearing ahead of them. When they finally stopped, the air cracked, rushing out in all directions and shattering the remains of several ancient buildings. Petra sighed, planting a hand on her face as she saw all of those piles of rubble falling towards the surface. “Well… we can confirm that the bubbles are sapient now.”
“Were. And they’re Bombubbles!” Lifre crossed her arms, pouting. “But anyways… they were sapient.” She scanned the surroundings with her World Sight, able to discern that this area had not seen active use in a very long time. “What happened here?”
Petra wasn’t sure how to answer that question. If they had found a ‘bubble city’ up here, she had expected that it would be actively occupied. However, there was no trace of a single bubble creature, whether predator or normal, anywhere nearby. And not just because they had gotten scared by their arrival, either.
Looking down, Petra noted that she couldn’t see any bubbles anywhere close enough for her to observe. “This is going to take some proper research as to what happened. What I’m worried about is currently something entirely different.”
“Oh? Is there something even stranger going on?” She asked, and Petra pointed downwards.
“How many of those remains are going to burn up as they fall, and how many will survive to crash into the super bubble?”
Lifre blinked, looking down, and blinked again. “On the bright side… that should take hours for them to reach the surface. Maybe days, even! At which point, we will be far, far away!”