Ar'Kendrithyst

Chapter 237, 1/2

Erick watched from beyond Clarice’s property line as the fae dragon woman stepped out of her house, wearing what seemed to be her normal set of gear; the same set that she had threatened to kill him with before. Shining silver fullplate with a wrap-around slit in the helmet for her to see though (but which was probably a Fae trick of some sort) and a cascading cape of silver metal. In her right hand she held a simple rod of solid silver; her main weapon, as far as Erick knew. It was inactive right now. When active, Erick suspected it would rip through whatever she targeted using Spatial displacement properties, or perhaps just Fae magic; hard to say. Erick saw something that looked pastel inside that rod, and pastel colors were usually Fae-aligned colors. Also, Spatial Magics didn’t work too well inside the Dark, so it was probably Fae Magic.

The All-Seeing Eye showed Erick a bit more than that. Clarice had bracelets and anklets and a choker, each holding other magics— Oh! Erick recognized that one.

Erick smiled, and said, “You got one of my Bracelets of [Hidden Whirlwind]!”

Clarice paused a moment in her walk, then she continued toward Erick, saying, “I wasn’t about to buy the normal version, but your upgraded version was worth it. So you managed to make a [True Sight] magic? Or a shift to your core? How are you seeing me right now? I know it’s not the Whirlwind magic yet, though I do like how you made it easier for everyone using one to see anyone else using the same sort of spellwork.”

Erick pulled out his All-Seeing Eye halfway from his robes, then tucked it back down, saying, “Very useful. Might have gone overboard, but I can see through all illusions now.”

“… And you didn’t go insane.” Clarice huffed, as she stopped on her side of the property line. “A good thing you made it outside of yourself, then. Go for a lesser version later, for it’s not good to see through all Illusions.”

Erick shrugged. He still wasn’t sure how far he wanted to go with his All-Seeing Eye Wizardry.

Clarice looked over Inquisitor Wess. “What kinda gear do you have?”

“Enough.”

Erick answered for him, “Wess here has a Breastplate of Absolute Reduction, a [Hidden Whirlwind] anklet like me and you, so we should all be able to ‘feel’ each other when we’re out there and working quietly, and some self-healing. I upgraded my own stuff a little since last we spoke, but it’s mostly the same as before.” He tapped his staff on the ground, saying, “I’m long-range kills. You two are short range.” Erick spoke to the sky, “And we’re all ready for that transport to the Workshop.”

Clarice gasped a little. “We’re going to the Work—”

The air wavered, and a portal of darkness appeared to the left.

“—shop… I guess we are.”

Wess softly spoke, “You’re guests at the Workshop, so behave accordingly.”

And then Wess walked through the portal.

Erick and Clarice followed.

- - - -

The portal dropped Erick off right behind Wess, onto a white courtyard raised a good ten meters above the rest of the land. Clarice popped in behind Erick, and started immediately looking around for the trap. There was no trap as far as Erick could see, though. There was just this small area, and a much larger disconnected series of mountain-buildings up ahead, all surrounded by golden wheat.

All around, wheatfields stretched, a waving yellow sea to complement the gleaming silver mountain range of the Workshop, while a black sky held overhead, devoid of stars or any natural sources of light. And yet, the place looked lit from a noon sun. It reminded Erick of silver icebergs floating in a golden ocean, with each of those icebergs dotted with smaller buildings and a few scattered towers. So maybe more like low islands. The whole place was definitely done in the ‘mountain stronghold’ style of Songli, which meant something, but which Erick did not know right now.

To the left, the golden sea continued, but it dwindled into the dark sky here and there, forming what might have been tunnels into the deeper Dark, or rather, safe passages. That made more sense. Those tunnels had to be safe passages to the other parts of the land. Erick had seen a map of this place in the control rooms, but to see the map and to see it in person were two different things.

Because on the right, far away, lay a black ocean, and the map hadn’t had a black ocean this close to the central stronghold of the Workshop. That edge of the dungeon was maybe only ten kilometers away. Maybe 20-ish. Scale was hard to perfectly judge down here.

Erick asked, “That’s the edge of the dungeon space, isn’t it?”

Clarice snickered. “I had heard the Workshop was on the coast of the Dark but holy shit, Wess. That’s just fucking stupid.”

Wess sighed, and said, “That edge is a Representative Edge, and not the True Edge. We’re in the center of the dungeon space, somewhere around the middle north of Greendale itself.”

Erick hummed. Well that’s unexpected. But everything inside a dungeon space was a truth of a variable nature, anyway, so of course there was space for alternative truths and representative truths.

“… Oh.” Clarice looked at the edge again. “So that’s a gauge of how large the dungeon is right now.”

“… Correct,” Wess said, not wanting to bother with a true explanation.

“Probably more like a gauge of dungeon size change…” Erick thought for a second, then added, “Or maybe, if they notice any size adjustment of that edge then they know that another dungeon has spawned somewhere near the outer banks of the Glittering Depths. That’s my actual guess.”

Clarice hmm’d as she thought.

Wess said, “Correct,” and then he started walking forward, toward the stairway down into the golden sea.

Erick and Clarice followed Wess into the golden wheatfields.

“I don’t see any sorts of ambushes yet,” Clarice said to Erick, purposefully loud enough to try and get a rise out of Wess, as she brushed through the wheat, leaving a trail of disturbed gold in her wake. “Do you?”

Wess did not react.

Erick said, “I see a welcoming party up ahead in the field. But they’re near the staircases leading up the silver islands.” He pointed. “There.”

“I don’t count them yet.” Clarice watched with Erick as the welcoming party dropped their cloaking magic, now that they had been found out. “They have the decency to stop hiding when pointed at, too, so they can’t be all that bad.”

A short walk through wheatfields that were surely killing fields, if they had to be, and Wess led the way toward the silver staircase leading up the first of four Workshop islands. The welcoming party stepped away from the stairs, to the side, except for an elderly woman, who remained in the path. That woman wore a purple robe that hung off of her small frame like drapes, while her wrinkled hands clutched a silver cane, to hold herself upright.

It took Erick, Clarice, and Wess a good minute to get to the first silver mountain.

When they reached her, the old woman proclaimed, “I’m Imara Downfield, one of the Workshop engineers capable of Wizarding meta-artifacts into actual artifacts. You two both have spellwork I desire. Give me this magic, and I will grant you unfettered access to my laboratories.”

Wess frowned. “You aren’t authorized to do—”

“Then I walk!” Imara said, “I leave this land, and head to Candlepoint and request a [Reincarnation] from the Wizard in exchange for all of my knowledge of mana crystals and otherwise.”

Erick rapidly said, “The Wizard grants this request. Do you wish to leave now?”

Imara smiled at Erick, and then positively grinned at Wess. “Looks like Candlepoint might give me what I actually want in this world, Inquisitor.”

Wess said, “Cease your foolishness with this misunderstanding, Imara.” He said to Erick, “What she wants is to eradicate all demons from this world, and your boss has made his opinion on the Quiet War quite plain.”

Erick paused. He looked to Imara again, and felt a subtle loss of possibility.

And Imara chuckled. “I’m a noncombatant, but I do strive to help those out there overcome the demonic threat in all ways.” She asked Erick, “Would your Wizard [Reincarnation] me into my best, youngest self, in order to kill as many incani as I could?”

“… He would not allow that.”

Imara shrugged, uncaring. “Then I understand you wish for a tour and whatever-the-fuck. If you two give me the simple spellwork that I desire, then you can come back here anytime and use these facilities to your utmost.”

Wess spoke up, “No they cannot.”

“I’m the archmage here, Inquisitor Wess.” Imara turned and started walking up the staircase, saying, “You may bluster all you wish, but I’m in charge in this Workshop.”

Wess frowned, but said nothing.

And Imara laughed, before she continued up the stairs.

The soldiers standing to the side of the path elected to stay there.

And Erick followed Wess. Clarice stepped forward a moment later, her eyes lingering on the soldiers. She wasn’t feeling too comfortable about this whole situation. Erick was pretty sure they were fine, though.

- - - -

Beyond a door and past some emplaced magics, Erick followed the archmage and the Inquisitor, into the depths of the silver mountain. There were a great many circumstances of this travel that would have scared anyone without an All-Seeing Eye, and Clarice didn’t have that, so she was rightfully scared, as they walked through narrow hallways, into the center of the fortress. For it was a fortress, just as much as it was a research station.

Erick asked, “Got a concern, Clarice?”

“… I am concerned about walking in the stronghold of an unknown power. The dungeon masters and workers don’t mix with Utopia more than strictly necessary, so I only ever heard rumors of this place.”

That sounded like an unintentional lie, to Erick. Clarice was a hermit, who cut herself off from everyone, which was why she didn’t know too much about this place. But she was still a dragon, and more of a possible-ally than Wess. That’s why Erick had wanted her here, on this trip, among other, more personal reasons; not because of her insider knowledge—

Imara grinned up ahead. “We’re almost there now, my cute little dragons.”

Clarice bristled, the air around her right hand turning fractured—

Erick said, “We’re almost past the fortress part. We have been taken the long way and scanned about a hundred different ways, and people have looked at those scans a thousand different ways, but so far they haven’t been able to penetrate much of my defenses, or yours, Clarice. Not any more than expected, anyway.”

Imara chuckled, and kept walking.

Clarice asked Erick softly, “Where? How far?”

Erick pointed up and to the left. “There’s the main research room. We could have taken a turn back there and gotten there two minutes ago, but we’re not going there.” He pointed again. “There’s the map room, which is probably where we’re actually going.” He pointed again, and then again. “And that’s the main security room, and the backup. That’s where they’re reading out all the scans conducted by the magic scanners we’ve passed through, and currently looking very worried about being found out so easily.” Erick pointed again to the ceiling, to rather inconspicuous light orb holders, which were completely normal to have in any place like this. “And those are multi-spell casters which can be triggered to release any number of spells, from this entire meta-iron mountain. I bet these walls contain billions of mana.”

Only a little bit of that surprised Clarice; the part about ‘worried about being found out’ mostly, because that revealed that Erick could read emotions from this far, and through whatever obscuring magics were layered upon this place. She also looked at him a bit oddly when he said the walls contained billions of mana, which was more of a judgmental look, for some reason—

Imara laughed at Erick’s proclamation. “What a delightful thing to hear!”

Then she knocked on the wall with her cane, and Erick experienced a discordance. What he heard was the sound of metal knocking on stone; a distinctive pap, instead of a clink. Imara smiled as she turned a corner, and she tapped the ground with her cane again, sending another pap into the air; another stone-ish sound.

Erick blinked a little, and then he turned his All-Seeing Eye all the way off—

They were in a stone hallway. Not a metal hallway at all.

Erick turned his Eye back on, and said, “People don’t normally know this entire building is one big meta-artifact.”

Clarice raised a small eyebrow at Erick, probably judging that his [True Sight] spellwork was working more than it should.

“We keep that well hidden, but not from you, it seems!” Imara said, “But enough about our heavy fortress that can murder anyone and anything that gets near or inside, and can monitor everything within, even if we can’t always discern what we’re noticing.” She went through an archway, saying, “We’ve reached the map room.”

Erick said, “Well now you’re being hyperbolic. There is no way that you can murder everything that gets through here; if you could, then no one would be able to walk through here at all.”

“Well now we’re into the philosophical discussion of security, which I will have to bow out of, because we’re here!” Imara said, as she stood beside a 5 meter wide silver pillar that looked more like a solid, low table, than a pillar. An equally-shaped pillar held on the ceiling, leaving a ten meter gap between the two. Between those two plinths hovered an ant’s nest of a map in 3-d, holographic form. “Behold; the Glittering Depths.”

Erick had already seen this in the control room.

The Glittering Depths, when taken as a whole, looked like a cake of a thousand layers, overlapping and connected by odd roads, with some layers larger than others, and some completely disconnected from the main stretch in the center. It was an ant’s nest; a thunderhead cloud; a disassembled cake. Erick could have called it any of those, and he would have been somewhat correct. And it wasn’t just one color, either; it was 6.

A key to the side named those layers. Blue was for the main dungeon floors, from the entrance to floor 5. Green was for Utopia. Yellow was for the backroads, and administrative spaces; Quilatalap called those places ‘administrative’, while others might name them as ‘maintenance’. Red was for monster lands; about half of the map was made of red, and completely disconnected from the blue. Black was for the edge. White was for the control room.

The control room was not labeled; a security concern, no doubt.

The largest layer of the Gem Dungeon was just below the real-world surface, stretching out in every direction for a hundred kilometers, and fading at the edges. This layer was Utopia, and if Erick was correct, then Utopia lay just below the golden sea of wheat outside the Workshop. If Erick were to somehow get through the ground there, he would have fallen through the sky of the main city of the Glittering Depths.

Piles of layers held here and there on that central layer, rising up, or descending; colored blue or red. Yellow roads lay everywhere around every floor, and at the edges of the yellow lands lay black edge; pure death; the Dark Itself. The whole map was surrounded by a faint blackness.

Imara slapped the surface of the silver map pillar, saying, “This is the Glittering Depths! And it’s the size of Greensoil itself! You’re never going to find your quarry, and that’s IF they’re out there in the backroads, which is a big ‘if’. Personally I doubt it, and I don’t care to help you at all, but I will, if you give me what I want!”

Erick already had a few ideas of how to trivialize this search, but one of those ideas was to use [Cascade Imaging] here in the dungeon, which would give his true nature as Erick away. So he decided to humor the woman, “And what do you want?”

Imara demanded, “From Clarice, I want your secret of [Illusion Rend]! From Ashes, I want your secret of [True Sight] in a manaless atmosphere!” She chuckled. “I have had such a difficult time understanding both of Clarice’s powers, but now that I have you both where I want you, I don’t have to choose! So tell me, little dragons! Tell me your secrets!”

Clarice answered, “Wizardry.”

Erick answered, “Wizardry.”

Imara exclaimed, “Dammit!”

Wess said, “Let us move on.”

“Bah!” Imara said, “I tire of this intrigue. Mariia! You’re up.”

Without further words, Imara walked away, her cane tapping against the not-stone ground.

… Well okay then, Erick thought.

And a Marii, from the second floor, walked away from the side of the room to stand near the projection. She looked a lot different from the last time Erick had seen her— or rather, seen one of her kind. This Marii’s right side had been caught in some sort of explosion, and though she had mostly healed from the blast, her red hair only hung down her left side of her head, and faint scars marred all of the right side of her body.

Mariia spoke with a clear voice, “Imara is the oversight of this location, and we tolerate her, but I’m the actual boss, and loyal to both Atunir and Greensoil.” Mariia said, “And you’re never going to find anyone through the backroads. The Inquisitors tried and failed tens of times, with a much larger search party than three people. This map right here is just kept so that we can keep track of where people are testing magics in the backroads so we don’t run into each other. The map here has no [Scan]ing functionality like the map in the control rooms, and even that one doesn’t do much more than this one. That said: We will strive to assist you in any way you desire. How can the Workshop be of assistance?”

When Imara spoke, Erick had thought her a little insane, but Mariia seemed a lot more normal; he was glad for the change.

Erick said, “I’m aware of the [Scan]ing inadequacies of the maps, but that’s not why I’m here. Honestly, if Imara would accept a [Reincarnation] that wasn’t pointed toward her attempting to inflame the Quiet War, then the Wizard would accept her offer of teaching mana crystal magics in exchange for a [Reincarnation]. That goes for everyone here, by the way. Candlepoint is open for immigration, but not for war of any kind—”

Mariia gasped ever so slightly.

“Ashes,” Wess said, as a warning.

Erick ignored Wess, and continued, “I mainly came here to check out what was happening here at the Workshop and to make some new connections, before moving on into the backroads to find whoever might be killing nobles and using all of that yellow space as a base of operations. I’d love a tour of the Workshop and to learn more about mana crystals, and all that.”

Mariia nodded, then said, “If you’re going to be exploring out there then you should know that as long as you’re in the wheat, then you’re not in danger of falling off the path, into the Dark.” She touched a part of the silver projector, and some silver dots appeared in the center of the projection. “This is where we’re at, and where the nearest teams of meta-item testers are located in the near backroads.” She slowly swiped her hand across the edge of the table, giving visual clues to what she was really doing, which was using her aura deep in the construct, according to what Erick could See. The map zoomed in and showed the four silver islands, and the nearest 20-ish kilometers of yellow backroads, along with an edge of black to the south that wasn’t really there at all. “This is the Workshop and the Representative Edge, located in the center of the dungeon. That fourth island is the lighthouse, which keeps an eye on the edge, and tells us when nearby dungeons press against the Glittering Depths, and then the Inquisitors go out and kill those dungeons. That island is property of the Viridian Throne, and we don’t use it.

“This island you’re on now is the first of the four islands, and this is the main project zone.

“The second and third islands are residential. They have some permanent connections to Utopia on the third island, but those are well-guarded; only known people get through there. Anyone who asks the dungeon for a direct line goes through that platform you took; it’s far enough away and visible enough that we can safely bombard that location, if bombardment should prove necessary to combat an incursion.” Mariia said, “And that’s the quick tour. Anywhere you want to see in particular?”

“The metamond creation rooms,” Erick added, “If they’re not simple mana chambers. Basically, if you have any special mana crystal creation locations, I want to see them. And also books on the subject; what you have found, etcetera. What’s the difference between interior-infinite mana crystals, like the metamonds you make in a chamber, as opposed to exterior-expanding mana crystals, like how they usually are? And how did you decide to make that shift? How did you think of that option, to go interior instead of exterior, and what sorts of repercussions has this had?”

Mariia paused for a moment, and then she grinned a little. “Mana is possibility and that means that everything external can be made internal with no loss of functionality, because we demand it to be that way. It does take some doing to get it— Well. I should start earlier than that. How it looked to me, when I was in the dungeon, was that I worked for 30 years of my life, trying to make mana crystals easier to use, while using theoretical and proven models created under 110 years of previous works, made by Resistance leaders and skilled artisans like the Summoner. All of that work was kinda trash compared to my understanding of the process now, here on Veird, where people actually share their knowledge of magic widely.

“They say that mana is possibility, but the truth is more nuanced than that, for possibility must be created at least once in order to be created again. When the Wizard made Benevolence; that was a major creation. But now, anyone can use Benevolence to make any matter of Benevolence-based spellwork; mostly [Renew] magics, these days. Node Networks and buffing magics, and all that.” Mariia said, “Anyway: In the past, the Old Cosmology had a certain inertial weight to it that kept it going forward and in mostly the same configuration, so that sort of stuff didn’t really happen. Even making new magics out of old magics was much harder… But that’s a philosophical issue, truly. People didn’t share their shit at all back then, so maybe that’s why we never had much innovation? Either way, it was extremely difficult to make internally-infinite mana crystals in the Old Cosmology. But we could still do it.

“But here in the New Cosmology, under the Dark, and in the Light of Atunir, where She has delivered us unto a new life in a land where that internally-infinite possibility is already known… All it took here was almost the flipping of a switch; of treading a path already well-worn by the weight of history. Now anyone can simply invert a mana crystal to make a metamond, as you have already found out.

“There’s no actual difference between the two types of crystals.

“Internally-infinite and externally expanding mana crystals are exactly the same, but the internal ones don’t take up more and more space as they grow, and they can be insulated from outside-influence and change a lot easier. Those are the main differences between the two, and why we chose to make internal mana crystals in the first place.”

“… Huh.” Erick said, “What you’re saying makes it sound like Dungeon Magic had nothing to do with the metamonds; they just allowed an old magic to shine through the Dark.”

“Exactly!” Mariia smiled as she said, “Dungeon Magic was the starting point for the meta-artifacts, but that start has blossomed into the power of Endless Delvers like Clarice, and then there’re the Iron Bandits, pushing past floor 230. The spells of the people here are so much more than I ever envisioned back there in my previous life. And now we have people making these Dungeon Magic-supported items real, like the staff you’ve made, and like that amulet of yours, too. I’m not sure you understand just how rare of an accomplishment that is, but trust; it’s rare. And now that you’ve made one true meta-artifact on accident and one on purpose, I’m rather sure you can make many more.”

Erick thought for a second, then said, “Well that’s interesting… So the controlled growth and space concerns are all that make metamonds truly special… But by that same token, metamonds are able to be altered a lot easier, too? Like if a mana crystal is corrupted by an odd shift in Intent-based growth, then you can discard that growth —either through chipping or carving that growth away— and work with what you already have, to try and grow it again. But with a metamond, if a corruption occurs, then the entire thing is changed. Like when you take a basic [Fire Bolt] metamond and add in [Water Bolt], to make [Steam Bolt], you can’t work with the [Fire Bolt] ever again; you have to make a new one of those.” Erick said, “It’s hard to unbake a cake.”

“Correct again!” Mariia said, “On the whole, though, metamonds are easier to use than mana crystals, because a mana crystal can easily outgrow its initial parameters and mutate into something else entirely, but metamonds don’t do that. As long as a metamond isn’t exposed to a high-mana environment, then the diamond-like barrier of the metamond will not interact with any other solid-mana spellwork. It’s like… You can take an ice cube anywhere you want in a blizzard, and the ice will stay the same, but when you move to a hot room you better be careful, or the metamond can deform.” She shrugged. “It’s the same with mana crystals, really, but mana crystals can be trimmed more easily, to prune off bad growth. You generally have to break a metamond if it goes bad.”

Erick began—

Wess interrupted, “Please, Ashes. Let us continue with the investigation.”

Clarice scowled at the inquisitor, for she too had been heavily interested in Mariia’s words.

Erick refrained from scowling at Wess, as he said, “I suppose there’s plenty of time to come back and play with mana crystals in a proper laboratory environment, if you would have me here for a while?”

“Of course!” Mariia said, “We welcome House Benevolence into the auspices of Atunir.”

Erick smiled a little at that, and moved on. He gestured to the map. “Is that map better than the one in the control room?”

“No, it is not,” Wess answered for Mariia. “We can query the control room for an update on our surroundings when we’re out there in the backroads, but we must actually be at those surroundings before they can scan our locations.”

Mariia nodded at Wess’s answer. “We have good coverage of the nearest tens of kilometers, but nothing past that.”

Erick asked Mariia, “Any suggestions for where to look?”

Wess frowned because he was a stick in the mud, as far as Erick could tell.

Mariia raised an eyebrow in surprise, then said, “I don’t think anyone would want to live in the backroads at all. They’re stable locations, but the dark tide does shift now and then, and rather unpredictably, too. So look in the low-mana areas instead; Those lands are the only places where people could actually hide with effective Illusion spellwork. But since you have Clarice and your own [True Sight] magic with you, those areas should prove easier to search.”

Clarice piped up, “Which is why we should go invade the fifth floors! The Ritual.”

“Yes yes,” Erick said, “We’re getting there, Clarice—” Erick paused as he looked to Clarice, and then to Wess. Clarice’s ability to [True Sight] through mana-less zones had been known for a long time. So… “Why didn’t you two work together before? To search those areas?”

Clarice laughed, then said, “Because people die for real in the backroads, and I wasn’t going anywhere with any Inquisitor at all, especially when Riamites were involved.”

Because she was a distrustful hermit, Erick heard and understood.

Wess frowned. “Every time some unauthorized person finds their way back here they die, and the dungeon masters get blamed for it. It led to legal battles among the nobility, and so, years ago, we decided not to allow anyone back here at all, and anyone who does get back here is on their own.”

“Ah.” Erick said, “Distrust, all the way around. Reinforced distrust, too.”

Mariia spoke up, “If you stick next to the edges of the floors, and stay away from the dark tide, then it’s not that dangerous to be down here. But yes; this is a liminal space. It’s not safe at all. If there are people down here then they’re likely ducking into floors when the floors are occupied, and then not sticking around when the floors are closing and being reset.”

Erick smiled a little bit at that. “Thank you, Mariia. That’s very helpful, actually.”

Mariia blushed—

“Ha!” Clarice laughed harshly. “I thought you had a boyfriend.”

Mariia scowled.

And Erick rolled his eyes. “What the fuck, Clarice. Come on. Let’s go. It was nice to meet you, Mariia. I’ll be back later, if you’ll have me.”

Mariia’s anger vanished as she said, “We welcome House Benevolence back to the Glittering Depths whenever—”

“No, you don’t.” Wess said to Erick, “Your welcome is strained, and will only be approved again if we get results. So let’s get those results.”

“Yes!” Clarice said, “Let’s go to floor 5.”

Erick sighed a little, as he turned around and walked out of the room, saying, “Floor 2 is where most people spend their time in this dungeon, therefore the most obvious places to check for signs of habitation are in floor 2. I know I wouldn’t want to move bases constantly, so I would stick around where people were most likely to fail for a long time.”

Clarice and Wess walked beside and behind Erick, with Clarice saying, “That’s probably a dead end.”

“Why do you say that?” Erick asked, as he turned a corner and took the more direct route to the outside of the mountain. “And I need a real answer, not just ‘because that doesn’t get me what I want’. Logically, if we’re looking for Riamites, then floor 2 is where most of them are, and everyone runs away from the main forces on that floor. I checked, and no one but me has full-cleared the place in 5 years, and that was only because this place was still stabilizing 5 years ago, and less dangerous than it is today.”

Clarice had been about to refute Erick, but then Erick kept talking, and now she wasn’t sure how to tell him he was wrong. So she said, “You’re wrong. Let’s go to the fifth floors.”

Wess sighed, and said, “We’ve done all of this searching before, and we even have people out there right now, looking into various locations. We’ve had people in the second floors before, and they never turned up anything or anyone. Personally, I think they’re in the monster floors.”

Erick shook his head. “Nope. Not there. Too dangerous; too many monsters always shifting hunting grounds, always looking for the best prey, or running from larger prey, or testing themselves against larger prey. Nope. Not there.” He asked, “Besides? You already have people searching there?”

“… We do,” Wess said.

“I’m not interested in searching where the Inquisitors are already searching.” Erick reached the balcony that led to the outside world. With the dark light coming down from all around, illuminating the golden sea ahead and the silver mountain underfoot, Erick held out a hand and channeled some mana from his core into his palm, hoping to cast a smaller version of [Cascade Imaging]. Something that would just pop up a light and a direction, and which he could use to still pretend at this ‘Ashes’ persona for longer. Lightning sparked under his skin, damaging him instead of escaping out into the world. He hummed. “Expected, but not altogether impossible to overcome.”

Clarice huffed a small laugh, then said, “You can cast normally if you’re near the Dark, where the tide has cleared away the golden sea. It’s dangerous as fuck and I’m not following you out there, but it works.”

“I won’t be doing that,” Erick said, as he held up his hand again. Light flickered again, and this time Erick twisted his aura in some further internal magic, to maybe light up a finger when he pointed in the right direction to the nearest person that was over ten meters away— Lightning crackled and broke. Blood spilled. Erick shook his hand out as his flesh slowly knit, thanks to his Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation]. “Hmm.”

Erick had another idea.

He held up his staff, and asked, “Do you know where the demonic killers are?”

The not-gold staff glowed a little. And then did nothing.

Clarice smirked behind her armor as she stepped forward, saying, “Let’s just run around the place and keep our senses open. It’s just Sighting what? Like 30,000 square kilometers of space? Might take a few days if we’re running as fast as we can, and Sighting just as fast. Two weeks for triple searching, to account for mundane hiding techniques.”

Wess said, “There are around 25,800 square kilometers of backroads ‘coastline’, in and around every floor. Most of that is around 400 meters wide, but some places between confluences of multiple floors are much larger.” He held out a hand and a ring came to life in his palm, displaying a map of the local area, like the one they had seen back in the map room here and the map room in the control room. It was cruder, though, and by a lot. “I will be tracking our progress, you two with the mana sense to Sight these sorts of things will be doubling up on the search pattern. We will be going around every floor twice. We will head to the more likely places first.” He looked to both Erick and Clarice, saying, “Unless you two wish to stop with the lies, and actually cast some real Scanning Magics that might narrow down our searching locations.”

Erick wanted to just cast a proper spell, but… he had actually tried. Wess seemed to think Erick was lying about his ability.

… Erick should probably keep up that lie.

“I’m sure that it won’t take us two weeks to search the whole place,” Erick said.

Clarice stepped to the edge of the balcony, where a low railing stopped people from just walking off. She cast her gaze across the land, then playfully looked to Erick. “How deep do you want to go into the Dark?”

Erick wondered at that for a moment, as he stared out at the golden sea, and at the deeper Dark, far away, lapping at the gold like a black ocean. It had been a very long time since he had needed to actually search for anyone or anything. With Ophiel, he could have searched this whole place within a few hours. With [Cascade Imaging] he could have searched it within minutes.

He had tried to manually cast [Cascade Imaging] inside his hand; to overcome the magical restrictions of the Glittering Depths through ingenuity and power. It hadn’t worked. But, even if it had worked, would it work down here? Likely not. There were too many oddities inside this dungeon space to believe all of what an Imaging could show, not to mention the layered, thick ground would have been hell to punch through with radio waves.

Erick had expected all of that, though.

He had two more things to try, and while one of them would work in a basic sort of way, and likely be useless, the other was a [Far Bolt] of a different sort, and not one he wanted to use lightly. But a little bit of Wizardry might work well.

So Erick relaxed his core. White light began to flow out of his body, illuminating him from within. He infused his words with intent, white glows flickering at the back of his throat—

Clarice rapidly lost her smile as she stepped away, fast. Wess realized that Erick was doing something odd at that very same moment. He backed away, slowly and surely.

—and Erick spoke, “If I’m on some sort of Benevolent Path, then show me the way toward finding the Path in here. Help me end a war before it can begin.”

- - - -

The floating screen of the control room did not capture what Kinder felt, as he watched Ashes open his mouth, revealing a pit of light, there on that balcony of the Workshop.

It was as though an unnoticed current in an unknown river changed directions. A shiver came and went, revealing a depth to Kinder’s soul that wasn’t there before.

And then the shift passed.

The dungeon reasserted its power. The river returned to its course, the dark retreated from the golden shores. The Core of the Glittering Depths remained untouched.

Kinder breathed out, took a moment to compose himself as his heart beat way, way too fast, and then muttered, “Damned dragons.”

- - - -

Erick watched the world as his words passed into the air, his core cooled, and an inner light faded back to normal levels of calm.

… And nothing happened.

Erick frowned a little, his eyebrows coming together, as he said, “Well that’s… Not what I expected.”

Clarice chuckled. “No worries! It happens to everyone eventually!”

“Don’t do that again, Ashes,” Wess said, “Or else this partnership is over and you’re banished from these lands. Promise me you won’t do that again.”

“I’d love to promise you that, but I have better sense than to lie to you.” Erick went to the edge of the balcony, and stepped off the side. Wind caught his lower body, gently lowering him to the mountainside, as he called out behind him, “Come on then! Let’s get a move on!”

Clarice hopped over the edge, following fast. “But where are we going?”

Wess caught up.

Erick landed on the ground, where the gold ocean touched the silver mountain. “The Inquisitors have already investigated everywhere of interest and they continue to do so, but illusions are stronger down here than they are anywhere else on Veird, so we’re going to investigate everything all over again. Just once over, though, and on the outside tracks, around the floors. None of the interior spaces that people actually move through sometimes.” Erick said, “We’ll start at the spaces around the second floors, because like Mariia said, people probably aren’t sticking around in the backroads all the time, and like I said, the second floor is usually open the longest of all the floors. It’s the best place to hide with fellow Riamites and then leave when the floor closes.” Erick finished, looking to Wess.

And Wess reluctantly said, “This fact has already been considered, but it would be one of the better places to check first. We might as well.”

Clarice shrugged. “We can steal some blue tabards from some elites in there and make ourselves blend in.”

“Or red tabards, and try not to draw the attention of whoever is delving those zones, as we blend in with the Riamites,” Erick said.

Clarice objected, “No. They’ll recognize us as non-Riamites. You can’t just blend in with the NPCs; they notice you for you, unless you’re using actual Illusion Magics.”

Erick was about to object, to say that he had heard that people had had success with blending in—

Wess said, “Or we do none of that, and simply remain hidden all the time.” He looked to the air. “Control room. List the currently-open second floors, and their status.”

Words appeared in the air.

Second Floor #1, delvers: 3, elapsed time: 1d:3h, estimate to completion: 18d:12h

Second Floor #2, delvers: 5, elapsed time: 7d:18h, estimate to completion: never, currently unoccupied

Second Floor #3, delvers: 2, elapsed time: 5d:10h, estimate to completion: 21d:0h, currently unoccupied

Second Floor #4, delvers: 7, elapsed time: 1d:6h, estimate to completion: never

Second Floor #5, delvers: 3, elapsed time: 19d:4h, estimate to completion: never, currently unoccupied, scheduled for sublimation

Second Floor #6, delvers: 2, elapsed time: 18d:8h, estimate to completion: never, scheduled for sublimation

. . .

Second Floor #36, delvers: 4, elapsed time: 4d:7h, estimate to completion: 16d:12h, currently unoccupied

Second Floor #37, delvers: 2, elapsed time: 10d:8h, estimate to completion: never

“Wow,” Erick said, “That’s a lot of floors.”

Clarice said, “Most of the Glittering Depths is dedicated to the Blasted Plains, but it’s quite odd to see so many ‘never’s in there. Even the Endless Depths aren’t that large because those floors rise and fall out of the Dark when they’re needed.”

Wess ignored Erick and Clarice as he looked over the floating text. He determined, “Number 4 as a good bet, or 8, or 17. All of them just started, and all of them looked to never complete, which means that the people chose to fight the Riamites and have proven ineffectual, and they had a tough time doing floor 1.”

“Why not number 1 or 3?” Erick asked, “Or any of the other ones that look to complete in 20ish days?”

Clarice looked over the very tall list, as she said, “Those parties must be trying to escape to the Mountain. An invader setting up shop in there would stretch the dungeon interior too much to account for the vast distances between real delvers… Even if all the floors are pretty much internal infinities anyway.”

“Stretching leads to problems?” Erick asked.

“Mostly in the form of a floor-wide warning,” Wess said, “Which would alert the delvers that there were more people in there with them.”

Erick almost gasped as he realized something, but he did not. He kept silent.

For he had cleared floor 2, and was prepared to stay there for a month to play around with meta-artifacts. But Kinder had stepped in and guided Erick onward to Utopia? Had there been invaders in that dungeon instance with him?

… Had Kinder known?

Had he rescued Erick from the invaders? Or had he thought Erick was one of the invaders?

“So #4, #8, and #17, are good options,” Erick said, moving on, “Lead the way, Wess. The long way around, if you could, avoiding any known Inquisitor locations. No need to double-up search patterns, of course.”

Wess looked to Erick. “… Of course.”

And then Wess took off through the golden wheat fields, the air around him bending hard as he soared across the plains.

Erick followed, stepping on the wheat, his wind-covered boots barely disturbing the heavy stalks of grain underfoot as he followed Wess across Atunir’s discount heaven, tapping his way across the gold ocean. Clarice gave chase, proving herself even more graceful than Erick, and not even needing to lay a silver boot on the grains underfoot. She just flew.

As the three of them moved a great wind followed in their wake, sending waves of golden grain rippling under the black sky.

- - - -

The black sky touched the golden sea only half a kilometer away, with barely a touch of empty land between the two. That not-sky arched overhead, and if Erick were to leap up, he would touch it, and surely be disintegrated. Even Jane never truly survived the Dark, when she and her teams killed dungeon cores and were ejected into the black. Those spaces were like jumbled Reality imposed upon the utter blackness that was the True Dark, and dungeons didn’t instantly vanish when their cores were broken.

But the Dark at the edge of these Glittering Depths was actual Dark. Nothing survived that.

Erick followed the path of gold through the black, keeping his mana sense open on his surroundings.

The landscape gradually changed.

- - - -

Erick slowed down, and when he did, he sunk into the wheat.

White cliffs 500 meters tall rose ahead, and then rose again above that first layer. And then again and again. It was a massive cake of white cliffs, layered up and down, invisible from this angle for the curve of Dark overhead obscured the higher floors, as though this was an Underworld land, and all of the Glittering Depths were merely inside a cave. To the right, the backroads descended, angling down beside the outer edge of the floors ahead, while to the left, the backroads ascended, leading up to the floor above, and then the floor above that one as well.

The floors themselves were well-secured in the Dark by those stone-like edges to them, but the ocean of golden wheat under Erick’s boots was barely a meter and a half deep, with Darkness probably a meter below that, under the not-stone backroads. This whole place was more Reality than reality; an imposition on the Dark, made by the dungeon core, and allowed to exist at the Dark’s whims.

Erick put on a smile. “So which one is number 4?”

“Is that the one we’re going with?” Clarice said, as she gazed upward.

“Even floors above, odd floors below.” Wess pointed at the floor ahead of them, and then pointed up, then down, then up again, as he said, “One, two, three, four. We only have to go up two levels.”

“Sounds good. How do we get in, though? Through the walls? Can we go through the wheat floor, into the sky of instance four, from above?” Erick asked, “How does that work?”

Wess said, “You have to enter the floor from the wheat field. You duck down and then walk into the wall, and beyond. You’ll end up on the floor, near a patch of golden wheat near a safe zone, near a white pillar about four meters tall. To exit the floor, you have to call for a dungeon exit, and then you’ll end up on the entrance floor. Or you get back to that field of golden wheat, and then you duck down to fully submerge, and walk into the white pillar, in order to exit that floor and end up back here, in the backroads. You can’t exit or enter a floor any other way; all that white stone is stone, until you enter properly.”

A different way to do it than most, but if it worked, it worked. That would also neatly explain why, when Erick turned his All-Seeing Eye up, all he saw was either stone or Darkness ahead; no Second Floor at all.

Wind and curved light swirled around Erick, as he stepped back on to the top of the golden wheat. “Let’s circle all the way around and get on top of the fourth instance, too. I want to check out everything on every level.” Erick guesstimated the size of the floor, asking, “It might take a few hours?”

Clarice rushed forward, saying, “Less than an hour.”

Wess followed, with Erick taking up the rear.

As Erick ran around the sides of the floor, with the cliffs on his right and the Dark on his left, he watched for anything unusual in the wheat. After twenty minutes of nothing, he looked up, and the full majesty of the stacked floors appeared beyond a curve in the Dark sky.

“It really does look like cake stacked high,” Erick said, over the whistling wind.

Clarice laughed. “That’s what I thought, too!”

- - - -

An hour later, they had circled all of the fourth instance of the Second Floor, both below, and above.

“Nothing,” Clarice said, as they stopped near where they started. She looked up. “They might not even be in there. We should just go to the fifth floors.”

“There are quite fewer fifth floors active at any one time,” Wess said, standing in the golden wheat. “If they’re hiding on Floor One, then they’re probably hiding on Floor Two, since that does make the most sense.”

“How large is the Second Floor?” Erick asked, “The absolute size?”

“The exterior is only a 10 kilometer radius, 500 meter height,” Clarice said, “But the interior is a few thousand kilometers across. Large enough for a month-long chase through the woods between the Plains and the Mountain.”

“Is that Spatial compression? Or what?” Erick asked.

Clarice said, “Just Fairy Magic.”

“If you don’t know then that’s fine, but lies are less than helpful.”

Clarice laughed.

Wess said, “Clarice is not lying; it’s Fairy Magic. But it’s also the divine magic of both Atunir and the Dark, and it doesn’t actually get that large before warning messages of distances start appearing for the delvers inside.” He moved on. “Are we going in?”

“Yes,” Erick said, “Let’s go in.”

Wess did not hesitate as he walked forward, to where the golden wheat grew directly against the white cliff wall. He flicked aura control though his armor, and the green enamel vanished momentarily, leaving silver in its wake. Another half moment passed, and his armor turned blue.

Clarice did something to her own armor, but mostly to her silver cloak. Brilliant blue, deep as the ocean, cascaded down her back.

Erick was the only one without clothing-color magic. … Which was an oversight on his part, he guessed. Clarice had spoken about taking some blue garb from the bodies inside, so that if they met the delvers the delvers wouldn’t attack them on sight, but apparently that was not necessary.

Wess said, “There are seven delvers in this area. They will not be passing this floor because they’re too focused on trying to kill the Riamite camps, which appears to be impossible for them. It would be highly rude to interrupt their delve, so we try to stay out of their sights. No doubt the demonic killers would do the same, since if they did interrupt the delve they would be spotted by the control room. The control room should be focused on this instance now, but they don’t see anything there, or else they would have messaged us by now. They must not have seen anything while we were out here searching the backroads, too, but they can’t actually see everything. This is why it is up to us to go inside.” He looked to Erick. “I assume you want to visit the main Riamite encampment in the destroyed Plains base?”

Erick smiled, saying, “That’s exactly right! If the demonic killers are Riamite, then it makes sense for them to hide in the largest Riamite zone in the lands.”

“I’m not convinced,” Clarice said. “Once an NPC becomes real, they aren’t welcome in the lands where they were born; a realized Riamite would have just as much trouble with an NPC Riamite as we would. It’d be like they were delvers, dressing up as Riamites, and having their disguise seen through anyway.”

Erick said, “Even so. They’re in here just as much as they could be anywhere else. So we’re going in.”

Clarice shrugged.

Wess ducked down under the golden wheat, his voice vanishing slowly as he said, “We go and investigate for ourselves...”

And then he was gone from Erick’s senses. Just like that.

Erick went, “Well then. That really is how you get into the dungeons, eh?”

Clarice said, “We could purposefully lose him now. Head to the fifth floors.”

“… Nah.” Erick ducked down under the wheat and walked forward on all fours. His Rod of the Lightning Guardian and staff clunked against the ground, as dense wheat filled his vision. “Let’s just go…”

Erick’s voice and everything seemed to slip away from him as the world transformed to all his senses.