World Keeper

Chapter 1041: Into The Pit

Lifre’s grin widened as she descended into the gaping chasm, plunging her body into the source of the pink mist. She could feel her sword already starting to erode, and so dismissed it to prevent herself from losing her divine artifact. “Just you and me, huh?!” She asked with a manic laugh, not even trying to stop her descent.

Her eyes scanned as much as they could, trying to identify a weak point. Unfortunately, she wasn’t even able to see the edges of the chasm through the mist. She clicked her tongue, deciding to simply fall until she reached the bottom. She had already ensured that she was immune to the mist, after all.

This thing doesn’t appear to have any real form of attack other than the mist. It doesn’t even move. Hey, does it even know I’m in its mouth? She had to wonder that, given its sheer size. Comparing this creature to a normal human, she would be about as big as a single atom. If I kill this thing, that will be the ultimate giant slaying!

With that, her grin returned, and she waited… and waited… falling through the pink mist as it blew past her figure. If not for the rushing wind and the constant sensation of gravity, she would have begun to wonder if she was being held in place.

Suddenly, the pink mist parted to reveal glossy stone, mere inches from her face. Lifre’s eyes widened as she collided with the ground at terminal velocity, splashing out as a puddle of goop. Pulling herself together in a literal sense, she let out a sigh. “I have been falling… for thirty minutes!” She complained, looking around.

“I think. It was probably longer than that, but I can’t wear a watch in this place.” She muttered. At the very bottom of the chasm, the mist didn’t seem as dense. Additionally, she was able to see where it was being emitted from.

It wasn’t simply some crystal that had fused into the ground like she expected. Rather, there was a smooth, circular gem held in warped and coiled stone, like a staff protruding from the ground. The mist gushed forth from the gem, filling the air and rising upwards.

Lifre’s brow furrowed at the site of the place where the gem was mounted. “That’s… not a natural formation.” She muttered, walking closer. As she did, she sent a message to Terra mentally. Hey, big boss lady! Can you send a message to the others to let them know that I’m okay, and totally didn’t splat face first into the ground?

You want me to lie to them, then? Terra asked in an amused tone.

Pretty please? They’ll just worry, otherwise. She responded, observing the structure that appeared to be some form of altar. She couldn’t make out any markings, though they would have either been eroded by the mist or the passing of countless years.

“Let’s see… how did he say it goes?” She muttered, focusing her energy in her eyes. “There we go… wait, it’s not Hunger or anything like that?” She asked in surprise. She didn’t often observe the domains of others, finding it more fun to learn by experience. Still, she had been sure that the domain of the primordial relic behind this would be something to do with devouring.

Instead, the domain that she read from the crystal was Nature. So… whatever this is corrupted the natural energy of this area, turning it into that poisonous mist? Lifre considered simply destroying the gem, but wasn’t sure that that would solve the main problem. Instead, she needed to look around and find clues.

“This should be the very center of the pit, so…” Lifre picked a random direction and started running, keeping her eyes peeled for any sort of abnormality.

Once she reached the far wall, she stretched her arm out, pressing it against the wall. She took a step, and a glowing blue mark was left following her hand. With a grin, she started running parallel to the wall, keeping one hand on it at all times.

“As long as I keep going like this, I’ll be able to see where I started if I make a full circle!” She shouted aloud, picking up her speed. The entire time, she continued to scan her surroundings, wanting to make sure that she didn’t miss any slight details.

Lifre had no idea how long she ran, simply continuing to move along the outer perimeter of the pit. Her minimap indicated that she had covered just over half of the circle when suddenly she felt her hand leaving the wall. Or rather, the wall crumbled away as soon as she touched it. “Ooh, I found the plot!”

She turned to face the section of wall that had crumbled, breaking down the rest of the nearby wall. What she found was a long hallway made of solid marble, the end of the hall having been cut off by some strange incident and covered with a thin layer of rock.

Lifre skipped over to the door at the other end of the hallway, tapping her chin. This door seemed to be holding back the mist, just like Aznod’s airlock. If she opened the door, the mist would rush in, destroying any traces that could be on the other side.

“Gods, I love being a slime.” Lifre snickered, dropping into a small, gelatinous form. The ground beneath her melted as she consumed it, ‘eating’ her way into the room beyond. However, after she passed down beneath the surface, she left a thin layer of her body behind to act as a barrier.

Upon reforming on the other side of the hall, Lifre found that the pink mist was completely absent. She could send her power out and observe as much as she wanted. Though it was dark within these halls, Lifre was able to produce enough light to see that this was far from a primitive construction.

All along the hall, there were thin layers of crystal that reacted as soon as Lifre released a bit of mana, lighting up to illuminate the area. “Oooh, magic civilization. I’m liking this already!”

Lifre thought about retrieving her compass, but decided not to. Her compass wasn’t suitable for navigating indoors, as it only pointed out a direct route. Instead, she just had to search manually and see what there was to find.

There were quite a large number of doors, showing that this used to be a vast, underground complex, but there was no sign of any remains. Granted, with how high of a floor we are, anything born here would be an energy being, and likely not leave behind a body when they died… So that’s not too unusual.

Most of the doors were unmarked, and Lifre could only open them to reveal what looked to be old bedrooms, the furniture inside having long rotted away. When she finally came to a door with unfamiliar writing on it, a wide grin appeared on her face. “You think that you can deceive me with a foreign language? I am the apostle of the goddess of stories!” 

Golden light began to shine from Lifre’s eyes, illuminating the sign on the door. Immediately, Lifre blinked, turning and continuing to walk down the hall. “Why’d I have to get so dramatic for the bathroom…”

She continued walking, finding more bedrooms, offices, and closets along the way. Eventually, she managed to find a warehouse, shelves lined with decrepit goods. Of these goods, Lifre immediately noticed one item in particular, a blue crystal sphere. Her eyes widened, immediately recognizing the level sphere. “So that’s where you were hiding…”

She picked up the sphere and shoved it in her inventory, turning around to leave the warehouse, only to pause with wide eyes. “Oh… that’s a thing.”

Along the walls around the exit door, markings had been carved into the wall, matching the language that Lifre had already gotten used to translating. Unlike the sophisticated design of the rest of the structure, these carvings were crude and uneven. Still, they told a story… as long as someone ignored the giant ‘No Escape’ written directly above the door.

Lifre focused, finding the starting point of the text and reading it. “If anyone finds this place, I am sorry. For all that we have done, for all that might still happen, I am sorry. We wanted to change the world, to unlock the infinite secrets of the arcane.”

“In the early days of our civilization, we found two mysterious crystals. One, rough and purple, radiating immense power. The other, smooth and spherical, matching the great spire. We wanted to understand these things, and so we studied them.”

“For generations, our world evolved. We developed magic by accessing the heavenly stones. We learned of runes and advanced techniques, but we never mastered these two crystals. All that we learned was that the rougher crystal had the meaning of ‘Nature’, but were unable to decipher what that meant.”

“At times, there were those who wished to absorb the power of the rough crystal. However, this was strictly forbidden. There was only one such crystal, and its loss would set our progress back centuries. Instead, we took shavings from it, allowing these shavings to be absorbed. Those that did so began to harness the power of wind and fire without the need of magic.”

“Finally, we believed that we had an epiphany. The blue crystal was a guide. In order to fully utilize the power of the rougher gem, we needed to refine it into a similar size and shape. At this point, we had long been shaving pieces of it, reducing its mass, so we believed this to be an acceptable test.”

“We constructed an altar, upon which we inserted the now-refined crystal, and our most powerful mages sought to activate its power. There was an explosion, one that reached all the way to the surface, and the world was flooded with a pink gas.”

“Everything outside has died. Every person, every animal… every building has melted, every trace of our existence gone. There’s no hope. I’m sorry… There is no escape.”

Lifre blinked upon reading the writing on the wall, crossing her arms. “Huh! So… wait!” She shook her head, calling out to Terra. If you shave off a large majority of the primordial relic, it… it would corrupt the power of the relic, right? That’s what happened here?

I wouldn’t say corrupt… more degrade. Maybe you could call it twisting. Judging by what you found, the power of the Nature relic was degraded to the point that it couldn’t properly exert its power anymore. Instead of acting as the primal force of nature, it only had the power to mutate natural energy.

Then… what was with the giant mouth I jumped into?! Is this thing alive, or not?!

That was a crater… and I’ve always said that there wasn’t any life on this floor. Even Dale knew that. Terra responded in an awkward tone.

Lifre let out a faint huff. “I wanted a boss battle, though…” She muttered under her breath, making her way back to the entrance she had found. If this was a lab, it was unlikely that she would find any important data, as the research rooms would have been closer to where they conducted the test for the purpose of monitoring.  And, given the size of that crater, all of such rooms would now be destroyed. It was better to remove the offending object and let the others come down to help investigate.

Once she reached the pit again, she simply walked over to the gem. “Dear gods, this feels so anticlimactic.” She said, turning her arm into a giant pickaxe, and simply smashing the gem. “Begone, rock!”

When the gem was shattered, it no longer released any pink mist, the altar beneath it crumbling under the force of Lifre’s strike. However, that didn’t mean that the pink mist would immediately dissipate. “I’ll have to call the munchkin over… but, in the safe lab, where this isn’t going to become a biohazard zone for her. Maybe she can purify the natural energy here.”