Book 17-15.3: Encounters
“We, actually, you could probably carry it across,” Gwendith said, then chuckled at Yuriko’s wide eyed look. “You think too loud sometimes.”
Yuriko rolled her eyes, but nodded. “True enough, I guess.”
I'mAt her current reach, carrying several thousand Jin of equipment was trivial. Of greater concern was actually fitting the vehicle through the biome doors, but she had been led to believe that those could be widened to vehicular level gates by sacrificing some shards to the device. That solved that problem, and the remaining ones were how long it would take to build the MHQ, and how much it would cost.
When consulted, Carina mentioned that the off the Network quotes were just estimates and didn’t account for deep layer expeditions. Yuriko thought that three million credits might have been enough, but they probably needed twice that amount at least. The only saving grace was that the MHQ didn’t need to be too big. Its primary purpose was for supplies storage more than anything considering that expanded spatial bags grew noticeably unstable below the first layer.
She absently patted her hip satchel and her safe pouch. The former had been expanded so that the relatively tiny space could accommodate a cubic pace of stuff, while her safe pouch had only doubled in size. The latter contained her varied IDs and a dozen gold crowns from back home. Her hip satchel had emergency rations, more coins, and other currency from different nations, as well as her Arcana Weaving grimoire. Important things for her, and she’d either need to remove the expanded storage and move her things to a backpack, suitcase, or duffel bag, or she might encase the containers with her Anima and seal it.
Hmmm, sealing might work, but it meant she wouldn’t be able to open them, and if her seal lapsed, it would destroy the satchel and safe pouch, and possibly with everything inside, too. Her Ambrosia flask was in her satchel as well, though it only contained a dozen droplets at the moment.
Ambrosia…perhaps she could use it to harden the bags against interference? That might work, though she didn’t know what kind of problem the deeper layers represented. A good reason not to rush, in any case. She absently checked her brother’s severed thread and didn’t notice any further degradation.
In hindsight, and upon further reflection, what she was doing now felt more like grasping at straws rather than a real plan of action. The severed tip of the thread had the stench of daemonfyre, and in Dragon Fall City, she followed the trail of daemonfyre whiskey’s smuggling trail, but what were the chances that Kato lay at the end of it? Abyssmally low. Granted, she was probably headed towards the Abyss at this rate, but she couldn’t actually judge it properly.
There were no iarvesh levels that she could detect here since there was minimal Chaos in the surroundings. The only place with measurable iarvesh density was back in the Chaos Sea. Unless the path was towards Primordial Chaos instead? She didn’t know if she could survive there for long, and she was certain that her companions would dissolve into particulate Chaos if they entered with her. She didn’t know what would happen to Devotee should he enter, but she didn’t think it would lead to anything good. It was possible that he would gain power, but it was also possible that the Primordial Chaos would overwhelm his mind and warp him into a twisted reflection of whatever was in there.
No. The easiest path to follow was to continue on. Her other goals were to learn how to return to Rumiga without spending a century travelling, and it could theoretically be accomplished in two ways. The first being that she could find a shortcut — a portal, rift, or spatial tunnel — or perhaps a Chaos Ship that could move quickly through the waypoints. The second path was to ascend. Perhaps if she reached the Ancient equivalent of Knight Dominus it would be enough, or perhaps it would require the Imperius equivalent. She was sure that the Manifestation Stage wasn’t enough to traverse quickly, though if she could split off another incarnation, she could send that body to travel the long way. She might get lucky.
Shaking her melancholy thoughts, she glared at the biome. Obsidian pillars, fog in the gaps, and narrow, ricketty rope bridges. While she had been mooning around, Fluffington and Heron had already walked to the bridge. The platform they were on was about a hundred paces wide, completely flat, and smooth. Dangerously smooth, actually, since there was also a thin film of moisture over the surface. She reflexively tethered every one of her companions with her Animakinesis, and had done so just in time to prevent Ryoko from spilling on her bottom.
“Careful,” she said while her handmaiden nodded.
Through her perception, she noted that there were exactly four bridges leading out to four ordinal directions. Heron and Fluffers went towards the northwest one, while the biome gate was subtly tilted in that direction such that the northeast bridge wasn’t immediately visible at exit. She walked a dozen paces away and turned around to get a better look at the southern and eastern bridges. Her Anima reach was at six hundred and one paces from her skin, excluding the forty nine paces occupied with holding Damien’s memories, and even when she stretched her perception in one direction, which tripled the distance at the cost of a narrowed field of view, she could sense any other pillar or land. She could see each bridges’ destination, however, and they were probably a league or so away. They were taller than the pillar they arrived in, and the forms were hazy from the fog.
The northwest one looked the tallest, actually, so perhaps the orientation they came out to was the correct one. She wondered where the other bridges led to, however, though it should be easy to check by flying.
In short order, Gwendith and Saki secured Ryoko and Carina with ropes around their waist. Just in case one or both slipped. The others were unaffected by the seemingly slippery surface, but even when Yuriko dragged her boots across the obsidian, it never gave the slightest impression of slipperiness. Perhaps it was a warning to those who didn’t have the correct Anima strength to beware of venturing past what they could personally endure.
Carina had a slightly worried expression, but she controlled herself quickly. Her anxiety was transmitted to Sir Blue, however, and the wisp danced frantically around his human. Ryoko remained implacable and merely shrugged at the necessity of wearing a harness.
“Yuri, continue northwest?” Heron asked when she arrived next to him near the bridge.
“As good a start point as any,” Yuriko shrugged.
The rope bridge sagged downwards for the first longstride or so, then was level with the origin pillar for the next couple of hundred paces, then it sloped upwards, growing more steep the closer they got to the other end. The rope bridge looked rickety, but was actually quite stable. The wind was strong enough to blow her hair practically parallel to the ground, but the bridge barely swayed.
“It seems a bit desolate, isn’t it?” Yuriko commented.
“I don’t understand it,” Carina admitted. “Monsters should have spawned by now. The Endless Pillars are populated by both flying and cliff climbing monsters.” She shook her head, “But we’re only in the first passage, so they might not appear yet.”
Yuriko nodded. Her Animakinesis held her above the bridge and she slowly moved over the empty expanse. Her current method of flight was to have her Anima latch on to the fabric of creation and she moved by applying her kinesis to her body. She could just as easily fly by using her kinesis against the air around her, but the first method was more efficient. With her Anima extended, she could feel a…restriction. Flight over the gap would be more dangerous, probably close to impossible if she was of lower Anima strength, but at her level…
She moved off the bridge and she felt a weight settle on her shoulders. A pressure that pushed her back towards the bridge rather than towards the ground, though if she couldn’t fly and she fell, she wouldn’t make it back. Instead, she felt she would be pushed under the bridge as she fell, so perhaps there was something underneath? She moved down and peeked, but the fog was thick, and there was nothing within perception range. So effectively, falling off and being unable to fly could mean death.
The bridge was wide enough for two people to walk abreast, but it would be a squeeze. Certainly, none of them did so, and they were marching single file for most of the trek. It only took half an hour to walk to the pillar. They could have crossed faster, of course, but it wasn’t a waste of time to be cautious. Thankfully, the bridge wasn’t slippery for Carina and Ryoko.
The next pillar was roughly a hundred paces taller than the previous one, and also had three other bridges in the ordinal directions. Not quite accurate, though, and they were off by a couple of degrees, maybe? She could only tell because her Anima perception covered the entire space while her Squires were unable to tell. There were also no monsters.
“Continue in the same direction,” Yuriko decided and they crossed the pillar and made a nearly identical trek across the bridge. This one was close enough to a league long that she couldn’t tell the difference.
The traction on top of the second pillar was much better than the first one. At the very least, neither Carina nor Ryoko’s boot soles skidded once they stepped off the bridge. There was also a thin layer of dust, and the plateau wasn’t quite as even or flat. There were more than a few gouges, inches deep, scattered all over the terrain. She wondered if those were battle wounds, and if so, if they were recent.
Biomes refreshed and regenerated after some time, especially if they were empty. Layer transfer biomes saw frequent traffic, so she’d thought the refresh rate would be fairly slow. That meant that those gouges could have existed for Seasons already. Or they could have been made as early as an hour ago. The dust probably meant they were recent since the wind would have blown them off the plateau already.
“Still no monsters?” Carina muttered.
“Somebody probably killed them recently,” Ilvarra said before Yuriko could interject. The silverette pointed at the dust and pointed out what she’d just thought of to the others.
“Think we’re going the right way then?” Heron asked.
“There’s really no telling,” Devotee grumbled. “You should know better, kid. This place is an infinite stack of Waypoints. Similar rules apply.”
“Huh, I guess you have a point,” Heron agreed, then gave the Chaos Lord an annoyed side-eye, “Don’t call me a kid.”
Devotee merely smirked. “Tell that to me after your first century… kid.”
Yuriko rolled her eyes, but ignored the boys. Dev and Heron’s sniping had been a fairly recent thing, but she detected no real hostility between them. Well, a little bit, but nothing to worry about.
They continued along the same ordinal direction for the next five platforms. The bridge shifted a couple of degrees towards the west after every platform, and they were closer to the cardinal direction than the ordinal one by the time something changed. For one thing, the succeeding pillars stopped being higher than the previous ones, and while the fog was still thick enough to block Enhanced Sight, she could see a couple of pillars silhouetted in the distance.
At that point, the dust was thicker, and she recognised it as monster disintegration dust. There were even a few fragments that looked like they came from shells or carapace.
And another couple of pillars later, they saw, and heard, a furious battle ahead. Complete with angry roars, flashing streaks of light, and explosions.