Chapter 28: Researchers

It was technically Vex that noticed it.

The scrying screens displayed the delve team going through and mapping out the dungeon. Each screen showed them from a slightly different angle, keeping track of both the team themselves and what they were surrounded by. A [Mass Telepathy] spell kept the team hooked up with the researchers, allowing them to be alerted to any dangers that the researchers spotted.

The problem was that the scrying screens were wrong.

It was nothing obvious — the researchers themselves would have spotted it if it had been. But Vex had training on this, too, and his penchant for detail and his more practical experience with dungeons helped him pick up on it quickly.

The scrying screens didn't quite line up with one another. One was slightly delayed. Which was weird, for a scrying spell that was supposedly happening in real time. It wasn't possible to miscalibrate a scrying spell like that.

"Uh. Kestel?" Vex tried, glancing at the head researcher and then back to the screen that he'd noticed was off. "I think you should take a look at this. This isn't created by a different scrying spell, by any chance, is it?"

"No, no, all the scrying spells we use should be functionally identical. We need consistent results. We can put the spell through different filters, but... Anyway. Why do you ask?" Kestel interrupted himself while speaking, like he knew he would keep going if he let himself.

"This one's slightly delayed." Vex paused. "And the spell resolution looks a bit off."

Kestel paused, frowning, and took a closer look. "Are you sure?" He asked. "I'm not sure I see it..."

"It's pretty subtle and it's hard to tell since the angles don't line up between the different screens, but yes." Vex frowned. "The question is why. That shouldn't be possible with scrying spells, should it?"

"Definitely not," Kestel muttered. "All information is sent in real time, and there's no time compression that we've noticed..."

"Try switching all of them to the [Mana Sight] filter," Vex suggested.

"You know a lot about our operations." Kestel looked at Vex strangely for a moment, then peered a little bit closer, as if he recognized something about the lizardkin — but then, when Vex took a step back, he shook his head and looked away. He spoke again, but this time he was clearly speaking into the [Mass Telepathy] spell, and only verbalizing his words for the benefit of the adventurers. "Switch all screens to [Mana Sight]. Simultaneously, please."

It took a moment, but every scrying screen spontaneously lit up with magic. The dungeon was filled with it, dark, glittering stone suddenly lit up by swirls and whorls of mana. This mana didn't quite dance or move in the way that magic normally did out in the wild. It moved with purpose, marching to an unseen rhythm, touched by chaos.

Almost like a heartbeat, Vex mused. He'd seen it before, but it was always a sight to behold.

"Whoa," Misa said out loud. Vex blinked; he'd forgotten that she didn't have the ability to see magic the way he did. The way his own sight worked was still different, and didn't look exactly the same as it did on the scrying screens, which had only the basic [Mana Sight] filter. "Does it always look like that?"

"It's usually a little more lively," Vex offered with a small smile. "But yeah, more or less."

Misa watched it for a moment. "I can see why you like magic so much."

There was something noticeably wrong now, however. The researchers were still fiddling with the screen that had seemed time-delayed — mana still wasn't visible in the filter, and now the discrepancy was obvious. It flickered a few times, even, traces of mana appearing in the air, but in patterns that were obviously different from all the other screens.

"It looks confused," Derivan muttered, his voice odd. "It... is confused?"

"What do you mean?" Vex asked, his voice coming out sharper than he intended. He winced, but Derivan didn't seem to notice.

"Physical Empathy is picking up on it," Derivan said. "Whatever is causing that, it is something alive."

That was not, it turned out, something that could be said without an immediate response. Kestel didn't speak, but it was apparent that he'd barked out some kind of order by the way he tensed and the way the other researchers immediately sat upright. The delvers in the dungeon responded almost instantly as well, reaching for their weapons and standing back-to-back warily.

There was nothing apparent in the corridor. But then they glanced up and to the right, where the [Scry] spell was watching them. One of them — the captain — narrowed his eyes, like he'd seen something or was peering at something that was indistinct — then there was some shouting that they couldn't hear over the scrying screens, one of the delvers reached for a spear, and —

— the screen cut out.

That one did, anyway. The other scrying screens were still operational, and one of the delvers walked over to where the spear was lying with a frown. On the tip of the spear, impaled, was... something strangely indistinct. In the scrying screen, it looked almost like a distorted cloud of static, with mana oozing down the spear in a distinctly un-manalike fashion.

When the [Mana Sight] filter was turned off, the screens showed nothing on the spear at all. Vex frowned, watching it carefully; he couldn't conduct any spell analysis at a distance like this, but had that been a monster that was made of mana?

Like the Mana Abomination they had fought. But nothing nearly so visible, because it was a small distortion rather than a large one; it wasn't created of so much compressed energy that it could be seen by the naked eye.

"Good catch," Kestel said to them, a little bit late and a little bit distracted — but there was a manic sort of gleam in his eye, and a small grin was spreading over his snout. "Looks like we've discovered something new! I've never heard of a dungeon monster like this before, have you?"

"No," Vex said cautiously, glancing at Kestel and then back to the screens. "It looks like some sort of creature made out of mana. Given what it was doing to the [Scry] spell... some sort of spell parasite, maybe? It took over part of the spell and tried to mimic it?"

"That's our main theory!" Kestel beamed. "It's even named Mana Feeder in the kill notification, so we're thinking that's exactly what that is. You're good at this. Have you ever considered joining one of Elyra's dungeon research teams? I could put in a good word for you."

"Ah. No." Vex flinched a little bit at that, but he relaxed slightly when he felt a metal hand on his shoulder. "I'd prefer not to. But thank you."

"Pity, pity," Kestel said, though he seemed too distracted to press Vex about it. The head researcher glanced through the screens again. "It looks like the rest of the spells are fine... I wonder what would have happened if it kept going. How does it feed, anyway? It was feeding the spell output back to us, but at a slight efficiency loss..."

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Kestel continued muttering to himself, wandering away from them and over to the other thing that sat on the stone platform — a rather large stone tablet, with an illusory spell overlaid on top of it that seemed to be his notes. It wasn't particularly visible to the rest of them, though. Vex saw a thin veil of white mana strung across the screen, and deduced that it was some sort of privacy function tied into the spell.

He glanced at the rest of his team. "That thing is... a little bit too much like the Mana Abomination we fought for me to be comfortable."

"Kestel said it's new, right?" Misa frowned, worried. "You think it's something related?"

"'New' can mean a lot of things," Vex said, hesitating. "The Adventurer's Guild doesn't really bother keeping a log of all the monsters we encounter because we encounter them all the time — it's not uncommon to find new monsters, or new variants of a monster, every time we discover a new dungeon. Elyra does try to keep a log of everything, but their data comes from a more limited set of dungeons."

"So it's new to Elyra, but we don't know if it's significant," Sev grumbled.

"Organisms that interact with mana in some way are pretty common," Vex said. "It's an abundant resource, and it's everywhere. But not ones made out of mana."

Kestel chose that moment to wander back over to them. "I made a ton of notes!" He said, in a voice that implied that he expected to hear applause — though he didn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that no one applauded. "Hopefully we find another one of those. We know to keep an eye out for them now. They're hard to spot even with [Mana Sight], because there's so much mana around in dungeons... Tricky. Bodes well for this dungeon! Who knows what else we'll discover."

"Looks like you'll be discovering something else soon," Misa said, gesturing to the screen.

The delving team had come up to a door. That door stood out, looking like an old, decrepit plank of wood pressed flush against the polished black stone of the dungeon.

"Ah! A challenge room!" Kestel grinned. "Perfect. We wanted to get to at least one of these before we pull back the delve team; they can take a break after this, and we can send you in next. What do you say?"

"I don't know—" Sev began.

"Sounds perfect!" Misa declared loudly, glaring at Sev. He smirked at her, and she grumbled. "Smartass."

"Good!" Kestel clapped his hands together, turning to the screen.

"How do you know it is a challenge room, and not a bonus room?" Derivan asked curiously, glancing at Vex. "I have always just thought of them as... rooms."

Vex opened his mouth to answer —

"Ah! Good question!" Kestel said, immediately turning back from the screen while Vex blinked rapidly at how suddenly the head researcher had inserted himself into the conversation. "Challenge rooms force you to go through them to progress. Bonus rooms don't. Sometimes bonus rooms don't have physical entryways at all, and have entrance requirements that automatically transport you in when you fulfill them."

Kestrel glanced at the screen as if ordering the delvers to pause while he rambled. "Those ones are always strange. I love them, because I don't understand how they work, but some researchers hate them because the patterns between different rooms make no sense. I've seen it require specific combinations of spells, or spoken words... Sometimes you need to replicate a specific situation?"

"Ah," Derivan said, sounding a little bit stunned at the block of information Kestel had just thrown at him.

Vex chuckled a bit, and patted him on the arm. "Some of Elyra's researchers are pretty enthusiastic. You get used to it."

Misa grinned at Vex. "You do know that's just what you sound like all the time, right?"

"No it isn't!" Vex said, looking offended.

"I understand it when Vex says it," Derivan said.

Misa smirked at that, shaking her head, and turned back to the screen as Kestel seemed to wave them to go ahead. The delve team opened the door into a strange, rocky cavern. All six of them streamed in, looking cautiously around the room — challenge rooms like these were never really clear about what needed to be done to complete them. Littered about the floor were what looked like mana crystals.

"Are those crystals, or flowers?" Misa asked, squinting at them through the screens.

"If it's a dungeon? Probably crystals," Vex answered. "But if it's a challenge room? Almost definitely a trap."

"Don't worry!" Kestel said cheerily. "We're prepared for all the traps a dungeon can throw at us."

Misa peered at him. "It's never a good idea to say that out loud."

"Bah! Confirmation bias!" Kestel said, clearly enjoying the opportunity to use the words 'confirmation bias'. "Things will happen the way they happen regardless of whether I say they'll turn out well. I just remember all the times they don't turn out well, because it's usually terrifying."

"Well," Sev said. "In this case the dungeon adjusts itself to delvers, so if you've prepared for a lot of things..."

A strange orb formed in the center of the room, floating.

"...You might create a problem you can't deal with," Sev said, eyeing the orb suspiciously. "Is it just me, or is that orb kind of menacing?"

Kestel paused. "Definitely not just you," he agreed.

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