Chapter 70: Getting Ready

"I feel like ass," Misa grunted, pulling at her shoulder as she slowly sat up — she protested when Sev went to help prop her up, which in and of itself was already alarming, Derivan felt. "We still alive?"

"Barely." Sev took the initiative to answer, there. "But we're safe for now."

Misa relaxed just slightly. "Good," she said. "Now why the fuck does everything burn so much."

"You might want to check your status," Sev said gently. "You took a lot of damage in that fight."

"No fuckin' kidding." Misa made a tiny, unnecessary flicking gesture to bring up the screen; she stared at it for just long enough to make Derivan start to worry. "...My status looks fine, but I can tell there's somethin' here you want me to find. Spill."

"Your anchor integrity," Sev said, and Misa cursed. It didn't take her too long to bring up the screen, and she flinched visibly when she saw it.

"...We've got two weeks," she said after a slight pause, and then her voice went firm, and her eyes determined. "We'll figure out how to fix this thing by then."

"We already know how, sort of," Vex said quietly. "We managed to make the integrity go up before."

"When you were doin' magic, right?" Misa asked. Vex nodded.

"Which lines up with what we're going to do here anyway," he said.

"Good." Misa stared out into the distance for a moment, keeping her expression as firmly neutral as possible. "I don't know about you guys, but I really need a bed. And some time to myself."

"Are you doing alright?" Sev asked, worried.

"No," Misa replied shortly, and then softened a little bit when she saw the way the cleric was looking at her. "Look, I just need a little bit of time. I'll be okay, I promise."

Derivan didn't say anything. Her words didn't express quite the depth of emotions she was feeling — she was holding so much back he didn't have any doubt that both Vex and Sev could see straight through the transparent lie. But they didn't call her out on it.

She'd talk about it when she was ready.

"What happened to Irvis?" Misa asked, after no one said anything. Sev blinked.

"Um. I don't know." Sev glanced around. "Vex?"

"I have theories," Vex said. "But nothing concrete. Our best bet is to get out of here before he comes back, though, if he can come back."

"So he's not dead." Misa's expression darkened a bit.

"...No, he's not," Vex said softly. "We— we wouldn't have been able to beat him. So I brought us here, where everything is a little bit different, and in theory... in theory he should be a little bit different here, too."

"Okay." Misa nodded sharply, not giving away anything else about her thoughts. "Let's get out of here, then."

The trek out of the dungeon was... surprisingly eerie.

There was a small mechanism in the wall of the elevator room that would activate it and bring them back down. Once there, all they needed to do was head back to the start of any of the four routes; they opted to head down the path Derivan and Sev had already taken, on account of the fact that that route was largely cleared of potential enemies.

What was strange about it was how silent it was. Derivan hadn't really noticed the noise in the background when he'd been through the dungeon the first time; the sound of metal being forged, of fires being stoked, of cauldrons bubbling to life. It was only now that those workshops were inactive that he noticed the lack of it. And what a strange phenomenon that was. There was no word to put to it except one: the place sounded... dead.

Which he did not, he decided, enjoy.

The sound of ringing metal did return after a moment, however, and all four of them tensed slightly at the sound. Misa crept forward first, followed by Sev, then Vex, then Derivan.

And they found a strange sight. A single suit of armor, molded in the fashion of Elyra's standard guardsman set, sitting alone in one of the workshops. One of the fires had been stoked with clearly inexpert hands, given how it was sputtering and dying rather than roaring. The suit of armor sat there anyway, hammering away at a piece of vaguely hot metal with what seemed to Derivan to be frustration.

Misa paused. "Is it... a threat?" she asked, sounding hesitant.

"I do not believe so." Derivan eyed the other suit of armor for a moment, then decided to step forward. It paused and stared at him, but returned to its ineffectual hammering a moment later. It didn't seem to mind his presence, but it didn't seem to care to acknowledge him, either.

There was a moment where its gaze lingered on his arm; Derivan didn't know how he felt about that. It was... uncomfortable? He'd noticed the glances his friends occasionally gave him, too, but he gave no outward indication of his thoughts on the matter. He was still getting used to the idea that he was missing an arm at all.

He walked over to the fire, and then the suit of armor did pay attention; it stopped what it was doing and turned to stare at him intently. Derivan wasn't sure if it was trying to get him to move away through the power of its gaze alone, or if it was simply curious about what he was doing. But what he wanted to do wasn't anything complicated — he just wanted to help.

He drew the Fire glyph that they'd learned just above the fire, and channeled just the smallest amount of mana into it. He had to guide the magic as fire began to emerge, directing it down rather than letting it stream out in an ineffectual sphere, but it was a pretty good attempt for it being his first attempt at this, he thought.

And then the proof that they were in a different world came — because the magic didn't just end there.

Like Derivan had stirred up something that had just been lying dormant, the mana around them came to life and surged into the glyph; the fire that was simply being produced became something real in that moment — more real than just the product of a spell. Like he'd informed the mana that this was supposed to be a forge, and it had responded, just like that.

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"Whoa," Vex said. His eyes were a little wide. "Did you—?"

"It was not me," Derivan said, shaking his head slightly and stepping back.

The armor was staring at the renewed fire in awe, and its hand was twitching slightly, like it was trying to remember the shape of the glyph Derivan had drawn. It still seemed a little hesitant to approach.

The moment Derivan stepped even further back, though, going all the way back to stand by Vex's side, the armor scurried forward and placed its hunk of metal in the forge, and began watching it intently.

"Well," Vex said. "I'm glad he's got something to be happy about."

"Sometimes it's the simple pleasures," Misa said with a small smile, though it seemed just a little bit forced. "C'mon. Let's go."

Derivan spared the suit of armor a final glance. "You don't have to stay here, you know."

It looked at him, but it didn't quite seem to understand. It cocked its head, shrugged, and went back to staring at the hunk of metal in the fire.

Well... It was as Vex said, he supposed. If it was happy just doing this, then that was fine. Maybe it would get bored eventually, and look for the way out.

The original room Derivan and Sev had appeared in — and indeed, the one they'd encountered the suit of armor in to begin with — was just as they'd left it, save for a small mess made in one of the corners where a vase had been toppled over.

"Is the exit supposed to be here?" Misa asked with a frown.

"There shouldbe a portal..." Vex trailed off.

There was nothing there. Just an empty room.

"We might have to break out manually, if the dungeon is inactive," Vex said slowly. Misa snorted.

And then, before anyone could say anything, she punched the wall opposite to the door.

Sometimes, Derivan reflected, he forgot about the number of points Misa put into Strength. She began ripping the wall apart like it was made of paper — and seemed to be getting in a good amount of stress relief, too, if the way she was baring her teeth was any indication.

In theory, the dungeon should have been protected against damage like that. Vex had given them many a lecture on why people couldn't simply tear their way through the walls of a dungeon, and he'd even tried it once or twice, back in his own dungeon. When the system was present, dungeons were simply immune to this kind of damage.

Apparently, not anymore. But then this was Vex's bonus room, rather aptly named a world without the system. He shouldn't have been surprised. Now that he thought about it, though...

"I did not consider this before, but should we not have received a notification about this bonus room?" Derivan asked after the dust had settled from Misa's... deconstruction efforts. The hole was large enough for them to get through now, and it seemed to lead outside, for a certain definition of 'outside'. It seemed more important to settle his final concerns about where they were before they went out there.

"...You're right, we should have." Vex frowned. "System menus are still working, and I think I can still send and receive messages, although there's a message about the time discrepancy. Is the notification system specifically not working?"

"It's not like the notification system worked with any consistency before," Misa said, a little dryly.

"It's going to be a problem if we don't know what we're supposed to do here," Vex pointed out.

"Add it to the list of problems we've already got," Sev said, though his words were hard to hear, partially whipped away from him by the wind as he glanced outside the hole. "We're kind of in the middle of nowhere."

The four of them gathered to look out of the hole. They were still suspended a good distance from the ground, though that distance wasn't much of a problem; [Featherfall] was a simple spell that Vex had used many a time. What was a problem was where they were.

The actual area they had appeared was, surprisingly, above the ground — Derivan had expected otherwise, considering what they'd seen of Teque. Noram had only briefly mentioned that there were reclaimed sections of the world that existed above the ground, and he had also mentioned that those reclaimed sections often had physical oddities and didn't work quite right.

That seemed to be true here, too. The sky split into fractals that reflected the ground back at them, in a way that made it almost seem like they were underground; it was only the vaguely transparent appearance of the reflected image that told them they were outside. The sun shone at them through that reflected image, lighting up what seemed like miles of grassy plains around them.

There was nothing to even indicate that there might be civilization nearby — even the reflections in the sky showed nothing but grass.

"It's really not even going to give us a hint, huh?" Sev muttered. No one responded to him, and he sighed. "We might as well go down and look around; maybe there's something down there that we can't see from up here. Sky's pretty weird, so who knows."

No one had a better plan. Vex did his thing; [Featherfall] was a simple enough...

The rune sparked in the air and did nothing. Vex frowned at it, then tried again, only to get the same result.

"...System spells don't work here," Vex said.

"Well," Misa said. "Guess we better jump, then."

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