Chapter 71: Fractals in the Sky

Jumping was much easier said than done. Derivan peered out of the hole to see exactly how viable jumping would be — it was not. Sev, on the other hand, just stared at Misa with one brow slightly raised.

"What?" she asked. She managed a small grin. "We're a Gold-ranked team. We shouldn't be afraid of a little fall."

"It's not exactly a little fall," Vex said, peering out of the hole alongside Derivan and shuddering slightly. "Somehow that's so much worse when I don't have my magic."

"You have your magic," Misa pointed out. "You just don't have access to your system-granted spells."

"I haven't figured out a Glyph of Featherfall yet," Vex grumbled. "Coming up with new spells isn't that easy, you know."

"We're not guaranteed the system's protection from anything," Sev said. "Nevermind that the system doesn't protect from falling — we can't take for granted that any system mechanic works the way we expect in a bonus room called ."

"What about your spells?" Derivan directed his question to Sev. "Divine spells are likely not under the same restriction."

"Huh," Sev said slowly. "No, you're right. They're a conceit of the system, as far as I know. They work like regular system skills, so if the rest of our skills are still working — and I know they are, because [Triage] worked earlier — then there's no reason my 'spells' won't work."

He tested it by flicking out a hand; a gleaming, golden barrier appeared a second afterwards, floating in the air.

"...I guess we could use these as steps," Sev said. "Somehow this feels vaguely blasphemous."

"I'm sure Onyx won't mind," Misa said dryly.

"He'd probably find it hilarious." Sev stared at the gleaming barrier for a moment, his brows furrowing slightly. "I hope Aurum's okay. I still haven't heard from the kid."

Misa glanced at him and softened, just a bit. "I'm sure he'll be fine," she said. She didn't say anything further.

They made their way down the makeshift steps in silence, pausing every so often to let Sev recover his mana. The whole process was arduous and took far longer than a simple [Featherfall] would have, but they didn't really have many other options.

The process did, at least, reveal to them that there was more to the world than had been immediately obvious from their perch in the dungeon.

The illusory mirrors in the sky weren't just in the sky; those were just the most obvious ones, because the light shining through them from behind made it clear that they were merely reflections of the ground. There were, however, scattered mirror-like planes all over the place, reflecting just a small fraction of the ground. The more they descended, the more it became clear that they had no idea what the ground looked like.

Or indeed how far down the ground even was. They passed the first layer where they thought the ground had been soon enough, only to find it was another wall of reflected ground, catching on to some piece of grass who-knew-where.

"I'm starting to notice that a lot of these patches of grass look the same," Vex mumbled, reaching out to let his claws drift through one illusory patch; it drifted apart on contact with his scales, and came together again once he pulled away. He frowned slightly. "I can't even tell if this is a mana-based phenomenon. I can't control any of it..."

"Noram said something about the surface being strange," Sev said. He glanced around, casting another barrier just a little bit below theirs. "I didn't think it'd be this strange, though."

"I'd really like to find a fucking bed right around now," Misa grumbled. "Half tempted to actually just jump for it."

"Please don't," Sev said dryly. "Even as a joke."

Misa glanced at him, then stared critically around them. "Anyone else think the grass is changing slightly?"

"They all look kinda the same at this point." Vex peered more closely at one of the panes in the air. "I guess the grass might be a bit more yellow?"

"Not yellow." Misa shook her head and tugged on Vex's arm, directing him to a different patch. "Rotting."

She had, in fact, discovered something that was best described as an illusory tunnel. The panes in the air formed a sort of circular path, but the further down that path the panes were, the drier and blacker that grass was; very visibly rotting, maggots and all.

Vex paled. "Um. Let's not go down there?"

Misa seemed slightly skeptical. "I don't know that we have much of a choice."

They kept on going anyway. It wasn't like the panes stopped them from choosing a different direction to go in — they could just walk straight through them, and the collective decision to avoid the strange death hole in the sky seemed like a smart one.

It became clear relatively quickly that there were, in fact, other paths in the midst of them — each one seeming to lead somewhere slightly different. It wasn't always as obvious as what Misa had decided to officially deem the Death Hole; sometimes the grass just seemed a little brighter, or in other cases, there were flowers.

None of them, notably, seemed to have people.

At first.

The signs of civilization came slowly, but surely. Panes where the grass was flattened, like many people had trodden over it; panes where there was glass or some other manufactured material lying scattered about. The path they eventually opted to follow was one that, at the end of it, seemed to have a road.

"Better than anything else we've seen so far," Sev commented, staring down the path.

"Let's not waste any more time." Misa gestured for Sev to start placing his barriers, and, after a brief pause to glance at her, Sev did so.

They didn't speak much while they walked down that path. Everyone that wasn't Misa exchanged slightly worried glances at one another, and Misa seemed content not to talk about whatever was on her mind.

So the time passed in silence, until they reached the end of the path, and finally found themselves on solid ground.

In the middle of a town, no less.

No one seemed to notice them, though — or at least, no one seemed to be interested. A few people — shadow-beings, it seemed, dressed in immaculate suits — glanced up at them and then went back to their own business, seemingly uninterested in the ground of adventurers that had, for all intents and purposes, simply walked down out of the sky. The dungeon-chandelier wasn't even visible from here, obfuscated by panes of light that each reflected a different part of the village.

If they hadn't come down here from the dungeon, they wouldn't have known that that was there, either.

"I'm beginning to feel like we should've left a tracker on that thing, just in case," Sev said, glancing back up at the sky in the rough direction of the dungeon.

"I believe I know where it is," Derivan offered. Sev blinked at him.

"You do? Using Shift or something?"

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"It is not currently shifted any more than we are." Derivan paused to find the words to explain. "I lost... pieces of myself, in the fight with Irvis. Not my arm. It appears to be an intrinsic trait of Slime."

"You can sense where other pieces of you are?" Sev cocked his head. "Useful."

"To a degree," Derivan agreed, nodding. It was slightly uncomfortable, in fact — but it was nothing he couldn't get used to. Perhaps his connection to those pieces of himself would fade in time, even; it was still too early to say.

"Think we can get ourselves an inn here?" Misa said, glancing around. "Don't know what currency they trade in."

"Reality shards, if Teque was any indication, but I guess it might be different here," Vex said. He hesitated. "But we don't have any left."

"Let's just explore," Sev suggested. "We'll either find a place or we'll find someone we can ask about it."

The whole town itself was... unremarkable. Derivan was rather uncomfortably reminded of Fendal, in a way, though the architecture didn't really resemble the other town all that much. Fendal was full of short, squat buildings, some of them divided into multiple storefronts, but most of them independent houses.

This place had apartments, but the buildings were almost unsettlingly close to perfect cubes, without any real flair of life to them. What few stores there were were dim inside, with the glass so frosty that the products they were selling were only barely visible. One store was stocked with identical loaves of bread, and another was stocked with a variety of fruits that Derivan didn't recognize, though 'variety' was a poor word to use, perhaps. There were about five different fruits Derivan could see, and every copy of a single fruit seemed perfectly identical.

It didn't help that as they progressed through the town, they saw not a single person that wasn't what appeared to be a shadow elemental.

"I'm not going to lie," Vex whispered as they walked through the town — he had one hand grasped on to Derivan's as he peered through the stores and tried to avoid the gazes of the people around him, not that it was difficult. "This place is kinda creepy. I was sort of expecting a lot more... life, here."

"Perhaps we simply picked a bad path," Derivan said, trying to be comforting. He wasn't sure it worked.

"We'll probably have to find our way into Teque or someplace similar soon," Sev spoke from his position in front of them. "Noram did tell us the surface is unstable. I didn't think it'd be like this."

"He mentioned some areas had been reclaimed, too, right?" Vex looked around. "I just don't know if this is one of them..."

"Just because we find it a little strange doesn't mean this place is bad," Misa said. She glanced critically at yet another one of the perfect-cube buildings; this one had a window that displayed, of all things, a bed. "What're the odds this is an inn and not just a place that sells beds?"

"About even odds, I'd say," Sev said.

"Fuck it," Misa shrugged, and pushed the door open.

The inside was surprisingly bright — so much so that Misa flinched slightly once she stepped in, having expected the interior to match the exterior. That wasn't the case at all — beyond the slightly shadowed display where the bed was, there was a beautifully decorated lobby. Bright red drapes adorned a window that was positioned perfectly at what seemed to be one of the few grass-reflecting panes in the town, creating an illusion of a bright park outside. Bright, warm flames licked at the upper corners of the room, each in small, perfectly controlled spheres.

The innkeeper — because this was very clearly an inn, there was even a wall of keys behind him — smiled happily at them as they entered. He, too, was a shadow-being dressed in an immaculate suit, but he seemed perfectly happy to see and address them, unlike everyone else they'd met.

"Well, hello there!" he greeted. "I've never had any visitors before. How exciting!"

"You've... never had any visitors?" Misa blinked and glanced around. "This is an inn, right?"

"Well, yes, but we don't exactly get any visitors here." The innkeeper let out a surprisingly warm chuckle and hopped up to sit on his desk. "It's a pleasure to meet you all. What brings you to the fine town of Aldea?"

"...Dungeon shenanigans?" Sev said, at a loss for what else to say.

"I'll mark that down in the guestbook." The innkeeper gave them a knowing grin. "The name's Clyde, by the way. You guys doing okay? Need some rooms?"

"We'll need four, if you have them," Misa said. "What types of payment do you take? We're kinda new here."

"Payment?" Clyde looked puzzled for a moment, and then brightened. "Oh! No. No payment. Stories, maybe, if you're wiling to share them. But we don't work that way here."

"No?" Misa paused as Clyde swept up four keys from behind him and deposited them in her hand.

"Nah. Can't say when we dropped it, but I'd say we're all pretty happy here. I get that it looks kind of unfriendly from the outside, though." Clyde's smile vanished for a moment. "It's complicated. But here, your rooms — let me know if anything's wrong with them, I haven't checked in on them for ages. I'll fix it right quick."

"Sure," Misa said slowly. She tossed three of the keys to Vex, Derivan, and Sev, and then held up her own. "I'm gonna go pass the fuck out first, if you guys don't mind. Let's figure stuff out in the morning."

She vanished up the stairs without giving any of them a chance to respond. Sev, Derivan, and Vex glanced at each other.

"She's having a rough time of it, your friend," Clyde said suddenly, glancing up the stairs. His face was little more than two glowing eyes hidden in shadow, but he was able to emote well through it — not unlike Derivan, in fact. His face had softened somewhat. "Lemme know if you want me to talk to her, yeah? Or my daughter. She's pretty good at this kind of stuff."

"You're... very helpful, thank you," Sev said. Derivan glanced at him — the cleric was a little suspicious, and Derivan supposed he couldn't fault him. Make sure Misa's okay, Sev mouthed at him, using the relay charm to communicate. Give her space, just check on her through the system or something. "Can you tell us a little more about this place? We're pretty new here."

"Of course!" Clyde smiled brightly. "Here, let me see; where do I start..."

Sev tensed slightly. Derivan watched as the system's strings around him suddenly pulled taut, like something was about to finally reach a conclusion.

He remembered, somewhat belatedly, that this bonus room wasn't just a bonus room — it was a recreation of the history of their own world, if it had taken a slightly different path. If the mana had tried to fix whatever had gone wrong, instead of the system. Teque hadn't known what had gone wrong, but Teque was only a partial recreation.

Derivan realized with startling certainty that Clyde hadn't interpreted "this place" to mean their town at all; he'd interpreted it to mean their entire world. Clyde was old. This whole town was. It wasn't obvious, but...

[Intermediate Mana Sight] has been upgraded to [Mana Understanding].

The mana here was old.

"Well," Clyde said thoughtfully, and Derivan's attention refocused sharply on to the shadow elemental, waiting for the words that would change everything.

"I guess it all started when the universe ended, about... oh, 1400 years ago."

END OF BOOK 2

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