Ch85: Delving Deeper

The Elf stretches one of her long legs down into the pit, resting just a bit of her weight on the sloped remains of the collapsed hallway floor. “Be careful,” she quietly cautions, glancing back at the barbarian. “The ground isn’t all tha’ stable.”

Krvavy nods and moves forwards. The rounded metal cap at the other end of her Soulbound weapon’s shaft presses into loose stone as she carefully steps past Beryl, taking the lead.

The grinding crunch of shifting rubble echoes out from beneath her Draconic feet. Tiny little pebbles break free from the piled slope, scattering into the darkness below. Tink tink clink tink... Those faint noises bounce around and overlap, fading further and further but never quite seeming to end...

If not for those soft but still far too loud sounds, a heavy silence would weigh over them like an oppressive blanket. The quiet and steady drumming of the barbarian’s heartbeat sounds almost deafening compared to the smothering stillness that she has disturbed. Each breath she takes feels almost too loud to her ears.

Krvavy hasn’t forgotten that there might be a monster in here with them. Even if it can’t be a particularly big one, considering the hole they had to widen.

Unlike the ruins, the stone walls of this descending tunnel are... rough and uneven. Natural. The ground becomes more solid as the tunnel subtly curves to the side, moving away from where the collapsed hallway above was leading. Plenty of debris still blankets the irregularly sloped ground, small chunks getting dislodged with nearly every single step Krvavy takes.

Beryl, on the other hand, is utterly silent and hasn’t disturbed even a single pebble.

A deep, crimson light bathes everything in a bloody hue. Long shadows dance across the coarse walls, cast by the slightest of bumps and faintest of ridges. Which makes it difficult to see their surroundings. Is that pool of darkness another small tunnel, or is it simply another shadow? Could something be hiding in that crevice? What lays beyond the meandering corner up ahead?

Black scaled fingers tighten their grip around the sturdy haft of a rather sizable axe. The presence of her Soulbound weapon brings peace to Krvavy’s mind, tempering paranoid thoughts and keeping them in line without outright dismissing those worries.

Drakling and Wood Elf continue downwards for an uncomfortable amount of time, following the tunnel as it weaves deeper and deeper into the ground. But eventually the blood-red light shines onto something different, something more than just rough stone and loose rock. A room.

It would appear that, despite how far down they’ve gone, this collapsed tunnel has reconnected with the ruins.

Stepping through the broken remains of what was once a wall, Krvavy’s fiery light spills out all around them, illuminating the tiled floor and the smooth stone bricks. Large piles of rocky debris cast long shadows throughout the otherwise empty room.

“Ah think this might be a separate ruin, my dearest love.” Beryl’s voice whispers out, so soft and quiet that her words are barely audible. “The stonework looks... different.”

Krvavy tilts her head and considers that thought, turning to look more closely at the wall. The bricks are definitely much larger and thicker down here, but that doesn’t mean much on its own. Still, Krvavy has to admit that something about this place does feel... older... So maybe her Elf has a point...?

“My dearest love, Ah found some more swords.”

The barbarian raises an eyebrow as she turns towards her Elf. Beryl is bent over a pile of rubble spilling out of the wall, right at the edge of Krvavy’s light. Her tight leather pants stretch over her firm rear as she looks down at her find, purposefully keeping her long legs straight and her ass jutted out.

“Ach,” the Elf unhappily clicks her tongue as she prods the rubble with her dagger, “they’re not much better than the last one.”

Half buried in the pile is a line of rusted swords, five of them all held together in what must have once been a stone rack but is now just another chunk of rubble. Their blades are in various states of decay, with some having only just barely retained their original shape, for the most part. But not a single one looks usable or even salvageable, with the rust bleeding out into the stone.

This isn’t a completely worthless find though, as the hilt of each sword seems to be mostly intact. They are tarnished and very worn, but they don’t look like they will be disintegrating anytime soon. At least not completely.

Krvavy leans her axe against the wall and reaches out her hand, carefully grabbing onto the hilt of the sword that looks most intact. Rust flakes off the grip as her fingers wrap around it, and with the faintest bit of force she lifts the sword up. Kind of. The majority of the rusted blade remains where it was, half fused to the stone, having long since snapped free from the hilt.

The barbarian just lightly shakes her head as she takes a closer look at the tarnished hilt in her hand. “Is this gold...?” She idly wonders.

“Ah can’t tell.” The Elf quietly replies. “Yer light makes it ‘ard ta see the colour.”

“Mmmh...” Krvavy hums in annoyance, as even Inspect doesn’t help answer her question. “I don’t know much about metal, but I’m pretty sure gold doesn’t rust. Or was that silver? Maybe both...? Those probably aren’t the only metals that don’t though...”

“Yer Dwarf would know, Ah’m sure, and it doesn’t ‘urt ta bring these back wit’ us.”

The barbarian nods and properly kneels down, taking the backpack off as she does so. After a moments consideration, she decides to place the hilt in one of the pouches. All five should fit in there, and hopefully they’ll be held together close enough that they won’t make much noise as she walks.

With the hilt stored, Krvavy reaches out and grabs the others one at a time, breaking them all free as easily as the first. Hopefully these are worth it, as it’ll be a pain to clean all the rust out of that pouch...

“Ah wonder wha’ this place once was...” Beryl’s hushed voice whispers through the stagnant air as she trails her gaze across the room, eyes narrowed as if trying to pierce through the darkness.

Krvavy wipes her hand on the backpack before sliding her arms through its straps and rising to her feet. “You see anything else in here?” Her fingers wrap back around the haft of her axe.

“Not without yer light.” The tanned Elf eyes the crimson flame burning in the palm of Krvavy’s left hand. It isn’t the brightest, but it is reliable. And it is better than nothing.

The barbarian nods her head and begins to slowly move throughout the room, looking for anything else of interest. They peek behind piles of rubble. They look for cubbyholes or openings in the walls. But they don’t find even a hint of a secret. If anything valuable remains in here, it has long since been buried beneath piles of rocks and the passage of time.

The only thing of note in this rubble filled room is... a door.

One with a worn stone frame taller than Krvavy. At least a head taller than the doorways in the ruins above. And a bit wider than those ones too. Is this door simply meant to be larger and more grand, or is this actually a completely separate ruin?

More interesting than that stone doorframe is the door itself. It is still intact. At least for the most part. It is quite thick, dense and heavy. But... it is also visibly bent and warped, its hinges just barely clinging on near the bottom of the frame as it leans off to the side. It appears to be coated in a thick layer of rust, making the already rather hefty door look even heavier.

Krvavy reaches out with her Soulbound weapon and pokes its spearhead into the warped door. A quiet screech rings out as she scratches off a bit of rust. That the door appears to be made entirely of metal unnerves the barbarian. But what worries her even more is that it seems to have rusted after being bent out of the way like this, getting folded despite how thick and sturdy it must have been in its prime...

At least that would have happened long, long ago... Whatever did this is hopefully long gone by now...

Beryl clearly doesn’t share those concerns as she simply slips on past the rusted door, much to the Drakling’s dismay. Luckily there is more than enough room for Krvavy to fit by, so she doesn’t have to worry about trying to move the almost certainly immobile thing as she hurries after that tomboy.

“Wow...” The Wood Elf woman mumbles in surprise as Krvavy steps up beside her.

Beyond that rusted and warped door stands a vast chamber. The crimson light of Krvavy’s flame hardly reaches the ceiling above, and does little to illuminate the walkway of sorts that stretches out to either side of where they stand, disappearing into the looming darkness. Ahead, where the tomboyish Elf is staring, are the remains of a stone railing. Broken and missing a fair few segments. On the other side of that railing is a dark void of utter blackness.

“That’s a big pit.” Krvavy points out the obvious.

“Aye. It is... not wha’ Ah expected ta find down ‘ere.”

The barbarian tentatively steps towards the railing, not trusting this ruin with her weight. It doesn’t look like her light even gets close to reaching the bottom, and Krvavy isn’t going to get any closer to see if that makes a difference. So she can only guess how deep this pit truly is...

Looking up, the part of the ceiling that Krvavy can see appears to arch upwards into the darkness, making a dome above the hole. It looks too smooth to be natural, but still seems to be a single solid piece. Was this whole place dug out of the rock? Or was it simply a cave that was expanded and sculpted into this shape?

They won’t find any answers just standing around here.

“So...” The barbarian lightly bites the inside of her cheek. “Which way do you want to go?”

Beryl looks to Krvavy, glancing at the weapon held in her lover’s hand. “Left.” She gestures for Krvavy to go ahead.

The pathway is empty and bare, with hardly even a pebble loose on the ground. If it wasn’t for the stone being worn and scarred by cracks, then it would almost look like they are simply walking in place along the gentle curve. But that feeling doesn’t last for long.

In less than half a minute of walking, Krvavy’s flickering flame illuminates something set into the wall. Behind a line of rusted metal poles lies a rather nondescript room. It isn’t particularly deep nor wide, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in it either. Beside the room is another that looks much the same, separated by a thick portion of the wall wider than itself. There is another room past that one, and then another one after that, continuing far beyond the edge of the light.

“Oh.” The Elf lightly gasps. “This was a prison o’ some sort, wasn’t it?”

“Looks like it.” Krvavy replies, peeking past the rusted bars into the empty cell. There isn’t anything in there beyond what looks like a cot carved into the wall and a circular hole in the ground across from it.

Oddly enough, this ‘discovery’ eases the Drakling’s worries a fair bit. This ruin had a purpose once, even if a rather distasteful one. It isn’t just a dungeon full of dangerous traps and monsters. Instead it is a literal dungeon, in the more historical sense.

Beryl carefully taps her dagger against one of the bars, scraping some rust off of it. “Ya could probably take some o’ these ‘ome...”

The barbarian raises an eyebrow and skeptically stares at the rusted cell. The bars are rather thick, so there’s bound to be some usable metal left inside of them... But they are also rather tall, with most of them far too large to fit inside her backpack. Luckily, there are a few broken and weak segments that she could just snap free and take.

The silence of the ruin is broken as Krvavy does just that, breaking off a few bars and dropping them into her bag.

Beryl winces slightly at each sharp sound, cautiously staring off into the darkness looking for any signs of movement, but the barbarian isn’t anywhere near as wary. They’ve made it this far without even the slightest sign of anything living in these ruins. So while this place is a little creepy and unnerving, Krvavy doesn’t exactly feel the need to be so careful.

That said, she is trying to do this as quietly as she can.

With all of the easily broken bars in her backpack, Krvavy steps back and moves onto the next cell. But as soon as her light shines through the bars, she immediately pauses. Laying atop the carved bed is a mass of glittering crystals, seemingly growing out of the very stone. Her lips curl up into a smile.

“My dearest love...” Beryl cautions with newfound worry in her voice.

“What?” The barbarian asks as she begins to snap apart the bars, trying to create a gap large enough for her to fit through. “It’s quartz. Inspect says as much.” That those crystals aren’t anything more valuable is a little disappointing, but not enough for Krvavy to even consider complaining.

“Aye, but... Look at ‘ow it is formin’, at the shape tha’ it is in.” The tomboyish Elf hesitantly states.

Krvavy squeezes into the cell and looks at the crystal mass. She doesn’t get what is worrying Beryl so much. The quartz seems to be mostly clumped together on one half of the cot, though there are a few lines of crystals that leave that mass. One trails down off the side and onto the floor, while the other two stay on the stone bed, reaching out towards the bars.

The way that it has grown is probably unnatural, sure, but that isn’t really saying much when magic is almost certainly involved.

“Do... do ya not see it?” Beryl warily wonders. “The body? The arm danglin’ off the edge? The legs spread out?”

“Huh...” Now that her Elf has mentioned it, the mass of quartz does kind of look like a body. Or, more accurately, it kind of looks like it has grown out of a body.

Leaning forwards, Krvavy closely inspects the quartz. She has no idea what colour any of these crystals are, as they all look red in the light of her flame. Some are clear and transparent, shining beautifully in her light, but others are foggy and difficult to see through, if not outright opaque. No matter where she looks, Krvavy cannot see a body or skeleton beneath the quartz crystals.

Moving her Soulbound weapon in, the barbarian carefully brings the hammer head down onto the mass, breaking a few crystals free with a tap.

“Well, it’s not alive.” Krvavy dryly states as she crouches down, placing her axe aside so she can begin to collect some crystals.

“And ya are alright wit’ harvestin’ those from a corpse...?”

“Yes?” The barbarian replies, kind of confused by why Beryl is so concerned. The tomboy was so confident earlier... “This quartz is more useful than the rusted pieces of metal we’ve found so far. Besides, this place has been a ruin for who knows how many thousands of years. So if this was a body, then it has been dead for a very, very long time.”

“It’s just a bit grim...” A fair bit of distaste fills the Wood Elf’s voice.

Krvavy simply shrugs. “Eh. If it makes you feel better, I’m not going to take all that much. This bag only has so many pouches, and I don’t want to put these crystals in with the rusted metal bars. That feels like a good way to get quartz dust. We can always come back for more later.”

Beryl clearly isn’t particularly happy with that response, but she doesn’t argue. The tanned Elf simply stands by and waits for Krvavy to finish.

And, luckily for her, that doesn’t take very long.

“Why are you so... on edge anyway?” The barbarian asks as she squeezes back out of the cell. “You were fine before we saw the cells.”

That earns a slight glare from Beryl. “Ah don’t like ‘ow this ruin feels. This part o’ it, at least. It is... grim. Ah can only imagine the misery tha’ filled this ancient place... Not to mention the monsters tha’ assuredly lurk in the shadows...”

“You really think there is a monster in here?”

“Aye. The signs were there at the entrance.” The Wood Elf replies, glancing into the next cell along their path.

“Yeah, but we’ve gone pretty deep without seeing a single thing. Maybe your monster just lives nearby? In a less obvious cave?” The barbarian glances towards her Elf, smiling as reassuringly as she can. “And even if this is its home, it can’t be all that large. We had to make that hole bigger for us to even be able to fit through it, remember?”

“Perhaps...” Beryl doesn’t look particularly convinced.

Krvavy steps in a very small and shallow puddle. “Look, I...” She begins and immediately trails off, glancing down at the ground. The puddle is clinging to her foot, holding it in place like a thick mud.

With a bit of effort she is able to lift her foot up, though thick gooey strings of what looks like viscous water still cling to her, trying to drag her foot back down with elastic force. And so, without really thinking about it, Krvavy lets just that happen, ‘helping’ the puddle by stomping down into it with a loud splash.

50 Damage dealt to [Puddle...?]

[Puddle...?] has been slain!+20 Experience

“My dearest love...?” Beryl glances back from a few paces ahead of the barbarian, confusion clear in her voice.

“Uh... I just killed a puddle...?”

The Elf’s eyes briefly widen in surprise before a serious look fills her face. Quickly stepping towards Krvavy, Beryl drops to one knee and gently prods the fading remnants of that sticky liquid with her dagger. “Ah think tha’ was a slime.”

“Okay. Guess you can say ‘I told you so’...”

“This is serious, my dearest love.” Beryl dryly replies as she rises back to her feet. “Slimes are outside o’ our ability ta deal wit’ right now. We need ta leave.”

Krvavy opens her mouth to respond, but immediately gets shushed before she can say a word.

“Ah don’t know much o’ the finer details and specifics o’ slimes, and even if Ah did... now would not be the time ta explain them.” The Wood Elf’s eyes are firm and her tone is even more so. “Just know tha’ they are magic given form, not livin’ creatures. The only way to truly ‘kill’ a slime is ta spread it out thin enough tha’ it can’t ‘old its shape and begins ta dissolve. Otherwise a ‘wound’ would simply be ‘ealed as the parts re-merge, if another slime doesn’t come along ta absorb the remnants first. So stompin’ a puddle too small ta even ‘ave its own shape is not the same as actually fightin’ a slime.”

The barbarian slowly sighs out, slightly disappointed at hearing that. Krvavy’s hopes got raised and then dashed in just a couple of seconds. But if her Elf doesn’t think that they can fight slimes, then she will trust Beryl’s judgment. “Alright, guess we should leav–”

Krvavy abruptly cuts herself off as she feels a drop of liquid splash down on the top of her tail. Her perception of time slows to a crawl as her instincts scream in the back of her mind. Without a conscious thought, Krvavy twists her body to the side and swings her axe through the air above her head.

150 Damage dealt to [Slime]

The glob of gooey liquid, roughly the size of a rather large dog, is chopped into two uneven pieces. The chunks of slime splat down onto the ground on either side of her with loud wet slaps, seemingly unperturbed by being cut in half.

Pursing her lips, the barbarian immediately brings her Soulbound weapon down onto the closest one.

95 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right]

Her axe cuts through to the ground, sending a slight shock up through its shaft. The strike was deliberately off center, letting Krvavy fling the smaller portion of the slime away over the railing and down into the pit by just jerking her weapon to the side and twisting it a bit.

-3.63 Health

The other part of the slime lunges at the barbarian, clinging to her leg and immediately making both her skin and scales tingle unpleasantly.

-2.15 Health-1.81 Health-4.26 Health

Kicking her leg does nothing to dislodge it, as the slime simply continues to crawl up over her knee and onto her thigh. Forced to change tactics, Krvavy brings her axe down, scraping its blade through the gooey thing to slough the slime off in large chunks. If it wasn’t for her black scales, then she would have likely nicked her skin a fair bit in the process.

Now surrounded by various new slimes, albeit significantly smaller ones, Krvavy begins to angrily stomp down on them one after the other. That worked well enough with the puddle.

35 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, One]

57.5 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Two]

[Slime, Right, Two] has been slain!+60 Experience

45.5 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Three]

24.3 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Four]

66.16 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Five]

[Slime, Right, Five] has been slain!+75 Experience

51.24 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Six]

[Slime, Right, Six] has been slain!+55 Experience

28.75 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Seven]

Her stomping appears to have been mostly in vain, as the slimes that Krvavy wasn’t able to splatter into a thin enough paste immediately begin collecting the globs scattered around and merging back together.

Annoyed by the relative ineffectiveness of her attacks, Krvavy decides to just start whacking the things with her Soulbound weapon, using the side of the axehead to squish the reforming slime as best she can.

62.34 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]34.15 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]45.41 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]28.55 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]

The swelling slime is flattened for a brief moment after each hit, but is able to mostly recover its shape by the time Krvavy’s Soulbound weapon comes at it again.

24.68 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]36.45 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]61.65 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]53.49 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]43.86 Damage dealt to [Slime, Right, Remains]

Each hit squishes the slime more than the last, gradually flattening it into a gooey pancake. But that isn’t enough to kill it, so the barbarian begins to chop away at the edges, flicking thin slivers of slime away and slowly whittling it down.

After what felt like forever yet couldn’t have been more than a minute, the slime finally stops moving.

[Slime, Right, Remains] has been slain!+250 Experience

Krvavy’s chest rises and falls at a rather ragged pace as new notifications suddenly pop up into her vision.

Level Up! You have reached Level 15. As a Drakling blessed by a divine power, you have 5 attribute points to allocate and have gained +2 to Might & Toughness. If not allocated by the time you fall asleep it will be done automatically.

+1 Divine Favour, for growing in strength.

“M-my dearest love!” Beryl’s worried voice calls out, immediately pulling Krvavy’s attention over to her.

The Elf is at the edge of Krvavy’s light, holding a long rusted bar as she backs away from another slime. She seems to be mostly trying to keep the amorphous blob at bay as she desperately swings the metal pole at it, though the slime is not deterred by that. It seems to be the larger half of the slime that Krvavy initially cut in two, reaching past Beryl’s knee in height. And the thing is much wider than it is tall.

Before the barbarian can even react, the rusted bar gets stuck inside of the slime as it launches tendrils out towards Beryl. Most of those tendrils miss their targets, dodged by the dexterous Elf, but one successfully wraps itself around her ankle. The Wood Elf’s eyes go wide in shock as she falls backwards onto the ground, pulled off balance by the slime tugging on her leg.

“H-help! Help! Ah can’t...! Ah can’t get it off!”

Beryl’s struggling seems to only make it easier for the slime to drag her into its mass. In just a matter of seconds, that blob has engulfed the Elf’s legs from foot to thigh.

Krvavy freezes at the sight, thoughts racing through her mind. Her axe is pretty much useless here, as she risks chopping Beryl’s legs off if she tries cutting through the slime. So what can she do?!

Her eyes flick to the flickering flame in her hand as an idea pops into her head.

Once again letting her instincts take the lead, the barbarian steps towards the slime and takes a deep breath. The flame in her palm dims as she pulls mana from her core, and her lungs begin to burn as she refuses to exhale. Krvavy’s throat glows a crimson colour and her eyes begin to water from the pain. Just as that starts to become unbearable, her jaw suddenly snaps open.

An eruption of frenzied flames burst free from her mouth.

1,546.54 Damage dealt to [Slime, Left]

A blazing inferno slams into the side of the aggressive blob that has dared to harm her Elf, causing it to bubble and sizzle as the force of the crimson flames pushes it aside. The sticky liquid that makes up its mass hisses and begins to fade, as if boiled in an instant and reduced to naught but steam.

872.16 Damage dealt to [Slime, Left]684.65 Damage dealt to [Slime, Left]

[Slime, Left] has been slain!+975 Experience

What remains of the slime collapses into shallow puddles, letting Beryl kick her legs free and jump to her feet as darkness descends on the ruins. The light in Krvavy’s palm is dim, its flame starved and nearly dead.

Wisps of smoke trail out of the Drakling’s nose, clouding her vision and stinging her dry eyes. The faintest taste of burnt flesh fills her mouth. Charred ash overpowers that flavour.

Beryl’s body suddenly collides with Krvavy, the Elf launching herself into a hug with the barbarian. Her legs wrap around Krvavy’s hips as she layers kiss after kiss on her love’s face. “Oh, my dearest love~! Tha’ was ah-maze-in’~!”

Krvavy’s axe flashes and returns to its place in her soul, letting her hold onto Beryl. “Yh–” The barbarian chokes on her words, needing to cough a few times to clear her throat. “I’m almost out of mana.” Her hoarse voice scratches out.

The tomboyish Wood Elf’s eyes go wide in realization, quickly dropping herself back onto the ground. “Let’s get out o’ here then. Ah don’t want ta be left in the dark wit’ those things.”

Beryl grabs onto Krvavy’s hand, pulling the Drakling along as she hastily retraces their path.