81: Wandering Too Deep

We fought more rackids as we followed this new wisp further into the underground ruins. They were scarily crafty opponents, but we weren’t to be fucked with either, and we beat them every time. As for loot, they gave us a few rackid items, from a healer’s staff, to a few pieces of armour, but nothing they dropped was useful to us, save for the gold.

It became evident that the rackids were living down here somewhere, but we never found out where. Instead, we found little snippets of lore here and there about the city and its inhabitants. They were humans, but from a civilisation that was far older than any we’d known before now. Paisley started documenting everything with screenshots and little notes when we realised that particular fact. She was going to make a forum post later on, when she had time.

“Is that a statue of Rasmerim?” I asked when we passed a smashed circular building that vaguely resembled a modern human temple.

“I think so, but he looks… angrier,” said Paisley, looking the statue up and down.

She wasn’t wrong. Rasmerim was a favoured god for humanity, as he’d been the one to teach humanity how to farm and work stone into blocks for building. He was always depicted with a smith’s hammer, a jolly pot-belly, a big smile, and laugh lines. This statue, however, depicted him holding a huge maul, and his features were grim and accusatory, like he was judging everyone around him.

“Scary,” Paisley said with a mock shiver, and I had to agree.

Looking around, I noticed more and more tunnels leading in different directions. With a start of surprise, I saw a second wisp float past an opening several chambers away. Turning, I quickly located the wisp that we'd been following. It was still happily bouncing around just out of reach, and the inklings of a realisation came to me.

Following the hunch, I called my full HUD into focus and looked up in the corner. Ah.

“Paisley,” I said, reaching out to take her hand. “We're not in the dungeon anymore. Our respawn is set to the tree again.”

I watched as she frowned and focused on something I couldn't see— her own HUD.

“Damn, that means we're not going to be meeting any bosses…” she said, then looked back the way we'd come. “What is this place, then?”

“Uh…” I began, then once again, I called on my HUD and inspected the area. “Inspect just says ‘Catacombs’.”

Using her own, much more advanced inspection ability, Paisley hummed with interest. “Catacombs of the Old Empire, Deep Southern Reaches.”

“I'm so confused,” I said, staring at all the ruins more intently. “Which ‘Old Empire,’ is it talking about?”

She shrugged. “Who knows. The skeletons are mostly human, so it's not the Ascendant Empire. I'd say it was the one that got invaded by the Ascendants, but this architecture doesn't match with that era. I think this is new lore.”

I felt a little spark of pride, and my fists found their way to my hips as I struck a triumphant pose. “We found new lore, and a new zone! That's pretty cool. Do you think this is expansion content or just undiscovered base game content?”

“No idea,” said my friend. She was looking thoughtfully back the way we'd come now.

I, however, turned my attention towards a small rustling, scuffing sound. It was through one of the openings into the next partially collapsed chamber, where a stone tower was holding a shattered slab of boulder aloft. Suddenly, the light of our stones caught in a pair of eyes, and I froze.

That was about all the warning I got, as another set of rackids stormed towards us. Steelfeather Guard flew into place, blocking an opening salvo of crossbow bolts and spells, but it creaked alarmingly under the onslaught.

Wow, what was the game feeding these guys? They were rackids, but they looked… different — like their visages were both softened and sharpened. Charging us, they hissed with rage — eyes wide with abandoned reason.

“The Gloaming does not welcome you!” a Rackid suddenly hissed in english as it leapt at me.

With a desperate twist of my body, I dodged and struck with my Tobubana Katana. It scored a deep line through the monster’s flesh, but stopped at the cartilage plate beneath. Oh, fuck! They were tougher than normal!

That’s when I saw Paisley’s dark red energy lance embed itself in the rackid. No, it didn’t go through, it got stuck. Sure, the monster died… but it should’ve been pasted like the others.

“The… Gloam does… not… Bless… you,” the rackid croaked as it died.

Right behind that dying monster, was another of its kind, and behind that, many more. Paisley and I fought for one, maybe two minutes, but it became very obvious that this was not a fight we could win.

We fled.

“Holy shit,” I said, gasping for breath at the top of the cave-in. As we'd scrambled up the mound of loose rock, more and more had fallen. Now, the cave below was choked with stone, and my health was dangerously low due to crushing damage.

“I think,” Paisley grimaced, her face red and her chest heaving. “That we should go back to that crafting room and shove all those scrolls into our inventory. As much of the crafting crap as we can carry, too. Obviously, we have to report the place on the lore forums, but if that room isn't respawning then we need to save the lore before we post about it.”

“And take pictures of it before we loot it more,” I added. My mind returned to the buried city, though, and I said, “I hate that we had to run from them. If it weren't for the fact that they were weirdly overpowered…”

Paisley nodded, then peered back into the hole that led to the buried city. “Yeah, except did you get a look at those rackids? With your inspect, I mean?”

I shook my head, but pulling up my combat notifications, I read through them to look for clues.

Enemy Killed:

Rackid Deep Dweller* x4 (70 xp)

*Blessing of the Gloam accumulated: 12

“Hold on, Blessing of the Gloam? What's that?” I asked. When I opened my inventory, nothing was there, and my currencies had no indication of any Blessing.

“I just saw that…” Paisley murmured, her expression deep in contemplation as she looked at her own status windows. “Wait, character sheet!”

With a thought, I opened mine. Everything was there as normal.

[Character Sheet Goes Here]

At the bottom though, in a new section, was a status effect that read, Blessing of the Gloam: x12.

It wasn't your average status effect, either. It had a fancy UI, with a bar that represented the accumulation of the mysterious blessing. The bar was divided into even sections, but I couldn't tell you the number of them, because you could keep scrolling the bar and more of it would slide past.

Below the bar, there was a section that read, The Blessing of the Gloam is not currently in effect, as you are outside of Aimashii Duthaich. To regain Gloam modifiers, return to the land of the fae.

“It's an expansion thing! We accidentally stumbled into an expansion zone or something!” I gasped, as the full implications of the various tooltips sunk in.

Paisley appeared to agree, because she smiled, wide eyed, flapped her hands excitedly, and grabbed my arm. “This is so interesting. What does it mean? Is it like, expansion experience, or is it more? Ah, why is it taking so long to get to the expansion?”

Holy shit, she was so cute.

Just as quickly, she deflated, leaning on my side for support. “Ugh, but we still have the whole dungeon to do.”

Pursing my lips, I looked up through rock and stone, towards the rest of the dungeon. “Ah… I'm actually feeling pretty tired, and it's getting late. Why don't we head home? We can do this again in a new dungeon, over the border into the expansion zone.”

Paisley's side was moulding itself to mine, hip, waist, and shoulder all pressed into and slightly behind my own. The warm contact between us had me relaxing and tingling at the same time. Gods, if she wanted me, I'd have been powerless to resist. My crush on her was the size of the moon.

“Alright, let's do the lore looting, then get out of here,” I acquiesced.

First, though, we placed all the stuff we'd taken from the hidden refuge back where we found it. Then, we went around taking pictures and videos of the place — careful to get as many details as possible. Once we were sure we had documented everything, we began to fill our inventories to the brim with the scrolls, crafting tools, and heavier specialised tables. Together, we fit almost everything of value, and with the task done, we used our Escape Stones to return to the Willow.