Well, more like try to get some actual work done.

As it turned out, Sláine wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to mundane extermination. While her attempts to smash open the tanks, stomp on the eggs, and chase down the workers fleeing with their unhatched young were certainly valiant, Sláine’s proficiency lay more in throwing herself against unstoppable foes twice her size than trying to achieve the same prestige as a shovel. With a laugh, Red had simply plugged up the tunnels with her crystal magic and scooped everything up into an easily-smashable pile with her shadows.

It was a bit like raking leaves. The crunch as Red compacted them was certainly the same.

Eventually, Red convinced her that Sláine’s time was better spent taking a break given how much she’d been running around. Might as well not get any more gross shit on her, right? She already smelled bad enough. Sit down and drink some water! Adventurers gotta hydrate! — Red’s pitch was along those lines.

Of course, before she’d shut up and sit down, Sláine had to ask the obvious question.

"Wait. How would you drink something through the mask?"

"Huh?" Red turned back towards her, the painted-on smile partially obscured by splattered insect carcasses.

"Water.” Sláine punctuated the word with a sharp, suddenly distressed gesture as all the logistical problems with Red’s general… herness dawned on her. “How would you drink water through the mask?"

A pause. Then, flatly, "By grinding up my 'eat through mask' [ Skill ], duh."

“…”

“…”

"...Really?" Sláine tentatively inquired, and Red let out a sharp sound somewhere between a cackle and a snort.

"No, dumbass, we can consume things directly from our [ Inventory ]. It just takes some practice."

“Oh.”

There was silence, then —

"Wait. Can you taste it?"

"Huh?" Red repeated, the sphere of shadow hovering over her hand wobbling as she turned to stare at Sláine once more.

"When you eat things from your [ Inventory ]. Do you taste them?"

Red closed her fist. The sounds of crunching exoskeletons drowned out the tiny screams of agony. "No, you don't.”

That made a certain amount of sense, she supposed. Sláine nodded to herself and proceeded to follow the mechanics of this land to their logical conclusion. "Then technically, as long as it’s not rotten, you can eat whatever bland, disgusting gruel you want directly from your [ Inventory ] and you'd be entirely fine."

Red’s long, loud peal of laughter did not disappoint Sláine in the slightest, and she watched the woman wrap her arms around her stomach as she tried to contain herself. "What a horribly depressing way to live!" She managed, once she’d gotten her breath back. A smile tugged at Sláine’s mouth, which she soon covered up with a gulp of water.

"But much cheaper."

"You're not wrong, buttercup, but don't go shouting it off the rooftops. The government mandated lunch-break is short enough as it is."

At least ‘buttercup’ was better than ‘bunny’.

Sláine let that be that, and the pair fell into silence as she watched Red work.

It fascinated her. The shadows leapt and danced at her command, but there was a crystalline component to it too, spikes of shining gemstone melded from the darkness itself. Sitting there in the relative quiet, Sláine could hear music in the way she conducted them, how she stretched and bended shadows to her whim.

Were those her [ Masque ] abilities? A byproduct of whatever her [ Class ] had changed to? Was it even something she’d developed in Arpege, or had she brought it from wherever her homeland was, much like how Sláine’s own endurance and regenerative properties came from Flora?

Each System had its own way of functioning, its own method of arranging the world into logical parts. Sláine’s had prioritized strength, heroics, valor. The tone of her culture rang out in rhythmic drumbeats and the march of war, and Sláine knew little of the stories of other Systems.

She’d never felt like she’d needed to. Those from Flora grew where they willed. Their legacy remained even in death, carried on from the stories they wove and the flowers nourished by their graves. Maybe that’s why encountering Fathomless had affected her so strongly. It wasn’t just losing her friends and allies; Sláine had seen many deaths over her many years spent alive.

It was how she’d lost them.

She couldn’t reconcile the virtues she held dear with an entity whose nature bid it to subsume reality and transform it into an endless abyss. The vast inevitability of it bothered her on a primal level; how the great cosmic expanse of the Pit made resistance futile. It took many forms, but they were no different in the end. Whether it was being swallowed into a gaping chasm or hurled from a thousand-foot drop in the air, falling was still the same. All of one’s accomplishments became meaningless when snatched away by the rush of air.

Encountering an existence which thought reality would only be perfect when it became an eternal free-fall upset her far more than anything Contagion, or any of the other Fears, could conjure up.

That wasn’t to say she was afraid of the Pit. Sláine had far too much pride to ever allow herself to feed the Fears with her terror. It just…

She didn’t like thinking about it.

She didn’t like thinking about it at all.

Letting out a hefty sigh, Sláine found something else to distract herself.

“Are you there, Aria?” she looked up and asked the air, fingers finding her markings and her mind casting out for that tingling which, fragment by fragment, grew into a more familiar warmth.

[ A remarkably intact concrete ceiling with carved holes accommodating a network of pipes attached to tanks in the room. Yes, I’m here. Sorry, I tried being less intrusive, but I promise I’m not spying on you or anything! I was just worried. ]

Less intrusive, mm? That explained the more… sedate level up notifications she’d been getting ever since her earlier conversation with Red. The knowledge that it cared about her privacy made Aria feel less like a fragment of a highly advanced power and more like a person. Sláine wondered if that was the point.

Or if something about the process of being fragmented had made humanity’s System, the Machine God, a little more human by default.

“About Red?” Sláine asked softly, eyeing the woman gathering up all those silvery little eggs into a bundle of darkness and crushing them. She [ Inspected ] those next.

[ The young, fragile egg of a Tunnel Mite Worker. Tunnel Mite eggs thrive near each other, leading to mass egg storage chambers. And yes, I’m worried about Red, but also about you too. I trust her to keep you safe, but… oh, I’m probably being too nosy, aren’t I? I’ll stop checking in. ]

“It’s okay,” Sláine replied, surprising even herself by saying so. Now that she’d had a bit of time to calm down and process everything she’d learned… well, this was the life she’d chosen, wasn’t it? She may as well use all the tools at her disposal to their fullest potential. “I don’t mind you keeping an eye on me while we’re in the dungeon. Do you have time for some questions?”

She redirected her attention to the ceiling and checked for Aria’s reply.

[ A concrete ceiling. While it’s normally good form to look up often, Tunnel Mites aren’t known for vertical ambushes.

I’m not that busy right now, so yes, I can try. Though, I apologize if I end up needing to handle other things and stop replying personally. ]

“Nothing to apologize for. I’m interrupting your work, after all.”

Now that it came to it, Sláine didn’t really know what she should ask Aria. Detailed questions about Red weren’t an option; the woman was still in the same room, even if she was distracted. It also it wasn’t really any of her business. But questions about Aria itself…

Actually, wait a second.

“If you’re a person, isn’t calling you an ‘it’ remarkably rude?”

She tried the floor again, wondering if it’d have a different response for this room.

[ A grimy concrete floor that is covered with bug sludge. The pipes leading into it suggests the possibility of a lower level.

Um, gender is a pretty complicated topic when it comes to us. Immortal fragments of a vastly powerful technological entity, you know? ^^; Back when ‘we’ were an ‘I’, pronouns didn’t really matter… but we don’t really mind ‘it’ as a placeholder before we hatch and pick a way to present. ]

This was so far out of Sláine’s realm of comprehension that she found herself struggling for a moment. It was like trying to pick out a specific strand in a massively tangled ball of yarn, except the yarn was moving and was also a color she’d never seen before. “Picking a way to present… what does that mean exactly? If, ah. That isn’t a rude question.”

Shifting her gaze slightly, Sláine [ Inspected ] the pipe attached to one of the various tanks.

[ A sturdy metal pipe which once transported water.

It’s okay, I don’t mind talking about it! So, when we hatch, we get bodies that can fully interact with the world beyond messages like these. Think of it like, oh, reaching maturity, I guess? Similar to a child growing up, our ability to think and understand what an ‘identity’ is gets more refined as we develop. When we hatch, we get to choose how we express that identity through our physical appearance. ]

“How do you… figure out your identity?”

Simply moving up, Sláine [ Inspected ] the tank.

[ Once having been used to store water, this tank has been repurposed as a storage area for Tunnel Mite Worker eggs. The logistical benefits of this is unclear; it may be more about symbolic dominance than anything else, as it represents the Swarm corrupting something once used to hold something clean.

Um, hold on, give me a second. ]

Sláine appreciated the pause, as that description had more to digest than the others. Symbolic dominance? She knew the ultimate intent of each Fear was to influence the world and make it more hospitable to the source of terror in question, but… that made it sound like this ‘dungeon’ had once been an actual inhabited location. How exactly did that work?

Was this a place that Contagion held ownership over, like… a pocket where one System could exist in another? Or, was it more like the Swarm had been confined to this place, bound where adventurers could come in and deal with it as they were ready to…?

After thinking over this for a few minutes, she chose to [ Inspect ] the tank again.

[ An old water tank that the Swarm has been using to store their eggs.

Sorry about that! But… how do you view your own identity, Sláine? How did you come to think of yourself the way you do now? We discover what sorts of traits and behaviors seem ‘right’ or ‘natural’ to us as we interact with the adventurers responsible for raising us.

For me, picking an appearance, a gender, a name… just like someone changing their haircut to alter the atmosphere they give off, I’ll choose a body that compliments the image I want to portray. Er, though I have to say, ‘gender’ still seems like a really weird concept to me. Even now, I don’t really understand the purpose of it. If ‘it’ makes you uncomfortable, I don’t mind ‘they’ as a gender-neutral alternative. ]

“Using ‘they’ would… feel less like I’m referring to you as an object,” Sláine replied, faintly realizing that Red had used ‘they’ for Aria once or twice before. Was this something the two of them had also discussed?

Huh.

She looked over at one of the holes the Tunnel Mite Workers had been trying to escape from and asked, “How close are you to hatching?”

[ A passageway constructed by the Tunnel Mite Workers. Due to the size of it, only smaller members of the hive could travel through it, such as Workers and Assassins.

I’m fairly close, actually! I need to consume greater numbers of high-level materials to make progress now, which is a good sign. ]

[ Congratulations, System Use has reached Level 5! This is a pretty decent way to grind that up. :0 ]

A thought, triggered by the notification, struck her. Changing topics suddenly, Sláine asked, “Hey… is there any way you could help me access the ‘class menu’ I keep hearing about?”

[ Inspect ] -> Tunnel Mite Worker

[ Tunnel Mite Worker ~ Servant of the Noxious Swarm. Lacking any manner of defensive shell, these fragile insects rely heavily on the rest of the hive for protection. While not a threat on their own, the presence of Tunnel Mite Workers suggests that other, more dangerous creatures might be around. This one has been brutally crushed to death.

Um… sort of? Part of the reason the menus work the way they do is because we need your consent before we can interact with you. Like, when you Inspect something, you’re specifically asking me for information. I can’t just put it into your head without prompting… ]

“Well, can you ask me for permission, then? Like what happened with I teleported, or when I joined the guild?”

[ Inspect ] -> Mold growing on wall

[ Yellow Cave Mold - preferring to grow in damp, humid environments, this mold releases toxic spores when touched. It’s a key part of the Tunnel Mite diet, allowing them to synthesize some of the poisons they’re infamous for.

I could try sending a view request, but I don’t think it’ll be very pleasant for you. There’s a reason the System works the way it does; it’s to make interacting with us easier on you… ]

“I’m used to unpleasant things,” Sláine said frankly, setting the water flask aside and crossing her arms over her legs. “So, hit me. I want to see my [ Skills ].”

After a pause, a message pinged in her head.

[ Open Class Menu? ]

[ Yes ] [ No ]

Well, that was easy, Sláine thought as she picked [ Yes ], and then immediately regretted so blatantly tempting fate.

>> Suffer consequences