Travelling along the underground river was both a lot easier compared to travelling through the narrow tunnels we had travelled in the days before but it came with its own challenges. Just the cold, moist air was uncomfortable, somehow managing to seep into my bones despite my affinity to Ice and there were various colonies of mushrooms around that were not very fun guys. Rai was the first to start coughing, causing me to wonder if the air had managed to get to him, but when I checked with my Blood Magic, I realised that it wasn’t just the air. Or rather, it was what was in the air, namely the countless, tiny spores that were starting to take hold within his lungs.

Purging them required Olivia and me to work together, with her Divine Healing easily purging the spores, while my Blood Magic revitalised the affected tissues. On my own, purging the spores would have been a little difficult, as getting them out of his body with Blood Magic would be… messy and while I had a theory regarding the use of Darkness-Magic to affect the empty spaces inherent to all matter, I had only just begun working on that, it was far from useable.

Once we had healed the damage from Rai, we repeated the process with each of us and, as expected, we all had taken in some of the spores, which had started to settle in our lungs. They hadn’t been able to fully establish themselves within our bodies, but I didn’t want to consider what would happen without healing-magic and generally powerful bodies.

“Lenore, do you think you can use Wind-Magic to keep those spores away from us while we are resting?” I asked my companion, who had been rather restricted during the last few days, the dark tunnels not the best place for a bird.

“Not for the whole night. This place is almost the worst place to use Wind-Magic at, I just don’t have enough Astral Power.” she admitted, sounding understandably unhappy. “Maybe Olivia’s barrier could work, though I’m not sure if she is able to conjure that up on successive days.” she suggested, her mental voice giving away her annoyance at her own inability.

Speaking out loud, I asked Olivia about her barrier and was told that it would keep out harmful substances, but wouldn’t work against what was already there when she set it up. Useful, but we would have to remain cautious.

Other than the spores, I noticed a couple smaller tunnels, some of them similar in size and shape to the one we had used before, others smaller and looking more natural, leading off into the distance. We had decided to follow the underground stream, hoping that it would lead us outside, but a small part of me wanted to explore, despite the spider-rats, hell, a tiny, insatiably curious part wanted to study even those. While I didn’t want to get close to them, certainly not close enough to touch or even see them with my own eyes, I kept coming up with ways to study them using my magic, mainly scrying them from afar, but also considering whether there was a way to use Blood Magic from afar to study their bodies.

It was something I hadn’t been able to use at all, not without having some Blood to form a link before-hand, but it was something I wondered about. As was the question if I had a way to gain some of that Blood and if there was, whether I would be able to put some of my more genocidal ideas to the test. A Mundus without Spider-Rats sounded like a vast improvement, though I had no idea how wide-spread those things were.

Sadly, the more I considered those genocidal ideas, the less practical they appeared to be, simply due to basic arithmetics. Blood- and Death-Magic, but also Mind-Magic for that matter, had a relatively direct and simple conversion of Astral Power to damage. The exact exchange-factor depended on both, the spell-casters affinity and ability on one hand and the target's affinity and resistance on the other hand. There was no real medium involved that would add a physical component to the damage, like an Icicle would when stabbing someone in the chest, making it all magical in nature. And that was where the problem came in, without some medium to carry the damage, akin to the Mist I had used when exterminating the snow-bolds early in my journey, the damage would be spread to each individual target pretty much equally, meaning if I wanted to, for example, exterminate all humans, I would need to use up enough Astral Power to overcome the combined health-pool of all humans, while also counter-acting their natural regeneration at the same time. With enough humans, even the relatively small regeneration added up, making such a plan relatively impossible. While I had no idea how many spider-rats there were, I doubted I would be able to overcome their combined regeneration, not without some extremely powerful outside source of Astral Power, preferably Death-aligned Astral Power.

By the end of the day, we had crossed quite a few kilometers underground, though I wasn’t sure just how far we had gone in actual, straight-line distance. The river simply meandered, making it difficult to guess which way was which, unless I pestered Olivia to use her magic. Thanks to that pestering, I had furthered my understanding of Divine magic a little, when Olivia explained the difference between minor and major spells to me.

Minor spells were simple, small spells, things like the spell that lit our way or the spell that determined directions. Those were something she could cast without drawing on the power of her deity, merely using her own, inherent Astral Power.

On the other hand, major spells were things like the spell she used to determine our path, or the protective dome she had invoked once, to shield us from a storm. They channelled the power of Eleutheria and invoked her name, something that was never done for frivolous reasons. Curiously, her combat-spells were major in nature, though apparently, protecting your allies was always a valid reason, unless those allies were involved in something that went against the Deity’s creed. For example, Olivia shouldn’t actively help a slaver, or she might lose her powers until the atoned for her misdeed. Just those vague, non-specific rules and outside regulations completely convinced me that using a divine Spellcaster was not for me, not that I had truly considered switching away from my Sorceress. Trying to figure out magic was simply far too interesting to switch to some ready-made class that granted skills but limited me to those skills. In the long run, I thought that the trade-off was just not worth it.

Once we found a reasonably large flat space near the underground river, I created some icy mist while channelling as much Death-Magic into it as possible, trying to kill off any spores in the area, before Olivia put up her protective shelter, hopefully allowing us to rest at ease. Before entering it, the two of us purged everyone’s body once more, to allow as few spores into our shelter as possible.

After everything was set up, I decided to indulge myself a little and set up my Throne, to explore the tunnels around with my scrying spells. There had to be a reason why I hadn’t managed to get a single point of Darkness-Magic in the last few days, despite using it almost constantly in what I considered a new application. It was then that I frustratedly realised that Olivia’s shelter wasn’t just a protection against the environment, but also against magical scrying, which, in turn, meant that my tendrils couldn’t leave it, making my throne a wonderful waste of time.

Turning my old Throne into water, which we no longer needed, I stepped back out of the dome, after confirming with Olivia that I could re-enter without trouble as long as she was awake, I set up my throne a few steps away from the shelter and started to stretch my tendrils, looking at our surroundings once more.

At first, I simply looked at the tunnels nearby, stretching into both the artificial tunnels and the natural crevices, until I began to follow one of the artificial tunnels further down, curious what I’d find beneath.

Suddenly, I felt a powerful wave of Darkness-Magic, strong enough to make itself felt through the tendril I had stretched out. It was as if something had taken the sensory pulses the spider-rats used and dialed them up by an order of magnitude or three. I had no idea just how far they’d reach, or what they’d really detect, but the simple fact that they were there caused me to disperse my tendrils and rapidly pulled my mind back, despite the headache the act was causing me.

Whatever it was that was causing those pulses, I highly doubted we were ready to face it. But at least I slowly began to understand what a high-level area in Road to Purgatory was like.