Chapter 11 - The Depths

I groan, my entire body feeling sore and limp, and my head throbbing with a headache. I try to open my crusty eyes, a little force required before they flick open; they feel irritated. It’s pitch black but I can hear the low breathing of someone, no doubt Leonore, so I whisper, “Hey, Leonore.”

There is slight movement before she whispers back, “Oh thank the gods, you’re awake. You hit your head quite hard.”

She throws something at me, hitting me in the face, a waterskin, “Here, drink, you’ll be thirsty.”

Indeed, I’m painfully parched, so I chug down the water hastily before asking, “What’s you condition?”

“I damaged my legs quite badly on the landing, I used an enhanced healing potion so I can walk, but not quite run yet.”

All of a sudden, I remember Aurelie and reactively yell, “Shit Aurelie, what about Aurelie!”

“Be quiet.” Leonore whispers in reprimand before saying, “I’m sure she will be fine; I have no doubt she had one of her own life saving measures. Anyway, in a few hours my legs should be healed enough so we can get moving.”

I grunt weakly in agreement, but my worry is not alleviated whatsoever. We quiet down as our topics of conversation come to an end. After an unknown amount of time, I feel bored, so I decide to initiate a new conversation, I remark, “You seemed less… uh, aggressive this trip. More friendly for sure.”

She remains quiet for a long moment before saying dismally, “It’s because I’m useless, I thought I was more talented than you two, but now you’re both in the S-class, and me. I’ve worked hard all year yet I’ve gone nowhere.”

I internally scoff, we’re only in the S-class because we are murderers, I wish I could tell her, scream it out, that all the rumours are true, it isn’t our talent, but I’m a coward. Feeling disgusted with myself I change the topic, saying, “Will you and Aurelie ever sort out your differences, she told me what happened.”

Leonore asks in surprise, “Oh did she now? What did she say?”

“Well, no specifics if I’m being honest, but she mentioned how you two were each other’s only friends, but she split your friendship because of a house feud.”

Leonore laughs loudly, ignoring the need to be quiet, then says mockingly, “Is that what she said? Ha, she’s always been a liar. It was the other way around, she wanted us to remain friends, but a… decision of hers made that impossible.”

I curiously ask, “What decision?”

She grows quiet again, we wait in silence for a few minutes before she finally answers, “I cannot believe she didn’t even mention her… Well it wasn’t just Aurelie and myself, there was Sarah Fievet. We were the closest of friends, and indeed our houses did have a feud but that changed nothing.”

I lean forward in interest, further inquiring, “So? What happened?”

Leonore replies in rage, “She killed her, that’s what happened. She’s mad!”

I feel my stomach drop, asking heatedly, “Why the hell would she do that?”

Leonore replies, “How would I know! She’s always been odd; you can never figure out her thoughts.”

I stop talking, there’s not much out for me to say so I mull it over. Indeed, she’s always been a little strange, I suppose I can only chat with her before I come to any conclusion, sort out whatever the hell this is. But her action of easily killing the adventurers only supports the case that she killed this Sarah person over what was likely benefits.

After what I assume is a few hours Leonore finally says, “Alright I’ve healed enough, let’s get moving.”

Leonore shuffles around until suddenly a light brightens our surroundings, her person reveals itself, her blond hair blackened with dirt and her face no longer with its usual haughtiness but instead shrouded in uncertainty with dark eyebags; she looks rather pitiful. The light comes from a small white orb in the palm of Leonore’s hand. She briefly explains, “A torch stone.”

The tall rock wall has natural indentations and rock jutting out, it is noticeably damp, as a matter of fact this whole canyon has a distracting humidity. We begin traversing through the canyon, walking alongside the wall, our steps echoing out spookily. Large disgusting eggs can be found in slimy clumps every now and again, I assume they’re baby bluzzers and so I remark, “Now that I think about it, where are all the bluzzers?”

“Dead, bluzzers are hyperaggressive and that’s why they’re so dangerous, it also means when you kill them, that’s every last one. Except of course their unborn spawn.” Leonore explains as she keeps looking around in paranoia.

Ah, so that’s why we continued our expedition. We continue our exploration; the floor seems to tilt downward slightly it feels a little disorientating the longer we walk. Eventually the canyon comes to an end as we come across a stony wall with an entrance into a dark cavern.

The cavern has numerous stalactites built up throughout the cavern, well at least water won’t be an issue. The cavern breaks up into numerous different paths which break up into even more paths; it doesn’t take long for us to get lost.

We walk for days, eating our dwindling rations and finding small outlets of dripping water where we can refill our waterskin.

Loud horrifying screeches echo out causing Leonore and me to freeze before we look at each other in shocked terror, I ask, “What the hell is that?”

“Not sure, it’s certainly not something I’ve encountered on the surface,’ Leonore explains. Unable to do anything we reluctantly continue onwards. Not too long later a dark shadow shoots past at the edge of our light, a low groan echoing out, Leonore yells fearfully, “Shield up!”

I cast a lesser magic shield and then create the runes of two magic missiles to have at the ready. A shadow blurs and I get swept off my feet, flying through the air before I smack into the wall, my shield dimmed considerably. I cancel one of my runes to create a new shield, but a beast jumps out from among the shadows and is already upon me. The creature has a tiny and deformed head, long spindly arms which is uses to run with and small hind legs. It swipes at my shield, destroying it, I cast a magic missile, halting the monster’s approach. I then form a flare with my spare as a bolt of lightning flashes, lighting up the whole cavern. The bolt zaps into the beast’s head, causing it to shriek in pain as my flare flashes out, blinding the beast and allowing Leonore and me to focus our attack spells, after an excessive amount of magic missiles and lightning bolts, a ball of electrical and fiery energy forms. Eventually the monster stops shrieking as it’s badly charred corpse finally collapses out of the energy field. We stop casting, heaving heavily after having depleted a fair amount of mana, Leonore bitterly remarks as she walks to the corpse, “We’re fucked. A rank 3 monster, and there are more; far more from what we heard.”

“You know, you swear more than I expected.” I remark offhandedly.

Leonore glares at me, unamused, before chastising, “Take this seriously Agnes! We could very well die!”

Ha, I’m usually the one telling that to Aurelie. I sigh, agreeing, “You’re right, sorry, I don’t know what’s coming over me, I think I’m just nervous.”

Leonore crouches down next to the corpse and whips out a knife as she digs around at the chest cavity while saying, “High risk means high reward, rank 3 monsters are guaranteed to drop a rank 1 core, and a rather high chance of dropping a rank 2 core.”

As she pulls out a black and sinister core she excitedly yelps “A rank 2 core!”

Throwing the core to me, she says, “Here catch, you did most the work, I’ll take the next one.”

Catching the core, I inspect it, playing with it a bit as I say, “The next one? I thought we would want to avoid the monsters.”

She shakes her head, darkly explaining, “We’ll need to take a methodical approach from now on, these caverns are too complicated, and we’ll be here for a long time now that we have to deal with these creatures; we can probably take on at most two. We will need to eat the monsters for food, and we’ll create a map, mark areas, and carefully clear out the monsters.”

I breath out yet another sigh, I feel slightly thankful that I’m stuck here with Leonore instead of Aurelie; Leonore seems far more competent and reasonable. Moreover, I don’t have either of their experience so if I was here alone it would be over at this first fight; I doubt I could kill one by myself.

Feeling my stomach grumble I look over at the disgusting creature before asking, “Is the monster even eatable and how do we cook the meat then?”

“Anything with mana is eatable for a mage. As for cooking the meat, unless you can create a prolonged fire with your meagre mana pool, we will be eating it raw.” She explains as she cuts off a piece of monster meat and hands it to me, noticing my frown she says, “Don’t worry mages are very resilient.”

Ugh fine, I grab the bloody piece of meat and without waiting any longer I bite into it. A foul sourness explodes in my mouth, the slippery raw meat struggles to get bitten into as it seems incredibly tough. After too long of trying to chew it, I attempt to swallow it but gag as I try to force it down my gullet. I spend another five minutes trying to swallow down the disgusting meat, eventually gulping it down; my mouth dangles open due to the wretched taste.

Opening my teary eyes, I see Leonore still staring at her meal with a sour look on her face. As confidently as Leonore was talking about eating the meat; clearly it was all bark, no bite.

We could hear a monster skulking about just ahead of us, performing our current tactic, Leonore walks forward with the light as she casts a lesser shield. I hang back in the shadows, pre-casting two missile runes, positioned in combat position. Leonore slowly walks forward and when she’s far enough, she readies herself before yelling out. The monster growls in the darkness causing Leonore’s body to tense up.

The monster jumps out from the shadows, Leonore’s body sparks with lightning before she shifts about two meters to the right, she sticks her hand out, and taps the monster with the tip of her finger. The monster gets shocked, lightning travelling around its body before it collapses to the ground, stunned. That’s my cue; Leonore and I cast at the frozen beast without mercy using up about half my mana before we stop. A burnt and electrified mess reveals itself.

Leonore’s performance has really got quite impressive lately, walking up to the corpse I remark, “Nice work; You’ve got really good at that.”

She haughtily twists her head from me, to hide her smirk I imagine. I crouch down beside the monster and perform the dissection, stabbing into the chest with a knife creating a strangled crunch. Ripping it open I harvest the black core, rising I turn to Leonore who is currently drawing in her notebook, saying with a strange sort of excitement, “We’ve made some good progress lately, I think this path may be it.”

I shrug, repeating the same conversation we have literally every day, “You said that about path 1, and path 2, not to mention path 3, we’re already at path 14, let’s not get our hopes up for no reason… Again.”

Leonore face drops in a comical fashion, comical because she’s already aware to not get her hopes up yet she does it anyway, there’s something off with her lately. We’ve been in here for at least a month, I’m sure, we could have been in here for a year and I wouldn’t be surprised.

While she intently focuses on the map, I sit down in meditative position, holding a rank 2 core to my chest as I start to cultivate. The core feels grainy to the touch because it’s been mostly exhausted. I feel the euphoric energy enter me as increases my mana at a much faster rate than regular cultivation. Suddenly my mana seems to hit a natural barrier as it stops increasing, I excitedly say, “Leonore! I’ve reached my natural barrier!”

She smiles in earnest, congratulating, “That’s great, do you have a rank 2 internal runic structure?”

I shake my head, replying darkly, “No, I don’t.”

Leonore thinks for a moment before suggesting, “Maybe you should give those earlier runes we recorded a look, I’m fairly certain they are internal runes.”

I suppose it’s worth a try, I haven’t learnt about how internal runes are created so the problem is, how do I know if the runes are internal or not. I suppose while I was copying down the runes I didn’t recognise any of the mini runes that make them up, if it were an external rune I’m sure I would’ve recognised at least one of the runes. I dig out my notebook and look at the runes, I compare them to my own internal rune. After a few hours I find that there are a few similar mini runes.

So, the recorded rune have no similarities to the external runes I know, and a few small similarities to my own internal rune. Therefore, I’m convinced that the recorded runes are indeed internal. Now the issue is to figure out the rank of the runes. I’m sure the language that I recorded down would give me an insight, but I obviously can’t read it.

After learning about runes at the academy, I have come to notice a peculiar quirk with my internal rune. All external runes I’ve learnt at the academy are all closed, as in all the mini runes join together with no spare joints. My internal rune on the other hand has extraneous runes that don’t connect to any other runes, it makes my internal rune seem incomplete. Maybe that’s where I connect my next internal rune. I compare the three runes I recorded down and look for which would connect to my current internal rune, and indeed two of them fail to connect but one of them would fit perfectly, so that one is likely the rank 2 rune as it builds of my rank 1 rune. Regardless, it can’t hurt to practice it even if it doesn’t turn out to be a rank 2 rune.

I expertly step among the monsters as they jump in and out of the shadows, three monsters, I can’t afford to miss lest I deplete my mana. I confidently fire off missiles at a certain monster as I dodge past the monsters, easily hitting the beast. I hear the intense striking of lightning in the distance; the cave occasionally flashing with light.

After a short while, One of my missiles finally pierces the head of the weakened monster that I focused on, lessening my burden. I dodge through the attacks, getting dangerously close to being hit but still remaining fine as I bombard the monster with missiles, much like the first monster, the next two fall, their bodies severely scorched and smoking. Leonore seems to have just completed her fight to as she confidently gestures toward herself, enthusiastically saying, “Haha, look at us, fighting rank 3 monsters each like child’s play, when we leave, we’ll be powerful battlemages!”

I faux yawn comedically, agreeing, “Hah, indeed these battles are getting old, these dumb beasts are simply too weak, where’s the challenge?”

We continue our agonising traversal of the cave system for who knows how long, my memory begins to blur from the constant battles. Fighting monsters way too strong for us, eating raw meat and working on my new rune. This rune is far more complex than the rank 1 rune, so I hope the ability is worthwhile. Leonore maxed out her mana too and has her own rank 2 internal rune from her family, so she’s been practicing that. As Leonore harvests the core of a monster we just killed, I notice that her hair has become discoloured, it’s darker, less blond. Now that I think about it, I get close to her, and look at her eyes, they’ve lost colour too, I’m sure they used to be aqua blue, now they’ve darkened and become closer to sapphire. She looks up and smiles creepily, ignoring that I comment on her appearance, “Leonore, I’m not sure, but I think your hair and eyes have lost colour.”

Her expression grows serious as she frowns, stopping what she’s doing to intently study my eyes before she looks at her nails, oh they’ve blackened a little too. Leonore’s breathing speeds up before she anxiously explains, “Corruption, holy shit! We’re being exposed to corruption, no wonder our cultivation has been increasing so quickly. It’s the monster cores, it has to be.”

“…Corruption? What does it do?” I ask as I look at my own nails, they’ve blackened. Leonore starts glancing around everywhere as she explains, “I don’t know the specifics, all I know is it messes with living beings, making them crazier. We’re going to go fucking crazy Agnes!”

Crazy? That actually makes sense, I haven’t noticed any differences with myself, but Leonore has definitely been affected, like right now, she’s pacing around like a lunatic; she’s going bloody hysteric! I repeat my thoughts aloud, “Going crazy, I think you’re already there, I’m certainly fine, maybe it’s my high will, but you’re affected by the corruption for sure; like look at yourself.”

Her eyes widen comically before she adamantly shakes her head saying, “I’m completely fine, you’re the one who’s going crazy, I can tell; you’ve definitely been getting weirder.”

A few shrieks echo out, so I complain, “Oh great, look what you did, you attracted more of them!”

A monster jumps at Leonore, she moves two meters in an instant, her body covered in lightning as she replies angrily, “You were loud too!”

I dive to the side and fire off a few missiles, but then another monster I wasn’t aware of dashes from the side and scrapes across my back, pushing me through the air and landing face first onto the wall, it’d be funny if the situation wasn’t so serious, I chuckle anyway. I feel a rather painful wound on my back, pain honestly doesn’t affect me anymore, Leonore shouts at me “Stop getting distracted, you always do that.”

My awareness returns as I escape my dazed state, a monster is already nearing me, I dodge to the side causing it to crash into the wall, allowing me to land a few good hits on the neck and lower back; their weak points. It howls, but I’ve already jumped back as the second monster attacks my previous spot, a bolt of lightning fires out, finishing off the first monster. I dodge the second monster a few times before Leonore jumps in with a shock spell, easily tapping it even though it is still furiously jumping around the room, without hesitation we both focus fire on the shocked monster, already practiced in our methods.

“Our spells” I remark as I dust off my clothes, explaining, “The corruption has also made our spells stronger; I’ve been wondering why they seem to do more damage.”

“Indeed, it’s quite likely, but the downsides are not worth the power, otherwise every mage would get themselves corrupted.” She says before walking over to me a pushing me into a sitting expression, ordering, “Now sit down so I can tend your wound, you’re so reckless.”

“You’re just as reckless as me, don’t even deny that.”

We continue forward for who knows how long, finally coming across a change in scenery. We find a manmade stone structure inbuilt into the cave, Leonore’s excitement overwriting her sense for caution as she runs over to the building while smiling stupidly, saying, “We made, oh my, we finally made it, I felt like I was going mad!”

“I think we’re already mad… But I suppose we’re alive at least.” I remark humourlessly. We open the metal door to enter the building. Inside a lab of sorts presents itself, what is made immediately apparent is a tube of glass filled with this murky black liquid as a vague body floats inside. Moreover, there is a table with half-filled beakers lining it, along with expired alchemical ingredients stored in clear containers. There is also a small bookshelf against the wall. Apart from that there is a line of stairs to the next floor, potentially our exit?

We both walk up to the floating body, Leonore touches the glass as she asks, “What do you think?”

I mull over it for a moment, the murky black liquid looks to be squirming around, like it’s alive. I suggest, “Maybe this black liquid is corruption; human experimentation?”

She nods, “Yeah, seems quite likely, the mages of this place could have even created those monsters outside; I’ve never seen anything like them.”

I shrug, “It’s all speculation in the end, and even if we’re right we don’t get a reward or anything, unless you can count the satisfaction of being right as a reward then…”

She interrupts me, angrily snapping at me, “Ok shut up Agnes, you’re just getting annoying now, how does Aurelie live with you!?”

She starts walking over to the ingredients as she says, “You scour the bookshelf, I’ll check to see if any of the ingredients are still usable.”

Happily obliging, I walk over to the bookshelf, looking through a book I immediately face the issue of not understanding the language, I’m going to remedy that issue when I leave.

I browse through the books, I would be able to identify a mathematics textbook or a spell book if I saw one, so I look for any of those. However, unsurprisingly all the books seem to be related to alchemy, something I have absolutely zero interest in, so I decide to nick a few valuable looking books and call it a day.

“I found nothing; you find anything?” Leonore asks as she raises from meditative position, clearly done searching the ingredients, I reply, “Only a bunch of alchemy books, help carry a few, I picked out the ones I think are valuable.”

Packing the books into her bag we move on to the next floor. Another bookshelf reveals itself, along with a simple bed, an intricate wooden wardrobe and a desk with some parchments and an inkwell. I decide to check the wardrobe, opening it up there are a few sets of robes. Leonore walks in beside me before looking down at her wrecked apparel, commenting, “Hm, these are enchanted, and we both need a change of clothes.”

They looked to be made for a full grown male, so I remark, “Aren’t they a bit large.”

“Don’t you know, the more powerful a mage, the more eccentric they are, oversized robes are a fashion statement!” She explains very seriously as she starts taking down the robes from their hangers. She looks at them very closely, indeed there are small systems on them if you look close enough, they don’t look like runes so I can only assume they’re enchantments, Leonore suddenly shakes her head, “Yeah I have no idea what these enchantments do, they’re incredibly ancient, their technique is probably completely different to what we employ today, just pick the one that looks the prettiest.”

Pretty is not the word I’d use to describe them; they look incredibly out there with interesting patterns and vibrant colours. I pick out the most appealing robe, a large royal purple robe with interesting symbols that line the hems of the robe, along with wide sleeves. Disrobing the wrecked rags of my old academy robes, I don the enchanted robe; it drags at my feet but oddly doesn’t impend movement. The material is thick yet comfortable to the point that I can’t even feel it; I like it. I look at Leonore who is happily prancing around in her vibrant pink robe, it seems to have an ethereal quality to it as it makes her look like a fairy. We’re still filthy with dirt and grim covering our bodies, so while the robes certainly look imperious, it doesn’t hide our wretched look.

Tying the other robes to our knapsacks, we continue our search for treasure, and what better treasure is there for a mage than knowledge. Holding out more hope for this bookshelf I search through it. I find two spell books with incredibly complex spells, I also find 4 mathematical textbooks, these 6 books take precedence over alchemy, so I swap them out, having 2 alchemy books, and my 6 new books. Feeling gleeful I nod to myself in satisfaction before saying while I turn around, “Right, I’ve got everything I think it’s time to…”

Leonore is blissfully asleep on the bed, clearly exhausted. Her fast looks strained as her eyes seems abnormally active. Poor girl, she’s still only a kid yet stuck in this situation. I awkwardly slip into the bed with her, with my face at her feet to be polite of course.