74 - Book 2: Chapter 11: A Path Through Stone

74 - Book 2: Chapter 11: A Path Through Stone

Misa was, compared to Sev, having a far more interesting day.

The first thing she'd done was use her Anchor skill to call a copy of her mother and two of the guards over, ones that specialized more in tracking and hunting than necessarily in guarding the town. She gave them a chance to acclimate themselves to the strangeness of having two bodies while she spoke with her mother, who was having no such problems.

They were still in the privacy of the inn, anyway, so the two guards could bump into the walls all they wanted.

Though it was pretty funny.

"This place is strange," Charise said, her brows furrowing slightly. She ran her fingers over the wood of the walls. She frowned, glanced at Misa, and took a step away from her then tapped on the wood again, her expression contemplative. "It doesn't feel entirely here, but it's more solid in some places than others."

"The fuck does that mean?" Misa asked, earning a scowl from her mother, and she raised her hands in surrender. "I'm just worried!"

"I am too," Charise admitted. "But I don't think it's bad. It just feels... different. It's hard to say until we know a little more about what's going on."

No answers yet, then. Misa was forced to accept that with a nod, though it was a little tense. For all that there wasn't much they could do with that information, a part of her still worried...

But no. She was going to trust that the others could take care of themselves, and focus on her own task.

Which was tracking down the goblin raiders.

"Are you guys set up?" she asked, glancing at Volaro and Juni the two guards her mother had brought with her. Juni was a half-orc woman like herself, and was grinning at her as she bounced up and down on her feet; Volaro, on the other hand, was a surly-looking older man who mostly seemed eager to get this over with.

"This is so cool," Juni said. "Can we do this more often?"

"Any idea where we should start?" Volaro asked politely, pointedly ignoring Juni's question.

"I don't actually know," Misa said. Sev hadn't been able to find out, either, though she'd been periodically messaging him so far his interviews hadn't yielded much information. No one had actually seen the goblin raiders coming and going from any particular direction.

"Then we'll have to circle the town instead," Volaro said, letting out what sounded suspiciously like a long-suffering sigh. "If we're lucky, we'll find something the goblins left behind. We have some skills that will help, but they might not be enough, depending on how long ago this was."

Misa raised an eyebrow, interested. "What kind of skills?"

Volaro gave her a look. "I know your reputation. Not today, Misa."

Her mother smirked at her, and Misa did her best to scowl in response though she couldn't help the slight grin that edged on the side of her face.

Surprisingly, it didn't take them too long to find something, once they got out of the inn. They'd barely walked out of town when Volaro stopped, frowning.

"Something's pinging my skills," he said, hesitant.

"Already?" Charise glanced sharply at him.

"It's not usually this good." Volaro frowned slightly, glancing into the air like he was staring at his status screen. "[Tracking Instinct] is supposed to just accelerate the process of me spotting things I would normally spot. This is the first time I'm getting a direction."

"I mean, that doesn't sound like a bad thing," Juni said brightly.

"It's different." Volaro folded his arms. "And different can be dangerous."

Misa froze, narrowing her eyes slightly. "Hostile?"

"No," Juni said, but she hesitated for a second, sniffing the air. "I don't think so. It feels like spatial magic. It's... spatial compression? I'm pretty sure it's some variant of spatial compression."

"Hang on," Misa said. "Are you smelling the magic?"

Juni grinned. "It's a skill. [A Nose For Magic]. Managed to learn it using some tips from Volaro. Pretty cool, right?"

"I didn't even know that was a thing you could do." Misa paused. "I don't even know if Vex knows that that's a thing you can do."

"It's a common skill in that it's technically easy to get it, but not a lot of people actually get it," Juni said. "Skill rarities are weird! But it's pretty useful if you're a tracker and you don't have [Mana Sight], like me."

"You'll have to teach me sometime," Misa said, and she meant it. Having a new skill could only help expand her repertoire, and the fact that it was a different way of detecting magic might mean she could cover for things that Vex didn't spot

"You might not want to learn it," Juni said, and this time she looked embarrassed. "If there's any strong magic around it's usually impossible to stop sneezing."

Oh.

That made things a lot more awkward, didn't it?

"Anyway, let's keep going," Juni said, quickly getting over her own embarrassment. "We're not too far now, I don't think. The magic smells stronger ahead."

Misa, of course, couldn't smell any such magic but both Volaro and Charise seemed to agree, even though nothing about the passage had visibly changed. Misa put herself on guard, literally; [Guard Stance] flickered into activity as they ventured carefully into the depths of the tunnel.

And then they hit a dead end.

Except it wasn't a dead end, of course. Juni reached out to tap it, and it crumbled away just like exit did; this time, when it crumbled away, Juni hissed and pulled back, because the light from the tunnel was spilling into a massive underground cavern in a way that was really quite obvious

But no one seemed to notice them. Obvious as it was, the tunnel they were in was just one light amongst many and there were many other entrances that all spilled into this enormous cavern dug deep into the middle of the earth. Below them, small enough to look almost like the specks of stars, glittered the lights of a bustling city.

Almost a kingdom.

"What the hell is this?" Misa said quietly. Her voice echoed, though thankfully it didn't travel too far before it was just lost in the general noise.

There were buildings down there. Buildings of stone, lit with the light of everbright torches and some more sophisticated looking mana lamps. Small figures ran around below them, and a thin precipice of a path just outside the tunnel led down into the city proper; Misa didn't need to look closer to be able to tell that goblins were far from the only species in this sprawling underground city.

"Perhaps we won't be clearing them out," Volaro said, and Misa gave him a deadpan look.

They were here to scout. Only scout. She wanted to figure out more about what was happening here, but she wanted Sev and Vex and Derivan with her, too; this was too big for them to explore on their own, and her villagers didn't have the levels to back her up. Because there was something else that Misa was noticing about the citizens down below

All of them were monsters. Every single species she saw, she knew the system categorized as a monster.

And yet... not a single one of them had a system label. No level. No species indicator.

Nothing.

[Guys,] Misa sent through the system. [You need to see this.]