Chapter 180

Chapter 180

Matt looked around and cursed as Liz washed up on shore, sputtering.

They had finished the first sublevel of the second floor on Minkalla, and when they found themselves on a vast beach, they figured they just needed to head further inland to find an exit.

However, they quickly figured out that they were on an island and a small one at that. To make matters worse, wading into the water only resulted in being transported back to shore. If they were going to progress, swimming wasnt an option.

Minkalla also deemed it fit to block flying away from the island in all its various forms, through both equipment and Concept based means.

Liz had even tried flying with her blood by spending Genesis Energy to empower the spell, but it had worked for only a few seconds. They got their hopes up, but were quickly disappointed once the spell failed and she was dumped into the water. Once fully submerged, she had been teleported back to the shallows.

Cursing, Liz sat down and pulled off her now waterlogged boots, asking, How far did I make it? It felt pretty far, but I was having to fight the restrictions of Minkalla to do so.

Matt broke that hope. About fifty feet.

That's it?! Fuck me sideways. It felt like at least a dozen times farther than that.

Matt had to hold back a smirk at that comment while Liz stood back up and glared at the gentle waves crashing on the sand. So we're trapped? I don't believe that... There's always a way out.

Susanne came back down the beach from the forested part of the island with the trunk of a tree dragging behind her.

Matt explained, When we saw you struggling, we decided to split up. Aster went to go hunt some of the rabbit things for us, and Susanne had an idea about this ruin's test.

Susanne nodded to Liz as she stopped next to the soaking wet woman with the log in tow. When we saw you struggle to fly, we knew something was up. We got dropped on a small island with no monsters besides some rabbits, and we can't swim out? She shrugged with one arm and continued, Either this is a wave scenario where we'll get attacked every night, or we need to make a ship to leave with what we have.

Matt added his own conjecture. So, we need to test with a log of wood. Would you mind doing the honors?

Liz looked from the log to the two of them before asking, Why me?

Susanne grinned, Youre already wet.

Liz tisked but took the trunk of the tree and dragged it to the waters edge before shoving it in.

With an easy jump, she landed on the surface and took a few steps to counteract the rolling of the log.

As she bobbed in the water, she turned to them and shrugged, I can't really move like this without spending Genesis Energy and I'd rather not.

Matt nodded and cut a thicker branch to give her a makeshift paddle.

Taking it, Liz paddled her way out thirty feet, then fifty. Once she reached one hundred feet out, a large wave crested above her and crashed down, knocking her off the log.

A second later, she appeared back at the shoreline, soaked even more than before. Ok, so we need to make a raft or something. Matt, can you drop the house so I can shower and change?

Matt did so and then turned to Susanne. You don't happen to be a ship building expert?

She looked at him with a flat expression and offered, I can chop trees down, but thats about it. You're the crafter.

Matt shrugged helplessly. I never thought boat building would be a skill that Id need to acquire. How hard can it be to build a boat? As he started thinking through the logistics required to build a proper boat, he changed his question. How hard can it be to build a raft?

Not willing to spend his Genesis Energy on his AI, and with the others AIs not trained on crafting, Matt started planning the old fashioned way. We need similarly sized logs and some rope. We have a few spools of various ropes in storage, so that's easy.

Susanne nodded to him but said nothing, turning to the forest. Together they picked out half a dozen trees, then cut and sized them. It was meant to be a rough test, so they quickly tied the logs together to give themselves a square-ish platform they could stand upon before cutting a smaller log into something that resembled a paddle.

Matt volunteered for the newest test, but stripped down first. They were seemingly teleported to the shore when they fell into the water, so getting too far away wasn't an issue. Besides, he had [Cracked Phantom Armor] at the ready if something attacked him.

While they had spent a good bit of their Genesis Energy fighting the various monsters that were strong enough to require spells to defeat, they were still far ahead of their set goal for their current position, so they had some wiggle room.

By combining two of their Genesis Energies as a test, they had seen that they were individually close to reaching the amount needed to get the exit reward. Considering that most delvers didnt reach that level until they were leaving the second sublevel out of the three that comprised each floor, they knew they were doing well.

Matt pushed out the raft, then jumped onto the logs and winced at the noticeable dip that his weight caused. Their bracing stick had broken when he landed on the log.

It was only the first test, but their construction skills needed some work.

Still, Matt was able to paddle out to the one hundred foot mark without issue. He did notice that as he neared the place where Liz fell, a larger than normal wave was building, timed just right to hit him at nearly the same spot.

With a better raft, he was able to crest the wave, only getting splashed from the impact, which was fine. One needed to actually fall into the water to be reset to shore.

Paddling through it, Matt was able to travel another hundred feet out, where an even larger wave smashed into his raft.

It nearly sent him tumbling off, but he was light on his feet and kept his balance long enough to crest the top of the swell.

A second wave at a one hundred foot interval could have been a coincidence, but the third at the three hundred proved a pattern, and it sent Matt tumbling into the water as it broke the raft apart.

An instant later, he felt the soft sand of the beach and crawled out.

Liz was there and offered him a hand up. Well, that's telling.

Susanne let out a sigh. So it's a raft building test? I hope the tests dont keep coming that fast, or it doesnt keep scaling that hard. If so, we'll be dealing with mile-high waves before we're a mile out.

Matt turned back around and spoke as he thought. No, something else is wrong. That was Tier 14 synthetic rope, and had a weight capacity of five tons. Theres no way that wave could have snapped it. We even triple-wrapped the logs. Its resistant to cutting and fraying. No way it broke from a wave that small. I think the ruin is cheating somehow.

Liz chewed her lip and pulled out a length of the cord, and dipped it into the sea.

After pulling it out, she found it weak and easily damaged.

The water didnt affect their weapons and armor, which they were quick to check, which meant the ruin was forcing them to play by its own rules.

Not knowing what to do, they decided to take a break as the sun was starting to set. Liz, with her AI not requiring her to spend Genesis Energy since it was a mana reserve type, sent Aster a message to return before the artificial sun had set. Susanne wasnt wrong. A wave-type challenge wasn't unheard of in Minkalla, and they usually corresponded with the night.

While floor themes were well documented and understood, the actual ruins that made up the floors were always random, and changed unpredictably. They were theorized to be finite, but they were far from all documented, let alone predictable. One ruin could be seen a dozen times in a row, and then vanish for multiple cycles.

Aster scampered back with a half dozen rabbits, and Matt cooked them up for everyone. They were simple, Tier 0 beasts, but they served as a constant source of food, which helped justify both the build a raft challenge and the fight-off waves theory.

That night, nothing attacked despite them keeping a watch and having the shields running at full power, dismissing their fears about the possibility of a monster wave challenge.

As Matt cooked everyone a rabbit and egg breakfast, he asked, So what's our plan?

Liz, who was tapping on a pad they had lying around, hmmed. Im trying to find anything about shipbuilding, but our records are severely lacking in this department.

Sadly, the pad she was using was the only thing they had that ran on mana and also had their information stored on it. It was packed full of useful Minkalla information for a situation like this, or any of the other floors where their AI wouldnt work properly. Sadly there was nothing on shipbuilding.

Matt shook his head. While Luna hadnt taught them about shipbuilding in particular, she had prepared them, and they had massive repositories of information downloaded thanks to her guidance.

Have you checked our backup drives? Maybe it's on one of them? He was hoping it was just a case of bad data management, but suspected that they werent so lucky.

Susanne shook her head as she looked up from her own pad. Dont bother. I had a video documentary series about a group of Tier 2s who needed to survive in various places. In one of them, they were dropped on an abandoned island. In that episode, they built a raft to escape, and it's gone. Or at least blocked. Minkalla clearly doesn't want us cheating.

She used her fingers to air quote the last word.

Matt tried to plumb his memory, but found nothing there about boats. He grew up near the coast and knew fishermen, but had never been on a boat more than a handful of times. Even then, they were modern constructs with mana engines and the like. They surely weren't wooden constructs cobbled together out of trees.

Liz tossed the pad to the side. Let's explore the island really thoroughly today. We can dedicate one full day to that before moving on. Id feel really stupid if we hit the edge of the ruin just to find out that we were meant to dig six inches down to find a trap door to the exit.

After their breakfast, Matt cast [Earth Manipulation] but found that the entire island was outside of his control. Even the sand under his feet resisted its own elemental manipulation skill.

With that discovery and wasted Genesis Energy, they split off into twos. Matt went with Aster while Liz and Susanne explored in the opposite direction.

Matt and Aster started by walking around the edge of the forest, keeping their spiritual perception on the beach around them as they walked. Any time they found something even slightly off, they stopped and dug it up.

None of what they found was useful in the way of getting them off the island, but it was mildly interesting. They found everything from chunks of refined iron to processed daggers, and even a few unenchanted pieces of jewelry.

Either Minkalla planted that stuff as false leads, or it hadn't been cleaned up from the last people to land on this island.

From what Matt understood, it shouldnt be the latter. Minkalla completely expelled and recycled everything the people who entered its depths left behind.

If that was true then why would random seeming junk be the exception?

When they reached the others, they compared what they found, which honestly seemed like an eccentric collection from a lost and found box.

The monsters were coming, after all.

He tried to put it into his spatial ring now that he freed it, but like Liz said, it wasnt that convenient. In the end, it took the combined effort of himself and Liz- who enhanced her strength with her Concept and blood alchemy- to get it back before they were encircled by the frommen.

Even then, it was just barely within their combined strength to carry it without using any Genesis Energy. Almost suspiciously so, if he were being honest. He hadnt exhausted himself so much in decades, [Endurance] always more than able to relieve his sore muscles after each exercise, but nothing had ever felt so impossibly heavy while remaining just inside the possibility of carrying.

Once back to their little camp, they had to fight through a mass of frogmen that were trying to use their very bodies as a way to overwhelm Susanne.

Liz was forced to cast [Blood Sprites] to clear them a path. Thankfully, while the skill had a high initial cost, even in Genesis Energy, it was self-replicating with the surrounding blood, and quickly started to expand exponentially and swarm the monsters.

As the bloody birds flew over the water and started to attack the frogmen that stepped out of the water, their numbers started to dwindle.

They needed fresh blood to spawn more of themselves, and had a short lifespan without a constant influx. While the tide of frogmen was overwhelming, it couldnt keep up with the constantly-growing swarm of birds.

Susanne looked to the chest balanced between Matt and Lizs shoulders and pointed at it with her chin, not saying anything directly.

As Matt brought it into the shelter, Liz explained it to both Susanne and Aster.

Matt replaced Susanne now that the numbers of frogmen had been thinned to an easily manageable number, but was forced to dip into [Endurance] and [Lesser Regeneration] for a few seconds to keep himself from collapsing on the ground.

After hearing the story, Susanne agreed with their decision to keep the treasure chest.

If it was as the woman said, and they would get rewards beyond their imagination, it was worth beating the test. Or at least attempting it.

They only had to open the treasure to be transported out after all. Or, that was their speculation.

As the sun was about to rise, the frogmen stopped appearing, giving them a much-needed break. They all took an hour nap before focusing all their efforts on building a ship that could take them across the waves.

The next two days repeated in the same way.

During the daylight hours, they gathered materials from the forest and built what they could of the ship, while at night, Matt and Susanne fought off the seemingly endless waves of monsters. Even when Liz used [Blood Sprites] to give them breathing room, the monsters stayed hiding under the waves, meaning that while it would kill off everything on the beach, theyd have to deal with a massive wave of the monsters as soon as the last sparrow was gone.

Thankfully they never grew stronger or changed their tactics in any way, so they only needed to continuously cut them down. That said, there were always enough to almost overwhelm them, and as they got better at fighting the monsters their numbers increased with every passing night. Minkalla seemed intent to slowly up the pressure until they broke or left.

Matts day job was mainly enchanting. What they didnt know about shipbuilding they made up for with magic. While his talismans were locked, he could still power normal enchantments with mana without a problem, so he could freely go overboard metaphorically speaking.

With Tier 14 trees being excellent enchanting material, having previously been alive, Matt was able to double, then triple up on the durability and repair runes. Liz even managed to find plants on the island that she could use to brew strengthening and lightening treatments for the wood.

The hard part was ensuring that the entire vessel was considered one item, and fed through a central point by the rudder where he would stand. Matt had never made an enchantment this large before, and he had to waste Genesis Energy a few times to check his work and ensure that he was correct in his rune placement and pairing.

For all that his AI was a powerhouse, it had never needed to work on a limited budget before, and that cost him as he had it work out the complicated equations.

It was on the third morning of construction when, after they napped, they pushed their catamaran off into the ocean.

At nearly sixty feet long, the boat was large, with its two canoe hulls spanned by a large set of planks and a small house.

The original design was half as big, but the damn treasure chest was too heavy, despite its small size. When they realized that, they were forced to expand the boat and create special reinforcements just to carry the weight properly without risking the boat collapsing with a bad swell.

None of them were experts, which was why they cheated and over-built so shamelessly. They did not want to have to do this a second time.

As they passed the first couple crests that tried to capsize the boat, they raised the sail they made and activated the wind enchantment.

It blew directly into the sail, which meant that they didnt have to worry about the direction or tacking in the wind. Which was a good thing. They knew it was something that could be done, but they had no idea how to actually pull off.

Thankfully, the enchantment didnt require any Genesis Energy, only costing mana. And without even his skills to drain his regeneration, he had more than enough. So long as Minkalla didnt change the rules on them again, they were in the clear.

They were an hour out from the island when the treasure chest started to glow.

Untying himself, Matt carefully moved to the treasure chest and found that a compass had popped out from the lid.

It glowed with a golden energy, not unlike Genesis Energy, but different enough that he couldnt interact with it. But Matt only needed to read it to follow the directions.

Like the chest itself, he was unable to store it, so he tied a bit of string through the clasp and made his way back to the others, where they had tied themselves to the deck.

We have our heading, Matt called out as he adjusted the way the wind was blowing until they were following the glowing needle.

As they traversed the water, the swells grew larger and larger. Thankfully, getting wet wasn't enough to send them back to the island, and their boat was well constructed. Or at least, constructed well enough.

They were cresting a small one-hundred-foot swell when they got a glimpse of the storm they were sailing directly into.

The clouds roiled black thunder and sent out bolts of purple lightning.

Seeing that, Matt whipped the water from his face and asked, Anyone fancy turning around?

Aster was the first to answer, Please. My fur is wet and salty. I'm sure if we ask nicely, the frogmen will serve us margaritas and ice cream.

Susanne laughed, We made it this far. No turning back now. Full power ahead! The boat is solid and we have no time to waste.

Liz sighed, I'm with Aster on the hair thing, but no. We made it this far. Worst comes to worst, we end up back on the beach.

Matt increased the power of the wind enchantment and followed the needle on the compass.

We might end up back on the beach again, but this is exhilarating! Matt called out.

This would be a battle between nature and their crafting skills. His enchanting skills, Lizs alchemy, and Aster and Susannes hard work all being put to a final test.

As they approached the storm, the waves grew more unpredictable and violent, but their boat persevered valiantly.

When they crossed the border of the storm, a wave of water crashed down on them so hard it actually hurt when it hit his skin. If theyd been Tier 10 or lower, it probably would have broken bones. Liz and Aster actually did need healing, with hairline fractures along their bones and a massive bruise spreading across each of their bodies, but a pair of Genesis Energy-empowered [Ranged Heal]'s fixed them up nicely.

Still, Matt stood where he was tied in by the rudder and laughed as they crested the top of a wave, and gravity seemed to give out on his stomach for a second.

As they crashed down, he felt the boat creak, and the draw on the durability and repair runes increased.

He didnt lower the mast or slow them down.

They had mana to spare, and were so close to their goal.

The compass in his hand was warm, and grew hotter the further they progressed.

He knew that as long as they made it through, they would be fine.

It took six hours of being beaten by the winds and a few million mana given to the built in enchantments, but out of nowhere, they left the roaring waves and entered an area of calm sea and winds.

Looking up and the sun shining down on them, Matt let out a laugh of relief. The others weren't at the helm, where he was feeding the enchantments, and so didnt have his feedback from the boat.

He was pretty sure that his whispered pleas were the only thing holding the boat together.

As they sailed deeper in the eye of the storm, Matt followed the compass to the center.

At first, it appeared as if nothing was there, but as he had the catamaran circle the point the compass pointed to, they began to see it.

Mist started to rise up out of the water, and with it, an island. At first, it looked small, but it grew larger and larger until a mountain touched the clouds of the storm overhead.

Not needing to check the now blazing compass, Matt pushed the handle and directed them to a rocky shore.

As soon as their boat touched the beach, they started to sink.

Not just them or the boat, but the entire island itself started to fall into the water. They and a few hundred feet of the surrounding water stayed at the same level, but they quickly found themselves in an underwater bubble as the water rose to encase them.

Now, it was time to find out what that captain had said was hidden.

The four of them untied themselves and moved over to the chest that was now glowing with Genesis Energy ready to open it up. Before they could do more than take a step forward, they all turned as they felt a presence rapidly approaching from further along the beach.

They hadnt been there more than a dozen seconds before being attacked.

Nothing unique for Minkalla.