Chapter 603 - The oldest view

Sofia shared her findings with Alith, who seemed a lot less worried about the entire thing than Sofia was.

The short woman shrugged, “I’m already from a different world anyway, what’s one more? I do find the lack of faces disturbing, though.”

Sofia looked very hard at Pareth’s face, trying to discern any kind of facial feature, but it was impossible to see more than a skin-colored blur. “Orator looks like this too,” she told Alith, “you get used to it.”

“Oh, you did say he looked like that… Think this place is related to him, then?”

“Perhaps… I would have preferred it if I got Aphenoreth’s skill, because Orator’s isn’t going to be usable until I kill scripture…”

“Hmm… I wonder if there’s a chance I could be able to use it? I no longer have the essence but my mana heart was made with it, so maybe?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it, but it’s not impossible. Either way, you, Pareth, Saria and Shaily are all also ‘marked ones’, so it wouldn’t surprise me if you started also getting Deep quests and stuff. No reason why I would be the only one.”

Alith nodded, “You and Shaily are the only ones with a direct blessing but yeah, I’ve kind of been expecting the Orator to show up again after my trial, honestly. I’ve even started leveling [Shenanigans] just in case you’re right and it’s really what’s been protecting you and Saria from his presence. I’d rather not die like that again.”

“He wasn’t super clear about it,” Sofia explained, “But then again he’s rarely very clear about anything. I’m relatively sure it is what he meant, though. I have more doubts about your ability to raise shenanigans, considering how upfront you tend to be about everything.”

“It’s level 12,” Alith said with a shrug, “Slow, but I'm getting there. The effect is quite nice actually, had to give up my level 100 [Botany] to take it, but I’m used to the plants of this world enough now that it barely matters. Speaking of, I’m dying to explore more! So many unknown plants here, it’s exciting!”

“Well… Now that we know about the light, the question is, do we explore with or without the light, the fruit doesn’t look like it got any dimmer so far,” Sofia said, observing the strange fruit Bookie was currently in charge of.

“Considering what we know, it’d probably be safer to do both? I wonder what the deep monsters look like in the light world.”

“I don’t think we should spread out though, and haphazardly covering the fruit isn’t ideal. Hmm…”

Sofia took the fruit from Bookie, returned to the ‘regular dark’ world and got Pareth to lend her one of his bones, which rapidly regrew thanks to the [Bone dominus] passive healing. She reshaped the bone into a handheld lamp, and placed the fruit inside.

“Oh, it’s the lightstone lamps from Exidia,” Alith immediately recognized.

Sofia flicked a small protruding lever on the side of the lamp and bone shutters obscured the fruit from view, the world around the group shifting almost instantly. “Like this we can switch at will. We can make more lamps if we find more fruits,” she said, handing the lamp to Bookie.

With things mostly figured out, they started exploring the tunnel again, now constantly switching between the light and dark world.

A few turns later, they found a second, slightly smaller fruit, and made it into a lamp for Alith. The fruits were, so far, the only thing other than the Deep glove and bell which remained the exact same in both worlds, as even the bone lamps took on a completely different look of finely sculpted wood in the light world.

Alith recognized about half of the light world’s flowers and plants with the other half being completely unknown ones, and without a system connection to identify them, she could only collect withered samples to analyze later. Beyond that, there was not much else of interest to be found in the tunnel, and the group was stopped by a completely collapsed section.

“Time to go back to the surface,” Alith said, seeing the collapsed tunnel in the distance.

“We could probably clear that up without too much effort,” Sofia analyzed, “but I’m not sure that’s worth doing. Probably more of the same on the other side, assuming it’s not the entire rest of the tunnel that caved-in.”

Without warning, Bookie flicked his lamp open. As the fruit illuminated the tunnel once more, the blockage was no more. “It’s not collapsed here!” he happily pointed out, running forward, only to get grabbed by the collar by Sofia.

“Nice find, but wait. This could be dangerous. What do you think will happen if the fruit stops shining and you reappear in this world while crossing the collapsed section?” she sternly asked Bookie.

“Oh… I don’t want to become a wall…” Bookie answered dejectedly.

“Right. So let’s at least turn on both lamps before we go,” Alith continued with a smile.

“So much for being careful. If we do that then we can’t turn the lamps off anymore until we’re sure we’re not in a collapsed section…”

Alith nodded, turning her lamp on, “Then let’s just stay in the light world while we’re in this tunnel. It’s a lot less drab like this anyway.” 

The group therefore walked the tunnels exclusively in the colorful world illuminated by the light of the deep, until they started feeling something new, wind.

Following the wind, it wasn’t long before they found more strange things, first, they started to hear the sound of flowing water in the distance, then thin rays of sunlight started piercing through the tunnel of vines. Finally, they found an exit.

The tunnel ended in a wide open, rounded stone gate. They were outside. 

Gentle sunlight caressed their skin, but it did not activate Bookie’s blessing nor Sofia’s Sunlight mana regeneration. In front of them sprawled a calm and sparse green forest with short grass under a bright blue sky. Strange colorful small animals grazed peacefully, and invisible birds chirped from the treetops, accompanied by a fresh breeze. Lastly, a giant glowing obelisk in the distance bathed this entire reality in a constant flood of shimmering light.

“Just what… I don’t even understand what is real anymore…” Sofia said, flabbergasted by the view.

“Sofia…” Alith said, tapping her on the arm and pointing at a specific large tree far on the right, “Look at this tree… It has a spile … Someone’s been collecting sap.”

“Surely not… This must be a part of the light world’s random additions like turning the bone lamps into wood, right? Or… Are we supposed to believe someone’s been living here ever since the lost epoch?”

“Maybe it’s someone like us who decided to stay and live here?” Bookie suggested.

“That sounds a lot more realistic,” Alith agreed.

“I guess it does? Now all I wonder is what can this place possibly look like in the real world?” Sofia asked, “this sky,” she whispered, shielding her eyes as she looked up. “It… it can’t be real, can it?” But the breeze on her face and the soft sunlight on her skin said otherwise. She turned to Alith, as if hoping for reassurance. “Are we even underground anymore?”

“Well, you’re probably gonna have to smash that big glowing rock if you want to find out,” Alith said, looking at the part of the obelisk visible over the treetops that stretched far up into the sky.

Bookie seemed to dislike the idea. “I don’t think the person collecting tree juice would be very happy if we did that…”

“Assuming there’s anyone. Could be that the light world was just created with pre-tapped trees,” Alith said half-jokingly.

“Let me have a look,” Sofia said, grabbing the vision token she had made earlier and lightly throwing it some fifty meters into the sky. Her vision spun like the token did, but she was already at a level where this was nothing, she quickly got a feel for the lay of the land. They were currently halfway up a hill, and the obelisk in the distance was built at the bottom, in a valley. It was surrounded by a village.

Sofia caught the token as it fell back down, and slotted it back into her armor. “I saw people,” she told the others. “There’s an entire village down there. Around fifty houses, I’d say. Fields, mills, smoking chimneys, it’s like the Skyreach countryside but with a huge obelisk in the middle…”

“I don’t know how to feel about this,” Alith reacted, “we might not be welcome there, we had to break a door to get in, after all, but well… Better than phageid.”

Hopefully.