Chương 396: Limitless Path Chapter Four Hundred Twenty

The tunnels themselves weren't smooth and unusual as the gash that had been carved into the surface had been, but they were a twisting warren of switchbacks, dead ends, and interconnected segments, leading up as much as down, that made navigation difficult. It wasn't helped by the fact that after the first couple hundred feet they made it in, the place was totally crawling with beasts, and not in any kind of frenzy due to the monsters, just numerous and hostile due to the influence of greater mana underground.

That, and beasts became more annoyed when trapped in the dark, even typical cave-dwelling specimens, meaning every encounter was a mass of flailing limbs and shrieking anger. So much shrieking. Charting a path downward, Blood got the brunt of it, always in the lead and almost always walking into the beasts first. There were times when they came from different directions, including from behind the group, but Sera walked at the back and easily blocked whatever tunnel the were moving down.

There was no chance of her getting overwhelmed or hurt at the back, her defenses far too strong for what they were facing. She did avoid using her flames, however, as she didn't want to suffocate them, her earlier explanation to Beth of how they still needed oxygen to breathe still holding true. The tunnels stretched on and on without end, spiraling deep into the earth, though they thankfully became less complex as they went deeper.

They had spent hours and hours in the upper reaches, getting turned around and having to backtrack to make progress forward. Luckily, Blood had both a keen nose and great sense of direction, and she led them unerringly toward the coordinates Delonne had for the… device, or whatever it was they were looking for. His data only had a rough location, a place deep underground that was supposed to be wherever what the Hegemony did was enacted.

He also didn't manage to get a map, which is why they had to spend so much time blindly blithering around before getting to where they wanted to go. As they moved deeper, the enemies became far tougher, enough that Delonne would have been totally outclassed on his own. With the girls with him, however, he didn't have any trouble, enough so that he could participate and get a chance at a level or two. Rebirth nine put his max at level three hundred and eighty, getting to which would be an impossible dream on Red II.

Impossible unless one went underground, as they were now, which was very dangerous, extremely likely to kill a person or group who tried it, which meant very, very few would ever survive doing it. Impossible was really the best way to describe it. Fighting was constant as they moved, hours and hours of it, and Delonne had to take breaks fairly often. His stats were… not great, including his END, and he got tired more easily when fighting such powerful foes.

The deeper they went, the higher the level of the beasts they encountered, until they were fighting enemies of over level three hundred. Delonne had to mostly bow out at that point, not really able to do too much against anything over level three hundred and twenty. Beth and the girls had to go slower, making the time until they reached their destination even longer, but they weren't in much danger from the fights as long as they focused.

Days had passed, with them taking a rest after about thirty hours, before they finally were closing in on their destination. Beth knew they were getting close when they encountered a room carved into the stone; not their final destination, but someone had clearly taken a small natural cavern and carved it into a place to stay. There were the remnants of the frames of beds, a stone table, and some chairs that were starting to fall apart scattered about.

The place had a musty smell about it, not able to be aired out from hundreds of meters underground, and the wood and remnant of blankets starting to rot didn't really help with the stink.

"A barracks?" asked Sera, but it was pretty obvious.

"Shattering a planet's climate and atmosphere regulation is not quick work," Delonne explained caustically.

"Well, for some," Sera said, getting a raised eyebrow from him.

"Somebody like the Exalted with us could do it in a couple days or less, especially if they were something like an Enchanter and given the time to work on it."

"Not a happy thought," he said.

"Not something they would do, though," Sera said with a shrug.

"What you guys did to your atmosphere was a big waste. Anybody who got to the kind of power that they could do it alone wouldn't do something like that without a very specific goal in mind. I've heard about stranger stuff being done to unoccupied worlds to get some specific results."

"As fascinating as that is, this means we're close, so lets get focused," Beth said, getting the others' attention.

"If we're finding their barracks, the room or rooms where they did the experiment will also be close. We don't know if there's still anyone sent down here to guard, if there are crazy strong beasts in the area, or if the monsters are sniffing around. Let's make sure we're not taken by surprise."

"Right," the others all said, quieting down. Blood led the way forward, through tunnels that hadn't been carved, but there were faint signs they had been used by thinking people years ago. The wolf kept her nose alert, as that would be their best bet in detecting something early. Their vision was rather limited by their lights and the twisting nature of the space, so smelling or hearing would let them know about dangers well before they saw them.

The wolf hadn't sniffed out anything unusual so far, and they hoped to keep it that way. It wasn't really beasts that was the biggest worry of the group, either, but they could still be a problem if there were enough of them at a high enough level. The complex, as that's really what it was, stretched for a few thousand feet, with them passing through two more rooms that were like dormitories or living quarters.

They then moved through a room that appeared to be a meeting room or perhaps a mess hall, with stone tables taking up most of the space, making it quite likely that was where the people that had worked down here had eaten. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Finally, they reached their goal, though they were stymied at first, as there was a force screen in their way.

It lit the doorway up with a faint blue translucence, cutting them off from entering the next room, though it didn't stop them from looking in. What did stop them from seeing their destination was the fact the next room was a massive cavern and was not lit in any way at all, their lights unable to show the far wall or the ceiling.

They couldn't tell what was in the room, or even if it was their destination, but it was the only path that they could continue moving forward through the facility through, so they would need to get by it.

"What the hell do we do about this?" Beth asked, staring at the force screen.

"We could try to diffuse it?" Blood said a little uncertainly.

"I'll diffuse it alright," Beth said, cracking her knuckles and popping her neck.

"Stand back."

"Beth, I don't know-" Sera started.

"Nonsense. There's nobody down here, and it's not like we're gonna get in trouble for breaking this stupid shit. Just watch," Beth said, waving the other three back. She approached the doorway, flexing her fingers in her gauntlets before curling them into fists and taking a step forward, punching the light barrier with just her raw brute strength. Her fist slammed into the barrier and cause it to glow a bit brighter for a second before returning to its original appearance.

Beth frowned at it for a moment, but she hadn't used her full strength, and so she took another swing at it. The barrier flared brightly this time, making a slight popping noise as the ground under Beth's feet cracked and the tunnel shook slightly from the force she used. Frowning deeper, Beth waved behind herself, getting the others to back up further before setting her feet and preparing a third blow.

This time, she engaged Spatial Obliteration as her fist impacted the barrier, the sound of magic, stone, air, and even space itself shattering creating a thunderous boom that echoed back up the way they had come. This strike was more than enough, the barrier flaring a brilliant blue-white before fizzling and popping, the whole thing collapsing in a shower of sparks like a wet blanket thrown over an old fire.

Beth stepped back a pace, looking around to make sure her burst of power hadn't compromised the integrity of the tunnel, but she shrugged after a moment, see nothing but a few new cracks in the walls to show any sign of her singular strike. The others rejoined her at the entrance of the cavern, for that is what the room on the other side of the doorway certainly was, the group cautiously pushing forward once reassembled.

Inside, the air was still and a bit stale, tasting just a bit off on the tongue if one breathed in through their mouth. Beth could faintly smell a scent like electricity, that classic scent of ozone that would linger after a lightning strike or with the movement of a huge thunderstorm. She could also very faintly see some blue glows in the distance, very likely to be other doorways or entrances into and out of the massive room.

The thing that took up most of her attention, however, was the giant formation in the center of the room, tens of thousands of runes that very, very faintly glowed with a remnant of power. It hadn't been enough that they could see it through the blue glow of the shield from the doorway, but it became obvious by the time they were even a handful of steps into the room. Beth held up a hand, signaling the others to be cautious as they moved further forward, coming up on the device.

Standing closer, Beth could see that there was some kind of machinery in the middle in addition to the runes, something that was made up of a dozen interlocking boxes with wires and pipes running between them. The runes continued up onto the sides of the lowest five boxes, but the rest were free of any kind of writing. And there was no other writing or any indication of what it was or how it worked.

Beth took a minute to exam the thing from the edge of the outer circle of runes, Sera and Delonne both standing with her as Blood scouted around the room.

"This is…" she said.

"Yeah," Sera agreed.

"The great work that destroyed my world, or nearly so," Delonne said quietly.

"Hardly," Beth snorted, getting a raised eyebrow from Delonne.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"Listen, Del, our Enchanter isn't with us right now," Beth said, getting a raised eyebrow from Sera now.

"Val."

"Oh, right, Blood's girlfriend," Sera said.

"She's not my girlfriend!" the wolf denied, almost reflexively, from across the room.

"Sure," Beth shouted back. She continued, "But Sera and I have studied runes. They become increasingly important the more you level and the more things you do and want to do. Anyway, we've studied runes and their use pretty extensively for non-Enchanters and, well, what do you think, Ser?"

"It's awful," Sera said succinctly.

"I really don't mean to insult your people or anything, Del, but this is…not good. I would honestly say a novice Wayfarer, somebody in their teens who had just started on their Path, had done this. Maybe whoever did this spent years of research and thousands of diamond coins on this, but it's just…bad. There's no other way I can say it."

"I knew we were…behind others," Delonne said quietly.

"And, as much as it pleases me to hear you denigrate the Heg bastards for the sloppy work they did, it does kind of sting. I thought we wouldn't be that bad, but that you're comparing the work done for such a massive project to the work of children..."

"Not really much else to say," Beth said with a sigh.

"I've taken pictures of it with my communicator, and recorded some video and analysis. I can see what most of it does, or what they were trying to do with the runes, but it's a mess. I don't know that we can use this to undo what was done; we'd have to likely build something brand new to counter the effect."

"I suppose that's good news," Delonne said hesitantly.

"It would turn my stomach a bit to have to actually use their work to undo what they've done. At the same time, that means we can't just…turn it off. That's going to be a major pain."

"Well, we've found what they used to break the sky, and we've recorded what we can. And we managed to do it without having to swim," Beth said firmly.

"I don't know that there's anything else useful here. Why don't we rest a couple hours then head back up to the surface. Looks like the monsters haven't been here, either."

"Yeah, there's no way they've been in here and left the barrier intact," Sera said, nodding.

"Right, let's do that," Delonne agreed.

"Blood, rest," Beth called to her.

"Nothing else here," she said in response, rejoining the group. The four of them headed back to one of the rooms they'd passed through earlier with only two doorways into and out of it. Delonne lay on his cloak on the floor, using his backpack for a pillow and passing out right away. Sera and Blood napped for about an hour while Beth stood guard, and then Beth meditated for a little, not really needing the recovery, but using the couple hours to focus on her meditation skill itself.

They waited until Delonne was awake again and ready before they set off into the tunnels, having to fight their way back up through miles and miles, taking quite a few hours. They hadn't spotted Baelvyr at all, but Beth was sure he was somewhere nearby, considering he said he would be near them and keeping an eye on them. It took them more than two days to get back to the surface, at which point they had to find some area open enough for Beth to deploy the ship.

She was very wary that they might be attacked by the monsters at any moment, but that moment never came, and they were soon flying back to Megoria's landing site. After, of course, they had taken some time to shower off and see to their equipment. It was very clear Delonne wasn't used to even the more mild pace they had set on that delve, as he passed out in a chair on the bridge and didn't wake up until they were setting down next to the shark woman's ship.