“Does it feel like these acid slugs are endless to anyone else?” Ash asked as she fired another arrow into a small red one. She'd lost count of just how many of the creatures had wiggled in through a crack they hadn't spotted. But every time the Goblins would have to work on patching it up, and nothing new came in through it when they were done.
“A lot of the slug-type monsters breed incredibly fast. There's probably some sort of giant queen somewhere in that jungle, pushing out thousands of eggs a day. They infest everything if you give ‘em time. Gods, I hate ‘em,” One of the younger Goblins said. Ash had earlier learned his name was Droffinflelk.
It turned out all of the Greel Goblins were related to Grimbleflork in some way. They were mostly distant cousins, but with the way her dad was treating Grimbleflork, that made them all family in her eyes. So far, she liked them, even if they were a little strange, but so were the Rock Trolls, and she'd grown to appreciate them.
It was almost bizarre to her to see her father and the older Goblin interact. She'd never really seen him treat anyone with reverence before. Sure, he had obviously respected her grandfather on her mom's side, but this was something different. There was a vulnerability in the way he acted around Grimbleflork that she had never quite seen before. It made her really hope to find more of their lost family.
“What do you think's in that jungle down there? Are there other things? I assume in other worlds, there are lots of species that live below ground? On Earth, Humans generally preferred not to,” Ash said, letting her thoughts pour out of her mouth faster than the Goblin could answer.
She didn't really expect him to. A lot of what she had been doing so far was just saying every thought that came to her mind and being genuinely surprised when someone had a real answer for her. With how much better she was feeling, her old, curious self was hard to push down. She had missed so much when she'd been stuck in her bed, and now that world didn't even exist anymore. She'd have to make up for it in this new one.
Something else had been itching in her mind the last couple days as well. It was the worst when she first woke up, slowly fading as the day went on, but there was something there that she couldn't fully grasp.
Ash wasn't stupid. She understood on a base level what that meant. It was obviously something to do with Stalplaht again, but what she didn't know, and worse, she had no idea how to figure out what exactly it was. For all she knew, the God was attempting to contact her about something critically important, and she just couldn't understand the message. And that worried her.
She was glad for the distraction today that was keeping her mind off of that annoying itch. Even if that meant she was mostly just following behind Goblins and watching them build walls across openings. And killing endless streams of slugs. It was important not to forget that part. The slugs certainly weren't.
“So what happens when we want to actually explore these tunnels? Do we just have to knock the walls back down again? That seems like it's going to be annoying,” Ash asked, studying one of the newly closed-off passages.
“Most of the smaller ones we're just sealing off like this for now. Hopefully, by the time we actually care to go and look through them, we can put a door instead, but we don't have the time or material to build reinforced doors right now. It's much safer just to seal it off entirely. But Tom and Grimbleflork did build a pretty strong door to the jungle area,” Droffinflelk answered.
“So, bear with me. I don't really understand how this all works yet. But is the door reinforced by the stronghold? As we close up these passageways, does that kind of work the same way as our walls up top?”
“Probably, but I ain't really one for the construction mana theory. Glormfin knows way more about that if you want to learn something. Just fill him up with a good meal, and he'll talk your ear off. But be careful. He likes to quiz you on the math, and the math is always weird,” the Goblin replied.
“I'll have to do that one of these nights. There's just so much I want to learn that I have no idea where to even start. I wish there were books in all of this. Wait, there have to be books somewhere, right? How do we get them?” She wasn't sure there had to be books, but it seemed like something that should exist. It didn't make sense to her that, with all the giant empires her father had alluded to, no one would have written anything down.
“There are all kinds of books for every single class and path and vocation out there you can imagine. The problem is they ain't cheap. Usually, books like that are magically connected to the person who wrote them, so they can control the distribution and the profits from taking the time to do so. And as far as I can tell, this neighborhood we joined up with is pretty broke, we're not any more broke than we already were, so who am I to complain?”
“You know, it's even weirder when I consider the idea that we need money. Obviously, we do. Everything always seems to need money, but then how do we actually build back up to having resources to have money? And now I'm just back to feeling like there is so much I don't know.” Ash paused her rant to let out a sigh. There was so much she wanted to know, dammit.
“You think it's okay if I go look at the crystal for a bit? I think we've got most of the slugs handled, and I figure you'll yell if you need me,” She asked the Goblin, wanting to take a look at the strange crystallized mana in the central cave.
Droffinflelk didn't even bother turning his head as he waved Ash off. His face was focused intently on a small crack he had found. Ash, being more than willing to let him work if it meant giving her a chance to explore a bit, didn't waste time in heading for the crystal.
She had already seen it several times throughout the day, so finding it wasn't exactly hard. The real reason she was so curious to take a look at it again was that she hadn't touched it yet, and something inside of her had been tugging at her just slightly to touch it. And considering that little pull felt connected to her class, that made it all the more important in her mind that she do it.
Stepping through the ring of water, she reached out with a single finger, gently touching the glowing blue stone. An odd, refreshingly cool sensation rippled through her body. She had expected it to feel warm, not whatever had just passed through her.
As she tried to withdraw her hand, a new feeling flooded into her. Images popped into her mind one after another. The first looked almost like a wood stove she had seen in her grandfather's patio. But there was something off about it. The flames were green, and she could feel her energy pulsate through her heart as her mind grasped at the fading picture.
The second was that of a bird, possibly a raven, flying through a dark jungle. There was a familiarity about the animal that she couldn't fully process. Did she need to find the bird? Was that the jungle far below?
She wasn't sure of the answer to either of these questions, but the images had left a deep sense of drive behind. It felt like it was another piece of the puzzle she had been missing, to just what had been happening in her dreams. She still didn't have the answer, but now she at least had an idea of where those answers might be.
Her hand came free from the crystal at the same moment that the images faded. Unlike the dreams that were plaguing her, she could still pull these back to her mind. It seemed her brain had been willing to remember what she had seen here.
As she stepped back out of the ring of water, she caught a small, distant tapping sound coming from somewhere below her. Was something below trying to come up? That could be a problem.
“Grimbleflork, wherever you're at down here, I think I need you! There's something tapping below the ground in here!” she yelled, down the tunnel that she was pretty sure the older Goblin was last in.
Several variations of ‘on the way’ resounded back from different Goblin voices. She thought one of them had probably been Grimbleflork, but wasn't used to the differences in their tones yet, to be entirely sure. At least she had plenty of them on the way.
Grimbleflork was the third Goblin into the chamber, looking less panicked than the first two had, though still his face had a bit of worry in it. He looked over once before speaking. “What's going on? Had me thinking Adam was gonna kill me because something happened to you.”
A twinge of guilt ran through her as she realized how much she had scared the old Goblin. “Sorry, really didn't mean to do that, but do you hear that tapping sound?”
“Aye, now that you mention it. It wasn't here earlier either. I don't like it,” he said, scrunching up his face as though he'd bitten down on something that tasted awful. “Droffinflelk, go get Tom. Tell him to bring whatever tools he has for mining through stone. We’re gonna need to see just what’s down there.”
While Droffinflelk went running, the other Goblins mapped out the floor, looking for the exact location of the tapping. “It's over here,” one of them yelled after a couple of minutes.
“What do you think it is?” Ash asked. Not sure if they were all about to be attacked by monsters, or something else strange was going on.
“Like something is trying to come up. The problem is we're going to have to deal with it one way or another, so we may as well dig our way down while we know where it is,” Grimbleflork replied, just as Tom and several other people joined them in the room, Gruther unexpectedly included.
“Can you tell who's down there?” Tom asked, looking at the creature.
“I cannot entirely sense who or what is down there. In fact, it's incredibly difficult to use my telepathy in here at all. The amount of mana flow pouring from that is making everything fuzzy. But I do not think it's hostile,” he replied.
“Yeah, I was worried about that. My class feature is a bit odd whenever I'm around the crystal as well. Guess we're doing this the hard way then. Everyone, grab a pick and let's get to work,” Tom said as he passed out large pickaxes.
“You want me to keep watching for monsters or join in the mining?” Ash hoped it was the first, but she understood if she had to take a round with Pickaxe.
“Nah, you keep watching our backs. You're too damn good with that bow to waste you with a pick,” Grimbleflork replied, Tom nodding along.
Soon, the sound of cracking stone covered the earlier tapping noise entirely. Ash was impressed at how quickly they were progressing through the rock. She doubted anything this fast would have been possible before the System and the increase to all of their Strength that had come with it.
“Who's down there?” Grimbleflork called into a hole an hour later.
“How the hell did you all know I was even down here?” a voice belonging to her father called back.