Markets and Multiverses

After we exited the building, we took a few moments to rest. The fight against the strange void creatures from room six hadn’t been the most dangerous fight we had ever been in: in fact, the hostile creatures hadn’t even had a chance to attack before Felix killed them all. However, fighting creatures that couldn’t be hurt by physical attacks and were extremely hard to track had still put a fair bit of mental pressure on us, so we took a few moments to center our minds again.

After that, I finally checked my System notifications.

Slaughter: Kill a voidless for the first time, fifth time

Slaughter: Assist in killing a voidless for the first time, fifth time, fifteenth time

Achievement +100, +200, +15, + 30, +50

My Achievement increased by 395, going from 16,833 to 17,228. I had honestly expected the little noodle-shaped remnants of living void to be worth a bit more, but I supposed it wasn’t too bad of a harvest either way. Perhaps their offensive abilities were weaker than expected, and that was why their Achievement reward was a bit on the lower side?

Either way, the final rewards from the Dimensional Facility weren’t bad at all. When we had walked into the dimensional habitat facility, I had only had 14,818 Achievement. Even though the dimensional facility had been dangerous in the final room, the building had provided us with rich rewards. The wide variety of unique materials, all of which were magical or powerful, meant that it was surprisingly easy to get Wealth Achievement inside of the building. Getting around 2500 Achievement in about a day was a bigger income boost than any of the previous boosts we had received in this world. I was extremely happy with the results.

Just as I was looking over my Achievement total in satisfaction, I got another System notification.

Influence: Help one Palanthyrre escape its imprisonment

Achievement +100

My Achievement increased to 17,328. I glanced at the building we had just left, and felt a moment of confusion before I shrugged.

Honestly, I hadn’t expected to get any reward at all for helping Sekundyrr. I had just felt it was the right thing to do. But getting an Achievement reward was nice, if a bit baffling. Right now, our group had no practical method of keeping Sekundyrr with us long-term. After all, Sekundyrr still needed healing to stay alive outside of its cage, meaning that we would need to return it to its cell anytime we went to sleep or Sallia needed a break.

The fact that we got Achievement despite these massive unresolved issues was more than a little strange, honestly. But I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the odd notification, so after confirming Sallia and Felix also got the same reward, we simply decided to move on.

Outside. It’s beautiful… sent Sekundyrr as we started walking again. I blinked, and stopped.

I stared at the ragged wasteland that had been mostly exterminated by the rays of the black sun, the distant corpses of creatures that had once inhabited this world, and the partially ruined palace in the distance. There were still a few resilient patches of pink plants and foliage in the distance, which was basically the only thing I genuinely found beautiful in the world right now. Most of this world looked like it was a warzone. Sekundyrr’s assertion that the world was beautiful also struck me as strange.

Then, I shook my head.

Even if it looked quite ugly to me, perhaps Sekundyrr’s civilization had different aesthetic standards. Or maybe it had just been cooped up in its cell for so long that any change of scenery was beautiful in its eyes. It was hard to say. At least Sekundyrr felt good about its environment right now.

Then, I stopped, and squinted at the sky.

Was the black sun bigger than before? Or was it just my imagination?

“Does the black sun look different to you guys?” I asked.

Felix, Sallia, and Anise looked at the black sun, before they also frowned.

“It definitely looks just a little bit bigger than before,” said Sallia, after concentrating for a few moments. 

“Whatever it’s doing, it’s speeding up,” said Felix, shaking his head. 

Anise didn’t say anything, but the four of us stewed in our realization for a moment.

The black sun had gotten ever so slightly bigger between our flight to Silver City and our return to the wastes. That had already been worrisome, but at least it had taken over a decade. 

Then, as we travelled through the wastes, instead of finding hordes of monsters to kill, we found a wasteland filled with dead or dying natives of this world. We hadn’t stumbled across many Outside creatures, but we had seen an object from the dimension of the black sun, which nobody else had ever witnessed before.

Now, the black sun had grown noticeably larger in the day we had spent inside the Dimensional Habitat Facility.

I had a sneaking suspicion that the black sun was getting very close to finishing whatever it was doing to this planet. And that realization made my gut churn with anxiety.

Perhaps even finding a way to restore item creation to the world wouldn’t be enough to give this world a fighting chance at surviving anymore. I had originally imagined that cities might find a way to create walls that could fend off the incursion of the black sun, or something like that. This, combined with other inventions in the future, could at least give the people of this world a fighting chance at reversing whatever the black sun was doing. It would be a slim hope, but there would be some sort of hope for the future of this world. However, when I looked at the black sun now, I started wondering if it was too late for item creation to combat the influence of the black sun. In fact, I started wondering if there was any hope for this world at all.

“I see three buildings that are nearby,” said Sallia, breaking me out of my thoughts as she pointed out three specks in the distance. “I think that one says ‘species breeding facility,’ so I imagine it’s quite useless to us. Unless there’s another Sekundyrr inside, but that seems unlikely. The second building is called…” Sallia squinted, and then shook her head. “I think the sign is on the other side of the building. I don’t see one anywhere. I have no idea what’s inside of it. The third building is called equipment production facility C.” Sallia said. She glanced at Felix.

I glanced at Felix.

Anise stared straight at Felix.

Felix looked at the three of us. “Why are you looking at me like that? I do want to check out equipment production facility C, but if the three of you want to check out the mystery facility, we can do that too. I’ll abide by the group decision.” he said. He still looked a little excited, but didn’t push us to go to the equipment production facility, even if I could definitely tell he wanted to go there.

I chuckled. “Let’s go to the equipment production facility and see if we can get some more Wealth Achievement. I do honestly think it sounds like a promising building, I just wanted to mess with you a bit,” I said.

Felix gave me a look filled with great, overwhelming tolerance, and snorted, before grinning.

“All right, since that’s the case, let’s head to the production facility.” he said.

Our group began slowly making our way through the magical minefield again, using balls of mud and Sallia and Felix’s exceptional senses to test the area around us for any fireball traps or other dangers. However, this time, we also kept Sekundyrr in the back of the group, to make sure that it didn’t get burned to ashes by a trap. This also meant that Sallia wasn’t at the front of our group, unlike usual, but we didn’t really have a hard time picking up the slack now that we knew what we needed to watch out for.

Especially since we didn’t run into any mines after getting about halfway to the next building.

This initially struck us as very strange. After all, we had run into a great deal of fireball traps during most of our journey through this area. To suddenly find a patch of land where there were no fireball traps present at all was very unusual. We initially thought that perhaps the traps in this area were simply disguised better, or perhaps there was a new kind of trap present.

This turned out to be incorrect. After some searching, we found a few traps that had run out of manifestation essence stuck inside of their own little scorched areas. The fireball traps were clearly present in this area, just like the previous area: they had simply all been activated already.

The fact that we had run into so many active fireball traps at first was probably more bad luck than anything else.

At the same time, it did make me wonder if other creatures or adventurers had already combed through this area. A bunch of fireball traps being active meant that we had to wade through a dangerous area, but it also meant that the area was probably unharvested. Since other people were aware of the existence of this area, due to the extremely well-known nature of the healing cube a few cities away from Silver City, it was natural that someone would have gotten lucky and found this facility. They simply wouldn’t have ransacked all of it - after all, people can only carry so much at once, even with spatial storage equipment.

True to my fears, when we entered the production facility, it was obvious someone had already broken in. The door looked like it had been partially melted by some sort of fire or heat-related spell.

There were several holes on the walls, where it looked like items such as maps or shelves might have once been nailed to the wall, but had since been removed.

After we tried investigating one of the two doorways that led out from the reception room, we found that the security doors in both hallways had been melted into slag, leaving Orthanoid-sized holes in each barrier that we could easily pass through.

We moved through the destroyed doors, hoping that perhaps we could find something useful in this building that the first adventuring party had missed.

In the first room, we found a bunch of empty shelves. There was nothing else in the room except for dust.

“They were quite thorough,” I said, trying not to feel disappointed. I glanced at Felix, who had a stoic expression on his face, and then sighed.

I had been hoping that somewhere in this building, there would be records about how to manufacture magic items. Even if I wasn’t sure if it could save this world from the black sun anymore, I still really wanted to figure out how to make magic items using alteration essence. That would be something both Felix and I would desperately want to use in the future. And if there was any building where I thought we might finally learn how to make magic items, it was a building called the ‘equipment production facility.’ Unfortunately, it really looked like there was nothing left in this building for us to find. Whatever was here had been taken away a long time ago.

“I doubt that one group has taken away everything in the building,” said Sallia. “There must have been a lot of things originally stored here, and I doubt one group could carry it all out in one trip. Either this building has been ransacked multiple times, or there’s still stuff left in it.”

“The same group could have hit the building over and over again, though,” said Anise, after thinking for a moment. “If I knew there was a basically undefended building in a highly dangerous but profitable area, I would definitely hit the building up multiple times, and then retire when I was done looting the building. Most of the dangers in this area seem to come from outside creatures and the fireball traps. The people who raided this area clearly dealt with the fireball traps already, since we were having a hard time even finding a fireball trap near this building. And outside creatures aren’t exactly common, even if they aren’t rare, either.”

I thought about it, and then nodded. 

“We can still try looking through the building,” said Felix. “Might as well at least double check.”

We moved out of the first room, and started moving from one room to the next. It wasn’t until the seventeenth room that we finally found something interesting.

“This door is still intact,” said Sallia, giving the door a curious look. “the other doors were melted into slag, but this one is still standing.”

 

acaswell

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