Day 57

Fuck me that smarts, I still have a headache from that huge expenditure of mana. I woke up blurry eyed to Lupe licking my face, “hey buddy, how long was I out?”

“Bur ur.”

“I see I see, I still don't speak glow puppy.”

“Buuuuur!” he shook his head and laid down, “yeah yeah, I'm feelin' better,” I said as I pushed to my feet. The sun clearly set, and I was clearly awake, and I was HUNGRY. I reached into my pack and grabbed the last scraps of dragon jerky, shoving most of it in my mouth, throwing a strip or two to Lupe. I looked up and didn't see any snow around me, I guessed I'd be going thirsty for a bit, at least until I absorbed something. I looked around, examining my surroundings finally. The large chunk of rubble had sufficiently bridged the gap to the next level.

I nodded my head in appreciation of my own work, prompting my forehead to be filled with tiny painful needles. I fell into a crouch, clutching my head and cursing up a storm. I was rocking on my heels, the pain slowly subsiding, and I got back to my feet without rushing. Lupe gave me a head tilt like he didn't understand what happened. “mana depletion, I spent too much energy pushing that rock.” Lupe nodded in recognition, clearly understanding half of what I said. I sighed and walked over to the rock, and carefully pulled myself up, after putting Lupe in my side bag of course.

I carefully climbed down, making many handholds as I did, so my ascent would be much easier. I reached the bottom soon enough and set Lupe down, the new underground landscape before me somewhat shocking. It was very much filled with life, I could see actual features of the land, more than the layer above at least, the ceiling too was higher by tens of feet with large hills and deep valleys. I felt much warmer than above, the occasional gust from above actually feeling welcome. It almost felt muggy down there, like there was a mist to the place, I could smell vegetation, and around the rock, I had shoved in, there was actual greenery, like grass or something. Well, it wasn't really to green, more of an opaque green white, and slightly glowing. I picked a blade of it with my left hand and it had a bit of resistance to it, not much, but more than grass ever had. I tore it from the base and examined it from a distance.

It seemed to release a vapor of sorts, but besides that did nothing. I waved the Manaphage through the little cloud and absorbed it, getting a sickly sweet taste, backed by the taste of bitter almonds. Ah, very poison, much deadly. I sighed and scrunched it up in my hand, absorbing it all at once, tasting the deadly sweet almond and shoved the dried remains in water bottle I forgot I had and succinctly drained before storing the ground up grass. I pulled up a couple more blades of the grass and tried to pull up to the roots but it always broke before I could, and I didn't feel like digging in the patch yet and placed the other blades in the same bottle.

I looked around after my little investigation and found that there were many more things to examine. There was a bunch of glowing things in the distance, and they all glowed different colors and some even moved in hypnotic patterns. So pretty, so nice to look at, so... I stopped, slapping myself in the face. No, I was not going to be lulled into a pretty trap. I looked down and noticed Lupe was still at the foot of the rock we came down, looking around cautiously, clearly very scared. 'well shit' I thought to myself and scooped him up, climbing back up. “That was a bust huh Lupe?”

“Bark bur.”

“Yup, not until we can clear out a nice outpost in the first layer down should we explore deeper, right?”

“Graw.”

“Yup, so what should we do now?” I asked as I reached the top, and grabbed the rope up to the top, and started ascending it. “Gro bur”

“Yeah, maybe if we go deeper into the forest we could find vegetables, maybe even less then deadly ones.”

“Ber Bark”

“so you agree, cool. Well let's start heading home I guess, we've adventured enough for now.” I said as I climbed out, and set Lupe down, stretching my arms, pumping them once or twice and getting in a sprinting position, and then bolted forward, Lupe streaking behind me, all the marks I left in the trees whipping past, as I followed my path home.