There was a lot of grime around here, and we'd only really started looking for it when we realized that we'd need a forward base to return to if any of us got injured too bad for Wendy to fix. Thankfully, the grime was sterile dirt and dust — no rotten food or skeletons in closets — so a quick broom sweep was about enough for most places. The floor was unvarnished, though, which led to swearing bouts whenever one of the others got a splinter stuck in some unhealthy place. Not me, though. My suit was staying on, at least from the hips down.
Wendy had logged out a few times in that timespan, mostly to get answers from support and the devs about what happened. It was looking to be more and more likely that our cave-in had become a full-time dungeon, whose exit lay at the end of likely traps and mazes and enemies. And, obviously, a bossfight. Possibly several, if we were unlucky — this would delay our quest by a lot, which didn't bode well for the rest of the game. I'd confirmed twice that Wendy had told the devs nothing of me, though. So. Well, there was that one thing going well for us.
Besides that, the clothes I had fit very well. I'd changed shortly after getting up, and the shirt was adjusted to my frame perfectly — plus it wasn't scratchy at all, which was incredible for what I could only assume was linen or cotton of some sort.
Anyways. As for our mining expeditions, Wendy had called in some favors and gotten us a real base setup kit: a claim flag, rudimentary anti-spawn engines, and some stations for crafting and the like. All the gear was multicolored like the rainbow, which seemed to greatly amuse literally everyone except me. A meaning tickled the back of my head, but it wasn't even my choice that all of the shit ended up in my room — that was on Wendy, and I wasn't about to throw a tantrum over 20% of my living space being consumed by utilities. That was just efficiency.
Because of the Base™, we'd all gotten the ability to recover HP at a higher rate and spawn in the same place each time — no random spawning wherever we last felt safe for us. It also came with some food and water supplies, since we'd need them to... not fucking starve. Everyone took turns cooking, and we'd figured out that buffs from food semi-depended on who was cooking at the time; even the exact same recipe gave different boosts if it was between me or Wendy. This... made me feel awkward due to the inherent instability of the buffs given, but the other three seemed fine. They said to just plan around what we'd likely be getting. I was suspicious of whether that'd really work well, but it seemed to be going fine so far.
So far meant my current solo expedition down into the mines. I'd been able to setup a Pidgin account (with Wendy's help), and she was communicating with me via voice chat while I streamed my view to her. Currently that view was pretty much just empty cave walls — she'd found an entrance into a cave area from a mines offshoot, which was slated to give us complex enchanting and magic materials as well as uncommon ores: extremely helpful. And since I was the only one who had effective low light vision due to my hardier-than-normal cameras and wasn't too scared of the dark, I'd been pushed to a solo run.
It didn't super matter if I lived. If I died I'd just respawn, and the critical thing gathered from this trip would most likely be information — though I was taking samples of a lot of minerals and inventorying them, there was a low chance that some animal or monster or something would steal them before we could retrieve the dropped loot from my corpse. Still...
God. I said I didn't really fear the dark, but a healthy respect was still in me — just like everyone goddamn else in the world. The dripping water coming from some unknown place and never-ending foray between both gigantic underground caverns and cramped, scraping tunnels alone would have been enough for me to struggle, but what really topped it off was the fact that I'd seen jack goddamn shit for enemies this whole time. Absolutely no slimes. No goblins, no dwarves, no mine-flayers, no spiders. It was pitch black if not for my sword's faint glow, and I couldn't shake the feeling that an endless swarm of something — or worse, an impossibly strong singular enemy — would suddenly strike me down out of nowhere.
It'd been a while since Wendy had last checked in. Part of that was due to my fault, I think. She had a rich, laughter-prone voice, and I was... kind of silent. That was protocol, though. When in unknown terrain, don't communicate unless necessary: really just how things were, at least as far as I knew. But Wendy kept joking, making snide comments and the like. It boggled the mind. I couldn't... respond. I couldn't respond not because it was difficult, but because what would I say? I had no idea what she wanted from me.
Anyways. There was truly nothing here, not that I could see — except, of course, for the massive drop I was standing a couple feet from.
You see, it's easy to find dead ends in caves. Just turn to a wall: bam. Dead end. But it's harder to find stuff in caves — either they don't want to be found, or it's deep underground, or... yeah, there's a lot that can happen, obviously. However, this particular cave was inundated with high drops — and while I did have that new ability, I wasn't keen on breaking my goddamn legs and needing them rebuilt or nanostitched back together over weeks of rest. I'd dropped a rock down one of them, the first time I encountered a long fall, and it flat out hadn't made a sound at all. So it was a very, very long fall.
But this was the last dead end. I'd travelled and squeezed and seen all of the other parts of the cave to the best of my ability — measuring the entrances I could only arguably fit through to make sure they were safe before exploring — and it was this, after 8 fucking hours of spelunking, that greeted my sore feet and tired goddamn eyes. A drop of indeterminate length into an abyss which I knew nothing about. Oh, sure — if I needed to, I was more than able to climb back out using magic. But it'd take ages to figure that out, given that I had very little mana even still, and carving rock carried a small but distinctly possible chance of a cave-in or major rockfall. With my luck, the rocks falling would more than certainly brain me and leave biorobotics and plastic shattered across the bottom of the ravine. And that's if I could even get down there without breaking both my legs and dying.
Eight fucking hours for this, though. Eight. Goddamn. HOURS.
You know, it was too fucking tiring to deal with Wendy's asking of how things were going. I shot her a quick message saying I'd be back later or respawn soon, ignored her questions and worries, then disconnected from the call.
Cracking my knuckles, I peered into the abyss. Putting my sword in my inventory snuffed out almost all the light — but I'd found a piece of wood with tar of some sort on it near the cave's entrance, which I could light on fire using a quick spell. The tar burst into flame almost as soon as I'd finished constructing the flame spell, giving off a deep orange light and a searing heat that made me flinch. Weirdly, fire spells seemed to come easier to me than any other.
It wasn't important right now. I dropped the makeshift torch into the hole, and watched the light slowly ebb and fade away into the darkness. From what I could tell, the drop had to be a minimum of two fucking miles — because after maybe 40 seconds, the pinprick of light had become practically impossible to see. I was pretty sure that light from a simple candle would have been — well, firstly, the candle would have went out. However, if it hadn't gone out, after two miles it becomes near-impossible to see: around the same light-level as a bit dimmer than the dimmest star humans could see with the naked eye.
So: two miles of drop. Fun! I was certainly not going to survive that.
Well... unless I figured out a way to reduce the G-forces acting upon my body at the moment of impact. Or in layman's terms, if I could figure out a way to slow down I could certainly survive. And I did, theoretically, have a way to do that. But it'd be a gamble, a really really big one. Because, really, it'd be safer to go back and get ropes or a climbing harness or something, an amount of safety equipment more than none, — and it'd also take a good three or four hours to go back up, as well as the same to get back, which was too fucking long. So, if I really wanted to get this over with...
I could jump. There was a clear precedent for at least a few functions of normal science happening in this world, not all of it was an abstraction: that meant if I created continuous fireballs underneath my descent (and cast a spell to stop myself from melting), I could slow myself enough to probably not even be winded. It'd cause my landing to be particularly fiery, and if there were any natural gas buildups in this game I was risking a fire catching and going up to the mines where our base was... but it would be faster. The one caveat (well, along with the other ones) was that I'd need a lot of mana to do this. That meant I was trusting that jumping off a goddamn cliff would give me mana.
Fuck it. I was tired of dealing with this garbage. I took a deep, steadying breath as I backed up from the edge of the cliff; some safe distance away from oblivion reached, I gave myself two seconds of respite before sprinting towards the edge and backflipping off to maximize style gain.
It wasn't enough. There was nothing to push off of — while I've given myself enough speed to not crash into the wall and die, my limbs spin and flail wildly as icy spikes of terror overtake me. Even if I'm immortal in this game — even if that's the case, it still feels like I'm about to meet my final resting place. Three seconds pass by; the air rushing past my ears seemed to taunt me, whispering grievances and hatred. The backflip did jack shit, too. A single burst of mana, quickly running out.
And as I fall through the air, spinning and seeing stars in the depths of this simulated mountain, it's now that I began to ruminate. Thinking can be fast, you know? Every cycle of my processors passing by felt like an eternity, even though it was objectively only a couple seconds beyond my subjective perception. And every cycle reminded me of what I was.
At the same time, though, I truly had no idea who I was. I could come up with any number of lists for what I was: a corporate android, a robot, an artificial intelligence, a non-player-character, a spellsword, a man, or a woman, maybe; I was an impossibly overpowered and underpowered being, both able to defeat threats far beyond my skill level and also defeated by a simple show of emotion. But all of this wasn't an assessment of who I was, it was just facts. You could list all of these things and describe any number of different types of android brought to another world — personality clearly mattered.
But my personality was a mystery to me. I couldn't see myself from the outside. I didn't know what everyone saw in me — what Wendy wanted to converse with or Flurry found so interesting or Nora found worrying enough to yell at — and that was, right now, as important as anything else. Once your life is put into critical danger, everything can be an existential threat if you want it to be.
So who was me? Who was the person that I am? I certainly couldn't tell.
But... maybe I was going about it wrong? Maybe it was impossible to know who you were. Or, maybe, it was as simple as me being no more than the sum of my parts: I was a corporate android pretending to be a free android pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. The idea sickened me. The layers hiding who I was from the world sickened me.
Fuck. I needed a distraction. I moved to what I wanted, deep inside myself. It was easy to tell what those things were, at least, and it gave me a goal to look towards and push for.
I wanted safety and prosperity for the people I chose to be around. I mean, that was just a function of what I was — a testing android. It was a no-brainer. And while there were other things I superficially enjoyed, like seeing them happy with me, or my own personal happiness, the most important thing for me was to always put those I was around first. It was something deep, something rooted far down inside myself.
I wanted that safety so hard it hurt. Some part of me was scared about all of this — by far, I was the most powerful in the party by sheer magical strength. That made the responsibility for everyone else fall to me, and what had I done? Nearly gotten myself permanently killed from a fucking hunch. Revealed my real identity to a player I didn't totally know just because I got tired of a minor inconvenience. I couldn't deal with having freedom, honestly.
But at the same time, freedom was necessary for what I wanted. I needed to just... deal with it harder, I suppose.
Heh. I snickered to myself soundlessly, rolling backwards through the air a bit. Funny how most of my moments of self-reflection are when I'm about to die, or consigning myself to death. Well... if I'm about to die anyways, I may as well just let myself go completely.
For one, two, three impossible moments, I tumbled through the air without any magic in my meters, and then a spark of vibrance hits me like a flash of lightning. A multiplier starts to spin up, from one to ten, and the minor amount of style I passively generate hits me like a truck once it's amplified tenfold. A giggle bubbled from my chest. Suddenly, I wasn't so sure I was dying here anymore.
Flipping around so that I'm facing the ground takes five seconds, and it comes as easily as walking even though I've never skydived before. Seven seconds remain before impact, from my calculations, and I'm just barely able to throw up the rocket spell I made on the cliff before that ticks down to three. Accelerometers in my body ramped up in the backwards direction, wildly spinning from 1G to -19Gs; even still, I didn't feel any adverse effects of the shockwaves from underneath me. The glow blinded me, like the prisoners coming out from the cave in Plato's allegory — but the fact that this was working made me giddy, enough to ignore the brief blowout of my cameras.
It suddenly occurs to me that my body could certainly have rocket-boosters embedded in it for reaction control during falls. Of course, for a test-android that'd be useless — but if the rushing of endorphins in my body says anything about the multiplier on my screens, I think I'm gonna need to do this again sometime. Maybe I'll think about that once I'm done caving—!
I slammed into the ground with a thud and a comically large dust cloud announcing my arrival — quite rudely, I must add. Coughing (and massaging my bruised and aching chest, knees, and forehead), I stood and observed the wreckage of what must have once been here— well, it wasn't much. There were some splinters embedded into the walls — pieces of the torch still burning from my previous barrage. Other than that, and a small divot around the edge of the round-ish walls with some kind of fluid shining darkly, it seemed to be just more rocks.
But there was a path forward. Falling two or more miles left me with two ways to go: up, and back to normalcy, or down a dark hallway into who-knows-what's domain. The answer was easy.
I hadn't found a goddamn single gemstone yet, and that was going to change by the time I went back up.
Chest still giddy (also, aching — did I mention how it hurt to fall on what ostensibly was an erogenous zone with the full force of your body?) from the fall, I pushed forward into the cave. The corridor squeezed me on all sides, almost seeming impossible to move forward in. And, well — I molded the earth around me so I could walk. A simple earth spell, with the last of my mana.
As I cleared my path from the rock, I could suddenly make out glittering in the dark. One moment passed where I thought that the stars shining along the walls and ceiling of a massive cavern was a sign of endless terrors come to beat my ass and send me right back to base — and then, I toggled the backlight on my eyes, and shining gemstones and ores and crystals refracted the meagre light from my irises a million times; suddenly, the cavern was awash with light and beautiful prismatic rainbows of color. I could see that I was in a carefully-cultivated rock garden: brick paths lined the area, with a few magical streetlamps turning on when the crystals did. There were benches. Goddamn benches!
Fuck.
Taking in the full breadth of light and color on display in front of me, I couldn't help but feel like crying. I didn't, but... it was certainly worth the several-hour delve. Maybe there was a point to caving.
I took a picture using my inbuilt cameras and sent it to Wendy in our DMs. After three minutes of waiting, she responded. "Flurry and Nora say it's not what we're looking for..." Damn.
"...but fuck those guys. Search around a bit, maybe see if you can find a way to get down there that doesn't involve a jump. If I had to guess, teleporters or portals. I'll start setting things up back here! Best of luck, Cyl."
OddLor· Oct 13, 2023
