On the day that Ella and Lauren agreed to bring us to our first fights, Ella led me to one of the exits to the city’s primary cavern. I started carefully examining the exit tunnels to the city. This was my first time getting a good look at the edges of our city’s cavern, since I had never had a reason to look at the tunnels that led to other caverns or cities before.
Much like the city itself, the stone corridors leading out of the city were lined with glowing moss, making it easy to see everything. However, I could also see that not all tunnels leading out of the city had the same telltale smoothness of our cavern ceiling. In other words, unlike the roof of the city, some of these exits could actually collapse and cave in. In fact, a few of the more neglected-looking tunnels had caved in, although those also looked like they had been abandoned for decades already. Many of the other non-magical tunnels had support beams practically everywhere.
Seeing my interest, Ella gave me a grin.
“Are you interested in the other cities and the tunnels of the underdark? The more well-maintained tunnels connect directly to some of the other cities that lay beneath the surface, although some cities are more isolated from the main tunnels. In the days of the second Orthan empire, there was even a network of ‘ground eaters’ that let people quickly move down the more established tunnels at incredibly fast speeds. Of course, we haven’t seen a working ground-eaters near our city in a couple decades, since the wealthier cities control most of them now.” She pursed her lips into a very light frown for a moment, before she sighed. “I admit, I’ve never actually seen one. I’ve heard merchants talk about them from time to time, though.”
I wondered what these ‘ground eaters’ actually looked like. Perhaps, if we ever got the opportunity, Felix could look into them? My curiosity was piqued, but not enough for me to go out of my way to investigate Orthan transportation networks.
“How many underground cities are there?” I asked, after a few moments of struggling with my curiosity.
“You know, I’m honestly not sure. I know there were a lot of them during the peak period of the second Orthan empire. There were hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, since the magic items used to make mushroom production easy are pretty common. I imagine they aren’t that hard to produce, if we could just figure out how to make magic items in the first place,” said Ella, biting back an undercurrent of annoyance in her voice. She took in a deep breath, before shaking her head. “Anyway, the second Orthan empire had a great deal of underground cities set up. But a lot of cities have fallen in the aftermath of the dawn of the black sun. Outsiders, Denizens of the dark, and Orukthyri raids have managed to swallow up huge numbers of cities, although the orthan remnant races have started pushing them back recently. Orukthyri in particular are too big to fight well underground, so cities taken by them are easy to reclaim if the city is built well. And there are still a lot of cities we maintain contact with. I know of at least twenty that we regularly trade with. Of course, there are also plenty of cities that we’ve lost contact with, or only occasionally get traders from, since the route to and from those cities might have been taken over by monsters or caved in. The underdark isn’t as dangerous as the surface, but it can still easily kill an unprepared explorer,” said Ella. “So it’s hard to say how many cities remain. Probably several hundred, scattered across the planet in small pockets and the occasional isolated city.”
“Huh,” I said. “That’s a lot more than I was expecting.” I had honestly envisioned less than a hundred cities in total existing underground, at absolute most. Hearing that there had been hundreds at one point was more than slightly shocking.
Before I had time to say anything else, Lauren arrived, with Sallia, Felix, and Anise following him.
The three of them quickly sped towards me the moment they saw me, and I gave everyone a hug as my teacher and Lauren greeted each other.
“Lauren,” said Ella, giving Lauren a nod of respect. “It has been a while since I last spoke with you. How have you been?”
“Quite well,” said Lauren, giving Ella a respectful nod as well. “You know me these days. I prefer to sit back and let the new generations make all of the interesting discoveries and exciting changes to the world. I’ve grown too old to do it myself these days,” he said, with a dry chuckle. “I thought that I would be relaxing in my home and enjoying myself, but instead my apprentices are running me ragged as usual.”
Ella gave me a glance from the corner of her eye, and she gave Lauren a sympathetic nod. “I know what you mean. Miria has me running in circles to try to get the arrangements for her attunement set up whenever she tries something new. I can’t even imagine how much more work it would take to set up for three different attunements, and spellcasting lessons for all of them. It must be difficult to manage.” She gave him a cheeky grin. “Luckily I was smart enough to only accept one apprentice.”
Lauren actually laughed this time, instead of simply chuckling.“They’re a handful, but teaching the next generation is also rewarding,” said Lauren. “On the other hand, maybe in the future I’ll limit how many apprentices I take on at once as well. Three apprentices at once is quite a lot to manage.”
The two teachers continued to chat with each other for a bit, while I gave Sallia, Felix, and Anise more careful inspections.
I noticed that Felix and Sallia weren’t using their market armor and boots, and they were also using odd weapons I didn’t recognize. Instead of using their Market items, they were wearing decently-made metal equipment. It took me a moment to realize why they might have changed out their equipment, but…
“Felix, did you use your attunement to make these?” I asked, after a few more moments of inspection.
“I did!” He said, his eyes lighting up. “I’ve been practicing really hard with blacksmithing and metal forging! I got to intermediate grade blacksmithing recently, and I can make pretty good equipment on my own now! It’s not quite as good as the equipment we could get from a master blacksmith or… well…” he glanced at my dress for a moment, which was currently disguised as a relatively ordinary blue and black spellcaster-adventurer’s dress, and I nodded. The items of the Market were way beyond our current understanding, so it made sense that Felix had no way to replicate them yet. However, the armor Felix had made was only a little inferior to what I had seen some of the lower quality blacksmiths of this world make. They were definitely not bad, even if they weren’t amazing.
“However, I’ve only been learning for eight years,” he said. Felix didn’t seem to notice, but he had a goofy grin as he talked about creating items. “I think I can get to advanced grade by the time we finish our apprenticeship. And that should be good enough that I’ll have some idea what I’m looking at when we find stuff on the surface later.”
I grinned as well. Seeing Felix so happy and excited for the future made me also feel really happy and excited. Unlike in our first life, both Sallia and Felix seemed excited about what the future held. And that made me happy that they had come so far this time.
After that, Felix also handed me a sword of his own creation, and asked me to give him some feedback on how the weapon felt. I would still probably stick with my {Two-Purpose Training Sword} for any dangerous combat encounters we had, since I was pretty used to the weapon by now, and it was also higher quality than Felix’s items. But I promised I would use Felix’s weapon in less dangerous skirmishes and give him advice so he could improve.
As Felix finished gushing about his progress as a blacksmith and craftsmen, our teachers finished chatting with each other.
“All right, we’ve already gone over everything a few times. Are you three ready?” Asked Lauren, scanning Sallia, Felix, and Anise to make sure everything was set up.
“We’re good!” Said Anise, who was practically squirming in excitement.
“Are you ready, Miria? Any last minute things you forgot?” Asked Ella, giving me a final check.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Ella’s smile turned more gentle. “Good. Lauren, do you want to lead the way?”
Lauren nodded, and quickly stepped into one of the more well-maintained passages out of our city’s central cavern. The rest of us quickly followed him, our shoes tapping on the smooth, hard stone of the tunnel.
“This is one of the roads that used to lead to an inhabited city beneath the surface,” said Lauren, his tone taking on the tone one might use during a lecture. “It has enough magic pillars to make cave-ins basically impossible, which is one of the reasons we chose this passage today. Remember, cave-ins aren’t common, but they’re one of the deadliest things you can encounter beneath the surface of the earth. No matter how well you can swing a sword or launch a fireball, it won’t help you if the ceiling falls on you and flattens or suffocates you. Which is why there are a few unique, slightly unorthodox spells I recommend picking up if you ever intend to seriously explore the underdark, although if you intend to focus on the surface and only travel the more well-maintained tunnels while below ground, you can largely ignore them…” Lauren started to discuss spells, cave ins, and things to keep in mind as we slowly walked down the tunnel. I did my best to listen to him, but I was distracted when I caught sight of an odd, distinct glow from one of the side tunnels.
I whirled around, trying to figure out what was glowing, and why.
At the end of the passage, I could see a giant, glowing pool of water in the distance. I could see occasional dark shapes moving underneath the surface of the water, which I assumed were fish.
I also saw several men and women standing near the edge of the glowing pool of water, holding fishing equipment.
Seeing my curiosity, Lauren broke off from his speech about cave-in safety. “Are you interested in this fish stream, Miria?”
I nodded. My favorite food was fish, after all.
Lauren smiled warmly. “There are a lot of ways that water gets to the city, and a lot of different sources of fish, as well. The easiest one to access is the river that runs right by the edge of the city, but there are plenty of little caverns like this one that have access to part of a river as well.”
“Why is the water glowing?” I asked.
“This pond, in particular, is part of a magic fishery that was being built by the Orthan empire at one point. However, it was never completed. The Orthans were added lights on to the bottom of the artificial lake for… some reason.” Lauren shrugged. “Nobody has quite figured out why. Some shapers who study items claim it was going to help certain kinds of moss and algae grow, making the pond self-sufficient. Others claim that it somehow purifies the water. Either way, several of the lights that should have been at the bottom of the lake are missing, but the lake is somehow self-sustaining and quite pure. But it glows. Either way, the fish are safe to eat and taste delicious, so we still use it.”
I nodded in curiosity, and Lauren resumed his speech about cave-in safety and spells. However, I got distracted again when I noticed another odd passageway. At the end of it, I could see mushrooms growing at a pace visible to the naked eye. Men and women in brown clothes were carefully harvesting mushrooms and placing them in baskets, before moving to another area. A new mushroom would grow every five or six minutes, before another person would swing by and harvest it.
“That’s where we get our mushrooms. One of the main food staples of the city,” said Lauren, breaking off his lecture to grin at me.
I nodded. I started to wonder how common magic items had been before the fall of the second empire. It seemed like they had been available practically everywhere. And nowadays, we couldn’t even make a single one, despite all of the examples of magic items laying around in our surroundings. I couldn’t help but glance at Felix, and I could see a hint of frustration in his eyes as he glanced at the magic items in our surroundings. I suspected he was thinking of the same thing. I was sure he would have loved to have been able to study directly under a master item craftsman, but sadly, the craft hadn’t been restored yet. I sighed.
Even if we didn’t know how to make magic items yet, I promised myself that we would find something for Felix when we went to the surface.
We continued making our way through the tunnels, with Lauren giving us little tidbits of information about how the caverns were built, what the city used each cavern for, and other such facts, mixed in with more notes about spellcasting and cave safety.
After a few hours of walking, we reached our destination.
At the end of the tunnel, there lay a giant cavern. it was easily seven or eight times the size of the already massive caverns we had passed by during our travels. I could see passages to several other underground roads in the distance, which made me think that the cavern had once been a sort of intersection of roads.
However, now, a giant wall cut off direct access to the other underground roads. Oddly enough, I could see the wall slowly sinking into the earth, as spellcasters quickly created new additions to the ever-sinking wall.
And just beyond the wall, occasional swarms and clusters of strange creatures I couldn’t identify crawled out of the other passageways and rushed towards the wall. Soldiers, especially archers and other spellcasters, continuously blasted and shot down these creatures, ensuring that they never reached the wall or the mages working to maintain the second line of defense.
We had reached the edge of our city’s territory, and the beginning of the territory of the denizens of the underdark.
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