Chapter 295: The “Red” of the Deep Layer
The helm of Glosswing, the special reinforced armor paired with the Tactical Machine Bird Suzaku, had a night-vision effect even on its own, but apparently that effect only worked because Suzaku was supplying it with energy.
Even if players get visual correction that turns total darkness into something closer to dim light, dark is still dark.
Water isn't getting inside the armor or anything, but there's no way to supply oxygen, so I still need to use Inventoria Escape periodically. Seriously, Divine Era powered suits are convenient.
Under the triple handicap of being underwater, powered off, and simply heavy, I move limbs that have become shockingly sluggish while activating a certain spell.
Sunraku: "Come to think of it, this spell is an incredibly blatant Lycagon counter..."
It's a spell I set on the Lapistella Cloak, which got shoved inside the armor along with me when I equipped Fugaku. Magic Torch keeps consuming MP until I deactivate it, continuously producing a light source for as long as it's running. Price: 2,000 mani. Pocket change, sure, but... if it pointlessly burns MP, doesn't that make it inferior to the item "Torch"? Do I even need one in the first place?
Not even close. It works underwater and doesn't occupy either hand; that alone makes it a damn useful spell. For a musclehead build that doesn't rely on MP, just keeping it running in the rotation is enough to deal with Lycagon's invisible doubles.
But that isn't the spell's true value. In SLF, where magic and skills are basically active-type abilities, it's a rare spell that can be operated passively. I don't know enough about specialized classes to say whether they can do that on their own, but if you've got a proxy-activation accessory like the Lapistella Cloak, you can have two spells active at once.
Sunraku: "Disposable magic medium—Magic Scroll... Active Sonar."
Price: 200,000 mani. Pocket change.
It's a detection spell that displays terrain information and the coordinates of players, NPCs, and enemies within a thirty-meter radius centered on the caster. In general, the price of a disposable magic medium scales with how difficult its spell is to learn.
I mean, a spell that shoves even terrain data straight into your brain as an image has to be chewing through a ridiculous amount of system resources, so a price tag of 200,000 mani makes sense.
Sunraku: "...I mean, did they seriously press something flat from above and use the crushed thing as a 'lid'?"
Between the view lit by Magic Torch and the terrain image Active Sonar paints in my head, I can confirm that the "lid" that brought the volcanic activity at the very bottom of this crater to a halt is some enormous something, with traces of horns and scales still visible here and there.
At the same time, I can tell there's a fissure in part of the crater's inner wall. It's a scar in the volcano, split just wide enough for one person to pass through. The lid cuts across roughly the middle of the fissure, but conversely, that means I can get beneath the lid by going through the inside of the crack.
Sunraku: "All right... hngh!"
GRRUNCH. (The sound of Fugaku getting wedged in the fissure.)
You fat bastard of a heavy armor... I temporarily retreat into Inventoria's storage space.
Sunraku: "The water pressure should be fine, right...? ...No."
Even other reinforced armor that's slim compared with Fugaku probably couldn't fit through that fissure. Which means I'll have to go back to my bare body for a while. I didn't want to overuse this, but I need to be prepared.
What I take out is the other grail I received as a reward from the Ctarnidd battle... the Indigo Grail.
It has the extremely powerful ability to swap the numerical values of two specified stats, but in exchange, once a set amount of time passes, those same two stats receive a debuff for a fixed period that drops them to less than half their original values.
While recovering my MP, I activate the Indigo Grail, and—
Sunraku: "Gblblblgh...!?"
The instant I return to normal space, the enormous mass of water bears down on my body as though to crush it flat—
Sunraku: "Hell yeah... I survived, asshole...!!"
Fellfate Caldera has spent long, long years accumulating an immense volume of water inside its sealed crater. I made it beyond the "lid" deep inside the crater and slipped through gaps in strata that looked like cooled, solidified lava... don't sweat the details. At last, I'd reached an underground cavity where I could breathe.
As expected, the water pressure dealt damage... but my read and prediction hit dead center.
The stats I swapped with the Indigo Grail were VIT and LUC. Water pressure is, in other words, environmental damage—the same basic category as sticking your foot into a poison swamp or lava. And since pressure is essentially a sustained impact, I figured I could endure it by raising VIT. Looks like I was right.
Sunraku: "So I burned through the MP charged into the Lapistella Cloak too..."
But I don't need a light anymore.
Because it's bright enough down here that one would be pointless.
How am I even supposed to describe this?
I don't have any real-world skill like geological expertise. Even so, I can tell this much: a magma chamber is absolutely not built like this.
???: "Folololololololololo..."
Sunraku: "What the hell is that...?"
The area of Fellfate Caldera that I'm calling the "Deep Reaches" for convenience is a dome-shaped zone smaller than a baseball stadium.
Beyond the middle layer leading down to the Red Dragon lid, then farther below it, lies the lower layer beneath a canopy of cooled, hardened lava. The Deep Reaches sit below a fissure in that canopy, and because of the structure of the entrance, water pours down like waterfalls from several points in the ceiling.
The walls and floor are made of the same material as the canopy—in other words, cooled and solidified lava—but normally you wouldn't get terrain shaped like this. If it cooled and solidified, then it must once have been submerged. And if there's no opening for magma to enter, then the water must have been removed by some abnormal method.
So the field looks like this: pillars of water pouring down from above, a water-covered floor, and a sealed dome with no exit. And right at its center is that thing... I really don't want anything to do with it, but there's no way my objective is anything other than that.
???: "Fololololololo..."
Sunraku: "A monster... no, I guess it could be an NPC...?"
No, seriously, how am I supposed to describe it? A sphere emitting a light that mixes vermilion and white, like magma, with an X-shaped broccoli growing out of it? And it makes this weird cry that's halfway between laughter and snoring.
My body, which was soaking wet only moments ago, is already drying far too quickly for natural air-drying, so I can tell that whatever that magma-colored glowing thing is, it's giving off heat too.
Sunraku: "..."
Maybe because I've spent most of my SLF playtime wearing one, putting on a mask has become a kind of routine. I equip the Staring Bird Mask, turn into a bird-head, and for the moment start to ready my weapon—
???: "qiqiqiqiqiqiqi..."
Sunraku: "Okay, got it. We're going with 'no weapons'..."
With the fastest, smoothest movement I've ever managed—smooth enough to aim for a time-attack world record—I put my weapon away. The X-broccoli's "warning sound" disappears, and that laughing-snore starts up again.
For now, I've learned that this monster... the X-broccoli, which is probably a monster, has behavior close to a non-aggressive monster. If merely readying a weapon shifts it into an alert state, then I figured going empty-handed might work... and apparently it decided to let me off.
Sunraku: "Actually, it was about to transform just now, wasn't it...?"
The glow made it hard to tell, but in that instant, the broccoli-shaped something had started trying to unfold the way a crumpled piece of cloth spreads open. At the very least, it's reasonable to assume its current form is only a standby state.
Fellfate Caldera. A mysterious floating object in its Deep Reaches. Since this space is a completely enclosed dome, my objective has to be that thing...
Sunraku: "My gear's gotten so complete lately that brute force works, so I haven't done much of this... but it's been a while. Time to do some testing!"
Let's have a heart-to-heart!
Two "Reds" that look similar but are different. The Color Dragons are related... but also sort of not.