Selena stared Michael down for a moment before flicking a more timid peek at Everlyn. “Um… Yes, a briefing. I can do that. I can talk while we walk.”
As a group, they followed Selena into the massive building. The entire platform was kilometres across, but all of that space was taken up by a structure that in human terms must have been a hundred stories high and there was only a thin strip of land on the outside that was not part of the complex.
As a result, it was only a short walk to the entrance the giant had used and despite still being clearly shook up, Selena chatted professionally the entire time. She was definitely making an effort and tried to communicate everything she could think of that they might find interesting.
The doorway was not giant sized… It was even larger. It was twice as tall as the giant and three times as wide as it was tall. Tom remembered Selena describing themselves as bugs or ants and walking up that entrance it was exactly how Tom felt. It was like they were entering the field of a sports stadium that fitted a hundred thousand spectators if it was paved with stone instead of grass and not just one of them, but dozens in a row.
He gaped at the view. The hallway the entrance exited into was a straight line for kilometres. An open space far broader than the doorway had been.
“This is one of several similar corridors.”
“Geez, there’s more than this,” Tom muttered to himself as he tried to comprehend how large the place was.
“We believe these corridors were created for a quadrupedal creature that was half as tall again as the giant and many times longer. There are artworks deeper in, but physically they’re kind of like a ferret with trunks out of their ears.”
“I really don’t want to imagine that.” Thor said cheerfully. Tom, because he had known the large man for long enough could tell he was putting on an act to try to ease tensions. “So, where are we sleeping? In a cupholder? Or maybe in their sock draw?”
Selena giggled. She, too, was forcing it. “No, this place was built for use by two species. The primary structure architecture is for the massive ones,” she waved at the cavernous corridor. “And then there was also a smaller species, small versus this…” She waved at massive indoor space surrounding them. “But large for us. They seem to only be about the size of an elephant, so we kind of use their spaces. They’ve got a network of rooms, basically a separate city constructed in the dead spaces left when constructing the home for their larger brethren.”
Keikain was peering up at the architecture like a tourist. “Interesting, absolutely fascinating. Do we think they were slaves?”
“We can’t say because there’re no writings or diagrams that clarify the relationship between the species. But personally, I don’t think so. The facilities dedicated to the smaller species are more opulent than those for the massive ones. They might have been children, peers or something weirder…” She glanced pointedly at the chosen when she said that. Tom figured that at some point, Thor must have sent through an explanation of their weird biological cycles. “But I don’t believe slaves or servants and there’s no real advantage in speculating. I doubt anything we find in this trial will help in Existentia proper. These species may have been borrowed from another universe and if they were from here, then even then it’s possible they’ve been extinct for hundreds of thousands to millions of years.”
Tom continued to feel like an ant as they walked along the passages sized for something far larger than them.
Selena had a destination in mind and marched doggedly at an angle to minimise the distance. She headed straight for the closest side corridor and turned down it. A hundred metres further on there was a slightly discoloured stone and when Selena went up to it, it opened smoothly like automatic doors at a mall.
It was large enough for six elephants to go through and tall enough for an elephant standing on another to pass through without getting close to hitting their head.. The second species as Selena had alluded to was significantly larger than a human, but not on the borderline ridiculous level of the other owners of the building.
The new passage they entered was the same size as the door, and as they walked down it, there were offshoots. Selena explained that they led to a variety of dedicated facilities.. Training rooms where the stone was like gym mats. Others with an obstacle course, with sections being useable by different body sizes including human and then finally the kitchens where any food you desired could be created by funnelling mana into magical ovens. It was like Star Trek, but better. Providing your imagination was good enough, or in their case an item that they could create a facsimile of in their system room then the ovens could create it.
That meant anything he had ever tasted on Earth, the tutorial or in Existentia was creatable because his system room had shown itself to be able to faithfully create all of them. That customizability, the ability to make a system room perfect in all regards was why he had never allowed himself to indulge in the sanctuary that it offered. It was better than real life and for him that meant it was a trap.
“Unfortunately, it won’t allow you to create magically buffed food.” Selena frowned. “Meiji has had some success—” she nodded to one of the men accompanying them — “Once it’s been created, he can buff it, but apparently it’s significantly harder than stuff cooked over a campfire.” They kept walking. “And this is where the bedrooms are. Jenny is that way.” She inclined her head and then pointedly took the corridor leading directly away from that direction. “Our rooms are in this direction. You can choose to sleep where my team is or go to another location. The next six are all sleeping corridors as well.
“What’s the arrangement with the bedrooms?” Michael asked.
She shrugged. “There’s plenty to go around. This passage has thirty-six dwellings and to be honest you could all fit comfortably into one. They’re huge…”
“And the security?” the healer pressed.
“It’s unbreakable, we tried, unless like we speculated the giant gets involved. You imprint your energy into the processing unit to claim the chamber, and once you’ve done so, you can grant access to whoever else you want.”
Michael sent a speculative glance in Tom’s direction. “Before we decide to have separate rooms do they have doorbells?”
Selena looked confused. “Yes, they do. But why is that important?”
The healer smiled slyly. “No reason at all.”
At some point, Michael had quietly taken the lead, and he led them down the corridor that contained Selena’s smaller team’s claimed rooms. Almost immediately, there was another one of the mis-coloured blocks of stones and Michael confidently strode toward it and it opened at his approach. The bedroom, if it could be called that was about the floor size of two large houses. It was enormous. Three to four bus lengths wide and long plus a bus length high. The giant probably couldn’t stand in the room, but it was awfully close to being able to.
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Keikain whistled. “Those high ceilings! This place is extraordinary.”
Tom sniffed and disagreed with him. The air had an unpleasant animal musk scent to it and was bitterly cold.
“Don’t worry about the temperature or smell.” Selena advised. “If you use the controls, you can get rid of it within half a minute.” She demonstrated by walking to a bookshelf sized sheet of polished metal next to the entrance. She touched it and Tom briefly saw writing scroll over it and then almost immediately the chill started fading away and the musky scent reduced despite the fact that their instructions to heat the air should have made it more intense if anything. “Any temperature or smell combination you have in your system room has the ability to be transferred into here. You can literally make these rooms smell like roses, if that’s what you’re after.”
Michael glanced over at the wider team. “We’ll independently test the security, but as far as I’m concerned you can have separate rooms if you want, but personally I’m more comfortable if we stay here. I’ll claim this one and every ones welcome to stay.”
“Healing one,” the elder said having zoomed in front of Michael. “We appreciate the offer, but we’ll like to rest in safety by ourselves.”
The healer nodded unperturbed. “Vidja? What do you want to do?”
She glanced at her team and it seemed there was a lot of tension amongst them. Tom personally was happy to sleep with the wider group. If he was still dating Everlyn, it would be different, but after the last couple of months he was used to the lack of privacy, and it no longer bothered him. In a fundamental way, it was amazing to sleep near other people after his years alone. He actually enjoyed the closeness. By the glances being shot around, it felt like his view was a minority one.
Thor grimaced slightly. “I’ll make it easier for everyone by nominating first. Bao and I intend to stay in our own room.”
Bao punched him in the arm. She was small, and he was large, so it was more symbolic than anything else. “Thor, you can’t say it like that. It implies.”
He gave her a half smile and raised an eyebrow. “Would you prefer to sleep with the main group?”
She bit her lip and her cheeks were going red. “No, a separate room is… I guess it’s a good idea. Yes, we can do it. It’ll give us a chance to talk privately. Lots and lots of talking.”
There were widespread smiles and a few chuckles as her cheeks got redder and redder the more she babbled. She gave up and buried her face in Thor’s chest.
“Rahmat and I will take one for ourselves too,” Toni declared.
Tom realised he was not the only one staring at the woman in shock.
“Any other couples want to out themselves?” Michael said dryly.
Tom was sure that comment had been directed and tried to see who Michael had been talking to, but he couldn’t tell. A pair from Vidja’s team was his guess. The five of them, Bao was already spoken for, looked collectively embarrassed. There was a lot of significant eye contact occurring between them and Puma and Gerald were encouraging Vidja to make the call.
“Our team will split up between boys and girls.” She said finally sounding slightly evasive.
Michael chuckled at the exchange. “If you don’t want to live here, then clear out, please. Go find your own rooms.”
The chosen, Vidja’s entire group, Thor, Toni and Rahmat did exactly that.
The healer looked around at their suddenly significantly smaller group. “Good. Thank you for staying. Personally, I’ll feel safer if I’m sleeping with others nearby. We even have enough to set a sentry.”
Tom explored the area.
There were three side rooms. Two seemed to be different versions of a bathroom with varying sized pools within them. Each of the ponds, like the air, could have their temperature be independently tuned and the entire room could be heated to whatever temperature they wanted. They could create a sauna effortlessly, if that was what they were after. The third room was different and was covered with a shiny magic metal and had a control module that let you set the parameters of the sensitivity of the surfaces and what biological materials were considered to be waste products. It was basically there to absorb any biological waste that the owner of the room wanted to dispose of.
It had not been designed for humans, but despite that, because of the customizability built in it had everything they needed. The level of luxury was incredible. The only thing that could be argued as being missing was that it would have been better if the food station was not half a kilometre walk away.
Fifty minutes later, after having a welcome bath and hot sauna they met in the corridor and Selena escorted them to a map chamber.
“This is a marvel. It has everything you need to know. It’s kind of like earth technology if instead of projectors we had proper holographic displays and brain downloads.”
“Brain downloads?” Michael queried immediately.
“Yes, those. Initially, it contained all the information that Phil and the giant had discovered about the zone. But we’ve been able to add to it. When you’re in the room, if you just focus and think about it, then all the information you have about the zone just gets sucked into it and is there for everyone to use. The magic is particularly extraordinary because it can even grab subconscious stuff you’ve observed but haven’t realised is relevant to anything.
“Are you sure you’re not talking this up too much.”
She laughed. “See for yourself.”
Tom entered the promised room, a little uncertain about what he was expecting. The room was completely empty and slightly larger than the bedroom Michael had claimed.
Selena clapped her hands, and suddenly the room was filled with various sized disks. They went from his ankles all the way to a metre over his head. There were tens of thousands of them and the biggest was the size of a saucer.
“That’s the entire zone, but don’t worry. We can control the zoom.” She didn’t do anything physically, but everything flickered and then he was looking down on the familiar platform the giant had claimed. It was the size of a table.
The resolution was incredible. If he leant in close, he could see the individual bricks that covered the ground outside the main build.
Selena then explained how it worked. Available routes through the islands could be mapped, they could be tailored for safety or speed. The interior of explored structures could be displayed and observed threats flagged. When you brought all the information together, you could run advanced scans. Produce locations of unexplored areas by inference and find weakly defended islands that could allow quests to be progressed easily.
It was a cheat code that would halve the time they would need to satisfy the quest requirements.
Especially as now that they had seen it, they would be able to recreate it in their system rooms and use them away from this place. It could allow them to check, for example, that they were still on track or cross reference an interesting location. A platform could look appealing and untouched, but if Phil had already ransacked it, then there was no point detouring to check it out.
“This is really good.” Michael admitted.
“It is and you should use it to strategize the fastest routes to complete your personal quests.”
“Not the global one. That unification quest seems like something Tom, myself, and Everlyn would be well suited to put together.”
Selena shook her head. “That’s the easiest to finish, and we’ll do it when we’re ready to defeat the dragon. Phil and the giant have already completed it twice, but the races involved get offended at the smallest things. One time Phil witnessed an imperfect flower display setting off a fight. That sensitivity meant that every alliance that forms falls apart almost immediately. It’s just not worth attempting to paper over the cracks. When we want them to link up again Phil and the Giant think they just have to kill a few of them and after that including a lilac flower instead of purple of the edge of a central display bouquet will not seem like as large an issue as they originally thought.”
They broke up with a plan for early the next morning, and Tom wanted nothing more than to slip into bed. His head ached from tiredness even though mentally he had not done that much.
Almost immediately he was dragged into the same dream that he had been getting every night recently, but this time, like the urgency to break through was increasing. Instead of one dream there were two. When the second happened, Tom treated it with greater seriousness than usual. Unfortunately, no matter how much he prodded at the sides and tried to focus his senses all he received was pure static. He couldn’t unravel any extra details or clues. There was nothing hinting at the target no indication of any revealing emotions. The only thing he took from the twin visions was the fact they had occurred twice.
That had to mean something because he didn’t think a tier nine skill would be investing this much effort into a single outcome if it wasn’t going to be successful.