--- Kat ---
Seems those caverns weren’t nearly deep enough for the second layer. They’d been making their way down the stairs for at least ten minutes at this point. Admittedly so of that was the lack of structural integrity forcing them to take things slowly so that Lily could move her shadows along the staircase to keep them together... but it was still quite a long way down. Kat wondered what they’d do when it ca to going back up the stairs?
She also wondered what possessed them to make wooden stairs for this. They’d obviously needed to dig down quite a long way and instead of chiselling the stone out as they worked their way downwards they’d used wood. Unenchanted, if originally sturdy wood. Instead of neat stone stairs, the stone dropped in large amounts every ti they hit a corner so that the next bit of the staircase could fit in place.
It was a weird design and if Kat had a mouth right now she’d comnt on that fact. Instead, it was simply sothing she noted as they continued all the way to the bottom. When they finally reached the end of the staircase, they found their troubles weren’t over just yet. The exist was aw rather firmly locked tal door. It was heavily enchanted, you could tell just from the feel of it...
And the tal had a slight rainbow sheen to it. The base was close-ish to steel, a bright silvery tal... but if you held a light up to it, the main reflections were a bright kaleidoscope of colours. Considering the only light they had down here was Kat’s demonic fire? And that was a rather consistent purple? They had no idea how bright green could show up if not for so magical effect.
The door itself also had no obvious handle to open it up with. It was almost like a tal wall, but... well... it had to be a door right? It was situated at the bottom of the staircase, filled the room completely and there might be sothing reminiscent of a gap around the edges to allow for the hunk of tal to swing open or closed. Of course, trying to fit her watery form through those gaps just saw her getting zapped by the enchantnts... but that probably ant there was more to this... right?
"How the heck was Chisel intending to get through this?" asked Kat as she transford back to normal. She also, poked at the door a bit. Before she could make contact with the tal a faint tingling ran through her fingers. That could either be super dangerous for a normal person... or a warning. Hard to tell.
Furen carefully examined the door for a few monts before answering "I’m not sure. He didn’t seem worried about getting past it... but I’m not sure he KNEW about it. Unless he thought those caverns were a way around the door? Fancy as this thing is... I have no idea how far it extends into the walls. I an, just based on the enchantnts I can’t imagine they’re so foolish but..."
Everyone glanced backwards at the wooden staircase they’d needed to head down. "I see your point," admitted Kat. "My counterpoint would be that, perhaps, this is more ’unfinished’ then ’incompetent’."
"Right but that still wouldn’t explain the stairs," countered Furen.
Kat nodded along with a shrug and turned to the walls. They seed like decently sturdy things... but ’decently sturdy’ had a different definition to the remnants of her human mind. Kat pulled back a fist and slamd it into the wall at full power. The stone was pulverized imdiately under her fist... but that’s all it really did. Make a fist size dent in the wall.
Lily had much better success with her drill shadows. In fact... it the stone seed to practically lt away underneath it. Kat did have to take a step over to block the debris from hitting Furen just in case, but Lily was making great progress. "Why is this so easy? I an..." Kat looked at the rock. "Is this ant to be soft rock?"
Furen shrugged, how would she know. Lily similarly sent a ntal shrug. With magic involved there could be all sorts of reasons and while she had explored rocks during her research... none of it really involved learning how to mine them better so she had no real guesses as to what was making this so easy.
Even when Lily dug towards the door... she quickly found that even her few extra tres off to the side was plenty to get around it. There was no hardy enchantnts on the surroundings of the door... at least not until they made their way closer. It seed that while the outside walls weren’t anything fancy, the interior walls for the... vault perhaps? Those were made of what seed to be the sa tal as the door.
Lily frowned as she looked at it. [I think I could possibly dig through this. It’s not enchanted, not properly like the doors... but it’s going to take a lot of mana and be hell on my ears. If I clear away so more rock so you can stand here Kat do you think you could do sothing?]
*I an... I can try but the bracelet is still limiting in a major way. I think we’d be best to... perhaps alternate? I shove demonic energy at the tal, then you try to break it, then I do it again. Try to induce thermal shock or whatever it’s called in the tal? Weakening it enough to dig through perhaps?*
Kat shrugged and the two got work. It was harder on Kat then she expected. The tal didn’t quite reject her demonic energy but Kat could feel it failing to sink in properly as she tried to push the matter. So... instead she had to deal with just using demonic fire on the outside of it and hoping her intent to freeze it made it through. After holding it there for a few seconds Kat would step to the side and Lily would move her shadows forward.
Lily chose to use the sa drill shape as before, the grinding sound against the wall wasn’t kind to anyone’s ears. Lily had so extra shadows stuffed into her own, Kat was accepting the damage as collateral and Furen had moved out of the tunnel and as far away as she could manage without risking the stairs. It was still loud, almost sounding like steel on steel.
The process repeated for quite so ti. Burning through demonic energy, mana, and patience as the wall continually refused to give. Progress was being made, just agonizingly slowly. The small hole Lily had managed to carve out was barely enough for you to fit a single knuckle’s worth of your finger inside and that was after fifteen minutes of this. *Do we keep going? This... this is NOT progress.*
[I an technically speaking it IS progress but I agree it’s not great. On the other hand... I think he tal around that small hole is weakening as well. If we keep going I think we should be able to get through... and if we can manage to get all the way through we might be able to start tearing the wall instead of trying to dig through.]
*You think that would be easier? I an I’m not against it in principle but I’m not sure how much strength you can put into your shadows...*
[Hopefully enough.] Which was really all that needed to be said. So the pair continued working their way through the tal as best they could. It took another ten minutes to make it through... and the hole was barely the size of a pinprick. Lily had continually refined her drill to be smaller and sharper as she’d worked... and while that ant they’d made faster progress, technically, it ant even seeing inside was hard. Sure they could see, but the point of view was so small that they couldn’t make out anything useful on the other side.
Let’s go talk to Furen. Lily had an inkling of what Kat was thinking so the pair moved outside. "Ah, finally done?" asked Furen.
Kat shook her head sadly, "Not quite. Lily and have managed to make a hole, a small one, and we can probably get through it with just the two of us. Lily teleporting and myself in water form. We can keep working of course... but..."
"It would be a major issue," sighed Furen. "Is there any reason you aren’t simply going forward?"
"Well assuming the core IS inside we’re not sure we can bring it out with the hole as it is now. We have no idea how big we’d need to make it of course... but certainly bigger," explained Kat. Knowing that the chances the core would go easily into her bracelet were... low.
Furen shook her head. "No, I’ve co far enough at this point. If you need to open it later that’s fine but for now... I guess you should go and see what’s inside. I’ll just wait here I guess."
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