More time passed as we slowly tunneled through the Earth. Two day-night cycles had passed by in my soul world as we worked our way down. Dav passed the time keeping the house clean and tidy, while Pait had taken an interest in my extensive library. He had stopped complaining and now spent his days reading.
I probably couldn’t say how deep we were. It was at a level that if we were on Earth, the molten core would have started to heat things and make the environment impossible to continue. However, thanks to the Deep, it was a rather cool place. Well, even if the environment was molten, I would have been fine as long as I kept my Heat Immunity equipped. I did feel the concentration of mana increasing, and also, I felt the presence of more gaia.
All mana had the signature of the place it came from. Faerith’s mana was unique to Faerith. Mana that’s signature had corrupted or changed became miasma, and was sort of like cancer or a poison that threatened to attack and convert surrounding miasma. Spirit Fire was mana that had a bit of lore connected to it, giving it a caustic element that could damage or consume souls. Fairy Dust, on the other hand, was concentrated mana, gathered and condensed by fairies.
As for gaia, the mana of the earth, if I had to describe it, it’d be like liquid mana. It was mana that had been crushed under high pressure beneath the earth. It had a much more pronounced signature, the signature of this world, and seemingly aided to solidify this world. One could call gaia the world’s memory, a compound condensed and maintained for sometimes eons. When our bodies died and broke down, we became oil. When our souls died and broke down, they became gaia.
At least, that’s how I had come to understand the fairy’s mana reagents, and how they existed. As to why I could utilize them to trigger unique skills, I didn’t know. Perhaps it was because each type of mana had adopted a piece of lore, and that lore could be combined with a skill to unlock a new skill. It’d be a way of using the mana’s memory to pull off something your soul lore wasn’t ready to accomplish.
The point is that the farther we go, the more I could feel gaia. At the moment, the gaia was in a vaporized state, not much different than evaporated water, but I had a distinct feeling that if I went far enough, rivers of gaia might be detectible. Such a thing could only be found this Deep down, or possibly in the lower floors of a mega-dungeon. I wondered if any of the mega dungeon’s lower floors connected with the Deep.
If so, maybe we could punch our way into one of the great dungeons like what had happened with the Widow’s Dungeon. Then, we could return to the surface from there. There were only two great dungeons that I could do that with though. I would have had to log in with the 1st floor of the safe room for the idea to work. Well, it was just an idea. I had nothing but time to think through this endless slog into the Deep.
I put Alysia away and grabbed the edge. I found myself hanging from a hole in a roof, leading down into a massive cavern. However, I could see the size of the cavern, as all along the walls was a translucent green light that glowed.
“This is…” Alysia gasped.
“We made it, the Deep.”