World Keeper

Chapter 1001: Hanging Moon

Now that I was already here on the sixtieth layer, I decided that I should take my time and explore a little. Although I had found the secret of the day/night cycle on this floor, there was no telling whether or not there was still more to uncover. And… while I could do so from the Admin Room, it was undoubtedly better to explore personally. After all, it was truly hard to grasp the scale of the area without walking it myself, and it was far easier to miss minor details.

That said, I teleported back to the ground, not wanting to waste extra energy on keeping myself airborne after I began to explore the maze. The worst case scenario was the night cycle beginning, at which point I would have no way to differentiate where the pitch black walls were and could be teleported around randomly without constantly expending energy.

However, I did not think that would be an issue. From my observation of the mineral veins above, they likely kept the world in a perpetual state of daylight, which was… incredibly helpful when it came to navigating the maze.

The first thing that I did was walk directly into one of the walls, wanting to send myself further into the maze. Once I had done so, I had no idea where I was in relation to my earlier point. What I did know, however, was that it was raining… heavily. The area that I had found seemed to have a large lake, with rivers flowing alongside a shore through the maze.

My brow twitched as I was subjected to the downpour, but I carried on. The water must have built up little by little over the years through the tidestone, so it would be strange if there weren’t any rivers in the maze. I simply created an umbrella made of solidified divine energy, to prevent it from being dissipated by the maze.

The rain was… intense. Every raindrop, propelled by the enhanced gravity of this floor, felt like a rifle bullet was being fired at me from above. Although my defenses were enough to withstand it, that didn’t mean that it was pleasant.

Out of curiosity, I followed along the flow of the river, listening to the sound of the rain around me. It didn’t take me long to notice the first effects of being deeper in the maze. For one, it took more focus for me to maintain my umbrella. While not a critical demerit, it was certainly annoying. However, the key problem was that it interfered with all airborne energies, even those used as part of the world’s system.

For example, when I opened my inventory, I found that it seemed filled with static. My minimap appeared fine, as it was just a visualization of what my senses had discovered, but display screens that projected in front of me had become more of an issue.

My main concern while I followed the path of the river was what we would use this floor for in the future. So far, there wasn’t anything valuable enough to commit a large scale mining operation. With the gates dissolving any airborne energy or enchantments, it wouldn’t be possible to turn it into a residential area, either. It wasn’t even a good place to fight, because most ranged attacks would fizzle out.

I’m sure Tubrock could come here to study the gates more in-depth, at least. This wouldn’t be the first floor that we had to abandon for one reason or another. I would just have rather found something to make this floor more important for our future development.

Dana hummed to herself as she sat in her office, working at her terminal. There was a screen projected in front of her, showcasing a large ship as well as several spheres of different material. Whenever Dana reached out to grab one of those spheres, the material of whatever she touched next seemed to change.

“Let’s see… I think the circuits should all be finished now.” She muttered to herself. After she learned about the Keeper’s plan to speed the world along, Dana had the idea to write a program on her terminal that would run for the entirety of her absence, optimizing the divine circuity that she wanted to create for the new starship.

With a wave of her hand, the results of the program emerged on the screen. Decades of development had led to this point, with nine nodes scattered throughout the ship, all connected to the captain’s chair via a complex network of circuits. “This should be good.” She grinned playfully, hitting a button in the bottom corner of her screen.

Within Fragments of Acidia, the command and construction file was received, a swarm of robots flying to work while Dana thought to herself. My familiar set up that machine empire, I might as well let myself get some benefits from it…

Lifre grinned as she swung her pickaxe horizontally, shattering the last boulder that remained from her mountain. She had already acquired nearly a dozen shiny new gems that she wanted to have Tubrock appraise when she got back to Olympus.

Turning around, she gazed at her handiwork, the crumbled heap that had once been a towering mountain. A grin covered her face as she looked up, before blinking. She had just turned her gaze skyward when she saw something that shouldn’t have been in this world.

“Since when does Fyor have moons!?” She asked herself, seeing a hazy white circle high in the sky. Her eyes were wide, staring at what looked to be a moon just at the edge of what she could see in the sky.

Now, logically, she knew that this must just be a massive island attached to another branch of the black stone walls. After all, the higher up you went, the further apart the walls were, giving plenty of room for this apparent moon. But on the other hand… “I’m going to be the first slime on the moon!”

Lifre’s body began to distort and shift, metallic wings sprouting from her back, like that of a plane. When she brought her legs together, they combined to form a jet engine beneath her. “Pilot, you are go for liftoff, in T-minus… now!” She shouted, flames shooting out of the engine beneath her, launching her into the air while she held her hands high above.

She could feel the wind crashing against her, forcing her to create a helmet surrounding her face. “Fyor, we have liftoff!” She cried out in joy, pushing more and more of her energy into the flames to allow her to accelerate faster.

As one might expect from a moon-like object, the trip to reach it was… quite long. Even at Lifre’s max speed, it took her more than an hour. Had she been able to teleport directly there, the trip would have been over instantly, but such was not an option to the excitable slime. Still, she was going dozens of times the speed of sound, the air crackling around her in a narrow cone.

“Faster, faster, faster!” She pushed herself constantly, the distant object slowly getting bigger and bigger until, to her surprise, she saw that it really was free-floating at the edge of the visible atmosphere. There did not appear to be any black stone gate supporting this spherical rock.

This discovery only made Lifre more and more excited, her speed finally reducing when she felt a new pull of gravity grabbing her. Her eyes widened, letting herself ‘fall’ towards this moon with a squeal of utter joy. The jet-like components sank into her body, and she rolled herself into a ball, crashing into the moon with a splat.

After a few moments, the slime began to reassemble, forming a grinning Lifre. “One small step for slime, one giant leap from Fyor’s surface.” She said, before breaking out in an almost hysterical laugh.

That was terrible. Aurivy replied with a mental groan, though Lifre ignored her criticism. She jumped to her feet, observing the moon that she was now standing on.

“How does it fly?! If I push it hard enough, will it bounce off one of the walls?” Lifre asked, determined to get to the bottom of this in a way that only she could. In other words, through sheer and utter recklessness.

She looked at her pickaxe, and then at the moon below her, realizing that this was certainly not going to be enough to mine out her new goal. So instead, she stored her pickaxe in her inventory, extending her arms out to her sides. 

Her hands began to grow, each one forming twin drills that began to rotate with a loud hum. Her legs thickened, clamps extending from near her feet to lock her to the ground. …Lifre, what are you going to do if your drilling breaks whatever is keeping the moon in the air?

Lifre tilted her head, giving that a serious thought. She ran through numerous simulations in her mind, before reaching a brilliant conclusion. “I’ll plummet to the ground and be buried in the moon! The diameter of the moon is larger than the space between the walls at ground level, so the force of its fall will cause it to crumble around me, encasing me in a mountain of stone.” Despite saying that, the drills actually became bigger. She moved her arms, shoving the drills into the ground to begin scattering rocks.

To handle the overflowing rubble that was bound to pile up, Lifre made an avatar, whose own arms turned into a wheelbarrow and began collecting any rocks she didn’t immediately shove into her inventory. Seeing her continue on, even after the warning, Aurivy’s voice became helpless. Then… shouldn’t you be a bit more careful about this?

“Oh, I’m being totally careful!” Lifre refuted aloud, a yellow hardhat appearing on her head. “See? Safety first!” After saying that, she pressed down, her hand-drills allowing her to progress nearly a dozen meters a second. Every step she took was anchored, and her avatar was rushing back and forth to clear the way.

At her current speed, and given the size of the moon, it would take her roughly an hour and a half to reach the moon’s core. Of course, that was without taking into consideration-- “Ooh, shiny!” Lifre’s drills temporarily paused when she found a glowing red gem, taking a moment to carve it out for her inventory.

Having to make such frequent stops like this, it was no wonder that the duration of her mining activity took nearly twice as long as she had initially expected. It wasn’t until sparks flew from her drills and she felt the pain of hitting something far too dense that she knew she had reached her destination.

“Okay! Final stop, the core of the moon! All slimes, please leave the elevator to inspect your prize!” She grinned, reaching down to look at the black rock that had been revealed.

For a moment, she tilted her head, thinking that this might be a black stone gate that had somehow not been connected to the rest of the walls. She reached in to touch it, seeing if the portal would open, but only felt a cool sensation against her fingers. “Okay, not a gate!”

With that revelation, Lifre immediately began digging out around the core, wanting to see just how large it was. Digging in a circle around the core allowed her to realize that the black core had a radius of roughly a hundred meters. “Oh! Oh! This reminds me of that material in Deckan! You know, the one with the flying islands!”

Magnartum. Aurivy reminded, seeming distracted. And… somewhat, though this is far more dense. At its size and weight, there’s no reason that it should be able to float like this. 

Lifre’s eyes practically shone as she heard that. “Well, it’s not unbreakable like the black stone gates! Although my drills can’t easily dig it up, I made scratches!”

This time, Lifre did pull her pickaxe out of her inventory, as it was better to use for breaking dense targets than her drill arms. “I’mma smash it!”

Lifre, no, no smash! Aurivy’s voice was startled as Lifre raised the pickaxe.

“Lifre smash!” She said, before slamming the pickaxe down on the black core. Immediately, a dense crack formed, which spread like spiderwebs throughout the core. The moon around her shuddered, and Lifre blinked. Suddenly, the core erupted, shrapnel flying in every direction and shredding holes through both the surface of the moon and… more importantly, Lifre herself.

“Owww….” Lifre whined as she began to feel a sense of weightlessness, looking down at her body that looked as if it were being held together with dozens of thin threads. “Aurivyyy, why didn’t you stop me?!”

Lifre… just… just pull yourself back together and get out before the moon lands.