Gacha Harem System

Without further ado, the four of them stood in a loose circle in the tunnel, their sun balls hovering above them.

They had the presence of mind to dim the lights, just in case, and they also had their eyes on Percival.

After all, there was the possibility that the man was lying. But that didn’t seem to be the case. After all, what was he going to get out of that?

"What are our options," Lukas said. "Talk to me."

"We turn back," Karrakas said immediately. "That’s the safe call, and I’d be a poor guide if I didn’t put it first."

"Something is wrong with the beast behavior in this section, and when the rules stop applying, then we have no reason to take the maps as gospel. And the maps are half of what keeps Climbers alive down here."

"Turn back to where, though?" Akira said. "Fort One? And do what? Wait for someone else to figure out what’s happening?"

"Report it to the pavilion, at minimum. Beast behavior anomalies are exactly the kind of thing they pay for."

"The injured party is already reporting it," Melody pointed out. "They were headed straight back. By tonight, the pavilion will know about the bats."

"They’ll know about the bats," Karrakas said, "but they won’t know about the empty tunnels. Those are two different warnings."

"For what it’s worth," Percival offered brightly, "I did already report the emptiness to some dudes yesterday. They wrote it down and told me that beasts migrate sometimes. Very reassuring men. Terrible listeners though."

Nobody responded to him, but that didn’t mean they didn’t hear his words.

"Here’s my concern with turning back," Lukas said. "We don’t actually know that going back is safer. If something has emptied these tunnels, we don’t know where the beasts went. For all we know, they’re between us and Fort One right now."

"If this were an open space like the Red Desert, we can simply chart another route, but this is the Crystal Caves. The routes are set in stone. Retreating now doesn’t automatically mean we’re heading to safety."

Karrakas grimaced, but didn’t argue. After all, the key here was that they had no idea where the beasts had gone.

"And there’s the other thing," Akira said. "If we run back at the first sign of strangeness, we’ve learned nothing. We came here to learn about this terrain and to learn how to operate without a guide."

"We have to consider that strangeness is part of the terrain. Running from every anomaly doesn’t make us cautious. It makes us unprepared. We learn from the unexpected just as much as we would from the expected."

"To be fair," Percival said, "running is quite underrated. I’ve run from many things and I’m still alive."

"Melody?" Lukas asked, ignoring him.

Melody was quiet for a moment, turning her mace slowly in her hands.

"I think about the Undercity," she said finally. "Things went wrong there too. I’ll say it was worse than this, with the walls closing around us and Akira gone."

She looked up.

"We didn’t get through that by retreating. We got through it by staying together and facing what was in front of us. I believe it isn’t an exaggeration to say we’re smarter now than we were then. And this time nobody’s separated."

She shrugged. "The empty tunnels are unsettling, but we’re not exactly helpless people wandering in the dark. Whatever emptied them still has to deal with us."

"That confidence is how obituaries start, you know," Karrakas said with a chuckle.

"It’s also how legends start," Lukas smiled. "Do the math. There are four of us, plus one D-rank tagalong—"

"Present and happy to help," Percival said.

"All armed for this specific environment, and with mobile light we control." Lukas ticked the points off. "Not to mention the skills we have with us."

He paused.

"If there’s a party in this entire cave system built to handle whatever this is, it’s this one."

Karrakas looked around the circle, eyes moving from face to face. Whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find it.

He sighed and unslung his bow.

"Fine. We’ll continue," he said. "But we do it my way. I want us clustered closely in formation with the lights spread. I want no one drifting, and the moment we find something I don’t like, we’ll reassess the situation. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Lukas said.

"Agreed," Melody and Akira added.

"Wonderful," Percival beamed. "I love a democracy."

"You didn’t get a vote," Karrakas told him.

"And yet I respect the outcome. That’s civic virtue."

"You." Lukas tapped Percival on the shoulder. "Stay close. You’ll be in the middle of the formation."

Percival raised his hands amiably. "Middle of the formation. Understood. It’s been years since anyone protected me. I’m touched."

"We’re not protecting you," Akira said. "We’re containing you."

"Even better. I feel very contained."

They arranged themselves without needing to discuss it.

Melody moved to the front, mace in hand, her [Hex Shield] ready to snap into place at the first sign of trouble.

Percival went in the middle, exactly where four sets of eyes could stay on him.

Karrakas took the right flank, an arrow loose on his string, and his gaze sweeping the walls.

Akira took the left, her flail ready for anything.

Lukas fell in at the rear, poleaxe in both hands, walking half-turned so the tunnel behind them never left his vision for more than a few seconds.

They began walking, and the tunnel grew progressively wider as they went.

The wider it got, the less Lukas liked it.

Narrow tunnels had two directions. Front and back. Especially when they were small enough that his head was almost scraping the ceiling.

But this place was wide and had dozens of angles. In fact, every column was something a beast could stand behind, or be.

Nobody talked, and even Percival had gone quiet, which somehow made things more tense.

Then Melody slowed down.

"There’s a blockage ahead."

They walked up to see the tunnel ended in ruin.

It was a cave-in, and not a small one.

Massive crystal shards had come down from the ceiling in a slide of debris, with the jagged blocks piled from floor to ceiling.

"That looks recent," Akira said quietly.

"Recent as in days," Karrakas murmured, stepping closer, "or recent as in hours. Hard to say with crystal."

He pulled the updated map from his ring and crouched, unfolding it. His finger traced their route, stopping at the corresponding passage.

A few seconds later, he tapped a branching line. "Here. We’ll backtrack about three hundred meters, and once we take the left branch we passed, we can loop around to the other side."

"Or I could clear it," Lukas said, studying the pile. "I can use [Bone Wall] to brace the ceiling, then work through the debris."

"Save it," Karrakas said, standing and folding the map. "Remember the situation we’re in. We’ll date that as a last resort, not a convenience tool. We have a route, so let’s use the route."

"Agreed," Akira said.

Lukas nodded. It was the right call. "Alright. Move out."

They were just turning around when Akira’s sun ball shattered.

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