Soulless Soul

Chapter 65: Behind the Darkness

Vesper flipped the heavy, sizzling slab of meat over on the heated stone with her silver sword and nodded her head in a slow, motion.

"Yes," she stated, "But... only when the night cycle takes its full effect. During the hours of the day most of them seem to completely disappear off the upper canopy entirely."

Sky grinned a cold, cynical smile beneath the dark fabric of his crimson scarf.

He already had a quite clear, strategic notion of what exactly why there weren’t many monsters roaming the upper levels of the gnarled forest during the day.

It was a feeling, like he had been jumping frantically from one high tree trunk to the other for a very long, grueling duration before finally stumbling upon the ruined clearing.

But to his internal clock it had felt like nothing much actual time had gone past at all. The compression of his senses under the weight of the dungeon’s sector deviation was playing tricks with his perception of reality.

What the absolute hell is this strange feeling I’m getting, Sky thought, furrowing his brow deep in the shadows of his hood.

Let’s not over analyze it now. I’ll just make myself unnecessarily tense for no practical reason, mental fatigue is yet another lethal hazard. He forced his thoughts back to the tactical board, looking over at the tech girl.

"That’s because they all gather near the exact geographical place where I’ve been spending most of my time recently," Sky explained, leaning his back against the rough purple bark of the massive branch. "You really should’ve seen the layout; there’s a massive, towering cliff structure positioned straight to the west of here."

"Well, to be exact it’s actually a single, colossal giant tree."

Chloe’s join the conversation. "A... a single tree? But for an independent runner to successfully survive up there without a frontline anchor it should be physically..."

"Yes, it’s a giant tree - at least two hundred meters tall from root to canopy. There aren’t any natural fruits or supplies growing on it, so I simply climbed up and hid myself directly on top of the severed trunk to hide."

Sky reached up, scratching the back of his head somewhat through his dark hood as he recalled his initial landing coordinates. "Anyway... on the specific day the array forcefully sent us down into this unmapped sector, two massive, high-tier sea creatures were a violent, catastrophic battle near that stone statue down in the lowlands. The moment the tidal system receded I saw an enormous, rotting carcass laying exposed out on the sand with hundreds of F-Rank Trench Spiders slowly tearing it apart."

"Then I met the Priestess, and she joined me on top of the giant tree to escape the local pathing lines." Vesper presented a single, silent nod of agreement, her gray eyes staring fixly into the dying embers.

Chloe suddenly tilted her head to the side, her short purple hair shifting against her tunic.

"Wait a minute. I was physically here in the sector too, but I didn’t see any sign of water or sea life. Were we literally living in completely different layered instances of the same floor layout?"

"How long?"

Sky blinked, his dark eyes narrowing through the static of his interface.

"How long what exactly?"

Crazy Hope stared at him in complete, unblinking silence for several agonizing seconds. The heavy, unreadable weight of her neutral gaze made the atmosphere around the small campfire very uncomfortable, until Chloe shifted nervously on her pile of dried seaweed.

"How long..." Vesper finally said, her melodic voice carrying a sharp, demanding edge, "...until those creatures are completely done devouring the raw mass of that sea carcass?"

"Oh, Sky muttered, his mind running off of the spider spawn he had tracked from the canopy. "One more day. Two at the absolute max before the resource node is fully depleted."

Vesper immediately and violently turned her body away from him. Without giving him a single word of explanation she reached out, removed the roasting meat from the hot stone and quickly put out the glowing flames with a handful of damp moss.

There is definitely something wrong with that girl’s, Sky thought to himself, staring at her retreating back suspiciously, she was treating the timeline like a tactical countdown.

Despite the abrupt darkness the three independent operators quietly ate their portions in the dimming, bleeding light of the violet twilight.

The mystery meat was incredibly juicy, remarkably tender, and incredibly delicious. The fat had been rendered perfectly against the heat, coating Sky’s tongue with a rich flavor that was better than absolutely anything he had ever tasted in his entire life - easily surpassing the bland mass-produced food served back in his real-world school’s cafeteria.

Of course, the fact that he was suffering from excruciating, deep physical hunger after an hour of frantic sprinting probably played a major, biased part in his evaluation.

Sky kept the absolute truth entirely to himself, forcing his face to remain a neutral, unreadable mask as he chewed. He wasn’t about to tell two exhausted girls the fact that they were currently eating the flesh of a Savage Beast. He didn’t feel like losing his head to Vesper’s silver broadsword or dying a painfully violent death out on a tree branch.

From time to time during the quiet meal they methodically passed the Uncommon-tier glass bottle back and forth between them, taking measured turns drinking the crisp, endless supply of water Chloe had engineered.

By the time they finally finished their meager meal the ground-shaking rumble from below had stopped, signaling that the mysterious red sea had fully returned to submerge the lower labyrinth paths.

Night had officially descended.

Of course, with his senses and his passive [Danger Sense] netting the immediate terrain Sky could still easily see the distinct profiles of both Vesper and Chloe sitting across from him.

Under the heavy cover of the dark night cycle Crazy Hope remained mostly unchanged, she sat perfectly rigid her fractured sword resting over her lap, a serene and unyielding monument of pure combat conviction.

The blind tech girl, however, finally allowed her true, heavily guarded human emotions to surface - operating on the fragile belief that the absolute blackness of the canopy meant no one could see her face. Stripped of the day light’s distraction Chloe seemed much more lost, profoundly lonely and deeply frightened than she had during their interactions in the safety of the LivingRoom. She looked like a seventeen year old child who realized her armor was gone and her life-support monitor back in the waking world may be running out of power.

As if desperately trying to fight off the crushing weight of those dark feelings and push back the suffocating silence of the forest, Chloe suddenly spoke up in a forced overly bright voice.

"How about we all formally introduce ourselves to each other?" Again? She smiled warmly into the dark, "Just to pass the hours. I’m Chloe."

Vesper glanced briefly in her direction, her silver hair shining faintly in the starlight, and gave a loose shrug of her shoulders.

"Vesp," she stated flatly, shortening her name to it’s bare minimum.

Next the heavy silence of the canopy shifted, it was officially Sky’s turn to speak.

He sighed mentally, genuinely wondering as to why they were even bothering to perform this ridiculous domestic social ritual in the middle of the night. They already knew each other’s names damn it! For crying out loud!

But seeing Chloe waiting there with quiet, desperate patience for his answer her hands tightly wrapped around her knees in the dark Sky’s cynical expression softened slightly. He let out a low breath and smiled.

"I’m Skies," he said his raspy voice dropping into a gentle, grounding register. He paused, looking out toward the starry void beyond the trees. "But since we’re sitting in the dark... you can just call me Sky."

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