The Chronicles of Dwynveia - a Slimeling LitRPG

Despite the nightmares, I woke up mostly rested. Still, I pondered asking Caeileera to put me under with her Sleep spell the next night. It probably wasn’t the healthiest thing to do, but you know… Anything was better than those dreams. Out of a morning habit, I checked the time. I actually reached for my smartphone and had a small panic attack when I did not find it, but then I remembered I was no longer in fucking Kansas anymore, so I called up the hour on my interface.

Current Time: 08:07 CET (08:27 local)

So it’s officially my second day here. Hopefully, it will be minimally less terrible than day one.

Aki figured out how to move her helllight around, so we ate a breakfast of ration bars, sitting around a “campfire”.

‘All we need now is some sausages and it’s a proper camping trip,’ I muttered.

‘Don’t remind me of real food,’ Caei moaned. ‘You have no idea how shit the rations we had here were. At least those…’

She pointed at the rations bars.

‘... don’t taste like paper.’

‘I’m with Caeileera on that one,’ Aki added. ‘I haven't eaten proper food since I got captured by the goblins. What they fed us was tasteless sludge with an occasional piece of mystery meat nobody dared touch.’

‘Why?’ asked Caei.

Aki paled slightly, so I simply said:

‘Remember where I told you I found Aki?’

Realisation and horror dawned on the Sanguine’s face.

‘Oh. Ohhhhhhh…’

Tasteless sludge is people, I thought grimly.

This killed any mood we had for conversation, so we finished the “meal” in silence.

After we were done and filled empty potion bottles with water we set off. Caei carried us over the pile of rocks and we reentered the cemetery. There, Aki pointed out something I should have noticed a long time ago.

‘Guys… why do you think there is grass growing here? Aren’t we, like, deep underground?’

I looked at her and simply said:

‘That is…an excellent question.’

We both looked at Caei in the hope she would have an answer. She was our resident mage, after all.

The Sanguine shrugged.

‘Sorry. The best I can do at such short notice is “It’s magic”. I was never one for magical theory either, so, unless this is something obvious, I wouldn't be of much help even if I had more time.’

‘Magical grass of mystery, it is then.’ I laughed.

Caei led us to the entry point into the pillar, which turned out to be a carved staircase. As she explained to me, apparently there was a network of man-made chambers spanning the entire length of the natural structure. Aki chimed in and called it a whole city built inside of a mountain.

‘So not so much Iram of the Pillars, as it is Iram in the Pillar,’ I joked, forgetting myself.

When I saw their confused looks, I quickly explained that Iram of the Pillars was a legendary lost city mentioned in one of our religious texts. Aki looked at me with her child-like wonder and said:

‘Could you tell us more about this Y-Ram? Oh! Please! Please! Please!’

Caei rolled her eyes but said nothing. Unfortunately, I didn’t know much. But, as we ascended the stairs, I did regale her with some stories of Atlantis. I may have added in some stuff from modern fiction, like that Indiana Jones video game, as they made it more fun. And, hey, despite her earlier disapproval, even Caeileera seemed captivated by these. And thus the structure we were in was dubbed Y-Ram.

The next few levels contained rows upon rows of open-topped box-like compartments built from the same stone as the rest of Y-Ram. I’ve seen those in movies before, which only made my brow furrow.

Wouldn’t you keep animals in those?

There was more evidence to support the “holding pens” hypothesis, as there were wide double-chambered floor-level troughs between the box stalls.

Each storey in the pillar, as we discovered, had two ways of going up and down - two of the walls had alternating staircases allowing you to go up or down a single level. Why these weren’t just two massive staircases spanning the entire height of the pillar, I had no idea. The other two walls each had four vertical shafts that did turn out to go from top to bottom.

Why are there elevator shafts here?

The few levels above the holding pens were even more perplexing: each was a wide-open space crisscrossed with a massive network of deep rectangular indentations in the floor, between which there were stone troughs. Upon a closer inspection, I discovered that each niche was connected to the other with a small circular opening, and all of those were perfectly lined up, as if, saaaay, a long pipe was supposed to be installed there. There were additional round vertical indentations in the floor at each end of a line of troughs. All of which made me wonder, why did we find what was clearly an empty modern hydroponic garden several hundred metres underground.

It took them several hours to get up to the top of Y-ram, a bit longer than it took them to go down, but it was to be expected, especially since Lilyth wanted to explore the place a bit. They didn’t find anything, but still, Caeileera was very worried about the slimeling's reaction to the city. Lilyth did her best not to show it, but it was clear she understood more about the structure than she was letting on. Both Caei and Aki were confused by their findings, but mostly because they didn't recognize the vast majority of what they came across. In the case of Lilyth, it felt like she was more focused on “why” rather than “what”. She was now sitting on the edge of the pillar, just staring into the distance, her legs just dangling over the abyss. Every now and then she would absentmindedly kick out with one of them.

Caei sat next to her, “accidentally” brushing against Lilyth’s shoulder and asked:

‘A Divine for your thoughts? You seem… distracted. Did you learn something while we were down there?’

‘Was I that bad at hiding it?’ the slimeling laughed bitterly, then she started enumerating on her fingers.

‘Going from the bottom we’ve seen: a cemetery; three floors with animal pens; a multi-level hydroponic plant, think sort-of greenhouses, clearly designed to have a sprinkler system with actual pipes and perhaps UV Lamps installed. By UV I mean artificial sunlight; a mess hall with a kitchen and cold storage; a water treatment plant; what I assume to have been a generator room; a massive storage complex; living quarters designed to house thousands; and don’t forget - a square with two office high rises. All of which were stripped of anything not made of stone. And lest I forget- everything is connected by elevators.’

Lilyth did not elaborate on the last one, but Caei assumed this was tied to the deep vertical shafts they saw. Were they some sort of a transport method? Instead, she asked the more important question:

‘So this WAS an actual city?’

Lilyth shrugged, and Caei noticed Aki perched almost out of view, trying her best not to appear like she was listening in on them.

‘Maybe. Here is where I enter the land of speculation. It cannot be just some lost city, not that there would ever be any city that’s “just” lost. It would be the simplest solution, but probably the incorrect one. The reason for that is actually simple: it doesn't add up. What we have here is a pristine marvel of engineering just ready for people to move in. But why did no one do it? This couldn't have been cheap to build. But then there is a graveyard at the bottom. Who’s buried there? The builders? Some of the inhabitants? So did people live here and abandon it at some point? Once again… I don’t think they did. There would have been some signs of habitation left, even if it was just half-decayed trash. And whatever utility fixtures are present, appear to have never been used to begin with. If pipes or whatever were stripped from them there would be SOME sign of that. Like, I can’t imagine this being done with surgical precision or much care. So it’s more likely these were either never installed, or well… vanished. I can’t fully exclude magic being involved here somehow.’

‘Why?’ Caei asked, genuinely curious.

‘Haven't you noticed there was not a speck of dust anywhere?’

Caei, in fact, has not, but now that Lilyth has pointed that out…

‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘That’s the telltale sign of a location with a high concentration of magic.’

Lilyth smiled bleakly.

‘So: expensive, magical and empty. I can’t imagine any reason why you would magick away the furniture and leave the structure standing.’

Lilyth paused for Caeileera to add something, but she was just as lost as the slimeling here, and the more her friend outlined her line of thought, the less the Sanguine liked what she was hearing. She suggested:

‘Which is why, I gather, you are more inclined towards ‘Y-ram was never inhabited’?’

Lilyth nodded and continued

‘We then come to the proper question, which is not “What happened to Y-ram”, but “What IS Y-ram”. Or rather: “What was Y-ram meant to be?”’

‘And that would be?’

‘Haven’t you figured it out? You have animal pens, greenhouses, a facility to recycle water there were likely some areas meant to produce items that we missed,… ‘

‘It’s a city that can survive on its own!’ Aki suddenly chimed in.

Lilyth turned towards the demonborn girl and pointed at her:

‘Correct! A gold star for the cute girl with blue hair!’

Aki smiled widely and joined them.

‘So why would there be such a city here?’ Caei asked.

‘And that’s the question I’ve been trying to figure out an answer to. You see… There are two actual whys here: “Why is Y-ram here “and “Why is the Tower of Trials here”. Like, it’s weird that both clearly unconnected structures are here underground. Y-ram was built by people closer to mine in technology, perhaps slightly more advanced as I think we lacked the means to even try to build such a thing. The Tower of Trials, other than the control room, is… well… you’ve seen it.’

‘A falling-apart decrepit Abysshole that looks like a castle dungeon?’ Aki suggested.

‘Yeah,’ Lilyth smiled mirthlessly. ‘ That would be an apt description.’

‘I don’t think the builders of the Tower of Trials knew about Y-Ram,’ Caei added.

‘Me neither,’ the slimeling sighed. ‘So why are both places here?’

‘A leyline?’ Caeileera suggested. ‘Laachersain theorised there was one here, given the Tower had been in operation for such a long time. That would be the only source that could sustain it for so long.’

‘Then Y-Ram being here would support that theory.’ Lilyth nodded. ‘Would tapping into the leyline necessitate it being this deep?’

‘No.. not really. You would need to be much deeper than this for it to matter, I am told. Once again, not an expert. They could have believed it to be helpful but you can get pretty much the same amount of mana from the surface. ‘

‘That settles it then…’ Lilyth said with a dead voice. ‘When I had my “friendly” chat with Varyag, the fucking bird said there were many places like this. Then, I assumed he referred to the creepy-ass graveyard. But… now… I realised he meant Y-ram.’

Caeileera felt her heart sink. She remembered what Lilyth had told them about the information the slimeling got from Varyag. She peaked at Aki. The demonborn girl also looked very distressed by what Lilyth had just said and seemed to also be connecting the dots. Her tail was nervously twitching. Then Lilyth made the final pronouncement:

‘Y-ram was not a city. It was meant to be a shelter.’