Clutter walks straight at the wall that doesn't lead to the street and presses his hand to the material. His ring gleams for a split second at the contact, then a spiraling circular door slides out of the way. He confidently walks right through it, and I follow him with my awareness on medium alert. There's no way a quest like this won't have monsters to fight at some point, and considering what we saw to get here, I'm betting they'll be made of plastic.

…Speaking of, there's been a huge lack of the stuff from what I've seen so far. The walls definitely aren't made of plastic, and neither was the catalyst–so maybe it's going to show up later. At least that's what I'd assume.

"Okay, be careful around these tiles." Clutter motions as the two-foot wide squares under our feet. "Some of them are trapped with magic, but they're easy to spot–they were ripped up and the traps put under them, not made that way, so they're not seamless. Oh, you can probably just feel where they are. Pretend I didn't say anything!"

I nod absentmindedly as I step over a tile that shudders with magic. Clutter's right, though–the thing is ever so slightly raised compared to all the others, and it's a little more beat up. Like someone had to force it off to get the trap under it. If we hadn't been among the first people to enter the quest, I would've expected this to be the work of one of the others who came in a different entrance.

But the truth is that someone did it. Whether that's the system, the thing that imitated Ursula, or something we haven't run into yet, it proves this city isn't completely untouched.

"So… what's different here?" I ask as Clutter leads me down a tunnel that looks a lot like the other one. Except for the tiles instead of solid ground, that is. "The ceiling's exactly the same height, so is there more above us?"

He nods. "There are a bunch of things that look like apartments up there, but I haven't found any stairs. I had to climb the wall to get up there, but I don't really think that's how I was supposed to do it. Oh, and I also found these!"

Clutter jogs ahead, dodging trapped tiles without looking down at his feet, until he reaches a random stretch of wall that looks a lot like the rest of it. He presses his palm against it just like before, and it opens up to… a smaller room. My awareness tells me there's nothing in there, but I want to see it with my own two eyes just to be sure.

He steps aside with an excited wave to give me a better look. Carved into the wall is a simple alcove–three tiles deep, two tiles wide, and about eight feet tall–with absolutely nothing in it. I glance down at the floor, and sure enough, none of the tiles are trapped. It's just… completely empty. For absolutely no reason.

"The hell is this?" I ask as I step inside and feel at the walls. None of them react to my touch. "It's like a storage shed. But why is it off a main tunnel?"

"I don't know. I just found it." Clutter says with a shrug. "There's one about every twenty feet, so whatever they were storing here, they needed to store a lot of it. If you don't touch the right place, you just go into the next wall. Pretty interesting, huh?"

I don't know if 'interesting' is the word I'd use for it, but it's definitely odd. My first instinct was that these tunnels were just for transportation–especially after the sky threw burning embers at me–but with the tiles and the storage? Well, now I don't know what to think. Because they definitely wouldn't need this many tunnels just for people to walk in.

"Did you find the catalyst in one of these?"

He shakes his head. "Further up. I just wanted to show them to you. Ooh, do you want to see one of the apartments? There's no furniture, or doors, or anything else, but they definitely have the layout of an apartment."

"Maybe later. Let's just go for the towers."

"Okay. But we're definitely coming back–there's no way all this would be empty for no reason." Clutter turns away from the alcove and continues walking. "You know, I thought the doors would be hexagonal. Not circles."

I brush off my hands and walk to his side. "Because of the plates?"

"Yeah, because of the plates. One of them had the big deposit of plastic in it, and it turned the map into something your Class Card could process. Until I saw the circle in the wall, I fully expected it to turn into a hexagon."

Huh. I guess I can see where he's coming from. The tiles on the floor are perfect squares, the doors and 'moons' in the sky are spheres, and everything else seems to be one solid mass. No hexagons in sight.

"Maybe that's the point."

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He tilts his head to the side. "What's the point?"

"The hexagons. We haven't seen any yet, which we're assuming means they aren't important here. So what happens when we do see one?" I trace a hexagon in the air with my fingertip that Clutter follows with his eyes. "It'll stand out even more. Like an 'x marks the spot' kind of thing."

"Ooooh. That makes sense. Maybe the hexagon is important to whoever used to live here. Or… or maybe it isn't important at all, and it only exists here because the system put it here. A kind of 'only for the quest' thing." Clutter's eyes shine with confidence as he nods to himself. "The hexagons only showed up in the ring Clamber made, I assume your armlet, and the actual rock we took the plastic from. I bet it's one of the hints to help us with the quest."

"Just like my map. But with information instead of a physical thing." I muse as I cross my arms in thought. "Makes me wonder what kind of hints or advantages all the other ways to get into the quest would've given us. Who knows–maybe the sphere-wreath will actually do something in here."

Clutter vigorously nods in agreement. "Take it out! Give it a try!"

"I don't see why not."

I shrug, then summon the sphere-wreath. The words 'Marywell Den' are still right there on the wreath, pointing in the direction of where I left Illumisia, but the sphere itself has undergone more than a few changes. To be specific… it's broken out into hexagons. Each of which vary from blazing light pink to icy powder blue, and everything in between. Most of them are shades of purple, which I assume is the intermediate point between the two colours, but a few of them are so white on either side that I can barely make out any red or blue.

"That's new." I state the obvious after a few seconds of silence. "I guess that means the proximity detector idea was a good one… but… then why didn't I notice any changes where the thing led me to? Was Marywell Den a complete red herring?"

Clutter leans in and taps one of the hexagons. He yips in surprise as the colour of the hexagon spreads over the entire sphere, leaving only an extremely condensed mass of hexagons on the underside. We both stare at the strange transformation for a few more seconds, but nothing changes. And I have no real idea what any of the hexagons actually mean.

I wrinkle my nose and turn around. The sphere's hexagons shift so they stay in the exact same orientation as before–like a compass needle–and I'm no less confused than before.

"What colour was the thing where you went with Illumisia?" Clutter eventually asks.

"No colour. Well, the colour of the stone we know this thing is." I lower the sphere-wreath and summon a shield to attach it to my belt. "Maybe it's some kind of resonance thing. The closer it gets to where it's supposed to be, the less it reacts."

"Then why wasn't it always reacting since we found it?"

I set my mouth in a thin line and stare at Clutter. "I have absolutely no freaking idea."

"Neither do I." He adds helpfully. "Want to just ignore it for a while?"

"Not really sure we have the ability to do that… but sure. Why not." I shrug and try to put the thing out of my mind. My awareness makes that an impossible task, but it feels like it's just in my peripheral vision, not dead center. "Alright. No more detours. We can go sightseeing and theory crafting after we set up one of these anchors."

Clutter grins and breaks into a jog. "Race you there!"

I roll my eyes, but jog after him anyway. Neither of us put our all into it, since we're not stupid enough to exhaust ourselves in a dangerous and unfamiliar place, but getting my blood pumping does feel good. A little… better than usual, actually. The air slides down my throat easier, my muscles don't scream as loudly, and everything just seems… a little easier.

My mind snaps to the fact that they greyed out my buffs and debuffs tab as well. The system wouldn't do that without a reason. And I highly doubt slightly increasing my stamina is the point.

"Hey, Clutter." I take a few long strides and tap him on the shoulder. "Do you feel like your mana's running out faster? Or… anything strange at all?"

He inhales deeply, as if the air itself was refreshing. "The air's filled with mana here. So no–my mana isn't running out any time soon. It's probably one of the quirks of the quest–or a way to make sure people with higher clearance don't just steamroll it for the rest of us."

"That's possible?" I ask, not even trying to contain my surprise.

"Of course it is. I bet the mana-air here makes it so everyone regenerates at the same pace–which is a buff for weaker people, and a huge nerf for strong people. But… that wouldn't be enough to make the horizonguard from Stonestep Solutions not just… clear this in a few hours. So there's gotta be more effects we just can't trigger on our own."

"Hrm. What do you think would happen if Illumisa came here?"

Clutter snorts out a laugh. "Nothing. If she doesn't want a buff or nerf to apply to her, I don't think anything could stop her. Of course, that'd mean we wouldn't get any rewards from this. Which, now that I think of it, probably nerfs the horizonguard more than anything else the system could do."

If that's the case… then why's the horizonguard here in the first place? I can't assume anything before I can see it with my own two eyes. Until I have confirmation of this quest's clearance rating, nothing's on or off the table. There's a very real possibility this quest is for… like… clearances 5-50 and it has a completely different set of objectives for each power bracket.

But even that is an assumption, so I can't pretend that it's right. Damn. Just knowing one person is here with clearance so much higher than mine throws a wrench into all my theories. So… I guess it's time to stop theorizing and keep jogging.

At least until the quest gives me something concrete to work with.

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