[D'sP] What The Refugees Saw - Chapter 372 (Patreon)

An old guy babbled on about how he had been stuck in a brick house. Or as he put it, “Well, it wasn’t quite brick. More of a quartz type of feel. Not red either, but bricks don’t have to be red, I guess. Just doesn’t feel right. Anyway, it was a brickish sort of house. Close enough to a house, anyway. Weird circular beds, let me tell you! Don’t quite get how they would have slept on those things. Though I guess they wouldn’t be quite human? Or maybe they were? Kind of hard to tell since there wasn’t anything personal hanging around. Odd that.” And on and on, but the information was good either way.

While not much of what the old man said ended up being all that unique compared to others, every data point was important. The quartz bricks? A common feature across every report.

In another room, a teen boy excitedly goes on about some stuff they saw out of a window. “So yeah, there was like, this mecha type thing! A real Mecha! Though I think it might have been magic? Still cool though! It had these odd cables that seemed to have a glow pooling, like someone dumped a glow stick in a clear tube. Though I don’t think they were tubes? Those cables seemed to be pretty solid.”

Across the hall, a family explained what they could see. The wife mentions, “We were in some sort of high-rise apartment. Not quite as big as some of the skyscrapers I’ve seen.” Then the father nods, “I’d say half as tall. Though the building itself also seemed to be much wider. More like an apartment block, but tall than a traditional skyscraper as we know it.”

All the while Ace is re-interviewing any people with particular important information.

One man had an interesting bit of insight. “They certainly used electricity not that long ago. There was old wiring in the place I was stuck and some appliances that wouldn’t work with the renovated plugs. Whoever lived there had recently switched over to I presume, Mana.”

A young girl who saw something and despite her parents’ insistence she imagined it all, Ace wasn’t so sure and so listened to the girl’s story. It was a little disjointed, but the crux of the matter? The girl thought there were ghosts in the house they got stuck in.

She would play with toys, only to come back, and they would have moved, creeping closer to the toy chest. Her parents, of course didn’t believe this, so there wasn’t any extra information. However, Ace figured they hadn’t been dealing with a ghost or anything. Rather, there must have been some residual Mana powering a simple cleaning cantrip that was designed to put away toys. That or the girl’s imagination, but Ace wasn’t dismissing it.

Another family with a teenage daughter was particularly useful. They had ended up on the top floor of a more traditional style skyscraper and tallest building wherever it was. As for why Ace paid particular attention to them having a teen daughter? Well, she happened to be into art and so with some paper she had kept with her, had drawn a bird’s eye map of the area.

Ace didn’t believe any of their teams would be lucky enough to actually land within that area. However, the layout would likely help. Though it did admittedly look very similar to many cities he had seen in the past. Ace also knew that the devil was in the details and so passed the rough maps off to the Barrais for study. If anyone could find an important pattern or detail, it would be them.

Another guy that Ace talked to had an interesting stay. He didn’t see much, but while where he stayed shared many similarities to the apartment skyscraper buildings that others described previously, his was different. If Ace had to nail it down, where the guy got stuck might be a barracks. Not just because of the more spartan accommodations, but also because of what he could see.

There had been tank-like vehicles lined up. Numerous aircraft with much too stubby wings and what might have been gun barrels except they were solid pieces of metal. More importantly, off to the side was a collection of rusting vehicles. Not just normal rust, though. They had clearly suffered as so many of the pre-system stuff Ace had seen so far. That rust that wasn’t only on the surface, but spread through even solid parts.

Also, while there weren’t any mechs in that area, the solid cables with something that glowed in them were all over the place. More importantly, the guy had actually seen one cable rupture and release the glow. The cable had been left too close to the vehicle graveyard and a stack fell on it. This proved that whatever had been in the cable wasn’t actually a liquid.

While it did seem to pool in the cables, once the surface of those cables were ruptured, it would flow out only to right away sublimate away. There was no bubbling or boiling. The glow peacefully turned into a gas that dissipated within moments of release.

And besides all that, there was a ton more. Ace had even gone and assigned a trio of people to go and record the layouts of every living space people had occupied. Though besides the round beds, much matched what you would expect to find just down the way in any of the pre-system towns.

Not that this was a bad thing. Knowing what you were going into? Always a nice thing. Though the fact that much of their knowledge was limited to living areas and what can be seen from windows could be a problem. As the round beds showed, not everything is as expected.

It also didn’t comfort him that none of the places that people had stayed, ever showed signs of being lived in. Yes, Ace understood that the whole planet basically a diorama set up in collaboration between the system and a dungeon. However, given the details seen, the fact there wasn’t a single knickknack? Sure, there were some appliances, even the non-functional ones. However, no one had seen any wall art, patterned rugs, graphic tees, or collectables. Even the toys the one girl talked about were her own, which had been brought with her.

Ace couldn’t even really compare it to those example room setups you find in some big stores to display their products. Even those places will clutter the display a bit with stuff. It looks too unnatural if you don’t.

In theory, this didn’t represent an actual problem. If anything, it meant they wouldn’t be tripping over stuff left lying around. Ace, however, felt it was more likely that the scenes people could see were set ups. Sort of like how movies and shows would have products with the brands removed. Which meant they didn’t know what to expect.

A problem when they’re about to send at least 30 people, though likely more, into the situation. Worse, even if some areas are like that, this was an entire world! Who knows what dangers might be just a mile down the road? Ace honestly felt this might be worse than exploring a new dungeon floor the regular way. At least then, you go in with an idea of what the limits might be.

This was a full size planet covered completely in a city. That meant the dungeon’s floor was bigger than that! Ace mostly trust the system not to screw them in this quest, but just the thought of what level monsters might be possible on the floor was sickening.

Though, as Ace worried, everyone else planned. There was so much they wanted to pick up from this quest. For many, even just gaining access to how they made those bricks would be worth it, because they certainly weren’t normal pieces of building material.

The bricks also weren’t magical in origin. At least, not originally. There were more than enough mages and such hanging around in there that some of them studied the various things. Those in the massive apartments had found the quartz bricks to be like much of the pre-system building materials around the place that had been reinforced by someone with a Skill for it. Though the reinforcement seemed a little too consistent and so the going theory was that the system did it since you can’t exactly have a planet city lose all man-made structures.

Those in the high-rise apartments, especially the fancier accommodations, had found something different. The quartz bricks used in those buildings? New, post-magic new. Now, they weren’t masterwork or something crazy like that. However, they were inherently superior, despite seemingly using the same materials. Sure, there was a minor improvement from simply being a little magical to start, but whoever had made it all? They figured out a way to enhance the basic materials to a large degree.

Ace personally wasn’t too worried about this, the same with the rest of the inner circle. Why? Because, they recognized what was going on. Though they couldn’t blame those who hadn’t studied some of the things from the deeper floors, especially mithril. Those special bricks? They had been reinforced in a similar manner to the rocks that the mithril was found in.

Now, not to say Ace wouldn’t be interested in if they figured out a method to artificially force such a process. Though he would be more interested if they just somehow had a bunch of mithril, if only because it meant they had a method to smelt mithril on a large scale. In the end, though, the planet hadn’t stopped getting more magical.

Any material they enhanced right now? Unless they really went all out, it wouldn’t be that many years before new materials being gathered would equal it. In fact, even if the magic levels stopped increasing, it would still take years or maybe even decades before natural resources had caught up to it. More to the point, while it might be important for other places, Ace had the dungeon.

Sure, wood from some of the deepest floors weren’t suddenly twice as sturdy as stuff from the earlier floors. However, that lumber was reinforced to an amount that trying to reinforce with Mana would be a losing bet, needing way too much Mana to be practical. Ace was trusting the dungeon to keep growing and to provide advanced materials well before any techniques could manage. Later on, those techniques won’t be turned down, but for the moment the natural growth of materials outpaced them.

What Ace actually wanted? Well, to start, samples of those cables. Kelly was almost certain that they allowed the use of magic as if it was a liquid in a pipe. Not quite as useful as electricity in a wire, but able to replace it to some degree.

Though just as equally, Ace somewhat fears such things. The system had clearly stated that this quest could reveal a trap that many were falling into and with just what was known right now? He had a guess. Ace kept such thoughts to himself for the moment though, as in equal measures, they needed to keep treading the path they were on. So, without firm proof, he would stay silent on the matter.

Besides, he would soon have more than enough local problems to deal with. Not only had the town’s population grown by a vast amount, but they now also had the deerkin and raccoonkin mixed in. The introduction of the wolfkin had gone shockingly smoothly, but Ace chalked that up to most of their features being quite close to those of a dog. After all, as kin, it isn’t like they have a wolf’s muzzle. He wasn’t going to try and coast by on lightning striking twice. Their introduction would require his full attention, at least for the near future.

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