My Last Dive [Made in Abyss Fanfiction]

09| Pride Comes Before the Fall

I dropped down out of the tunnel, landing on a steep pile of pebbles and powdered rock that I slid on to the bottom. Pebbles met moss as I straightened up, marveling at the scenery.

   Leafy, fern-like plants that grew up to nine feet tall lined the walls of a cavern that must have been twice the size of my parents' house in both width and height. Vines climbed the walls and draped down from the ceiling, and moss covered almost everything. Some of these ferns also bore a strange, orange fruit—baracocha, if I could recall correctly—that faintly filled the air with a sweet scent. Neritantans nibbled at the fallen fruits, breaking the silence with occasional squeaks.

   The most notable flora in the cavern was the blue shining grass Vio had mentioned. It grew where the moss didn't on the walls and ceiling, and it also lined the bottom of a semi-large pond at the cavern's center. Ribbons of azure light danced across the walls in dazzling arrays, bright enough that we almost didn't need our headlamps.

   "I wasn't expectin' to come 'cross somethin' like this," Melva said after joining me at the bottom of the slope. She was looking around as much as I was, though her expression remained as stony as it had been since we first began this delve. Meanwhile, Vio had already begun searching through the ferns, trying to find any Relics.

   "There's hollows and tunnels hidden behind some of these plants." He turned back to us. "I don't think we're in Talpiclor territory, but there's a water source here, so you never know. Let's find a place to set up camp, and then we can start searching." I'd almost forgotten about those things. Hopefully this cavern was just a gathering place for Neritantans and nothing more.

   We established our camp at one of the far ends of the cavern, a place where the ferns were particularly tall and thick. It took some hacking, but we soon cleared away a spot in the center where we could sleep for the night. The ground wasn't as flat as it could be, but the surrounding plant life was enough to hide us from anything that might wander past. With only our tools in hand now, we set out into the cavern to hunt for Relics.

   To my delight, it didn't take long for me to start uncovering things. The Relics were hidden amongst the baracocha plants and stashed away in hollows in the walls. Most of these hollows were Neritantan dens, and they seemed to have a liking for shiny things. Finally, after spending so long in those tunnels, I was back in my element of Relic-searching. Rocks were overturned, ferns were pushed aside or slashed through, and walls were hacked at with precise blows from my pickaxe. My skin gained a sheen of sweat that soon became coated with dust, but I didn't care. I'd much rather work up a sweat knowing that I was moments away from finding something than merely walking or climbing.

   After some time, we cleared out as many Relics as we could find and reconvened near the pond, where we pooled our findings. The level of quality between the Relics here than on the upper layers was easy to see. Of the ones I found, the ones that stuck out to me were some kind of magnifying eyeglass set in a ring that produced light when put in darkness, and a writing instrument resembling a pen whose markings could only be seen in, again, darkness. It was as if the blue shining grass had been made into ink, even if there was no visible ink left behind.