Loomian Legacy: Veils of Shadow

Chapter 22

"OH FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, THAT IS HUGE."

"Why did you scream all of that?" Zinx looked back at Angel in confusion, the latter still amazed by the large dome building sitting above the water.

The building had a glass walkway leading up to it, with four cylindrical platforms, two on either side of the walkway. Both the building and the platforms were glowing cyan.

"FIRST DIBS ON THE SUBMARINE!" Nadia yells, racing across the bridge to the lab. Musa follows suit, yelling about how Nadia had an unfair start. Angel rushes towards them after, shouting about how she wants to ride the vehicle first. Zinx just sighs and tells everyone to stay close together.

The lab was blue in the interior as well, with a circular pad in the center, which displayed a large yellow submarine. Computers and capsules lined the circumference of the dome, everyone in there working vigorously, studying rocks and placing them together. A woman with purple hair greets the group of 8 entering, asking them if they would like to take the "Underwater Mining Vehicle", or "UMV" for short, out for a ride. She gestures to the submarine while doing so.

"Although, only two people can fit at a time, so I'd suggest you go in pairs." The woman explained. "Each pair gets a free UMV battery, so no worries about paying."

The woman leaves them to discuss who's to go with who. Mabel immediately latched onto Jake, which left Lucy with Lucas. Nadia and Musa decided to be a pair, then Angel and Zinx, since he was the only one who vaguely knew how the UMV worked.

The trenches were a maze, clumps of rock forming high walls that can easily make someone get lost. Nadia didn't necessarily like that, since running around in circles makes her privy to a nausea attack sometimes.

Nevertheless, she manned the submarine anyway, while Musa kept a lookout for items jutting out of the rock or for walls that were about to give way. When mining, Musa would meticulously drill out the parts she was certain had something in it and every now and then, Nadia would chuck a pack of dynamite at it, blowing up the wall with no damage to anywhere else. Sometimes they manage to get whatever was inside, other times the wall collapsed before they could. They managed to get a couple of odd items: fossil fragments, triangle-shaped stones, and a blood-red crystal of some sort.

"Oh! You found a Glimmering Scale!" The woman exclaimed, examining the item at her desk. "It's an evolutionary item, pretty rare in the trenches. I'm surprised you found one."

"What about these triangular stones?" Nadia held up a blue one, which the woman took for examination as well.

"Ah, it's a Voidstone," she revealed, "We don't have any uses for it, but there might be someone on this route who can make something out of these."

"They're triangular, like our Capture Discs, yeah?" Lucas interjected, holding out one of his own. "Maybe they're used to make specific discs."

"Good idea! We can try to find a craftsman here. With the resort nearby, it's possible to meet someone who makes discs." Lucy suggested. Jake nods along in agreement.

"Yeah, that makes sense. Preferably, they'd be used to make type-specific discs, to make catching certain Loomian types easier. I remember back at home, there was a store that sold type-specific capture items, and they'd rotate them around depending on the day. For example, one day could have Fire-type items and the next could have Water-types, and the next Fa-" He stopped himself then, shaking his head. "Never mind. That's my speculation though."

"That would explain why they come in multiple colors. We found a Green, Blue, some Gray, and a bunch of Red ones."

"And we found some weird chamber," Zinx pulled up the submarine then, hopping out of it and pulling Angel out from the passenger seat. "I managed to snap a picture of it. It seemed to have been opened, and both doors had three circular artifacts each."