"Welcome back!" Corissa called as Varis returned from the woods, not a single plate of armor looking worse for wear, "I saved some lunch for you!"
Varis nodded and sat down with the plate of curry that Corissa handed him and began eating the curry through his helmet. With Isla watching him very closely. Like...personal space invasive-ly close.
"You never told me you could eat." Isla hissed.
Varis jolted as Isla leaned in closer and closer, now actively preventing him from eating his curry.
"Isla! Down, girl!"
Perry's sharp order made Isla growl and slowly retreat back away from Varis like some sort of miffed dog.
"So what's the plan?" Momo asked as the rest of the group sat around in a circle, "How do we exterminate these monsters?"
"First, we have to find this nest. Roko sighed, "Thankfully, we have Perry's exploration data from the past two days so we have a bit of a head start, "Perry?"
The mercenary pulled out a map and rolled it out on the ground where everyone can see the marks and notes they had made over the topology.
"I see." Roko said, quickly scanning the notes, "So we have about a quarter of the edge of the forest checked. However, the nest I found was around here to the top left here. Perry found Corissa around here and we've stemmed the recent attack wave around here." Roko made gestures around the map covering around 2/3 of the map with his points, "So the only remaining places we haven't been to is the deeper parts of the forest and the edge around the bottom left."
"I don't think it's around the bottom left." Perry noted, "They usually like more enclosed places or at least places with more cover."
"Then why have you just been checking around the perimeter?" Momo asked curiously.
"You've seen for yourself how many monsters are in the shadows of the trees." Perry laughed, "It's way too much for me and Isla to handle. I sent a request for reinforcements to our band's leader yesterday but it almost certainly must not have even arrived yet. We were just doing preliminary scouting while we wait until we came across your party."
"And now you don't even need reinforcements." Momo grinned, "Alright so we're exploring deep in the forest tomorrow!"
"If only it was that simple." Roko shook his head.
"What do you mean, Roko?" Helena asked.
"I explored the top left of the forest and discovered the abandoned nest and there were exactly NO monsters to be seen anywhere."
"Which is unusual for them since one would expect them to be using the shade to hide themselves all over the forest." Perry nodded, catching onto what Roko was saying.
"Right." Roko nodded back, "So I can only assume they're nowhere on the surface of the forest."
"On the surface huh?" Kaguya mused, "So you're saying they're perhaps underground?"
"They're certainly not in the sky." Roko said, checking the clear blue sky over the forest, "No, I can only assume that there is some sort of underground chamber they're using. What are the known caves in this forest?"
"None." Perry replied, "Look around. No caves anywhere on the map."
"True." Momo said, raising the map to her face to look over it for any names or icons, "I'm not finding anything."
"Then what's going on?" Helena crossed her arm, "What can we do?"
"Long shot but…" Roko turned back towards Varis who was still eating with Isla watching him closely, "Varis, did you spot anything that looked like an entrance to a cave?"
Varis shook his head.
"Hmmmmm…" Roko closed his eyes and thought deeply about their options.
"Any ideas?" Helena asked.
"Perhaps the underground option was kind of a premature conclusion?" Perry shrugged, "I don't know, me and Isla can check the bottom left edge of the forest real quick and see if we can find something?"
"There's still enough daytime left to do that real quick." Roko nodded, "But take Helena with you while you're at it."
"What's going on?" Helena asked, excited at the idea that she could prove pivotal, "What's the plan?"
"I still think the underground option is the most likely." Roko stated, "So if there is an unmarked cave somewhere, our best best is to check underground as well as on the surface."
"How do you suggest we do that?" Perry frowned, "Is there someway to...look under the surface somehow?"
"Oh!" Helena cried, slamming her fist onto her palm, "Drone!"
"Right." Roko nodded as a ghostly eye floated out from around Helena, "You can send your drone underground from the surface right? Can you see underground?"
"Hmmm." Helena pretended to think for a moment, "I can send it through objects but I usually don't see anything while inside an object. So I would be blind for a long while until I reach something like a cave where I can open my eyes."
"That's great and all but can you see in the dark?" Perry frowned, "If it's an undiscovered cave, I can't imagine there would be a lot of light for you to see with."
"Good point." Helena mused, "I don't think my vision improves much just by using my spell so I will train to see in the dark! I will lock myself in a room and practice looking at smaller and smaller objects in sheer darkness so that I can-"
"Do night vision spells not exist?" Roko frowned.
"They do." Momo reported.
"So just lift the night vision enchantment off an enchanted object and apply it to your drone." Roko sighed, "Just like how you lifted the enchantment for better vision off your phone's camera."
"Oh alright, I guess I can do that too." Helena sighed, "Alright Roland, you get to keep your pants on tonight."
"Ayo?" Roland blinked.
"Roland please recall what Helena was talking about before you get excited." Roko sighed, "Until then, Perry, if you still want to patrol the bottom left perimeter, I won't stop you but I'll still ask you take Helena out as a test run for this idea. Until then, we can rest at the village until tomorrow arrives. If we understand then we'll break for today."
"Yay!" Everyone shouted in agreement and went off into their own groups for the day.
"Gotta call in an order from Melia to emergency deliver a pair of night vision goggles for me." Helena said as she followed Perry off to the left edge of the forest, "You need anything?"
"Oh, you offering?" Perry smiled, "I can use a new dog bed."
"Oh, you got a dog?"
"At home yeah."
"At home? Who takes care of it then?"
"My wife."
"You're married?!"
The next day, Roko received some troubling news. Namely that the recon with Helena didn't produce much results though she did manage to procure some night vision goggles and successfully copied the enchantment onto her drone spell.
"So now you can see in the dark?" Roko asked, mainly to confirm.
"Sure can. I would demonstrate but it's pretty early in the morning right now." Helena shrugged.
"I'll take your work for it." Roko nodded, "For now, let's send your drone underground and see if you can pick up anything."
"Roger." Helena saluted and the team set off.
According to their plan, they trekked towards the deepest center of the forest. And like their plan entailed, Helena kept a drone underground to look for any caves but the deeper they got with no reports from Helena OR any sign of another surface nest, Roko became increasingly worried.
"This isn't good." Perry nodded as their hike continued, "We're going to reach the forest center soon and if we don't find anything, we're going to need a new plan."
"Well there is one backup plan I guess." Roko sighed.
"And what's that, genius?" Isla scoffed.
"I have a spell that can...map the surrounding area in my head for me." Roko sighed.
"Oh yeah? And why didn't you start with that then?" Isla sneered.
"Because the drone plan was better." Roko retorted, "And it's not that big of a range so I'd have to go around using this spell on every corner of the forest."
"So instead of doing something yourself, you just pushed the work onto Helena." Isla teased.
"I told you, the drone plan is better because we could get visual information instead of geographical information instead!"
"Right, the old 'Visual information is better than geographical information' excuse." Isla nodded.
"For the record, I don't mind doing this." Helena interjected.
"Whatever, I guess it wouldn't hurt to double up on plans." Roko scowled.
"Oh is the humble little prince going to actually do something now?" Isla teased.
"Shut the fuck up, cutting board."
"Oh, you're so original." Isla rolled her eyes.
"What's that you said, Isla? You're so short and your chest is so concave that all I can hear is the echo of my own voice coming back to me."
"You're dead meat!"
Varis and Perry worked on holding the short red head back as Roko scowled and turned his attention to the surrounding woods as he casted, "Analyze Map."
The past times Roko used Analyze Map, he was usually inside a cave or in a building. Both locations were usually quite simple locations at least in terms of details. The most Roko had to deal with where wavy forms of stalactites and stalagmites. But this was a forest and Roko had a concern that using his spell here would cause him to be aware of the location of every tree and branch around him which might cause an overload of information. And while he did get a little dizzy as the information flooded in, it wasn't quite as bad as he feared it could be. It still wasn't something he'd be keen on doing again though. That being said, it did bear immediate and noticeable results.
"What the hell is this?" Roko frowned as he looked at the green lined map in his head.
"Did you find something?" Corissa asked.
"Seriously?" Isla frowned.
Roko ran off, following the map in his head to one very noticeable outlier in his map. The trees and foliage were a pain to look at sure but this single thin tunnel leading straight down from the ground? There was nothing else like it. In a few short minutes, Roko reached the location where the tunnel downward was supposed to be and looked around. There was no gaping hole where this drop could be but from his spell's information it wasn't a big tunnel to begin with. So he crouched down and began shuffling through some bushes until he found it. A single small hole. Basically the size of a bath drain. Except it was surrounded by tentacles. They did not stretch out far from the hole at all and even his analyze spell cut off at some point several meters underground.
"Find something, fido?" Isla called as the rest of the group arrive to discover that he discovered.
"Whoa." Perry said simply as he recognized the tiny hole in the ground.
"No wonder we couldn't find the nest." Momo whistled, "They're that deep underground?"
"So deep that even I can't discover the main chamber." Roko scowled, "Helena."
"You want me to follow this hole down with Drone?" Helena smiled, "Sure thing!"
At her casual utterance, Helena summoned a phantom eye and sent it down into the earth, following this suspicious tunnel as far as she could go.
"So how far can she actually project that thing?" Isla asked.
"I'll make it simple and round it down to an easy 120 meters." Helena answered.
"That's far!" Perry exclaimed, "Are you some kind of magical genius?!"
"Nah, I just had a very good teacher. Also, the spell was always meant to extend pretty long anyway or else it would be useless."
"So...did you find anything ye-"
"Shush." Helena said, cutting off Isla as her eyes narrowed in a concerning discovery, "...What the hell is this?"
"Is it them?" Roko asked.
"You bet it is." Helena's eyes continues to scrunch and warp as she grew more concerned with what she saw, "There's an entire chamber down there. It's huge."
"Not man-made?" Momo asked.
"No, there's stalactites and stuff." Helena reported, "It's definitely a natural chamber but it's been taken over by the tentacles too."
"Any women?" Roko asked.
"Yeah." Helena replied darkly, "They're behind cells made by the monsters. They look...pregnant."
"Not again." Roland held his head.
"Quick question tho." Isla frowned, "These girls are normal sized right?"
"Yeah?"
"Then how'd they fit down a hole this small?" Isla pointed at the entrance they discovered, again, about the size of a shower drain, "There's no way they'd fit!"
"But the oil monsters certainly could." Roko nodded, "They're virtually liquid."
"So what, are you suggesting they digested the girls then reconstituted them underground?" Isla rolled her eyes.
"No, but there's no telling how much mass they can compact inside their form. If they can store an infinite space inside them, they could easily absorb a girl, compact down then slide into the hole."
"Oh yeah, the infinite storage space theory, how could I forget?" Isla rolled her eyes, "Are you serious right now?"
"Are you? Haven't you been fighting them yourselves for a long time? Are you really surprised by something like this?"
Isla stopped and through about for a moment, her consideration bringing her bitter realizations.
"In the end, the real question is how are WE going to get down there?" Momo frowned, "We can't get down there ourselves."
"What about fat tits mcgee over there?" Isla jabbed at thumb at Corissa, "Can't she purify the monsters by herself right now?"
"I don't think so." Roko frowned, "But what do you think, Corissa?"
"From the sound of it, this chamber's quite deep." Corissa mused, "Sanctuary is only a certain layer deep though. I can send it downward but the further away from me it gets the weaker it becomes. I don't think I'd be able to destroy it from up here."
"What about holy?" Momo asked, "It destroys everything related to those monster on just a touch right? Can't you just use it here and it'll go straight down?"
"There are ways to avoid that kind of destruction though." Roko shook his head, "If it's traveling down the tentacles to destroy them then they can split off the tentacles at an earlier point so that it can no longer travel down. Then they just start reforming."
"True.' Momo nodded, "So...what now? How do we get down there?"
Everyone stood around, unsure of how to handle this conundrum. This silence lasted a while until Isla spoke up,
"So...I'm just gonna say out loud the plan that we all thought about but no one wanted to acknowledge."
"What is it?" Corissa asked curiously.
"Funny that you should ask, cow tits because it involves you." Isla smiled, "We let you get captured, sent down into the chamber then you use your funny magic stuff to destroy them from the inside out."
"W-What?!" Corissa yelped, "That's...actually a good idea."
"Huh." Isla blinked, "I didn't think you'd say that of all people."
"I mean it's easy and efficient." Corissa nodded, "I'm willing to give it a try."
"Seriously?" Isla blinked, "I didn't think you'd volunteer of all things."
"I mean, I'm sure everyone else thought of it too." Corissa smiled, "They're just too polite to offer it."
"Yeah." Isla sneered at she looked at the rest of the group with Roko, Perry, Momo and even Kaguya trying not to look guilty.
"I mean it would work." Roko admitted, "The monsters can't touch her once she uses her spells basically so it actually is incredibly safe."
"I don't know how this spell works but I'll take your word that it's effective." Perry smiled awkwardly, "And...Corissa IS a girl so she could very easily get kidnapped."
"My only other plan is to blast this hole open with lightning magic and force our way down." Momo said sheepishly, "But that will no doubt rile up the monsters and we'd have a real fight in our hands."
"We can still do that to get Corissa out once everything's purified." Kaguya nodded, "The real concern are the girls. If we start a fight they could get hurt down there or worse, the monsters might somehow escape with a few while we're fighting."
"...So in conclusion…" Isla sneered, "The Corissa Sleeper Agent plan is the best."
"The problem is Varis." Roko winced, glancing at the black knight, "If he'd allow her to endanger herself.
Varis shook his head, an immediate refusal though Roko expected a stronger rejection than that. Perhaps some stomping or lightning magic sparking out of him in anger but his reply, while still a refusal, was quite simple. Perhaps he heard everything and agreed though he still wasn't quite willing to let Corissa endanger herself.
"Leave it to me. I got this." Isla said smugly as she walked over to Varis and placed a hand on his shoulder, "Varis. It's time to take the cow tits out to pasture."
"What she MEANS to say is-" Corissa said quickly rushing in as Perry ran over to cover Isla's mouth and pulled her away, "-it's okay. I want to do it! Please let me do it!"
Varis's expression could not be read through his armor though he looked down, unsure of what he could do instead.
"Varis look at me." Corissa gently lifted Varis' head to look her in the eyes, "I want you to trust me on this, okay? I've always trusted you to protect me. Over everybody else even. But I want you to understand that I don't just want to be protected. I didn't want you by my side just so you can protect me. I want to achieve things alongside you! I want to go on adventures with you! I want to be someone worthy of standing along side you remember? So I need you to trust me."
Varis hearing all this reached up and caressed Corissa's cheek. He looked away, complicated and difficult thoughts fighting in his mind before he turned back to Corissa and nodded once, short but firm.
"Thank you, Varis." Corissa smiled, "I won't let you down."