Search the Fifth

The depths lay still, and have lain still for a good few weeks now. Since the removal of the Dungeon Heart and the destruction of the Type-28 and other pre-Machina enemies, the Scale Emblem has been clearing out the region of any last monsters.

This leaves the Catacombs a strange and empty place. There's some straggler monsters here and there. Ones that manage to come down here from other outside routes. But they are mostly insignificant.

There are many notable sights at this point. Between the everfrost crystals that stain the labyrinthian areas from the battle against the Frozen Machina, the battle scars near the former Dungeon Heart, and the various expeditions - there are plenty of zones of interest.

Yet, those that come here today are not interested in what lies at the surface. But rather... what lies beneath.

Schneider comes down here again with the Scale party, following Proph and the rest. One hand held up, wreathed in flame to provide extra light, he looks around with deep curiosity. He is, alas, not a crafty type, owing to the historical maxim that doing actual useful work is for peasants. Or, more likely, he's just lazy, though it's not clear why he seems to know /about/ various things. Schneider is, to be fair, a little bit interested in what lies on the surface also, but a long, slow, thoughtful look is all he has time for before he has to hustle to keep up with the party.

The blue haired samurai is present and accounted for amongst the Scale party members. Neither scouting nor searching are things he puts down as a strength, but his intuition comes up with results in similar fashion. As if he world itself had cracks and he follows them through some divine eye. Must be a samurai thing when you see the opening strike. Soujiro is in his raid gear, being the red armor over his kimono, and keeping a steady eye around for surprise monsters. It only takes a moment for some glitch to turn a friend into a fate worse than death and although he keeps a happy-go-lucky smile on his face, he is not oblivious to the real threat and the equal measures to draw against it.

A tail twitches. A pencil scratches at a page as Kita has her nose in her sketchbook as seems quite the norm for Scale Emblem's resident artist. The Imp isn't here because she's particularly interest in exploration or the deep lore surrounding the area. No, the Black Mage is here because sometimes, when people find new or unique things, it's good to be able to capture them in image format.

At the moment, the punk girl seems preoccupied, but not in that 'strange mood' sort of way. It's just the usual way the girl happens to be when her attention isn't caught by anything particularly interesting at the moment.

She stops briefly, looks around, then scribbles some more in the book, her eyes and expression hidden by the witch hat which largely keeps her in shadow. Her companion, a small mote of darkness, looms just to one side of her hat, blowing off little puffs of dark smoke.

Vertina isn't much of a searcher, but with the amount of time she's spent in the catacombs as a training ground for herself and with others, she knows the reasonably well to get around. Especially now that they've cleared out a lot of the traps and most of the monsters save a few strays with the destruction of the Dungeon Heart. She has other reasons for coming along on the excursion too. "If anyone gets hungry or thirsty, yell. I brought plenty of snacks and juice to keep us going."

    Setsuna walks through the tunnels of the catacombs as he looks here and there, every so often he seems to be stopping and counting paces of the width of the tunnel. Really at the end he isn't sure what they are looking for, just that they are trying to get to the bottom of things. Finally though he speaksup to the group, "What does everyone think about getting a dire rock snake to live down here? Maybe see if we can find a few small rock wyverns or drakes ?We could totally trick out this catacomb to make it worthy of the name of catacomb. In fact I think I know where we could find a minotaur, then again perhaps being catacombs we need the undead versions." Is he joking? Perhaps just making small talk? Does Setsuna himself really even know?

"Where do the monsters go?" Syx asks, as he is mostly seeming to be wandering the halls of the catacombs and poking at walls from time to time as if one is going to reveal a secret exit at some point.

"Like when we kill them and they turn into sparkles and loot and stuff...Do they go somewhere? Like I know they used to respawn but now we can clear them out of areas permenently so like.." He makes a motion with his hands, "Where do they go?"

For once in what feels like quite a while, Prophylaxis is not in the grips of some kind of psychotic obsession with one occupation or another during an important reconnaissance mission. It's nice! His head is clear, his caffeine intake is at a relatively safe and normal level, and his brain isn't swimming with the urge to strap someone to a chair to experiment on their eyeballs.

Or anything like that.

"Well, maybe there's some kind of Monster Heaven they go to if they've been good little enemies?" Prophylaxis muses, refreshing the duration on the light-conjuring nimbus hovering around his staff. "Well, regardless. Remember why we're here, everyone? We're looking for evidence of 'squashed' terrain. If we find anything of the sort, it may mean we're approaching the Crystal Tower. And if we can find the Crystal Tower, it means we might be able to uncover a few mysteries of this place... And maybe even find a faster way to ascend floors while we're at it."

Vertina stops as the Good Doctor fully explains what they're looking for. "Oh. That's... different." She hmms softly, considering. Then shifts her position to assume a meditative pose, balancing on one foot while bending the other leg to rest her heel against the knee, folds her hands together and closes her eyes. Tries to scan around them with the heightened spiritual senses of a monk... but 'squashed terrain' is just a bit too unusual and vague for the supernatural perception to pick up on.

After a few minutes she exhales a groan and lowers her leg back to a normal standing position. "Even without the Dungeon Heart this place's energies are too weird of a vibe to look through the third eye."

Soujiro Seta looks around in a clean sweep. A rock there. Broken doodad there. The ground is crunchy beneath his feet there. He squats down to run his finger along the cold stone. What story can you tell?

Rumble. Souji must have worked up an appetite with all that Training(tm) he did earlier in the day. "I'll take you up on the snacks, Vertina. What do you have?"

One can not divine the future on an empty stomach!

Schneider hrms at what Proph reminds us all of. "Squashed...?" He /had/ forgotten. He isn't much of an investigator, but he can summon small elementals of various sorts, and the small earth elemental rises up out of the floor of the cave. It's not very large, as he can't control large earth elementals, but he commands it, "Seek out where the earth is squashed." And with those vague marching orders, it sinks back into the ground, and, hopefully, will search.

Where some of the others might have skills that would be applicable for searching out evidence of changed turrain, or signs of passage that might suggest they are going in the right direction, Kita certainly does not. The Imp looks up, tapping her pencil once or twice on her sketchbook. "I'll... leave the searching to you guys."

Mote seems to agree with this, blowing out another puff of dark smoke. "Let me know if you spot anything that needs some spellwork or anything that you need me to record." She lowers the book ever so slightly, shifting the pencil to sit behind one ear as the hand then moves to push her glasses up on her nose.

    "Ground that is squashed, " Setsuna makes a comment as he looks about before adding, " Isn't that technically any ground one has walked on? " Despite the sarcasm Setsuns does decide to help out on looking for ground that is squashed but not squashed as if it was treaded on. Using magic Setsuna enhances his eyes to help oddities stand out as he continues to look about. "I should of brought Demon with me, six more eyes would have been helpful."

True to his own advice, Prophylaxis conjures a little serpent of jade stone out of the surrounding rock. It hisses obediently as he quietly directs it to slither into narrow spaces and crevasses. Perhaps a cave-in once upon a time has hidden what they're looking for...?

Whatever the case... Search Snake, go!!

"It'd look like someone used a really rushed photoshop squash-and-stretch tool on the terrain," Prophylaxis explains. "That's really the best way I can describe it."

"Do you mean squashed as in like visually or like squashed as in you know," Sys makes a motion as he pushes both of his hands together and makes a pbbblt sound with his tongue.

He taps one of his feet against the ground a couple of times, and then considers the puzzle, "What if we squash the ground ourselves!?" He asks, not waiting for an answer as he grabs a nearby stone off the floor of the catacomb, and then german suplexes it into the floor, trying to squash the ground to reveal the path.

Seeking a place where the ground has been 'squished' is a rather odd request to seek for amidst the Catacombs. After all, the ground has been walked up, trampled, and even built upon in various corners of the place.

Spreading out to seek something like that is perhaps something one might suggest to be a fool's errand. Enough so that Soujiro and Vertina try to strike their own path, finding... well, a patch of trampled ground. The area that a previous raid group entered with heavy armor and indeed trampled the ground.

Prophylaxis and Schneider head elsewhere. Each finding parts of the earth that are at least a bit different. They end up arriving where the Tear of Ice destroyed the ground to fall to the floor below. They find earth that has been moved and shifted multiple times. With a few metalic looking tubes sticking out. But the moment they get too close, the tubes quickly retreat into the ground, and seem to 'seal' it back up. One of them taking with the Jade Snake, shattering it on the retreat. Almost like there was damage there that was being repaired.

Syx and Setsuna on the other hand, find something other than that. Specifically, with Syx deciding to German Suplex some stones into the ground! It takes a few moves. But eventually, Setsuna's special spell allows him to see... a glisten of something.

It takes a moment of unearthing, but they find what looks like... Crystal? Crystal, and a sudden warning:

<< IMMORTAL OBJECT >>

But the crystal they have found looks weird. It looks like someone grabbed a crystal, and then perfectly sawed it in half.

Soujiro Seta likes where Syx is going with this. Ooo. Ahhh. Sparkles. There is a childlike glee in watching a suplex. One of life's little joys. He is about to go do the same, for the sake of Training(tm), when there is the unearthing. Time to put them swol arms to good use. Then there is the Crystal, his one true chance to become the Warrior of Light, Class Samurai. "That is different!" he observes in the master class of obviousness.

Vertina gestures a hand down at the trampled patch of ground. "Well, that's not inaccurate. Just shows how vague the concept was." She shrugs, and heads back to regroup with the others.

    Setsuna catches the glint of something as he watches the suplexing madman, that is when he sees the curse that all adventurers know. "Guys we have immortality over here!" The necromancer shouts as he moves over to poke at the crystal and tilts his head. "So we got an immortal object that looks like someone clearly cut in half. That is rather impressive. Are all immortal objects able to be sliced in half, I bet some legendary samurai did it."

Schneider looks at the crystal thoughtfully, frowning as he looks into it with his wizard's sight. "It's like that crystal is part of both things at the same time. The information display header keeps flicking between 'The Crystal Tower' and 'Aincrad Tower' and can't decide between them," he explains after some consideration. "It's like two radio stations on the same freuqency, and the radio doesn't know which signal to play."

At least, for the moment, Kita isn't completely absorbed into her work. She slides a bookmark ribbon into the pages and closes her sketchbook, tucking it into a shoulder bag before approaching some of the others. "Find something?" She asks.

Since the others are already closer to the discovery at hand, she hangs back slightly, trying to peek around bodies to get a look. The Mote of Darkness floats up higher as if it were trying to peer over various people's shoulders. She looks over towards Soujiro, keeping herself quiet as she may have just made a similar statement otherwise.

For now, her tail flicks and she just seems to be observing.

Syx has found a larger rock to hit the ground with, as he slams it several times into the ground, until apparently revealing the crystal and feeling the rock break in half as it hits an Immortal Object.

"Welp!" He kips up to his feet and turns around to look at the crystal, "That doesn't look right, now does it?" He asks, as he takes a knee near the crystal, "So what's the plan Doc?" He asks, as he waves a hand over the crystal a couple of times. No he has no idea what he's testing for. "Could we put the crystal back together somehow? Or would that be impossible since it's immortal?"

Well, that's a familiar sight. Prophylaxis's eyes widen in surprise at the tubes' appearance, but they retreat into the ground before he can do anything. The earth seals over as they do so. It's almost as though they're trying to repair this place. But that means that there's something further down there that they might be trying to hide.

That said, if they took this long to repair that much damage... Maybe they can do something with that.

"I'd say it's a decent plan," Prophylaxis says as Syx suggests repairing the immortal and broken crystal. "Either that, or that thing is some kind of key item we'll need to proceed further. Though... The fact that it's flickering between the two locations..."

"It's almost like the thing is bugged, isn't it?" The doctor rubs his chin, then looks to the spot where the cables used to be. "Well. For now the plan is to go deeper. This is where the Tear of Ice tore through during its rampage, and we still haven't found where Harrifenas dug her out. So I say we blow open a hole of our own and see what can be found."

Again following his own advice, the good doctor conjures a goddamn cannon made of rock and stone and aims it at the spot of earth that those cables had been touching up a minute ago. It fires an equally goddamn explosive cannonball at the spot, hopefully blasting clean through...

Learning of the broken crystal further back, Prophylaxis decides to aim his skills towards the ground where the Tear of Ice one broke through. There's still perma-ice crystals stabbing out of the ground here, near 'Ground Zero'.

A cannon is summoned, and a sizable 'cannonball' is shunted at high speeds. Slamming into the ground! Wires and cables are forced to the surface, roiling, before the cannonball hits flat crystal! Shattering upon it.

But at the same time, like snakes, the roiling large cables come to life. Forming a near dome around Prophylaxis. Grabbing at him. Grabbing his leg, his arms, causing him to be strapped to the ground. Forced to his knees, arms behind his back, as the cables start to try and tear his body literally apart!

Up until this moment, Kita has been hanging back in the group. However, the one thing she is known for is being protective over those she considers allies. So, when Prophylaxis is seized upon, she is all too quick to grab for her spellbook, fingers immediately finding one ribbon and opening to a particular page.

She traces symbols into the air which glow briefly before reforming at her feet, creating a series of summoning circles. From them, a series of skeletal raptors appear, making chittering, clicking noises before she motions them foward. "Protect our allies. Break through those restraints."

And such, a little mob of skeletal raptors starts to snatch and bite and claw at the roiling cables.

"Oh, well," Prophylaxis says, moments before he's grabbed by robotacles, "I guess I should have seen that coming--"

And then he is, in fact, grabbed by robotacles. He's pinned to the ground, falling to his knees as the tendrils wrap around his arms and legs and throat, twining about and seizing tight. His body begins giving off sparks of red as they /pull/, straining to tear him quite literally limb from limb.

But before they can, a crystalline barrier shimmers into being around his body, ensconcing him at the skin-layer. His HP stops dropping at around 1/3 of a bar left, but...

From the strain on his face, it's clear that he probaly won't last long.

The rest of the team will need to save the doctor before he's forced into one of THOSE doujins!!

Soujiro Seta puts a hand on the hilt of his katana as the cables make themselves known. Known and hostile. The kind eyes flick over to the narrowed blues of 'you make a mistake' as his body leans forward. Lowers. The tight confines of a rope give little room for error, but this fact doesnt cause him even a moment of pause. He has complete confidence in his abilities and hurting a friend is unthinkable. Someone hurting a friend is unforgivable.

There is a rising tension around Soujiro as actions and reactions are set in motion. It would be easy to miss even if there was not the chaos of a crisis. Blink and you could miss it.

A moment later he has zipped in a line past where Proph is, the previously sheathed blade out in full swing. A turn on the heel back as his other hand rests on his second blade. In a flash he returns to his original point, both blades out in full stroke now.

    Setsuna looks up hearing the earth shatterring kaboom and blinks as the doctor begins to wage war directly with a tower. "You know if I was a betting man I would have guessed I would have been the one to be torn apart by the tower before the doctor." Setsuna himself is actually surprised at his own hesitation, normally he would be all for attacking the tower but well instead he offers advice, "I know it's been a couple of years but I am going to just offer some advice, violence and technology were never good bed fellows." Instead Setsuna takes more interest in the Crystal, "Curse my ability to only see the future. If only this crystal was a monster I could handle it and then talk to it and have it...oh"

     Standing up Setsuna looks over at the doctor and grins as he approaches the tentacles of the tower and reaches out with dark energy around his hand. He just begins to soothingly touch it when he gets a pop up infront of his face and frowns. "Fine then. I didn't want to be your friend anyway, damn tentacle. " For now though he simply walks back away as the rest of the party goes to kick tentacle and take doctors back.

Vertina jerks back reflexively as things go south fast for the Doctor being a little too curious for his own good. "Goddamn, I've heard of crossing the line, but this is rediculous!" She's just as quick to leap into action though, bearing the direclaws of her battle gloves in quick lashes to try and slice apart the cables trying to constrict their favorite healer. It's exactly times like this why she has sharp edged weapons so she doesn't have to rely on her fists or elemental powers being less than effective.

Schneider seems pleased that he's helped by finding useful information, though he's not clear on exactly how it's useful. "Remind me what this tells us? I get that the crystal Tower used to be here, and maybe this crystal got repurposed from one to the other. But it feels like you guys are three conclusions past that, and I was..." and the Proph is trying to re-bore that hole, and .... the ground erupts, and now seems to have Proph on a rack-like thing. With weird cables that came out of the ground. As Scale dogpiles on the rescue operation, he will inspect the cables to maybe find out what they actually are, or are part of.

Clack-clack-clack-clack, Kita's little skeleton raptors rush to Prophylaxis' aid. Tearing into cables. But it takes all of them to even start harming even a single one of them. Ripping apart the metalic construct. Pulling off metal casing and ripping out wire!

Soujiro's cuts are immediate as they follow, joined by Vertina. Tearing open a further hole for others to try and get through while Setsuna is attempting to command the cables themselves... to no avail.

Schneider, inspecting the cables, reads:

<< ? AINCRAD TOWER ? >>

No symbols. No notable colors.

With a few last cuts, some of which end up nicking a bit into Prophylaxis' body, they pull the Doctor out just before his health can drop below zero, and retreat away from the cables...

They remain restless for a while, targetting the nearby ground, before they seem to 'knit' the ground where Prophylaxis had damaged it, and begin to move sand around, until they are no longer visible, but the ground can clearly still be seen moving. The 'half off the top' crystals being covered up.

With Proph pulled clear, Schneider eyes the ground warily. But he's not going to drop an attack on it, that ground looked pretty impermeable. "That was weird," he remarks when things have calmed a bit. "It seems like the cables were part of the Tower, itself. There were no symbols at all. Or colors. But I can't work out what that signifies, I hope one of you knows?"

    Setsuna watches the battke as he decides someone should save the healer. Stepping forward he finds the leg of the doctor and begins to give a tug on it until Prophylaxis comes free and Setsuna works to drag him away from the pile of cords before anything else happens. "Didn't anyone tell you, don't stand in wires?" Setsuna is trying to drag the doctor towards the half cut crystal but watches it get covered bysand. "Damn it, that is going to get everywhere to dig up."

Vertina helps grab Proph and pull him free once the group has cut open enough of the cables to do so. They need to be quick about it, before the cables pull back together to repair the hole. Looks like they're barely in the nick in time doing so, too. "It's like some physical representation of whatever force puts the Tower here." That's about as deep as she can understand these things. Getting the Doc free was a little more important than thinking too thoroughly about it.

"Maybe let's work on not pissing off random tentacle monsters that might be part of Aincrad. I don't really want to end up part of that sort of anime." Kita replies as the magic of her spell fades, the raptors disappearing into whisps of dark smoke which her Mote of Darkness seems to swirl around and gobble up.

Then, she hesitates, "I... don't have any sort of healing magic. Do you have enough mana to heal yourself, Doc?" Doctor, heal thyself! Well, Kita certainly can't assist in that department.

Prophylaxis is not dead!! This is, by and large, a good thing. It's an even better thing that Prophylaxis prepared well for this expedition, brewing a great many healing potions in anticipation of combat. "Thanks, everyone," he wheezes out as he injects a full five syringes of hp and mp pots directly into his shoulder. "Ugh. Well at least we know now that we can't just be blasting the ground wherever we like. I thought at least we'd be able to punch through to where the Tear of Ice used to be, but... Maybe we should take a more cautious approach."

To that end, he reaches down and touches an amulet dangling from his neck, "Activate, Kein Eintrag." The amulet glimmers, and soon begins projecting a literal minimap of the surrounding area. "I'm going to see if there are any passages 'downward.' Potimas got in somehow, and I can't imagine that he's tough enough to survive getting tentacled like that AND break through whatever other defenses the tower might be able to put in his way. Anything you guys might be able to think of to help us find our way in?"

Soujiro Seta puts his katanas back in the sayas when the threat passes. He keeps his eyes on those snakes. They could be the secret to unlocking flight, if only we can get them onto a plane. "It'd be a cold day in Aincrad before I let that happen, Kita," he lets the Imp know that this is not about to become /that/ kind of anime genre. Nope.

As far as ideas go? Souji closes his eyes and thinks with that breezy brain of his. "Nothing comes to mind," he says, understatement.

Vertina meanwhile pulls out one of her Tavern Yakitori skewers and waggles it just to the side of Prophylaxis' vision so she's not poking it into the minimap display. "Here, eat something. It'll help you recover from the experience." Not that Prophylaxis can't heal himself, but this won't take so much mana to help recover how much health he lost.

Schneider looks at the ground again, then back to Doc. "So, did that happen because you used magic to dig in the Tower, or because you tried to dig in /that spot/?" he wonders. He watches that spot fiercely, as if it might spring to life unexpedly. Again. "I've got a shovel, but I'm kinda not clear on if that's a good thing. Does it not want us to dig up the Tear of Ice?"

Prophylaxis frowns at the projected minimap image. "Damn, nothing, huh? Then was she somewhere further up...? Why did the Crystal Tower have to wait until we beat her to reclaim her, then...?" The doctor furrows his brow and then shakes his head. "I think it wants to keep us from accessing the Crystal Tower at all. Whatever that was, it seemed to be behaving like some kind of security system. Let's see if we can't change our tack. I'd like to see if we can track down where the Tear of Ice was located before she reactivated. I think we stand a decent chance if we follow these perma-ice things--" Prophylaxis gestures at the frozen formations, "To their source. Anyone a decent tracker?"

Vertina shakes her head. "Got me on that one. All this metaphysical mix and mash is just going to give me a headache if I try to make sense of it."

Schneider shakes his head to Proph about being a tracker. "Sorry, can't help with that. But those two that snuck in here could go invisible, there's no reason they couldn't just use the stairs." He nods to what Vertina says, "I just don't understand enough background to even hypothesize. Where do you learn all this stuff?"

Soujiro Seta takes out one of the snacks that Vert gave him earlier. He noms on it. Brain food may help. Chew chew chew. "Door have keys," he offers after a swallow. "Security systems are a good indicator you are in the right place with something to secure." His family did work in the police force, after all, so its random trivia knowledge for him. Lacking a better idea at the time, he heads on over to the crystal and goes to put his hand on it barring any obvious 'Ya gunna lose your hand, brah' signs prior to.

    Setsuna stands there pondering the situation for the moment as he looks up over to Soujiro. "A door? Did you find a keyhole?" Its more of a question then anything but in someway things are making sense. "So we are looking for the crystal tower and underneath the sand and such is a layer of a crystal floor. Seems like we found proof of the crystal tower and what is keeping it covered." Setsuna looks to where the tentacles and then adds, "But why."

"It is more that if you build something that is made to be entered, then you have a door," Souji goes to explain to Setsuna as he puts his other hand on the ground nearby. "And doors are places of entry so you put security near them to protect them. I don't get the whole crystal layer thing. Another dimension, maybe?" Souji goes full video game logic mode versus real world logic mode. "But the temperature near it is similar to that of it, so feels more like a seal. Or maybe we have to change the way we interact with it." The samurai stands up, giving the ground a tap tap with his foot. "But hey, we know more than we did yesterday now, right?" And have more questions. The eternal cycle!

"Presumably because it's hiding things from us. Important things. Things that might explain why this tower is here, what might be sitting at its top, and how the whole wave-thing works," Prophylaxis says with a huff. "Anyway Schneider, it's mostly just that I write a lot of things down and eventually the notes start lining up with one another. Nothing particularly special. But--"

Soujiro interacts with the crystal. He looks to the ronin and shakes his head. "I think it's... We've definitely found the crystal tower. This might be a wall, but it might also be a door. If we can get a Hacker or something like that on-side, they might be able to open us up a proper portal. At least we know where to find it now, though." He pauses, then adds: "We'll need to make sure we can find this place again quickly."

Schneider hrms to Proph, and nods about the hiding things, and again about the writing things down. "I guess I don't have enough clues, then. I can never make sense out of the combination of things. I can figure out the individual pieces, sometimes, like if the old Crystal Tower got split top to bottom, and stacked one side on top of the other, it'd make up an Aincrad. It'd be more stretched than squished. That'd be why the thing ID's as one, then the other. It literally got repurposed from one to the other."

Vertina grunts. "That makes even less sense than the living wall wire tentacles.... which around here doesn't make it impossible."

Soujiro Seta looks pretty with sparkles and a deep, meaningful, "I didn't understand any of that, Schneider." Souji brain is out of RAM.

    Setsuna blinks at Schneider then at the floor then at Schneider. "Soooo that would make the crystal floor,actually the crystal wall?" Tilting his head he does his best to orient himself with the idea that the walls were the ceiling and the floor, and the ceiling and floor were the walls. "Huh well that makes kinda some sense maybe."

Prophylaxis opens his mouth, then shuts it, then opens it again. "Oh. That would make sense, wouldn't it? But... Then, what's the deal with this big crystal thing here...? Maybe it's both? Maybe the tower was split like you say, but also squashed by everything else being slapped on top of the crystal?"

Schneider can only shrug to Seta and Setsuna. "I just call them like I see them," he explains. "Explanations are Proph's job." He sideeyes Proph. "If that makes sense to you, then we ought to be able to step off this floor onto floor, uh, fifty four, I think?"

"That'd save us at least fifty floors of climbing if so. But... Would that trigger fifty waves, too...?" Prophylaxis' brow furrows as he places a hand on the strange crystal floor. "Perhaps we'll keep working on it. Thanks to Setsuna, we should at least have some manner of forewarning."