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MAZE - Chapter 1110 - Beach Findings
🕑 Added 2025-09-28 02:31:41 +0000 UTCAs Hera and her group continued to walk across the beach, everybody had removed their shoes to enjoy the sand between their feet. And unlike what happened while they were walking across the valley, they were relaxed. It was hard to be on edge when they were going across such a beautiful beach.
They also realized that the tide never reached the cliff side, as it was completely dry. There were no markings or indication that it ever got wet. And while it was possible that the tide rose, and the sun dried it quickly enough once it went out, Bonnie felt that if that did happen, the water shouldn't raise that much. Otherwise, the damage would be visible.
Not to mention that if needed, Nimbus could grab everybody and start taking them up to a safe altitude very quickly. And that was just scratching the surface. The Empress couldn't help but be amazed by the sheer number of options they had on hand. Bonnie could make Ruby become a platform for them. They could use some spells to shape a terrace in the stone wall. Shane could create grapples so they could hold on if the tide was really something that they needed to worry about. Alex could use [Wind Chaser] to escape and use another skill called [Dragging Wings] to pull everyone up.
When she was starting her adventure as an explorer, this was certainly not the case. Hera couldn't help but remember the time she was hunting pangolins on Brinefront, and how much she relied on items to find good places to rest. Now she could make all that by herself.
Still, they had already spent a couple of hours walking the beaches and were now halfway past the plateau where Au Dorado was located. The only reason why they were done with this area was that this particular segment of the room was very narrow near the ocean. If this were the lake plateau, it would take them several hours to go all the way around it.
Of course, they could move faster if they were riding Nimbus, even if they were using some sort of sled or cart to carry everyone around. But they were opting to go on foot just to make sure they weren't missing anything.
As they were leaving the Au Dorado plateau, they noticed a few strange pieces of exoskeletons on the ground. They were much lighter than the ones they had seen before, or at least their colors were more towards brown instead of the black of the other corpses, and there was a strange pattern to them. That wasn't the only thing that felt odd to the group. The shape also didn't really match with what they had learned to expect from the bodies of whatever creatures lived here.
On closer inspection, Shane and Alex were able to confirm that it wasn't actually part of a living being. As a matter of fact, it was maybe part of some sort of construction that was done here at one point. With that in mind, they continued following the trail of broken pieces, which appeared to be part of some larger structure that had collapsed a long time ago.
And while that wasn't entirely correct, it wasn't entirely wrong either. The trail guided them to an entrance buried in the sand. They had to struggle to pull everything from the hole by the edge of the cliffs and slowly start to dig up whatever was there. That's also when they realized what they were actually looking at.
The stones on the ground were truly broken pieces of structures, but not of something that was broken a long time ago, but of one thing that was broken into several pieces that formed the whole. It was almost like docks of some sort. Maybe back then the ocean could reach this area, and this was actually some sort of docks with the stone pillars functioning as support.
Looking at the old, forgotten dock, Shane became even more interested in properly removing all the sand from inside it.
"But what's the point?" Alex asked.
"It all depends on how long ago the sand started to cover it. If it's been a very long time, they're going to work as a layer of protection to everything that's inside," the enchantress replied.
"Okay, but how are we supposed to even get rid of all the sand?" Alex asked.
"I might be able to," Shane turned to the alcove.
There was one specific way of using her enchantment that she learned from Darni. More specifically, she watched him do it and realized that it could work for her as well. He only used it for construction or some sort of large, non-combat situation where he needed some heavy-duty work that didn't necessarily need to be that sturdy. Darni was able to create some weird animals made out of rubber or whatever was around him. He called it his enchanting workforce, but doing so stopped him from being able to use any spells or skills related to combat, as he needed to focus his attention solely on the functioning of those workers.
Unfortunately, Shane wasn't able to get the exact same skill that he had. As while the Naga hero had mentioned the name, the system that blocked the Naga Hero from uttering the words.
Still, the enchantress had managed to recreate a minor version of that effect. It wasn't as direct as the one Darni was using, but she could overlap a few different skills so the effect would be somewhat similar. More importantly, she could do that while using pretty much anything as the material for the construct. Even if they only turned out to be amorphous blobs that didn't really resemble anything, unlike what Bonnie was able to create.
Focusing a bit, Shane overlapped the skills together with a spell to make sand moister that way it would be able to attach to each other more easily and activated it. From the entrance of the cave, which was very low to the ground, the group watched as the sand started to shift and rise in the form of a giant slime made out of sand.
Following that, Shane gave it the command to go inside the cave and start dragging the sand out, while at the same time telling everybody to step back. They all did so, and Nimbus had to stop Hera from getting swept away by the sudden whirlpool of sand that was being created due to the movement of the sand slime.
They thought it was going to be something quick at first, but it was actually taking quite a while. Shane was trying to control the sand slime as to not damage anything that could be inside that cave. Not to mention that she kept running out of mana. At first, she tried drinking some potions to recover, but she wasn't able to keep up with the demand since the whole combination of skills and spells required a lot of mana to work. Which meant that she only worked for a few minutes before having to stop and meditate in order to trigger her active mana regeneration before doing it again.
The sand slime would collapse back into sand and be reformed, which unfortunately was the part of the spell that cost the most mana. And everyone understood that this wasn't the best way to go about it. Shane could come back with more people. They could get some help, or they could wait until the enchantress had the proper skills to deal with this. Yet, she refused and continued to bash her head on the wall, so to speak.
The worst part was that Hera, Bonnie, and Alex couldn't even help due to the size of the sand slime. The creature was just too big, and if they tried to do anything to assist, such as sending Ruby to help or Hera having her Court participate in the efforts, it would just hinder the slime's movement and cause Shane to be frustrated and start complaining to everybody.
Eventually, the Empress used her blueprint skill to create a large towel made out of bamboo since it was something close enough to cloth that wouldn't require her entire mana pool. And together with her friends, they just lay down on the beach, enjoying the sun as it slowly crossed the sky.
Bonnie was laying down on her stomach and using her arms to prop herself up so she could continue reading something on her tablet, her shirt neatly folded to the side allowing the sun to bathe her back. "Wouldn't it be better to get more help?"
Hera had to look backwards, almost doing a handstand while trying not to get sand in her hair. She was lying on her back with her shirt rolled up to her chest to enjoy some sun tanning. Beneath her, there was a small pit of sand that she dug just to push her tail to the side and let it also enjoy the sun.
"Honestly, I don't know. I'm sure it would be better since we would have less chance of damaging things, but if you're calling people who are good at archeology, they generally take a long time to do anything. But they are better at saving the artifacts, aren't they?" Hera replied.
Alex was beside Bonnie with her feet pointed in Shane's direction. Unlike the other two, she kept most of her clothes on, only folding her pants a little bit. The assassin's complexion wasn't really that good for sun tanning without very strong sunscreen, something that she failed to bring here. Sunburns were something she really didn't like the sensation of having, and she was being more careful with that. Even if her attributes should be more than enough to deal with anything.
"Do you really think there's going to be anything left down there?" the assassin asked.
Hera quickly expanded her senses to Livy and the other Court members who wanted to be in the ocean. She was using [Magnetic Domain] to extend her range since some of her blades wanted to swim a bit, but nothing seemed to be happening with them. Only once she was sure they were fine that she turned back to Alex and replied, "Honestly, yes. Shane might be a bit headstrong and kind of obsessed with the Naga, but that's exactly why I don't think she would do anything to destroy the artifacts that might be down there."
She paused for a moment, "It's just going to suck if there's nothing left. You think she can be annoying when she's focused on something? Wait until you see her when she just thought something she was going to do failed."
"She can get more annoying?" Bonnie asked.
"You would be surprised," Hera nodded, remembering the issues they had when they were discovering the Naga tombs.
"You know I can hear everything you're saying, don't you?" Shane protested.
"But you're also too invested in what you're doing to do anything about what I'm saying, so I can keep talking as much as I want," Hera replied.
Shane grumbled a little but didn't say anything else.
They spent a good three hours there, and Hera even used a [Stone Shape] spell to create a place that would be deep enough for them if they had to spend the night. Although she wasn't really comfortable with that idea, there still existed the possibility of those giant bones being the source of a giant specter. And if that was the case, she truly didn't know what would be their chances against a ghost like that. Even if she did have a couple small pieces of the root that was protecting her previously, it might not be enough to deal with a giant undead monster.
The sun started to set, and the group began the process of trying to convince Shane to let this go and continuing in the morning when the enchantress turned to them with a big smile.
"I'm done," she said excitedly.
"Really?" Alex turned to look at the grotto.
By the looks of things, Shane had only cleared out an area that was about maybe 5 meters deep and 3 meters tall, not to mention all the sand from the surrounding entrance that she had to remove and was doing it by hand at one point.
Shane nodded. "I'm serious. There's no sand inside. My sand slime confirmed it."
"You know, I kind of feel offended when you call that thing a sand slime. It's not a real slime," Bonnie frowned.
"Well, how do you want me to call it?" Shane asked.
"I don't know. Maybe Sand Snake?" Bonnie suggested.
Hera cleared her throat. "Not Sand Snake. Maybe Sand Golem."
"Sand Golem doesn't really strike me as a good name," Alex frowned.
"Can you forget about the name?" Shane asked. "I'm telling you, I just opened the entire thing, and I think there's something weird there."
"What do you mean?" Hera turned to the alcove trying to see what was inside.
"When my sand construct was digging it up, it noticed a wall or something hard, so I'm hoping it's something interesting. Shall we go check it out?"
Before Shane even heard a reply, she was already walking towards the cave, with the Empress calling back her Court just in case something were to happen. They had spent most of the day in the ocean, and Livy was absolutely blissful as she missed being in her natural element.
None of them were really ready for what was waiting inside. At the very bottom of this cave, encased in a panel of amber, was a giant map detailing everything about the room. All the cities, all the dungeons, all the locations of interest. Everything was still in pristine condition and easily readable. With drawings and names, and even roads, all signaled on the map. More importantly, it showed the exact location of not just the palace, but the Naga capital.
