Chapter 1411 – Acid Lake

I just can’t believe how terrible it is down here. Well, I can believe it, but just when I think the fifth can’t get any worse, it somehow manages to find a new low. We haven’t even managed to dig that deep into the stratum, maybe a kilometre, and already things are going to plops, as Isaac would say.

“What is that, Brendant?”

“What do you mean, Eldest?”

“I mean, what are we looking at?”

“Isn’t it obvious what we’re looking at?”

“Indulge me.”

“It’s a lake of acid.”

“Why is there a lake full of acid?”

“Because there is? I feel like you’re asking the wrong ant, Eldest. We can get Brilliant to try and explain the origins of this lake.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, I’m just getting depressed.”

In front of me, directly below our position at the ceiling, the offensive body of not water bubbles away menacingly, oblivious to my mounting disapproval. Tiny turns to me and raises an eyebrow.

“No, Tiny, you can’t punch it.”

He looks sad. I’d kind of hoped that raising his intelligence would lead him to consider other solutions, ones that didn’t involve his fists, but alas, all that seems to have happened is that he can now think of more things to hit. Rather than watch the steady barrage of ghost fists flying from Tiny to the acid below, I turn toward Solant, who has finally descended to lead from closer to the front.

“Did we know this was here?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“We weren’t able to sense this far into the stratum, but such obstacles weren’t unanticipated.”

“You thought we might run into an entire lake of acid?”

“I tried to anticipate many different eventualities,” the small ant demurs.

After digging down through a few levels of the fifth, encountering several of the massive, kilometre-plus wide tunnels we’d found so far, we eventually broke through to this mess. It’s a massive lake filled with a thick, goopy mess of bubbling, acidic snot.

I hate it.

To make matters worse, there’s clearly a heap of monsters inside it. We can see them wriggling and writhing down there, the surface of the lake shifting unnaturally as they shuffle about below. A few have tried to break the surface, perhaps sensing the cleansed mana above their heads, and from what I saw, they looked like nothing so much as… mucous crabs, I guess I would say, even if I hate that phrase.

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It’s not even possible to guess how deep it is, since the acidic goop is so thick you can’t see more than a millimetre into it!

“So how are we going to get through this mess?” I ask with a sigh.

“As quickly and as safely as we can,” Solant replies.

I notice that she won’t give details unless I actually press her for them.

“Care to explain?”

It’s almost like she’s irritated at having to tell me the plan! She’s asking for a thwacking, I tell you.