Chapter 4: A Generous Exploration

Rex woke up, feeling something had gone terribly wrong considering there was no voice commanding him to rise from his slumber. He decided not to dwell on that, and took it upon himself to set up mining supplies while Alicia was still sleeping. He couldn't help but to smile. He would be exploring below the surface! It could be an incredible adventure down there, not to mention the fact that, this time, the sun can't do anything to screw this up since, it was apparent, the sun seemed to hate him. He would also be adventuring with someone, and not just alone. He couldn't exactly do everything by himself forever, without eventually going crazy. It just wouldn't happen.

He made three stone pickaxes, one extra for Rex and two for Alicia just incase she didn't have any. He didn't have any food, but he could bring his hunting bow and get some meat while they're down there and they could cook it on a campfire. He also brought a crafting table, a furnace, and a campfire for the meat thing, obviously. He also crafted about, 80 or so torches, and put his flashlight in his bag as light sources. Rex was still stuck with the weapon that Liax gave him, as the notebook had said minerals, which he had none of, were required for the crafting of new weapons. He sighed, hoping that the Hylotl had some sort of weapon of her own. He also brought some wood, he felt it was necessary and he had a huge amount of the stuff, as well as an axe just incase of a giant strand of plant fiber.

After finishing up his inventory management, he walked over to the table set he had made and sat in a chair, dozing off a bit. What he dreamt about what something he didn't honestly expect. First off, he expected a nap, not to be asleep. Second, it was some sort of snake-like monster made of vapor. It was staring at him, and he was staring at it. It opened it's mouth, and the same cold, hard sound that came from the disembodied voice emitted from it.

Hello, little Wolf-Human.

"Y-you?"

Yes. Shocked to see me...?

It made some sort of chilling chuckle, with a demonic smile. This triggered Rex to bare his fangs a bit and growl under his breath.

You seem angered.

"Oh really? I didn't notice."

Just remember I'm the only reason you're still alive.

"What?"

The others all wanted you dead.

...Oh, it seems your time left in this realm has dawned short.

"B-but I just got here! Who are 'the others?' Heck, who are you!?"

A mere messenger…

Rex...

Rex..

Rex.

"Rex? Rex…? Are you okay?" Alicia was shaking him. He groaned a bit and slowly opened his eyes to see the purple Hylotl. "Rex… You're okay. What the heck was that? It's like you were drowning in air!"

"Wh-wha…?" Rex was a might bit confused.

"Y-you were shuttering and your breathing was stammered… Like something was choking you…"

He sat up and got out of the chair. He sighed and took a deep breath. "Yeah, ignore that. It's… er… fine."

"Alright…" Alicia replied, a face of worry still clearly visible.

"Anyways…" Rex started, attempting to sway off the topic. "I've got tools and stuff for mining. But first we need to know what we both have."

"I've got some torches and a matter manipulator." Alicia replied. "Not much I know…"

"No, that's good! How many torches?"

"23."

"Even better!" Rex replied, as he clasped his claws together. "Alright, here." He said as he passed her and axe, two pickaxes and 40 torches. She took them with a sort of confused and embarrassed look.

"You're giving all of this to me?"

"Uhm, yeah. I made a bunch extras of stuff so that we can both mine and place torches and the such. Now, only problem… I don't have any other weapons…"

"Dang it, so I'm going to be a burden then if you were to protect me at every monster encounter…"

"Well... you're right about one thing, I WOULD protect yo- wait... wait a minute! I have a bow. Can you use a bow?"

"Oh, uhm, I suppose... I was a pretty good archer back in my village."

Rex handed her the weapon, which she took acceptingly, and with a smile. "Thanks."

He nodded. "So… shall we get going, miss Alicia?"

She smiled and nodded.

• • •

They approached the mouth of a cave with pickaxes in hand. Rex was feeling rather exciting about the idea of exploring a danger-and-wonder filled cave, whilst Alicia was shaking uncontrollably in, what Rex assumed, was fear. He nodded to her, and she nodded back as he lead the way into the cave. Rex took role as the miner while Alicia placed lights as they went. Both were in charge of facing any enemies that happened to rear their ugly heads along the way. At first things were a tedious cycle, moving and placing torches periodically. A monster didn't even show up. Then they came to a split path, being able to take the left or right. Rex turned around to face Alicia, who looked at Rex, confused for a bit. Suddenly, she knew why he was looking at her.

"Ooohhh no. You keep leading. I'm going to get us lost."

Rex continued to stare at her with a bored expression.

"Rex, stop please. Just, you pick a direction…."

Still staring.

Alicia finally gave up after a bit, realizing that Rex's decision seemed to be final. She sighed. "We'll take the right path."

Rex bowed slightly and continued down the chosen path. They continued down the general path, breaking through the walls that blocked their path, and occasionally stopping to mine minerals. Rex was a bit worried, as there had been no monsters yet. Alicia could sense this worry, and she realized that he was right. Nothing had tried to kill either of them yet. Both of them silently agreed to raise their guard. As more choosable pathways stopped their progress, Rex allowed the judgement to be up the the purple Hylotl. They continued down the different pathways, continuing the cycle of path choosing and mineral gathering until they had finally come across a large, expansive pit. It seemed to go a ways down, but there was no way to tell for sure, seeing how neither of them had anything to throw down there to check. If they threw a torch, it would burn up before hitting the bottom, and the slightly couldn't reach that far.

His thought process as to how they were going to go about this was abruptly stopped when the platform under them was blasted away by some unknown force, plummeting them to the pit below. Things started to pick up pace, as Rex and Alicia rapidly placed torches around their current location in an attempt to quickly create some light to help them see if anything tried to attack them. They both drew their weapons, Rex his sword and Alicia her bow, and stood back-to-back in the center of the torchlight. Suddenly, Rex took note of a blue orb that slowly grew in size. He squinted at it a bit as it was growing, followed by his eyes widening and grabbing Alicia to the ground with him, narrowly avoiding the same blast that knocked them down to this pit in the first place.

They both quickly got to their feet, just in time to receive some light blue, six-legged feral creatures crawling towards them. Hearing their steps on the ground made Rex think of spiders and sent a bone-chilling vibe down his spine. Alicia looked around in an attempt to locate what had just tried to shoot them, and saw a blue orb that slowly grew in size. She took aim with her bow, and shot a fury of arrows at the blue-marked target, which caused the blue orb to disappear, followed by an explosion that temporarily lit up a bit more of the room, showing that there weren't any creatures hoarding there. She took this time to run over there and place some torches down so that they could see more of the current stage that was set for the current battle.

Meanwhile, Rex was fending off wave after wave of weird creepy-crawlies, slashes at a time. They bunched up tightly together, so that made horizontal slashes hit all of the monsters in one swipe. One lunged at Rex, which he easily sliced through, but was followed by another one that landed on his stomach and started scrapping at it with a surprising pace. An arrow came from some part of the room that nailed the creature clinging to Rex in the side, knocking it off and reducing it to pixels. More followed, which were quickly replied to by more arrows and the slashing of Rex's own weapon, which made short work of the remaining monsters. Alicia ran up to him, smiling and breathing heavily.

Rex looked up to see that most of the room had been lit up already, revealing mass amounts of plant fiber, ores, and even a small pond of water. "Perhaps we should set up here for a bit." He suggested.

Now that he mentioned it, Rex was right. Their tunneling expedition had been hours long, and they both had to admit the fighting and the jumping around and the mining and the walking on sore feet for hours accumulated to a mutual feeling of… tired. Alicia nodded in agreement, signifying that she would very much like to have some sort of rest point set up. With that, Rex got to work, picking up the spastically placed torches and spacing them out so it wasn't a waste, and they could still see the surrounding area. While Rex started mining the materials that were scattered within the walls of the cave, Alicia walked over to the small underground pond and sat on the edge, dipping her bare feet into the water.

She released a heavy sigh, and smiled. The purple Hylotl didn't know Rex for more than, maybe, a day, but she felt like she could already trust her life in his hands. She also didn't feel as tense. Before they entered the cave, she was shaking like crazy, thinking they were going to die in the cave. She had that same feeling when they feel down to their current location. But, no. She thought. Rex and I took care of things, and we came out on top… She felt pleased with herself. She even felt like she saved Rex's life, which added to her already joyful mood, feeling that she had done something useful. She could hear the sound of stone and ores being mined from behind her, and turned around to see that Rex was already almost finished with the collection of ores. As he finished, he walked to a location somewhere near the center of the room and got to work building a temporary base of operations.

For s temporary base, it sure was big. It had three floors, the first being the living room, the second being the bedroom, and the third being the crafting room. Torches were placed symmetrically on the walls, making it obvious that a sloppy torch placement would have set Rex off. The bedroom had two separate rooms, each with, simply, a bed and some lights. The top floor is where Rex was currently, smelting the ores into bars and crafting more torches and the such. Alicia was in the living room, sitting in a chair, humming a tune that she had learned from her village a while back. She put her foot on the table and used her knees to rock the chair back in forth slowly, being careful not to make it so that they fall over.

Rex came downstairs to the living room. "Well, we've got about 40 copper bars, 36 silver bars, and 53 iron bars. Oh, and about 80-something pieces of coal."

"Well.. that sounds like a lot. Is that a lot?" She asked, making it obvious she had no clue which amount was the worst of them all.

"Yes, actually. This is more than enough ore to craft the gear that I think you needed to get for your planet! All we need to do you now is… well… get to your planet. Shouldn't be too hard, considering you have it written down, I presume?"

She nodded, smiling.

"All right, well, I'm gonna take a nap, so… night Alicia. Er.. unless it's day… then… uhm…"

She giggled. "It's okay, Rex. I understand what you're trying to say. Have a good rest."

"You too."

• • •

Alicia yawned, feeling much less tired and sore, and much more energetic. She was a bit sad that her adventures with Rex were coming to an end soon, but she was going to be able to go home soon! Maybe she could even persuade him to visit the planet she was on every once and a while. Considering she was going out with another Hylotl, While she hadn't fallen for him (Well, at least not a whole lot), she probably would have, given the right circumstances. I mean, lets face it, no Floran in the village would go out on such a limb for her as to help her with an important task, risking their life in the process. Heck, hardly any male Hylotl wouldn't even set FOOT in a mine filled with monsters!

Not realize she was pondering this the whole entire time in her little bed, she got up quietly, just in case Rex was still sleeping. She poked her head through the door that lead into the house to make sure nothing had popped in to say 'Hello.' After deciding that the coast was clear, she stepped out and began to aimlessly walk around the room, thinking about Rex, her Hylotl friends, their adventure, how worried her parents probably were, and perhaps even the stories she would tell. While walking around she tripped over something that didn't feel quite…. 'rocky' like a rock usually did.

After falling on the ground, she dragged herself up and turned around to see something silver in material protruding from the ground in a sort of squarish shape. Alicia got to work, slowly, and quietly, mining around the silver object. As she finally got it uncovered, she realized it was some sort of control panel with a single button in it. She picked it up out of the hole it was in with a mass amount of effort, and placed it on the ground near her. Alicia's curiosity got the immediate best of her, and she pressed the button with very little hesitation.

As she did so, the ground began to shake violently. Well, so much for letting Rex sleep some more. Then the wall of stone before her slowly shifted and started to pull apart. Chips of the stone started falling to reveal a metallic gate that continued to open at a very, very slow rate. The gate had finally settled and all movement ceased, save the incredibly rapid beat of Alicia's heart. It seemed to be some sort of laboratory, judging by the vials of green, red and blue liquid that were spread out across the tabletops. She walked in a little bit to view the broken and damaged lights that dimly flickered, offering no source of light whatsoever. Suddenly footsteps could be heard, and she turned around to see Rex in a wide-eyed trance.

He looked around the room in awe and wonder, realizing that the corridor that they were standing in went a fair ways down, being there was potentially a lot here to explore "How did you find THIS place? Randomly stumble across a giant friggin' metal door or something?"

"Actually, there was a giant metal BOX with a button inside that opened the giant metal door." She replied, smiling.

"Well… at any rate… WOW! Before we head up, do you want to explore this last place?"

"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Who know's what we may find in here?"

"Well, if I think it looks cool, I'm going to be taking with me to put in my ship. I've got nothing in there."

"Fair enough."

And with that, Rex took out his flashlight and the two began their forward march into the giant laboratory. The walls were lined with sliding doors that actually worked and opened up whenever Rex or Alicia got near, or were jammed and didn't move at all. They continued into the different opened rooms, collecting the cool high-tech looking chests that were scattered in there. They found a weapon with strange abilities in one of the chests and gave it to Alicia, so that she had some sort of melee weapon for usage, and not just a bow. As their little journey continued, they came across masses of Apex posters and labs with vials of blue and red that Rex took along with him. There were also a lot of lab tables, which Rex ALSO took, that had a lot of papers spanning the tables. He even found a single bomb.

As they continued to look at the papers, they both noticed that it talked about a 'dark creature' coming in and killing and eating everybody. How reassuring. Well, at least they now knew what happened. as they walked to the final door, a sound, like hissing of some sort, could be heard on the other side of the door. The two looked at each other, both wearing faces of both concern and curiosity. They both put on serious faces and nodded, walking into the room. What they came to see, however, wasn't exactly the most expected thing to see in the world.

There, on the floor, balled up in a sort of a fetal position…

Facing their general direction.

Lay a floran.

Rex's heart didn't feel like beating after seeing this.

It's eyes were a shade of sinister red, and it's flower skin was a mix of blue and purple. Rex and Alicia looked at each other, both worried and disgusted, before looking back at the floran. They both stepped back by one step, which made the floran stop moving, and look up at them. At first the two sighed, thinking it wasn't going to do anything. That was BEFORE the floran made a high-pitched hiss that almost made the two go deaf. Shortly after, the floran gave chase, running after them on all fours, which seemed to be an insane amount faster than Rex and Alicia could ever hope to move, who were each running on two. That's when Rex remembered something and dug in his bag for what he was searching for.

He pulled out the bomb, and threw it at the floran, just barely missing it. The Floran, however, did exactly as Rex has planned. It stopped it's pursuit of Rex and Alicia and chased the explosive. Thank gods curiosity was a thing. As they ran out the metal door, the bomb exploded, and the Floran began to retarget the Hylotl and the other Floran after swiftly jumping out of the way of the bomb radius. "Closer the door!" Rex yelled as Alicia ran over and pressed the button, beginning the painfully slow door closing process.

"Come ooonnnn…." Alicia whispered in an attempt to make it move faster.

Then, Rex ran up to the door and started helping with it's advancement, and Alicia helped with the other side, barely closing it before the dark floran could make it to them. They were both breathing heavily, looking at each other. Then they broke out, laughing.