With the notification of a cryptic final reward, I press on my back and rise to my feet. I tilt my head at the stairs in a silent question to Clutter, and he nods with a grimace as he uses the wall to stand. From the look in his eyes, it isn’t hyperbolic to say he’s staying awake with nothing but force of will.

  “We can wait half an hour if you want to take a power nap.” I offer as he starts walking to the stairs. “No point seeing things now if you’re going to have to take a second look since you missed so much the first time around.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m okay for… ten minutes. Just enough to get a first look, and then the two of you can go really in depth.”

  I shrug. “You’re the one whose eyelids are struggling, not mine. Go slow down the stairs so you don’t fall.”

  “I know.” He says with a small smile. “But thanks for worrying about me.”

  My mouth pulls into a tight line as I watch him struggle down the first few stairs. His legs shake a little with every step, and he has to lean against the wall with both palms pressed against it for balance, but… he looks used to it. Like this isn’t his first time working through an exhaustion that could be deadly with even one enemy around. I step onto the stairs just as he’s about to disappear around the bend, and he looks back at me with a half proud, half relieved grin.

  Pearl huffs, then speaks right into my mind. “He has a serious fear of abandonment. But he also has pride that makes him want to be a part of every single decision being made. I can see that making it pretty hard for new groups to accept him.”

  I nod in agreement. Not that I don’t see where he’s coming from; I hate being left in the dark about things, too, but I’ve never really felt ‘abandoned’ by anyone. The part that’s… difficult… about him is his own… inability to do the things he wants to do. And then he gets sulky that he can’t do them, even if I never expected him to do those things in the first place. I did properly tell him what I expect from him, right? Yeah, I’m pretty damn sure I did. So all this is just some pride point for him.

  He wants to be able to do everything. There’s no way that doesn’t stem from some unrealistic expectations placed on him as a kid or… something. But I’m not a damn therapist, so all I can do is hope that he finds his own answer and be there when he wants to talk about it.

  My awareness feels the door before we see it. It’s more like a vault door–circular, hinged on one side, and with a comically large multi-pronged wheel at the very center of it. All of it glistens with grey magic, and it feels… almost like the rest of the material of the tower. Except there’s a slight magical dissipation that’s just leaking off of it and disappearing into nowhere.

  “I guess the system just made the room.” I say as we near the floor. “Wonder if it made the alcove with the plastic paindne as we were following the line. Or maybe in that long delay after we activated the second hexagon.”

  “I have no idea.” Pearl responds out loud. “There wasn’t any obvious magical intrusion like there is right here, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any.”

  Clutter nods in agreement. “If the system wants us to believe this place was more populated than it actually was, then it’d make sense. But if it’s actually an ancient city, why bother making rooms when you’ve probably got a ton of space to work with anyway?”

  I don’t have a good answer for him other than ‘because the system wanted to’. Sure, it might be true, but if we start thinking like that then this entire quest becomes pointless. Well, not completely pointless because of the rewards, but… what’s a better word for it? Unfulfilling? Whatever word means it only gives material wealth, not satisfaction.

  We turn the last bend, and the vault door comes into view. Clutter gasps at the sight, then tries to hurry over to it, only to stop with a wince and hold his back in discomfort. I gently pat his shoulder as I walk by, but my attention is completely locked on the vault door.

  Somehow, and without my awareness even noticing, the door stopped being a circle. A hexagon stares back at me, outlined in grey magic, and perfectly mirrored in my awareness. Almost like by looking at it, the thing changed from a circle to what we see now. But that’d mean the door is phased. And if I didn’t have an awareness, I literally never would’ve noticed.

  “Pearl?” I mutter quietly. “You saw the circle too, right?”

  She nods. “It changed the moment Clutter turned the corner. It must be phased, but… why?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  I reach out and brush the door with my fingertips. Grey magic hums inside of the material, unlike the stagnant stuff that makes up the walls below us. Even though it looks like and has the same texture as the other stuff, this material feels… strange. More conductive. If I hadn’t seen the other stuff just suddenly have magic inside of it, I’d think this is just flat-out better than the other stuff.

  But having experience with the other stuff… it seems wasteful for the magic to always be here. Like a car that has to be left on because it takes so long to start up. Then the other stuff would be a luxury car that turns on at the push of a button, and does so instantly. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but this feels like it’s compensating for not being able to perfectly replicate the material the walls are made of.

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  “Nrgh!” Clutter grunts as he forces himself to stand up with a tear in his eye. “Why’s the wall so bright? Don’t the other doors open only when we want them to?”

  Okay, if Clutter’s noticing it without an awareness, it can’t be just me. “Yeah. This definitely feels like an add-on.”

  He nods in agreement and pulls out his Class Card. “Like someone built a shed right next to their house with slightly worse building materials, since the laws for sheds and houses are different.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “You’ve got housing laws here, too?”

  “Of course we do.” He scoffs as he taps something on his Class Card and the door clicks unlocked. “If you have a bunch of people with spells, and some of them are transmuters, you have no reason to make a house out of anything but the best materials. That’s why the stuff in Denmary was so out of place–it was like someone who didn’t care at all made most of them.”

  Makes sense. If we could turn plywood into old-growth lumber with a little mana, I bet every house would be insanely solid back on Earth. …Huh, is that how the houses in Palastia looked like they were carved out of stone? Did they get a bunch of transmuters to turn normal building materials into the same rock as the rest of the city, or did they actually carve everything out? Because that’s a hell of a lot of work either way.

  On the same note… making this place would be infinitely more work. Not months, or even years worth, but probably decades of people working tirelessly to make sure everything’s in the right place. A place like this… how’d it get forgotten in the first place? And ‘forgotten’ doesn’t mean destroyed, so are we actually somewhere in the world right now, or are we… like… phased out?

  I shake my head as Clutter grabs the spoke-wheel and pulls the door open. If this quest is worth doing, all my questions about this place should be answered before we’re sent back to where we came from.

  He carefully pulls the door back with a grunt of effort, then yelps as his grunt-aided pull turns out to be way too strong. The door swings open with a mighty whoosh, and Clutter tumbles to the ground as he instinctively lets go of the spoke. He blinks a few times in surprise, then looks down at his hands in astonishment.

  “How did I get this strong?”

  I snort and shake my head. “It’s a light door, buddy. See?” I reach out and gently nudge the door. It sways like a shirt drying in a breeze. “The quest wouldn't be nice enough to give you a random power-up for no reason. Unless you were chugging stat coins while I wasn’t looking?”

  “No. I wasn’t.” He pouts as he awkwardly gets to his feet. “Why’s the door so… weird? All the other stuff felt really solid, but this feels…”

  “Cheap?” I offer as I give the door a few test swings.

  He nods. “Yeah, it feels like a cheap knock-off of the actual wall material. Did the quest do this on purpose? Is this some kind of a hint, and we… um… should reinforce the room behind this so people can’t break into it?”

  I hadn’t even thought of that. But he’s right–our impenetrable tower now has a very cheap feeling wall spliced into it. Hopefully it’ll still keep the radiation out, or else we’re going to be spending way more time in the walls than I’d planned on. And wasting pretty much all of the tower’s benefits.

  “C’mon, the system wouldn’t screw over normal people for completing a difficult sub-quest.” I say with confidence I don’t feel and step into the seemingly empty room. “This is a reward–not another part of the quest. And… wait, weren’t there supposed to be doors here?”

  Clutter steps through right behind me and takes a look around. He frowns when he’s less than halfway through. “Yeah, for a ‘room with doors’, there sure aren’t any doors in here. And why’s it a hexagon? Wasn’t pretty much everything a circle or some kind of rectangle until we found the handprint plate?”

  “It was. And the only place we saw hexagons before the quest started was the rock with the plastic in it.” I turn and motion at the door. “You think all this stuff is made of plastic?”

  “I don’t know why it’d be… but maybe?” Clutter shrugs. “Try closing the door. See if that makes anything appear.”

  I nod and reach for the wheel on the inside of the door, then pull it shut. It clicks loudly, yet the sound is hollow, and a burst of grey magic suddenly fills the room in tune with the hollowness. I shift to see what the stuff is doing, but the light of six new hexagonal doors takes my attention first. There’s one on every wall except for the one we came through, and one on the roof–like a hatch leading to the ceiling. For five of them, my awareness informs me that the magic just cuts off an inch or so into the wall. But for the door right across from the entrance, it doesn’’ cut off at all. In fact, the magic stretches so far into the distance that my awareness cuts off before it does. And that’s not considering the fact that I can somehow feel the magic through solid mass.

  As I’m watching it, brows furrowed in confusion, a pattern etches itself into the door. It starts at the bottom, makes turns for absolutely no reason, and quickly zips up to connect to the top. Even if I don’t have the pattern that we had to run to escape the repeated hallway memorized, I’m pretty damn sure the one on the door is a perfect replica of it–minus the grid.

  “That’s the pattern.” Pearl says, removing all of my doubts.

  “Why’s it here?” Clutter asks nervously. “Are we going to have to run again if we open it?”

  “I don’t know. But… maybe…” I walk up to the door and trace my fingers along the pattern as I slowly form a theory. “What if the workshop slash kitchen upgrade would’ve happened even if we did the ‘first time’ of a different sub-quest, and this door appeared because we did specifically the one we did?”

  Pearl hums. “It’d make sense. But we won’t know for sure until we walk through it. Clutter, can you open it up?”

  He hesitates for a split second, but taps on his Class Card anyway. “If we have to do that whole thing again, you’re killing the stain and then we’re both going to take a break.”

  “I can do that.”

  He nods and swallows hard. “Okay. Then get ready.”

  The door clicks and violently swings open on its own. I flinch back in surprise as magic and light surge together as one, and somewhere else feels like it just appears out of nowhere. My awareness stretches into the unknown, where it touches a mass of… oh, what the actual hell.

  Grey magic and plastic turns towards us, and a plastic paindne offers us a very familiar smile.

  “Back so-so-so soon?”