---

The warmer air was a seriously needed change. The gall of whoever designed the castle to include a bunch of decorations littered across the halls was a different story, but it would work a bit to her favor. Her eyes glazed through the main hall, intent on trying to understand the structure of the room and its items.

Suits of armor, vases, and weapons. Reese eyed the weapons for a good moment.

...They looked more reliable than her pipe, she took that for granted. Still, she decided not to touch the items for the time being.

Instinctively holding her pistol closer to herself, she continued to look around as she walked next to Soraya, neither following nor avoiding her.

Nothing may have been happening, but Reese refused to let her guard down. It was less about her trying to be alert and more of her wanting to find whatever potential threats could be present as fast as possible.

---

@Lugubrious@Rune_Alchemist@TheFake@SquishStar45

---

“Thanks. I guess?” Neither Lizzie nor Kirk’s sentiments made Katie feel any better about the location but at least there were no creatures scampering about beneath the water. Daichi’s plank of wood made certain of that and once the water was checked out, the group descended among the waves. “Er, you don’t happen to have an extra pair of boots in there, do you?” Katie asked Lizzie, smiling in embarrassment as she looked at her bag. She tried not to think about how childish she was sounding right now.

As it turned out, Lizzie did among…other things in that bag of her. Before long she too was wading in the murky depths of the swamp with the rest of the group. It didn’t take too much longer before they arrived at the tree they had scouted out earlier. Katie noted the ground underfoot was becoming less sporadic and resembling something close to stability. It was a good place to set up a base of sorts, a sentiment Daichi spoke aloud of.

“I can scout ahead,” Katie said with a raised arm. “It’s probably best I put some distance between myself and the group anyway. Since we’re surrounded by water and my Attribute is…er, yeah.” Before she went off on her own, Katie looked around at the others in her group to see if anyone else wanted to join her. Her gaze passed from Lizzie to Kirk and then finally Kay.

---

Exiting through the door and into a graveyard, Charlotte immediately raised an eyebrow. What a pleasant place this was--and with something dragging... things around in the distance. A monster dragging corpses? A shambling mound of dead bodies? Anything was possible in a place like this. "I'm going to go look into what that sound is, try and head for the other building."

No sense everyone else getitng caught out in the open if it turned out to be pretty fast. She could probably back out of a fight or keep dodging.

And so, the garishly dressed cyborg strode boldly towards the dangerous-sounding noises...

Well, that was useless. Xu Jian's idea of shoving her shaft where it didn't below didn't pan out in the slightest. Thanks to the... astute(?) observations by their only party member that was actually thinking about their scenario, it would appear that they would have to actually venture through the doors to the next area to proceed.

And past those doors was death. Less in a literal sense, more in a "this is graveyard aesthetics" sense. There was something in there with them. That odd dragging noise... Probably a zombie or a very belligerent grave digger. This was a graveyard aesthetic rift, after all. Also it stunk like ass and death, which was pretty gross. Charlotte, immortal as she was, decided to go headfirst into danger. Xu Jian gave a shrug of acceptance as she commanded (actually suggested) the party to check out the building. If Xu Jian's game sense was anything to go by, that building either had treasure, enemies, or lead to an underground mausoleum in which the dungeon would continue. Either way, they were probably supposed to go to it.

"Okie dokie chokiefolkie." She said in her weird, always-an-inside-joke-but-never-tells-you-the-origin way. Then she went towards the stone building. Really, it was that simple.

"Be sure to shout if it's something super crazy," Albrecht called out after Charlotte, before he moved to put on a gas mask. Filtered air with a rubbery smell wasn't the best thing in the world, but decay was also rather unpleasant, and who knew when it'd turn out to be poisonous? Motioning for Alice to get moving as well, Albrecht lead the way to the leftwards stone building, making a mental note to inspect the tombstones after they confirmed there were no skeletons in that hut.

The strange sounds immediately caught Alice's attention. Given they were inside of a rift, and that there were a high amount of unknown lifeforms within such spaces, Alice promptly began to take stock of the situation. In all likelyhood, it would be hostile. Therefore...

"Potential hostile detected," she intoned, raising one arm and sweeping her hand to the side as she did. "Initializing offensive options Level One. Begin activation procedures."

The air around her began to feel considerably warmer, a faint glow radiating form her body. This was hardly the first time Alice had done something like this, but it was the first time she would be doing it in potentially active combat. There was a strange feeling in her chest, this odd tingling sensation that she couldn't describe. Just what was it? She couldn't identify it, but the machine girl couldn't allow herself to be distracted when the situation could potentially become quite dangerous.

Her toes lifted off of the ground.

"Pseudo-soul linking process stage one complete. Ego activity within normal parameters. Pseudo-soul linking process stage two complete," she recited, as her processes began to activate. The warmth in her limbs grew as magical energy focused itself all across her body, into her very core. Somehow, she could describe the sensation as 'pleasant'. "Password input accepted. Code: Blue Valkyrie. Mana conduit condition is green."

Faint sparkling lights drifted from her small frame, fading into the air as she did. A circle of light spread from beneath her feet, a star marking its center as complex symbols danced on its edges.

"Pseudo-soul linking process stage three complete: Artificial Concept Engine Activation confirmed."

As she spoke, the lights grew brighter and brighter...

"Argent Gamma initialized."

With that, there was a brilliant flash of light, and now her body was clad it what appeared to be some sort of leotard. Materializing around her right shoulder was a series of elongated cannons, their angular blew forms gleaming slightly. They were attached to an almost wing-like rack behind her shoulders, the other side featuring an enormous chainsaw-bladed weapon.

"... ARI Unit-001 combat activation successfully completed."

With that, drifting over the floor, Alice proceeded from the room with the others...

@Raineh Daze@ERode@Duthguy@PKMNB0Y

Walking north from the entrance to the graveyard—towards whatever was making the noise in the distance—would show that this location was indeed nowhere near as empty as the initial chamber might have hinted at. While the graveyard itself continued on, the building seemed to extend parallel alongside it, with another door further off in the distance.

Towering above the space in between the graves, though, was a large humanoid creature slowly patrolling the area. The sounds, it seemed, came from the shovel that was in its hand—or, at least, one of them. It seemed to not be wholly aware of anyone else's presence, and for the most part it continued to move about, its cloaked head staring at the ground as it did so.

@Raineh Daze


The smaller structure off to the left of the main building would prove to be far more willing to cooperate than the altar that the group had dealt with prior, with the doors already being slightly ajar (though not without difficulty in actually moving them). Past those, however, would reveal a massive jewel hovering a few feet above the ground. The size of the object made it far too implausible to move around, and it was doubtful that the object itself would even fit through the doors back towards the entrance of the Rift, if at all.

What would come next, though, was the sound of bones rattling from further into the structure—a cacophony of metal hitting bone hitting stone and whatever else it was that could be made out from that as a result. To those more acutely aware of their surroundings, however, the sounds of the earth behind the group shifting likewise was more than enough reason to remain on guard.

That being said, nothing seemed to be occurring yet—it was as if the sounds were being made to ward off intruders more than anything else right now...

@ERode@Duthguy@OwO@VitaVitaAR


The entry of the group present was immediately followed by a dramatic slamming of the doors behind them that seemed almost automatic in nature. As things were now, escaping straight through the front door seemed to no longer be an option to those brave enough to head forth. With that said, though, the hesitation of those present near the entrance also meant that no threats had come to strike at the group as of yet.

Or, rather, that might have been the case had the vase off to the side not been disturbed. Almost as if in response, one of the sets of armor next to it seemed to slowly creak, its head turning towards the source of the disturbance before it began to pick up speed. Acting with the speed of a trained soldier, the enemy seemed to spring to life. With its weapon now unsheathed, the living armor swung down towards Marxion's torso without a shred of hesitation.

@Lugubrious@Rune_Alchemist@Anonawrimo@TheFake

Well, this wasn't spooky at all. Even with the rattling of what he could only assume to be skeleton warriors and the shifting of the ground around them, Albrecht didn't feel all too concerned. If those scientists have done their work right and Alice's appearance wasn't just constructed out of foam, the android should have more than enough firepower to lay waste to whatever threat lurked in the shadows. Instead, it was the massive jewel that occupied Albrecht's mind. Floating was weird enough, but there was also the question of how it was even transported into this chamber to begin with.

Maybe it was a power source? His hand flexed, joints cracking.

"Wager I could destroy that jewel pretty easily. It's a bit redder, but I think it's otherwise the same hue as the stuff shielding the doors and windows, so maybe it's the cause of that." Albrecht pulled out a pen light as well, the fluorescent light shooting through the darkness of the room and sweeping over the walls. "Looks like the murals change too. Some sort of...parade? Any arts majors here?"

Normally Paul would have spoken up against splitting the party but Charlotte was immortal after all and would probably be fine on her own.
Alice's transformation a bit later surprised him, but after everything that happened it wasn't a huge shock. "No wonder they wanted to try her out in a rift."

Eventually the group arrived at a building without running into any trouble, though the floating jewel and noise suggested something might happen at any time. Albrecht offered to destroy the jewel, something Paul didn't agree with. "I think we should avoid messing with it for now, it might be trapped or something." At the mention of murals he took his improvised running out and compared it to them, wondering if there were any similarities that might be a clue or something

@ERode @VitaVitaAR @OwO @Raineh Daze

---

The clamor of metal, even slight, broke the frigid castle's pervasive silence like a popped balloon. With a smirk, Marxion glanced over as the automaton creaked to life and barreled his way. Given his experience with rifts, he'd been wary from the start, and wasn't a living suit of armor incredibly classic? Since the vase apparently contained nothing, he held no compunctions about simply lobbing it at the incoming threat to be split by the empty knight's nondescript weapon rather than his head.

In the meantime, he pivoted out of the way of its overhead cleave and let its strike go by. As he stepped past, Marxion hooked the suit's ankle with the side of his right foot and kicked off, aiming to use his assailant's weight and strength to trip it and send it sprawling. In the moment that the two made contact, Marxion placed a save point on the suit's lower leg, then moved away. On a whim, he reloaded the save he'd put on the vase, restoring it to prime condition where it stood the moment before he picked it up. Maybe its replacement would get the armor off his back, after all.