Sludgy construct material sloughs from my hair as I run my fingers through it, splattering stuff on the strangely clean floor with echoing impacts. We're in some kind of… well… it looks like an empty olympic-sized diving pool. Scratched out patterns stretch along the floor contained within differently sized tiles in a pattern that my brain just can't make sense of.

"I have absolutely no idea." I say as I flap my jacket to de-grey it. "But there's no way this isn't the next uplifting trial. Or at least where it starts."

Clutter bends down and runs his hand over a scratched tile. "It looks just like the hallway where the stain went through. No way that's a coincidence."

I nod in agreement. "Must mean we're already in the subquest. Those three lines the construct said must've been all we're getting."

Once I get all the construct out of my clothes I summon my Class Card and swipe over to my map. It's still working, but we're in the middle of a gigantic grey stain. Which narrows our location down to literally anywhere but our tower's district. I click my tongue and swipe over to my messenger, send out a quick 'reply with 1 if you're okay' to everyone, then send it away as replies come rolling in.

"Your time to shine, Jumble."

She nods. "I'm already on it. We're in a place specifically used for uplifting trials, and the map bounds are locked to this location so I can't figure out where it is in the city. Size wise we're looking at a space about a tenth as large as our district, and there's a bunch of indentations just like this one all over the place."

Llaliu laughs nervously. "So, what, we're in some kind of ancient paindne swimming complex?"

Jumble sends her Class Card away with a shrug. "It's more likely than you'd think. Personally, I bet this is some kind of water storage facility for the system to do research on."

A grim thought tickles the side of my brain, but I wipe it away along with a little chunk of construct that managed to stay on my shoulder. There's no way the quest just sent us to any place that's actually important. The last time this happened it just repeated the same damn hallways over and over again. This has to be a magical space just like that.

Which means… it might have something like the hallway leeches. Obviously not triggered by our Class Cards this time, so what else would it be both cautioning us against and hinting us to use?

Nothing obvious comes to mind. And if we're going to start experimenting, I don't want to do it at the bottom of a thirty-foot deep pool. I jab a thumb at the edge as the last of the confirmatory messages roll in.

"Let's get out of here. Maybe the construct's words'll make more sense when we can actually see everything."

It takes a few minutes, but we all get out of the pool thanks to a human stepladder and an impromptu rope made of Clutter's extremely durable fabric. Clutter pulls me up last, and once we're all out, I get a good look at the rest of this place.

Which is just… off-putting. What Jumble forgot to say about the indents is that they're uniform in size, but definitely not in placement; ours is the center part of a spiral that goes out for miles, and even further out, the 'pools' make dozens upon dozens of strange shapes that we can see from where we stand.

Because the entire place is one big dome. And the little stretch of ceiling that we could see from the bottom of the pool is the only part of this place without any indents. Oh, and there's a shimmering mass of half-invisible construct matter hovering in the perfect middle of the air like a miniature grey sun. I run my hands through my hair one more time as an annoyed sigh reverberates through every fiber of my being.

"Of course it's more nonsense. Why wouldn't it be?" I mutter to myself. "How the hell is this place broken?"

"And what are we supposed to fix?" Jumble finishes for me. "Oh, please don't tell me this is going to be another anomaly apartment situation. I don't want to spend days looking at every tile in each one of these pools."

Llaliu snorts nervously. "If you think this'd only take days, then you're smoking something I want a hit of. Just look at how small those indents are near the top. They're like damn peas, and we're standing right next to how big those peas actually are! It's… like… a thirty foot cube! Perfectly!"

"Perfectly?"

She nods. "The exact same tile pattern is on each of the walls and the floor. They're all perfect cubes. Who'd bother building thousands of perfectly shaped swimming cubes?! A psychopath, that's who!"

"About sums up the system. Or maybe the quest; we don't know if this place was here before, or if the quest made it specifically for us." I look around for any signs of the others, but there's nobody. "Absolutely nothing. Shouldn't be surprised, but it could mean everyone else is in another place exactly like this."

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Llaliu grimaces and pulls out her Class Card. "I'll talk to Sawyer to see what they're going through. Hopefully they've got more to work with than we do."

It'd be damn hard for them to have less, that's for sure. I wait a moment for Llaliu to focus on her Class Card, then motion for Jumble to do her thing. She rubs her hands together then gently presses them again the y'tocwa's head, wrapping her in a veil of tunnel-visioned focus that'll give us a few minutes of privacy. Once she turns and gives me a thumbs-up, Pearl crawls out of her shell and plants herself on my shoulder.

"So it's another quest with no real instructions. Great." She sighs and leans against my neck. "Well, the last trial-linked quest gave you guys an upgraded map just for starting it. Maybe this one did the same thing?"

Clutter, already nose deep in his own card, shakes his head. "If it did, I haven't seen anything obvious."

"Nothing on the messenger, that's for sure." I agree. "And now we don't have the obvious hint of anything being un-greyed to point us in the right direction. So all we've got to work with are our ideas. Anyone got anything they want to try?"

Jumble and Clutter share a look that Pearl joins in on. Each of them looks like they're trying to come up with something to say, but there's hesitation holding it back. I don't blame them. The quest is obviously messing with us. No way there isn't a hint somewhere in here.

I crane my neck skyward and focus on the mass of construct stuff. "That thing is important. Maybe we can message it just like in the anomaly apartment?"

"There's nothing in the messenger for it. At all." Clutter says, quickly and swiftly putting an end to that train of thought. "The construct talked to us with actual words, not messages. Maybe we can just… call out to it?"

Jumble cups her hands around her mouth and takes a deep breath. "HEY, CONSTRUCT ORB! CAN YOU HEAR US?!"

I wince at the volume of her voice; she has pipes that're fit for a concert hall. She stares up at the orb for a few seconds, waiting for a reply, but there's no way this is how we talk to it. Though I bet we are supposed to talk with it using some dumbass method that involves… pool echoes or something like that. Shit, maybe we're supposed to spell something out like we're stranded on a desert island.

But before my brain can wander too far, I circle back to exactly what the construct said. 'It's broken'. And supposedly we're able to fix whatever it is that's broken. I was ready to dismiss that a second ago, but if we have absolutely no other leads to go on… then I have to take it seriously. Even if it means thinking out of the box.

"It's not listening." Jumble lowers her hands and plants them on her hips. "I already don't like this quest."

"Is it the trapping us part or the absolutely no information part?" Pearl asks sarcastically.

Jumble shrugs. "A little bit of both. Oh, um, my spell's failing. Sawyer must've stopped replying."

I raise an eyebrow. "I didn't know your spell could fail."

"When I'm trying to be discreet, it definitely can. The stronger version definitely can't." Jumble giggles ominously. "Sorry for the short outing, Pearl. I'll try to buy you some time later."

Pearl waves her hand as she crawls back into her shell. "No problem. See you all later."

"Later." Clutter says without looking up from his Class Card. "Hm. This might be something."

Llaliu turns around as Jumble's spell fades. "What might be something?"

Clutter flicks his Class Card. "My inventory has one new slot. It's a double wide, which is… something I didn't think existed."

"A double-wide?" Jumble asks with a frown and pulls out her own Class Card. "...Oh, would you look at that? I have one too. Maybe it's some weird new kind of inventory slot?"

"It's a reservoir." Llaliu says confidently. "They have a lot of space, but can only take a specific kind of thing inside of it. Hold your finger on it and it'll show you the details."

I raise my eyebrows as I tab over to my inventory and do exactly that. The inventory slot looks just like all my other slots, except for the fact that there's no barrier between it and the slot right next to it. I hold my finger to it for a moment, and a new popup pings to life informing me of exactly what this new addition can do.

Inventory Reservoir: Liquids.

This slot can only be filled with liquids.

Once a liquid has been slotted into it, this slot adapts and can then only be slotted with that specific liquid, even if emptied.

If you are near someone with a reservoir filled with the same thing as yours, you can draw on their reservoir with their permission.

"So it's a shared inventory slot." Jumble says. "Specifically for liquids, we're in a place with thousands of pools, and we got here by being flooded by liquid construct. That's a lot less subtle than I was expecting."

"About as subtle as a brick to the teeth." I agree and look up at the orb of construct stuff. "If we can access each others' reservoirs, then there's obviously a teamwork portion to this. Maybe one of us needs to find a way up there and keep the tank filled while everyone else starts filling pools."

Clutter tilts his head to the side. "But how's that fixing anything? Pools aren't broken just because they're empty; they get emptied because they're broken."

Llaliu groans and covers her face with her hands. "Please tell me we're not going to fill every one of these pools just to figure out which one's broken."

"That's the last resort, not our opening move." I pat her on the shoulder reassuringly. "But it means we've got to look around and see if there's anything else out of place that we're missing. Did Sawyer say anything that might help?"

"Just that they're in a huge artificial cavern with a bunch of rope bridges over a…" Llaliu trails off as realization lights her face. "There's a fake river filled with water way below them. Maybe that's what we have to do. Flood this place and drain theirs!"

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