Ithelisemou left the subterranean humans to themselves for now and instead ventured into the shadowy outside, he wasn't going to just pick a direction however and decided to kill two birds with one stone.
He made his way up the lighthouse using a floating spell that wasn't very reliable, this way he would be able to monitor the surroundings from up and on a stable ground as well as investigate what it was exactly that casted all of this light, staring at it directly from so close was uncomfortable but no as much as he could have expected.
As it turns out, it seemed to have been the work of a runesmith, this was the only craft that seemed to have been used on the round crystal that floated inside of a cage, this runesmith must have been quite talented to achieve such a result with only that, Theli could guess that it was the work of a single individual as the way the runes had been carved was consistent on the orb.
Also, carving on a round surface was a pain in the ass, Theli had yet to truly tackle that issue himself, the runes had been engineered well and allowed the orb to shine a bright light for seemingly forever, no sign of anything being damaged was to be seen.
Which was weird, the runes were expertly carved and the runes used were good in themselves as well as reinforced by other runes but nothing here should allow this orb to be so bright and so pristine, from what he had heard, the pale humans down here had been in there for a long while.
Without that light they would have been butchered by the shadow creature outside a long time ago, he couldn't make any certain claims about the why this orb was just so good.
The only thing he could think of were that the rune carver had had an ability specific to himself or he had used a certain art that simply couldn't be noticed due to its nature or it was some other random reason.
Theli loved logic very much but to not go mad when one searched for answer, one had to accept that logic would be flipped around all the time, especially when they were so many things that could interfere.
Not being able to do much more at the moment, he instead turned to watch the surrounding, pulling out a spyglass and looking into the distance for a long while, looking for signs.
It wasn't very hard to find, the monsters were very simple minded and would seemingly just pick a spot to wander endlessly until something would come stimulate their minds and make them so something else, as such, the fact was that before picking a spot, the monster would have to travel a bit from its original position and since he had never seen one that was walking in a circle decide to move in a circle elsewhere.
It could only mean that they chose a spot right after appearing.
That implied that they were born as they are right now.
Reinforcing that idea was the fact that the monsters that weren't stuck in a loop all came from roughly the same direction.
Deciding that it was conclusive evidence untik proven otherwise, Theli got down the lighthouse and traveled toward the source of the monsters, making his way there sneakily.
As he progressed, it became more and obvious that he was on the right track as he kept crossing paths with the shadow monsters and as he approached a depression in the ground, he was able to see a magnificient creature, an enormous being with dark flower-like formations covering its body.
It was easily bigger than two blue whales stacked on each other and he was suspecting that it was partly hidden inside of the ground.
Still as sneaky as ever, he walked around the large monster, it was mostly as silent as the other monsters except when birthing one of them, it would make a very meaty and wet sounding noise as a monster was pushed out of one of its many holes.
Which, by all accounts, were clearly female reproductive organs but he didn't see anything that could be the father around.
The large monster, apart from its flowery decorations didn't have much in terms of appearance, it was mostly a black sludge with holes, no eyes, mouths, ears or anything, it didn't seem to have an anus so it must have not been eating anything.
It was nothing more than a stationary, living breeder.
Theli loved these kinds of things, monsters that could endlessly produce other monsters through the way of natural conception, truly magnificient in his mind.
You didn't even have to worry about species extinction with a monster like that around.
Pushing aside his thoughts about the creature's way of reproduction, he noticed that the dark clouds that formed the borders of this place didn't seem to have anything to do with it.
He took another few steps and then noticed that another monster seemed to be standing on top of one of the flowers, it was standing per see and was more floating, true to its appearance as it looked very much like a jellyfish.
Or rather, multiple jellyfishes linked to one another to form a somewhat dress-like appearance to the whole thing, each flap of bioluminescent skin moved in harmony and the few tendrils the creature seemed to have were placed in a way that made it appear almost humanoid but in a very crude way.
Seeing the creature turn its body toward him, he almost expected it to start speaking a sapient language but it did not, it spoke in a much more animalistic way.
This wasn't an obstacle for Theli as he could understand what it was saying, just like he had been able to communicate with the pale humans despite the fact that they shouldn't have been speaking the same language.
Still, communicating when they were so few words and that the sounds used were much more straightforward wasn't an easy job and it wasn't like he could move like a bunch of jellyfish to make movements to it either.
Thankfully, the being wasn't hostile at all, it was because of its basic nature and also because it was speaking to Theli in particular, the young man wouldn't have tried to engage conversation with a monster unless he knew that he had something to limit his chances of being attacked.
All in all, the monster spoke as it was the brain of a hivemind, refering to the flowery monster as the womb and the other monsters has its organs, they didn't seem to actually be linked in such a way but the meaning was easy to understand, they were all parts of the same thing, the organs do the heavy lifting, the womb pushes out things and the brain is the one taking care of all that, it wasn't quite how an actual body worked but the monster's analogy stood.
Awkward attempts at speaking later as well as the usage of more bodily analogies and Theli convinced the brain that he wasn't a foreign body but that he was in fact, a good thing.
The brain was way quite intelligent but it was still very much simple minded and couldn't compete against the snake tongue of Theli, which was backed up by a few abilities and spells he had been throwing around sneakily.
He shook the brains tendrils for no other reason that he was wondering how it felt and decided to stick around for a bit before going elsewhere.