> "I'll be honest Nue: do you see these gems I'm wearing on my ears? There are 4 of them, and one is supposedly down here. It was hidden some place where no one would ever find it, and that's the best place. I'm not going in just for bravado, I'm going in to get that gem, and I'll be going in with a plan because I will be coming back out. So, can you show me where it is?"
>"I thought those looked weird on you..." says Nue. "Well, alright, if you have a reason. Just...don't fight that thing. I don't know if you can run from it and get away, but I am pretty sure you can't fight it. Gimme a couple minutes, I need to find the right map."
>She leaves the bar and disappears through a door into the back. A few minutes pass before she returns, bearing a rolled up paper. "I'll rent this to you, for 500☼" Nue says, playing the paper on the bar and unrolling it. "If you get it back to me, I'll give you...let's say 450☼ back, alright?"
>The map is fairly large, and you can quickly tell it's not complete, several spots run off the page. You pick out the Ancient city on it pretty quick, and a sizable blacked in area that simply reads, "No return." The path between the two is complex enough that you can't immediately pick it out. You aren't sure you can memorize it if you did know it.
>"Sound okay to you?"
> "Also, if your could spare details on this beast, that would make things easier for me. Weaknesses, things it would put all attention on, ignoring even a potential threat maybe?"
>"If we knew any weaknesses, we'd probably not worry so much about it," says Nue. "No one's seen it and live to tell the tale. All I can really say for sure is this is it's home," she gestures toward the blacken part of the map. "I've got no idea how large or small that is, just that no one's ever been able to tell me what's there, and I don't have the heart to go further myself. There's a story that you can smell lightning in the air when it's close, but anyone who tells that story never met it. But I wouldn't hang around if I smelled it. There's also a story that it's something that crawled out of Former Hell, but, well, no way to confirm it."
>_