With Klauthsura's help, the two of them finally settled on the details of the "return to the surface" plan after a week of discussion and repeated deliberation.
Yet once the plan was finalized, the mind flayers who had evacuated had long since packed up and taken away the colony's most important star charts and teleportation devices. The precise spatial coordinates had vanished along with them.
At her current level of psionic power, Klauthsura could not set up a Teleportation Circle capable of sending Renato beyond several thousand meters of rock without clear coordinates.
The female dragonborn also flatly rejected the idea of traveling upward on foot and teleporting from another stratum, given the excessive danger and uncertainty along the way.
Drow patrols roaming between the strata, aboleths lurking deep in the fissures, ancient tunnels that could collapse at any moment... every seemingly upward path concealed a deadly threat.
As a "native" of the Underdark, Klauthsura understood the dangers of this tangled subterranean world far better than Renato did.
Their routes were blocked, and their equipment was missing. Renato's "return to the surface" plan had hit a dead end from the outset.
The two remained silent for a long time, until Klauthsura suggested that perhaps the Hellforged Multiverse Wanderer's abilities could help Renato return to the surface.
Renato had actually considered using the artifact at the start. But first, he had never used this unfamiliar artifact and had no idea exactly what it would do or where it would teleport him.
Second, the artifact was nowhere near sufficiently charged. Even if Renato wanted to use it, he could not.
After all, even after devouring the Consort's Mask and the Dark Elf Guard Sword, two pieces of equipment containing considerable magic power, the Hellforged Multiverse Wanderer's charge had barely reached eleven percent.