15

The party of two walked towards the tall tower slowly and in complete silence. There was only the sound of the boiling mud behind them, rhythmically erupting in a shower of blistering heat. They were being cautious, each with their own reasons behind their behavior that went beyond the simple logic of being careful when approaching an unknown tower. There were people who remembered the armed guardians watching the doors of metal of the Metalmancer’s fortress. Their stories were filled with golems and automatons that towered above everyone, that could breathe fire and obliterate whoever dared enter the tower. Men of iron who never spoke or faltered, who fought until death and sometimes even beyond. Things that followed the strange man wherever he went, and some of which were left behind to defend his fortress while he was away.

There were structures that looked like radiator fins jutting out from the metal at regular intervals, beginning from half the height and continuing on all the way to the top. Those too were unblemished and shiny under the setting sun, an impossibility after all this time exposed to the elements.

Charles looked at those in wonder, but the wonder did not last long though, as he was not worried about some rumors but about something much more real. He knew very well what the holes and craters on the ground meant, and he didn’t want to end up like the piles of bones outside. He had to be careful, for now, until he had something to shoot at.

That there was something defending the entrance to the tower, and that it looked a lot like some automated defenses from his old world was pretty clear by now. Bullet based weaponry, something a man out of the middle ages should not be able to even think up. Had he underestimated the technological level of this universe? Perhaps it was only this plane, or even only Unica that was so underdeveloped while other places thrived and advanced. Or perhaps it was the Metalmancer who was leagues ahead of everybody else.

He approached the entrance with great care, keeping his gun ready to shoot at the first thing that moved inside. He had the LAI ready to take over as well, as the artificial intelligence was able to react to danger much faster than he could, even as a level 145 human with all the bonuses that such a level granted him.

He wondered for a moment if the LAI even received the bonuses as well, but the answer came to him immediately when he was reminded of the fact that the artificial companion acted as a multiplier to normal brain capabilities. This meant that it was gaining power as well as him, making it a really invaluable tool.

The tower was completely silent and still, giving no hint to what might happen in just a moment, with its polished metal door wide open right in front of where Charles and the elf were. But there was an ominous feeling in the air, one that even Charles could not ignore.

But everything was eerily quiet, and he kept going. There was darkness beyond the door that made it impossible to see what lied inside, and without power in his suit Charles could not use the advanced analysis tools it usually provided, like sonar or radar. Whatever was defending this place, assuming that it was still active, was not reacting to their presence for some reason. Perhaps the defenses had failed after the centuries passed after all, but Charles thought it unlikely. The exterior of the tower looked completely undamaged by the passage of time, perhaps by magic or by design, but it hinted at the fact that everything inside should be working as well. The other possible explanation was that perhaps the defenses had to be triggered by some sort of hostile action.

This last thought terrified him, as for the first time since coming to this world he was being faced with a real challenge where his life was at stake. He wouldn't want to find out that the defense mechanisms were actually only dormant and waiting to come alive while he was already inside. 

He eyed the two loopholes that were at the two sides of the door. He could not see what laid beyond the vertical slits, but he knew very well what those two openings meant.

“There may be something defending the tower.” He said to the girl. “See the holes in the ground next to the piles of bones?”

The girl looked worried, but did not ask about the nature of the holes. She was not very observant, Charles mused, or she was just worried about something else. She was also looking at the dark hole that was the entrance with wide eyes, suspicious of the two slits just as much as Charles.

“What do we do, then?”

“We try to trigger the defenses, of course.” 

“Why?” She looked at him like one looked at a crazy person.

He shrugged. “Either we fight them here or we try our luck and get inside. If you want to go ahead without knowing what is defending this place then go ahead, I’ll wait here.”

“Sorry.” She looked at her feet.

 Now that you got the point, it’s time you showed me your archery skills.” Charles said, and then pointed at the bow and quiver strapped to the back of the elf girl.

She gingerly grabbed her weapons, while Charles was staring. The LAI was watching with extreme interest as well, or at least with the closest thing resembling interest that the machine was able to express. Charles asked the AI how long it would take it to react to an incoming threat, while he watched the elf next to him prepare an arrow as if in slow motion.

0.014 seconds. The LAI replied to his mental query. Like that time, but this time less is actually better.

“What the hell?!” He shouted surprised, but as he was reacting to the strange new development the elf let loose the arrow. He had to observe carefully now.

The arrow left the bow, and sped through the air with unbelievable speed. Yet, it looked as if it was frozen in time to his eyes, moving very fast compared to the outside world but at the same time slow enough that he was sure he would be able to catch it if it was shot at him.

There was no time to linger on this either though, as the arrow finally entered the dark cavity of the missing door, disappearing inside. For an instant that looked like an eternity, neither the girl nor the armed man dared to make a move. They were holding their breath, their bodies at the ready to react on instinct at the first sign of movement from inside.

But nothing happened. The tower stood before them, massive, monolithic and menacing; challenging them to enter, to step through the door encased in its polished metal walls and ornaments. 

And it was this that made Charles suspicious. The Metalmancer was obviously someone who possessed some sort of magic related to the manipulation of metals, that much was clear judging by the name of his class. And looking at the walls of the tower he knew that there had to be something magical about them even if he could not feel any mana coming from inside them.

They were beautiful, perfect, precise in their shape and making and most of all uncorrupted by the passing of time. Their secrets called to him, the possibilities of what the knowledge of their making could unlock for him hinted at great creations. He wanted to step inside, he wanted to study whatever had managed to make this beautiful work metal and nothing else.

Yes, the tower was made entirely of metal, resting on the hard stone of the ground and merging with it as if made from the very same rock that was deep in the earth. Another impossible thing, yet very real before his eyes.

Eereen looked at him expectantly. He rolled his eyes and tightened the grip on his gun before stepping forward towards the dark opening. He knew that he’d have to do all the work himself, and he knew that he could not wait outside here forever. The fact that the tower was perfectly preserved while the defenses were, apparently, not working anymore bugged him but there was nothing he could do about that.

Perhaps some of the people who attacked this tower managed to get over the defenses in the end, and by seeing the sheer amount of bones outside he knew that this place was attacked either frequently or had been attacked by a large army of men. Even barbarians with swords and arrows managed to overcome the power of the gunpowder, in the end, thanks to their damned system and its magic.

“Wait!” A shout came from behind him, making him stop dead in his tracks.

He had one foot still raised and was holding his gun ready to fire, aiming down its sights while he walked. To his senses, nothing had changed inside the tower.

“What?” He asked the girl in a complacent tone. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“No, it’s not that. I can hear sounds coming from inside.” She said frantically.

“Is that your elven magical hearing?”

She pouted. “It’s not magical, but yes.”

“Alright, tell me what you heard.”

“It’s like someone’s breathing, just… strange? Hissing, at times, and the grinding of metal.”

“Alright, then. Let’s go.” Charles said, and took another step.

A loud hiss pierced the air, a sound that preceded the creation of a tiny round hole in the ground by a few milliseconds. Charles was warned about it in time by his LAI and managed to sidestep to the right, moving nimbly and with a grace and speed impossible without his now magically enhanced body.

“Shit. There are defenses after all!” He grunted and prepared to fire. The LAI had calculated the trajectory of the bullet back to where it came from, and had painted a target at the location.

He squeezed the trigger, and the horrible and loud noise of metal grinding and warping told him that his rod of tungsten had hit its mark. There was no way to know if he had disabled the turret, though, other than testing it himself.

This time he was ready. When the loud sound of compressed air was heard by the LAI, he was already out of the path of the bullet and immediately fired back and disabled the second turret. 

“Compressed air, and probably a heat seeking targeting mechanism. How the fuck does one make this stuff without real technology?” He muttered to himself, the annoyance he felt at having to deal with the threat already gone and replaced by a sense of admiration. And dread. This was not how it was supposed to go.

“Did you get the notification?” Eereen asked.

“What notification?”

“The bonus experience.” 

“No system, remember?” He said in a condescending voice. “So, what did you get?”

“Five times the experience for destroying a Metalmancer creation, it says.” 

“Huh.” Charles muttered, deep in though already.

This meant that the system was not only interested in the Metalmancer, but that it wanted to remove any traces of his creations from the world. It had an interest in methodically obliterating them, and since it used people to do its bidding it was encouraging them to fight via quests and experience bonuses. Probably even Charles, despite not having a class or a working system interface, received the bonus exp. 

“Are we safe now?” The elf asked.

“How would I know?” He replied, spreading his arms wide. 

He stopped this train of thoughts by concentrating on the mystery of the Metalmancer. He had to be an otherworlder, there was no other explanation. The things shooting at him were guns, and they were using compressed air or gas to fire bullets at high speed with unbelievable accuracy. A primitive person from this world would never be able to even think up such things, especially considering the fact that they used magic rather than technology.

Why bother with guns when you had fireballs or could shoot lightning from your fingertips?

He resumed walking with renewed purpose. There were no more bullets coming at him now, leading him to think that he had disabled all of the defenses that were behind the loopholes. He was sure that he’d find more inside, but at least now he knew what to look out for.

Stepping in, he was surrounded by darkness. There were no lights on the walls of the tower, and all he could see thanks to the light coming from outside was a complex assortment of pipes and brass tubes, with a giant cylinder at the center.

The two broken turrets were placed on the ceiling behind the loopholes, and were now only a mass of mangled and misshapen metal. Their design was interesting, with thick plating to protect them from incoming projectiles and long barrels powered by a set of pipes coming from the ceiling. The magazines were somewhere inside, and he could not see a reloading mechanism, but that was probably because of the damage he inflicted.

There were ramps on the side of the cylinder, next to the thick metal walls, and they went all the way around the central pipe and downwards. He could see them descending at least four meters into the ground. The tower was only the exterior of a much bigger complex, he realized, a complex built inside the very hill that was next to the tower.

He looked up for a moment, staring at the amazing view that was before him. Pipes that were more than a meter thick surrounded the central one like serpents, and smaller brass tubes wormed their way outwards and towards the walls. They got smaller and smaller until they divided into countless tiny tubes right after a valve. The end tubes then disappeared inside the walls in the same positions as the fins outside, before returning to view and coalescing into a big straight pipe going down into the floor.

This was not a simple tower at all. This was a cooling tower and a chimney, used to radiate and dissipate as much heat as possible into the atmosphere. And the heat was still coming from below, as he could feel that some of the pipes were very hot while others were cool and even had droplets of water forming on their surface.

The top of the tower was visible from where he stood, half hidden behind a web of pipes that looked thin and intersecting from this far down but he was sure were quite thick seen from up close. Behind the maze of brass and steel, there was a catwalk and a platform at the top, right where the steam came out of the central pipe. Like a lighthouse, there were transparent panels at the sides that allowed a 360-degree view of the surroundings.

It made sense that the people mistook this construction for a mage tower. They had no notion of technology and of the need to dissipate heat in the most efficient way possible, so that a gradient could be used to power machinery. This otherworlder, Charles thought with a chuckle, fooled them all.

“Alright, let’s head inside.” He said chipperly. His mood had improved vastly ever since seeing what laid here.

“What about the tower? Didn’t the wizard live at the top?” Eereen asked.

“Look, I know that you barbarians must think of this man as a wizard or grand mage or whatever, but trust me when I say that this is not magic in the slightest. This, my dear, is the beginning of a technological revolution. This is industry. This is a factory!”

She looked at him without saying anything, but then she smiled warmly. She clearly didn’t understand a word he said, but for some reason she looked quite happy now.

She stepped into the darkness and uttered some words. “[Aether Wisp]!” She said, and then a small ball of light blue, or rather cyan light appeared floating next to her head.

Charles looked at her, his face contorted in a mix of puzzlement and annoyance. “A skill, uh? But why did you say its name out loud? It’s not as cool as you may think to do that, you know?”

“I didn’t do it to look cool!” The elf immediately replied.

“Come on, don’t throw a tantrum now.”

“I’m not! Saying it improves efficiency and lowers the mana cost.”

“Ah! So, you copied the ancient, old-school, obscure, ineffable, unknowable, forbidden, dark, dangerous and actually original magic and stole its ways and chants? I see, I see. And the almighty system with its skills and classes lets you do that unpunished?”

She stuck out her tongue.

Charles copied, thanks to the LAI, the skill into a spell of his own and casted it without chanting or doing anything particularly flashy. He just told the LAI to do it and the AI complied. The spell cost him 47MU to produce a ball of light that emitted as much light as a small torch. He then redid the same process but also said the skill’s name out loud and tried to actively weave the mana.

He was surprised to see the cost go down to 43MU just like that. Doing it again brought it to 42.8, and then again it reached 42.5 before he decided to stop. He now had four balls of light he could somewhat mentally feel floating next to him, each a little bit brighter than the previous. The brightness was another aspect he tried to amp up with each subsequent casting, and it contributed to the mass of data about magic the LAI was digesting as they walked.

Eereen looked at him for a while, and he felt her gaze drill literal holes in the back of his skull but since she didn’t ask, he didn’t say anything.

The ramps led them down and into the ground, revealing a much bigger space. The party emerged from the right-hand ramp, and found themselves before a corridor that ran perpendicularly to the ramps. The first thing that Charles noticed was the floor. It was made entirely out of metal and was dark, spotless and extremely cold. There was no heat coming off of it, and it looked like one single enormous plate put there by forces unknown. Solid, unbreakable. 

There were two fortified rooms that looked upon the two ends of the corridor, with small slits and loopholes but otherwise completely closed off to the outside as far as they could see. One was right in front of where they were, at one end of the corridor right in front of the end of the ramp, while the other was in front of the leftmost ramp, with only a corridor leading into the darkness between the two guardrooms.

Charles sighed. Whatever was inside those two rooms was inactive, because he was sure that he would have been in quite the situation otherwise. This Metalmancer was not someone to take lightly, and that was perfectly fine by him.