Clink. Clank. Clink.
The sound of metal on metal rang out as Deus slowly climbed down the elevator shaft to the lower floors using the Labour Drones' body, fortunately he'd designed them to have four durable arms that could be combined into two and separated at will. Operating the arms did increase the energy cost of keeping the body operating but by it would only become a concern if he used it for longer than necessary.
He couldn't even see the bottom as he continued to pass floors, it was more likely that the higher floors would have been fully ransacked simply for convenience, if he wanted to find anything truly worthwhile he had to descend much further into Mammon.
Before entering the shaft he'd gotten Mammon to charge the body enough for a two hour trip, the moment he left the area of the energy grid of the upper floors was the moment his timer had begun. If he wasn't back up in two hours then this part of his consciousness would be lost, if it wasn't that he couldn't trust a Labour Drone with such an important task due to how rigid their AI was he wouldn't have risked going himself.
It was a fortunate that mechanical bodies didn't feel exhaustion or else he had no doubt that he would've already fell to his death, 'See, who needs to be human.' He thought to himself as he carefully lowered him down another floor, it'd been exactly seven minutes and he'd descended to the ninth floor - another thirteen passed and he'd finally reached the twentieth floor without much difficulty.
'This should be far enough for.. something?' He wasn't exactly sure what, if anything, he'd find. With all four of his hands he pulled open the elevator shaft doors and squeezed through the gap he made in it.
Bang!
The doors shut soundly again behind him, 'A Research Lab.' The twentieth floor had been where he'd developed his first Advanced Artificial Intelligence, it was the place he'd become a creator himself and it was also one of the floors he was most familiar with - he'd often split part of his mind off to come down here in the body of a Research Drone, it would spend weeks if not years at a time holed up without rest as all of its processors were used to the maximum to achieve breakthrough after breakthrough.
He walked around the familiar lab, looking over the empty spaces where the sample computers and AI of other civilisations had been placed for his research, before his death he'd been studying how the same type of AI would develop under two different cultures. Unfortunately, all of his research had been taken and either destroyed or his Creator had claimed it as his own to boost his own renown across the universe.
'The only place I could escape from being monitored and yet even this has been cleared out.' He shook his head as he walked through the lab. He checked out each and every cabinet, sometimes having to simply rip them open because they were automatic rather than manual - fortunately he hadn't bothered to reinforce the room or else it'd take much longer for him to search and he'd burn through power at a much faster rate.
[86:53]
The clock was slowly ticking down and he hadn't found anything useful to take back with him, it didn't help that more strenuous actions took up more energy so the 'two-hour estimate' was in reality less than that depending on what he did while he was down here.
He quickly searched through the rest of the containers and cupboards, most were empty and even those that weren't only held a few scraps of paper that most likely belonged to some research log of his - he enjoyed keeping both physical logs of his research alongside data, if anything it could be said to be a weird preference for himself as an AI.
'That is?' He noticed a small cylindrical tube peeking out from behind one of the containers, pushing it to the side he reached down to pick it up off of the ground, brushing the dust and cobwebs off of it while doing so, as it came closer to his auditory sensors he picked up a low but familiar hum from it.
He brushed off the remaining dust to reveal a faded label on it, 'Energy Cell' if it was possible for him to grin in this body he would've been beaming as he saw the words written on it. While a single Energy Cell would barely make a dent in the overall supply of Mammon it was enough to give him hope that some things had been missed; it's not like it's useless either, it would give him a few more hours to explore the lower levels without having to go back up.
He didn't waste a second as he opened up the circuitry and placed the Energy Cell into the Drones power base, a few moments later he felt a burst of energy surge through the Drones body as the remaining activity time went up drastically.
[08:50:00]
Almost nine hours, plenty of time for him to gather what he could and haul it back to the throne room - Deus took one last look at the Research Lab before he forced open the elevator shaft doors again and began his descent further down into Mammon, he couldn't help but look forward to the day he could return and continue his research in peace, but such a peaceful life would have to wait...
Good