Two goals that Amelia and Hummer lived for at the moment:

One, wreck everything. Destroy the facility so thoroughly that when the fire spread it did not even have anything left to consume.

Two, make good time. Do not stop for anything, not until reaching the meeting with that accountant Castien Brielwa. This was perhaps the only chance they would ever get for surprise. They had to take it. If this man was captured, the true link between Fourland and North Sunwell would be revealed. Vulnerabilities in the system would show themselves. And a path to Ed would appear.

With a newfound burst of power, Amelia kept both goals in mind as she tore through everything in sight. No maze-like facility to confuse her path. No mana dampeners keeping her down. No mana deficiencies to keep her body hurting—not until tomorrow morning, at least. She was in the perfect position to destroy as much as possible, and she would take advantage of it as much as possible. [Throwing Hands] and [Mana Burst] launched with wild abandon.

This facility was extremely automated. Not a glossal in sight, saving tremendous money on costs. But, as Fourland would soon learn, automation would also be their downfall.

The fire from the greenhouse had spread all throughout the east wing of the facility. They were probably minutes away from a large explosion from some mana reserve or blastpowder cache that would ignite the whole place and take it to the ground. But, more importantly, an explosion that big would probably end that meeting that Castien Brielwa was currently in. So she needed to reach that spot long before that happened.

Hummer followed close behind, but she had been unable to do much so far. She had two flintlocks holstered, and her sword out, ready to slash at any foe they came across. But with Amelia in front of her, she never even had the chance.

“I feel like I’m a third wheel,” she said as they ran. “Even though there’s only two wheels.”

They came across an open area, with a window showing the dark seas of the outside, and with very slightly higher ceilings than usual. Here to greet them was a group of golems, five of them standing perfectly aligned, blocking the only path forward. Shell models, as all down here were, and made of simple clay.

They raised their palms up and began to shoot rock fragments at the two women. It was not an attack these facility golems used lightly, likely because of the damage it caused the environment around them. But here, they sent those fragments by the dozens.

Amelia blocked some of them by putting her arm out in front of her, but she was still pelted with rocks against her flesh. A few cuts and bruises just from that. But nothing worth stoppping over. That is, until the next round started one second later.

Then Hummer stepped out in front of Amelia and activated a magical spell—a large translucent white shield came up in front of her, blocking all of the ranged attacks for both women. When the golems stopped to let themselves recollect their energy for another blast, Hummer pushed the shield forward. It moved away from her and then rammed into the three golems in the middle of the group, knocking them down. She ran up to them and hacked away at their bodies with her sword until she was sure they would no longer get back up. The remaining two fell with a couple well-timed [Throwing Hands] launches from Amelia.

When they finished, the two women looked at each other and nodded. Hummer raised her hand in the air for a high-five. Amelia kept on running.

“Wait up!” Hummer yelled, grumbling at Amelia’s rude move.

“There’s a shortcut up ahead,” Amelia said. “We’ll reach the west wing in a couple minutes.”

She kicked down the next door and they entered a synth processing room. The entire room was automated by factory machines, but at the moment they were all deactivated, thanks to Amelia’s control of the facility.

“Oh, is this where they make the synth?” Hummer asked needlessly.

The factory machines were laid out in an assembly line structure, taking the harvested crystal ferns from the greenhouse, and then separating the mana-rich segments from the pure organic segments. The latter was sent to a composting area elsewhere in the facility, and the former went further along the process. They were crushed into mush, then dried of any remaining moisture. Then a new element was added in—soul energy, directly imbued into the fibers of some cotton-like substance that was mixed with the crystal fern flakes. These fibers were using harvested souls for their energy, likely many of them glossal, brought in from some other part of the facility. Every single batch of synth likely contained some amount of energy from a once-living, speaking being. The mixture was thrown into a large device that spun at high frequencies until it was all tangled up into puff-like balls, and then given to another device that ground up the puffs until they were mere powder. Then, and only then, would the substance finally be called synth.

None of it worked right now, but Amelia saw it with the eyes the data server golem had given her. A perfect machine amorally creating what it was designed to create, giving no credence to the danger and harm it posed because they were simply devices to be controlled. Ethics could not apply to something that worked purely in binary yeses and nos. Like golems, these machines were innocent by themselves. But in operation, it was a factory of death.

“All this will fall to ruin,” Amelia said, activating [Mana Burst] and sparking the machines until most of them had burst into flames.

Then, when she was sure the machines in this room could not be salvageable, she and Hummer left out the other side.

The hallways grew longer, wider, and taller. The cramped maze of the east wing was disappearing as they made their way further west, away from the more factory-focused section of the facility and towards the more office-oriented spaces. They passed a large cart filled with soul gems. A hundred or more, surely, and most of them were filled and glowing. The cart had been pushed around by a golem, but that golem was now lying in pieces from the moment Amelia saw its shell.

She went by the cart, not stopping to observe it closely, but made sure to pocket two handfuls of gems and put them in her pockets. If she absorbed all of those today, she would feel absolutely wretched for the next week or two, but it would give her more and more opportunities for upgrades and new power in the future.

The rest, though, she shot with a [Mana Burst] and watched catch fire. Soul gems were mildly flammable, so when grouped all in one cart like that, they were much like a powder keg.

As she and Hummer left the cart behind, it exploded and shook the hallway. It was not large, but it foretold the larger shockwaves to come. Amelia was both anxious and extremely excited for it to come.

The end of all synth production was coming.

The next door they entered took them outside, on a path with only one narrow walkway and two railings on both sides.

Now, for the first time, they saw their first real view of Floor 5.

Dark, unlit caves, much like Floor 3, but with pools of flowing water underneath them. The entire facility was built, raised up far above ground level, so the sea below was a considerable drop away. There were beaches in the distances, the only light to reveal them coming from small, luminescent fish that floated around looking for food.

Hummer stopped moving and took it in for a moment. Basking in the warm breeze and the sheer quietness of it all. Amelia had not stopped to truly consider the toll this adventure must have been taking on the woman. It was her first time truly partaking in the violence and chaos of fighting, and she had no ability to, say, dampen her audio levels to ignore sirens or rifle shots. She looked tremendously tired, despite the content smile on her face.

“I’ve always wanted to be here,” Hummer said. “Just exist in the moment, right in the middle of an exciting frenzy. Not a war, but just... something crazy. Like this.”

“Why?”

“It makes me feel less like a noble, like someone important. I feel more like, I don’t know, just someone trying to survive the day.”

“You’ll do a lot more than surprise.”

“I sure hope so. At this point, I’m not giving up until I see Floor 8!” she exclaimed with excitement, though it faded quickly. Then she looked over the railing and down to the water below. She pointed off to the side. “Look at that. There’s a huge waterfall.”

Indeed, there was.

A vast cliff, off of which water raged down, past Floor 5 and down, down, down. Amelia stepped a little bit closer to the railing and looked down at the massive ravine. It must have gone all the way down to Floor 7, by the looks of it.

It was the kind of abyss one would see staring back at them. Instead of pitch-black despair, though, at the very bottom, there was a soft pink glow. What the hell was down there?

“Let’s not fall down that waterfall,” Hummer said, dishing out more useless advice.

They continued through this walkway, venturing over to the western side of the facility. But before they entered through the next door, Hummer spotted something and stopped. Amelia looked, too.

Out in the waters, a tentacle popped up ever so briefly. Then another. Swimming by, circling below the walkaway as if either of them might fall into its mouth at any moment.

“A daika,” Hummer said in whisper. “A legendary beast.”

“It looks like an octopus.”

“An octopus, but with tentacles the length of buildings, they say.”

“Yeah, okay,” Amelia said incredulously.

They would do well to avoid it completely, she was sure. But the length of buildings was likely a massive exaggeration.

Finally, they entered the west wing of the Fourland synth facility. Their journey was about to reach its apex, because the conference room was just three doors down.

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