The team following Kanae into Ha'Vavish consisted of Eliza, Alicia, and Petyr. Hilde and Claudia were charged with obtaining a black slime from Faebog, and Edina with collecting crystallized mana. Hopefully, the kleptomaniacal squirreling wouldn't sell them as soon as she got her hands on them.

They were about to head to Eliza's tower when Reen came running to stop them.

"Waaaait!" Reen screeched to a halt in front of Kanae and was out of breath.

"What's the matter Reen?" Kanae asked.

"I… whipped up a batch of experimental… biscuits… Would you like to try them before… leaving?" she panted.

"Why not?" Eliza smiled and accepted first. "A pleasant meal before plunging into what very well could be certain doom sounds good to me."

The other three shot the sorceress a dirty look, because anything could go wrong teleporting into a flooded underground city. They took Reen up on her offer anyway. Amethyst Hall's personal cook had them wait in the main chamber. She returned a few seconds later with a wooden platter of a dozen cookies that emitted a honey-sweet aroma. Red, tart jelly dabbed the center of each morsel.

Reen was even thoughtful enough to bring tea for them to wash it down. The cook who made them turned to Kanae with bated breath. Eliza didn't hesitate. She popped one into her mouth and sighed delightfully. Everyone else simultaneously gulped hard, and their mouths watered intensely.

Kanae helped herself before Eliza ate them all. The biscuit crumbled the moment it touched her tongue, spreading a nutty taste with a hint of brown sugar.

[You have temporarily gained Minor Magical Potency.

Minor Magical Potency: Non-offense spell effects have increased in magnitude irrelevant to your INT.]

"I just gained a passive skill?" Kanae gasped.

"Yes! That means it worked!" Reen jumped for joy.

"I'm impressed," Alicia said with a hand up to her lips and still chewing. "Unfortunately, it affects me little since I cast no spells."

The same must be true of Petyr, unless her Smites were considered spells? Probably not. That left Eliza.

When Kanae turned to the sorceress, she said, "Magical Potency is a passive skill native to crowned Sorcerers and Sorceresses. Still, that does not take away from Shireen's accomplishment. Well done, student."

Reen was all smiles and vowed to improve what she called 'Mana Foods'. She wished them luck on their expedition, and they set off to Eliza's tower without further delay.

"Just to brief everyone again," Kanae began as Eliza handed out potions of water breathing and teleportation pellets, "we'll be going to an ancient dwarven factory called Ha'Vavish. It's currently flooded. Other dangers include sex automatons that will try to molest you and possible cave-ins. Our goal is to find felmetal."

Petyr scoffed derisively. "Dwarves. Only they can come second to the succubi race in their perversion."

"I'm surprised you even know of dwarves, Petyr. Not a fan?" Eliza smirked.

"You think I'm some unlearned urchin? Save your taunts. When I was still carrying out the Empire of Ortesia's commands, we came to learn of an underground dwarven city in the western continent. They sent me to investigate," she explained.

Kanae and Eliza recoiled with surprise. That the dwarven civilization extended farther than the eastern continent was a testament to how widespread they used to be.

"Imagine the knowledge we can gain from exploring these ruins! I'm getting so excited just thinking of returning to Ha'Vavish." Eliza trembled with eagerness.

"It makes me wonder where else the dwarves reached. Did you find anything interesting down there?" Kanae asked.

"No. We excavated our way down to the city's structural foundations and dismantled them. It is now buried under rubble where it belongs," Petyr explained.

"I hate you Ortesians so so much…" the sorceress grumbled angrily.

Kanae, Petyr, and Alicia braced themselves around the Arcen room while Eliza channeled magic into the transportation mechanism. The entire tower rumbled violently, and for a second, they thought it was going to collapse.

A burst pipe and a few lurches later, everything became calm. The atmosphere turned humid as warm air rushed into the tower. Kanae was already beginning to sweat. They poked their heads out the nearest window and found the dwarven factory city, Ha'Vavish, only partially submerged.

The tower sat on a cliff, overlooking the city. Many residential blocks to the west were completely flooded. Still sex automatons floated listlessly in the water. The broken aqueduct only offered a trickle now. On the other side, the industrial stretch of the city was mostly intact. It wasn't as flooded due to being on a slightly higher elevation and the buildings having been built taller.

They drank their potions and pocketed the teleportation pellets, then flew out to Ha'Vavish. Several working sex automatons spotted them when they landed on the roof of a warehouse, but Petyr dismantled every single one with ease. She transformed Shifting Steel into a hammer to cave the head of one in, and punched through the chest of another. When the automatons slumped into the water, their golem forms diffused like wet mud.

"That one formed a penis right in front of me!" Petyr exclaimed.

"Yep, that's what they do. And no, Alicia. You can't drain them. I've tried," Kanae explained.

"Damn," Alicia muttered under her breath. "By the way, Claudia tells me this is where Labelle and Ambrosia encountered you. I commend you for defeating them. It isn't often Ambrosia meets defeat."

"I don't think it was a fair fight though. I had a lot of help. Have you ever beaten her in a fight?"

"I wouldn't have been in the sunken temple if I could," she countered.

Point taken.

"What are you three waiting for? Ancient and buried secrets await!" Eliza shouted from below.

The four of them skimmed the surface of the water on the way to the main factory, all the while keeping an eye out for any important-looking buildings. Eliza led the way on her flying broom when she stopped abruptly, and Kanae flew right into her back. Both of them plummeted into the water.

"Can you not stop all of a sudden?!" Kanae complained after resurfacing.

"Excuse me, Amethyst. There is open airspace all over, and you chose to fly right behind me. Anyway, look there. That looks to be a library of sorts!" Eliza directed their attention to a tall circular building in the distance, tapered with every increasing floor.

Even if it was a library, Eliza only had so many hands and there were so many books. It would take forever for her to go through enough of them to find anything worth keeping. Not to mention, they were supposed to be here for felmetal. She wanted to scour the library, and they wanted to search the factory.

Unable to reach a compromise, they agreed to split up and rendezvous back at the tower later. Kanae, with Petyr and Alicia, pressed on to the main factory. The jaws of the entrance weren't glowing orange and red like last time. Without water flowing into the proper channels, the factory couldn't function anymore. Peering through the cracked windows along the long corridor, it seemed production had long stopped. Unfinished automatons hung on hooks with missing parts. Manufacturing lines and conveyor belts weren't moving. The loud bangs and booms of machinery were replaced with swishing water.

At the end of the hall, they reached the great round chamber where Kanae had fought Ambrosia and Labelle. The place was in ruins after Arenade went berserk. Furniture was all smashed up. Sections of the walls had collapsed, giving way into the once-automated bowels of the factory. Glowing stone now lit up where forging flames once illuminated.

They crawled through one of the holes Arenade had likely made. Inside, inert conveyor belts and gangways criss-crossed above them. A service tunnel gave them access to travel deeper. Along the way, a great many doors leading into offices and bedrooms lined the corridor.

"Where are we even supposed to start?" Petyr asked. "Aren't these automatons made of some felmetal? Why can't we just take them instead?"

"Eliza says it has to be unprocessed ore. Something that likely came from Tortuga, the other dwarven city," Kanae explained.

"Why did we come here instead of to Tortuga then?" she groaned.

"We told you before that it's submerged in lava. We can't swim in lava…"

At the end of the corridor, a giant metal door cut their journey deeper into the factory short. This definitely looked important. It had a single keyhole, but they didn't have the key.

"Stand back, I'll pick the lock—"

"Get back, I'll destroy the door—"

Alicia and Petyr butted heads when they stepped forward.

"Elf, if you pummel this door and it doesn't open, you will jam the locking mechanism, keeping us from whatever lies ahead." Alicia glared.

"Not even adamantine can withstand my blows, Succubus. Waiting on you to tinker with unfamiliar locks is a waste of time. If you don't move, I'll just break you open along with the door," Petyr fired back.

"Ahh~ My dear sister Claudia would climax if you said that to her. You're such a tease," she cooed.

"I'M NOT FLIRTING WITH YOU, IDIOT!"

Both of them whirled around on Kanae for the final order. She figured that they at least had enough sense to leave the Knight-Commander with the decision…

However, before Kanae could give them instructions, a shrill siren howled across the factory and a red light flashed intermittently from the ceiling. Uncompleted automatons with missing limbs and heads shambled down the corridor like marching zombies.

"Shit. Alicia, get to work on opening the door! Petyr, help me hold them back!" Kanae ordered.

"Tch. Even though I could have opened the door already…" Petyr stomped away even though she wasn't told to. "STOP FLASHING YOUR GENITALS AT ME!"

The paladin bashed through scores of automatons, ripped their dicks off, and punched their tits in. That made Petyr the second raging high elf to go nuts in Ha'Vavish.

Kanae didn't even need to do a damn thing, and trying to help would only get herself caught in the mayhem. Petyr's blind fury did accidentally let a few slip by, so Kanae had to take care of them. A harsh crack with Lust knocked each one to the ground, and she stomped on their chests to break the crystals inside to end them.

"What's taking so long? I knew that succubus was going to take forever!" Petyr yelled.

"It's going to take longer if you keep hurrying me!" Alicia retorted.

"What will it take for you two to get along already?" Kanae sighed aloud.

"Nothing!" they answered at the same time.

Click!

The metal door grinded against the floor as it opened inwards.

"Inside, now!" Alicia shouted.

Petyr hammered both sides of the wall to collapse the corridor, then followed them in. They pushed the metal door shut and twisted a vault-like wheel to close it. The three found themselves inside a storage facility in which fewer automatons moved materials onto conveyor belts, going from one wall to the next. But since the factory wasn't operating anymore, the bots simply repeated their routines despite the belts not moving.

They might have just discovered where the felmetal were being held. Unlike the automatons outside, the ones in here ignored them as they rummaged through large metal crates. Iron, steel, copper, gold, bolts and metal rods…

"Is this it?" Alicia asked after cracking a box open from a high metal shelf.

It contained chunks of rock with dark red striations along the surface. Eliza had described felmetal exactly like that, stone with crimson lines. Compared to adamantine which was a super tough and dense metal, felmetal was supposed to have a 'high magical enchanting point' which made it suitable for powerful enchantments compared to the likes of lesser metal.

"I think it is. Hold on, let me bring it down." Kanae cast Magic Hand, but instead of regular hand-sized hands materializing, two hands the size of a human body appeared. "Damn. I wonder how much larger these hands could be with Major Magical Potency."

Good to know Reen's mana foods actually worked. If she could provide with bigger and better magical buffs, it would be a huge boon to the Amethyst Hall.

"I assume we're ready to leave?" Petyr asked.

"What's the matter, Petyr? You want our little field trip together over so soon?" Alicia grinned.

"Quit patronizing her! Petyr's right though. We should leave. Hopefully Eliza's done book shopping." Kanae drew a teleportation pellet, channeled a bit of magic, and tossed it to the ground.

A vacuum of air sucked them and the crate of felmetal in, and spat them out into a room stuffed to the ceiling with books.

"Where in the three hells did we end up?!" Alicia exclaimed.

"I-I think we're on the library floor of her tower?" Kanae wondered aloud.

"Oh, you three are back! Excuse the mess. I seemed to have brought back more than I expected to." Eliza's muffled laughter reached them from somewhere underneath the tomb of books.

After swimming out of the books, they eagerly returned to Aidenhall with a treasure trove of dwarven belongings. Edina had returned with a batch of crystallized mana, and Hilde and Claudia with the pristine core of a black slime. All that was left to do was let Elizabeth Bedlam work her talents in creating magical tools to forge the Debilitating Band.

Petyr and Alicia were still bickering on the way back to the Amethyst Hall. Kanae sighed at her own luck. It seemed like no matter what companions she ended up with, they were always going to be like oil and water. It was true of Edina and Arenade. It was also true of Minestra and Claudia. It was probably going to be true for Alicia and Petyr, too.

Once they returned to the order hall, however, Alicia went to her sisters' sides. Kanae and Edina were about to fly to Arenade's mansion to have dinner together. That would leave Petyr to her lonesome self. She paused in the main chamber as Petyr ascended the stairs to her room.

Right. Petyr Stormcloud had lost everything, but she didn't need to be alone.

"What're we waiting for, Kanae? I'm starving!" Edina complained.

"Hold on. Petyr!" Kanae called out to the high elf, who glanced back to meet her eyes.

"What is it now?" Petyr asked.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come with me and Edina? We're going to have a big dinner with Arenade. Apparently, she spared no expenses tonight because the wedding preparations are finally done," she explained.

"You expect me to dine with succubi? Psh. I'd rather swallow my own tongue."

Kanae shook her head. "Succubi also don't always feed through sex. We know how to enjoy a good meal, too. Besides, Arenade's a high elf. You two might find each other to be nice company."

Petyr stood there in silence. Edina was impatiently tugging on Kanae's arm, but she didn't want to budge until she heard an answer. Petyr could very well decline, but she wanted to at least try.

"I take that as a no?" Kanae asked.

"It's getting chilly." Petyr sighed and continued up. "I'm going to grab a jacket first."

"Why are you trying so hard with her anyway?" Edina braced both hands on her hips.

"I didn't give up on you when we first met, did I?" she teased.

"Goody two-shoes." The squirreling rolled her eyes and relented.