Well. This is definitely a time where escaping to Zangdar seems like a decent idea.

The ring activated, and nothing happened. Sofia was desperately stuck where she was. She sighed and stored the bone plate with Zangdar’s teleportation ritual circle.

I’m sure the [Ringed arms of Zar] ring could break through the shields… IF IT WASN’T ALREADY FULL FROM THE FIGHT AGAINST CARDINAL!

Well, Pareth, Bookie, seems like we can only either stay right here and not move, hoping that someone comes to save us…

OR I go back to the robbing plan.

I still have a rune up and plenty of mana, so…

Come hide inside, Pareth, no need to take any risks.

Sofia took a step up in the air and started walking forward.

Nothing.

Alright, very good start. If the floor is suspicious, just don’t walk on the floor. I could fly too but that won’t cut it if any room is tighter than this corridor.

I still have Astelia’s earrings so I should be able to see right through illusions and things like that. There’s nothing hidden in the walls, as far as I can tell. It’s really just all these ritual circles everywhere that freak me out.

She kept cautiously walking toward a random end of the corridor.

Maybe there’s no trap at all. If I assume this is a level 500’s home, then all they probably need is some shield hiding them from the outside, no need for puny traps when they likely can kill anyone under level 500 with a snap of their fingers, right?

Sofia stopped in her tracks.

Wait. What if the sword wasn’t the real guy hiding in an artifact but just a distant proxy?

Well if I’m in a level 500’s house and they’re there too and want me dead, then I’m just dead, so no need to think about it… The fact that I’m still alive is enough to tell that this probably isn’t the case.

Should I summon Crowie to at least have an advance scout? Maybe not… Let’s not forget that the rune does a decent job in hiding my presence, with cutting the mana emissions and all, let’s not compromise that by having a glowing skeleton fly around.

Slowly, she made her way to the room at the end of the corridor,

This room featured a walkway going around a large central pool embedded several meters deeper, in which streams of luminous blue water flowed down from the ceiling. Looking down into the luminous pool, Sofia could see long dark forms swimming around, appearing and disappearing as they swam up and down.

No railings… I don’t want to fall in there. I need to get a sample of the water if I want an identification, right?

Sofia made a bucket out of bone and stepped into the air above the pool. [March of the Envoy] better not randomly stop working right now. Walking up to one of the falling streams of water, she made a long bone stick to handle the bucket from a distance, just in case, and used it to grab some of the water. The bone bucket froze over and was quickly covered in a layer of frost in contact with the water.

Strange. Verdict?

[Water of the Underworld current]: The underworld current is a closed loop of water currents in the deep layers of the planet. This water retains the main attribute of the Underworld current: an eternally freezing temperature.

… I’ll take a few more buckets.

After filling two bone-barrels in her storage item with the strange water, Sofia walked to the set of doors on the other side of the pool room. Sofia could tell with her mana senses that water from the pool was being sent to that room through underground channels.

Opening the doors, Sofia almost instantly passed out from the heat emanating from inside. She immediately took a few steps back.

Not only was the heat hard to even comprehend, there were creatures in there, as well as the rhythmic cacophony of metal hitting metal.

Golems?

The heat deformed the air, making it hard to even see what was happening in detail, but from what Sofia could perceive, this was some kind of enormous forge. Glowing-hot giant kilns were heating piles of something, while golems transferred carts of stuff to and fro. Giant columns of metal struck equally monstrous anvils in deafening crashes. What exactly was being made, and with what materials, Sofia couldn’t tell.

I can’t go in there. I will melt. Even the golems look like they’re melting!

Sofia observed the madness going on within the giant forge from the outside for a good thirty seconds, and the longer she looked, the more distance she had to take from the entrance.

Fucking… It’s actually getting hotter!

The air inside the forge was getting so hot and the heated metal so bright that it was almost impossible to see inside. The rhythmic sound of the giant hammers stopped, and a blaring alarm rang.

Shit, did they see me?

With nowhere to really hide, Sofia just jumped into a corner of the pool room until the alarm stopped, followed by the sound of water evaporating. The air was rapidly getting colder.

Oh!

Going back to the doors, Sofia could see the entire forge being doused with the Underworld water to cool it down, creating huge clouds of steam that were being sucked into vents in the ceiling. The golems were nowhere to be seen.

This is my chance!

Deploying her wings, Sofia flew inside the forge the second it was no longer getting sprayed with the glacial water. On her way, she touched and stored a few random piles of metal and stuff without really knowing what it was, only that she might luck out and steal something valuable, but she had to quickly leave, as the golems were coming out of holes in the walls, and the forge was very quickly heating back up to unbearable levels of heat all by itself. She located an exit on the other side and once she was in, she closed the big stone double doors behind her.

I don’t think the golems were chasing me. Damn though, how is this place heating up so fast? This was so much worse than the solar temple it’s crazy.

The place Sofia had ended up in was a smaller corridor with only one other exit, leaving little choice as to her next destination.

Let’s have a quick look… This looks like a big cube of meteoric iron, these ingots I grabbed are just Orichalcum… And this weird thing…

Sofia had to take out the huge chunk of weird-looking half-molten metal she had pilfered from the kiln of the largest central forge to identify it.

[Adamian slag]: Slag produced as the valuable byproduct from the destructive refining of several precious metals together, can be refined into one ingot of 99% Pure Adamian steel.

One ingot? From this whole thing? It’s almost bigger than me!

Alright whatever. I’m not going back there right now. I need to find a way out before the owner of the place comes back, if he does.

I don’t have infinite storage space anyway so I need to hold back a bit.

Going up to the next set of doors, Sofia could already feel that there were more golems moving around in the next room. Without the disturbance from the violent heat, she could tell these golems all contained within their cores at least twenty times the amount of mana she herself had.

These golems have to all be over level 300 at least…

Slowly opening the doors a little bit to peek inside, Sofia could see the golems neatly lined up around the four walls of the rectangular room, each occupied doing something on their personal workstation. Every so often, the stuff in front of the golems would slide toward the next golem on their right, and the golems would all start working on the new thing they received from their left.

They’re… Assembling more golems?

This has slightly worrying implications…

Now, should I turn back, or do I try to reach the door on the other side? If a single one of these golems attack me, I’m dead meat, but they don’t seem to be paying any attention to anything other than their work, so maybe they’re not programmed to deal with intruders at all…

Only one way to know.

Sofia had Bookie appear in her hands, and she threw the book through the slit in the door. The book of skeletons flew halfway through the room and landed on the tiled floor with a thud, which was barely audible due to the noise the golems' works made. The golems did not stop their work nor paid any mind to the book in any way.

Might be safe, then, you can come back, Bookie.

The book disappeared from the floor in a puff of mana mist, now ready to be summoned again.

Sofia opened the doors just enough to fit through, using her ability to walk on air, she silently walked up to the ceiling while still in the doorway, hoping that the golems would spot her and crossed the room while crouching right under the ceiling. Better safe than sorry.

She made it to the other side and let herself fall in front of the other doors.

Another corridor. But with choice this time. Left or right…

It’s occurring to me now that I might have chosen the wrong side on my very first move. It seems like I’m getting deeper into the facility now, not closer to the exit… Maybe I can afford a quick look into these two last rooms before turning back. I haven’t crossed the golem room for nothing.

Sofia turned right for no reason in particular, and when faced with another set of doors, she once again focused on expanding her mana senses; only for them to return nothing.

The corridor she was in was still full of mana and covered in almost invisible enchantments, and there was still a big shield right outside the walls which would no doubt prevent her from leaving by imitating a mole, but beyond the doors, nothing. Or rather, the shield seemed to turn into a flat wall, as if the doors would open to reveal she was in the middle of a cliff. She could feel there were things actually stacked in the room but they had no mana so she could only tell they were there because of the marginally lower density of mana indicating solid matter.

She opened the doors.

Hoooooooooooooly fuck.

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