26: Many Kilometers Under the Sea(level)

[Year 21 Month 3: 1 Month has passed]

[Blessed: 5539 + 53 – 18]

[You have leveled up]

[You have gained 1 level]

[You are level 53]

I spoke for several hours with Salfi a few days after she awoke. I would have sooner, but I suspected from how she was attached to Penelope’s hip that the elf needed a bit of recovery time. I doubt it was easy to survive out in the Wildlands for as long as she did.

As such, I decided that she would talk to me when she wanted to, and I wouldn’t ask too many questions until Salfi felt like she wanted to open up a bit.

In the meantime, there had been a few developments underground and above ground. Recently, we began to receive a higher influx of travelers and adventurers once more. When questioned, they brought news of the new generation of Chosen finally appearing.

The new soldiers conscripted by Trendal’s two gods had begun to clear out the massive hordes of Vexus that had been patrolling the vast grasslands and forests that made up most of the terrain between Runehold and the rest of the world. These packs had thousands of basic, lower-level stalkerhounds with a hundred or so of their evolved brethren, and while their numbers made it hard to fight back, it was a great level farm for the Chosen.

It was rather amusing, actually, to see the flood of people back into Runehold and the information that came with it. It seemed that Runehold had been pretty much abandoned by the crown, and the fact that it was still standing and seemingly unbothered by the world threat that was the Vexus, it made many look toward it with hope.

Frankly, this hope was invalid and definitely flawed. Although the attacks over here were tame, I knew that there was still the ‘super duper leader vexus mini-boss’ (name under debate) roaming around somewhere, and while Codex and I had only seen the spike of corrupted mana that heralded its arrival, we never actually saw it other than that one day.

I blamed it on the anti-detection wards that had more mana powering them than they ever had before, especially with the [auroric channels] that gathered a tremendous amount of magical fuel. My assistants, on the other hand, had differing theories.

Metis believed it simply ran out of fodder to throw at the walls and was afraid to risk itself, especially after it had been manipulated by our powerful stealth veils.

Athena added onto Metis’s thoughts, speaking of the possibility of it sensing my new evolution. After all, if we could detect its presence, then why could it not detect ours? It had made direct ‘eye’ contact with my main body (whatever that would be, considering I am a really large rock), so it was certainly a possibility that it simply decided that I wasn’t worth the risk anymore.

Codex sort of just threw its hands up, partially disagreeing with all of the other possibilities but not actually coming up with anything itself, stating, “There are too many variables to consider; it is likely some combination of all of these.”

Anyways, I hadn’t been focused as much on this as I probably should have been; instead, I had been focused on the underground ruins as much as possible, but even down there, I had run into a few snags.

For one, the chamber that we had discovered had ‘ended,’ and by ended I mostly mean I was struggling to make any progress with getting anywhere else. I had already confirmed the ruins to be absurdly gigantic, far beyond anything that I had seen in this world or Earth, but each area was sectioned off, with highly secure tunnels and vault-like doors blocking the other regions.

For a moment, I thought I had gamed the system when I created a small golem and pushed it through the air vents that the ambient mana used as pathways, but some weird spell severed any connection between the little scout and me.

With the easy way out of the window, Codex and I had turned to drilling. While the doors themselves were made out of a seemingly indestructible material, the walls themselves were made out of an ever-so-slightly less indestructible material, letting us slowly chip away at the intricate stonework that covered the walls like a giant mural.

Taking a few days to properly set up a ‘drilling’ site, I turned my eye to one of the crucibles that dominated the room.

There were three of them, with all of them looking to be exact copies of one another. From what I could tell, they had enough space to melt down several tons of minerals at once. If I could get them operable, the crucibles would be able to make several metal golems per load. Basically, my juggernaughts could be produced at many times the original speed. Despite them not being the highest level constructs I could make, they were certainly the ‘strongest’ with plenty of mass to back up their punches.

Stolen novel; please report.

It’s already crossed my mind that I could just… light up a fire beneath it and just use them as a basic container, but it was clear that there was much more to these crucibles than what they seemed. In this case, the runes that had been linked and combined across them were the tricky part.