34: Plasma Torch

[Blessed: 6887 + 54 – 4]

I woke up early, my sleep interrupted by Codex.

“There has been a disturbance in the ruin., I have woken you as per your request.”

Instantly, I shook off my drowsiness. Truthfully, the dwarf ruins had been a constant enigmatic presence and subject to my curiosity for several reasons. One of which was the runes I could learn from their machines, and totally not for any personal reason…

Dwarves have always been my favorite fantasy race. Good to finally explore more.

Checking what Codex defined as a ‘disturbance,’ I was a bit surprised to find that the mining golems had successfully broken through the walls, leaving a large hole leading into a dark room. I knew it was going to be soon, but I had been busy dealing with fallout, so it had been deprioritized.

“Codex? How long ago did the golems make it through?”

“Four hours ago.” He responded, “They broke into what appears to be a small maintenance room. Opening the door led to swift annihilation, although we did see a hallway before the golem was destroyed.”

“Ah, similar to the previous defensive turrets?” I asked.

“Yes. I would like to preserve these if possible. As such, I didn’t risk overloading them before waking you; we can proceed now.”

Having expected to run into way more security systems than we had experienced, Codex and I had been working on a few ideas on how to prevent their detection.

Only barely managing to fit through the hole connecting us to the maintenance room, a large sapphire colored golem rolled through. This one looked similar to one of NASA’s rovers, and had internally had a steel frame, the exterior was covered in plated deep cobalt, which we had collected more of since the pressured mana experiment several years ago.

I had hoped that the mana insulation properties would sort of ‘cloak’ the golem, but pretty much the second its wheels touched the dusty floor of the hallway, a wall of spikes shot into it, piercing all the way through and disrupting the internal mana flow.

Damn. It’s like a dart trap. I was more surprised by how the projectiles went straight through the metal, but it was mostly intact, other than some large holes, and we could reuse the valuable metal at a later date.

Alright, try two.

The other solution we had devised was a swarm of very small golems, pretty much dust mites that could be moved with a solid breeze of air. I had hoped to create something like nanobots, and sure, they could, in theory, and they didn’t cost much mana to maintain, needing only a fraction of a percent. Yet, each one counted as a separate construct and required a great deal of processing power to coordinate.

In short, they were entirely useless in scale, but would maybe work in this situation.

The mana emitted was minimal and would be quite close to that of the ambient levels. From the way the mana-insulated cart was still targeted, the defensive system looked for any fluctuation, whether that was a lack of or an increase of.

Removing the lid from a metal box, Athena and I both worked together to direct the swarm of tiny golems through the doorway, taking advantage of her new [Golem Commander] skill. For a moment, I held my breath as they crossed over the boundary. One way or another, the darts probably couldn’t get them all, but the more often the traps fired, the higher the likelihood they would break, after all, these were neglected for what had been thousands of years, if not longer.

Fortunately, no such thing happened, and the swarm safely floated down the hallway, allowing me to see the rows of doors all leading into the unknown.

Jackpot!

Unlike the room I had first discovered, this had a lot more possibilities, even if the only decorations were the symbols above each door.

Separating the little golems, we continued to search down the hallway, looking for an easy path of exploration.

For a brief moment during the search, my portion of the swarm slipped from my control, a result of my attention splitting too much. Just as I was about to reassert my will, I watched something curious occur.

A few began to drift toward a nearby door. I grew a bit confused, but after a few minutes, I noticed a slight difference in the ambient mana; something was drawing some of the magic energy through the door, creating a slight current that the floating golems had drifted on.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author’s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

As far as I can tell, there’s nothing special about this door… even the symbol above it had been repeated. We should see if we can crack this room open.

Before I could do anything else, though, I would have to disrupt the trap that so rudely destroyed my golems.

With me able to now access the room, it was pathetically easy. A good rule of thumb is that if I could ‘enter’ a location, I possessed a great deal of power in it. Sure, the further I expanded from my main body, the higher the mana upkeep was, but with my massive auroric channels drawing power from the Wildlands, I could afford it.