As I pushed deeper into the floor I discovered parts of it were covered with water in large puddles that were found alongside pipes sticking outside of the nearby walls. ‘This must be another of the experimental rooms that the dwarves worked on while living here. Since they have pipes supplying water to this place I assume they are doing something that either requires a lot of water or somehow keeps the situation safer than if they didn’t.’
Soon I found the first set of doors on this floor, specifically doors in what looked to be a security checkpoint. There was a wall made up of metal bars which would allow for one to look through to the other side, and in the middle was a heavy stone door that was locked with a large stone key. I knew it was a large stone key because I found the key on a nearby skeleton of a dwarf that was still wearing its equipment from several thousand years ago.
Inserting the key and turning it allowed the door to open with a loud creak, the stone hinges sounded very old and very fragile. ‘I might have been able to just knock the door down without even unlocking it. I just hope they weren’t keeping anything alive in here that could chase me back out, I might have to close the door and it might not hold.’
Past this door the smoke-like substance in the air was becoming thicker and thicker making it impossible for me to avoid it. Just in case there was something I unsheathed my sword and kept it ahead of myself as I continued forward.
Continuing down the hall and around a corner I found a second door that was thankfully unlocked and had tremendous amounts of the substance coming out through the edges of the door and the frame. Opening it up the substance practically barreled out of the room and into my face leaving it feeling both hot and wet. I waited a moment for it to pass out into the room I was currently in and make this room clearer. When I was certain there wasn’t anything moving and the substance wasn’t dissipating in any significant amount I entered.
Inside I could see a few silhouettes of what looked to be various objects such as tables and a few chairs. There were a few stone bound books on these tables as well but the paper was long unusable and what was left was soaked through.
But there were also a few other notable objects within this room, one that stood out from the rest was a large metal object that was made up of several contraptions including gears. Going down on one knee to take a better look I found that it was an incredible contraption that I unfortunately couldn’t find the use of. I also found it was the source of the wet smoke-like substance in the air as well as why the floor was covered with water. It was attached to a pipe sticking out from the wall and both the contraption and the pipe were leaking water. The contraption was also doing something with the water inside of it as it was the source of what turned out to be steam in the air.
‘This contraption must be heating the water up within itself and expelling the steam, but it isn’t doing anything that might indicate that it is creating any kind of heat. It is very hot though, so something inside of it must be creating heat and thus creating steam.’
Taking a quick look through the contraption I found a small tube that led inside of it on the opposite side, slowly removing the tube I was able to look inside and see that there was a small container made of metal that had the water, unfortunately there was too much water being pumped inside of it and it was overflowing over the sides. The most interesting part of this discovery however was a small red stone that looked like some sort of volcanic rock that had once been lava and since cooled down. Out of curiosity I reached towards it and without even touching it discovered just how hot the rock was, my hands started to burn just within a few inches of it so I retracted my hand and left it alone for the time being.
‘This place should have a control room of some kind to shut off the water, that way I can get rid of the steam and actually look around the room properly.’ With that I stood up and started looking along the walls up close for any doors or rooms that I might not have seen when I first entered, eventually after basically rubbing my face against the walls I found a few rooms off to the sides. Most were not what I was looking for but eventually I found the control room which was full of levers and switches labelled in the dwarven language.
Unfortunately I couldn’t read any of the labels, but most of the levers were in the downward position which I assumed was the off position. Walking up to the closest lever that was pointed upwards I grabbed it firmly and pulled downward, the lever was hard to pull likely due to the internal mechanisms being very old but eventually I managed to pull it all the way and it clicked into place. Taking a moment to rest my arms I listened for anything that might indicate something had changed or moved, but I heard nothing.
Stepping outside into the room with the strange contraption and found that the steam in the air was slowly yet steadily dissipating and clearing up, it wasn’t very significant yet but it was noticeable especially when you were standing right next to the source of it.
After waiting for around a half hour a majority of the steam in the air had dissipated leaving it clear, however the floors and walls were still covered with water. I was also able to see the damage the water had done to the stone itself, it had started to erode and smooth out in several places in the past era, which came out to a few thousand years ago.
Now with the steam out of the way I was able to take a better look at the contraption and try and determine its use. Upon my inspection that took around a half hour I noted that the contraption was designed to boil the water that was being fed into it for some reason, though I couldn't understand why. It certainly wasn’t to use as the water was impossible to retrieve without removing several external components, and the hot lava stone as I came to call it was very dangerous to be near as its temperature began to rise when I stopped the water.
Stolen story; please report.
‘What on the earth were the dwarves trying to do with you?’ I asked myself as I continued poking and looking through the contraption. ‘From what I can tell all you do is boil water, but you also have all these gears and moving parts inside as well, and I don’t exactly see how those are supposed to help with boiling water when you have the lava stone.’
I was puzzled by this contraption and was unable to find its purpose, but as I was about to leave I noticed that the temperature of the lava stone was still increasing and the inside of the contraption was becoming dangerously hot to interact with, so I returned to the control room and reactivated the water flow to keep the lava stone from getting too hot.
As I stepped back out I could already hear the water starting to boil inside of the contraption and pressing my hand on the outside of the contraption showed that its temperature was declining with the constant supply of water. Soon after I left and took a look around the rest of the nearby rooms and unfortunately found nothing of value or interest.
Returning the way I came I found that the hallway wasn’t quite as long as I thought it was being only around one hundred meters in length, it was just the steam in the air that confused and made everything feel a lot longer as I took my time to avoid slamming into a wall head first and hurting myself. When I arrived at the locked door I chose to lock it behind myself as the contraption was rather dangerous and I would prefer that it stays there until someone who actually knows what it is or how to dispose of the lava stone arrives.
Since this floor didn’t really have anything of value and I was only here for a few hours I decided to go down to the nineteenth floor and see if there was anything there. Looking both up and down before I started walking down the stairs I listened for any sign of movement, after a minute of this I was certain that there wasn’t anyone or anything nearby and started walking down to the nineteenth floor.
The first thing I noticed on the nineteenth floor was just how open and large the place was. It looked like some sort of open area that everyone would walk through, almost like a courtyard but with various buildings across the sides that looked like they were at one point stores or other important buildings. With a quick look it appeared that the entire floor was like this roughly half the size of one of the districts in Antium. Several of the buildings I passed by even had glass windows, most however were smashed or broken in some way and the few that remained felt very wobbly and fragile as if they could break at any moment.
I could almost feel the age and history of this place as I walked through, it reminded me of the dwarven settlements under Antium through the hidden entrance in the basement of Velerin’s temple, only much more advanced and far wealthier. ‘This must have been where most of the dwarves that lived within the city lived and worked. Several of these places look like stores and shops, and some of those off in the distance look like attached homes with those balconies along the sides.’ Off in the distance I could see a wide variety of buildings that stretched up and connected to the ceiling of the floor which was around five or so stories up depending on the building.
It was a beautiful sight to see that was only made possible by the various glowing blue crystals that acted like street lanterns attached to metal poles and the side of the occasional building. I was also able to see that several parts of this ‘town’ were dark and had no functioning blue crystals, this was both worrying and confusing as from what I understood they weren't exactly something that would run out of light or broke easily, the mages guild uses something very similar and those use the ambient mana within their surroundings to power themselves.
Taking several more steps forward I kept my longsword in hand as I watched my surroundings weary for anything that might be hostile which would be a goblins as unlike the cavern several floors below this place was entirely carved out by stone and didn’t have any plant life that could support animals or other creatures.
Passing through the initial archway I found myself in a more traditional area that I would expect from these dwarves that consisted of old abandoned homes and the occasional storefront. Taking my time to take a quick look through them all I found basic and old furniture in the homes that was almost entirely made up of stone, the stores on the other hand had a bit more variety with actual shelves that still contained some things of value such as metal utensils for eating. But just about anything else that one might find in a store that wasn’t a luxury was gone as if the store had been looted by someone.
Further exploration of this town resulted in the first goblin of this floor being discovered, it was already dead and likely had been for several days by now given by the decay of the body and the dried blood. The body had been looted of anything of value indicating that one or more goblins took anything this one had on him, possibly a robbery. ‘If this was a robbery then it indicates a more complex society than I initially expected of them. But then again they might have just been greedy and wanted something this goblin had.’
There was also some blood splatter around the area outside where the goblin was killed, while I am not a detective I could see that they were likely caused by a bladed weapon both from the blood pattern and the wounds on the body. The goblin also likely died very quickly given all the wounds it had across its body, it was likely ambushed by several at once.
‘This likely means that there is a group of goblins still here somewhere, they might be the attackers or perhaps they were allies of this goblin. Either way they will have something valuable on them and I still have six levels to regain until I am at the very same power level as I was before. I will need to more than triple the exp I currently have to reach level fourteen, so I better start as soon as possible and start hunting.’
As it turns out goblin’s aren't exactly the smartest when it comes to covering their own tracks as I found several traces of goblin activity throughout the area and it only became more frequent as I got closer to their hideout of sorts. Those traces consisted of feces, footprints, scattered and broken materials, as well as blood. When I found this hideout of goblins the first thing I noticed was that it was a fairly nice looking building that had more metal woven into the structure than most of the other buildings, it was well designed and looked like it was once very expensive. Unfortunately the goblins that were now living there had decided to give their own touch to the design of the building in the form of broken pieces of wood, blood, and dirt which they somehow tracked in a place without any.