There are two doors, excluding the main entrance. The doors are rusted metal, and their handles have broken off.

I examine the door closest and notice some exposed mechanisms. I'm assuming this is an internal locking mechanism that's currently activated.

The door is locked, and I can't even attempt to open it because of the broken handles. I wonder if I can access my mansion from these hallucination doors. Spirit doors? Honestly, what the fuck is going on?

I feel like my priorities are being affected by the narcotics in my body. The first thing I should do is get my bearings and understand where I am and what I'm doing before hyper fixating on doors.

I creep up to the statue and examine it closer. I'm not looking for physical descriptions since I don't know any dwarves. The legs have been broken off at the calves, so the statue is sitting on its nubs.

At the back of the room is a large flat pedestal where the statue would stand. The broken legs are standing there, holding up nothing.

The entire thing should stand around eight or so feet tall. It's around double the height of the average dwarf.

The base of the statue has a metal plaque eroded by time. Most of the carved words are still visible, but I can barely understand what it's saying.

I sound out what's written in this archaic dwarvish.

"Vanderblitz, triemr avor aldrjaalgorr oz hrounvor avor klarth"

There is more, but it's illegible.

Vanderblitz should be a proper noun. So this is what Vanderblitz looks like. Taller than I thought.

I open my [Lexicon] and start skimming my books to try and translate these words.

"Vanderblitz, tamer of aldrjaalgorr and smither of steel."

That one word is escaping me. Wait, I'm being illiterate right now. I keyword search my [Lexicon] since I can find specific information with this tool.

Aldrjaalgorr comes up as a mountain in a dwarvish fairy tale that exploded when a child didn't finish eating his beets. There's a whole collection of these stories, and most of them are, "a child dies because they did/didn't do x."

Or fighting enemies.

I'm going to assume aldrjaalgorr is either a specific name for a mountain or just the translation for a volcano since that's basically what an exploding mountain is.

"Tamer of volcanoes" is a pretty badass thing to be revered for. I wonder if I could tame a literal volcano?

I don't know about dwarvish society to infer if this is a folk hero or some divine entity. There is a chance that this is just a tall dwarf that got turned into stone, and someone added a plaque afterward.

I spend ten minutes moving the statue and lifting it back to its legs. Then I use [Heal Anything] against an inanimate object to completely restore something for the first time.

That took way more mana than I'm comfortable spending for a whim. I pick the door on the right and head over to it.

I clear away the rubble before trying to open it up.

I place my hands on the door, attempting to force the door open rather than trying to unlock it manually.

*CLAMP*

-0

When my hand was placed against the door, I must have triggered it somehow because the door clamped down on my hands like some sort of bear trap.

The metal teeth fail to pierce my skin, but the metal still holds my hands in place.

"Grunt, fuck, it's on tight."

I pull to no avail. Fuck it.

I activate my mansion skill, but nothing happens. Either these don't count as doors because I'm high, or they don't count as doors because they are traps instead.

I need a "doorway" to activate my skill, and the definition is loose. Technically a hole in a wall with a movable object in front of it is a doorway.

I'm assuming I'm hijacking an already established entrance as a catalyst to open a localized fracture.

Doesn't matter. I could reactivate my liver and get out of this if I wanted to.

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[Enroot]

With my feet planted firmly into the ground, I try to free my hands. The door creaks, and it doesn't want to give up.

Beryl wants to help, but since she isn't on cactus right now, I just look crazy.

I pull heavy on one and free one of my arms, which allows me to get the other free. I start breaking down the door, and not too long after, it falls over, defeated.

What a weird trap. This kind of trap isn't made for killing someone but to hold the victim in place so they can't escape. Maybe something else was supposed to happen, and that part of the mechanisms failed, or a dwarf with a spear was supposed to jump and stab me.

I have to duck my head when I go through the doorway. The ceiling is pretty high, but the doors are made for dwarves, not nosy humans.

It's hard to make deliberate movements, but I try my best to tread carefully so I don't trigger any other trap. Beyond the door is a metal hallway, something that makes me nervous.

I hear a quiet clicking noise.

I pick up a chunk of stone and throw it into the hallway, and nothing happens. I take one step inside and then jump out of the way. Nothing happened. I thought that if the trap was entity sensitive, I could juke it. But nothing happened.

Embarrassed, I make my way into the hallway and investigate the source of the sound. It's coming from deeper inside.

On the other end of a hallway, around a corner, is a vault door with many massive spiraling gears, making the entire thing look like a cross between a door and a clock. The vault door is clicking quietly, and I think I can see why.

A femur with a boot at the end of it is stuck in one of the gears. I slowly approach the door, and the entire mechanism is beyond my understanding.

I think I could figure out the basics of how this thing works if it wasn't currently melting and shifting hues.

I pull the bones free as it shatters in my hand. I put the shoe on, and it almost fits. It's a bit big.

The ticking sound is more pronounced as the gears start moving slowly, but it doesn't seem to be opening.

Are the gears just for aesthetics? What's the point of perpetually moving parts for a door? I wonder what's powering it. I wonder if this mass hallucination is a part of something bigger or if I'm just tripping balls on a mountain.

There is no doorknob, just a comically large keyhole. I don't want to stick my fingers in there in case they get crushed by all the moving parts.

I get my barbed sword from my carapace sled and stick it in the hole.

*CREAK* *CRRRR* *REEEE*

I quickly try and pull my sword free, and when I finally get it out, it's bent to all hell.

Nothing so far has even scratched my blade, and this abomination of a door almost fucking broke it. Wait a damn second.

My sword isn't on drugs. How the fuck did this damage it? Will it go back to normal when the cactus leaves my system? I toss the sword back onto the sled. I can always just conjure it again and reset its shape.

Wait a damn second!

I spend 10% of my current health recreating my sword, turning it into a comically large key for the hole. The metal can be shaped how I want it, the only caveat being that I can't control the fact that it'll be covered in barbs.

I stick the key in and...

*CREAK* *CRRRR* *REEEE*

I don't know what I expected to be honest. If I can't unlock the door normally, and picking it would be a fool's task, then the only option is to break the door down.

Or I could explore the rest of the building and maybe find some more clues. I'll check the other doorway after I investigate this gear door better.

There is dwarvish writing on the gears, but I can't understand it. Maybe it's a magic script or something because it's completely different from the words on the plaque and the modern-day dwarvish I have at my fingertips.

This thing is probably enchanted. Dwarves have reputations for being brilliant artisans, especially in the arcane area. I wonder how they hold up magic-wise compared to the elves... I don't recall any famous dwarven mages.

To be fair, I don't know any elven ones either, but I'm aware that they exist, at least.

I count at least twenty-seven moving parts, but It's hard to keep track since they melt into one another. I try gauging how thick the metal is by knocking on the door.

*knock knock*

"Ill'th aarak. Lare, tha'm comuroz."

What? Muffled from beyond the door, the unmistakable sound of the dwarvish language speaks. Well, what I believe is the unmistakable sound of the dwarvish language. I've actually never heard it.

The gears start whirling and clicking, sounding like a giant bomb. The entire thing swings open and reveals a four-foot figure, completely naked except for a pair of shorts and a single shoe.

"Yir da gilthok ath othok, e garnt Elger e fell Dwed?"

I'm pretty sure he asked me if I was a fat elf or a tall dwarf, but he's talking too fast for me to translate what he's saying in real-time. I try my best and butcher the language of the dwarves and tell him that I can't really speak his language.

."So laddy, I gotta use the simplified script, eh? Can't be using the royal dialect in front of outsiders now, can I?"

"I have so many questions."

"Good for you, too bad that I have some as well. What are you? What are you doing here, and why are you wearing my shoe?"

"I'm-"

"How'd you pass all those traps? Through the front door?"

"..."

"...well, boy?"

"You don't look like Vanderblitz."

The dwarf in front of me is fatter than the statue. There aren't any fancy metal beads in his unkempt beard. His face is fucked up, his nose bent, eyebrows crooked, and balding.

No fancy armor, just some shorts with holes in them and a single boot. The dwarf is apprehensively using the door as a shield.

"Eh? Of course, I don't look like Vanderblitz. I'm not him! But serious lad, what are you? I've never seen your kind before."

"I'm a human, native of a different planet, the one where your planet shattered and integrated with."

"..."

"This temple isn't even in the sliver of the world protected by a pocket dimension but only appeared before me because I've consumed a cactus from a shamans ritual."

"... a lot has happened, hasn't it? Well, fuck off. I'm not interested in history lessons."

He tries to slam the door shut, but I dive into the room before he can lock me out.