I quickly stored all of the most useful looking corpses before making my way back down into the building. The building was a few stories tall, and I couldn’t tell from the outside what the building used to be for, probably because the sun removed anything identifiable. However the inside of the building seemed to have some kind of protection from the outside environment, because there were various things in only a mildly worn state.

Seeing that I had to wait for some of my mana to regenerate anyways, I decided to take some time to explore the inside of the building, hoping to find some clues that might lead me to something valuable.

I made my way down the stairs, taking a cursory look into each floor on the way down, to see if there was anything interesting. But no matter how much I looked, I couldn’t tell exactly what this building was for just based on the things I saw on each floor. There were desks and workspaces within the various rooms on each floor, but, while everything was fairly preserved, I couldn’t find anything helpful in any of the individual rooms.

However, in the larger rooms and open areas there were a variety of posters and other things that helped me understand what this building was used for. Although I couldn’t read the language, there were still plenty of other visuals to go off of. It seemed like this building was responsible for manufacturing some kind of medicine or something, and on almost all of the posters and memos there was a symbol, or maybe logo, that looked like a bunch of intertwined lines with a picture of a lizard’s face on top.

I didn’t really get much from my exploration of the upper floors, so I didn’t have much enthusiasm by the time I made my way to the second floor. However when I made my way into the second floor a completely different scene greeted me. There were many different machines and stations that looked very scientific and delicate. The whole floor was filled with these machines and stations, and I thought that this was probably the place where everything was manufactured.

I thought about storing the fancy looking equipment that was on the floor, but I decided against it. Sure everything looked fancy, but I had no idea what it was all for, and so I had no idea who I would sell it to. It just wasn’t worth the effort. There was, however, something else besides the machines, that caught my attention. It was a large poster that took up most of one of the walls.

At first I just assumed that it would be the same as all of the other posters I had come across on the higher floors, but looking closer, this one was actually much different. The ones before had all focused on what seemed to be going on in this particular building, but this one seemed to be referencing some kind of larger/higher organization.

There were many different sections of the poster, and each one seemed to reference different things. It ranged from showing things that looked like potions and pills, medical technology, robotics, energy production and storage, and a few others I couldn’t make out. In the center of this poster was the same symbol of a bunch of intertwined lines and the picture of a lizard’s face on top. Just based on what I had seen so far, I had no idea what this poster might be representing.

It was an interesting poster, and it seemed kind of out of place with the rest of the floor’s environment. The rest of the floor looked like some kind of high tech manufacturing plant for delicate products. The mystery was all very interesting, but there was seemingly nothing here that would lead me to anything valuable, so I shrugged my shoulders and decided to move on.

Should I take the poster for Mystdell though? Mmm, no I don’t think so, not worth it. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt me right? I just won’t tell her about this. Knowing Mystdell, she probably would’ve been ecstatic to be in this abandoned city, exploring this kind of environment, it would’ve been like heaven for her. But I’m different, and I would rather focus on other things.

Seeing nothing more that was worth looking into on the second floor, I descended down to the ground floor. However the ground floor wasn’t any more worthwhile to look through than the rest of the building was.

Feeling that I had wasted my time, and feeling that my mana had recovered enough, I decided to leave this building and try to find a more important looking building to explore.

There was nothing I could do about the fact that my presence would draw nearby monsters to me, but with my mana reserves being somewhat low at the moment, I shouldn’t draw in monsters from nearly as large of an area around me as before. As long as I explored slowly and took care of the monsters I drew in as I went, I should be able to gradually explore the city even at nighttime. So I cast my concealment spells and made my way out onto the streets.

Thankfully I didn’t have to deal with hordes of monsters this time. There were monsters roaming the streets, sure, but my concealment spells combined with my lower mana reserves meant that I only had to deal with a few monsters at a time with minimal mana expenditure, in fact I even started to fill up my mana reserves instead of depleting them.

The area I was in didn’t seem like the important part of the city, that part where the rich and important people would likely be; so I looked for clues that might lead me to that area, but there wasn’t much I could find even after a few hours. So I decided to just head for the center of the city, which would be where the center of the dome enclosing the city was.

I thought it was a good idea, and maybe it would’ve been, but when I started to make my way towards the center I was stopped by the appearance of 3 large robots from behind 3 different piles of scrap, just as I reached the center of an intersection.

The robots were about 2 meters tall and 4 meters long, walked on 4 legs, had a long dangerous looking tail, and had a reptilian looking face. They made lots of noise as they shifted and moved about, and it made me wonder how I hadn’t heard them before now. As I analyzed them I thought that, if not for their disrepair and rust, then I might’ve thought they were metal lizards.

At first I just stopped where I was, hoping that they would pass me by, after all I was currently concealed, but these bots took advantage of my stillness and charged at me from 3 different directions.

My mind accelerated to analyze the situation while I also slightly backpedaled in surprise. I had no idea why these robots had suddenly appeared and decided to attack me, or how they could tell where I was despite my concealment, but now wasn’t the time for speculation.

I retrieved a simple mace and shield from my Internal World, to prepare for potential close combat, after I analyzed the three robots’ speeds and determined that, while slower than my top speed, they weren’t too far behind.

I dashed backwards and slightly to my right side so I could keep my left handed shield between me and the bots. The bots didn’t directly follow my movements with their eyes and heads, but they still moved towards me like they could track my general location. As the robots turned to follow me, I could hear their joints creak and see their movement slow down as they tried to change directions.

I tried to look for weak points on each of the robots as I made more of an effort to move towards their sides and away from their sharp rusted teeth. If these robots were newly made then they probably wouldn’t have had any weak points, but I could spot several rusted or missing metal plates and targetable spots on each of the three robots. I ran a few simple simulations in my mind and came to the conclusion that running away from these bots wasn’t going to work out. If I wanted to live then I was going to have to face these bots head on.

I steeled my resolve and made sure my body was thoroughly reinforced before launching myself towards the side of the nearest metallic lizard after it drew closer. The open mouth of the bot tried to snap towards me, but its rusted neck couldn’t move fast enough to catch my sudden movements, but it seemed to track my movements much better at this closer range.

As the lizard moved past me I quickly arrived at the base of its tail and swung my mace as hard as I could towards a particularly rusted looking plate. As my mace made contact I felt the weakened metal give way beneath my swing and crush the components inside of the tail.

My hand was slightly numb from the impact, but I didn’t let it distract me as I dodged away from the back leg of the lizard before its body could hit me. The metallic tail went limp and started to drag behind the robot on the ground. However, the other two robots were still completely fine, and they didn’t give me any time as they lunged towards me without caring for their companion’s injury.

Stolen story; please report.

I raised my shield to protect me from the jaws of the robot that reached me first. I swung my mace towards the right side of the head of the bot and succeeded in smashing apart most of the head of the robot under my mace, but the other robot arrived to my left and slammed into my raised shield with enough force to make my shield vibrate.

My left arm went slightly numb from the impact, and I went crashing to the ground due to my poor combat stance’s lack of stability. I didn’t have a lot of combat experience, and it was showing.

As I came to a stop on the ground I ignored the slight pain from the fall and scrambled to right myself. The robots, though, weren’t going to just let me freely recover, and all three of them came at me almost in unison.

I didn’t have the right stance to put as much power into my strikes, so instead of attacking I launched myself in a roll towards my right, trying to dodge out of the way. However, despite their rusty nature, the striking tail of one of the robots managed to hit and scrape along my back as it tried to impale me. Luckily my jacket was made out of good stuff, and protected my back, but I heard a tearing sound that made it clear that it was not armor.

I quickly got to my feet and barely had enough time to see yet another striking tail headed towards me. This tail was from the robot in the middle of the three charging robots, and was coming at me from over the top of the robot in front of me. Thinking quickly, I dashed forward towards the right side of the robot in front of me, and was able to get underneath the striking tail as it was unable to lower any further due to the back of the robot blocking its descent. I wasn’t going to let my momentum go to waste though, and I brought my mace around to strike the back leg of the robot in front of me, crippling its leg and causing it to crash to the ground.

The crippled robot acted as a barrier between me and the other two robots, but even in its crippled state the robot was still able to move its tail. And it did exactly that, whipping its tail towards me like a whip, intending to crush me into the side of its body. Its tail made a horrible noise as the bot tried to use its tail in a way it probably shouldn’t have for something so rusty and time-worn, and my observation was proven true as a loud snapping sound rang out across the street and its tail broke off and sailed away from its body, failing in its mission to crush me.

I was grateful to have mostly incapacitated one of the three robots, but the other two came around both the front and back of the downed robot, trying to pincer me. The one coming at me from the head side of the downed robot was the undamaged one, and the other robot was the one with its tail dragging along the ground.

My mind buzzed as I tried to find a way out of this predicament. In the end I decided to face off against the undamaged robot and leave my back to the one without a functioning tail, my jacket would protect me somewhat, and I wouldn’t have to worry about a tail coming at me from behind. My hands were still slightly numb from previous impacts, but I kept my grip firm as I charged towards the rusty mouth of the robot on my left.

With me dashing to meet the robot it wasn’t able to gather much momentum, and so when we crashed into one another I was able to hold my ground and swing my mace into its left front leg.

With a harrowing noise its leg bent under the blow, and its leg joint should no longer be able to move, but before I could do anything else I was slammed forward from behind and fell towards the same side as the now severely bent leg.

I felt my breath get knocked out of me when I got hit from behind, and I twisted as much as I could in the air and landed on my shield as I crashed against the hard ground. I let out a groaning sound involuntarily, but when I tried to breathe in I was unable to, my lungs refused to respond. I quickly bypassed my physical body and sent the signals to breathe through my Cloud instead of my nerves, as I waited for my body to be able to breathe again.

However just because I was on the ground didn’t mean that the fight would stop, and I could hear the screeching of a tail coming towards me from the robot with the bent leg, and at the same time I saw the robot that had crashed into my back pounce towards my fallen form. If I was lucky then the tail screeching towards me would snap just like the last one, and I’d only have to deal with the pouncing robot.

But if the tail didn’t snap, then I would be looking at the possibility of a few broken bones. I didn’t want to take that risk, and having to deal with the metal teeth of the other robot without my shield wasn’t looking good either. I didn’t have many options left.

I was between a rock and a hard place. If I were to take the blows from the two robots I could end up seriously injured, but the only way to prevent this, that I could see, was magic. However, if I were to use magic strong enough to save me from this situation, then I would end up attracting monsters from a very wide radius, trading one bad situation for another. There was no time to debate though, the only difference between my options was between facing the danger now or later, and I chose later.

So, without worrying about the monsters it might attract, I quickly converted my mana into kinetic mana and threw it out of my body. Everything around me was pushed back by the force, saving me from harm. Once again I used the same kinetic mana to push me off of the ground, and I didn’t hesitate to launch myself at the robot with the broken front leg.

With a somewhat liberal use of mana I proceeded to easily take out the robots as fast as I could. However it came as no surprise to me that as soon as I finished off the last robot and was about to leave, I heard a chorus of noise heading towards me. I grit my teeth as I felt my low mana reserves, but I had fought off a horde of the monsters once before, I could do it again. Right?

As I looked towards the noise, getting ready to face a horde of monsters, what greeted my eyes was much more than I had bargained for. Moving alongside the approaching horde of monsters were at least 14 more lizard-like robots headed right for me.

My heart sank and my expression hardened as I felt my eye twitch at the sight. I didn’t even have the composure to joke about this situation in my mind, poking fun at Jilly wasn’t happening in this situation.

As my mood dropped I had the thought, Did the robots send just enough of them to get me to use magic and pull in a horde of monsters? Whether it was true or not, I was still in a horrible situation. Looking at the buildings around me I sought for a defensible position, but they were all short buildings with open floors and minimal walls. Either this was a coincidence, or the robots had planned this too.

With me being in the middle of an intersection, monsters and robots were flooding towards me from all directions, none of them making any sound besides the sound of their movement. The horde was only a few seconds away from me at this point, and with things coming to this there was only one thing I could think of to survive this situation.

I sat down on the ground before releasing my last resort, a spell crystal. Immediately a dome rose up from the ground to surround and protect me, leaving me in darkness. My heart ached from having to expend yet another of my limited spell crystals, but no matter how precious they were, they were meant to be used in situations like this.

Spell crystals weren’t easily made, with each one requiring many months of effort, and I only had 4 more of them left after using this one. Of the 4 remaining spell crystals, 2 were defensive, like the one I had just used, with one being a water type defense and the other being a pure mana barrier; of the other 2 spell crystals, one was a freezing type offensive skill, and the last was a mental type offensive skill.

However, although spell crystals weren’t single use, they did take quite a lot of time and mana to recharge, so although it wasn’t a permanent loss, I wouldn’t be able to utilize the spell crystals I expended, during my remaining time in the Dungeon of Tribulation.

The earth shield I had just used was much stronger than anything I could currently cast, and should be able to last for quite a while even against the horde of monsters and 14 robots outside. So at the very least I had bought myself enough time to recharge my mana reserves a little before I had to fight again. So with the sound of pounding against my earth shield, I started to meditate and get ready for the battle ahead.

After about half an hour I started to feel that the mana reinforcing the earth shield was starting to weaken, but by this point I had only recovered to about 40% of my maximum mana capacity. My mind raced trying to think of how I would fight off a horde of monsters with only 40% mana reserves, but as I started to get ready for battle something strange happened, the pounding against my shield started to weaken before completely going silent.

I was extremely confused as to what had happened outside. Had the robots started fighting the monsters instead? Or had they given up altogether after fruitlessly pounding against my defense? Or were they seeing if they could trick me into stepping out before ambushing me? I couldn’t find an answer to this perplexing situation, and even after many minutes of waiting in silence nothing changed.

Although it would make me a little less combat ready, I decided to switch out one of my active Skills to (Space-Time Sense) to try and see what was going on outside my shield. Immediately the situation outside my protective bubble was plain to see. All of the robots had shut down, and all of the monsters had disappeared. I scratched my head trying to figure out what was going on.

Then, like a lightswitch, I connected the dots in my mind. The Sun! The sun must’ve come back up and started to shine down its wonderful radioactive rays to save me. Although I couldn’t see the sun with my (Space-Time Sense), it was the only possible answer I could come up with. I was about to joyfully drop my barrier and free myself, when I paused and wondered if the robots around me were just pretending to be shut off so they could pounce on me as soon as I left the safety of my barrier.

Cautiously I threw a few spells at the motionless bodies from inside my barrier, and after a while I was certain that the robots weren’t faking it. Letting out a sigh of relief, I dropped my earthen barrier and saw the scene on the streets with my own eyes. All around me were piles of destroyed flesh that I could almost convince myself was just dust, and the unmoving bodies of many different lizard-like robots layed around me.

It was quite the scene, and if I had the means I would’ve taken a panoramic picture of it. Unfortunately they didn’t hand out cameras back in prison, so the imposing view would have to remain only in my memories alongside the string of events that had gotten me here.