25.

Santi walked through the doors of the distribution center calmly. His morph blade was a pool of razor wire that dragged behind him and his eyes swept across the cavernous building in search of any new foes. There had been no golems replaced on the outside, and Grimvr said that the cyclops often spent up to four or five days outside the rift before coming back in. They had reduced him on the first day on the outside.

He was still cautious though. He could feel Daniel dart inside, even if he was invisible to the naked eye. The burst of power and efficiency he had gotten from his evolution had strengthened his skill to the point he melted into the shadows.

Hana didn’t cloak herself, just stayed tucked into Santi’s blindspot to keep an eye out for any potential ambushers. Her cloaking ability didn’t go with her affinity and she couldn’t hold the skill for as long as Daniel could. Once they entered the rift, she’d have to hold the ability for as long as possible as they worked their way toward where Grimvr said the other dwarves were held.

It took only a few minutes to walk to the rift and feel the heat emanating from the rift. The two dead cyclops lay half rotted on the ground. Their skin was beginning to sag around their extremities but their bellies were bloated.

“Oh god, they reek,” Hana complained, grabbing at her nose as they walked past them and into the rift. Santi couldn’t disagree with her.

From one step to the next, they left the dark warehouse and entered into a burning world. A yellow sun blazed above them, burning away the shadows that Daniel hid in. The other man became visible with a curse as they all looked around the giant metal foundry.

Santi’s new affinity gave him an instant understanding of how time was flowing. It was like a piece of him had suddenly been pushed into a rapid current. Time in this rift was accelerated to nearly double. An hour inside was only twenty-five minutes outside in the real world.

They were standing in a baked earth lot, the ground having lost any signs of moisture decades ago. Towering in front of them was the metal walls of a refinery, rust caked it to the point that holes had formed revealing the insides of the building. Scrap metal was heaped around, piled high into hills.

“How tall are those walls you think?” Hana asked.

“Hundred, hundred twenty feet maybe. Doesn’t matter, we need to get moving,” Santi said. He broke out into a jog, heading toward where Grimvr said a secondary entrance was located. The main front doors were watched and even some of the bigger holes in the wall had guardians. There was a service entrance that the dwarves had found but hadn’t been able to use so far on the far wall.

Running around the side of the building itself was a chore. Jagged pieces of metal littered the ground. Sharp pieces that grabbed at their clothes and threatened to cut them if they stepped wrong. There was no subtlety to their run, no discreet game of moving from cover to cover. It was a fast jog where they all hoped nobody would look outside of the walls.

Grimvr had told them the monsters were lazy. They sat in the cool shade of the foundry and relied on the golems to bring them what they needed. It would just be his luck for one of the one eyed monsters to look and discover them in the only part of the rift without any cover.

Daniel was cursing a storm under his breath as sweat trickled down his face. Santi wasn’t sure what the other man had invested his stats in, but it wasn’t looking like it was durability. Hana was loping alongside them with ease.

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They turned the corner of the rectangular building and Santi saw what Grimvr was talking about. A four foot tall by two and half foot wide hole. Rust had done most of the damage, but something had smashed in, pieces of metal laying in the dirt an easy hint.

Santi waved Daniel forward and waited as the scout leapt into the hole and disappeared. He crouched down against the wall with Hana by him, slowly waiting for Daniel to give them the all clear signal. Adrenaline raced through his veins, his heart hammering in his chest as sweat slowly beaded his forehead. The wait was worse than the jog, it would have been easier to be fighting than waiting.

It was a drastic change to who he used to be. He would have done anything to avoid a fight in the early stages of the integration. It had taken him months before he could muster the courage to face even the lowliest of monsters in straight combat. His evolution and class selection had been a reflection of that.

Daniel popped his head out and nodded toward the hole, vanishing again a moment later. Santi and Hana locked eyes, and then Hana was following her partner. Santi gave them a moment, then made the plunge.

The loss of light blinded him for a moment. The ferocity of the sunlight outside was a powerful contrast to the dim glow of smoldering furnaces. Red glows that spread the shadows and darkness more than anything. The hulking shadows of machinery stretching up and towards the ceiling.

The forges floors were covered in an array of debris. Santi understood why the dwarves had been forced to make the scrap golems. There was so much here just laying around that it would be impossible not to use some of the metal. The cyclops weren’t the smartest of monsters, but they weren’t the dumbest. The mated pairs were likely as intelligent as a base human.

Santi stuck close to the wall and started to work his way further down. Daniel had vanished off into the ether and Hana was somewhere close by. Grimvr had given them a map with his best recollection of the foundry and where exactly everyone was being held. The majority of the dwarves were held together near the edge of the building.

Their guards were just a handful of the weaker golems and a half dozen cyclops. Enough to stop the weakened dwarves, but nothing that would even slow down Santi. Torin, the Acolytle level dwarf, would be held in the center of the foundry with the mated pairs. Grimvr had been certain about that.

The issue was the Acolytle level golems that were roaming around. Most of them were just barely over the threshold of Acolyte, but Santi still didn’t want to run into them in enemy territory. Nothing like getting jumped by a squad of them in the dark to ruin his day.

He ducked behind a piece of defunct equipment. A river of chilled metal had hardened over the side of it. Santi ran his hand over the smooth metal, not recognizing it immediately. He hoped that Daniel would find what they were looking for.

After a moment of scanning the darkness, he pushed forward again. Staying low to the ground, he moved slowly. Each step was followed by a pause as he looked to see if anything reacted to him. When nothing came lunging out of the gloom, he moved again.

It was a slow and methodical movement. He had made a career out of it before his later evolutions had let him specialize. He had forgotten how nerve wracking it was though to be standing in the dark and waiting to see if something would come crawling out of the dark to eat him.

It took nearly a half hour to work his way over toward where the dwarves were supposed to be. Grimvr had been specific enough in his instructions that he was able to navigate through the dreary foundry by just sight of the slumbering equipment.

A pen was nestled in between two broken machines. Wooden planks and rope stretched across the gaps. It wasn’t enough to stop the dwarves if they wanted to run away, but the two patrolling Acolyte golems were.

“Well fuck,” Santi cursed under his breath. He felt confident in fighting one of them head to head, but two? It was going to be tricky. Hana should be close by. The original plan had been for Santi to hang back while the two stealth specialists rescued the dwarves. If things went awry, Santi would step in while everyone escaped.

Now it was looking like he might have to step in just to give her an opening to begin the rescue. The golems moved slowly around the pen, circling like lazy sharks. Each step sent a shudder through the floor, rattling Santi’s feet. Santi looked up and frowned as he figured out a plan. He would have really liked to have unlocked a skill or two towards flight before he started climbing buildings and ruined structures.