Steam poured from the pipes.

They had sealed the bulkhead behind them when they entered the short hallway, and so they were trapped with the heat. Mason had interposed his shield between it and them, but that only kept it from striking them directly. The heat in the room quickly rose to scalding temperatures, [Heat Resistance] the only thing keeping them from cooking to death. Kenna was already at the other end of the hall, trying to open the bulkhead, but the wheel wouldn't budge.

Two thumps against Mason's shield signaled the extent of the danger they were in. One of the steam-based imps perched on the edge, while the other was already flying for Beck. They opened their maws, and from each, a burst of steam erupted. A cloud of superheated water engulfed him, immediately burning his skin while also soaking his clothes. That gave him an idea, though. An ephemeral ding sounded in his head.

He pulled on [Shape Water], and the water on his skin froze. It was slow, but by the time the thing closed its mouth, he was encased in ice. The downside was, he couldn't move, and the imp was still coming at him. Thankfully, he wasn't alone. Cora caught it by the neck in the crook of her polearm and wrenched it to the floor. Then, he witnessed a spell construct for the first time.

A golden halo formed above the creature's head, which sprouted a multitude of similarly glowing lines like roots. Once it reached the halfway point between the first circle and the imp's head, a second halo formed, connecting all the root sections. A rod of golden light formed inside the cylindrical confines, wherein more threads of mana stretched from the bottom of the structure to the top of the thing, anchoring in the flat end, while from the top, four threads extended to the bottom and formed a cup that held it in place.The moment that the rod was finished and constrained, the outer shell elongated rapidly until the cup split into quarters, sending the projectile down its corridor at immense speed into its target.

The imp went still, and after a beat, burst into a gout of steam. The construct dissipated into motes of golden light, then disappeared. At the same time, Kenna swatted the other from the air, throwing it into the wall and causing it, too, to burst into steam. Mason was currently crouching under his shield, moaning in pain from what could safely be assumed to be a scalded everything.

Beck melted the ice encasing him as quick as he could, pulling it into a steadily growing orb behind him as he rushed to Mason's side. Kenna returned to her attempts to open the bulkhead, and Cora moved to join her. While the pair of them struggled with the door, Beck was focusing on stripping the armor off of his friend.

Every inch of exposed skin was quickly covered in the now lukewarm water, moving in all different directions across his body. Mason's face still carried the pained expression, but it was enough to ease the pain until the other two got the door open.

After ten minutes and liberal use of both mana and brute force, they finally moved the bulkhead. Cora returned and began to gather up Mason's shed armor while Beck helped him to his feet and Kenna held the door. As soon as they were through, Kenna resealed the door, and Beck helped Mason to sit against the wall.

The room they had just entered had the same large glass windows as the short hall, but it was much wider, and the wall with the window had a number of strange sloped desks, with instruments and buttons that didn't make any sense to any of them. Those weren't important at the moment, though. Kenna was with them quickly, pressing her palm against Mason's forehead so that her healing flames entered into him as quickly as possible.

Watching Mason's skin go from swollen orange and back to its natural grainy tan color was more of a relief than Beck had been expecting. He clapped a hand on Kenna's shoulder, and she returned his smile. Once the young man was fully healed, the pair pulled him back to his feet.

Cora had left Mason's armor nearby shortly after they had gotten through the door; Now, her and Kenna were checking the room for anything useful. That left Beck to assist Mason in donning his armor, which took another few minutes. All the straps and buckles made it a bit more difficult than simply sliding it on.

With Mason situated, all four of them congregated at the room-spanning windows, Cora standing on one of the desks to roughly match the others' height. For the first time since they entered, all four got a full view of the facility. The area they had seen previously was but a fraction of the Ruin. They had already known that coming in, but what they were looking at only drove home just how large the place was.

From their previous hole in the wall, they had been able to see the central four metal spheres, but at this new vantage point, they could see the full quarter of mountain diameter, packed with those same spheres and flocks of imps of all kinds of different affectations. The steam and magma types were easiest to pick out: Glowing orange on brown or simply being completely white was a sure way to stand out against the gray of the construction. Occasionally, icicles would detach from some of the overhead pipes and fly off to a seemingly random section before returning and tossing something to one of the other types.

Stolen novel; please report.

Then there were the automatons. The things acted like the imps weren't even there, simply allowing the monsters free reign of the place. They all looked alike, too. Burnished silver and copper in a clanking facsimile of a gnome, often with some kind of tool either extending from or replacing an arm. It didn't take long to find the Big One. It still glowed, though it was relatively still now, compared to how it had been. It sat upon a throne fashioned from scrap metal, situated on an elevated walkway that was covered unnecessarily. At least, it seemed unnecessary to Beck.

He drew his focus gun and stepped away, moving to one of the desks and taking a seat. Kenna watched him till he sat down, at which point she nodded and returned to surveying the area in front of her. Closing his eyes, he focused entirely on the weapon in his hands. Mana flowed from its place in his chest, down his arm, and into the gun.

As far as he could figure, Cora's construct worked somewhat like a crossbow, despite the obvious differences. The principle seemingly remained the same: you have a load, something that wants to pull that load forward very quickly, and something else that wants to keep that load in place, or draw it back in this case, until it releases in one way or another. For a crossbow, that was the mechanism behind the trigger and lever, but the spell had the restriction simply... give way. That didn't really make all that much sense in his head, but he had to start somewhere.

Threads of mana wove themselves into a small ball, a ring near the end of the barrel, and a pouch for the ball to rest in. Even smaller strings were attached to sections of the ring and the pouch, as well as to the back of the pouch in a tiny loop. A latch, almost exactly like the one in his crossbow, formed at the farthest point possible from the end of the barrel. With an extra effort of will, he was able to pull the pouch and ball back to the latch, hooking the loop onto it to ensure it wouldn't move. He could feel the strain in the strings. If he had stretched them any further, they may have snapped.

The familiar sight and sound of a system notification greeted him, so he took a moment to look at it and the ones he ignored.

[Heat Resistance] has leveled up! +1 Constitution It is now Level 2!

[First Aid] has leveled up! +1 Wisdom It is now Level 4!

[Mana Manipulation] has leveled up! +1 Intelligence It is now Level 2!

He hadn't noticed the level to [First Aid]. That was the first time he had ever fully missed a system notification. Still, he didn't have time to dwell on that.

His eyes snapped open and he turned, raising his weapon at the back wall. With a thought, the latch disintegrated, and the ball was flung through the barrel. The moment it left, the rest of the construct disintegrated as well, dissipating into the air. The ball itself flew over the next desk, then fell to the ground. When he went to find it, the only thing left was a wet spot on the floor. Another failure.

To add insult to injury, it took a full tenth of his mana pool. Granted, the amount of mana he had available had increased by ten, but that was still a tenth of something he didn't know if he would even be able to get back. A sigh escaped his lips, which gave him another idea. Resting the butt of his weapon on the desk, facing the wall, he dove into another attempt.

This time, he kept it simple. The barrel was probably a worthy substitute for the outer shell of the construct, so he focused on one thing: pressure. He focused his mana at the end of the barrel, building an inverted cone; a cylinder with a cone-shaped hole through the center. With that done, a disc formed at the other end of the barrel. As he moved it through the barrel, forcing the mana in the barrel to compress, he opened his eyes to see what effect it would produce.

From the barrel, a spray of water launched itself across the room. It struck the wall, then tapered off as the mana inside was used up. Another tenth of his mana pool gone. He let the thing drop onto the desk, followed shortly thereafter by his head. After a minute, he felt Kenna's hand on his shoulder. She didn't say anything, and neither did he.

Without his focus to keep it in line, the mana that he had been feeding to the gun through his arm dispersed, what was a thread becoming a loose collection of motes in his arm and, more importantly, his weapon. Through the faint connection he had to the energy, he could feel the entirety of the gun as if it were a limb. That meant that he could have part of the construct on the inside of the metal of the barrel. Immediately after this realization, he set to work on another attempt.

First, he made a spike as long as the last knuckle of his index finger and as wide as the barrel would allow. After that, he began to braid mana threads into two long strands, attached at four different places to the end of the barrel and intersecting directly behind the spike. He was able to pull the spike halfway down the barrel by will alone, but that wouldn't be enough to launch the projectile. A loop formed and attached to the end of the barrel with smaller threads. He hauled on those threads, until he had pulled the spike back as far as possible.

The threads snapped, and a projectile formed from ice flew from the barrel and into the wall, shattering on impact.

Beck took a moment to stare at the small mark of powdered ice on the wall before he dropped the gun on the desk, a manic smile creeping onto his face. He heard the sound of a system notification, but he ignored it in favor of hugging Kenna as tightly as he could manage.

You have learned the Spell Ice Bullet (Basic)!