In the gigantic room beyond the doors, an army of golems. Lined up in loose metal casings, stacked up from the floor dozens of meters below to the ceiling dozens of meters above, continuing further as far as the eyes could see, rows and rows of inactive metallic golems.
HOW MANY DO YOU NEED?!
Is this guy trying to replace every living person on the planet with a golem?!
How much mana would it cost to prime all of these?!
I think I’m starting to understand why the others want this guy dead!
… Too bad these don’t have mana. It would have been my pleasure to send some rot that way. As it is, the rot won’t last long enough to scratch the metal.
Seeing how everything else here is enchanted, even the walls, I might still let some rot loose later… But not before I find an exit. If the construction golems have a self-defense trigger, I don’t want to find out.
Sofia backed away and went to check the opposite room.
Storage? Oh, the raw ore is coming in from the chutes, this door on the left probably links back to the forge… There isn’t so much refined metal in stock I guess it’s all being used, there are plenty of golem cores though.
More doors on the far side… I’m not risking going in there. Some of the golems are actually patrolling. Time to head back.
Going back was just a matter of doing the same thing in reverse, the longest part being the wait for the forge room to enter a cooling phase again so she could cross through. Soon enough she was in the corridor with statues again.
Let’s check out the other side.
Right away the first room on the other side felt somewhat familiar, it looked a lot like Saint Tartaros’ room in the academy, just a dome with pillars and a cushion on the floor in the center. Meditation must be a popular old-man sport.
Already, this room opened up to three different directions, quickly, Sofia checked the left and right, which both turned out to be more corridors, then she followed her usual way of going straight ahead.
Who in their right mind would explore the side-rooms first?
What I need right now is an exit or a way to disable the mana shield around this place. The shield is huge so the array controlling it can only also be huge… Sounds like an important thing to monitor, wouldn’t be buried in a side corridor, surely.
Sofia was starting to be more comfortable walking around in this place. There were no traps or such things, it seemed, which actually made a lot of sense, considering this was meant to be a secret place. No need to defend if nobody can find you. And clearly nobody could find this base else they wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble to lure Hugo out.
No golems on this side so far either.
Sofia’s train of thoughts was completely derailed when she entered the next room.
Woah th- holy fuck. This stunned me more than the golems.
So many paintings, what the hell.
This guy sure likes his elves.
In a purely artistic way, the room which was without a doubt some kind of painting atelier, was full of vivid depictions of female elves with no clothes, in every kind of degrading position inimaginable.
I mean, he is a good painter…
Although Sofia was not particularly interested in the images themselves, she couldn’t help but look, especially since there were rows of paintings everywhere. Some were framed, some not, on the wall or propped against each other. It was hard to find a single safe place to rest your eyes except if you stared at the ground as you navigated across the room.
AFjzifjeiehf IS THAT SUN?!
That’s definitely Sun!
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Hoy, Sun, you fine with this?
I’m surprised this guy’s still alive… Holy fucking shit this entire row is only paintings of Sun!
Also I’m pretty sure Her chest isn’t that big…
Just when Sofia thought nothing could possibly surprise her anymore after that, she turned around and her mind completely blanked.
Near the exit of the room was where the work in progress paintings were, each canvas mounted on a wooden easel and with a paint palette and brushes left on their side. Among the five unfinished paintings was one of Sofia herself, in the same ‘style’ as every other one around. The crown on her head left absolutely no doubt as to the blonde woman in the painting’s identity.
… I’ve never felt so… Disgusted.
Also, come on! You made Sun’s bigger but you made mine smaller? This guy has shit for eyes.
And I don’t smile like that!
Sofia stored the painting of herself. For fear of some kind of repair magic being able to bring it back from the ashes if she burned it. And it felt fine if she had it. She didn’t really know why but she stored one of Sun’s as well. Then she grouped up everything else in the middle of the room, built a bone box around it, and used the inside of the bone box like a shredder.
She also found a painting of Lola and her siblings, who thankfully all actually wore clothes and were not depicted doing anything weird, and that was the only other painting she saved from the shredder. There was not a single intact painting left in the room when she left, leaving behind piles of ripped canvas and splintered wood.
That’ll teach you to paint people without permission, you freak.
I can’t believe…
The next room was a salon. Literally, just a place with a couch, a bunch of memorabilia stacked up against the walls, a kitchen area on the side, collections of sculpting tools in display cases, all in all, mostly a bunch of useless crap.
Not my first home-intrusion. But this is my first time doing so completely guilt-free.
Show me the good stuff, I’ll take it all. Surely there must be a collection of magical items somewhere.
Sofia kept looking around, the rooms around this section were all the living quarters of the very cultured ‘Ancestor Hugo’, and Sofia found it sorely disappointing. Most of the things being proudly displayed were things of understandable sentimental value, but Sofia couldn’t care less about the man’s first sculpture or his set of diamond chisels. At least she was comforted by the lack of elven slaves which she had been worried she might stumble upon after going through the painting room. It seemed the only ‘people’ living there other than the owner were the endless golems on the other side.
All was going well until Sofia found a locked door.
Ohohoh, there we have it. Locked doors. Let’s see what you have against me!
The door had a lot, it turned out. So much that no matter what she tried, nothing worked, even the rot would get cleansed from the door’s barrier by pulses of weird black energy. But at least so far, despite her fooling around, there was no repercussion of any kind. Still no guards, no alarm, no trap, no nothing.
But the door was impossible to get through, and the walls around it were exactly the same.
Now aware that she could go crazy with no repercussions, as long as the golems weren’t touched, at least, Sofia returned to the main corridor.
She blocked the path to the golem section of the base with a thick wall of bone, and while standing in the meditation room, started blasting rot everywhere in the main corridor.
With every tile and every piece of every wall being enchanted, the rot ate well. There were some minor explosions which freaked Sofia out, but nothing major really happened until the statues holding the place together were too damaged by the rot and crumbled, which led the entire corridor to collapse.
That worked better than expected.
The shield is still intact around the area though…
But at least that’s destroyed that middle ritual circle, if it’s really a teleportation platform, then the guy might not be able to come back if he wanted. That would be nice.
With whatever enchantments filled the corridor gone, Sofia noticed that the graveyard skeletons now worked properly when summoned inside the stone debris of the collapsed section. Despite that, they still could not get her through the outside shield, and still couldn’t get her through the intact walls and floors of every other room. So they really only served as a way to still get to the golem side without clearing the debris.
Now ‘separated’ from the potentially dangerous golems, and having fully explored the other side save for the locked room, sadly finding no exit whatsoever, Sofia at least felt safe enough to start throwing bolts around to try to empty the ring of Zar. She had to cancel the unlife rune to regenerate mana, then when the ring was finally empty, she took all the time she needed to inscribe three new unlife runes on her body, then she returned to the locked door.
The shield’s core is probably there, and all the valuable stuff is probably there too.
For a second, Sofia had second thoughts, and considered just using the ring to break out of the base and to safety instead of trying to break into the locked room. Then she thought back to the distasteful paintings.
Let’s rob a level 500 asshole blind!
Sofia activated the [Ringed arms of Zar]. The magic protection around the door broke as the mana was being forcefully sucked into the ring. Pareth hit the door but it was incredibly sturdy and was not even scratched; however, without magical protection, the graveyard skeletons could appear, and just as the door and its surrounding protections finished repairing themselves, Sofia appeared on the other side.
I’m in.
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