Whelp looks like it’s my turn. That little fluffy kid was next to me, in whatever tight space we were in, still sucking on the bloody end of Quartz’s arm.

I really hoped the others were in a similar space, even though we’re separated, and I would miss the sight of those big lumbering idiots all squeezed together like that. At least Lefty would get to see it and then tell me about it. I mean depending on the thickness of the tunnel they probably would’ve been big enough to bust through the wall of it.

I mean sure, Sailhin and Paeris were wiry elves, they could bend to fit but the two goliaths would certainly not squeeze enough to fit.

I looked up at the ding.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to floor 36: The Wandering Factory

Description: The Kalice kingdom’s mage society has requested the aid of the adventurer’s guild to save the wandering factory from its destruction. The factory has been producing golems that have protected the lants within its predetermined path for centuries. However, it has inexplicably begun marching on a different path, and it seems to be heading directly for the capital of the Kalice Kingdon. Rather than side with the ancient device that has been protecting the lands for centuries, the king has ordered it be destroyed before it collides with the capital. The mages are desperate to save the kingdom’s most powerful ally.

Completion requirements:

Correct the factory’s course

or

destroy the factory before it arrives at the capital.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Floor challenge aside, how in the world could that stupid king even consider destroying something like this. I mean the mages were probably no different than those bastards at wasarera, only liking it because it left more of the kingdom’s budget for them. I’m sure that king hasn’t needed to invest in public defenses with this thing wandering around. He probably cares more about his own palace than this money saving relic.

Though it is weird that the mages here don’t seem to have much of an interest in the factory itself. Having something on a scale like this, running all on its own should be something to at least be slightly curious about. Unless of course the rest of the world on this floor already contained things of this caliber. In that case why wouldn’t they attempt to fix things on their own instead of sending a random party?

I slapped my cheeks.

Come on Dot, the inconsistent logic of the tower’s challenge decisions really isn’t something you should think too hard about. Just be happy you get to look around. Most of these floors have been based in some form of reality, this is the chance of a lifetime to study engineering we haven’t discovered yet.

And I’ve got a fuzzy, mostly silent, companion to listen to my ramblings. Could I ask for a better situation?

“Alright, just you and me fuzzball” I ruffled his hair.

I didn’t know where I was, but the location was probably important. The description didn’t help too much with that but there were plenty of other ways to figure things out. I think I’d prefer to look at the insides of the factory itself, but I hope I can get a look at the golems it’s making too. And based on the description and me being separated, I get to clear the challenge, so it seems I’ll be getting a close look at things. The mechanics to make a factory walk around on its own though will be interesting enough. Still having to miss out on the golems themselves would be such a shame.

I hope that either Paeris or Lefty considers taking a look at them for me, if I wanted to create something on my own, looking at the smaller things would be so much better than looking at the big thing. There would be no use case for something this large in fights in small quarters. Instead, if I could recreate the golems, store them in mana stones and then deploy them during a fight, that way they fight on their own, and I’m left to do large scale-

I slapped my face.

Focus.

One thing at a time. The factory needs fixing.

And to do that I need to figure out where we are.

Fluffy looked over at me, now a quarter of the way done with his meal.

I lay my palms firmly onto the ground and closed my eyes concentrating on the vibrations and mana within the structure of the tunnel. The walls surrounding us, like I’d expect, containted solely earth mana. The air however was only filled with fire mana. This would make my most likely location the exhaust vent, if this place was run with any furnace like system.

The mana in the stone around me gave me a good sense of the tunnel and space around it and a bit of the distance in either direction. It seemed to be that I was in the only hollow part for a good bit in either direction. Best option was to head towards the source of the exhaust. And with that hopefully the furnace or the core of the factory would be. Both the most interesting place to look and the place where I’d be dealing with the supposedly important part.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Though, relatively speaking, learning about the inner workings of this place was higher on my priority list. Even though advancing through the floors was also important…. There wasn’t really a time limit, and what I could glean from here would definitely be important too. I mean what better way to assist in our efforts if I were to add golems to our arsenal. It really is in our best interest when you think about it that way.

Fluffy hit me and I looked at him, he furrowed his eyebrows.

“Sorry bud, you’re right, the more time I spend thinking about what to do, the less time I have to look around. It would be a shame to waste such a grand opportunity.”

Fluffy just looked at me, one eyebrow raised and his head tilting to the side.

I didn’t seem to have him on my side. Or that wasn’t what he was trying to say.

Alright, Dot, pick the right direction. We’re heading for the furnace, so the opposite way the mana was flowing.

Unfortunately, that seemed to mean I had to turn around. And that was an awkward thing to do in a tunnel this size. So, with a bit of warping of the tunnel I spun around and turned Fluffy as well.

“Sorry for the wait, lets head off this way,” I said and started walking down the tunnel.

I kept a hand on the wall to maintain my perception of the space around us and eventually the tunnel separated from the mass that was previously connected to it. And I could tell that we were now in an open space. We were at the source, well more accurately, inside of the furnace thing.

Easy enough problem to get out of.

“Alright Fluffy, hold onto my leg,”

I felt his hand wrap around my ankle, and shiver shot down my spine as I felt Quartz’s disembodied fingers brush up against my back.

I was mostly okay with his peculiar diet, but I really didn’t want to feel Quartz’s chopped off limbs.

It would only be for a moment though.

I warped the stone around us and as we moved forward the material in front of us shifted to be behind us so that the tunnel itself wasn’t interrupted. Creating an interruption in the normal path would surely cause more problems than solve any.

Once all the way through I kept one hand in the wall just to be safe, which was a great choice as we ended up considerably high up above the floor of the large room.

To our right was the source of the exhaust, but it wasn’t the only thing in this room.

I pulled the air mana around me to float us down to the floor safely. Once there I got a good look at the contents of the room.

What was attached to the exhaust tunnel we had come out from was a large rectangular chamber that sat on the floor. On top of it had a series of nine tunnels that clearly entered the main chamber separately, but all connected to each other before entering the far wall of the space.

Directly above the point where the exhaust tunnel met with the main chamber there was another tunnel that made a sharp turn upwards. It headed through another cylindrical structure before entering a large heart like shape that hung from the top of the room from two tubes. The heart seemed to be beating irregularly, so the problem was somewhere within the chain of mechanisms within this room.

There was a platform that surrounded the attachment point of the two tubes and was connected to a walkway that spanned the distance between the tubes and the wall to my right. The pathway didn’t seem connected to the heart or the tubes in any way, it simply seemed to be positioned for an ideal inspection point.

Next to the point of the ceiling where the tubes entered, there was an open hole. Four thin cables ran out of it, two of which attached themselves to the heart and the other two to the main chamber.

Intermittently flashes of blue light were pulsing down along one cable and a few red bursts would shoot back up along the other cable.

The pattern of the red flashes was different for the heart and furnace. If this was controlled by some sort of system triggered on certain mana levels, the cables probably led to the main brain of the system.

Which would need to be looked at later… for challenge clearing purposes only of course.

For now, I should get as comprehensive of an understanding of the way this main chamber was structured, and how it functioned or was poorly functioning. You can’t fix things on guess work alone.

Thanks to the useless sloths that birthed me, I could only ever look at drawings of dwarven engineering. And those drawings aren’t even completely accurate since the dwarves wouldn’t’ve let those wasarera bastards get close enough to create notes that were remotely valuable. Even though I managed to sneak into a few smiths, I was unable to spend an adequate amount of time to create overly useful detailed notes or diagrams of things.

Thought they did end up being marginally better than what was available in the records at wasarera. I can’t really blame them, but still, at least put some inferences about what the parts were. Instead, all they took were half baked sketches and notes of what the object was.

I guess I would have to acknowledge that if anyone had actually been interested in studying things further, they would’ve put more effort into it. Much more effort, considering the things they would do for the sake of their interests.

There’s no reason to doubt what I have figured out for now at least. After all, if I was confident in anything it was my understanding of mana reactions. And with how well separated the mana in the exhaust vent was, this was run on mana reactions.

As long as I didn’t make any assumptions that were too absurd, anything I took into consideration was likely to be more useful than the others. And worst case scenario, and I mean worst case scenario, we have to destroy this gift of practical study materials.

“Alright bud, why don’t you sit tight while I figure things out.”

He nodded and let go of me before he sat down fully, legs crossed and continued to savor his meal.

I then flew myself up to the top of the furnace structure. I focused and turned my mana sight on. But from out here I could only really see the structure itself. Which was only useful in clarifying the structure of things.

The nine tubes were each connected to a separate vertical cylinder structure. And they all were connected to two separate paths that lead to the exhaust vent and the other tube respectively. The other tube was likely filled with the important result of whatever reaction occurred within the cylinders.

To get a better view of the mana I’d have to look inside them individually. It certainly wouldn’t be the smartest idea to physically enter the cylinders without a solid understanding of the method for the reactions. A viewing port would be enough, and safer.

I flew over to the closest one and about a quarter of the way down the cylinder, I slowly dug out a hole. Before I reached the inner most lining, I carved a small mana circle into the wall and pushed fire mana into it. The final layer was transformed into a thick glass viewing port.

With that done I was able to separate my own mana that helped manipulate the view port structure, from the mana within the cylinder so that I could properly see things.