Alex would have facepalmed had he not been more concerned about getting distracted. He found himself in an entry way, another atrium. Part of him became more guarded as he looked around, another part of him felt excitement. This place had the feel of a military installation, lots of concrete, security, cages surrounding doors, obvious guard posts. It was the closest he had felt since coming here to home.
The quick check of the room was punctuated by crashing and rumbling from above. The ground was shaking, and he was pretty sure that the fuckers fighting above had collapsed the building. The muted sounds coming from the other side of the door said as much followed by what could only be rocks or the like hitting metal at high speed. The door flexing inward slightly also killed and hope he had of leaving that way.
“Good to know my luck hasn’t changed. Well, nothing for it, time to search.” He pulled a device from his necklace setting it into the middle of the room. It looked like a box with cylinders sticking out of five sides, letting it rest on the flat bottom.
It was an air purifier, he had wanted to make something that generated air, but that was beyond him. Never underestimate the dangers of gas and oxygen deprivation when underground. He had found this in his searching, used it to replace the much shittier one he had made. Once he activated it the box became a vortex of moving air, four sides pulled air in to be purified and the last side on top forced clean air out.
“Going to give that some time to work before moving on.” Alex shuddered at how much can go wrong, the release of air when the door was first opened and the need of such an installation to be well ventilated plus a paranoid mind had severe implications. Any secure installation that needed vents and didn’t have a way to seal those vents was vulnerable, to being gassed. Other types may be trying to keep stuff in, like biological weapons. Regardless he wasn’t going to take chances.
Sitting down near the device he posted his golems as guards and pulled out a book to study.
Alex recharged the purifier, as its power dropped adding his mana to the crystal core powering it. Waiting for the lit up gems to move to green, saying it was safe to breathe the air. His helmet had a similar function, except it didn’t generate air. It was designed for micro threats in a mostly open environment not a sealed room where it had to do everything on its own.
For now, Alex was extremely cautious. He didn’t want to make snap judgements about the place. He assumed it was secret, it had been hidden from public view. He knew it was secure, the security measures he could see told him that. The lack of distinguishing marks, carvings or organizational seals/emblems, further put the two points together. It was also in the city. Not on a base, or government land. Not removed from the city. It wasn’t a facility that supposedly did one thing while focusing on classified work in the lower levels like one expected of a government office, the level of separation and difference in security seemed to indicate otherwise.
He wasn’t even sure it was governmental in nature, seemed likely, but he had no way to know. He didn’t even see mounting places on the walls for flags that may have rotted away. This place could be anything.
“VIP bunker maybe… City or national storage… Training facility, intelligence or law enforcement are possibilities. Research, either corporate or national… sketchy or outright illegal. Fuck too many of the possibilities are nasty, and I don’t have the information on this society to judge. For all I know this could be a fucking prison or secret police HQ. I need to be careful and fuck off if it looks wrong. At the same time, I need a new way out, kind of doubt this is the only way in. Probably not even the main entrance. This right here is why you don’t go underground.”
He stopped before standing up and pacing to help him think.
“Ok I need to make the best of this. Regardless of what this place is, it almost certainly has something valuable in it. Might be useless to me but you do not spend the time, money, or effort to construct this without a purpose. No guarantee I’m alone in here. Has to be supplies, at the very least. I doubt that this place was for information only. Too easy to handle that without all this, just use a dedicated government building dedicated to intel, if they wanted to hide things no need to do it here. Probably has a sizeable security component, and a dedicated security force. They would want that and the resources and weaponry on hand. Definitely want to stockpile whatever supplies they needed on site, have to take a lockdown procedure into account… This means that just fucking off is a lost opportunity. This place has the best chance of having what I need, without being a shot in the dark. If the facility is sealed and not currently populated, it’s also a good place to hold up and work on my project. Possible benefits currently outweigh the risks.”
Nodding to himself Alex decided to secure the facility if possible, and only leave if given an immediate reason. An opponent that he couldn’t hope to face. Anything else and this seemed to be a place to draw the line and battle it out.
He had Zwei and Drei pick up the filter and follow behind the group. Better to have it, working near him. He could put it back in the necklace if things got dicey, he didn’t want to lose it to stupidity. He moved to the caged off security position, and looked in. He saw a few desiccated humanoid corpses laying down. From the distance he didn’t think they died a violent death, just died or committed suicide. However, he was stuck the builders had placed two buttons in the room aside from what appeared to be communication equipment. On opposite ends of the room, preventing him from opening the cage door further in the facility.
Wouldn’t have mattered in this case as the facility lacked any power, only the sight enchantments on his helmet prevented the place from being cave dark. So, he had Eins tear the door down. Alex wasn’t concerned about his six in this case. The entrance was jammed and blocked, with no other doors. Keeping this door intact wouldn’t have mattered. If he was pushed back to the point he needed it well, Eins being able to tear it down meant it wouldn’t help anyways. Besides it was metal, and he was looking for metal. Not enough to start tearing it down everywhere, that was too noisy and difficult. When it was in his way, waste not want not.
Once through the inner and outer doors he looked around, he didn’t see a way to the security booth from here and none of the doors led in that direction.
“Did the designers go full paranoid and split the facility. Force people from this door to navigate around until reaching the main areas, buy time in case this entrance is breached. Fuck, not a great sign. Makes it more likely to be secret police or some shit.”
Dismissing that train of thought he moved on. Offices and cubicles on both sides, mostly separated by large glass partitions and set into the walls, the occasional nicer door to a more high ranking flunky. He went around looting everything, he had a large focus on the intact glass, as it was hard to find on the surface. Few personal belongings sat around, and none of the safes or secure hiding spots were found. Not a lot of power in this area, definite minion vibes with these work stations. Ego stroking with the better offices.
The central desk didn’t yield anything either. He also couldn’t see anything resembling a map, leading to him growling under his breath.
“More and more like spook shit, I hate spook shit.”
The double doors led to a series of branching corridors all the same. Possibly to confuse anyone who was new. No signage or markings. Identical corridors that didn’t give any hints. Could get lost in here, slowing down an intruder and making snap communications difficult as you have no landmarks to call out. Easy to get turned around in.
Simple solution, mark where he is going. He was an intruder, he wasn’t worried about the old security. Vier was clawing the walls with a directional indicator while Fünf marked the walls and floor of the corridor they were in with a mark for the start point. These would back up the mini map his helmet had, he swapped out the local map in his bracer with a new jewel. This gave him triple redundancy against getting lost. Starting with the right most hallway he began his search.
The whole area turned into a fucking maze of offices and supply closets, all mundane, and leading back to the entrance. He might have thought it was just some underground office space if it wasn’t so perfect, and deliberately designed. All of that made him believe that nothing important was here.
He did feel bad for the hypothetical invaders if they charged in here. You would need a platoon at least to clear this place with any speed and might just get friendly fire from them stumbling on to each other. Tight uncomfortable halls, echoing sounds. This place was designed to destroy a person’s sense of direction, unless you were already familiar with it, or you went slow and mapped it out. Some halls led back to the main room others looped around. Like getting lost in a subdivision, trying to logic your way out only to find that the road you were on didn’t go through.
At the same time there was no reason to do this if it didn’t connect to some far more important parts of the facility. There weren’t even name plates or numbers on the doors, each room and desk were identically set up. They were obviously used, not a bland training ground, or kill house. Just enough personality to be real at each desk, and in each office.
After checking the last corridor that returned him to the main junction. He reviewed, he already knew where to go. A stair way down placed out of the way in an unimportant part of the facility, easy to miss if you moved quickly. Tucked away by the bathrooms. Not marked or behind a door, any door would be checked, at least if someone was properly clearing the place. But a slight room variation with no reason to go anywhere that puts you in line of sight of the stairs, that would trip up even people who knew what they were looking for.
Alex picked a room and settled in, it had been a long day. He munched on conjured rations as he updated his map. “Sleep then move further in.” Checking the map for obvious discrepancies, he wouldn’t put it past the designers to put a stairway to one location similarly mundane. All to throw people off, give them what they expect, a hidden stair ‘oh my’. While hiding the real entrance in plain sight, a closet that was slightly too big, a room that was of a slightly different size. Mess with someone’s special awareness, hide between the cubicle farms because most people can’t judge how thick walls are or the space between each just like the area he entered from above. At the same time this place acted like a low level high security facility, desks that were obviously checkpoints. Others positioned to observe in a way a boss wouldn’t, while being unobtrusive.
Most of his anxiety came from still having no idea what this place was. Luckily his map was to- scale, the distances were all consistent, and he had an overhead view of the rooms.
Hours later, if something was hidden he couldn’t tell. He kind of doubted that after his review all the separations between rooms were consistent, the offices were all the same size. Nothing blatant jumped out. It honestly depended what purpose this was supposed to serve. If it was a delay, it worked. If it was a distract and convince “nope nothing to see here” it also worked just not as well. He didn’t see the point in trying to convince officials everything was kosher, and invaders would have a purpose. Either one fell apart after some review. Why make the place seem ordinary if you were going to make things hard to find? Invaders would probably have some idea, and government officials would question the placement and expense. Almost certainly know what was really going on or supposed to be going on.
Alex even took the time to see if he was missing some magical signs that might identify paths. Signs that were lost with the power. He had found nothing. Just a super sterile and sanitized office space with highly sketchy effects on the uninitiated.
“Whatever this place is, it’s not like I found a way out, kind of have to go down. At least I haven’t found any sign of monsters, only the bodies up front. Got some loot even though I could have found this in an office.” Saying this he went to sleep.
~ * ~
Moving downstairs when he woke up, Alex perked up a bit. At the bottom of the stairwell was a small administrative area. Similar to what you see in a construction site trailer. Simple workstations, a map, file cabinets, and what looked like a project manager white board. Through the windows he saw a series of laboratories below, six main labs, and two or three secondary labs for each primary. No roofs so the manager could look down and see people working with walls separating them from other labs. A series of metal walkways crossing the room, some of those labs had partial factories in them. Best of all he could see no sign that the area was in any way inhabited.
No unusual shapes, no obvious movement, no massive piles of shit, and no smell. The entire facility so far was empty and dead.
Alex’s paranoia kept him from relaxing, but he moved on. After thoroughly checking the place from above he moved down to the lower level. The creep factor was strong here, he felt like some horrible monster had to reveal itself. Leap from around the corner, be walked into, a sound in the distance echoing menacingly letting him know he wasn’t alone.
So far it hadn’t happened. Alex had watched horror movies and he knew that the moment he relaxed, it would strike, nothing about his experience in this world made him inclined to change that line of thinking. In the vain hope that he could prevent such a thing he moved forward toward the first room.
A lab for working with chemicals, loot and move on. The next room looked to be related to enchanting. The one after had to do with shaping organic materials, a carpenters workshop. Another definitely an artificer building specialized tools. The fifth one had stone working tools and materials. The last had a holy grail for Alex. Metal working stations and materials, at some point he would find a way to power the stations that were currently just cluttering his inventory, for now he was just happy to have more decent quality metal available, rather than the mostly rusted out stuff he found topside.
A good haul, but each lab only had working quantities of materials in them. Yet again he stripped the place bare. All the tools and machinery vanishing into his necklace.
Back in the admin office he spread out the facility map. Aside from the stairs down a walkway led to another room, both being guarded by his golems. He took the time to imprint this map into his mapping gem making sure to keep it shaded out. He wanted a clear way to compare what he actually saw with what was on the map. The diagram, or more accurately a series of diagrams. Bound at the top so a person could flip to what they needed took several hours to add to his map. It included office labels, likely so that people down here could find the right person upstairs.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
On it he found several rooms identical to the one he was just in, surprisingly no labels for the specifics of what was going on. Just things like chemistry lab, or enchanting lab one. They all sat in a row he had entered the furthest one on the right. Across for the center sat command station for all the labs. Alex was indeed on the wrong side of everything. The next level down after dealing with the additional offices, on the level above him, was labeled workshops. He carefully marked the armories, and what appeared to be the pathways security used. An entire level was labeled medical, and below that an immense series of warehouses and storage.
Alex was almost drooling at this point, he didn’t think this place had been plundered. If he could get his hands on those supplies he could do his project, and finally get to work actually getting out of the city. Make some progress forward.
He was seriously debating heading straight down for those supplies rather than wasting several days clearing his way down. In the end he decided to try and secure this place, greed had killed plenty of people getting sloppy now was a recipe for disaster, if there was an issue he wanted to be able to see an exit. Confirm that the map matched up to what he knew. Avoid the potential to get jumped from behind by some monster he failed to find.
So, he got to work his only concession to being as methodical as possible was looting the remaining labs on this level first before checking the headache inducing offices above. No, those offices likely didn’t contain anything immediately useful. They might have information on what people were doing down here, maybe not. Given the sheer amount of paperwork he discovered he wasn’t likely to get to the bottom of that anytime soon.
~ * ~
Several boring days later Alex had gone full loot goblin, stripping the entire first two levels to the studs. The facility he was in was massive, at least ten square blocks of underground had been carved out for it. That also left the interesting proposition of using it as a hub, for further forays into the city. As far as exits go, he only checked that they were in the proper location. He wasn’t going to pop his head out like an idiot, possibly compromising this place until he was ready to go.
Moving to the lab overseers office, positioned in the center, he eyed the large spiral staircase down. The elevators and elevator shaft he had left alone, while here he wanted to be as stealthy as possible, he didn’t want the monsters on the surface getting curious and digging him out. He also wanted to avoid having the undergrounds inhabitants attempting to get in. They descended to the workshops, two golems still carrying the air purifier.
Workshops was an understatement, the entire floor was a series of production lines. In a massive hall the size of the whole facility, around four stories tall to support all the tall machines, all in the open only split by support columns, and the occasional half wall like cubicles sectioning things off. Alex moved through the place carefully hoovering up everything he could get his hands on. Leaving the whole cavern barren after his passage. Literally thousands of tons of factory equipment stripped in a few hours of walking around, followed by more and more materials that these lines used for production.
That brought him up short. He had more than enough material for his plan. Anywhere else he wouldn’t have the current conundrum. Stop here and begin work, search the rest of the place, or leave. If he had been on the surface, he would finish the search in a reasonable place and leave to find a secure location to work on his project.
Fuck it, he decided, he wanted everything he could get from down here. He hadn’t run into danger yet. Knock on wood. Alex brought out a piece of wood for some light knocking. He might not get the chance to loot the place later. He hadn’t finished clearing the place, it was possible that he might get jumped if he didn’t at least look. Better to know and be on guard than not. This facility was also the best place he found to actually do his work. Almost as secure as Alessa’s tower.
“Clear and loot the place then find somewhere to hole up in and begin work.” Below the workshops/ factory was the medical facility. Pristine like any modern hospital, set up for all manner of emergencies. No sign of wicked experiments, or any craziness.
Alex was beginning to think that this was a governmental scale apocalypse prep. A fall back bunker in case the shit really hits the fan. Places for experiments, production, medical, housing, places to work, armories, and storage. This place was looking more and more like a fallout shelter for, a significant portion of the city population. A population who would have everything they needed to rebuild.
Alex alone could build a city with the materials he snatched, if he had access to the manpower, and raw materials. It also appeared to be non-functional, like the death of the city or nation had happened too quickly. The only bodies he had found were support staff, the guards and a few others. Like this place had been put on standby, then had everyone killed off by the negative mana wave. He had yet to find even a hint that someone survived past that zero hour down here. Guards dead at their stations, what he assumed was maintenance workers dead in the halls often near tools. No sign that this place was anything but pristine.
Honestly, Alex didn’t really care. Sure, it was sad, and somewhat depressing to see such monumental effort go to waste, but it didn’t resonate with him. He was happy for all the loot and improving his chances of finding civilization again.
The next level was a housing level, he blitzed through it confirming his belief that this place hadn’t been inhabited. Not one of the apartments had anything out of order, everything in the places felt factory fresh including the placement and number of provisions stored. The furniture and walls had zero personality not even being moved to accommodate personal taste. Nurseries had everything parents might reasonably want, but everything else was simply organized neatly in a corner.
That did creep him out, far more than it should. Just something about the planning and sterility of it. After forcing himself to be as cold blooded as possible and not skip any he moved on to the, armory level.
~ * ~
Moving into the armory Alex moved with the utmost caution, pulling the air purifier into his necklace to free up his golems hands. So far, he had run into no security measures, no traps or alarms. Most of the doors hadn’t even been locked, those that had hadn’t been to terribly hard to get through.
If he was going to run into security it would be here, the place that should arguably be the most secure in the facility. If anywhere was going to have automated defenses or the like, it would be here. If back-up power existed this would be the place. True standalone systems for defense.
Everything about the level screamed security and restricted area. Several paths existed for people passing through but any time he looked like he wanted to get in he was blocked. Blocked by real security doors, blocked by hard checkpoints that forced a person to deal with the guys behind the glass. He continued his search back-tracking up and coming down in a different spot to see if it was easier and quieter to gain access.
No luck. Every way in was blocked. It wouldn’t stop him, and he felt he was far enough underground to make some noise if needed. Alex was reluctant to do so, if he wasn’t being paranoid, he might alert enemies to attack him. Something he hoped to avoid.
Gritting his teeth in frustration at being denied, he spent a day marking each door and checkpoint with basic traps blocking others off. He wanted to know if anything came out. He would need to make serious noise to get in and he didn’t want to warn any inhabitants without checking easy access areas first. Might even save them for after his project was complete, still undecided about that right now.
At least anything that broke out should be noticeable on his return.
Pushing past the regret he moved to the storage areas on the level below. The final level he was going to check. Maybe after his project was complete, he would consider going further, but for now it seemed stupid. The lowest levels were packed with all the utility equipment, water, sewage and power. To Alex that sounded like a recipe for encountering the monsters that populated the cities underground infrastructure. As much as he might like the tasty loot of more ready to operate machinery, just no. Not until he was confident of survival.
The storage areas were the first ones he ran into that were all clearly labeled. Proving in his mind once and for all that supply guys really do win fights on the basis of pure practicality, when it came to their chosen profession. Several truly massive warehouse doors as well as supplemental access on one side, if the maps were correct each one went all the way back to the edge of the facility. Pure easy access bulk supplies. On the other there were large units, like a sizeable personal storage lockers. The types people rented out but larger. If the labels were correct this area stored specialty stuff that no one wanted to search for in a warehouse.
He started with the smaller lockers, Eins cutting the thin bolts off. Alex again didn’t bother to do more than note down the label and what he saw inside, he was anxious to be done and move back to the armory. Then onto his project, he could almost taste it.
Most of what he found on that side of the facility was easy access maintenance or replacements for the equipment above. Large amounts of redundant supplies for each area. He also found significant amounts of daily necessities, things people would forget they needed if they moved quickly.
The only part really of note came at the end. A few far more secure storage units label with names he barely recognized. All of them contained the highly rare magical metals and materials, mithril, adamantine, elemental steels, orichalcum numerous varieties of magic crystals. The metals alone were a god send even if he lacked the skill, power or tools to use them. The crystals were amazing to have though they had the same problems as the metals.
Three of the rooms contained another truly godly material. Cores.
Raw in one room, refined and ready in another, and the final room contained processed and inscribed cores of every variety he could imagine.
Alex almost stopped here. Almost let the fear of the other shoe prevent him from raiding the bulk materials. The cores might not be truly god tier in quality, most of them were decidedly average. No immensely valuable one in the lot, a storage of basic replacement cores for every use the facility might need for their magical appliances. And each and every one of them was superior to the ones he produced from his scavenging. He would still need to make them into something useable, but a god send in bulk none the less, several hundred times the number and quality he had found on the surface.
To him a life line, and a way to further his project beyond his wildest dreams. Just like the metals. Each of the cores he had found had been better than the ones he harvested on the surface. A number were ready to inscribe, pre-prepared. The only way he could have been luckier was if he found the ready-made cores of a military base.
Moving carefully his necklace feeling like it had grown much heavier he went to the bulk rooms. He almost had a heart attack at what he saw. The immense warehouse had an office, on the wall of that office and behind where a clerk would sit were storage devices. Like his necklace.
He had been somewhat wondering about the lack of cargo transport capacity. None of the entrances he saw would accommodate what he considered large scale loading and unloading. Only the areas in front of the warehouse would do that and now he knew why. Put everything in a spatial device to move it around, leave enough room for people to use pallet-jacks or forklifts when needed in the corridors, especially in the warehouse but get everything in here with spatial items. It would be low key, no one would see the stockpile.
Alex yoinked those without a second thought placing them first in a special box nearby one that allowed you to stack spatial spaces inside others. Then moved and began clearing out the rest of the facility. He was carefully not thinking about the amount of inventory management and updating he would have to do to his supply list. No, no he wasn’t not going to jinx this heavenly offering. Not until he was somewhere else far away.
Each of the warehouses had the same, sad empty look after he finished. Before he left, he felt compelled to give the area a short bow and a heartfelt thanks. He directed at the spirits of those who made this place.
Moving back up to the armory he stopped and slept.
The next morning, he checked all the entrances before recovering his traps/alarms. Then he thought about how best to gain entry. The armory was a solid square in the ten block area. Surrounded by corridors. The middle was the access part, a wide corridor down the center with separate areas for each armory, where anyone going to acquire or turn in gear would gather. Long metal tables before each window and a clear path between each side so you can get where you’re going. The outside had armorer access, places to get in for the people working there.
On the one hand the processing area was probably the easiest, on the other it should be secure from that side most of the measures in place were there to prevent precisely what he was thinking. On the other hand getting through the doors for the staff might make it easier to move around, i.e. less doors to tear through. If the place was well designed it wouldn’t make that much difference was the conclusion he came to. Most security measures were in place to work with people, to delay and make those breaking in obvious. Not to stop them entirely, that was pretty much impossible to achieve.
“The creators of this place relied on three systems to prevent entry. Physical barriers, people keeping watch and enchantments. With no power these enchantments fade over time unless specifically designed otherwise. Those are mostly a waste of time for anything complex, passive mana won’t support it. Not really a problem until you start talking millennia, centuries without hands on maintenance even for the best… This place has no power and no enchantments running. No people even if someone had survived, they likely died of old age. The physical stuff is pretty mundane.”
“Looks like a basic armory, steel and bolts won’t stop Eins from getting in, only question is how do I want to do this.”
He decided to just go through the cages. Quick easy and he would likely only have to go through a few doors on each side. He doubted that the entire interior was divided into completely separate work areas, and that there was no common ground for the armorers to work in. The amount of redundant stations that would require was ridiculous and wasteful. The cages were also not meant to stop serious attempts to get in, they were there to prevent idiots from getting the jump on the guys on duty.
Eins got to work his claws cutting through the cage and peeling it back enough to get in. Alex went slow, no need to rush. First, he would clear out the cages and on the last one he would try to get deeper. He still tried to keep everything quiet, no need to tempt fate here.
The inside of the cages was surreal, so familiar. Neat rows of fighting equipment, packs and other miscellaneous gear that a soldier needed. The difference was he wasn’t used to seeing medieval weapons and armor. It made perfect sense, he just had some cognitive dissonance about it. For all his caution he didn’t find anything personally useful until the end of the hall on one side.
An entire area screamed golem station, it was on the second side he searched. Unfortunately, it was empty. No golems or cores, no frames sitting around. For a moment he felt a flash of disappointment. He actually started bashing his head against the wall, quietly of course. Then he was cursing himself out for being too greedy. This facility didn’t have one little thing, something that was totally in-line with reason. Considering how valuable and useful golems were, how long they took to build. How few people worked in the profession. Why would he expect premade golems to be sitting around in storage in a facility that was not currently being used. Maybe if this place was purely military or had been designed for golems. Not in a place like this.
One wall had three bands hanging on it, a concession for the facility. This place had everything it needed to build golems from the ground up, it had a place in the armory to work on them. Everything one might expect. Including golem storage bands. Items that could store and to a limited extent repair active golems, keep them charged, and do basic maintenance on the enchantments. He tentatively checked each one finding them empty, he expected as much but they were still another god send.
Currently Alex had no way to store an active golem he couldn’t just drop Eins in his necklace. He wasn’t an expert on the whole thing but apparently golems were alive enough to be rejected by the magical bullshit of a standard storage device. These had been designed for a golem, a way for them to be transported. A method for someone with a golem to keep them out of the way, nearby.
Alex hadn’t activated more golems due to this. He would have to adapt or leave them behind. It had seriously stalled his practice. Control issues aside, as he added to his retinue he attracted more attention from the local monsters. He decided that it was too wasteful to just willy-nilly make golems and inevitably lose them in fights or leave them behind.
He could store inactive ones but that didn’t help him, aside from having a spare. He gathered the bands, these models meant to go around the bicep. They were big flashy storage items, had to be to account for the function. Each one would repair, maintain, and charge dozens of golems. Mid-tier ones like these, he ‘felt’ twenty slots in each one. This gave him room to store sixty golems if he used all three.
Alex could in effect lose a golem in battle then immediately replace it with a spare, the bands linked with the golems stored within allowing recall.
In short, they like his necklace these were the most bullshit magical items he had come across. Even worse than the combination of survival spells he was using. It was, however, his bullshit, so he had no real problems with it.