Free Web NovelInside the hall, the traps continued to cycle. Flame jets incinerated those trying to climb the walls. And the floor periodically electrified them. Causing convulsions to anyone not killed by the traps or the lion golem yet.
Within three minutes, the screaming stopped. The only sound left was the whirring of the golem's internal gears as it returned to its pedestal. And the occasional hiss of its lubricated parts.
The lion-golem sat back down. Its blazing red eyes dimmed to a neutral blue glow. The iron grates retracted. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
Jack watched with a cold, detached expression. He had warned them. The [Eyes of Judgement] showed the karma of the dead ones... Most were murderers, thieves, and rapists. He felt no pity to them.
A few were actually neutral. It was unfortunate. But they had made their choices against his warning.
The crowd outside was silent. The survivors were pale. Many of them backing away from the entrance entirely. Even Scorpion looked a bit more upright. His casual stance was replaced by a wary crouch.
"My gosh!" Serene whispered. Covering her mouth.
Jack adjusted his coat and looked at his crew. "Everyone have their keys ready?" He asked.
The others immediately understood what he meant. The keys were the [Rockman's Authority Ring]. They inconspicuously checked theirs. Ensuring that they had the ring with them.
"Love! Coat all of us with illusion of invisibility." He instructed Reina.
"Yes, Dear." Reina said. Her voice was calm despite the carnage they had just witnessed.
Grey mist immediately covered her. Spreading out to cover the others in their team. Within the views of the other people in that place, Jack's group had disappeared into nothing.
Reina manipulated her illusion. Weaving exclusion to the crew members. Now, they could still see themselves and each other. Only outsiders would be affected by the illusion.
"Stay close. Walk, don't run. Don't make too much noise." Jack ordered the rest of the crew.
He stepped over the threshold into the hall. His boots clicked on the stone. He walked past the first mangled body. A man whose hand was still trying to reach the exit.
As Jack's group entered the hall, the wall sensors clicked. Jack felt a tingle of energy wash over him. The scanning field of the ruin. Invisible illusion meant nothing for the runic mechanism. However the ring he kept in his pocket vibrated.
The slits on the walls remained closed. The floor tiles stayed solid. The identification contained in the rings was accepted by the mechanism. They were registered as authorized residents.
They walked past the lion-golem. The massive mechanical beast tilted its head. Its gears were clicking as it tracked their movement. Its blue eyes flared for a second. Analyzing the signatures of the [Rockmen Authority Rings]. Then, with a low hiss of hydraulic fluid, it lowered its head back onto its paws. Continuing its watch.
"It... it's just letting us pass." Chloe whispered. Her voice was trembling as she walked past the golem's massive, blood-stained claws.
"It recognizes the identification keys." Jack said. "To the golem, we are the owners of this place. Everyone else... they are invaders. Targets to be eliminated."
He looked back toward the entrance. A few of the more daring mercenaries tried to use similar visual illusion to sneak in behind them.
One man, a cultist from the Circles of Wealth, had completely digested a potion of invisibility. He stepped onto a tile inside the hall. freewebnσvel.cѳm
The tile turned red. A spear of solid stone shot up from the floor. Impaling the man through the chest and lifting him five feet into the air. He coughed blood once and went limp.
The spear then retracted. Dropping the body like a piece of trash. His invisibility disappeared.
The message was clear. Invisibility wasn't the answer here. Jack's team didn't survive in the hall because of their invisibility. They possessed different means to solve the traps and the security system in there.
"Let's keep moving." Jack said in flat voice. "Rune, lead the way."
He glanced at Rune, who pulsed with a soft, reassuring golden glow. She moved ahead. Showing the way to the team. She had scouted the place with Jack last night. She knew where they needed to go.
Their immediate destination was the forge. A location Jack had pinpointed as one of the most important sites during his spectral reconnaissance.
They navigated the echoing passages with a practiced efficiency born of their shared experience in the dangerous expeditions.
After what felt like a hundred turns through identical stone corridors, they arrived. The forge chamber was a massive industrial hall. Furnaces the size of houses sat in a row. Ready to be used. Great hammers hung from the ceiling on heavy chains.
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What attracted Jack to the place wasn't them though. Instead, he was more concerned with the piles of materials placed there. The precious raw ore was piled in a heap like common worthless junks. They were shimmering with exotic hues... veins of viridian, streaks of cerulean, chunks of obsidian black.
Next to them... ingots were meticulously stacked. Gleaming in the ambient light. Some had already displayed intricate runic patterns that pulsed with a faint, contained energy.
"These are star iron, mystic copper, crimson-stained gold, and moonlight silver..." Jack listed the materials. "These are incredibly rare. Each ingot here alone is a treasure people would die for. Adding the raw ore... it's beyond calculation."
Reina stepped forward. Dropping down her [Spatial Backpack]. "We should start moving them then, Dear. Quickly!"
Her tone was urgent but controlled. They knew that while the rings protected them from the golem, there might be other threats waiting for them. No treasure hunt would go smoothly from start to end.
Jack nodded. "Don, Bell, Ned, Moby, Leon, Argust... Focus on the raw ores. Prioritize the larger chunks. Mirella, Reina, Serene, Autumn... Focus on the ingots. Chloe, Aella, Baroness... Keep watch. Barnaby... moved the collected bags to the Mirror Mansion with me."
Each of the crew members had [Spatial Backpack] and [Spatial Belt]. Jack provided them those useful equipment. With the great number of [Spatial Ambers] he had, creating those two objects were not that difficult.
The assigned crew immediately worked. Their [Spatial Backpacks] were swiftly deployed. The boys hefted the massive chunks of gleaming ore and put it inside the backpacks with surprising ease. The girls did the same with the ingots.
Once the backpacks were full, Jack and Barnaby transported it quickly to Jack's Mirror Mansion. Utilizing the small hand-mirror Jack carried with him.
The two poured the content of the bags inside the basement vault of the mansion. And then, they carried the emptied-out backpacks out of the realm. Ready to be used for transporting materials once more.
The rhythmic sound of heavy ore being dropped into bags, the soft clang of ingots placed in the backpack... they became the only sounds in the vast forge chamber.
Within less than an hour, the forge was noticeably emptier. Piles had shrunk to mere scattered pebbles. The sheer quantity of wealth they had expropriated was staggering.
"That's enough for now." Jack declared. Even with the aid of spatial container, the physical act of hauling such dense materials was demanding. "We've got other things we needed to check in this place."
Rune glowed a vibrant green. Indicating that their next destination was more of non-material fortune rather than physical wealth. And she was not wrong.
"Let's move to the next destination. The library." Jack said. Leading the crew to one specific direction. The team, invigorated by their success, followed him without any hesitation.
The journey to the library was pretty quick. The way was actually full of deadly, passive traps. But with the [Rockmen Authority Rings], they were never a problem for the team.
Soon, they reached the place. The library was very different from the forge. It was also very different from normal human library.
The place wasn't a library of paper books. It was a room filled with thousands of thin, hexagonal metal plates. Ones that were stacked in floor-to-ceiling racks.
Jack had noticed that each plate was etched with micro-runes. Unlike the day before, the plates were no longer held in place by a magnetic locking system. They could be taken.
"These are the archives of the rockmen." Jack explained. Running his hand over one of the plates. It felt cool and smooth. The carvings were remarkably sharp. As if etched yesterday.
Baroness Artheim gently picked up a slate. Her eyes seemed to flash in sparkles as she traced the symbols. "These... these are incredible. These plates might be the records of their entire civilization. The culture, technology, history. This is invaluable."
Chloe added. "They might be more valuable than the metals in the long run, Captain. After all, knowledge is power."
Jack nodded. "Precisely. Especially for us, who have a way to translate this. Unfortunately, I have only one [Omnilinguistic Sense] spellcard."
"And I haven't finished using that to translate the book we've acquired from the auction. The Tome of Arcane Talisman Craft." Baroness Artheim sighed. "But still... we need to take these records, Captain."
Jack nodded again. He turned to the crew. "Same procedure. Prioritize the larger, more ornate plates first. Those likely contain foundational knowledge. Then work your way through the rest. Be careful not to damage them."
The team set to work again. This time, they did so with a quieter, more reverent intensity. The metal plates were carefully lifted and placed into the [Spatial Bags].
They focused on the central shelves first, where larger, more intricately carved plates of metal were kept. These were clearly master records. Perhaps the equivalent of a civilization's sacred texts or foundational scientific treatises.
Together, they meticulously transported them. With each plate disappearing into the Mirror Mansion, the heavy air of knowledge in the library seemed to grow lighter. A burden of ancient history had been carefully lifted and preserved.
They had been working for more than an hour. The shelves were rapidly emptied. But then, a deep, rumbling groan echoed through the rock.
It wasn't the sound of the ruin's mechanisms. It was something far more primal. A deep tremor that vibrated through the stone floor and up their legs.
CRACK!
A sound like thunder splitting solid rock vibrated in the air. The walls around them seemed to shiver. And a fine rain of pebbles began to fall from the ceiling.
"Earthquake!" Leon Drake yelled. His voice was tight with surprise.
"Spatial stability is compromised!" Reina cried. Her usually calm eyes darted around with genuine concern. "Something seriously bad is happening to this place!"
Jack's usually unshakeable demeanor wavered for a fraction of a second. This wasn't a natural tremor. This was something far more dangerous. Something that interacted directly with the ruin's inherent magical structure.
Rune spun frantically around Jack. Her glow had shifted to alarming crimson.
"We need to get out of here!" Jack commanded. His voice cut through the rumbling sound of earth. "Now! Before this whole place collapses or tears itself apart!"
He didn't need to explain further. And he didn't try to use the Mirror Mansion. His [Mythical Mirror World] was technically a spatial power. If the spatial stability of the ruin collapsed, it could malfunction. Potentially trapping them between dimensions or worse.
They moved with renewed urgency. The rhythmic sound of their boots on the stone floor was punctuated by the groaning of the ancient structure. The tremors intensified. Making their footing uncertain.
Small cracks spiderwebbed across the walls. And larger chunks of rock occasionally detached and crashed to the floor. Narrowly missing them.
The [Rockman Authority Rings] still protected them. Keeping the security systems in their side. But the integrity of the ruin itself was now the primary threat.
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