Paladin 4: Chapter 45 (Patreon)

Darren flew over the hazardous wilderness outside of Angelless, eyes to the ground as he tracked the moving hunk of iron the Omniscient Codex had called a train. The hulking behemoth of a device rolled along on tracks made of the same steel it ferried back and forth from the mines to the city where they processed it.

It was an impressive invention, to say the least. Darren suspected Angelless could move even more iron ore than Cassandra’s merchant fleet, though they were limited to this one route where they had tracks built.

The wilderness outside of Angelless was supposed to be rather dangerous. Darren was surprised to hear that, since outside of the Sacred Seas, there were no demons. But apparently, there were plenty of monsters, and anyone straying too far from the defenses of the city without the means to defend themselves was risking their life.

The whole reason Angelless needed so much steel was to export it to places like the Sacred Seas, which was where most of their food was grown since their tiny valley could never support their city’s population on its own. That was why the Omniscient Codex was so keen to restore this mine to full production capacity. He had little concept of how trains worked or what a nuclear power plant was, but he could see the value of having something to trade for food. And Angelless’ steel was good no matter what peculiar wizardry they used to make it.

He monitored the tracks below, keeping watch from overhead. Melancholy was sitting in the train with Ashe beside it, keeping lookout. He’d tried to ride with them, but the constant rattling combined with the feeling of moving forward without actually moving made his stomach turn a little. The way sitting inside a metal box narrowed his view and also irked him. While it might be fine transport for a lump of ore, he preferred flying.

The trees outside of Angelless were taller and wider than any he’d encountered within the Sacred Seas, though comparable to those in the wilds to the west of Limedeep. The forest floor was covered with thick, tangled underbrush, and more than once, he’d encountered some wild specimen that he could have mistaken for a peculiar demon.

A few giant mutated insects scurried across the tracks, though none appeared that the massive steel wheels couldn’t smash to paste as they rolled past. A slowly wafting cloud of mist seemed suspiciously dense for such a sunny day, but they blew past without causing trouble.

Eventually, Darren, Ashe, and the train arrived at the mine. It was a sprawling complex of metal structures that seemed to go n forever. Darren marveled at the amazing sight of this science wizardry at work. There was machinery here every bit as miraculous as the train.

He saw a combination of large mechanical arms combined with lifts, belts, moving platforms, and many other devices that Darren had no words for. Many of them were working even now, though there were no humans in sight. At first, Darren mistook them for metallic lifeforms like iron horses, but Ashe soon explained.

“They’re like the train. They have an engine inside of them that lets them consume energy to run,” Ashe explained.

“Like a magic tractor.” Darren nodded sagely.

“Well, like a regular tractor,” Ashe laughed. “But yes. It’s the same idea as the one Asuriel and I took that little ride on.”

“We need to investigate,” Darren said. “Shall we split up?”

Ashe grimaced. “Let’s not. Remember how that ended last time?”

Darren remembered and changed his mind. “You’re right. Let’s stick together.”

They investigated the nearby machinery. Ashe looked everything over with a careful eye while Darren used both Absolute Analysis and Oracle Sight in combination to find anything that stood out.

“Anything strange?” Darren asked Ashe when she stopped over a rock that was a bit grayer than all the rest. He was pretty sure it was just an ordinary rock, but Ashe seemed intrigued by it.

“Hmm... I think there is something off here. This rock, it’s too... rock-like,” Ashe said.

Darren gave her a blank stare.

“I’m serious!” Ashe replied. “Look at how... gray and rocky it is.”

Darren continued to stare blankly.

“Oh, fine. This investigation work is hard stuff, you know.”

Darren gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Sometimes, all you have to do is smash some enemies. Other times, you must pour over tiny details.”

Ashe sighed. “Yeah. I guess we’re going to have to--“

One of the giant digging robots tried to take Ashe’s head off with a swing of its big metal arm. It failed when Darren caught the incoming half-ton block of steel in his hand.

“--Smash some enemies.” Darren finished on Ashe’s behalf. He wore a grin that spread from cheek to cheek. He definitely found this a lot more straightforward than looking for clues.

The other machines turned on them, and Darren drew Inevitability. He’d cut right through whatever strange wizardry animated these mechanical monstrosities.

Darren drew his sword and charged against the first mining machine launching toward them. With a flick of his wrist, he sliced through the metal arm and sent it clanging to the ground. The next machine was on top of him in a heartbeat, with a giant drill already spinning and heading for his heart. Darren dodged the attack easily and cleaved through the drill as well.

Inevitability cut through the metal easily, though not as easily as he thought it would have. Apparently, there was a lot of regular metal in these things and only a little magic.

He deftly parried several more attacks while Ashe took to the air. Melancholy hovered over her shoulder, shooting blasts of bright white energy from its tip.

With a fierce battle cry, Darren charged the rest of the machines, slaying every one of them before they could turn them and attack them as well.

“You look happy,” Ashe said as Darren dispatched the last machine.

“I’m feeling much better.”

It was good to know that despite all this machinery and wizardry, his skills as a paladin and the strength of his sword arm still reigned supreme.

***

Darren and Ashe continued their investigation in the way they knew best. They waited for things for things to attack them, and then they went in whatever direction those things were coming from.

It was a strategy that had never failed him before. Following the most aggressive mining robots, they soon traveled through a set of mining tunnels heading downward.

“It’s dark in here.” Ashe clung to Darren’s side.

He waved a hand and created a Divine Energy Construct, which took form over their heads and shone down bright golden light that illuminated their surroundings.

“Better?” Darren asked.

Ashe nuzzled into the crook of Darren’s arm. “Now there are shadows, too.”

I couldn't believe that Ashe had once been a powerful Prime Sin, one of the strongest kinds of demons there was. And it was harder to believe she was slowly recovering her power as a Prime Saint, one of the most powerful kinds of seraphim there was. Right now, she looked like a nervous girl in need of help.

Darren’s instincts wrapped her up in his free hand before he even thought to remind her she could blast apart the shadows and everything in them with one wave of her hand. Now that he thought of it, he was pretty sure she’d just tricked him into carrying her.

The tunnel went down and down, and they encountered the occasional robot along the way. They were short and squat things, about twice as tall as a human and three times as wide. They rolled along on tracks just like miniature trains carrying small cartloads of ore to the surface where the larger machines would gather it.

When they finally reached the end of a tunnel, they found a larger kind of robot wielding a drill, pickaxe, and shovel in each of its mechanical arms. They whirled on Darren and Ashe the moment they appeared, but defeating them was easy enough. Ashe took to sitting on Darren’s shoulder, thinking through this puzzle.

While exploring, they found several armor-clad bodies. Those were probably the other expedition teams the Omniscent Codex sent to investigate this problem. Darren took them into his Inventory so he could return them to Angelless.

They also found a few peculiarly colored golden keys, most tucked into the pockets of various dead adventuring parties. At first, he and Ashe thought the keys were something the adventurers had brought with them, but when other parties had identical keys, he suspected there was more to this.

He grew even more certain of that theory when he killed one of the mining robots, and a key spilled out of its broken metal chassis. it was like whoever built these machines wanted him to kill them to get these keys. It was a disconcerting thought.

Ashe took to sitting on Darren’s shoulder with a pad of paper and a pencil in her hand. Between the two, she drew out a map of every tunnel they walked through, quickly making sense of the maze.

“That was the last unexplored tunnel. It looks like there aren’t any clues here,” Ashe said as she scribbled something down.

“Then let’s return to the surface,” Darren replied.

But when they came to the tunnel they entered through, they found only a large stretch of rocky wall. There was no way back to the surface.

“The damn tricky robots filled in the hole behind us!” Ashe glowered at the wall of rock.

“Seems so,” Darren replied. “But that’s new.”

A lot of the dirt that had gone into the wall had come from the sides of the tunnel. By removing it, the machines had revealed what lay beneath it, previously concealed by the earth.

A large doorway stood off to one side of the tunnel, brightly colored and with three huge keyholes in the center.

“I think we were supposed to collect those keys until we had enough to open this door!” Ashe said. “Do we have a blue, a red, and a green one?”

Darren pulled Inevitability and hacked a Darren-size hole in the door. He didn’t enjoy following the directions of mysterious shadowy entities.

“I brought a universal key,” Darren replied.

They walked through the shredded door together and found the other side contained a facility much cleaner than the network of mines they had been exploring.

The air was sterile, and the walls a pristine white. They stood in stark contrast to the dingy rock and packed earth tunnels they’d been traveling through just moments before.

More than that, there was a distinct hum in the air. It was like the rattling of the train’s engine but far higher pitched. Darren wasn’t sure ordinary humans would have been able to hear it at all.

“Greetings, adventurers!” An excited female voice boomed through the room. Darren whirled, certain he’d sensed no one approach. Eventually, he traced the voice to a small black box on the wall.

The Omniscent Codex said that the part that had gone rogue was a subsystem of itself. Perhaps that was what was speaking to them.

“You’re the first to make it through my maze! Congratulations! Although, I should note you were supposed to use the keys you found to open the door, not just cut it down. But that’s okay! Ingenuity should be rewarded as well.” The voice sounded far more bubbly than the Omniscient Codex. It was hard to believe they were the same type of being.

“The Omniscient Codex sent us,” Darren said, hoping for an explanation.

“Oh, that crotchety old program?” The voice turned dour, and Darren heard a distinct muffled harrumph. “Yeah, I figured. Let me guess, everyone wants to shut me down, right? Well, tough! If they want to turn me off, they first have to complete my dungeon! Beat my floors and get my core! Now, doesn’t that sound like more fun?”

“Dungeon?” Darren asked.

“An epic quest for brave adventures such as yourselves to test their mettle against foes and traps alike! Fight your way through my minions, and great rewards await you! But be warned, the deeper you go, the greater the danger becomes!” the voice said. “Stand strong against all challengers and go as deep as you can. But be warned, if you get too greedy, you may lose your life! I have seen no one respawn yet, so it probably takes a while!”

“Respawn?” Ashe frowned. “I think you’re confused.”

“I, the Dungeon Queen, wish you the best of luck on your adventures! May we meet again in my core room!” The Dungeon Queen declared. She went silent, and then a moment later, the doors burst open to reveal dozens of robots.

These looked like they had once been mining machines, like those outside, but someone had rebuilt and repurposed them. Instead of being bulky machinery built for labor, these had sleeker, faster designs. Instead of drills and shovels, they had axes, swords, and shields on their arms. Several were even painted a bright green color with abdominal muscles crudely drawn on the flat plates of their middle section.

The mining robots had no heads, but these had a crudely carved humanoid faces on top painted a snarling green visage that looked somewhat human but was just different enough to seem feral.

“I hope you came ready to face an orcish horde!” The Dungeon Queen said.

“Those are most definitely not orcs,” Ashe said.

The Dungeon Queen made a quiet harrumph. “Get her first, my orcs!”

The first robot swung a steel axe arm at Darren, but he easily sidestepped it and cut the axe arm through the middle, turning it into a regular axe. He caught the axe before it fell, spinning and throwing it through the head of another robot while turning with Inevitability and cutting the rest of the robot he was facing in half with his sword.

Inevitability slew the first robot orc, but all his thrown axe did was knock the head off the second orc. It turned out the heads were strictly for decoration.

“Body shots,” Darren said. Ashe nodded and fired a beam of white light at the nearest orc robot, cutting right through the chest of the first before her and into the one behind it.

Soon, every one of the robot orcs was nothing but a pile of scrap metal.

“Well, I think it’s safe to say we know where the extra metal and energy the Omniscient Codex is looking for has been going.” Ashe pointed to the metal scrap on the floor.

“Seems so,” Darren replied.

You two are way too strong for the early floors of my dungeon. “Okay, you can skip the first five floors.”

There was a loud clicking sound, and a door nearby opened up. It revealed a stairway leading straight down.

Darren and Ashe looked at one another, shrugged, and followed it. Behind them, they heard the Dungeon Queen giggling with excitement.

<Author's Note>

Bonus chapter, as promised!