City of Fallen Souls: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 3) Jez Cajiao (best color ebook reader txt) 📖

“What?”

“You haven’t thought about all of your plan when I’ve been available to learn them, so I’ve got no clue what you’re going to do here,” she clarified, and I snorted.

“Sorry, Oracle,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. I sensed three ‘Mining’ class Golems down here, as well as a stockpile of Golem parts and a Genesis chamber. Makes sense, I suppose. The Empire would want the facilities to build the Golems outside of the Great Tower, after all, and you did say the cities were built first. So, the Genesis chamber is damaged, a rockfall has fucked it up, but we’ve got two active Servitors. One can stay to repair the Genesis chamber and start to build the Golems we need, while the other can come with us. First, though, we need them to repair the miners.”

“Why? If there’s a storeroom that’s down here already…” Oracle said, and I grinned at her.

“There is, and it’s full! More than that, though, Oracle, the Golems can mine up under the city somewhere for them to come out. I used the map function on the control center. It showed me tunnels around us; one is only a few feet away, and it leads to the surface. We get the miners to break through there, and we’ve got an escape that nobody knows about. Then we get the servitors to repair the breach, and the miners can head straight for the river. As long as the tunnels are above the water level at this end, there’s no issue. When they break through, they’ll just keep on going as the lower sections of the tunnel flood. Golems don’t need air, after all.”

“Right, but why bother?” she asked, confused.

“Because so far, nobody knows what happened upstairs!” I cut her off. “If they think the Golems vanished, then they’re going to go looking, but with no trace, they have to look everywhere. We have the Golems march up along the river and wait just out of sight. When everything kicks off tomorrow night, they just walk up out of the water and help us, nice and simple!”

“What about the loot from upstairs?” she asked and I grinned, gesturing to the first of the War Golems as it marched into the room and deposited its haul in a pile.

“They’re looting it all. They’re stronger and faster than we could be, and if something happens and someone sees them, it’s the Golems that are ‘difficult to control’ going mad and stripping the place. Nobody is going to associate it with either the legion, or the arena fights.”

“What do we do with it all when it’s down here?” she asked, and I grinned again.

“I borrowed as many Bags of Holding as I could from Mal before we left. We should be able to get most of it in them, and what we can’t, we just leave. The Golems will bring it, or if it’s crap, we’ll abandon it.”

“Okay, but what about the owner of the Emporium?”

“Well, that’s the one thing we can’t control, so I had a Golem prop a few of the display stands against the door. When he gets back, it’ll take him a while to get in,” I shrugged. “Best I could do on short notice, really.”

“Hmmm, okay, So what do we do now?” She began searching around the room, and I joined her. Three cylindrical objects sat in the middle of the large space. Each of the objects were covered in dust and debris, while the far end of the room had devolved into a mass of collapsed rubble. Four rooms led off the central chamber, with the stairs behind us the only apparent means of escape.

“I guess we see what’s in the rooms, loot what we can, and get that escape tunnel started,” I said, concentrating. It took a few seconds, but a wireframe overlay suddenly seemed to snap into existence over the room. I could see its original design outlined in blue, with red lines showing changes; notably, the nearby tunnel that led, I guessed, to the sewers.

“Okay…” I said pointing and dismissing the Fireball I’d been holding. “There, by that watermark…” I said, indicating a water ingress mark that snaked down one wall, then across to disappear down a partially collapsed tunnel before one of the miners. “That’s where the tunnel is, and it’s not far. I bet we don’t even need the miners to break through.”

I turned and looked the miners over, finding both Servitors hard at work on one. Its flickering, glowing insides caught my interest as their hands blurred. I moved closer, discovering upon closer inspection that the Servitors hands were…weird. They were made up of four fingers, spaced equally around a central pad, which seemed to give them terrific grip, but as I watched, I saw they weren’t actually as solid as I’d originally thought. The fingers split and sealed together into different patterns, shifting parts of the miner Golem around. One Servitor paused, moved to check over the second machine, and then the third, before it turned and glided to one of the doors set in the wall.

It grabbed the handle, opening it with an almighty screech of tearing metal, as the hinges had rusted into place. We watched as it disappeared inside, reappearing a few seconds later with handfuls of parts. It returned to the first Golem, adding in parts while assisting in repairing the Miners. Suddenly, a notification sprang up, and I blinked as I read it over.

Estimated time to repair Mining Golems fully: 27:16:42

“Nope!” I said concentrating on it, and a series of options sprang to life for me.

Golem Maintenance Facility Three Repair and Replace Options:

1)       Repair all systems on Mining Golems. estimated time to repair: 27:16:38

2)       Repair Golem Mining unit #1 & #3, using stored parts, stripping #2 for additional parts, estimate time to repair: 16:42:09.

3)       Repair Golem Mining Unit #1,