Chương 592: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Fourteen

She was immediately immersed in a slew of problems, but she would just tackle them one-by-one as she could. Firstly, and least important for the moment, was the fact that she was now trapped in some kind of room with no other way out apart from the still trapped corridor that she had just teleported past. Secondly, she wasn't at all familiar with anything in the room or how any of the traps worked, so she was going to have difficulty disabling anything.

Last, though certainly not least, she had found herself in a massive room that contained many strange and bizarre devices that seemed to be producing some kind of dark gem that was then dropped through the floor. Beth meant that quite literally, as the gems were produced through some kind of long, strange process and then dropped through a square hole in the floor into some distant room below, though they were clearly being caught, as there was no sound of the gem hitting something or breaking.

She didn't move for a minute, first inspecting the surroundings carefully, and then making sure she didn't disturb anything as she watched the process of the gem being made for a moment. She was mostly concerned about tripping any additional security or traps, but a minute of inspection showed her a panel on the wall, one she used her Ideal to fly over to.

The panel was not as confusing as she had feared, with most of it in Universal Standard, and she was able to disable the traps in the hallway at the press of a button, Blood and Val showing up just a moment later.

"I wouldn't touch anything," she said as she continued to examine the panel, the other two moving around the room.

"What is this?" Val asked, though the question was more rhetorical than anything.

"Don't know. It's making some weird gem and dropping it in the floor," Beth replied.

"Jaq would be interested in this device," Blood commented.

"We'll see if we can shut it down without trashing it," Beth said, pushing another button. The machines all paused, though they stayed powered up and frozen in the motion or action they had been performing when she hit that button.

"Well, you found the pause button," Val said, examining a gem that had just been completed without touching it.

"But not the shutoff," Beth muttered, examining the panel still.

"Do these gems…remind you of something?" Blood ask, standing by her girlfriend and sniffing the gem she was looking at.

"Vaguely. The energy within them is quite familiar," Val said, creating an array in the air with her enchanting skill and using it to take some measurements of the gem.

"Smells like the shades," Blood said then, causing Val to snap her fingers and Beth's head to whip around.

"That's what I was feeling," Beth said, leaving the panel for a moment to walk over to the gem.

"I knew I recognized the mana and magic signatures in the air. How strange. Do you think they're using these to power up the shades?"

"I think they're using them to make the shades," Val said, drawing frowns from the other two."'Make the shade'? What do you mean by that? They figured out a process to make monsters, whoever built this place originally?" Beth asked, her frown rather deep.

"Not unheard of," Val answered with a shrug.

"People have created monsters before, though a lot of places don't like people looking into that kind of research. We would have to examine the whole apparatus, and I mean all the stuff below the floor and in the other rooms around here, but I think that's what this is. They have some kind of process for creating a special kind of gem, which is what we're seeing here, and then they fuse that gem into beasts-please let it be beasts-and that creates the monsters."

"Production of monsters at an industrial scale," Beth mused.

"Whoever thought this one up was pretty fucked up, not gonna lie."

"Yeah, it's not great," Val agreed, now examining one of control panels.

"A lot of research like this is outright banned most places, and the CRA also takes a very dim view of this kind of thing. Fortunately for us, this looks like some ancient facility that was automated and then just left abandoned, so we shouldn't have to deal with going after whoever is operating and funding it. Sometimes, the Path takes over places like this and uses them for its purposes, and sometimes they just pop back up after a century or a millennia and start going haywire. I'm thinking it was the latter."

"I don't see any reason why the Path would have been involved, yeah," Beth said.

"Nothing here screams that this is any kind of test, it doesn't look like a dungeon and we got no dungeon warning, and there's no kind of special instance or notice or anything saying that this is some kind of trial or challenge zone. I think this really did either restart after being dormant, or someone restarted it, which would be worrying."

"Only if it weren't accidental, and we can look into that," Val said, pressing something. The machines all powered down together, the energy feeding them cut from the lines and sockets.

"There, that should do it for this part. Technically, we already have done what was needed, but we should still explore the rest of the place. We might also want to take everything here, including everything that's bolted into the floor and walls, without breaking it, so get your tools ready." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Let's see what's behind door number two first," Beth replied, walking over to the final part of the gem assembly line, though the whole process was much more magical than mechanical so calling it an assembly line felt strange. She peered down into the square opening in the floor, unsure what was down there, but it was more than wide enough for her to enter, and she had an advantage over others with being able to move her body with her Ideal, so she just hopped in.

She made sure to float down slowly, not wanting to slam into anything or run headlong into a trap at high speed, seeing that the whole distance was just a uniform shaft. She looked back up to see Blood and Val standing at the top and staring down at her, the kresnik's hands on her hips while Blood had her arms crossed under her substantial chest, both of them watching her with narrowed eyes.

She looked back down, wondering if this was going to take a long time, but found the shaft was only about fifty feet deep or so, though it didn't let out into a normal-sized room as the one she left had been. Instead, she found herself in something the size of a large warehouse, the walls hundreds of feet from her and the ground more than seventy feet below, making up quite a large area.

It needed to be large, she discovered, because they were doing the real work of monster production here, including housing and moving beasts around. Based on Val's earlier comments, the girl had been worried that the sick fucks that set up the process had used sapient beings to create the monsters, but it looked like that wasn't going to be a concern. Still, the place was vast and complex, and Beth focused back on what she was doing before she got lost in the details.

"You can jump down!" she called up to the other two, hovering above where a padded arm likely caught the gems falling from the room above. Val and Blood trusted Beth implicitly and, after exchanging an exasperated glance, leapt into the shaft, Blood first then Val. Beth was still hovering in their path and didn't even look up, absentmindedly catching Blood with her left arm and then Val with her right, holding the two girls by the waist as she examined how the gems were moved from where they were dropped.

"Simple," said Blood.

"But efficient," Val said, reaching behind Beth's head to scratch Blood's scalp while examining the room.

"They clearly have a system that they set up to use the least energy for their operations as possible. For another example, look over there, that small pen they have holding a half dozen beasts. There's no kind of complex system to get them out of that, just a gate with a ramp below it and fencing around the ramp. Gate opens, beast moves through, slide down the ramp to the first machine that starts the process of getting it ready, no conveyors or pulley or anything."

"I wouldn't get too starstruck by the efficiency of people who were transforming beasts into monsters," Beth said idly, looking at the place where the gems were taken.

"Just because this setup is well done and efficient doesn't mean it's all that grand. Let's see what we can find out from poking around a bit more." Beth floated over to a small free space on the floor and set the other two down, shaking her head at being the shortest one in their little group, even if it was only by a couple inches to Blood.

The three started poking through the machines and arrays, Beth finding little that made much sense to her, but Val was making all the appropriate 'oohs' and 'ahhs' as she examined everything, so it must have been quite interesting. Blood mostly made sure the beasts weren't going to break out and go on a rampage while also checking for any traps or other hidden dangers.

Beth hadn't looked at the wolf's skills in some time, not something she was all that bothered by or interested in, and she found that Blood did have a basic skill for finding traps called, quite drolly, Detect Trap. It wasn't anything fancy, Beth seeing it was tier one when she examined the description, but it clearly helped her find the hidden dangers in a place like this.

Finding a few skills like that, one that was an upgraded version of it, was something else she should look into for the group when they were done with this initial batch of missions. Beth searched around for a storage area or storage containers, but her luck was pretty bad. Based on the layout of the room and its functions, it looked like the people who built the place didn't store any of the dark gems that were in the process.

As soon as one of the gems was generated, it was dropped into this room and consumed, being immediately used in the process to create a new monster. Based on the speed she had observed the gems being created, she was assuming this one room was responsible for the entire problem, if it could make a monster in the time span it took to create another gem, but Beth wasn't a hundred percent sure.

She was hoping Val could decipher enough of what was going on to determine if there were any more production facilities apart from this one, though she would explore more of the ruin either way; she hadn't been satisfied with the lack of loot in such an old and complex place.

She was sure there had to be some kind of treasury or something still here; the machines for the monster creation were interesting, and she was sure they could even get some money for them, though trying to sell such tech might be a big no-no, but she wanted to find a forgotten stack of coins or chests filled with mana crystal or something.

Val's inspection of the equipment didn't take as long as Beth had first assumed, the kresnik done in fifteen minutes and assuring them that she had done all the analyzing she could without further tools and assistance. More of the team being here would have helped, in terms of having Kris, Neph, and Andrea to assist with deciphering what was happening, but she had a basic idea of the system from her investigation.

She did, in fact, confirm that this should be the only facility making the monsters, meaning they had effectively already solved the issue just by turning off the dark gem production line upstairs, though she wasn't happy with just that. This was one area where Beth could help, as the installation of machines like that wasn't terribly complex, though she wasn't a hundred percent sure of how to handle all the interconnects between the various machines.

Still, with Val's help, she was able to start taking apart everything in the room, packing it all away in one of her now many storage spaces as they took everything, even the things bolted down. She then grabbed hold of Val and flew up the shaft to the dark gem with the girl, repeating the process of breaking everything down, storing all of it in the reliquary so the Empyreans could give it a look as the group did other things.

Blood, meanwhile, had taken care of the beasts; the facility had apparently used the runoff from a dungeon to have a never-ending supply of beasts, which might prove a problem going down the line. If they shut the place down, which they had effectively already done, then that dungeon wasn't going to be used for anything anymore. It would be a tricky situation, as the mana would build up and the place might overrun, but it was underground and hard to access.

The dungeon overrunning underground might, therefore, be a problem, and it might not, just depending on how strong the beasts were and what kind they were. A lot of times, underground dungeons weren't maintained well because any overrun wouldn't matter; the surrounding beasts were stronger than the dungeon residents and wouldn't take kindly to a horde of dungeon beasts invading their territory.

The opposite was where problems started, when the dungeon beasts were very strong and even the terrors that lurked underground couldn't handle them, leading to a serious situation that the CRA would likely need to step in to get handled. Beth was less concerned with the dungeon itself, even with an overrun possibility now distinct, than she was with making sure they had cleaned up every last monster.

The dungeon leading to the start of a beast tide wasn't ideal, but it could be ameliorated in several different ways. The dungeon leading to a beast tide while a monster was still in the immediate area, however, was a whole different ballgame and could quickly spiral out of control into something where their team, or somebody stronger, might be called in again to fix it.

They would have to be very careful here, as they could not leave the problem alone and just jet off without fixing it; leaving a festering mess because it wasn't necessarily directly related to their mission would not be viewed favorably by the CRA, and it certainly wouldn't be them called back in to fix not. Not for merits or credit, at the very least.