Speak of the devil.
Petra turned her head just enough to glance over her shoulder, looking towards the mountain path opposite to hers. Through the thin fog, a sizable group emerged from the lower trail, their figures sharpening as they approached.
Petra stood there quietly, watching them approach.
Then she saw him, Arthur Goodwin, that four-eyed, er… three-eyed, little bitch. The southern hero, oh boy, what a good 'Southern Hero' he was!
Petra couldn't explain her disdain for this guy, she just didn't like him.
The feeling was mutual.
Even if what happened in Imai didn't happen, Petra still felt as if she would have found a reason not to like this guy...
Anyways…
He walked in the front, his brown coat flapping in the wind, while his strange goggles shielded his eyes. Behind him followed a team of nearly forty people.
The moment Arthur spotted Petra, he froze in his tracks.
"—You've got to be kidding me." He muttered. "No, wait…"
It dawned on him instantly. Petra was probably here for the same reason he was. Even if she wasn't before… she definitely was after seeing him now.
'Damn it!' He cursed under his breath.
Because he couldn't 'see' Petra, he completely forgot that he had to be careful with his movements. No one understood better than Arthur how deceitful this little wolf in sheep's clothing was.
Petra tilted her head, expressionlessly looking at him. She stood on a high rock, standing above Arthur and his group, making it easy to look down on him.
Arthur cursed under his breath. "Why are you always where you shouldn't be?"
Silence.
He crossed his arms. "Following me again?"
Silence.
Arthur's eye twitched. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? Damn girl."
Still nothing…
A tall woman leaned towards him and asked in a whisper, "Uh, sir… is she…?" Arthur gritted his teeth and barked, "No, she's not with us!"
That wasn't what she was going to ask.
Whispers spread through the team as the awkward one-way conversation continued.
"Do you even understand what this place is? It isn't a playground!"
"…"
Petra blinked once, one eye deliberately slower than the other, exaggerating the action just enough to give herself a lazy eye. She ignored Arthur, completely disregarding the future fated fool, which sent his blood pressure skyrocketing.
Arthur's body shook so hard that the others almost began to worry.
Was he… ok?
Petra shifted her gaze past Arthur, and towards the broken gate in the distance.
Arthur's eye twitched even harder. He inhaled sharply, forcing a strained smile. "Fine, ignore me. Sure, sure, sure, very mature!" He heard a mumble from behind, "...Is she ignoring you, Captain? I don't think her race can speak the human language…"
Arthur's smile cracked. "No, she definitely can…!"
Behind him, he could feel the strange looks multiplying.
Petra tilted her head the other way, clearly toying with him. She perched on her rock like a small bird, looking into the clouds, seemingly oblivious to everything around her, yet Arthur could feel the smug smile hidden somewhere in those big, black eyes.
He hated nothing more than the fact that his ability didn't work on this little brat!
Arthur rubbed his temples, muttering about 'little devil' and 'someday he will'.
After this short interlude, he waved his hand towards the entrance. "Let's go. Stay close and don't touch anything, this place isn't safe."
He led the team towards the research facility.
The massive doors loomed before them, half-collapsed yet still sturdy enough to block the entrance. Arthur activated a rune carved into the frame. With a low groan, the damaged doors trembled, then slowly dragged themselves open across the metallic floor.
The team entered cautiously.
After a brief pause, Petra followed behind them.
* * *
When they entered, everything changed.
This place wasn't the crude work of mercenaries or miners. The interior was clean and exact, with the kind of precision that could only come from a true laboratory. The walls were etched with glowing runes that pulsed faintly with pale blue light, each one carved into the stone-like metal in geometric veins.
Even the lift beneath their feet was a piece of magitech engineering, an early platform powered by hydraulics and elemental energy.
After passing through the front gate, they stepped into a massive chamber that held the main elevator. The platform was enormous, close to twenty meters across, and easily large enough to hold a small army. Intricate runes wrapped around the rim in careful patterns, and in its center was a wide ring-like opening that revealed the dark shaft below, an actual hole, not just a window.
Arthur tapped something along the rim and the runes ignited.
Rumble!
The platform lurched down, the sound rolling out like thunder. Dust drifted from the ceiling, caught in the rising wind, then blew around like a small storm.
Petra stood near the railing, her cloak fluttering with the change in air pressure.
Arthur's team remained silent. They had all been recruited to 'explore the ruins', but none of them had expected to be marching straight through the local boss's research facility.
Whatever waited below, it didn't matter.
It was already too late to turn back.
* * *
The platform stopped with a sudden thud.
Dong!
They stepped out, leaving the artificial lift and into a massive hall carved directly into the mountain. Grey stone bricks lined the walls, refined and smooth, reinforced with faintly glowing runes that blended seamlessly into their surface. Tall pillars rose along the sides of the hall, supporting the high curve of the ceiling.
Between each column hung a black banner, each embroidered with the Black Lion's crest.
Down here, the air was completely still.
Only their footsteps broke the silence of this castle-like hall.
Petra lingered near the back, scanning every detail as she skipped. The pillars, lights, and even the cracks in the floor. She brushed her hand against one of the columns and felt a faint vibration, clearly indicating that the runes were still active.
Arthur gestured for them to move forward.
The facility's built-in lighting flickered unreliably overhead, casting uneven shadows.
He led the group through the entry hall, holding a lantern-like artifact. Its warm light cut through the dust and illuminated shallow runic channels carved into the stone framework on the floor.
At the far end of the hall stood a massive gate forged from magic steel and something else.
The door was sealed with an elaborate matrix of spell circles and chain runes, a kind of lock that hadn't been used for decades in the 'modern' world. Arthur studied the pattern, his lone eye flickering constantly with a golden light.
There was a pause…
Then, a moment later, he raised his hand and traced a sequence across its surface.
-
Click.
Click.
Click.
-
Each rune dimmed, the light fading one by one.
A deep rumble vibrated beneath their feet as the door split apart and retracted into the walls. A dull glow spilled out from the chamber beyond as a desolate wind spilled out.
Arthur stepped aside.
Petra poked her head out from behind some random dude, watching the shifting metal with a quiet fascination. The way the plates folded, the joints slid, and the concealed gears moved in sync, it was mesmerizing. If she didn't know better, she would suspect that it was a mechanical creature pretending to be a door.
Mm… Levy could probably do that, right?
She wondered why this design had fallen out of favour.
Then she suddenly remembered the anti-magic wave in Imai, and how it had cut off the spiritual energy in an instant. A door powered only by runic channels would be useless against that kind of thing.
That probably contributed to this 'old lock' being replaced.
Perhaps she would test it someday.
They entered the laboratory's main hall.
The chamber was enormous, appearing as a cylindrical room nearly one hundred and fifty meters across, with three layers of walkways hugging the outer wall. In the center of the room was a towering pillar, hollow and filled with floors, with dozens of doors branching out, leading to the many other rooms in the upper part of the facility.
The faint hum of machinery echoed throughout the room.
Petra approached the upper walkway's railing and looked down.
The bottom of this room was swallowed by darkness. Without jumping down, the only way to descend down deeper was the smaller lift embedded inside the central pillar.
Her antennae twitched, and her eyes narrowed.
There was something far below.
Her eyes stared down into the darkness, but she couldn't see anything. Her avatar's enhanced sight couldn't pierce the depth of the darkness.
Arthur's voice drew her attention, snapping her out of her daze.
"Spread out," he ordered. "Search every hall and check the remaining defenses. Map what's still functional and mark what can't be taken."
The team split into smaller groups.
Arthur remained on the central platform, kneeling beside the runes that controlled the central lift. His golden eye pulsed gently, flickering in a rhythm that Petra recognized as his form of analysis.
She watched him for a moment, then got bored and wandered off.
* * *
Petra explored the facility…
-
Petra found herself swaggering through a long corridor lined with numbered doors. These were the living quarters for those who lived in the facility. She opened one of the rooms, and inside, Petra found a tidy bed, a half-filled cup of cold tea, and a pair of gloves abandoned on the floor.
Whoever lived here had left in a hurry.
A sealed black notebook sat on the desk.
Petra lazily snapped the seal and flipped through it. Runes, diagrams, and countless sketches of nervous systems and bone structures, all belonging to Beastmen. This research was focused on 'Enhancing Nerve Conductivity'.
Clearly, this room belonged to a researcher.
She frowned, closed the book, and slipped it into her backpack.
Then she stepped back into the hall.
Petra checked a few more rooms, occasionally passing members of Arthur's team as they searched.
After a while, she moved on…
* * *
Next, Petra entered a wide circular room.
The Observation Deck.
As for how an underground laboratory could have an observation deck… well, it turned out she had not gone as deep as she thought. The far wall was a single sheet of reinforced glass that peered out over the Western Region. The window cut horizontally through the side of Red Rise Mountain, giving a direct view of dark clouds, red grass, the black expanse, and a broken landscape illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning.
Petra pressed her hand against the glass.
Something felt off.
It wasn't danger exactly, no, it was more like she could sense the Western Region's remaining time thinning by the second. Months… weeks… days…
Petra wasn't sure.
What was this feeling? She didn't know, but she also had it during the first calamity.
Beside her stood a cracked brass telescope. She rose onto her tiptoes to look through it. A blur filled her vision at first, then it slowly sharpened. From here, she could see a large portion of the Western Region. She imagined that before the Calamity reshaped the landscape, one might have been able to see nearly half of it from this spot alone.
She watched for a few seconds, then stepped back.
"Mm," she murmured, turning away.
* * *
The next room was lined with shelves and scattered papers… this was the 'Record Room'.
The air smelled faintly of dust, wax, and magic ink. Papers and old pens were scattered across the tables, as if the people here had left in a hurry and never returned.
Petra released a faint wave of mental energy, letting it sweep across the shelves and tables as she scanned everything like a dog lapping up water. The way she greedily 'recorded' all this information would be considered very 'unrefined' within the Which Clan Culture. Unfortunately, Petra didn't know any of that yet…
To the side, several notes lay open on a desk.
Petra picked up a thin bundle of notes and read through it.
'Project Rebirth - Failure | Note: Results - tainted'
'Bloodline Rebuilding - Taboo Trade, Result: Successful'
'Antiform Construct – Type IV | Non-Elemental Element'
She turned the pages over one by one, then glanced at a sealed jar nearby, half-filled with a black substance that pulsed faintly with life.
If Elena were here, she would recognize it as the same 'thing' that was sealed beneath the High Elven Prison under the Green Wind Forest. It had been about a year.
Petra turned away.
Her attention had been drawn to something else.
"Mm?"
She crossed the room and approached a large table. A single tome rested at its center, the surrounding papers pushed to the side. Petra brushed her hand across the surface, and faint light spilled out from its pages. The ancient book read, 'Duskwood Garden | Sin of the Seventh Saint'…
"Duskwood…" she mumbled to herself.
She looked closer to find that the author's name had been violently scratched out. The texture of the paper, the scent of the ink, and even the style of the book's binding was far older than anything else in the room, telling Petra that it definitely didn't belong to the current era.
It wasn't written by the Black Lion, only used by them...
Petra tilted her head, suddenly thinking of something.
Then, after a pause, she smiled faintly. It was the kind of smile that would send a prophet into madness.
The tome crumbled to dust in her hand, as a storm of mental energy swirled around her palms, compressing the pages until nothing remained.
Her lips curled into a mischievous smile.
She could practically feel the 'thread' snap.
This book was a clue… one tied to the truth behind the Second Calamity. No, perhaps… it was the fated method to sentence the Mercenary Alliance to death.
This book shouldn't be meant for her…
Arthur, perhaps?
If fate wanted Arthur to find it, well, too bad... Petra didn't play by the rules.
Wasn't that how people viewed witches? She wondered what would happen when this little gear in the grand cogwork of fate was quietly removed.
She had no idea, but she wanted to find out.
Her antennae twitched, causing her to turn her head.
Someone was approaching from the corridor.
That was… a youth, a member of Arthur's team.
Right on time, no, perhaps a few seconds too late.
Petra just smiled at him and walked away, leaving the young man feeling inexplicably empty.
* * *
Time passed.
After Petra kicked what must have been the twentieth pebble into the bottomless pit of the central room, Arthur finally finished repairing the main elevator and called everyone back.