Chapter 1911: Chapter 1911

He circled the mansion, scrutinizing the yard and the state of the building. Once satisfied that all was clear, he led his cat through a break in the fence and into the grounds. The courtyard had long since lost its former splendor; now, only the faint traces of a few flowerbeds remained.

Jenkins and his cat made their way to the rear of the mansion. After sweeping aside the fallen leaves with the toe of his shoe, he uncovered the faint, lingering marks of a ritual on the cleared ground.

The marks didn't seem particularly old, likely from within the last year. But they were so faded that discerning their original purpose was nearly impossible.

The main entrance to the mansion was barricaded from within by a lopsided cabinet and an upended dining table, forcing Jenkins to enter through a side window. Inside, the curtains were gone, and the furniture had almost entirely vanished, a windfall for some long-forgotten thief who had broken in years ago.

A thick layer of dust coated the floor. Each step Jenkins took sent motes swirling into the air, prompting both him and Chocolate to let out small, stifled coughs.

He forewent checking the upper floors, instead consulting the mansion's architectural diagram he’d acquired from the town hall. Just as indicated, he found the entrance to the basement hidden behind the main staircase.

The basement door was shut tight. Scuff marks and gouges showed that others had tried to force it open, but none had succeeded. Jenkins gave it a push, but the door only rattled loudly in its frame without budging. He concluded it would take something with the destructive power of a steam bomb to get through.

So, he used his [Door Key]. With his cat at his heels, he descended the stairs into the darkness below. The basement was so well-sealed that the air was noticeably thin, starved of oxygen.

Worried that his cat might suffer from the lack of air, Jenkins left him on the ground floor, instructing him to wait there. But as he stepped off the last stair into the basement, he found the cat had, of course, followed him down.

To his surprise, the first thing he saw in the basement was brewing equipment. For the better part of a century, the three great kingdoms had forbidden private distillation to ensure an adequate reserve of grain.

This equipment likely explained why the mansion's last owner had gone to such lengths to secure the basement door.

But this had nothing to do with his reason for being here. Jenkins bypassed the machinery, which lay silent in the gloom, and made his way to the southeast corner of the basement, following the directions he’d found in the church archives.

The fissure that once led deeper underground had long since been sealed by the Church. In the three hundred years that followed, nothing had emerged from below, and now, not a single trace of its existence remained.

There was nothing Jenkins could do about that, so he simply dropped a few seeds onto the floor. He willed them to grow, sending their roots burrowing deep into the earth to probe for any hollow space directly beneath the mansion.

While he waited, he and Chocolate searched the illicit brewery for any other clues, just in case, but their efforts yielded nothing. Fresh chapters posted on ɴovelfire.net

After nearly half an hour, he finally confirmed the location of the space below. To forge a path, Jenkins positioned himself directly above it and blasted a large hole in the floor with his White Bone Holy Sword.

Once he confirmed the new "path" led straight down, he and Chocolate leaped into the chasm.

The drop was staggering, roughly equivalent to leaping from the very tip of the lightning rod on his own roof down into the yard. After landing, he waited silently in the darkness for a moment. Once he was sure there would be no sudden ambush, he raised his miner's lamp and scanned his surroundings.

He couldn't help but let out a gasp of awe. The space beneath the mansion was not the ancient mine shaft he had anticipated, but a massive blacksmith's workshop. A great blast furnace stretched from the floor toward the ceiling high above, and he couldn't imagine how it vented its exhaust.

Workbenches of all shapes and sizes, carved from obsidian, were fused with the floor, as if they had been hewn directly from rock that had thrust up from the depths of the earth.

This was where the Orthodox Church had discovered the mechanical monster all those years ago. After defeating it, they had confiscated the creature's remains and taken most of the portable equipment back to Nolan to be sealed away.

All that remained now were piles of ore, stacks of timber, and massive workbenches whose purpose he couldn't guess. Fortunately, the dry, stagnant air had kept the wood from rotting.

Jenkins tossed a few logs into the great furnace. He didn't bother adding any coal before lighting them—all he needed was some illumination.

The instant the wood caught fire in the furnace, the flames seemed to flow like liquid, racing along a network of pipes extending from the furnace chamber. One by one, they ignited a series of small, recessed lamps along the walls. Inside each lamp was a sphere of compressed carbon powder encased in metal. Treated by some unknown process, the powder began to smolder upon contact with the spark, providing a slow, steady glow. Though dimmer than even the lowest setting of a gas lamp, the sheer number of fixtures provided ample illumination..

As the lamps flared to life in succession, the full scope of the underground workshop was revealed to Jenkins and his cat.

Man and cat surveyed their surroundings, stunned by the sheer size of the space—as vast as a football pitch—and the complexity of the stone forging equipment. As Jenkins ran a hand over one of the devices, even though he didn't understand its function, his [Mechanist] ability hummed with recognition, telling him this place was undeniably linked to metal casting and mechanical production.

His Eye of Reality swept across the workshop, detecting an unusual spiritual aura near the blast furnace. As he drew closer, he saw it came from a life-sized metal bust of a man. The figure's torso was bare, while the lower portion was intentionally fashioned to resemble rough, unhewn stone, likely an attempt to make the metal sculpture appear as if it were carved from rock.

The Church must have left it behind because, like the workbenches, the statue was fused directly to the floor. Jenkins reached out, touched the cool metal, and gave it a gentle tap.

A faint hum vibrated through his hand, and he saw the statue's complete internal structure flash before his eyes. He took a step back with his cat, watching as the statue's frozen face shifted, its features coalescing into a distinct expression. Its hands, which had hung limply at its sides, began to stir.

It spoke in the common tongue, its voice perfectly matching its chiseled appearance.

"I have been waiting a long time for you, Williams."

Hearing the statue utter Jenkins's family name, Chocolate let out a protective growl. Jenkins raised a hand to soothe his loyal companion.

He braced himself for a fight.

"I have been waiting a long time for you," the statue repeated.

"Yes. The foretold Redemptor. The legendary descendant of the priests of the World Tree. And... the fated calamity. I have awaited you for a long time. You are... a little late."