Chapter 2162: Chapter 2162
Hearing Jenkins explain once more, the woman nodded and, without another word, closed her eyes for a third time, vanishing on the spot.
Jenkins finally switched the cane from his left hand to his right, then single-handedly drove it deep into a crack between the stone bricks.
A vast torrent of spirit surged behind him, once again forming the phantom shape of the World Tree. A green halo expanded outward, sweeping across the entire space like a shockwave. Dust that had accumulated for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, billowed into the air. The spirit of life poured into the ground, causing the seeds Jenkins had scattered to grow rapidly into vines that erupted from the crevices.
The vines thickened and lengthened, steadily lifting Jenkins high into the air. But most of them simply grew with wild, unchecked abandon until they had submerged the entire great hall.
Jenkins controlled the vines beneath his feet to lift him into the beam of light descending from the ceiling. The light was warm; it was indeed sunlight. He looked down, watching the vines writhe and slither across the floor like tentacles, and watched as the woman frantically hacked at the plants.
Half an hour later, the woman, bound like a mummy, was raised to the same height as Jenkins. The vines ceased their growth.
Greenery now clung to the walls and covered every inch of the floor. The once-empty stone hall was filled with plants, which only made the place seem even more ancient and dilapidated.
The vines loosened around the woman’s face, freeing her head. She looked at the man standing in the beam of light, just a short distance away. He seemed to be glowing.
“I feel as if I won unfairly,” he admitted.
“No, you have truly won.”
The woman shook her head.
Jenkins leaned in to ask.
“Why should I be? I am already dead. Besides, everything and everyone I knew was taken from me with the coming of the end. Even if I had won, what would be the point? To know that a strong civilization still endures in the era after mine... that is enough for me.”
From his manner of speech and his attire, she could discern the level of civilization in the time Jenkins came from.
“Very well... Do you have anything else to say?”
Jenkins didn’t act immediately. After all, she had answered a good number of his questions, so it was only right to offer her the same courtesy.
“I do have one question. Civilization was lost in our era. Did this affect yours?”
the woman in the vine-cocoon asked.
“It had an effect, but not a major one. As long as intelligent life exists, it will always have the chance to start from scratch.”
“That’s good to hear.”
The woman closed her eyes, and Jenkins summoned his sword. Though he had won this time, he felt a sense of unease in his heart.
“We’re all just pitiful souls living at the end of an epoch,”
he lamented internally.
Stepping out of the fiery red doorframe again, he found the flame he received was significantly more powerful than the first time. The first opponent, the man in full plate armor, had only briefly suppressed Jenkins with a crossbow. He hadn't been particularly strong himself. The woman just now, however, was a genuinely formidable warrior. If not for her lack of knowledge about him, Jenkins would never have won so decisively.
“The intensity is decent this time.”
The man before the forge maintained his posture, arms crossed over his chest. The glow of the fire was a little brighter, allowing Jenkins to make out more details of the man’s body and clothing.
“So, will you create a compass or continue the challenges?”
“If I create a compass, how much of the flame will it take? And how long?”
“It would require three-quarters of the current flame. As for the time, it would be but an instant.”
“And what if I wanted to use this compass instead?”
Jenkins took out the compass he had obtained in the small town, the one used for finding objects at close range, from his pack.
“Then it would only require half of the current flame. The time would still be an instant.”
Jenkins thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement. He handed the compass over and took two steps back. He watched as the flame once again flowed out from the furnace gate like a long rope, enveloping the compass before completely disappearing inside it.
The brightness of the flame in the furnace dropped sharply. Jenkins took the compass back from the man in the hunting gear. It was warm to the touch, and its spiritual aura was much stronger than before. Its appearance hadn't changed much, aside from a new ring of glowing, fiery red runes etched onto its metal casing.
“I’m actually quite curious. Since you’re the guardian of this forge, what is its purpose?”
“Does it need a purpose?”
“Of course, it does.”
The man in the hunting gear smiled.
“You’ve guessed correctly. This is no ordinary Mysterious Realm. It was constructed by a certain great being for a special purpose. If you can reignite the forge, I can tell you what that purpose is, free of charge.”
Jenkins remained noncommittal. He turned and aimed his newly acquired compass at the nearest doorframe. The needle began to spin, but not very quickly. He pointed it at the next doorframe, and this time, the needle spun much faster.
“So the value is determined by the speed of the needle...”
he mused. He spent some time testing it out. The door with the strongest challenge made the needle spin so fast that he could only see a blur. There were three such doorways, which meant there were three challenges of the highest difficulty.
“Just two of those will be enough to restore the forge to its original brilliance,”
the man in the black hunting gear advised from behind him. Jenkins lowered the compass. But instead of choosing any of the three, he walked towards a door where the needle had spun slightly slower.
Although time in the Mysterious Realm was limited, and he couldn't just repeatedly challenge weaker opponents to reach his goal, Jenkins felt it was necessary to probe the strength of the strongest contenders before facing them head-on.
He was deeply concerned that the power of a hidden Beast of Calamity was lurking behind one of those three doors.
While it was difficult to quantify the speed of the compass needle with the naked eye, Jenkins estimated that the door he had chosen was just a step below the three most difficult challenges.
Stepping past the fiery red doorframe, Jenkins’s foot landed in water. It wasn’t deep—it didn’t even cover the top of his foot—but it was a clear indication of a terrible environment.
The sky was a normal twilight color, and his shadow stretched long behind him on the street under the setting sun. He was in what appeared to be a town. There were signs of life all around, except now the townspeople’s corpses were piled high in the streets. Jenkins realized he hadn’t stepped in a puddle of water, but a pool of blood.
“What happened here?”
Since it was a town, he could identify the era from the architecture and the style of clothing. This was definitely the Thirteenth Epoch. While architectural styles could vary, the text on the signs was unmistakable.
He looked at the surrounding bodies. Every type of wound imaginable was visible on the numerous corpses, and some even bore the marks of animal bites. This didn’t look like the work of a single person. As Jenkins moved forward, an assortment of bizarre corpses appeared one after another: beasts, unidentifiable exotic species, humans, elves, lab-synthesized beastmen, vampires, dwarves, halflings, and so on. Jenkins even saw a few demon corpses piled on top of the remains of a gargoyle that was missing everything but its head.
A few more steps took him off the street and into the town’s central square. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ novel·fire·net
As he stepped into the square, the twilight sky abruptly grew bleak. The sunset clouds, stained with the traces of rain, vanished along with the sun. But even without the sun, the sky still held a horrifying, sickly yellow hue. The town suddenly became dilapidated, as if it had endured a long passage of time before abruptly freezing in place, just like the forest and the shelter he had encountered earlier.
The fountain that once stood in the center of the square, a statue of a child holding a water jug, was now just a circle of stones. The statue itself had vanished. The neatly paved stone ground of the square was covered in dirt and moss. It had been a long time since anyone had set foot here.
Standing under the sickly yellow sky was not a person, but a metal figure. It had a human form but possessed four arms and three heads. It was about the same size as Jenkins. Its four hands held a sword, a scimitar, a short staff, and a long spear, respectively, and its six eyes were six different types of magic eyes.
Drawing on the alchemical knowledge he had gained from the Carmel family’s inheritance, Jenkins recognized what stood before him. He had considered that his opponents might not all be human, but he never expected to face a man-made alchemical weapon .
“The creation of golems is a lost pinnacle of the alchemical arts. Even the Carmel family’s legacy didn’t preserve the complete manufacturing process. However, I believe Miss Bevanna mentioned that the Church of Creation and Machinery and the Church of Death and End still possess the methods to create such things. A golem certainly has no life force, but for a thing , if I can just find its energy core...”
Jenkins narrowed his eyes at his opponent. The location with the strongest spiritual aura would undoubtedly be the golem’s core, its equivalent of a heart.
But as he began to study his opponent more closely, the previously motionless golem seemed to activate. A spark of intelligence flickered in its six magic eyes.
The voice was extremely stiff, indicating it hadn’t been imbued with much intelligence.
“Praise the Great Wisdom, exterminate the Savior!”
As it spoke, the pair of eyes facing Jenkins began to gather different energies, then unleashed them all in an instant. Jenkins’s reaction was a fraction too slow. A beam of blue light grazed his right hand, and his entire arm went numb. Sensation only returned after at least two seconds.
He wasn't surprised by the golem's words. In fact, he would have been more confused if the Difference Engine hadn't tampered with the challenges inside the doorways.