Chương 508: AF Chapter 507 – The Heart of the System, Part II

It was indeed an access door, polished but non-ornamented blue-gray metal that couldn't be seen from below the landing, with a partial veranda there basically pointing due east. We stopped in front of it, looking it over, and then the access panel at the side.

"Magitech or technomagic?" Briggs asked fatalistically, tapping a big gauntleted hand next to the panel, which looked like some kind of palm-reading access point. His eyes immediately went up to a glass orb recessed above the door, his pale green eyes narrowing as he saw a camera or scrying focus. There was a reason Vampire's Veil was on his Ring.

The inability to record and relay his image via non-magical means was a simple solution to a workaround for scrying Divs, and worked fine against mirror-using or image-transferring technology. Magic-enhanced tech or tech which ran on mana? I just eyed the flows through it.

"Both? That's definitely an alchemically-enhanced door, and there's mana-reinforcement all around it in the stone. What's the internals look like?" Kris was drumming her fingers slowly on the stone next to the door, and sent over the Visual File of the internal workings, while Briggs did the access panel.

"So, you just need to trigger that relay there to open it?" I pointed near the panel's side of the door.

"I can figure three ways to do that: Kris imitating a palm print, Kris using her hair to input an electrical pulse from the panel to the door on the other side of the sensor, or Kris inputting a charge right into the relay with her hair after carving out a slit in the stone."

"Magnetic tap here would repel the locking mechanism and inch the door open, easy to push after that," Briggs contributed, reaching up to the top of the door.

"There's wire access to a greater network. I think we're dealing with at least some form of electronics or computers. A signal from past the sensor indicates approved opening and won't set off an alarm?" Kris made the call. Briggs stepped back, and Kris calmly drove her black nails under the edge of the access panel.

Her dark hair flitted and inserted into the systems that lay behind it, winding through and over the mess to the proper position, where the coded system passed on the approval for the power to open the door. A second of concentration to figure out the wavelength of the electricity, and she sent a pulse down into the mechanism.

With a quiet whoosh, the door slid open, and without hesitation, Kris lunged in, Quaver instantly out, Elemental Gems swirling to Lightningphasing, and was thrusting at the Construct waiting there just out of her Tremblesense range as it turned to look at her.

"Magitech!" I offered to Briggs, as Quaver's Sound Bubble went up and he charged in after her. Her first thrust and cut sheered across its pyreal armor, flaring and flashing on its force-field, but a swirl of Ocean Dragon ki still got through, and both antennas of the robotic mek there shorted out, even as arms bearing tubular vents opened up at her. Lasers, or something similar enough that it didn't matter. Which was heat energy, not radiant energy, as there was no magical photonic essence in the attack.

This was technology running on magic, with suitable enhancements to make the scientifically impossible totally possible. Blasts of light chewed along the wall and cut against her side, centered on Briggs and into his chest as he came forward. Endure, in the same Lightningphasing Breaking and Sundering mode as Quaver, came down on its sensory box and reduced it to shattered, sparking crap with a crushing impact.

"Test acid!" I shouted, even as Quaver plunged in for its emitter array, fusing circuits and shorting out its force-field entirely. The two beams of light that stitched across my chest I absolutely ignored as just being condensed heat.

Briggs paused just long enough for purple Lightning incarnate to swirl into pulsing green Acid with a phantom pick point around Endure, and then he drove his Hammer down into the command center and formation of the tracked bot's metal central module just as it was starting to back up hurriedly from its position, spitting lasers at us frantically and combat prongs seething with voltage emerging from its mechanical limbs.

There was some hitting and spitting as the pyreal armor gave way under the blow, and the control center of the bot was reduced to slag. It jerked to a halt, hissing, and its limbs powered down and returned to their resting positions. We all tensed, looking around and waiting for an alarm to go off, Quaver's Sound Bubble turning off so we could hear it.

"I got nothing," Briggs informed us, his hairy ear flat against the wall. I just pointed at the bot.

"Two minutes. Learn how it is put together, and reduce it to scrap. Try all the Elements," I told them.

"I can't Assay to inform you, there's still sensory Wards keyed to Casting all around us." Both of them nodded, and therein followed a quick class on technogolem construction, deconstruction, material vulnerabilities, and weapon and defenses design, courtesy of Artificer and Alchemist Class Levels. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Lightning appeared to be the optimal Element against its command circuits and force-field, but the armor and materials was more vulnerable to acid if we wanted to actually hack things apart. Fire could damage some of the more sensitive internal circuits, while cold did almost nothing.

"That's a pyreal duralloy," Briggs pointed out, picking up a piece of the main body structure and looking at it with thumb-taps for emphasis, and tossing his other thumb over his shoulder at the door behind it.

"It should look familiar, although the door is mana-reinforced." Kris and I nodded agreement.

"A durasteel alloy, a key component of technological societies," Kris confirmed with authority.

"Pyreal makes it lighter without giving up too much protection against normal attacks. Against lasers or standard physical damage, this thing would be pretty nasty. DR/15 or something. It has electrical sinks against AoE lightning attacks, too, so acid is the only structural vulnerability, and acid attacks are repulsed by its force-field, right?"

"Very good," I complimented her.

"Yes, the force-field is doubly effective against acidic and physical force attacks. It's actually designed to let part of the basic energy attacks through, since they will mostly bounce on the armor." Argent Mastery of Force let me read its force-field of magitech as easily as those wrought by spells.

"I'm not reading any psionic components, in case you are interested." Kris toed a dark Rune-carved thing of metal.

"That looks like the main battery, running the bot on electricity held in an excited state within the atoms. I think that's a Lightning Cesium alloy battery, being used as a capacitor."

"Huh." Quite clever and efficient, really, once you had a source of electricity to charge it up.

"Bring it along. The alloy and process to make it should be something. What is holding it together?"

"There's an unfamiliar coating on it which seems absolutely non-conductive." Kris picked up the battery and studied it intently.

"I think this thing could run the robot for a year. There's a lot of juice in here."

"A perfectly non-conductive coating is better than a slake," I almost whistled.

"Okay, this place definitely has some tricks. They just didn't remember to ladle some Radiance into their lasers, so it's just heat damage."

"Pity them. Since they are definitely going to find this mess at some point and know we were here…" Briggs shrugged casually, looking up the corridor going into the mountain. Oh, yes, corridor. Very modernistic, recessed lighting that was soft and white, blending with the stone, which was also hued white. Leading slightly up and off into the mountain.

"They actually polarized the surface crystals of the stone," Kris murmured, tapping her toe on the floor.

"That's why everything is so white. Conductive flows moving through the crystals?" she theorized.

"They go in about an inch. It's more than just something topical for appearances."

"And that way you don't have to dig multiple holes." Briggs also tapped down his toe, and squinted.

"Kris, there's a flow pattern to the crystal formations. I can sort of see the broad strokes of it, but it looks like it's down below the cellular level."

"Mana conducting circuitry of some type, yes. If it is conducting power it's diffused over multiple fine conduits instead of any larger ones," Kris agreed, while I made shooing motions at the two of them. They both grinned and preceded me up the hallway, tremblesense out in full force as they didn't want to be surprised by anything hidden behind the walls, like unseen doors or security mechanisms.

"Minimizing system stress would be crucial in any system that is supposed to endure, as well as minimizing the amount of energy that needs to be expended to maintain and repair things that burn out. This crystal under us is definitely capable of carrying massively higher loads." I glanced around, superimposing the manafields I could see over Kris' and Briggs' scrolling material assessments.

"It is definitely mixing and swirling the mana actively, making sure it doesn't divide up along any Elemental lines or anything, meaning they only need one type of harmonic conductor: arcane energy."

"Decent planners and builders, then," Briggs nodded, looking at the floor.

"This is an old floor, but the wear is extremely mild. It does not get a lot of traffic."

"Either low numbers or low use, possibly both," Kris confirmed.

"But just the routine crystalline mergers and bleed into substances indicates this thing is at least forty thousand years old."

"Do I even want to know how you know how to compare that stuff?" I asked rhetorically, and she just flashed a grin.

"So, probably here before the Empyreans came and started the first empires of the Falatacot and the like, which is of no surprise to us. The magical fields likely attracted their Casters, if they could suss out the power flows, as this whole island must suck energy out of the greater planetary field like nobody's business. Track it down, and they find mineral wealth and potential fields of unending battle.

Empires tend to be conquest-minded with a warrior's mentality, so this would have seemed like paradise, and they were sucked in."

"That is quite reasonable." She and Briggs held up hands at the same time, a dark striation of crystals circumlocuting the corridor under the whiteness.

"Some sort of field projector?"

"I don't sense any building power. Possibly a security field." I reached out and gently pushed.

"This corridor is mana-reinforced, and so I can't Shape it. We'd have to hack through it before I could reach stone I could mold. I don't sense any building power. Are there sensory mechanisms in the floor or walls?" The two of them came right up to the edges of the thing, and both looked down on the other side.

"Pressure sensors," Briggs spoke up for both of them.

"And I think that's either a bioelectric sensor or one for body heat," Kris pointed at the walls to either side.

"Lateral line, my guess. How's your Kirlian control?" I asked them, tamping mine down. Briggs reached up to the ceiling, which sparked as his hand touched it, leaving a glittering trail for a moment behind him. Kris reached to the side, slightly glowing crystals trailing her black nails sliding over the white stone. We stepped past the screen projector one by one, lightfoot keeping us effectively weightless and above the floor, and moved past the second of the interior defenses.

"They really aren't going to like us too much, are they?" Kris asked, as we continued on.

"I don't think they planned for two masters of tremblesense sussing out their nasty little concealed surprises. So sorry I am for that," I said, and they both chuckled low.