Blood took over again, taking point as they moved back up the tunnel to the shaft and then turned for the area that used to lead to the kobold city but now led to the kobold maze. It was what was at the center of that maze that was of interest to them right now, and why Beth had invited Bjorn specifically. Blood was the only other one who knew what was down there and she was staying quiet, letting the others experience it for themselves.

  "Anything in these side areas?" Sera asked as they progressed.

  "Eh, there might be, but I doubt it. Last time I was down here was a while ago, but they were all dead-ends with nothing but a few beasts and the occasional little trinket," Beth answered.

  "Hmph, not worth it," Veren said with a slight shake of his head.

  "Yeah, what we're looking for is much further down, and it'll be pretty big," Beth replied with a nod.

  "Still keeping us in suspense?" Andrea asked.

  "You'll see when we're there," Beth replied, grinning.

  They followed Blood down to the end of the long tunnel where they found the kobold labyrinth laid out before them. Blood still remembered the way, as long as nothing had changed, and guided the group through the area by the fastest route. It turned out that nothing had changed, as Blood got them to the center of the area in less than fifteen minutes. They found the same inscriptions on the floor that Beth and Blood had briefly ventured through many, many months ago.

  "This is it?" asked Val, eyeing the strange area dubiously.

  "Yeah. It's a two-way teleporter, or was the last time we were in," Beth started to explain.

  "Oh, you've been through before?" Sera interrupted.

  "Yeah, it was a while ago. It was too much to handle at the time, so we just left it," Beth said.

  "Not very responsible," Veren said sarcastically.

  "We reported it to the CRA and one of the Seniors checked it out, just for your information. They determined the area wasn't a danger as long as nobody wandered in, which wasn't really a problem at the time," Beth answered with a frown.

  "Just ignore him," Val said, which got a scoff from the lanky man.

  "Let's just head inside," Beth said, gesturing to the formation. They all walked onto it, some more cautiously than others, before Beth activated the array and teleported them to…wherever the other location was.

  As soon as they arrived, Beth looked for the enemy that John had killed when they came here with him, and she very quickly found it. She was able to watch as the titan mechanicate awoke from what looked like a standby mode and started to walk towards them. The others all noticed it at the exact same time, more or less, and focused on it with varying expressions of mild interest or amusement. All except for Bjorn, that is, who had a very different reaction to the beast than what Beth might have expected.

  "Those fucking bastards," he growled, immediately starting to charge at the beast. Beth exchanged glances with the rest, but she wasn't particularly worried about him. Not his physically safety, at least; his mental state was a bit of a different question.

  The titan descendant got up to quite an appreciable speed as he approached the beast, ignoring its massive arm smashing down towards him, simply shrugging off the strike. A blow so powerful it made the metal and stone floor underneath Bjorn's feet crack and buckle was basically ignored as he continued charging. A moment after that, he slammed into the beast's right leg, crushing and twisting it as he carried on moving, taking the leg out from under the beast. He kept going while holding the foot, causing the huge beast to twist and then fall, smacking the ground with an impressive thunderclap.

  Bjorn slowed and turned after another couple dozen feet, looping back around as the mechanicate tried to climb to its feet. Before it could do more than sit up, he slammed into it, leaping off the ground and smashing into its chest, knocking it back down and heavily damaging the metal of its torso. He stood straight atop it, not so little even in comparison to the massive beast, and raise his maul high overhead, bringing down the end with a sound like a highspeed car crash. He repeated the blow once, twice, thrice, crushing the mechanical being's torso with enough force that it was slammed into the ground, further cracking and shattering the area around them.

  The others just let him go, watching as he angrily demolished the beast until there was little more than twisted scrap and a few smoking pools of oil and some kind of mana-infused liquid. He finally leapt off the remains of the beast, landing in front of the group with a heavy thump, glancing around at the rest of the room. He nodded a couple times, whether that was because he recognized what he was seeing or because he was making some internal decisions, Beth wasn't sure.

  "Wanna tell us about it?" Beth asked lightly.

  "Rather not," he said coldly. "I can see why you suggested this. Let's kill everything in here."

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  "You sure?" asked Sera, giving the titan descendant a concerned look.

  "If I'm right, you'll see why," he replied with a nod. "No reason to let a place like this go."

  "Is this a dungeon?" Kris asked quietly.

  "No, it's something a lot worse," Bjorn said while shaking his head. "Once we clear it out, you won't have to worry about any more enemies. You'll see what I mean. Let's take care of it."

  "After you," Beth said, gesturing for the wall of metal to lead the way.

  "With pleasure," he said in a gruff voice, turning and trotting towards one of the doorways.

  Veren examined the dead beast as they passed, giving it a critical eye before drawing his blade and slicing in a lightning-quick motion. His sword cut through the metal like a hot knife through butter, experiencing no resistance as it sheared the material apart. He frowned slightly with a slight shake of his head, making sure his blade was clean before re-sheathing it as he walked with the others.

  "Copper for your thoughts," Sera said to him.

  "The metal is strange," he replied. When he saw her glare, he continued, "The metal is an alloy that should be extremely strong, but it shears too easily. It's strange."

  "Haste makes waste," said Bjorn from the front, but he wouldn't elaborate more than that.

  They encountered more of the mechanicates in the hallway they were walking down, but the group was far too strong for the beings. It made a stark contrast to the first time Beth had entered the area with Blood and John. In that long ago era, the level two hundred and fifty mobs had seemed an impossible challenge. Beth still very clearly remembered the highly impressive display John had put on as he sliced apart the beast in the initial room with ease, overawing the two new wayfarers. Not that his performance was at all bad, but it was a bit less impressive in retrospect now that she was part of a group where each individual member was more than capable of killing the creatures without assistance.

  The hallways were made of the same kind of metal and stone as the initial room, a silver-white metal that acted as the supports around a gray stone. Beth was no architect or builder, but the place certainly looked impressive to her, though she wasn't sure the metal in-between every stone block was really necessary. It was likely more an aesthetic choice, though, without knowing where they were, maybe there was a mountain of stone over them that needed that much support.

  The group emerged into a room like the initial entry only far larger, and filled with the beasts. The mechanicates in here were not idle, but performing a series of tasks on an endless repeat. Bjorn was able to contain himself for a minute, and they observed as the beasts carried parts from openings in one wall to large tables in the center of the room where they snapped the pieces together before running a current through them with some kind of spell. It was incredibly unusual activity for beasts, and Beth was far from the only one to think so, but Bjorn remained tight-lipped, the only one of them who had some inkling of what was happening.

  "Destroy all of it," Bjorn said. The others all glanced at each other, seeing the confusion on their faces, but they all eventually shrugged or held up their hands in a palm-up, what-can-you-do gesture.

  The group set about doing just what Bjorn had said, killing the mechanicates and destroying everything in the room. Beth inspected the devices they had been building, but she couldn't make heads or tails of the things, winding up just happily smashing them to smithereens. The metal they were made of might be salvageable, but it would be a lot of effort, and she and Sera currently had no lack of good metals. They, in fact, had far more high-end metals than they knew what to do with, blocks of mithril and white mana gold and so on, so taking back a bunch of broken scraps of a weird alloy to melt would likely wind up a waste of time.

  It took an hour to smash the room to smithereens, largely because Veren didn't participate. He didn't deign to waste his time on such efforts, not because he was above such things, but because he was looking for a challenge and killing even these beasts was little more effort for him than flicking his fingers. Once again, a stark reminder to the entire group just how strong weaponskills would become when pursued to an ultimate peak. If one of the mechanicates did get close to him, he would kill it with a single slash and a dozen sword lights, but he didn't go running around the room trying to clear it out.

  The whole place was like that, with rooms filled with strange beings doing strange things, particularly considering they were beasts, which were supposed to be mindless rage machines, but they were performing tasks. Sometimes quite complex tasks, as they built things, repaired things, and transported various goods between rooms and buildings with a mindless efficiency. Beth surmised after a time that it was because the facility had been abandoned a long time ago; in the intervening years, the Path had stepped in and made the remaining beings in the facility into beasts, though they weren't driven by anger and a lust for battle. They were still performing operations they had been for decades, centuries, even millennia, but now doing it as named components of the Path, which helped integrate the facility. It gave people several more compelling reasons to explore the place, as the beasts were worth good experience and money, and their bodies had quite a bit of value as resources, or would to a group other than Beth's.

  They moved through first a couple, then dozens of rooms while they explored, and always the request was the same; kill. Bjorn was personally offended by everything in the facility, or that's what it felt like, as he even smashed the furniture and some of the decorative lighting. He insisted that the group destroy everything they encountered, including not just the beasts but also the things they were building, the materials (though Beth swiped quite a few materials that hadn't been fabricated yet), the furniture, the doors, and even the decorations attached to the walls. The rest were fine with killing the beasts and smashing the products they were working on, but they left Bjorn to rampage through the rest of the facility, not really quite seeing the point in the wanton destruction.

  Hours passed as they explored the place, though Beth might quibble with the description of what they were doing a little. It was more like a smash and grab, though she was the only one who was really grabbing anything. The others didn't really possess an interest in anything in the facility other than Bjorn, and he would just destroy it if he saw it, even if it was ingots of metal or crates of plastics. Beth only grabbed the most valuable stuff, not wanting to fill her necklace with mana copper or big tubs of plastic stock, but she still made out like a bandit once they started discovering the resource rooms. The mechanical beasts and half-finished products weren't worth the time, but a hundred pounds of very high mana density mana steel? Why, yes please, and thank you very much.

  They cleared nearly the entire floor before learning that the place was a multi-story structure with a dozen levels. They were at the topmost level, meaning it was going to be a few days of moving down to fully explore everything, and that was assuming the floors were all the same size. It was also assuming they didn't spend too much time letting Bjorn smash things, as that certainly wasn't having a positive effect on their clear speed. The place didn't count as a dungeon or special instance, from what Bjorn said and the others surmised, so they didn't have to worry about any imposed time limit or the beasts respawning or anything of the sort, meaning they could be more leisurely, if they wanted.

  The second floor was laid out very much like the first, with a ton of huge rooms interconnected by large, long hallways. The same things were happening on this floor as well, with hundreds, if not thousands, of the mechanical beasts constructing components and putting odd things together. They also moved huge amounts of freight around, some of the massive beings pushing carts or hauling sleds filled with thousands upon thousands of pounds of materials or components. Bjorn remained tight-lipped on what all of it was for, if he even fully understood it, and their group, despite the motley collection they were, lacked an engineer. Unless Veren was one and wasn't saying, but Beth doubted he spent much time on his profession, if he even had one, as he seemed far more devoted to pushing his skill with the blade as high as possible than anything else. Beth did snag a few things that were partially or fully built to take back for Jaq, knowing the sarcastic commissar would at least explain what the things were, even if he was quite insulting about it the entire time.

  Clearing the floor took most of a day, and the indication from earlier said that this was floor two of twelve, meaning it would be about two weeks of work for them to clear everything. The main impediment was that there were just so many of the mechanical beings; with them not being limited to one room or area, they could go anywhere at any time. The group was constantly running into more, and often they had to backtrack to fight yet more groups in rooms they had already cleared. Beth was also pretty sure that by the time they were partially done with the second floor, more of the damn things were coming up from downstairs to try to replenish the ranks.