The cave was pitch-black, with only the faint glow of luminescent moss scattered here and there — barely enough to see one's hand in front of one's face. But Lucian possessed moonlight bloodline and had darkvision; as long as there was not complete and utter darkness, he could see everything with perfect clarity.
In his deep, dark pupils, the spectral form of Angous was reflected — like a candle that had burned through all its wax, flickering unsteadily before finally guttering out.
"'The Master will awaken and return?'" Lucian repeated in a low, solemn voice. Among all of Angous's memories, this was the one that had left the deepest impression, beyond its overwhelming rage.
Accompanying those words, its emotions had surged violently — filled with reverence, awe, excitement, and elation.
"An anomaly truly has appeared in the depths of the Netherworld… Is a truly immortal being about to awaken?"
Of course, Lucian did not believe that Angous's "Master" was the Church's God of Truth. That deity was certainly not the object of worship for these high-ranking undead of the Netherworld. But whether this "Master" was a true god, or something akin to the vampire progenitor Aetna, or perhaps merely a symbolic representation of some transformation within the Netherworld — that, he could not say.
Without the Soul Sovereign's abilities to manipulate souls and memories, it would be impossible to extract every detail from a high-ranking undead's mind. Moreover, given that the gap in rank between Lucian and Angous was not that great, and that Lucian was not proficient in that branch of magic, he had not even been able to read slightly more detailed memories. The only certainty was that tremendous changes had indeed occurred in the depths of the Netherworld. If left unchecked, the consequences down the road could be exceedingly dire.
Obtaining this intelligence dispelled most of Lucian's suspicions regarding Rhein, but his attitude toward this mission remained the same — he would do what he could, and what he couldn't, he wouldn't force. After all, he was merely a high-ranking mage. Being drawn into what seemed like a world-shaking legendary event was beyond his weight class. If the danger proved too great, it would be better to risk submitting a report to the Supreme Council. With seven Grand Archanists and eleven Legendary Mages shouldering the burden above, he would feel considerably more at ease.
"So this high-ranking undead was actually Felipe's summoned creature. Heh — and he has no idea about the strangeness of the Netherworld and his contracted spirit…" Lucian shook his head with a faint smile. Apart from the information about "the Master awakening and returning," Angous's deepest memory was mocking Felipe's arrogant stupidity, as well as cursing another high-ranking undead named Adol, who had been purified by the Church of the God of Truth and slaughtered by a Legendary Mage.
Thinking of this, Lucian sneered inwardly. "It seems the Pale Hand really does know the Netherworld exists, but they've been keeping this intelligence under wraps, wanting to explore it on their own. What a pity — they appear to have been used and deceived by the high-ranking undead."
"If this mission fails, I'll find a way to trigger the high-ranking undead hidden within the Pale Hand and expose this strange world's existence to the rest of the Magic Parliament, thereby peeling back its veil. But doing so would offend the Soul Sovereign and the demigod lich to the bone. When there are other paths available, it's better not to take that kind of risk."
Of course, compared to the alternative, this was far safer than Lucian simply reporting the situation while the Supreme Council was in session.
His right hand slowly clenched. A bright flame ignited silently in his palm, completely incinerating the remaining spiritual dust of Angous. Then Lucian meticulously cleaned up every trace of the battle nearby, lest other high-ranking undead of the Netherworld track him down.
Having completed all of this, Lucian continued his advance deeper underground, guided and guarded by the Scrying Demon Eye.
In the darkness dotted with faint points of light, Lucian took one of countless branching paths for more than ten minutes. Gradually, the air grew slightly warmer, and the sound of an underground river rushing and gurgling reached his ears.
Understanding that he was now approaching the dwarves' subterranean city, Lucian grew ever more cautious. He carefully rounded a junction, and the view before him suddenly opened wide.
It was a massive passage — seven or eight meters high and a full twenty to thirty meters wide. The floor and both walls were paved with large grey stone bricks. Rows of deep-black stone pillars stood down the center, supporting the ceiling and dividing the passage into three lanes. The sight was overwhelming in its grandeur. The dwarves had carved out such an enormous passage underground — what, then, must their city look like?
According to historical records, the ancient dwarves knew no magic and possessed no powerful bloodlines!
Patches of luminescent moss grew freely across the floor and walls, casting the passage in a dim, greenish glow — hazy, dreamlike, as if at any moment a corpse might crawl forth or a specter might drift past. The atmosphere was quiet and eerie.
After the Scrying Demon Eye had carefully scouted ahead, Lucian stepped into the passage. His footsteps were extraordinarily soft yet distinctly audible — tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap — echoes reverberating through the hollow passage, empty and desolate.
Restraining his body, Lucian quickened his pace until his footsteps vanished entirely. Within the observation range of the Scrying Demon Eye, he broke into a full sprint.
Along both sides of the passage ran two black metal rails — seemingly designed for special vehicles to transport cargo. Lucian followed them forward at speed, and before long he could faintly make out the passage's exit.
Lucian instinctively slowed his steps, alert and wary. From the Scrying Demon Eye's feedback, he could see that ahead lay a cluster of buildings in total silence, situated within an artificially enlarged cavern.
Rock faces and stone pillars deliberately left in place to support the ceiling naturally divided the cavern into more than a dozen city blocks. Tall stone houses — some collapsed, some overgrown with weeds — looked down upon streets that had not seen their owners in thousands of years.
What was truly unsettling was the network of metal pipes connecting these stone houses. They protruded from every part of the buildings, converging into enormous metal conduits in the cavern ceiling, then rising further upward into tall structures crowned with countless chimney-like protrusions before plunging into the rock above, leading to destinations unknown.
Walking through the silent, frigid streets, Lucian periodically spotted familiar metal objects on the ground — axles, springs, pistons, gears — as if he had returned to Earth and stepped into a machine factory.
Ahead, a faint glimmer flashed through a patch of black grass. Lucian bent down and picked it up as an archaeologist would. It was a steam rifle as thick as a rocket launcher. The gear mechanisms, though corroded and rusted, still betrayed their intricate sophistication, and it was connected to a steel high-pressure steam backpack roughly half the size of a person.
Running his fingers along the cold, rust-eaten barrel that was on the verge of snapping, Lucian let out a quiet sigh. This rifle represented the disappearance of an entire ancient civilization.
Before humanity had risen to prominence, the dwarves — masters of craft — had invented all manner of steam engines and built a magnificent steam civilization.
Compared to their diminutive stature, everything they built seemed colossal to the point of obscuring the sky: airships that blotted out the heavens, steam-powered vessels that sailed the Storm Straits and the boundless ocean, terrifying cannons large enough to fit several people inside, powerful steam rifles, and steel foundries and machine works that belched black smoke like living monsters. Everything seemed as though it had been designed for dragons.
Without any deep theoretical framework to guide them, relying solely on their innate talent for smelting and fabrication and the accumulated wisdom of generations, the dwarves had miraculously developed a steam civilization through slow, painstaking progress. They had acquired knowledge of mechanical forging and design, and even the magical steam train improved by the legendary alchemist Claus, as well as the airships used by the Church and the Magic Parliament, had drawn upon the dwarves' legacy in their structural designs — though they had replaced the original steam power with arcane and divine energy, shrinking the gargantuan airships and steam trains to a practical, affordable size.
Sadly, this civilization had been lost. Had Lucian not read about it in the Grand Archanist and magical libraries, he would never have known of its existence. Even Lazar, that erudite mage who had grown up within the Magic Parliament, had never heard of it — he believed that humanity had been the first to invent the steam train and use it for transporting goods. (Of course, the magical steam train truly was Claus's original invention.)
Without a figure like Douglas to raise earth-shattering questions, the dwarves' steam-powered inventions had ground to a halt once they reached a certain stage. And the periodic outward expansion of magical creatures from the Dark Mountains had taught them a bloody lesson — these terrifying high-level beings were nothing like the mid- and low-level magical creatures they had once bullied. Steam rifles and great cannons on ironclad ships were simply no match. In less than twenty years, the once-glorious steam civilization had retreated underground.
But the subterranean realm was ill-suited to the development of a steam civilization. Coupled with the presence of countless monsters and hunters, after the age of dragon rule, the natural elf civilization, and the rise of the werewolves — roughly in the early period of the ancient magical empire — the steam civilization had perished entirely. Only the dwarves who remained on the surface, transformed by mad magi to possess bloodline powers and spiritual energy, managed to rebuild kingdoms anew.
But they were fundamentally different from the dwarves of old. Though they remained gifted at smelting, though alchemical grandmasters still arose easily among them…
"Without the power to defend your own civilization, you can only fade into oblivion in the river of history. Aside from learned mages, long-lived vampires, dragons, and the like — who would even remember?" Lucian murmured softly, his feelings complex.