Taking a little break after floor two, they huddled around by the massive stairway that led to floor three. The stairs up and down were not located in the same place, though Bjorn had said that one of the doors they couldn't get open next to each staircase was for an elevator. They could have spent some time and effort to bash through the doors and get access to the shaft, but Bjorn said he was certain the elevators were key-locked and password protected. They could still use the shaft to skip floors, but they intended to clear the whole place anyway, so it wouldn't really buy them much.
"What was this place used for?" Kris asked, still in the dark about what the machines were doing.
"It's a production facility for automated machinery," Bjorn rumbled. He continued, "It's for building more machines like the ones we've been destroying, though that's not its primary purpose."
"And what is the primary purpose?" Andrea asked, sitting on a big block of material that had dropped in the hall when they killed two mechanicates carrying it.
"I'm not positive," Bjorn hedged. "But, if I'm right, we need to destroy it. Don't worry, there'll be some good stuff later."
"I kinda hate smashing things I don't understand," Beth said, which got her looks from everyone present. "What? I'm not that bad."
"If you say so," Veren quipped, Beth glaring at him in return.
They had a small bit of idle conversation as they finished resting before taking the stairs down to the third floor, which was slightly different than the first two floors. Much of the floorspace here was dedicated to some basic forging equipment, where huge amounts of metals were being melted and cast into various molds. It was mainly being used for the creating of very large parts; frames, axles, large panels, blocks such as for engines or motors, thick wire, and so on. The temperature of the place was unreal, enough that Beth could feel it pinging her Flame Resistance when they were in the middle of one of the rooms. It was also a more dangerous place to fight, as adding in hundreds of tons of molten or just-recently-molten metal to the picture certainly didn't make the rooms any safer.
There was little here that interested any of them, and Bjorn continued with his wanton destruction of the facility, even smashing apart massive crucibles filled with molten metal. The heat and fumes didn't bother him at all, and the more he smashed, the more satisfied he became. Beth didn't bother trying to salvage anything, as it was all either metal stock, which she had plenty of, molten metal, or basic parts that she had no use for. The entire floor was dedicated to the casting operations, and it was easier to clear than the first floors because it was only a dozen rooms in total, making the navigation of the place very quick.
The next floor was the exact opposite, in that it was a machine shop meant to handle far more complex and finer operations than the forge where the casting was taking place could handle. Though, it was a machine shop for titans, with lathes the size of houses and various pieces of equipment of even more fantastic proportion. Beth was sure quite a few of the tools were valuable, especially considering there were some that were of a more normal size, but Bjorn could not be stopped. And, anyway, Beth didn't know what she'd do with the tools other than sell them, and she still wasn't at all hurting for cash at the moment, or in the foreseeable future.
This floor was much more annoying to clear, however, as it was massive with tons and tons of rooms, as well as a crazy number of interlocking passages and passthroughs connecting everything. Whereas the floor for rough casting took them a couple hours to clear, the fourth floor took them several days. They had to rest halfway through and sleep, which was something of an ordeal as there were definitely more of the mechanical beings coming up from the lower floors at this point. They had to set up a watch and sleep in turns, forming a rotation as the beasts could walk into the room the group was in and immediately attack at any point in time.
"It's going to get a lot harder from here," Bjorn said as they rested after sleeping and getting ready to head out.
"Why's that?" asked Sera with a raised brow.
"We're going to encounter more than just dregs," he replied before leading the way down the stairs.
However he knew about that, he was certainly correct, as they started to run into much more powerful enemies starting on floor five. It was the first floor that Beth couldn’t really figure out the purpose of, as it had nothing in it that particularly applied to assembly or forging. It also didn't look like it was supposed to be living quarters or offices, so she was a bit stumped. The one thing she did know is that the beasts here were way more powerful, with higher levels and new types that were specifically meant for fighting. They were all armed with some kind of weapon, including projectile weapons, and they all had additional layers of armor and armoring on and in their bodies. This made them far, far more difficult to take down than the simple construction bots the group had been dealing with thus far.
It didn't mean they were impossible, by any means, and everyone in the group could still handle any of the enemies in a one-on-one fight. The only exception was Veren, and that was only because he could handle any number of the warrior-type mechanical titans in a fight. His mastery over the sword allowed him to cut through their defenses like they were stiff paper and even to do it at great range, as he was able to produce long, powerful sword waves with nothing but his knowledge of swordsmanship. It was still crazy to Beth to watch as he drew his sword with a casual motion and flicked his wrist and, in the distance, the head would fly off one of the warrior mechanical beasts.
Stolen novel; please report.
He had mentioned at some point that a Grandmaster could reasonably challenge anything below level five hundred no matter their current level. That was, of course, assuming the opponent didn't have a Grandmaster or greater level weaponskill, but everything was insignificant in front of that. Level five hundred was a massive change for beasts and a lot of other factors made having a weaponskill at Grandmaster far less of a surety, but against enemies like they were facing now, Veren was unstoppable.
The fifth floor took a couple days to clear, and it was definitely rewarding if only in terms of experience. The beasts were in the high two hundreds now and they were pretty tough, granting the team abundant experience when they were killed. Beth, Blood, and Andrea were the lowest levels going into the area, and they were progressing the fastest, but gaining levels in the mid two hundreds was much harder than at level ten or fifty or even one hundred fifty. Despite killing enemies of a higher level, sometimes thirty levels higher, they were progressing only a level or two per day. That was still a pretty phenomenal speed, as in Beth's gate they would likely take a couple days just for a single level.
After floor five was, of course, floor six, and it was even larger, though the enemy composition hadn't changed at all. It was all warrior constructs, though they would occasionally run into large groups of the weaker mechanicates that were headed for the upper floors. Whoever, or whatever, was in charge of the facility was clearly aware at some level of the depletion of the upper floors of workers. Considering Bjorn had thoroughly depleted the upper floors of, well, everything, it would take an awful lot more than a handful of the weaker mechanical titans to restore the areas they had already passed. He wasn't any gentler on these two floors that didn't have a very clear purpose, sometimes destroying things at entirely random, sometimes focusing on just specific objects or parts of the structure.
None of the others were really sure what was going through his head, but Beth was happy to wait until they got through the whole facility. They had cleared exactly half of it, if the information about it having twelve floors was correct, and they were resting just before floor seven when they got the first different response than what they had experienced so far. As they were camping and most of the group was asleep, a huge group of the Titan Mechanical Slayers rushed up the stairs to them, led by a Titan Mechanical Juggernaut. The juggernaut was powerful enough that even Veren couldn't just slice it apart with a swing or two, but the slayers posed him very little trouble.
The whole fight felt like a scripted mini boss from a video game to Beth, but the Path didn't necessarily follow the kinds of rules she was used to. It also was rather unusual as the facility they were in, while having been commandeered by the Path, wasn't an actual dungeon and thus shouldn't have such things as mini bosses. Beth puzzled over what exactly was going on as she concentrated her efforts on the juggernaut. Andrea and Kris were cleaning up the mechanical slayers with Veren acting as overwatch for them, the cocky swordsman even now not impressed with the level or abilities of their foes. The rest of the group anchored around Bjorn to whittle down the impressive defenses of the mini boss, which was almost half again as tall and wide as the slayers. It was also made from some kind of greenish-hued metal that was very dull, not really reflecting any of the hall lights any more than in a slightly muted way.
The group was still a bit too powerful for the enemies, even not counting Veren, to the point where they destroyed the juggernaut before the other two even had corralled all the slayers. The group assisted with the cleanup before taking a bit longer to rest. Most of them were raring and ready to go, but a few hadn't gotten quite enough sleep, so they spent another hour or so letting Kris and Andrea nap. After that it was time for floor seven, which was also a new layout and type of floor as compared to the previous six, with the whole thing being a complex maze of gantries and scaffolding in several large, open spaces. It was pretty clear this was a massive assembly area, and it was only sometime later, once they had cleared the whole thing, that they got a bit of data indicating the place counted as both floors seven and eight.
It was a paradise for Bjorn, as well, as it was full of half-constructed mechanical titans and various other machines and vehicles. He had an absolute field day smashing it all apart, and when Beth said all, she really meant all. He destroyed basically every single piece of scaffolding and gantry along with the half-finished beings and machines, smashing everything in the double-floor into little more than metal scrap and broken hunks of burnt plastic waste. It had also improved the massive man's mood to a certain degree, as he wasn't so standoffish and cross after having finished destroying two-thirds of the facility.
The open spaces and lack of complex interconnects had provided less impediments on those floors, but Bjorn’s smashing spree had slowed them down. Still, compared to a few days for one floor, just a day and some change to clear what was technically two floors was a massive improvement on their overall speed. They had been in the titan construction facility for over a week at this point, though just barely, and Beth was rather optimistic they could get the whole thing done within another week. That did depend on not just the toughness of the upcoming enemies but the size of the final four floors, but Bjorn added to their positive outlook when he explained it was highly likely floor twelve was a command center and nothing more than that. Even if it was full of very high-level mechanical titans, it would take them one or maybe two hours to clear. That meant their final time would likely be largely dictated by floors nine, ten, and eleven.
Floor nine was a smeltery, not the same as the third floor, which was used to cast metal into large parts. This floor was taking ores and unrefined minerals and putting them through multiple processes to create clean, high-purity stock. Beth's eyes glimmered a little when they realized the purpose of the floor; there was money to be made here, and she could always keep a bit extra for their own use. There were massive piles of mana copper, mana brass, mana steel, mana platinum, and even mana mithril, though it wasn't in such large quantities.
Even splitting it with the whole group, they could all take many hundred pounds, if not thousands of pounds, of the absolute highest quality materials. All of the less mana dense and lower purity stock was valuable, but just the best of the best was enough to practically fill all their storage spaces. Beth, Blood, and Sera also all basically counted as a single item, being part of the same core group together, but they each got a portion, meaning their harvest was even greater. It was further boosted by the fact that Veren fully turned his noise up at the materials, scoffing at filling his storage space with some 'Worthless piles of slightly higher quality scrap.' Oh well, more for the rest.
Clearing the smeltery was the work of a couple days, mainly because Beth and several others insisted on sorting through all the metal stock. They pulled only the highest of high-quality materials from floor nine, apart from the mana mithril and mana platinum, which was in smaller quantity and was extremely valuable no matter the purity. They each finished out with over a hundred pounds of mana mithril and nearly three hundred of mana platinum, as well as their pick out of a pile of thousands and thousands of pounds of the more common metals. Even the mana copper in the six big piles they had made at the center of the floor was all of total, one hundred percent purity and some of the highest mana concentration anyone in the group had ever seen. The more mana a material had in it, the stronger and more powerful it was, and some of the mana copper was close to an insane ninety percent mana saturation, which was more than many had even though was possible for metal. The value of just a few dozen pounds of mana copper at that saturation would be into the diamond coins, easily, if not as much as a mithril coin.
