It made sense for the main power generation systems to be placed at the bottom floor of the complex. In fact, the power in this Factory was mainly supplied via steam or, in a minor part, by compressed air. This meant that the Metalmancer had the need for a vast supply of steam, made using the heat that came from deep underground. The water had to come in contact with that heat in order to boil and become vapour, and this meant that somewhere below there was a huge boiler filled to the brim with water at high temperatures.
The whole place had been built on top of a sulfuric vent for a reason, and that reason was because it provided easy access to the underground layers of rock where the heat from the volcanic caldera could provide almost limitless energy. Transporting such tremendous heat to the surface would have been almost impossible if it weren't for the vents all around, which conveniently did the job for the Metalmancer, requiring him to just reroute the gases and high temperature water from underground into his systems.
There was steam coming from the top of the cooling tower, even with all the pipes cold and inactive, which meant that the main power system was just on stand-by. The pipes always came from the floor and walls all around the workshop, leading him to think that there was a boiler somewhere around, and that it probably was below.
Charles looked at the elf walking just a few steps behind him, and for a little moment thought back to how he had been treating her so far. Perhaps he was being too rough on her, as it was not her fault that she was born in this backwards plane of all places. She had been useful so far, so maybe he should treat her better if he wanted to keep her around and use her knowledge of the world.
"You know what a boiler is?" Asked Charles, as he walked through the small central corridor of the workshop and towards the elevator. It was not going to move, of course, not without power.
"Somewhere to boil the water?" She said tentatively.
Charles stopped for the briefest of moments. Of course it was tautological, the meaning came directly from the definition.
"Yeah, exactly. The water boils and turns into steam, which then goes into all these pipes and makes the machines move." He pointed at the assortment of pipes of various sizes and shapes, all made of brass.
He reached the elevator, and looked at it. He wondered, for a moment, just what kind of stuff had been transported up and down with it. Without power, it was definitely not going to even budge, meaning that they had to find another way down. There was a hatch somewhere that they could use, though.
Eereen seemed deep in thought for a moment, and was looking intently at all the tiny pipes that disappeared inside the machinery. The yellow contrasted against the shiny steel of the robotic arms, even under the cyan light of her [Aether Wisp] skill. Charles' own wisps, which were skills made into spells, at least going by what he understood of the magic, were following him as he tried to make them illuminate the place more efficiently.
"But how can that make the machines move?" She asked, visibly confused.
Charles chuckled. "Steam actually contains a lot of energy, you know?"
She looked like she wanted to ask for more information, but then stopped herself as realization dawned on her face. Charles looked at her and smiled, satisfied.
They reached the hatch, which was next to the coal pile. It was a small hole in the ground, relatively small compared to the rest of the things in this room but actually quite large, with a vertical ladder made of rugged metal that led to a dark room downstairs. He sighed, because with his still rudimentary control of the floating lights he could not yet make them go up or down, and that meant that he could not light the room below. He'd have to dissect the spell better if he wanted to make them do that, but at the same time he suspected that the spell itself would not support that kind of modification. If that was the case, then he would have to alter the spell itself and not just the parameters with which it operated, and he had no idea how to do that.
He made a mental note to research spell theory somewhere, when he had time.
The area immediately under the hole was clear, and that would have to do, because he was not getting any more information than that. He sighed and took out his gun, as a precaution, before starting to climb down.
"Let's go." He said to a very distracted looking elf, who seemed deep in thought thinking about the wonders of steam power.
Eventually she seemed to realize what was happening and followed him, gingerly going down the steps with incredible grace. Her feet made almost no sounds as the soles of her shoes made contact with the bare metal, which was a considerable feat since there was no rubber in this world and the soles were made of wood. Thinking about it, she had been incredibly nimble and silent even when walking the metal floors of the workshop, acting as if she weighed nothing.
Now that he was down here, the three lights that were still following him after all this time managed to illuminate the area better. They had been draining him of small amounts of mana periodically in order to keep from disappearing, making them very mana efficient after the initial casting, he thought with satisfaction.
The elevator shaft was a hole in the ceiling, plugged close by the elevator itself that was still resting at the floor above. The shaft ended here with a small depression in the floor, not going any deeper and making Charles think that he had reached the bottom floor already.
A small clang of metal, then he felt something under his foot. He had stepped on a small gear that was on the ground near the vertical stairs, and looking around he saw that there were pieces of broken machines on the ground next to the elevator shaft, scattered all around the floor of the room. They were quite visible against the dark floor, because they reflected the blue light that came from the floating wisps back at Charles and around the whole room. The floor, in contrast, seemed to absorb the light for the most part, appearing very dark.
Before going to check on those broken machines, however, Charles spun around to take in the layout of the room. He didn't want to risk any unwanted surprises, because he was now aware of the potential threat that the Metalmancer's machines could pose to him.
The first thing he noticed was that there were once again ramps around the base of the cooling tower, leading deeper underground. He had been wrong, and this was not the last floor. The elevator simply stopped here for some reason. And the reason was simple: they were being forced to follow a preset path, a path that normally would have included the elevator, which was surely hiding some sort of automated defenses inside of its design. The last floor did not have any ramps leading down because it was a chokepoint, made so that people who wanted to infiltrate the compound had to face the defenses inside the guardrooms. It was a clever design, he conceded.
"There are ramps going down again, look." He told the elf. "The Metalmancer must have thought that the last floor's defenses would have been enough to repel the intruders."
"Probably. Or maybe he's trying to force us on the longest path possible."
Charles thought about it for a moment. She was not completely hopeless, it appeared, having reached the same conclusion as he did. "Could be. Everything's offline, though, so there isn't much danger to us."
Continuing on his survey of the floor, Charles noticed that there were two rooms next to the cooling tower's base. They were six meters long and four deep, with thin and weak-looking metal walls that were probably built after the floor's layout had been already completed. Probably the man's personal quarters, worthless to even consider if he understood the man well enough.
Continuing down the far wall, there was a very long and thin table, barely a few inches tall, then an empty area to the right next to the other wall, and a series of shelves in various states of disarray along the far wall. With the survey done, he approached one of the piles of junk that were lying on the ground next to the elevator shaft.
He crouched down, and had the LAI scan the visible components. They were, when pieced together, automatons of some kind. There were weapons mounted on robotic arms, lying on the ground severed from the main body of the automatons. The hologram, that appeared as soon as the LAI was done with its scans, confirmed what Charles was already thinking: they were defense bots. Their design was vaguely humanoid, armed with weapons and with thick metal plating as armor, but damaged beyond recognition.
Eereen was looking at them as well, as if she could see the same holograms that Charles was seeing. The girl must have been very confused, because it was very unlikely that she had seen anything like it before in her lifetime. Charles had not, at least in this world, and was pretty sure that robots made of steel and powered by steam were not very common in this world.
Speaking of steam, he tried to see where the pipes that powered these things were. The Metalmancer must have had quite the headache trying to make the power supply flexible enough to be used by moving machines, and not by static robotic arms. Had he had electricity, it would have been easy. Easier, not easy, because he did not have plastics. But with steam? It was almost impossible to make a flexible pipe capable of bringing highly pressured gas all the way to some robots that were moving around and fighting.
"There are no pipes going into the bots. Odd. Where do they get their power from?" He wondered. There had to be something else. And the answer was compressed air.
"Perhaps they have a core, like golems!"
"I don't think they run on magic. Nothing here does." He got up, sighing. "It's no use. They are too damaged to get a good feel of their designs."
"Fireballs and lightning spells…" The elf muttered.
"What did you say?"
"I mean… the metal beings must have been hit by spells of a very high level for this damage to occur."
He looked at the broken remains, the half molten shapes deformed and distorted by the heat and impacts. It was clear that they had fought a hard battle, but that was not the point he was trying to press.
"Spells? You mean skills? They can be leveled up?"
She looked startled for a moment, probably because she had forgotten that he did not have any access to the system and its skills.
"Yeah, the system upgrades your skills if you use them enough times and if you are of a sufficiently high level."
"How?"
"Through a quest, usually. Sometimes it just happens, though, like enlightenment. After you comprehend a skill well enough, the system rewards you with a better version of it."
"Almost as if it wanted you to stop thinking, huh?"
"What?"
"Nothing."
Charles walked towards the shelves. Looking to the left, he noticed that there were pipes coming from the floor that snaked their way inside three perfectly intact automata. The pipes were small and thin, and were not made of brass or copper but of steel. The automata were in a pristine condition and armed to the teeth with guns and various other armaments.
"That's how they get recharged, then. Fascinating, he fixed the issue of providing them with steam by making them work with compressed air and by giving them a tank, making them rechargeable!"
Past the table, there were the broken shelves. They were filled to the brim with tools and pieces, many of which he did not recognize. He knew that some of the things he saw were tools, but only thanks to his intuition as a fellow engineer. They were too specific, too far away from the common tools that one could see everywhere like a hammer. They were made specifically for the kind of work that was being done here. It was interesting to see how things evolved for the Metalmancer without any contact with another technological society.
One interesting example of convergent evolution of technology was when Charles saw some bolts. They were almost identical to normal ones, except that their heads were not hexagonal but square. It made sense, because the Metalmancer had ways to make the metals much more resistant than they should have been, fixing the issue of the edges of the square being worn down by use.
Hexagonal heads were still better though, as they were more compact and easier to screw in, Charles thought proudly.
This was all for this floor. It was fascinating to see, but it was not what he was looking for. Charles wanted to open the damn door upstairs, and to do so he needed to restore power to the place. To do so, he had to get to the boiler and see what was wrong with it and if he could fix it. The only option, then, was to go down once again. Fortunately there were ramps to use this time.
"Let's go down again, there's no boiler here."
Finally, they reached the lowest floor of the whole place. The confirmation that they had reached their destination was the suspended pipe hanging from the ceiling. It was huge, attached to the ceiling via chains that were thicker than a thumb, and went straight from a large geothermal boiler in the middle of the room into the cooling tower.
The room was scorching hot, and the humidity made the extreme heat all the more unbearable. Despite this, all the pipes were in perfect condition and did not feature any rust or oxidation, and the floor was still cool and spotless as always. There was something with the metal it was made of that allowed it to not even begin to heat up. Fascinating. Despite that, there was also no kind of moisture or water droplets on top of those surfaces. They were cooler than the air, and there was a lot of humidity so they should have been drenched in water. Yet they were not.
The boiler was huge, and occupied all the space in the middle of the room. There would have been ample space to move around it, even with its exaggerated size, if not for the web of pipes that came out from the floor and went into it. Other pipes, higher up towards the ceiling, went out of the boiler and snaked their way into the closest wall or the ceiling, to go power some sort of machine throughout the whole complex.
Charles began to circle the boiler on the left side, attracted by three small boxes that were resting on the floor. The elf went to the right, instead, for once trying to explore on her own. It was not much of an issue to Charles, because the place was too small for her to get lost or hurt without him hearing it.
The three boxes were actually miniaturized repair bots, little automata with many foldable arms and an array of tools attached to each one of them. They were resting in their stations, immobile like everything else due to the lack of power.
Going onwards, he found himself on the opposite side of the boiler to where he came in from. Here, he saw that there was a collapsed tunnel that led deeper into the earth. The entrance was completely obstructed by rubble, and there was a broken pipe that went down the dark tunnel. It probably powered the many excavation machines that were in there, now destroyed by the collapse.
Completing his survey, he found a tool deposit hidden behind a fake wall, and a small steam powered contraption with a turbine that was very similar to an air compressor. There were a few tanks close by, probably not pressurized but clearly capable of holding in quite a bit of compressed air.
There was even a furnace, small and unassuming, connected via pipes to the compressor. A backup system, probably, made so that it could be used in case there was no other way to power up the whole thing.
Why was the Metalmancer building so many redundancies into his systems? It made sense to have backups, but the compressed air was already a backup in and on itself, so this was a backup to the backup. Not only that.
There were the choke points as well, there were the armored doors, the defense systems… the list went on. The metalmancer was being paranoid for some reason, building precautions into his designs and blueprints, hiding things away. But from who? And why?
"Charles!" Came a call from the other room, the one he still had not checked out.
Charles moved away from the pulleys disappearing inside the ceiling that he was examining, and turned his face towards the source of the sound. It came from the room next to the deposit, close to the way they came in from.
"What?"
"I think I found something."
Skipping the deposit, for now, and the collapsed mine, Charles approached the door. He stopped in his tracks as soon as he was close by it, because the small details on its surface caught his eye.
It was gearwork; the whole door was covered in small gears interconnected to each other but that led nowhere. And they were moving, slowly turning with a pace so slow that the bigger gears seemed to be almost completely still. Beautiful to look at, but completely useless.
It was odd. Not only because of their uselessness, which was something completely out of character for the Metalmancer, but also because the assortment of red, yellow and silver gears was still moving despite the lack of power in the base. It was the only thing that was moving in the whole base, in fact, but how was that possible?
If there was power, then the safety systems would have been the first to receive it, or at least the paranoia he saw reflected in the Metalmancer's work would suggest as much. But it was not the case. Everything was perfectly still except for these small, useless decorative gears.
He went inside, huffing at the apparent contradiction. He was not one to understand people, he understood machines much better, but this was too odd not to notice. There was something about this room, then, or maybe the defenses had been deactivated on purpose.
He eyed the wall, and there it stood: the biggest lever in the room, shining in a reddish hue. Its box had one thick pipe coming in, and a lot of narrow pipes going out, extending in elegantly regular rows towards the rest of the circuits. There was a sign that was hung above a lever. The letters were made of a different metal, embedded in the steel much like the magnets upstairs, but they were unreadable.
"This has to be the master switch. Should we pull this lever, I wonder?"
Eereen looked confused.
"I mean, it would surely restore power to the base. But, what kind of sleeping monsters would it also awake?"
Silence.
Charles roared in laughter. He held his stomach for a second, then looked at the scared-looking elf for a moment before laughing again.
"Okay, sorry. It was mean of me." Che chuckled again, then approached the switch and pulled the lever.