"What was that?" Mark calmed down.
"Automated defence system." Kong Jing wiped her mask with a clean cloth.
"I know that, I mean what was that beam!?"
"Probably topaz magic. Feels similar to Ordina's topaz magic. Just more potent." Ebony replied.
"Then the blue one?" Mark didn't get the answer he wanted but he knew better than to ask them when they weren't sure either.
Ebony raised his shoulders and shrugged, he knew just as much as any of them. The genius craftswoman admittedly wasn't a fighting or magic maniac either.
"And crap! Was that a domain? A real domain?" Mark continued with his yelling.
Ebony noticed something. "Are you angry?"
"No, just pissed." Mark calmed down.
"Oh, I'm wrong again." Ebony sulked when he didn't get the correct answer at identifying emotions. 'Wait, is there a difference?'
He noticed Mark couldn't breathe well and his own chest felt tight too. Mark didn't know how to draw the runes that absorb ambient mana to convert to air but Ebony knew. He took out a piece of paper and moulded one but he was not very familiar with it so it wasn't drawing ambient mana fast enough. Also, he didn't know where they were underground but the ambient mana wasn't very dense. They were probably still near the tomb as the range where the tomb had drained mana was huge.
Kong Jing got him to teach his junior apprentice. Mark needed to use a pen and draw it on but he learnt the simple rune in a few attempts and made one with much better effects than Ebony's. It must have been his Fortifications but Ebony didn't give up, once he familiarised himself Inscripted Mana Moulding should come into effect.
"Stay here, I'll go back. I want to see if the defence system remembers us or it resets its targets till someone touches the barrier." Kong Jing rested enough.
"Alone!? Sister, you can't teleport out right?" Ning Xin grabbed onto the space mage's sleeves before she disappeared.
"I can if it was just myself. This fool was the biggest problem since his magic body is so thick, we were lucky he was running out of mana so I could move him." Kong Jing knocked on his head.
He faintly saw her mask's black circle expand as the horizontal line shortened in response before she disappeared.
"The blue beam might be hard to dodge if there are 32 of them the thickness of an arm." He pondered about the speed of those blue beams.
The light beams all lasted about half a second each and could follow them while it was shooting but the beams were straight and didn't curve or home in on them which makes them easy to predict. They also came from the same direction and they had plenty of space to move around in the vast open underground space. Even though he didn't have Ning Xin's speed, he was better at dodging.
Other than the streets being filled with Topaz Golems, there were quite a few that were blue as well. Not to mention the handful of green and even purple glowing ones. He had no idea which was stronger but he had a feeling they would find out soon.
In less than ten minutes, the space mage returned as a glow stick. She stripped her mantle as if she didn't just get hit by their weird magic.
"Good news is, I wasn't attacked the moment I got there. The towers didn't shoot. There's no entrance, I forced myself through the barrier and the response was violent. I managed to find places that have a weaker presence of patrols though. Probably used to be farmland, I think it's a city turned tomb."
"So just don't touch the barrier and teleport through. And the farms are useless to the golems so there are less of them there. Found anything of value?" Mark pushed for more details.
"The different types of patrolling golems were made of different runes. The buildings were inscribed with a language I've not seen or heard which is odd since I know what Dwarven runes are like. The resemblance is too thin to chalk it up to age, it's a completely different language." Kong Jing didn't find out much since she just entered and left in a few minutes. Ebony was staring at the mantle that she stripped and watched the multi-colour, mostly yellow veins that started spreading to the floor. It kept growing and he tried to stop it by freezing it as the tunnel they were in wasn't that wide and he was too lazy to move right now.
"People, walking above us. A lot of them." Ebony sensed the vibration from the ceiling. He could make out footsteps and maybe people talking but not what they were talking about. At least not through metres of thick earth.
"They might be moving towards the tomb, their camp shouldn't be far either. We should see how they plan to enter." Mark suggested.
"They must be more well informed after all. I'll go, sister Jing, can you bring me behind them? I have the best stealth." He was hoping her spatial awareness was good enough.
She complained about how difficult it was to use space magic on him but she still did it.
It was instantly brighter and he was quite far away from the long line of people in front of him. Double confirming that he was silencing his every movement before he went after the people in a slow march. He could smell their stench from where he was, they must have had a difficult time here without any baths. The wildlife here consisted of many things but giant worms and moles should be the largest of their diets outside of ration.
'Oh and also those weird fruits that grow underground. Dirtpur is a weird name for a fruit.' Ebony remembered passing by hanging vines that carried surprisingly juicy fruits that had too many seeds. They were all over the place and led him to believe the vegetation had a large source of water somewhere underground.
Ebony only followed them for 2 minutes before he had to dodge something that shot right out of the dirt wall he was keeping close to. He failed to predict that he was baited to dodge as something grabbed him from behind and put a chilly blade on his neck.
"Who are you? How did you get here?" The slim lady was completely dressed in black and even her shoulder-length hair was black. This was the one of the few times he saw black hair on Elcra.
"Is that shadow magic? Or darkness? That was cool, I couldn't see how you crossed the distance at all." Ebony Identified nothing again, not even question marks. He should think about getting something to hide his Class too. It was valuable information.
"Answer me!" She put more pressure with her dagger.
"Ebony. I walked and ran."
"I'm not laughing."
"Me neither. You should stop pushing your dagger, I'm not planning to pay for it when it breaks."
Her blade had been creaking as she put more and more pressure as his body was attacking it with mana vibrations but the lady herself didn't seem to be affected. The dagger must be better than he assumed.
Her response was to push it further and shatter her own dagger.
"Well, I warned you." Ebony's words or perhaps her dagger shattering seemed to shock her a little too much.
He didn't even cast any enhancement or Stalwart Endowment. He was more careful about Stalwart Endowment as these people were probably very familiar with the runic glow. He would look like one of those blue glowing golems if he were to utilise that. It felt like it would bring forward a very troublesome development.
The lady shouldn't be a Grandmaster but she was pretty strong, it was her relatively low quality dagger that held her back. She tried to run by diving into the ground again but he didn't want her to inform anyone of his presence so his domain spread out in a very small space and a couple of arms pulled her out before she could fully sink.
"It's too late to run now." He tried to get her to relax but the moment he cast his domain, he let his overflowing mana leak a little and her eyes rolled back.
'She fainted…' Ebony didn't expect the lady to be so faint-hearted.
He spawned a Glacial Model to carry her, using Ning Xin's model so that he didn't come off as rude. "Carry her and follow me." The tunnels branched off quite a few times but it was quite obvious to him where the expedition party went even without footprints, the heavy footsteps were echoing throughout the tunnel.
He had to follow them down a neat shaft that he guessed was made by their earth mages. He stuck himself to the deep shaft walls after falling through it as the group didn't continue moving off. The bottom of the shaft had been a very well-lit underground space with hundreds of tents and campfires.
'Are they planning to wage war or siege the tomb?' Ebony saw thousands of people from Beastmen to humans but almost half of them were Dwarves.
The group that he followed seemed to be the most recent addition, as they unloaded and prepared to rest.
Perhaps his Glacial Model wasn't that fluent in carrying someone and it jumped in after him as well. His sudden stop near the exit of the shaft was out of the Model's expectation and it fell down together with the lady on it's shoulder.
The Model landed with a loud 'thud' due to its immense condensed weight.
'Uh oh. Dissipate dissipate.' The drop from the shaft was not that tall and still within his range of control but he accidentally made the Glacial Model burst into icy mist that enveloped the entire camp.
"ATTACK!" Many people yelled at the same time.
"No attack no attack." He said hoping they could hear him. He ran up the smooth shaft, not planning to fight when a random Identify scan gave him more than a few blue colours and he was very sure he saw one golden armoured Dwarf with purple words above his head.
Their response was a little too fast so he dropped the hiding of his mana to scare them. It worked and he could sense them hesitate enough for him to get out of their range. He quickly backtracked along the same route he used to get here. Fortunately, he had Mental Mapping as there were dozens of branching paths every so often.
'Crap, they're chasing.' There was a limit to how fast he could go in these tunnels, he already passed through where he started following the black hair lady's group.
Now it was unknown territory.
"Let's have a chat boy!" The furry beastman charged at him with his huge battle axe and called him out happily. A small group of 4 followed behind the beastman.
"Um. No thanks." Ebony continued running when he saw that they only brought Grandmasters along. They weren't scared of his mana and that was pretty intimidating.
"How did you get here by yourself huh?!" Someone else wasn't that cheerful, Ebony was trying to guess whether the person was angry or not.
"I-" He almost rammed into the wall but was teleported to their hiding spot.
"So you got caught." Kong Jing was writing in the dark when she spoke out.
"Thanks." He told the space mage.
"So what did you find out?" Mark was surprisingly unbothered about getting found out.
"There's thousands of people in their camp. I'm pretty sure I saw a King Class Shield Warrior Dwarf."
"King Classed?! Are you sure?" Mark was shocked.
"Are you shocked?" Ebony was sure that was the look and reaction of shock.
"Of course I'm shocked!"
"Yes!" Ebony made an uncharacteristic fist gesture for Identifying the correct emotion.
The three of his compatriots looked at him funny. He couldn't even identify what they were feeling this time.
"Anyway, there are a few King Classed Dwarves amongst the nobles but the only combat King Class is the Archduke of Dwarves himself. This operation is too secretive to be a noble's initiative but…the funding has to come from somewhere. A King Classed non-noble. Now that's rare…" Kong Jing seemed to be confident of her guess. Ebony was thinking that the large-scale mobilisation was by a noble but what did he know?
Apparently, it was common sense that the Archduke of Dwarves, Gerot Mallet, was the only noble Dwarf who was King Classed that wasn't some sort of blacksmith. Although it wasn't as if there weren't any non-nobles that high-ranked, it was indeed very rare.
He then explained how he was found out and how he felt bad for the lady that he dropped, hopefully, she didn't freeze to death by his Model's forceful dispersion.
"Couldn't you react fast enough to control the ice to float?" Ning Xin rarely saw him not react in time.
"Oh…I wasn't meditating and was thinking of all sorts of stuff."
"I think you should stop that weird training for now." She poured water on his enthusiasm.
"Mmm." He thought the same, it was only bringing him problems. Maybe Muse's idea hadn't been very good. Well, it was his idea but he got it from Muse's words.
Now he needed to spend some time to get rid of the excess nonsense in his mind.
"Wow, they have skilled people. They're coming." Kong Jing reported.
"Let's go then." Ning Xin wasn't about to run.
Kong Jing teleported them right in front of the 5 that were chasing him. Spears and swords were thrust out, axes were swung and fists were flying.
He held back on reducing the amount of space his party would have and kept Icicle sheathed for the time being. The tunnel wasn't able to fit 5 people swinging weapons side by side. These people were all using some sort of mana enhancement with 2 earth mages behind. The earth mages were extremely annoying for Mark and Ning Xin. They tried to limit movements instead of shooting spells, far more effective in these tunnels.
They had the advantage in stats for a short moment with his fiery twin-bladed member quickly crushing their advantage with a few pulses of her core skill. Mark was doing his best to fend himself, he was on the losing end without his runic domain. Ebony hadn't asked him about it.
Kong Jing just stood and watched, she didn't seem to like fighting. She was helping by releasing her aura which was quite the wonder when the opponents were also Grandmasters but she was still causing their movements to feel stunted. Ebony did the same, he had the greatest advantage when it came to 'aura'. It was so effective that he was probably going to do it all the time now.
Their expertise and experience in fighting in confined space weren't enough, the twin-bladed masked one was far too ferocious as she went from pushing one to pushing all three of the melee fighters herself. There was no place for Mark or Ebony, they would hit her instead with how she was moving so fast and taking up the whole tunnel.
"Hmm. The strength difference from one grandmaster to another can be amazingly big, it probably gets even bigger as they go up the ranks right?" Ebony asked as he manually controlled his Models to suppress the earth mages behind the warriors.
These people seemed slightly stronger than those he fought with against the level 380 plus Knight Earthfly but nowhere close to the people who suppressed the royal insect and her guards.
"Pretty much, then again Grandmasters are the elites already. With few Kings many of the dying grandmasters probably don't care about getting the best evolution since the increase in rank would give them a big advantage and also keep them alive. I mean, look at you guys. The gap is only going to widen."
Since Ning Xin couldn't use fire magic haphazardly and the other group seemed to be using less flashy skills it had turned to a good'ol close combat and she was crushing their resistance with pure technique. Slowly but surely, Ebony could tell that her sword style was changing ever so slightly.
Their opponent tried to run but it was futile with him who could cast behind them even without moving behind them here.
"What now?" He froze all of them together and their mouths shut because he didn't want to hear them speak.
"Make them talk?" Kong Jing didn't exactly want to find trouble with the main camp of these people.
They were tight-lipped and not just because he froze their lips shut. They didn't even utter a word no matter what Mark tried to ask.
"I'll throw them down the shaft," Ebony said as if he already decided what to do after ten minutes of talking to blocks of wood.