Obviously, it was an entrance to the underground lair. Unfortunately, it was so dark there, that I had to use some firebird to spawn and illuminate the path for me.
The path was wide at first, but then it got quite narrow. The creatures would have to squeeze through if not for the fact that it was obviously not a real, functioning entrance but just pretended to be since it was all made by the sapling.
I soon discovered a system of caverns with more of the creatures, eventually arriving inside a bigger cavern. It had green crystals on the walls, providing light. In the middle, surrounded by piles of fake bones was the boss. A massive version of the creatures I kept killing as I went deeper.
To give you a good perspective, the thing was as big as a truck with two trailers. As it noticed me, it reacted quite violently, rolling from its side straight to stand on its short feet, then it puked a sea of fire, but I extinguished it taking over the control of the flames.
This clearly didn't make it happy, as it immediately charged, trying to bite me. I shadow walked to the side and the creature grabbed a mouthful of rocks. To my surprise, it chewed them like they would be some kind of crispy cookies and charged again, this time trying to ram me with its spiky side.
I blocked it with a quite powerful barrier, so it slammed into an invisible wall. Before it managed to pick itself u, I shadow walked again, appearing slightly above it with the pudao in my hand, and then I trusted my weapon, piercing through the boss. That was not enough to kill it, so still in midair, I changed my grip, and as I landed, I swung it widely, tearing the monster's insides.
This worked. A bit of smoke and a crystal on the ground was left to the boss. I picked the latter, and left, heading straight to the surface.
I decided to continue my journey on the same trajectory as before, heading towards the castle on the cliff, as I suspected that something had to be beyond the cliff.
What I saw before was correct to the point. Below indeed was a valley, but it didn't look as nice as I hoped it would. The green lands quickly turned into a dark place with trees cindered by a strong fire. Beyond that was just ash, which eventually reached a facility of sorts.
It looked to me like a citadel maybe. Single enclosed massive building with many chimneys puking clouds of dark smoke. Each of the four outside walls had liquified metal pouring down, and vanishing somewhere underground.
Even from afar, I could hear a lot of heavy machinery working inside. Well... At that point, I wasn't sure what was making that noise, but later I did confirm it. From time to time, the sound was completely overpowered by the hiss of steam being released somewhere.
Pushed by curiosity I approached it, eventually finding a large gate, which, as I got closer, opened by itself gasping with steam.
What I saw there were rows of machines, fueled by steam, working tirelessly. All were well-illuminated by rows of electrical lamps under the ceiling. Some of them were blinking, and a bunch was also spitting some sparks, but overall they worked pretty well.
It looked like some parts were being produced by multiple power hammers, smashing the red metal without any breaks, then moved by metal arms from place to place to be further processed.
I got even more curious about what was being made out there, so I decided to investigate. The parts I saw didn't look like anything in particular, so I wasn't able to crack the mystery without additional clues.
I searched the place quite a lot, at first slowly expecting some dangers to come, but since there was nothing happening. I got bolder, but without any actual progress. What was made there remained a mystery to me for a little longer while. I discovered, though, that the parts eventually were moved to special platforms, which took them underground.
Nove l B(in).C OM
In the middle of the factory, I found a large dark hole, in a shape of a square, but since I was too keen on finding what was being named out there, I didn't pay too much attention to that at first, but it became my target when I realized that on my current floor I won't reach any conclusions.
I approached the hole and looked down at first. There was a source of light there, but all I was able to see was an empty space. This meant that I had to drop down to find what was there because no angle I tried would give me the vision of anything below.
I did just that, landing heavily on the floor. A second later my jaw joined the feet.
I found myself in another part of a factory, with heavy machinery constantly working to assemble golems. To add to that, some of the golems were working on making new ones.
I suddenly felt like a fucking Christmas came earlier! My wish of creating a golem was within reach of my hand. I just needed to find one fucker, and by fucker I mean the local boss.
I had no idea how this could be. Was it a mere coincidence, or was the device responding to my wishes of creating some metal companions to help me clear the hunting ground more efficiently? One thing I was sure of, and that was that whatever class I was gonna unlock, by getting rid of the boss, would have something to do with golems. Hopefully creating them. I even crossed my fingers for such an outcome.
I also laughed like a child while doing the little ceremony, alarming every working golem around, and they didn't seem too happy with an unannounced visitor. Their normally blue eyes, if you could call the glowing dots like that, turned red as they focused on my person.