Chapter 169: Downtown
After standing in line for a while with the rest of his team, Lake made sure he was able to grab the paper from Masters so he could read it first. It was just orders for them to go to the 25th tier and do whatever was necessary to find anything suspicious. Lake wasn't sure what they meant by whatever necessary so he handed the paper to Freed.
He could see Freed's face as he read what was on the paper and after a while Freed said. "Let's get moving, it's going to take a while to make it to the 25th tier." The face Freed made gave him enough information to assume they were about to cross some lines and that made Lake remember what Master Dean had said to him while he had been telling him what was going on here.
Master Dean had said the Fighters guild had been hired by the Metal Temple and if Lake assumed that they were the ones who ran the Metal Domain he could just assume they had just been given permission to do whatever was necessary in the time they had had after giving the new info to Masters.
Going to get permission was probably the important thing Masters had needed to do that had made him dismiss them almost as soon as he had read what was on the paper they had gotten from the spy. Once they were out of the guild Lake went ahead and asked about the other thing he was wondering about.
"Is the 25th tier underground?" Lake had counted and there were at most eight tiers in this city and that had led him to think they were going down into the ground. It made sense that there was a huge excavated area below them anyway considering this was the Metal Domain, he was sure there was a massive mine down there, where else would they have gotten all this metal.
"Yes we'll be riding an elevator down for about an hour to get there." After Freed said this a few seconds passed and he asked. "Julie you've never been down there either have you?" Julie shook her head no but when she realized Freed wasn't looking at her she said. "No."
"That's not that strange, usually only the stone people like it down there."
"We're called dwarves." Lake looked down at Grendia when she said this and made a mental note that they liked being called dwarves. "There are non-dwarves in the stone people, I think Freed was including them as well." Lake was soaking all this new information up like a sponge and almost didn't even notice how quickly Julie had dispersed the small amount of tension that had been in the air when Freed had said Stone people and not dwarves.
"I was indeed including them. I think about 10% of the people from the Stone Domain are still human. Anyway back to what I was saying, while you're down there you'll find it hard to use water magic so just stay close to one of the others while you charge up your spells." Julie nodded and did as she was told by getting closer to Peter.
Peter seemed to notice this as well and when he saw Lake was looking at him he gave Lake a stealthy thumbs up. When Lake saw this he wondered if Peter liked Julie or just women in general either way he guessed they had a chance if the old adage of opposites attracting was true.
Once they had walked all the way down to the bottom tier of the city, Lake got his first chance to see the wall from the other side and as he was staring at the millions of stone blocks he noticed something. This wasn't even the wall, it was building materials they were just storing behind it. It was a genius idea in his mind to use what would one day be used to make new homes and such as a way to thicken your walls while you weren't using it. That being said he had already pretty much said it would be impossible for humans to attack this city in a normal way.
He was sure there were other reasons why they would choose to store them here, mainly the space that would be needed to store them. "Alright, here are the Elevators that are used for people, don't ever try to ride the big ones because you'd be yelled at by the people running them."
Lake nodded and followed the others onto one of the empty elevators. Lake saw that the system to use this elevator was different to the one in the Alchemist guild so Lake paid attention to what Freed did to activate it. Lake saw Freed reach toward the wall where small stones with numbers on the sat on small plates.
Lake saw Freed take the one with 25 on it and place it on an empty plate next to the others. Lake saw the plate go down slightly and a second later they started to descend. From the sound Lake could tell there was another difference between the elevator here and the one in the Alchemist guild.
He was pretty sure this one was mechanical in nature opposed to the one in the guild that used magic to hover a platform up and down. After a while Lake could tell there was almost no light so he asked. "Can dwarves see in the dark?" Lake guessed he didn't really need to ask once he saw Grendia look at him.
He could tell by the way her eyes seemed to shine in the dark that they were different to humans. "Pretty much but don't worry it's more like low light vision so there will be lights down here." Lake nodded and just assumed she could see him do it because she looked away as soon as he did.
He could actually see in the dark so it seemed he would have a bigger advantage than the people who called this dark hole their home but he would also need to worry about his three human companions' ability to see and keep himself alert. He didn't want them to walk into a trap because Peter couldn't see where he was stepping.
...
Time passed slowly and enough of it did that Lake would say it would probably be about night by now if they weren't underground but he wasn't really worried about what was going on up there because for a while now they had been passing huge open spaces underground and because of the fact he could see perfectly he had been able to see just what was built down here.
It had answered his question about if this was truly the only city in the whole Metal Domain because every tier they went past Lake had been able to see a city a few sizes bigger than the ones he had seen above ground in the last territory he had been in. None of them were the size of the capital city he had called home until now though and it made him wonder what they were using to feed every one.
He was sure they probably had farms that grew something down here but he had yet to see any but he was sure it would be something like a root vegetable or some type of mushroom. It could also be some magic plant type he didn't have back on his world or even some type of animal and as Lake continued to think about it he realized he had missed them arriving.
Following the other four so that he wasn't left behind Lake saw the humans in the group holding onto a handle that helped the walk in the low light. Not wanting to stand out he went ahead and held onto it as well and after a few minutes of looking around the underground city they were in, Lake asked. "How many tiers are there?"
"There are over fifty but most of them below us are still just mines and haven't been turned into residential areas yet. 25 through thirty are still being built and are mostly empty so I'm sure that's why the guild thinks the Demon Worshipers could be hiding down here." Lake just went ahead and took everything Grendia said as fact since she was a dwarf and once she was done talking he asked. "Where should we start?"
He didn't say what they would be starting in case one of the people they were passing was listening but he knew the other four would know what he meant. "Let's go to the market and look at everything that's there first." Since it was Freed that said this Lake just nodded and followed behind them.
He wouldn't know where to start so he had just decided to follow them until they found something. That would be the time where he would be able to shine even if he wasn't going to use some of his more Unique skills he didn't want people to see.
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