Chapter 174: The Forge

The moment Ethan stepped out of the teleportation gate, he heard bones grinding against each other behind him.

He turned around and saw the Flame Bone Dragon lowering its skull to squeeze through the gate, its enormous wings compressed so tightly that several joints made cracking sounds.

Gray marks left behind by the nonhumans’ Magic Array still covered its left wing, while part of the material Ethan had used to reinforce it earlier had already been corroded away.

Ruo Yan immediately raised a hand to stabilize the Soul Threads connected to its core, while the Undead Mage standing beside her looked up at the dragon, the blue flames inside its eye sockets flickering warily.

“Don’t tell me it can’t fit through.” Laira looked at the gate, which was less than one-tenth the Bone Dragon’s height, with a rarely seen serious expression.

“It can.” Ethan observed the particles of light surrounding the skeleton. “The System has already recognized it as an accompanying puppet. It just doesn’t seem very happy with the posture.”

The Flame Bone Dragon was finally dragged completely through the teleportation gate.

It planted its feet on the ground and shook its wings hard, sending ash all over the Undead Mage.

The puppet silently brushed off its cloak.

If the look inside its eye sockets could speak, the first thing it would probably ask was: they were both puppets, so why did one get to be a dragon while the other was always the one standing where all the dust landed?

Before Ethan could comfort it, he realized that the third layer was completely different from the previous two areas.

Before the group stood a city of black stone nestled between dark red cliffs.

The roads were wide enough for the Bone Dragon to pass through and were completely covered in ash. On both sides stood ruined workshops and stone statues of craftsmen whose faces could no longer be clearly seen.

At the center of the city, an enormous forge towered above the surrounding rooftops.

Its furnace mouth had long since gone dark, but the structure still occasionally produced the sound of metal expanding and contracting from heat.

Behind it stood a massive gate sealed by rings of fire-patterned locks.

Laira stepped onto a section of collapsed wall to survey the city, then turned toward Ethan.

“There isn’t a monster chasing us here?”

“You sound a little disappointed,” Ruo Yan replied.

She guided the Bone Dragon around a stone pillar that looked ready to collapse, then inspected the wing joint that had been corroded by the Magic Array.

“If this layer wants us to repair something, I’d rather not have another monster show up.”

The notification appeared before Laira could object.

[Third Challenge Round: Emberfall City.]

[Restore the Purefire Main Furnace and feed valid fire-element energy into all three circulation rings to open the gate.]

[Each team may activate the Main Furnace three times. Every failed activation will increase the furnace’s seal level.]

[Rewards will be distributed according to the degree of restoration and actual contribution.]

Ethan looked at the final line, then at the gate covered in fire patterns behind the furnace.

The System was not asking them to kill anything, nor had it mentioned a time limit.

For a place filled with bones, metal, and a giant forge, he should have been pleased.

The problem was that three activation attempts did not sound like an invitation to experiment freely.

He turned toward Ruo Yan and signaled for her to leave the Bone Dragon in the plaza, while he headed toward the Main Furnace with Laira and Mumu.

Up close, the forge was even larger than Ethan had expected.

The feeding port alone was as tall as a three-story building.

Three circulation rings wrapped around the furnace body, each consisting of hundreds of channels connected to the workshops below.

Many of those channels were clogged with black ash. In several places, fragments of armor and half-burned monster bones were still wedged inside.

Ethan activated the Eye of Truth.

The structures beneath the ash immediately became visible.

Most of them were only heat-transfer channels, but deep beneath the base of the furnace was a series of much finer fire patterns whose glow pulsed with a strangely slow and steady rhythm.

The Fragment of the Lava Emperor’s Heart inside his storage space suddenly grew slightly warmer.

Ethan stopped.

He took out the teardrop-shaped crystal fragment and placed it in his palm.

The red-gold spark inside pulsed once, almost perfectly matching the rhythm of the fire patterns he had just seen.

When Ethan tried closing the Eye of Truth, the fire patterns beneath the ground disappeared among countless ordinary cracks.

The heart fragment also gradually became still.

“What did you see?” Laira moved closer.

She looked at the crystal fragment, then at the ground, but clearly did not notice anything unusual.

“There’s an old channel beneath the ash,” Ethan said as he put the heart fragment away. “It might be connected to the furnace, or it could simply be part of the structure that was abandoned. I need to inspect it more carefully.”

He did not immediately mention the Lava Emperor.

Back in the Lava Sea, the heart fragment had been inside an Ultra Rare fish, while this place was already a city filled with fire-element energy.

A similar reaction was not enough to prove that another fragment was nearby.

Furthermore, the Eye of Truth allowed him to clearly see what was already in front of him. It could not turn an entire city into a map that pointed out the way.

Ethan memorized the location of the fire patterns, then walked around the furnace to determine how badly the three circulation rings were damaged.

Ruo Yan left the Undead Mage behind to watch the Bone Dragon and came over to help him personally.

She examined a cracked mold and ran a fingertip across the solidified metal inside one of the channels.

“The furnace was once forced to operate while the temperature inside was unstable. If we pour powerful flames into it immediately, the weakened channels will rupture before the furnace door even opens.”

“Can we reinforce them?” Ethan asked.

“If we have materials, yes. But first we need to know which routes are still usable.”

Ruo Yan glanced toward the Bone Dragon.

“It needs repairs to its wing joints and several sections of its spine. I can use the materials we just collected from the battlefield, but if we spend too much repairing it, we won’t have enough left for the furnace.”

Ethan laughed.

“So the day has finally come when a dragon and a furnace are fighting over my scrap metal.”

He selected the fire-element materials he had decomposed on the previous layer, giving Ruo Yan the bones and metal suitable for repairing the wing joints while keeping the pieces with more stable structures for himself to patch the channels.

Laira was responsible for lifting furnace covers so heavy that even the Undead Mage had needed to wrap them in several layers of deathly energy just to drag them.

She flipped the first one over with a single hand, brushed ash from her nose with the other, then wondered aloud why the craftsmen from the past had not simply made the covers smaller.

Ethan did not answer.

He was busy examining the stone beneath it, but judging from Ruo Yan’s expression, he guessed she was also thinking that an ordinary craftsman could not lift a furnace cover with one hand in the first place.

Mumu was initially extremely enthusiastic about helping.

Its soft body squeezed into narrow gaps to push out ash and rubble, occasionally spreading a thin layer of gel over cracks so Ethan could identify where heat was leaking.

After working for a while, it secretly began dragging a Lava Crystal toward its mouth.

Ethan only needed to glance at it.

Mumu immediately put the crystal down and pushed it toward him with one tentacle, wearing an expression as though it had been voluntarily handing over the spoils from the beginning.

Once one of the circulation rings had been cleared, Ruo Yan suggested testing it with a small amount of flame to measure the furnace’s response.

Ethan agreed.

They should not waste one of the three official activation attempts, but testing only the outer channel without touching the feeding port would not count as an activation.

Ruo Yan controlled the Bone Dragon to breathe out a thread-thin stream of fire-element energy.

Ethan used the Eye of Truth to follow it through the channel they had just repaired.

The red glow traveled through more than half the ring before suddenly turning murky gray near the furnace base.

“Stop,” Ethan said. “This route accepts the flame, but something else is mixing into it near the end.”

Ruo Yan immediately cut off the flow of fire-element energy.

A small explosion sounded beneath their feet, and ash burst from a crack in the stone.

Mumu covered Ethan’s face faster than he could raise his own hand, while Laira planted a foot on the furnace cover she had just lifted to prevent it from flipping backward into Ruo Yan.

Even a simple test of the outer channel had caused such a violent reaction.

The entire group now regarded the Main Furnace much more cautiously.

Ethan found two more leakage points, used Decomposition to remove the damaged burnt stone, then fused new material into place.

The Eye of Truth allowed him to see the structure sealing itself back together, but it could not reveal where the murky gray flow originated.

It appeared and disappeared within a layer of metal too deep to inspect, like dirty water seeping into an old pipe.

After considering how much fire-element energy would be required to run all three circulation rings, Ethan decided to attempt the first activation at the lowest possible level.

Only when the furnace truly began operating would he be able to see how the internal flow behaved.

“I can hold the furnace body if it starts shaking.” Laira placed one hand against a stone pillar beside the feeding port. “But if the whole city starts flying into the sky, you should warn me beforehand.”

“I’ll try to warn you before it takes off,” Ethan replied, then looked toward Ruo Yan. “Only let the Bone Dragon feed in a portion of its core flame. The moment I raise my hand, cut it off.”

Ruo Yan nodded.

The Soul Threads connected to the Bone Dragon tightened.

The Flame Bone Dragon lowered its head and breathed white-gold fire-element energy into the feeding port.

The first circulation ring lit up.

Then the second.

Ethan watched the flame travel through the sections he had just repaired and saw that it remained stable.

But when the red glow reached the third ring, the fine fire patterns beneath the furnace suddenly lit up at the same time.

The heart fragment inside his storage space pulsed violently again.

Before Ethan could look down, the murky gray flow surged upward from beneath the ground and wrapped itself around the Bone Dragon’s fire-element energy.

“Cut the flame!”

Ruo Yan immediately gave the command, but the fire that had already entered the furnace continued to be pulled inward.

The Bone Dragon jerked its head violently, and a new crack appeared across the wing joint that had just been reinforced.

Laira rushed forward, gripping the dragon’s jaw with one hand while slamming the other against the feeding door as it began closing on its own.

The door trembled, delaying the suction for one more moment.

Ethan seized the opportunity and pressed his palm against the gray channel, activating Decomposition to sever the metal bridge connecting the furnace to the Bone Dragon.

The material shattered into light just before the door slammed shut.

A heavy bell rang throughout Emberfall City.

The lights across the first two circulation rings went completely dark.

Only the fine fire patterns beneath the ground flashed once for a very brief instant.

A notification appeared before Ethan.

[First activation failed.]

[Remaining attempts: 2.]

Laira released the Bone Dragon’s jaw, looked at the newly cracked wing joint, then at the Main Furnace.

“I thought the furnace only needed to eat fire.”

Ethan took out the Fragment of the Lava Emperor’s Heart.

The tiny flame inside the crystal was still pulsing very faintly, as though trying to answer something beneath the city.

He looked toward the place where the Eye of Truth had revealed the fire patterns, his expression gradually becoming serious.

“So did I,” he said. “But it looks like we just fed it the wrong thing.”