Chapter 122: Engineer Cole Ellenian

"So the thing really was hidden here after all? Insane, how has nobody ever managed to find it?"

"Crazy, right? I remember the intel clearly — this laboratory was built during the war between the races. That was ages ago, back when the First Hero was still completely dominating the battlefield."

"The First Hero was really that strong?"

"Buddy, are you still questioning that? The First Hero was the one who ended the war back then and became Augusta's very first Emperor. You know how prosperous the Empire is right now? That's all thanks to him."

"Ohh~ sounds like you're a fan."

"Yeah. Honestly, I kind of admire him. Too bad we ended up walking a different path. Well, it's all for the sake of humanity anyway. For their sake, we've got to be willing to play the villain."

They laughed heartily, keeping the mood light as they talked. Meanwhile, they kept pushing deeper into the laboratory, reaching a point where the air grew heavier and turned bitterly cold.

"So where's the thing actually kept?"

"There's a reason it's so hard to find," the man in the bat mask said, the one leading the operation, an Luminous-tier Soul Tier holder, speaking low, his gaze fixed on the tunnel ahead with a relaxed expression.

"Back in the day, there was an old engineer from the Dwarf race. He was a genius engineer in his time — a lot of what we now think of as magitech fused with stigmata exists thanks to him."

"You mean Engineer Cole Ellenian?"

"Yeah," the man nodded. "He's believed to be dead. But actually, that's not quite true. In reality, he went into hiding, holed up in this laboratory, working from the shadows. The airships used in combat, those unique artifacts that can only be used once, most of them were originally created by Engineer Cole, with no outside help, no blueprints. He built them straight out of his own imagination."

"Man, what a lunatic... So... what do we do now?" one of them said, a woman in a fox mask, sounding eager. "We've hit the end of the tunnel and there's nothing here."

A massive, cold wall stood before them, the only thing in sight. All of their gazes settled on it for a moment.

"Maybe just smash it? I mean, since this thing's hidden, there's usually some kind of mechanism that opens the wall up and reveals a room, right? Let's just break it instead of hunting for some trigger."

Another one of them offered up the idea. But the man in the bat mask shook his head.

"That's exactly why no one's ever found this thing. Engineer Cole built it knowing full well that someone would eventually come looking, using whatever logic seemed reasonable to them. So he designed it to work against the logic of any rational being."

The man pulled out four unusual objects. Solid, dense material, each shaped like a square that curved inward on every side of the block.

"Engineer Cole's masterpiece is known for his genius in creating a Transcendent-tier artifact. But that wasn't actually his greatest work. According to some long-forgotten records, his true masterpiece was his ability to bend space itself, and use that to deceive rational minds."

The man placed the four objects at each corner of the wall, top and bottom, left and right. They latched on firmly, and with a soft exhale of sound, all four began to spin, releasing thin, dense beams of green light.

The four beams merged together, connecting into one another, forming a square, and at the same time, a cross shape at the center.

"And this, this is his true masterpiece."

The next instant, the wall that had previously appeared to be a dead end expanded on its own. It grew wider, revealing more space stretching further inward — the wall itself never moved back, staying exactly where it had always been, yet the room itself simply grew larger.

By the time they registered what had happened, they were standing much farther in than they should have been. Hadn't they just been facing that same wall head-on a second ago?

"...What the hell?" one of them muttered, unable to believe it. There had been no visible movement, nothing suspicious at all — everything had unfolded as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

As if the room had simply always been there, only removed from its location for a while, and had just now been restored.

"Alright. We can admire Engineer Cole later, let's focus on why we're here," the man in the bat mask said, his gaze fixed on the far end of the room, where an object sat atop a small podium, encased in a thick glass box. It floated slightly above the surface, spinning slowly, pulsing as if alive.

The object was purple, laced with dark veins, its shape resembling a human heart, only different in color.

"Now, let's secure that thing and get out of here."

The woman in the fox mask smiled. "Alright! I'll grab it."

She grinned playfully and shot forward, reaching for the object. But the very next instant, a flash of red blinked past, and a tiny hole tore through the woman's body, right at her chest, right where her heart was, punching clean through to her back.

Her face jolted, her eyes went wide, and blood sprayed from her mouth. Then, without a single word, her body collapsed lifelessly, twitching a few times before the life drained completely out of her.

"W-what? What just happened!? Hey, are you okay?"

One of them looked stunned, moving to rush over and help her. But another one stopped him.

"Stop, idiot. Didn't you see that? Something's clearly wrong here."

"....Ugh...! What do we do now?"

Both of their gazes turned to their leader. The man in the bat mask stayed quiet for a moment, then an awkward smile spread across his face, cold sweat beading down it.

"Engineer Cole had a certain reputation. He was a maniac who absolutely loved building killing traps, weapons of mass destruction, and every other kind of murder-related contraption imaginable."

Which meant, beyond just hiding the object in a room displaced from reality, there were still more traps waiting for them.

"...So what do we do now?"

The man in the bat mask hesitated, then, with a darkened expression, pulled out yet another artifact.

"Let's use this one."