Chapter 279: Restoration

By the time we were out of the Timeless dungeon, it was already well into the night. We didn’t have enough time to try to raid the water treatment plant again, so we returned to Fallcry to rest for the night. In the morning, Diane said that she had told Marron about our progress with the Timeless dungeon.

“Marron said that she’s not too good with horror themes, so she is glad that someone else was able to take care of it for her,” Diane reported. “Also, she has a few items that she would like to have us try the Timeless Traces skill on the next time she’s in Fallcry.”

“That’s fine. By the way, has the workshop gotten back to you yet about meeting the pixies? You had said that they’d give us a new car in exchange for that, right?” As I asked that, I teleported the three of us back towards the compass that marked the way towards the water treatment dungeon, following its guidance to drive over the desert.

“They’ve already started on the car that I ordered,” Diane explained with a nod, looking out the window while we flew through the air. “According to the last message that they sent me, it will be done in about a week. As for the meeting, they were hoping that they could deliver the car in person and go to meet the pixies while they are here.”

I didn’t have any problem with that. “How long will it take them to get from their workshop to Fallcry?”

Diane blinked before clarifying. “Oh, the representatives that they’re sending have already left. They’ll be mailing the car from their workshop to the representative, who will then present it to us next week.”

That was certainly one way to handle their business. Still, I saw no reason to complain, given that we were getting a higher-end vehicle for nothing more than an introduction to an isolated race.

I focused on flying straight, going nearly an hour before I saw the familiar oasis appear on the horizon. “We’re here. Get ready to explore the dungeon.”

Diane took a deep breath to prepare herself. “We’ll need to work carefully. With only a one-minute timer for the skill, you’ll need to cast it repeatedly in order to keep the terminal in a functional state. You may even need to go around and use the skill on various pipes to fix leaks while we work.”

However, I simply gave a wry chuckle. “I spent all night doing simulated training for Timeless Traces,” I revealed as I parked the car, causing the other two to look over in surprise.

“What’s the duration for it now?” Bella asked hesitantly.

“Just over forty minutes. It seems like you get one minute per level of the skill, which made it really annoying to keep training near the end of the night. To optimize my training time, I have to cast it once a second. And since I can’t cast the skill again on the same target until it wears off…”

“You would need over two thousand targets to use the skill on,” Diane quickly calculated, her eyes twitching.

“Exactly. So, I made a swarm of small snakes to use as targets. Not my brightest idea ever, but it gave me all the targets that I needed. The real problem was identifying which ones still had the status active, so I had to constantly use Search to look for the unaffected ones.”

Bella, meanwhile, smiled brightly. “Well, if you can use the skill for over half an hour, it just became a lot more usable both in and out of combat, right? With half an hour for the duration, it’s basically a second life.”

“Yes and no,” Diane said with a sigh. “If anything, it’s become more problematic to use in combat. Since he can’t use the skill on us again until the duration expires, that means that it has to be saved for emergencies only. But, in such an emergency, we’re likely to take additional damage after the skill has been cast. Meaning that once the skill expires and the injuries stack up, it is very likely that we could just die on the spot.”

Bella winced at Diane’s description, though the halfling followed it up with more. “Thankfully, though, it has become more useful for its intended purpose as a dungeon exploration tool. With forty minutes of uptime, you could theoretically use the skill on most of the dungeon before it starts to cancel itself.”

“However, once we get inside, make sure not to use the skill on the golems in the dungeon.” Diane’s eyes narrowed slightly as she said this, already approaching the gate. “There is a chance that they only recognized us as inspectors because of the damage that they had sustained from countless years. If you restore them to normal, we may very well be instantly identified as intruders and attacked.”

“That would be less than ideal.” I agreed, following behind her and into the dungeon. As before, we were greeted by one of the golems and led towards the terminal at the heart of the dungeon. This time, however, we weren’t completely helpless when faced with the aged terminal, its labels worn away.

I used Timeless Traces to restore the terminal to perfect condition, and Diane immediately began to study the controls. Thankfully, they were all properly labeled now, and there was even an automated diagnostics button. Once she pressed it, Diane began directing me to parts of the dungeon with damaged machines, getting me to fix those as the computer ran its course.

In total, there were ten machines that I had to fix, and they were all in the same general area. Under normal circumstances, it might take someone five minutes to run the gauntlet and repair them all, as well as the terminal. This meant two things. First, the cost of the skill was low enough that a high-leveled player was meant to be able to cast it with a downtime of less than thirty seconds. Second, they were expected to have gotten the skill up to at least level five before coming here.

Without experience buffs like I had, getting a powerful skill like this to level five would be no easy feat. Even with the penalty from my simulated training, I estimated that I was gaining skill experience about a dozen times faster than normal. Even then, an entire night of constant training had only gotten me about forty levels.

This dungeon was never meant to be cleared right after the other one, I thought to myself as I returned to the control room. It was just supposed to be a guide to show the potential of the skill, and incentivize Players to continuously train it until they could come back and finish this.

“Okay, I’ve got the self-repair protocols activated,” Diane said proudly once I was back. “One of those machines you fixed up was a reservoir for tiny maintenance drones. According to the computer, the drones themselves were fine, but the machine holding them had broken from the outside, making it impossible for them to get out and do their job.”

“Now that they’re out of their container, they won’t be stuck once the skill timer is finished.” After she said that, she gestured towards the screen, where it showed a map of the facility and several small shapes moving through the pipes.

“What about the waste slimes?” Bella asked curiously. “They were the things clogging the pipes, weren’t they?”

“Some of the other machines were meant to control them,” Diane explained. “In reality, we probably only needed to fix three or four machines in total for everything to get kickstarted. However, the diagnostic could only identify one problem at a time, so we had to fix all of the key systems ourselves first.”

I watched the map for a few moments before my eyes glanced over the damaged golems nearby. “What’s going to happen now? If the dungeon’s being repaired, does that mean we ‘beat’ it?”

However, Diane did not have an answer for this, looking somewhat conflicted. “Honestly? I’m not sure. The computer just said that it’s running its maintenance program, and to standby. I assume that the next stage of the dungeon will either trigger during the repairs or at the end. Maybe we’ll have to fight some kind of monster attacking the drones, and there could even be a wave defense mechanic.”

“Alternatively, the goal of this might be to force the one with Timeless Traces to continue running the gauntlet of machines to keep them repaired during the maintenance. I doubt that they expected the person who came to have the skill at your level.”

As she spoke, we began to hear the whirs of machines coming back to life in the distance, the plant slowly becoming operational. In the periphery of my senses, I noticed the waste slimes making their way through the pipes, congregating towards the nearby reservoir.

When I reported this information to Diane, her face twisted in disgust. “Oh god, I hope it doesn’t sing.”

Her words caught both myself and Bella by surprise, looking at her with utter confusion on our faces. She simply let out a long sigh. “Long story. Anyways, get ready. If they don’t turn hostile immediately, they might combine to form a single boss. The waste slimes have been left to propagate for too long, so it is likely that the control devices can’t fully restrict them.”

Diane’s words soon turned out to be true, as I saw the viscous slimes emerging from large pipes, their colors having changed after absorbing the filth within the pipes along their journey. They were now a sickly green, sinking into the water and combining to form a single, bubbling mass.

The first complaint that I had was the smell. It was absolutely horrendous, like an entire sewer had just been dumped in front of us. The second was the eyes… were those eyes? There were large, white bubbles of what looked like pus near the top of the giant slime, shifting around as if observing the environment.

“Can I please destroy that thing before I feed it my breakfast?” I asked, resisting the urge to gag.

“Go, Drake! Use Water King!” Diane shouted, covering her own face to block out the smell. “Fire will only make this even worse, so you have to destroy it with water or other elements!”

I let out a groan at that, but was already acting. Waves of floating water rushed out from the air around me, spearing through the gelatinous fecal slime. The ‘wounds’ left by the water quickly closed up, and it began moving towards us, so I changed tactics. Instead of piercing it with water, I wrapped my water ki around it, then froze the entire block solid. This seemed effective as a cage, but the monster was still shifting around inside the ice block, having not been frozen through.

Next, I sent a blob of darkness through the ice block and deep into the slime’s body, before giving it an order to go wild and destroy the entire slime from within. The blob violently expanded, shifting into a mass of swirling blades that rapidly shredded the living sewage. As far as I could tell, this thing did not have any form of core or weakness, so the only way to destroy it was to continuously inflict large amounts of damage faster than it could recover. Thankfully, that’s something that I was very good at.

Shortly after I was done, and the monster showed no more signs of life, Bella slowly lifted one hand, the other still covering her mouth and nose. “...Wasn’t the answer just to use Timeless Traces on the slime to turn it to normal?” she asked, Diane and I looking at one another.

“I was not going to touch that thing,” I answered in a firm tone. “No amount of gold or quest rewards could get me to place my hand on thousand-year-old sewer sludge.”

“And if you did, you would not be holding onto me with that hand when we returned to Fallcry,” Diane agreed just as firmly. Bella simply shook her head and gave an amused smile, while the water in the reservoir slowly began to drain out, more water rushing in from above.