Chapter 245: Furnance Below

The tunnel swallowed them whole.

Nathan stepped through the opening in the black wall, Moonlight drawn, his boots crunching on something that wasn’t stone. It was metal. Cold, riveted, industrial metal.

The air hit him next—not the dry heat of the desert or the organic dampness of the forest. This was something else entirely. It tasted like a forge that had been running for a thousand years and never once stopped.

The party filed in behind him. Thirty Climbers. Six nations. All of them blinking against the sudden shift in environment, their weapons raised, their eyes adjusting to the dim orange glow that pulsed from somewhere deep below.

"What the hell is this?" Dillon muttered, his voice echoing off metal walls.

Nathan didn’t answer immediately. He was staring.

Layer 4 was not a forest. It was not a desert. It was not a nest or a ruin or a battlefield.

It was a factory.

Massive gears the size of houses turned overhead, their teeth interlocking with grinding, tectonic groans. Pistons the width of tree trunks pumped in slow, rhythmic cycles, driving clouds of white steam into the vaulted ceiling. Conveyor belts of black iron stretched in every direction, carrying... something. Shapes wrapped in grey cloth. Shapes that moved. Shapes that breathed.

The walls were lined with pipes—thousands of them—each one pulsing with a faint, sickly green light that Nathan recognized instantly. The same light as the crystals the grey-robed figures had planted beneath the stadium. The same parasitic glow that had been siphoning mana from the tournament.

"The Tower’s engine room?" Smithy said quietly. He had pushed his glasses up his nose, his Void Eel coiling nervously at his feet. "This could probably be where Lord Creation is being built. This is where the energy is being processed, like the crystals"

"Processed from what though?" Garrett asked.

Nobody answered him. Because they were all looking at the conveyor belts.

The shapes on the belts were people.

Nathan saw it clearly. His [Hunter’s Insight] stripped away the grey wrappings, the dim lighting, the industrial haze. What lay on those iron belts were human bodies. Civilians. Stadium-goers. Families. Children. They weren’t dead—their chests still rose and fell, their hearts still beat—but they weren’t awake either. Their eyes were closed. Their mouths hung slack. Thin tubes of translucent green material ran from their arms, their spines, their temples, feeding into the pipes that lined the walls.

The pipes pulsed brighter with every heartbeat.

"They’re being drained," Elise said. Her voice was flat. Controlled. The voice she used when she was very, very angry and very, very afraid. "Their life force. Their mana. Everything. It’s being siphoned into the Tower’s construction."

Nathan’s stomach turned. He looked down the length of the conveyor. Dozens of bodies. Then hundreds. Then more, disappearing into the darkness ahead, feeding deeper into the machine.

"The strays," Amara whispered. Her spirits were agitated, darting around her head in tight, panicked circles. "The people we couldn’t find. The ones who were scattered when the Tower formed. They weren’t just lost. They were collected."

Kaito’s hand tightened on his sword hilt until his knuckles went white. "Fucking hell, How many?"

Smithy was already counting. His lips moved silently. Then he stopped. His face went pale. "Hundreds. Maybe more. This is just one belt. There are dozens of belts. Dozens of processing lines." He looked at Nathan. "We’re talking about thousands of people."

The silence that followed was the worst sound Nathan had ever heard.

Then the gears shifted.

The grinding intensified. The pistons pumped faster. The orange glow beneath the floor brightened, and the temperature climbed. Something was waking up. Something in the machinery had detected them.

"Movement!" Arthur bellowed, his shield slamming down in front of him. "Twelve o’clock! Multiple contacts!"

They came from the walls. From the ceiling. From the gaps between the gears. Mechanical constructs—humanoid shapes forged from black iron and glowing green veins. They had no faces. No eyes. Just smooth, riveted heads and arms that ended in blades, clamps, and welding torches. They moved with jerky, hydraulic precision, their joints hissing with every step.

[Enemy Detected: Assembly Drone]

[Enemy Detected: Welder Unit]

[Enemy Detected: Crusher Frame]

Nathan’s interface flooded with red markers. Dozens of them. Then more. The factory was spawning defenders like an immune system responding to an infection.

"Protect the civilians!" Nathan shouted. "Don’t let them reach the belts! Garrett, Red—hold the left conveyor! Kaito, Arthur—right side! Dillon, Cloudy—air superiority! Elise—freeze the conveyor mechanisms! Amara—get those people off the belts!"

The raid party exploded into motion.

Garrett charged the left conveyor belt, Volcan blazing crimson. Red’s horns lowered, wool hardening to steel. A Crusher Frame lunged—a massive, eight-foot construct with pistons for arms—and Garrett met it head-on. Volcan erupted against its chest plate. The thermal pulse melted through the iron, and the construct staggered. Red finished it, horns driving through its core.

Kaito and Arthur took the right. Kaito’s sword was a silver blur, carving through Welder Units with surgical precision. Arthur’s shield absorbed a blow from an Assembly Drone, and his counter-strike shattered the construct’s head. They fought in tandem, covering each other’s gaps, an unstoppable wall of steel and golden light.

Dillon and Cloudy owned the air above the conveyor belts. Drones dropped from the ceiling, trying to reach the unconscious civilians. Cloudy’s lightning intercepted them mid-descent, frying their circuits. Dillon’s [Thunder Edge] carved through the ones that survived, his Storm Striders crackling as he leaped from belt to belt.

Elise raised Aurora’s Heart. The Frost Golem materialized beside her, its crystalline body gleaming in the orange light. She slammed her staff into the floor. Ice raced outward, crawling up the conveyor mechanisms, freezing the gears, locking the belts in place. The bodies on them stopped moving.

"Amara! Now!" Nathan called.

Amara and her team surged forward. Her spirits wrapped around the unconscious civilians, gently lifting them from the belts, pulling the green tubes free. The bodies gasped. Stirred. Some opened their eyes—confused, terrified, blinking in the harsh industrial light.

"Stay down!" Amara commanded. "Stay down and stay close to me!"

Nathan fired [Starfall Barrage] into a cluster of Assembly Drones swarming toward a group of newly freed civilians. Silver arrows rained down, piercing through iron skulls and glowing cores. The constructs collapsed in showers of sparks and black oil.

But more kept coming.

Mirko was a hurricane of golden fire.

She had activated [Gigantification], swelling to twelve feet tall, Dragon’s Fang blazing in her hands. She swept through the mechanical horde like a scythe through wheat. Each swing shattered iron. Each [Aegis Strike] sent shockwaves rippling through the factory floor, crumpling constructs like tin cans.

"Hmph! Soulless machines!" she roared, her blade carving through a Welder Unit’s torso. "You dare threaten the innocent? THIS KNIGHT DOES NOT TOLERATE BULLIES!"

A Crusher Frame swung at her from behind. She didn’t turn. She caught it on her back with [Impenetrable Fortress], the barrier flaring gold, and then spun, bringing Dragon’s Fang down in a devastating overhead cleave. The construct split in half. Sparks showered the floor.

Kuro was everywhere and nowhere. She slipped between the constructs like smoke, her Veilweave Daggers phasing through armor plating to strike the glowing cores beneath. [Shadow Lock] pinned three Assembly Drones to the floor simultaneously, and Shiro descended from above, her [Dragonification] spreading golden scales across her arms. [Tyrant Dragon Fist] detonated against the pinned constructs, shattering them into scrap.

"The Young Lord’s enemies are many," Shiro called, landing lightly beside Kuro. "But they are mindless. No will. No purpose. They are tools."

"Then we break the tools," Kuro replied. "And find the hand that wields them."

Ororo stood at the rear, her staff raised. [Healing Field] washed over the freed civilians, closing their wounds, restoring their strength. [Negate Ailment] purged the green tubes’ residual toxins from their systems. Her pale blue eyes were focused, her expression serene, but her hands trembled slightly. There were so many people to heal. So many.

Nathan fought his way toward the center of the factory floor.

His [Hunter’s Insight] was screaming. Not with enemy markers—those were everywhere, a sea of red. But with something else. A pattern. A rhythm. The machinery wasn’t random. It was structured. Organized. Everything fed into a single point, deep below the floor, where the orange glow was brightest and the grinding was loudest.