[Chapter 217. Inside a Volcano]

After their bath, he petted Iris on the head. "I will be going into the east for a while. One of my drones found a dungeon out there."

Her silver eyes followed him. He walked over to the table at the foot of the bed and retrieved his shredded combat suit.

He took out the repair kit he had bought in the System Shop a while ago. The two remaining needles gleamed in the sunlight. With care, he plucked one of the two needles out and pressed its tip into the torn fabric of the suit. Unlike the last time, the needle did not dissolve to repair the armor as it had done with the system-bought gear. It simply glowed.

`Maybe the damage is too much for one needle.` He thought, taking the second and last needle from the soft cushion.

Searanox pushed the second needle right next to the first. Both began to dissolve. The armored plates glowed with a faint light, humming as they re-formed. The tears in the underlying fabric stitched themselves shut, returning the entire piece to its pristine condition.

"Will you be back by night?" Her question was a whisper in the still room.

He pulled the now-intact suit over his bare skin. The metal clicked into place with a series of magnetic snaps, fitting itself against his body to create an almost second skin.

"I cannot promise you that, my dear." His coat settled over his shoulders. The gauntlets sealed over his hands with a final click. He was the Lord of Androxis once more, all traces of vulnerability erased behind cold, impassive metal. "But I will try my best to survive."

He did not wait for a response. He walked out, leaving her alone in the silence of their shared chamber.

He arrived on the sweeping rooftop balcony. The eastern horizon held a strange palette of colors. It was no longer just the piercing blue sky he was familiar with, but a mix of light blue with hints of orange and purple, giving the sky a permanent look of twilight.

With a thought, a sleek, ATV-like travel drone materialized. He mounted the machine. It shot eastward with a near-inaudible hum, becoming a black speck against the canvas of the sky. The drone cut through the warm afternoon air. The wind remained a distant sound that never touched his body, deflected by the magic of his mechanical unit.

He looked down as he flew over the plains below. The land was a desolate, rolling expanse of brown and yellow-green grass. He saw a small herd of deer-like beasts with legs that were too long and what appeared to be armored plates covering their backs. They scattered in panic at the shadow of his drone passing over them, their strange calls echoing in the vast emptiness.

As his drone drew near, the destination became clear: a blue vortex growing larger on the horizon. He brought the vehicle to a silent hover several meters from the swirling portal, its energy distorting the air. In one swift motion, he dismounted. The travel drone vanished back into storage with a flicker of blue light.

The blue light of the entrance cast an unnatural glow on the weathered, bone-white stone framing the archway. His gaze fixed on the dungeon entrance, and the familiar System window opened.

`Level twenty-five. This will give me a good amount of experience.`

Searanox's mind calculated the potential gains; the experience needed to bridge the gap to his next level. The dangers of an unfamiliar dungeon against the experience it promised and the reward for being its first conqueror.

Searanox stood there for a few moments before he approached the portal. His hand stretched out towards it with a slight hesitation, the air shimmering around his fingers as they neared the swirling energy. He took a deep breath, caught the scent of sulfur wafting from the vortex, and stepped into the unknown.

In the blink of an eye, the temperature shifted from a pleasant sunny afternoon to a hellish heat. The change was immediate and overwhelming, like stepping into an open furnace. He found himself standing in a dark tunnel illuminated only by the orange glow of small cracks in the ground, which distorted the air above them in shimmering heatwaves. The ground and walls of the tunnel were made from molten stone, crystalline in structure. There was no vegetation anywhere. Only the sound of distant, bubbling magma and the crackle of cooling rock broke the silence.

With a flash of blue light, his rifle appeared in his hands. The suit immediately began cooling his body, fighting against the ambient temperature, its internal mechanisms whirring in his ears as they maintained his core temperature. Beside him, an array of intermediate drones appeared. First came the defensive drone, its glowing shield activated. Next was an offensive drone, its weapon ports opening, followed by three assault drones that fanned out into formation. Last was a single recon drone.

They took up a defensive formation around him before he took his first step forward. His gait was deliberate and marked by caution, each footfall placed with precision on the crystalline molten stone floor. Several meters deep into the tunnel, he encountered his first bend. He sent his recon drone ahead and waited for its memory feed to show him what lay ahead.

Viewing the tunnel through the eyes of the drone, he saw half a dozen turtle-like creatures. Their shells resembled the ones from the Labyrinth's second floor, but with a slight difference. They did not reflect the light, nor were they as polished; the shells looked as if they were made entirely from basalt, glowing with fissures of orange light.

Each was at least two meters long and about a meter in height, if one counted only their bodies. When they stood, they reached a height of almost one and a half meters.

Searanox had fought turtles before. Some had been nothing to write home about; others were a nightmare in the form of a walking mountain. These, however, were no mountains.

He braced himself and stepped around the corner. His rifle glowed a deep violet as he got his own eyes on them. The next moment, a thick beam of violet light tore through the hot air, blasting into the shell of the nearest beast. Upon contact with the basalt-like shell, it cracked and splintered under the beam's force.

It turned its dark, stone-like head towards him, fixing red eyes the color of molten magma upon him. It took its first steps in his direction. The creature he had attacked was not alone; the rest of the pack turned toward him as well.

His drones began shooting the moment the first beast advanced. Their beams crashed into the shells, splintering the basalt-like armor upon contact. A multi-layer barrier formed between him and the advancing turtles, its hexagonal patterns glowing blue as it expanded to cover most of the tunnel's width and height. Whenever the violet beams from his offensive drone lanced into the armor of the advancing beasts, shards of black rock sprayed off like shrapnel. The fragments glowed orange at their edges before cooling to dull gray in the scorching air. The defensive drone hummed with strain as it maintained the shield, its energy readings fluctuating in his mind's eye.

Searanox realized that shooting at their forms blindly proved inefficient. Their shells resisted the damage typically inflicted by the drone beams. The basalt-like armor absorbed far too much energy, dissipating it through the glowing fissures that pulsed across their surfaces. With precision, he took his next shot, striking the small head of the leading turtle while its beady red eyes locked onto him with malicious intent. To his surprise, the attack did not evaporate its target as expected. It left behind a blackened crater that sizzled in the hellish heat.

The first turtle opened its maw just meters away, spitting out a spray of bright orange magma. The viscous liquid arced through the heated air, landing with a sizzling hiss as it collided with the barrier. It cooled upon contact with the blue, shimmering wall. There was no visible damage to the first layer, yet the stone forming against it could become a problem. If the pack continued spitting molten stone against his barrier, they would encase his protective field in a cocoon of volcanic rock.

He felt the intense heat radiating from the cooling stone through the barrier—a wave of thermal energy that pushed his suit to maintain his body temperature. Taking a direct hit from that magma would prove fatal. The molten slag would melt through his armor, and the concussive force alone possessed enough power to shatter bone.

With a mental command, he instructed his drones to strike exposed flesh instead of impenetrable shells. At first, the shift in focus yielded little result. Then, one of the drones landed a precise shot on the exposed neck of a turtle as it craned its head to spit another glob of magma. The beam seared through flesh with a satisfying sizzle. The beast let out a guttural cry before stumbling forward, its movements growing sluggish as it succumbed to its accumulated wounds.

Two of them reared their massive bodies up in near-perfect unison, their thick, armored legs straining against their own weight. It was a staggering sight to see turtles of that size and weight lift their fronts, revealing the softer scales of their undersides glowing with an inner heat. When they slammed back down, the stone around them cracked and buckled. Within a second, Searanox fought to remain upright. The entire tunnel shook as if a localized earthquake had struck. Dust and small rocks rained down from the ceiling, the very foundation of the dungeon protesting against their sheer mass.