Fizzy plummeted down the hole opened up by the Vault’s mysterious-but-not-really controller. She bounced off the metal-lined walls a few times before her body began falling directly downwards. Flashing yellow lights built into the surroundings blurred past her during her descent. Their presence was very much a good thing, because they were the only source of illumination she had now that the shaft’s entrance had disappeared somewhere overhead. As she stabilized her fall and twisted her body around to face downwards, however, she realized that even that small comfort was about to disappear. The metal covered section of the shaft disappeared abruptly, giving way to a vertical tunnel covered with nothing but rock for walls.

You have left Lednik Dva.

A few seconds later, she felt her body bounce off a protruding stone, slightly slowing her descent and altering its trajectory. She began sporadically colliding with the uneven walls, causing her metal body to produce a burst of sparks every time she did. Being knocked about so much was beginning to deal damage to her, at which point she activated Parallel One and entrusted her vitality to Plus. The Holy Lights aimed at herself momentarily bathed her surroundings in a radiant light, through which she was able to grasp two very important things.

Namely that this part of the shaft was not only tighter, but also had a slight incline to it. Realizing this was her chance to gain some control over her freefall, she twisted her body around to face the direction of the steep slope and tried to grab onto it. Her fingers and toes dug into the sheer cliff face, making them screech loudly and spark brightly as they tore up the rocky surface.

“Is it working?!” asked an excited Plus. “Seems to be working, right?!”

“Shut up and focus on keeping our hands and feet attached!” yelled back Fizzy. “I need those to do things!”

“Right! Holy Light!”

The Parallel entity’s outburst, ill-timed as it was, was still very much correct. The golem’s actions had indeed killed a good deal of her speed, if the rate at which her surroundings whizzed by her was any indication. If it was like this, then surely she could avoid making too hard of an impact against the ground.

*DONNNNNNNNNNNNN*

At least that’s what she thought until her butt collided with something huge and metal.

Your body suffers damage from the fall. HP -835.

Proficiency level increased. Shock Absorption is now Level 4. END +4. STR +2.

“Well, that could’ve gone worse,” remarked Plus.

“Yeah. Though I wonder what it is we hit? It definitely didn’t sound like rock bottom.”

“Let’s check it out, then! Holy Light!”

The flash produced by the healing Spell revealed that the thing Fizzy and Plus had hit on their way down was the torso of that iron colossus they saw back in the Vault. The massive construct had gotten badly damaged during the fall, making it lose all of its limbs save for half of a right arm. It then got lodged in this narrow section of the tunnel to become what was essentially a steel bridge that led to nowhere. It obviously lurched a bit due to the golem’s butt making an impact on it, but it seemed a stable enough foothold for the moment. Fizzy let out a breathless sigh of relief as she turned off Parallel Plot Skill and allowed her MP to recover as best it could.

*RRRRUMBLE*

The break didn’t last long, however, as her surroundings began to shake about a little while later It was a violent tremor that dislodged rocks and stones from the walls, making them rattle loudly against what was left of the metal titan’s body. The quake also made the ‘bridge’ wobble and groan, but didn’t manage to dislodge it. Fizzy didn’t have much of a chance to inspect its structural integrity, however, as she was too busy dreading the source of that violent tremor. And indeed, a single glance upward confirmed that yet another in a long line of guesses had proven to be true.

The Vault had erased itself in a rather spectacular fashion, and the resulting flaming debris were currently tumbling down the hole towards the golem.

“Oh, come on!”

Fizzy let out a complaint as she leaped off the temporary stop and continued falling downwards along the steep slow. Rather than trying to slow her descent, however, she now let her body slide against the near-vertical incline, letting her shield and the left side of her lower body bear the brunt of it.. The molten wreckage from above was in hot pursuit, but didn’t seem to be catching up to her at all. In fact, the worst of it had collided with the metal titan’s body, blocking off most of the tunnel and allowing only the smaller pieces to fall through. There was no telling how long that would last though, as Fizzy imagined it would buckle under the unimaginable weight piling on top of it sooner rather than later.

After about almost a minute of skidding along the steep incline, the tunnel came to an abrupt end. However, rather than smashing into the ground feet first, the gnome suddenly found herself in another completely uncontrolled fall. With her sole source of traction gone, she flailed around wildly for a second or two before hitting the actual ground, landing butt-first onto what could only be described as a scrap heap.

Your body suffers damage from the fall. HP - 756.

The piled up debris of ages past crumpled under her shiny metal ass, becoming something of a cushion that absorbed her momentum and considerably softened the impact. Fizzy then immediately healed herself with what little MP she had remaining, scrambled to her feet and started running without even trying to get her bearings in this total darkness. Thankfully her surroundings were predominantly made of metal, so her Metallopathy was able to roughly guide her through the junk-filled maze and allow her to vacate her landing site. Her hustle bore fruit, as a deluge of flaming Vault debris began to pour out of the ceiling. They bathed the area in a bright red light as they fell on top of roughly the same spot Fizzy had touched down on, where they continued to smolder.

From what little she was able to see from her momentarily lit up surroundings, Fizzy determined she was in the middle of a vast dome-shaped cavern. The ceiling was dotted with circular holes similar to the one she came out of, suggesting that there were multiple places that fed into this one spot. Combined with the sea of junk around her, the only conclusion she could reach was that this was some sort of ancient dumping site. She had gotten the impression that the Original Artificer had been a hoarder that never threw anything out, but that was proven to have been a misunderstanding.

While the bits and pieces in the Vault were of poor quality, they at least had potential uses. The stuff down here, on the other hand, was complete trash. Channeling her Metallopathy through it made it abundantly clear most of it was rotten, rusted, tarnished, corroded, horribly bent, molten through or otherwise ruined. It would appear that the Original Artificer simply had a slightly different standard on what she considered ‘useless junk’ than Fizzy did. Even she would have a hard time putting any of this stuff too good use, despite her ability to restore metal to pristine condition with her magic. In fact, just touching it filled the golem with an infuriating itching sensation, which was why she wasted no time in getting away from the scrap heap right away.

Using the lingering flames of the Vault’s wreckage as a light source, she then did a thorough inspection of her body. All of her limbs were still attached and in working order, which was a good thing. The shield was as unblemished as it always was, although her butt and thigh were both scratched up pretty badly. Thankfully it was nothing another Holy Light wouldn’t fix. She didn’t have the MP to sustain Parallel Plot for the latter half of the descent, so she was worried whether pieces of her rump might have been peeled off completely. Which, thankfully, didn’t seem to be the case.

Next, she confirmed the state of her equipment. The spring-loaded knife strapped to her right arm was in place and functioning properly, though her electrified backpack had been banged up pretty hard in the fall and no longer functioned. It was nothing that some metal healing couldn’t fix once her MP recovered somewhat, though. The same went for her newly acquired wrench, which she had stuck to the side of her body with her magnetic abilities.

Deciding this was a good opportunity, Fizzy then appraised the oversized tool with her Metallopathy.

“Man, this thing’s a lot sturdier than it looks,” she commented. “I bet its mechanisms would’ve still worked even if I didn’t bother trying to protect it.

“Well, it’s the Original Artificer’s handiwork, right? Something like this is only to be expected.”

“I suppose.”

“Have you decided on a name for it yet?” asked Plus with a voice brimming with anticipation.

“A name? What?”

“Uh, hello?! All legendary badasses had names for their weapons, so it wouldn’t do if we were somehow left out of that tradition, right?!”

“I guess that’s true. Does that cliche still apply if it isn’t really a weapon, though?”

“Are you or are you not going to smash skulls with it?”

“Right, good point. I guess giving it a name does sound pretty interesting. I suppose you already have a suggestion in mind, yeah?”

“I sure do! We should call it the Grindy Crushy Death Wrench of Awesomeness!”

“… Uh, no, I don’t think so. That just sounds silly.”

“Oh… Yeah… I guess…” said Plus in a clearly disappointed voice. “Don’t suppose you have any ideas, then?”

“Hmmm… It needs to be something memorable, unique,” mused Fizzy as she looked it over. “A name that doesn’t take away from the quality of its craftsmanship, yet is simple and easy for plebeians to understand to memorize. Something like… the Iron Teeth!”

The golem then pulled the lever in the handle, causing the newly-christened Iron Teeth to roar in response as it clenched the huge aperture completely closed. Calling it that was somewhat misleading since there were no actual teeth nor iron involved in its construction, but it was probably good enough for the simple minded masses.

“Oh-hoh! A wonderful name, as expected of myself!”

“Huhuhu… well, I am pretty smart if I do say so- Oh, shit!”

The self-congratulatory session was suddenly cut short, however, when Fizzy realized something rather dire. The Bag of Holding that held her emergency supplies had been ripped open during the fall, and its contents were nowhere to be found, which was a big problem. Even if she didn’t need food or drink, the golem could’ve made good use of the tools and explosives she had stuffed in there. There was no telling what she might run into down here, so lacking those combat options was neither tasty, nor shiny. She had also lost that flask of metal polish she bought back in Gun Tarum, so making herself shine was going to be quite difficult.

She briefly considered looking around for the lost items, but gave up on it almost immediately. They had most likely been teleported to random spots within two or three kilometers around her when the enchanted container’s spatial magic had become undone. Which, considering that she was deep underground when it happened, meant that her belongings had been more or less lost for good. She wasn’t even sure at what point during her frantic descent the Bag of Holding had been torn up, which only added to the potential area those items would’ve wound up in.

“Say, how deep are we anyway?” asked Plus in an attempt to get them back on track.

Fizzy went silent for a second as she began doing some mental math.

“I’d say about five, maybe six kilometers down.”

It was a rough estimate based on how long the descent lasted, how heavy her body was and the amount of speed she would’ve lost while dragging her hide along the shaft’s wall.

“That much?! How in Marlene’s name are we supposed to get back to the surface?!”

“I’m working on it.”

“Can’t we just climb back out the way we fell?! Maybe the Vault is still-!”

There was a loud groan and a series of tremors as yet more flaming wreckage spilled out from the ceiling and contributed to the smoldering junk heap a dozen or so meters away from Fizzy.

“… Nevermind. So, uh, what’s the plan, boss?”

“Well, first things first. This fire won’t last long, so I think we should get our bearings while we still have light.”

Through her exploration of the cavern, Fizzy was able to quickly determine that the ground was much too flat and the ceiling was much too spherical for this cavern to be a natural formation. The circular floor had a radius of about 20 to 23 meters, and the chamber had a height of about 15 meters at its tallest point. There were a total of 14 round tunnels lining the walls at ground level, with 6 more visible overhead. Each of them seemed to have been carved out of the surrounding bedrock through unknown means, though the smoothness of their walls suggested some type of corrosive acid had come into play.

The golem then began to rifle through the junkyard in an attempt to find a more permanent source of illumination. She knew this was something of a futile effort, but she kept searching all the same until the fires died out and she was surrounded by complete darkness once more. Which turned out to be a good thing, as it allowed Fizzy to spot a faint blue light seeping out of the gaps in a nearby pile of scrap.

She eagerly dug into the trash heap until she happened upon a stack of cylindrical metal drums. There twenty of them in total, and each of them was slightly taller and wider than herself. They seemed to be made out of lead and were marked with the same symbol, though most of the paint had peeled off due to the passage of time. The only thing Fizzy could tell about it was that it used to be a yellow circle with maybe black markings towards the middle, but that was it. She had never seen anything like this before, but the fact she was able to see it at all was what was truly important here.

And the reason for the increased visibility was that one of those barrels had a rupture in it, allowing a mysterious glowing liquid to seep out of it. The pale blue light it gave off was rather weak and failed to illuminate more than half a meter around the puddle, but it was surely better than nothing. On a hunch, Fizzy ripped open the lid of one of the other lead drums, revealing that it was full of the same liquid. Except that this particular batch seemed ‘fresher,’ for lack of a better word, as the bright cyan light it gave off was so intense that it momentarily blinded her.

Thankfully Fizzy was a golem and not a pathetic meatbag, so her eyes only took less than a second to adjust to the new light source without any sort of pain or discomfort. Even if she was glad for finding this stuff, however, the aspiring Artificer couldn’t help but be suspicious of it considering it was her first time laying eyes on something like this. There was also the fact that its mere presence down here seemed to imply that it was something the Original Artificer herself had deemed as useless garbage.

Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, so Fizzy decided to test the waters, as it were. She picked up a random metal rod off the ground and, after healing it with her magic, began stirring the strange substance. Calling it a ‘liquid’ seemed a bit generous though, as it turned out to have a very thick, almost chunky consistency. It clung incessantly to the renewed rod Fizzy had poked it with, and refused to completely come off of it no matter how vigorously she swung it around. The droplets that flew off then stained her surroundings, which ever-so-slightly raised the light levels around her. The important part was that the metal rod had not corroded or dissolved in the slightest, meaning it was probably safe for a golem like her to handle this stuff directly.

Not that she had any intentions of doing so. Unenchanted iron was one thing, but there was no telling how this stuff would react to her mana-charged mithril skin. So rather than pour the stuff all over her as was her first instinct, she instead used some old buckets to scoop the goop out of its lead container and begin splashing it all over the stone walls around her. About 10 minutes and half a drum later, the junkyard was bathed in a serene cyan light that provided all the visibility she needed. She had no idea how long this glow-in-the-dark ‘paint’ would last before it grew dim, but she had a feeling it would probably be in the scope of years and decades rather than hours or days.

Next up, she decided it was time to try exploring one of the surrounding tunnels. She hoisted one of the still sealed lead barrels out of the trash heap and set it down in front of the nearest hole in the wall. She then tipped it over on its side and, after carefully puncturing a small hole in the lid with some random spear-like piece of junk, began rolling it down the tunnel. The glowing trail it left behind was more than enough to not only illuminate her path, but also make sure she wouldn’t get lost. If it was like this, she was sure she could map the place out in no time flat.

Unfortunately, she soon realized she was underestimating how vast these underground passages really were. The tunnel she had went into was long and winding, with many branching paths that looped in on themselves. It wasn’t until 16 hours and two barrels’ worth of glowing goop later that she had finished exploring the area, though the results were rather depressing. Each and every path she explored had either ended in a dead end, or became impossible for her to traverse due to it becoming too small or curving upwards in a way that made it impossible to climb.

She failed to come across any living things aside from some plus-sized earthworms poking their heads out of a loose patch of soil, but that didn’t mean she was alone down here. Her sharp ears were able to pick up distant skittering and screeching sounds that echoed gently through the tunnels, but was unable to pinpoint their origins. She could only assume they came in from those gaps she couldn’t go into without risking a cave in, but there was no telling what sort of creature they actually belonged to.

Fizzy returned to the vast cavern she originally fell into, feeling disheartened and a little bit annoyed at having wasted her time. She began exploring the other tunnels in turn, but her mood only turned more and more sour after being treated to the same results as before. A few days later all she had to show for her efforts were a whole lot of glowing lines and zero ideas on how to reach the surface. It wasn’t until the fifth day after her descent that something noteworthy actually happened.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

“… Who the what now?”

The golem had been in the middle of exploring the fourth tunnel entrance when she got a completely unexpected notification.

“What’s up, Fizzy?”

“I just got a message stating that I apparently killed something via an ‘unknown toxin.’”

“… Huh? For real?”

“Yeah. Got some Metal Golem XP for it, too.”

“But… we haven’t even run into anything that qualifies as an opponent yet since those bastards keep avoiding us!”

“I am well aware of that, Plus.”

“Right, sorry.”

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

“Ah, got the same message a second time just now.”

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

“Make that a third, actually.”

“Okay, this is officially weird. You don’t suppose this blue stuff we’ve been leaving all over the place is to blame, do you?”

“I don’t see what else it could be. I mean I’m perfectly fine, but that doesn't mean it isn’t poisonous to whatever creatures have been avoiding us over the past few days. Those stupid meatbags must’ve fallen into it or something like that.”

“Hmm… should we go investigate one of the tunnels we’ve already been to?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

Having decided on this new course of action, Fizzy immediately abandoned the lead drum she had been carrying with her on the spot and turned back towards the central hub.

…

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

…

The same notifications continued to trickle in as she walked, making her Metal Golem Level go up at a steady pace all the while. What started off with three became five, then a dozen, then twenty, then fifty as the messages gradually increasing in frequency. By the time she managed to return to the junkyard some four and a half hours later, the body count had already reached triple digit territory and refused to stop climbing. She then proceeded warily down the first tunnel she ever visited with a tight grip on the Iron Teeth. She had also stopped keeping track of the number of casualties attributed to her actions at around the 240 mark, as she needed to focus on her surroundings.

Level up!

Congratulations, you are now a Level 40 Metal Golem! STR +3. END +3. AGI +2. FTH +1.

It was around the time that her Metal Golem Job had Leveled Up for the fourth consecutive time in 10 hours that she finally found one of her supposed victims. It was a monstrous scorpion that was roughly 3 meters long without even counting its stinger-tipped tail. It had six arachnid legs instead of eight, and only two eyes at the front of its face. Its most distinct feature, however, was its purple crystalline shell covering the entirety of its body. Its rough surface sparkled in a rather captivating manner due to the serene blue light given off by the trail of poisonous slime on the ground.

Most importantly of all, though, was the fact that it lay there absolutely still and lifeless. Fizzy approached the corpse carefully and prodded its oversized pincer with her weapon. This gentle nudge made the limb break off of the main body with a crumpling noise, much to her surprise. This allowed her a glimpse at the creature’s insides, revealing that it was not actually a crystalline golem subspecies or variant, as had been her first guess.

Beneath that glimmering carapace lay what looked like it might have been meat at some point. However, even someone with zero interest in either having or consuming flesh like Fizzy was able to tell it was rotting, despite the fact it hadn’t been even half a day since it died. It probably smelled the part, too, making the golem quietly thankful she no longer had access to that particular sense of hers.

The important thing to take away from this impromptu autopsy was that whatever this thing was, it was quite literally falling apart from the inside out. Now, Fizzy was by no means an expert when it came to poisons and toxins, but even she was sure this was extremely unusual. Not even the undeath-spreading disease known as the Blight had this sort of effect on living flesh.

Most interesting of all was that the scorpion-thing bore no signs of actually ingesting or even touching the stuff. The golem knew from personal experience that this stuff stained incredibly badly, which was why she had been extra careful not to get any of it on her. The body didn’t have a single glowing drop anywhere on it either, regardless of whether it be its shell or its mouth.

In fact, it was actively avoiding the stuff if its position was any indication. Fizzy had tried her best to leave the glowing trail on her left-hand side when going inwards in accordance to a trick she picked up during her time in Azurvale on the subject of dealing with mazes. The result was that she would always know which way was ‘in’ and which way was ‘out’ by simply noting which side of the path her markings were on. So the fact that the trail was on the corpse’s right side meant that it was actually moving away from the deeper parts of the tunnel system.

Fizzy followed the direction it had seemingly come from, coming across more and more of the creatures’ corpses, both small and large. She kept looking for the source of these things until she eventually came upon a familiar part of the cave network. It was the place where she had abandoned the first drum of glowing goop after it had become almost completely empty, but it was not at all the way she left it.

For starters, the barrel itself had been smashed and ripped up rather viciously, allowing what residue remained inside to pool slightly on the ground. The other and arguably far more important difference was the fact that this path was no longer a dead end, as evidenced by the freshly dug out tunnel in the cavern’s floor.

The golem once again tightened her grip on the Iron Teeth and warily went into that new passageway. It sloped downwards a forty degree angle, leading her to a greater depth than the she had ever been before. It wasn’t all that dark, either, as a trickle of the ‘mysterious toxin’ had found its way down the path. Not only that, but Fizzy herself seemed to glow slightly, though she did her best to ignore that particular can of worms until she reached the bottom.

And when she did, she found herself at the edge of a spacious cavern, extremely similar in size and shape to the one she had originally landed in. It did not have a junkyard of its own, or indeed any scrap at all, but that didn’t mean it was empty. Its walls were actually lined with weaving vine-like patterns of glowing blue liquid, which must have seeped into this place through cracks and gaps in the tunnels Fizzy had already visited. As for the results of this accidental spillage, they were all strewn about on the floor.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

Your target has expired due to the mysterious toxin.

Feat of strength performed! You have unlocked a new Perk: Slayer of Shardlings.

Hundreds of dead or dying crystal scorpions - or Shardlings, as they were apparently called - lay around the ground in a disorganized fashion. Some were decomposing rapidly on the spot, while other moaned and wailed in clear agony as they waited for death to claim them. It was a grim scene that made Fizzy realize that she should probably stop playing around with that mysterious chemical that was well beyond her understanding.

However, this conclusion wasn’t borne out of guilt or pity or anything like that. If anything, she was actually quite glad at how things turned out considering the rate she was acquiring Levels. On the other hand, she now knew that this glowing goop was capable of killing things en masse through proximity alone. This meant that she could no longer afford to splash it all over the place like she had done up until that point. Otherwise her actions would be interpreted as both willingly and knowingly damaging the natural environment, thereby violating the Taboo of Zephyra, Goddess of Rain and Travel. She even considered doing a bit of cleanup just to be on the safe side, but she had a far more pressing matter to attend to.

Which was to drop down to her knees on the spot and pray fervently, thanking Jose from the bottom of her core for being blessed with a golem’s body. If it wasn’t for that, then she surely would’ve died a hundred times over by now, considering her level of exposure to that ‘mysterious toxin.’ She also showed her gratitude to whoever it was that had, in their infinite wisdom, decreed that both the ‘willing’ and ‘knowing’ criterias had to be fulfilled in order for a Taboo to be issued. It was surely a way to separate those acting out of malice from those acting out of ignorance, which was extremely fortunate for the golem, as her case was most definitely the latter.

After all, it was hardly Fizzy’s fault that the Original Artificer left so much highly radioactive waste just lying around where anyone could find it, right?