The corridor was a nightmare. That was the best way I could describe it. Chunks of stone and metal were littered around haphazardly, sometimes even sticking out from the walls, forcing me to climb over and crawl through some places. It was like a jungle gym for kids, but whoever had made it had been high on too much of the good stuff when assessmbling it. Of course, it would have been nice if it was just crazy kids, who I had to worry about.

Thankfully, whatever had fought the damn metal eaters, it hadn’t gotten away cleanly either, as the damn bugs had given it hell. In more than one place, I found scales and scutes that seemed almost like they belonged to some kind of large creature. Neduzar had not exactly been an expert in Taxonomy, but his memories told me that the big monsters with scales in this world were not friendly either. They equaled destruction and mayhem with a good dose of vindictiveness thrown into the mix. Either way, knowing the damn 'bugs' had been able to drive it way meant that I was more than capable of curb stomping it, hopefully.

After a while, I finally saw the exit, thought I couldn’t exactly make out too much of the state of the research zone. It was a bizarre name to give an entire part of a fortress, but it described the area pretty well. Home to various experiments and collections from across the continent, it had been a mad scientist’s paradise in its heyday. Neduzar may have been an insane lich, but he had gotten pretty close to becoming a modern scientist in how he had approached magic and how much resources he had allocated to it. In fact, if he hadn't been so enamored with just pure research, I had a hunch that he could have conquered half the continent and not just a corner of it with everything he had access to.

The central hub that I exited out to was just like in my memories. It was a semi-hollow, sphere like space filled with walkways crisis-crossing in almost every direction connecting to different passages that then led to a variety of project sites or labs. The semi-hollow space was almost half a dozen stories high, with the middle most walkway connecting to the exit that I had just walked out of. While the walkway I was on led to the opposite end of the sphere, which had an entrance to another corridor, I was more interested in space around me.

Surprisingly, the area had light. It wasn't from any complicated magic enchantments or magic constructs but was instead from dozens of familiar torches scattered around the semi-hollow area, burning with their sickly, yellow glow. I stared at the closest torch, which was off to my right, affixed to the wall of a ramp leading down to the next level. The torch went on burning, like there was nothing special about it being the only magic that was working in a fortress that had literally been scrubbed clean of working magic enchantments and constructs centuries or maybe millennia ago.

Back in my throne room, I also glared at the torches filling the hall, realizing something was really off. I remembered the name of the spell used to make the torches and even where Neduzar had obtained the spell, but nothing bizarre stuck out to explain why they were still working while the rest of the fortress had no magic still working. Well, there was one little thing, which back then had seemed kind of weird to the mad lich. Portions of the 'Book' spell had been difficult to transcribe elsewhere by magic or by hand and had not been visible to anyone but Neduzar in an old grimoire that he had dug up from some old ruins. Focused as he had been on his research on souls and necromancy, he had only made some messy torches for practice. Afterwards, losing interest, he had tossed them all in some storage room somewhere. “Wait... what?”

Then it hit me, making me freak out a bit. All the torches were supposed to have been stored away somewhere. That was the last insignificant memory that Neduzar had concerning the torches, which begged the question of where in the hell the ones in the throne room and the research hub had come from. “Someone's been here after the end...”

That was what logic told me, and though it definitely made me worry and wonder about all the questions of who, when, and even why, I shook off the unsettled feeling quickly. It wasn't that I didn't care, but just the fact that whoever they were and whatever their purpose had been, they hadn't killed off Neduzar when he was at his weakest point. Instead, they had decorated the throne room with the torches. That was not something an enemy would do. At least, that was what I hoped.

Back in the research hub, I pulled my sight away from the torches, deciding the mystery had to wait. All I was doing was going around in circles in my mind trying to figure out something that had occurred a long time ago. Instead, I headed down the side ramp, aiming for a few floors down and towards my goal. This entire time, though, I was still examining the research hub's state. Most of the walkways were still intact, with only a few having collapsed, but it was obvious the creature that had wrecked the corridor had also turned this place into its personal playpen as long gashes and pits covered every surface.

Deciding to avoid any ambushes, I cast a mid tier spell . Almost immediately, my vision fluctuated a little, leaving just one large splotch of red off to the left side. I turned quickly to cast a spell, when I felt my body go stiff, and I collapsed against the ramp's crumbling, stone railing. Even as I poured more mana into my flesh to counteract the spell that had just hit me and tried to turn me into stone, I caught sight of the large creature's life force, glowing a deep red on the other other side of the research hub. As its reptilian head emerged from a dark passageway, I finally got to meet the hooligan that had been trashing my research hub. “Yeah... Hello to you too....”