Infinite Mana - Chapter 182: Over Heated (Patreon)

Sieghart waited until the final customer disappeared between the camp buildings before closing the folding counter attached to his carriage. Only then did he sit behind the cargo compartment and pull out the notebook where he recorded purchases, material expenses, modifications, and sales.

Somehow, everything he had prepared during the previous few days was gone. Shields, reinforced bracers, impact-resistant boots, helmets, gloves, breastplates, and even the dust-resistant cloaks had found buyers much faster than Sieghart originally expected.

He emptied the accumulated coins onto a small reinforced table and divided them by denomination before comparing the total against the numbers written inside his notebook. The calculation took several minutes because Sieghart refused to trust how encouraging the first result looked. He had made a good profit.

Not enough to recover everything he had spent in the capital, unfortunately, but considerably more than the materials and ordinary equipment had originally cost him. Even accounting for engraving time and replacement materials, the margins remained comfortably positive.

Sieghart leaned back and looked toward the empty equipment racks inside the carriage. Apparently, buying ordinary gear somewhere cheap, modifying it for a specific regional problem, and selling it where those modifications mattered actually worked.

“Nice.”

He could make more immediately. The camp contained workshops selling basic equipment, and Sieghart still possessed enough metal, engraving tools, and materials to spend several days producing another batch without leaving the area.

That would probably be profitable. It would also become boring very quickly. Sieghart closed the notebook and returned the coins to separate secured compartments. Making money remained necessary after his enthusiastic spending inside the capital, but money had never been the primary reason he left Lunar Arc.

He wanted knowledge. He wanted stronger magic. He wanted experience that could not be reproduced by sitting underground engraving the same reinforcement circuit onto twenty more shields for increasingly happy miners.

Fortunately, the conversations around his temporary shop had provided exactly the excuse he needed to stop working as a merchant for the day and start behaving like a mage again. Something unusual had been happening inside the dungeon. According to several veteran explorers, golem numbers had been increasing steadily for months. Areas normally cleared for several days were repopulating within hours, while deeper passages sometimes contained twice the expected number of constructs.

Nobody knew why.

The dungeon had always recreated destroyed golems eventually, but the reconstruction rate was apparently accelerating. Mining teams were spending more time fighting and less time extracting the valuable material produced by the monsters they defeated.

That was partly why Sieghart’s equipment had sold so easily. More golems meant more punches. More punches made impact-resistant equipment considerably more attractive. Sieghart found the timing reassuring for one very important reason. The increase had apparently begun several months before he ever entered the region.

“So it isn’t me.”

That conclusion felt surprisingly refreshing. After corrupted dungeon guardians, Chimerians, altered cores, and several situations that had become worse shortly after Sieghart appeared, confirming that one abnormal event had started without his involvement almost felt like personal progress. He still intended to investigate it.

Sieghart closed every merchandise compartment before preparing the carriage for his absence. The dungeon camp looked relatively safe, but leaving most of his current possessions unattended still sounded like an excellent way to discover whether local miners respected property rights.

The first security measure was simple. Sieghart removed the steering wheel. He had designed the central contact assembly so the wheel could be detached from the main column without damaging the internal conductive channels. Once removed, the primary mana-input contacts disappeared with it.

Someone capable of pouring mana directly into exposed circuitry could theoretically bypass the missing controls, but ordinary thieves would probably stare at the empty steering column before realizing they had stolen a vehicle they could not properly activate. Sieghart stored the wheel inside a locked compartment and closed the metal cover over the exposed connection point. Without the intended contact sequence, the engine’s main runic circuit remained incomplete even if somebody supplied mana elsewhere.

That still left the possibility of simply towing the entire carriage away. Sieghart had thought about that too. He retrieved several heavy chains from beneath the rear storage floor and wrapped them through the wheels before locking opposite pairs together beneath the chassis. Even if someone brought horses, the wheels could no longer rotate freely.

Moving the carriage would require lifting most of its weight or breaking the chains first, and either solution would create enough noise that people throughout the camp would probably notice.

Sieghart stepped backward and inspected his work. The carriage looked slightly ridiculous. Secure, though. He briefly considered adding another layer. A Spark Rune connected to the exterior handles could discharge electricity whenever anyone touched the carriage without first disabling the circuit. Building something like that would be relatively easy with the magical knowledge he already possessed.

Sieghart imagined a curious child touching the door. He abandoned the idea.

“Not yet.”

There was a difference between protecting his property and turning the carriage into a magical punishment device for anybody whose curiosity overcame their manners. An alarm would be better. Perhaps something based upon sound, light, or a mana pulse that only Sieghart could recognize from a distance. He added the concept mentally to the increasingly unreasonable carriage improvement list.

He deliberately left most heavy equipment behind. The dungeon contained narrow tunnels and enemies made from stone or metal. Carrying ordinary weapons simply because he owned them would accomplish less than entering light enough to use Impulse comfortably.

Sieghart locked the final compartment and started toward the dungeon entrance. People noticed immediately. The reaction was almost amusing. Several miners who had purchased equipment from him looked confused when the young merchant walked past their work areas without carrying another box of merchandise.

The broad woman who had purchased his first shield looked from Sieghart toward the dungeon entrance, then back toward him as though waiting for the obvious misunderstanding to correct itself. It did not.

“You’re going inside?”

Sieghart kept walking.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were a merchant.”

“I am.”

She frowned.

“And a dungeon runner?”

“Something like that.”

The woman stared at him for several seconds before finally shaking her head. Nobody attempted stopping Sieghart, although several nearby explorers exchanged looks that suggested they expected him to return considerably less confident. Sieghart preferred that. People underestimated young mages naturally enough that he did not need to create an elaborate persona. The fewer stories surrounding Sieg before he left the region, the easier traveling would remain.

The dungeon entrance itself had been reinforced heavily by generations of miners. Thick wooden beams supported the first section while metal braces connected several weak points where previous golem attacks had damaged the surrounding rock. Lanterns hung from prepared hooks along the walls, although most relied upon cheap mana crystals rather than flames. Their pale illumination extended only far enough to keep the primary passage visible.

Sieghart crossed the threshold. The temperature immediately dropped. Outside, afternoon sunlight had heated the rocky ground around the camp. Inside, cool air smelled of dust, mineral deposits, damp stone, metal, and the faint magical pressure Sieghart had begun associating with established dungeons.

He activated Magic Vision. The tunnel changed completely. Mana flowed throughout the walls in broad, slow currents, far denser than anything naturally present outside. Small concentrations gathered around veins of unusual minerals while brighter points marked embedded mana stones deeper beneath the surface.

Sieghart immediately understood why miners tolerated being punched by walking rocks for a living. There was money everywhere. Extracting it safely was another matter. He continued deeper without touching anything. Stealing random ore near the entrance of an actively worked dungeon seemed like an excellent method for transforming potential customers into enemies.

Several side passages contained obvious signs of excavation. Tool marks covered the walls, wooden rails remained embedded along sections of the floor, and abandoned carts sat beside piles of ordinary broken stone. Strangely, Sieghart saw very few people.

He had expected miners and adventurers constantly traveling between the entrance and productive areas, especially considering how large the permanent camp outside had become. Instead, the first several hundred meters remained almost deserted. Old footprints covered the dust, but relatively few looked recent.

Sieghart slowed.

The information from the camp had suggested exploration became more dangerous recently, but he had not realized the increase in golem numbers had discouraged people this close to the entrance. Perhaps teams entered together during specific hours instead of wandering individually. That would make considerably more sense if the constructs were multiplying unpredictably.

Sieghart kept Magic Vision active. A faint vibration traveled through the soles of his boots. He stopped. Another tremor followed several seconds later. Not an earthquake. Something heavy had stepped somewhere ahead. Sieghart smiled slightly.

Training had apparently decided to come toward him. The next vibration arrived sooner. Then another. The rhythm became increasingly recognizable.

Step.

Pause.

Step.

Stone scraped against stone somewhere beyond the nearest bend while tiny fragments fell from the ceiling each time the unseen weight struck the floor. Sieghart dismissed his smile. The first golem appeared less than a minute later.

It stepped around the bend with none of the speed or animal aggression Sieghart had expected from previous dungeon monsters. The construct simply walked forward with the slow certainty of something that had never considered becoming tired. It stood approximately two and a half meters tall, broader than any ordinary human and built entirely from overlapping pieces of dark-gray stone that fitted together without visible mortar.

Its torso resembled several slabs compressed into a rough humanoid chest, while thick cylindrical sections formed arms almost long enough for its stone knuckles to reach the ground.

There was no head in the normal sense. A small wedge-shaped block rose between the shoulders, containing a single horizontal groove where pale amber light glowed from somewhere inside the construct. Sieghart’s Magic Vision revealed considerably more.

Mana circulated through channels hidden beneath the stone, flowing from a concentrated structure buried inside the chest toward each limb before returning through narrower pathways.

Not blood circulation. Closer to magical wiring. The dungeon had effectively constructed a moving machine from stone. Sieghart approved immediately.

“That’s actually pretty interesting.”

The golem responded by accelerating. Apparently, appreciation was not mutual. Its slow walk transformed into a heavy charge as the mana inside its legs brightened. Every step cracked the floor slightly while several hundred kilograms of stone gathered momentum through the passage.

Sieghart remained still. This was exactly the type of enemy described in the guide. No complicated spells. No poison. No deceptive movement. Just a large amount of magically animated rock trying to hit him. The golem raised one enormous fist as it approached.

Sieghart considered testing Protection. Then remembered the Aura user stabbing through several layers of confidence two days earlier. Testing defenses by allowing enemies to hit him had become less attractive recently.

Instead, Sieghart stepped sideways with Impulse. The stone fist smashed into the wall. The impact tore out enough rock to create a crater larger than Sieghart’s chest while the resulting shockwave sent dust rolling through the passage. Sieghart landed behind the construct.

“Good decision.”

The golem rotated slowly. Sieghart raised one hand. Flamethrower activated. A concentrated line of orange-red fire erupted from his palm and struck the golem directly across its chest before the construct finished turning.

Ordinary fire probably would have accomplished very little against stone. Sieghart’s version did not remain ordinary for long. He increased the mana output. The flames brightened. Heat accumulated across the same area without interruption while Flamethrower continued pouring energy into a target incapable of dodging quickly enough to escape.

The outer stone changed color first. Dark gray became faint red. Red became orange around thinner sections. Mana channels beneath the heated surface began flickering as the magically bound material expanded unevenly around them.

The golem pushed forward anyway. Sieghart backed away slowly while maintaining Flamethrower. That was the advantage of continuous spells. He did not need to stop attacking simply because the enemy kept walking. The golem raised both arms to shield its central chest.

Sieghart redirected the stream slightly downward. Heat flooded the abdomen and upper legs. Small cracks appeared. Then larger ones. The magical channels inside tried compensating, moving additional mana toward damaged regions as though the construct could reinforce itself against the temperature. Sieghart increased output again.

The flames became almost white near his hand. Stone began glowing brightly enough to illuminate the entire tunnel. The first melted material appeared around one knee. A thick orange line ran down the golem’s leg like molten wax before striking the dungeon floor and immediately beginning to cool.

Sieghart stared. The golem attempted another step. Its softened knee deformed beneath its weight.