Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5): LitRPG Series

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “What’s going on with you?” Valrus had to shake Tailyn to his senses, and it was only then that he noticed the rivulet of tears running down the boy’s cheeks. Howling in frustration, the reptiloid dropped the boy and dashed back to the wall—he had to close the entrance. He pounded away frantically at the buttons on the wall, managing to finish the combination all of a few seconds before the monsters got there. There were indeed three of them. That much was clear by the fact that their stalk didn’t intermingle. Just as the panel slammed into place, it shuddered from a heavy blow, the monsters doing their best to break through the enchanted door. But Valrus wasn’t worried. The protection was reliable, and the mountain would have sooner collapsed than give up its secret, though the pair still had to hurry. In just four hours, the sun was going to set over the horizon, letting in the monsters. The reptiloid and his companion needed to be deep in the lab before that happened.

  Whirling around to face the boy, who had collapsed onto the ground, Valrus finally got the bad news.

  “Ka-Do-Gir... They... He’s gone!”

  The message was still in front of Tailyn, the boy having yet to find the strength to brush it away. Because it was worse than he’d even thought.

  Ka-Do-Gir was destroyed by Lesser Griala.

  Note! Because of the sanctions placed on the use of noa, you cannot resurrect beings who are themselves resurrected noa for the next 9 years and 11 months.

  “But we’re still here!” While Valrus couldn’t see the message, Tailyn’s inability to move on was infuriating. “That won’t be for long if we don’t hurry, though. Let’s go!”

  It took an effort, but the boy pulled himself together. Losing a friend due to his own incompetence hurt—if he hadn’t sent the lixes back, they might have survived. Once again, unbeckoned tears coursed down the boy’s face, though he was able to dry them faster that time. Ten years wasn’t so long. The important part was to make sure Li-Do-Ga waited for her beloved without starting a new family, as that would have been beyond Ka-Do-Gir’s strength to bear.

  Valrus made sure Tailyn was following him before heading off quickly. Much more quickly than anyone might have expected of someone who’d spend two whole days being hauled around on a stretcher, in fact. Thanks to his night vision, the reptiloid had no problem with the pitch darkness, picking out details even without a scanner. He did have to pause a couple times to wait for Tailyn, however, and that made sure they got to the secret door in an hour rather than the thirty minutes he’d been planning on.

  “Keep going!” the reptiloid barked when he saw Tailyn stop at the door. “That way won’t get us to where we’re going, remember?”

  It took an effort for Tailyn to pull himself away from the picture Raptor was drawing. With his named items a level higher, the scanning range had increased to 150 meters, and Tailyn could finally see past the long descent leading into the mountain. There were a few empty hollows that looked like rooms. And while it was impossible to pick out the details, the fact remained that there were large open spaces wherever that way led. Regardless of what Valrus said, the door definitely concealed a fearsome and intriguing secret.

  “Hurry!” Valrus yelled from somewhere up ahead. Glancing unpleasantly ahead into the passageway, Tailyn saw that the reptiloid was already out of reach of his scanner. If the green bastard had shown what he was capable of back when they were leaving Mean Truk, Ka-Do-Gir would have still been alive. An anger kindled in the boy’s chest. It wasn’t him, a simple boy, who was responsible for the lix’s death; it was Valrus. Almost as though sensing his master’s resolve, the boy’s dragon slipped off his shoulder to look him in the eye.

  Burn him?

  For a little while, the boy and the city head wrestled with each other. The former wanted mindless revenge; the latter knew the reptiloid was useful, and to the whole city as well as just him. Common sense won out.

  Not yet—there will be time for that later. Although, I do need you. Come here.

  Tailyn tied one end of a fairly long rope around his waist, making a loop on the other that he draped around his companion’s leg. Li-Ho-Dun, in turn, watched in silence as he tried to figure out why his master was turning him into a racehorse. He wasn’t going to be able to drag Tailyn. But what the dragon hadn’t considered was that his master could mitigate his weight completely by hovering just ten centimeters off the ground. While the tunnel wasn’t particularly big, the ceiling was high enough to keep the boy’s head from banging against it.

  “Let’s go!” Tailyn said out loud, and Li-Ho-Fun shot off after the reptiloid, his master in tow. And just as Valrus was twice as fast as the boy, so was the golden reptile twice as fast as him. It didn’t take long for Tailyn to catch up to and leave the reptiloid far behind—all he was thinking about was maintaining his balance. Arriving at the panel blocking the exit long before Valrus, he even had time to get some rest.

  But the enchanted exit wasn’t where the boy wanted to sleep for a few hours. As soon as Valrus dashed up, he went to open the door, only Tailyn stopped him.

  “If we open it, we die. There are two Lesser Grialas outside.”

  The news wasn’t great. When Tailyn had gotten there, he’d had a hard time believing the picture Raptor showed him of the nearest 150 meters. The entire area outside the passageway was a jumble of stalks. They were in the air, on the ground, and even under the ground. Indeed, Griala’s “children” were very different from their “parent,” the grass completely gone. With no water or goo left in what Tartila Mine had turned into, it was no longer needed. In its place, there were thick stalks packed with ancient devices and cables, making the Lesser Grialas look weak and pale in comparison. Experiment 26 couldn’t get past the invisible boundary standing between the laboratory and the outside world, though the Lesser Grialas were all over the panel. An hour later, it was going to open, and the deadly greenery was going to rush into the tunnel, devouring everything it found in its path.

  Valrus growled angrily. His perfect plan wasn’t just falling to pieces; it was threatening to bury them under those very pieces with a laugh at their expense. And there was no reason to doubt Tailyn—the boy didn’t joke about things like that. Still, the way back was blocked, both sides holding deadly enemies. All that was left was to activate a portal and head back to Mean Truk, admit he couldn’t complete One’s mission, and tell Tailyn he couldn’t get him into the lab’s control center. It was only the reptiloid’s habit of never surrendering that held him in place. That same habit was what had kept him going over the three thousand years he’d been tortured with dragon’s tears.

  “We have to hide! Griala can’t have an advanced intellect, so if it doesn’t find us in the tunnel, it’ll lose interest. You wanted to see what was behind that door? Good news—you’re going to be the first person in the past three thousand years to find out. How’s your armor’s carrying capacity? Can you hold me off the ground?”

  Taken aback by the question, Tailyn just nodded, not completely sure what the reptiloid was getting at.

  “Excellent! Turn around—you’re going to carry me. With your dragon, you’re much faster, and it doesn’t look like it matters what the load is.”

  Both Tailyn and his dragon were surprised by the gall the reptiloid had, though the latter interpreted their silence somewhat differently. He leaped onto the boy’s back and held out two arms for the boy to grab hold of. Completely confused, Tailyn did just that to keep the reptiloid from knocking both of them over. The boy’s Talarii kicked in to do double duty. Once again, the dragon asked silently if it could torch their intrusive companion, though Tailyn, who had recovered from the shock, declined the offer. Valrus was right—they were going to be much faster that way. Still, the boy made a mental note for himself.

  The dragon took off, covering ten kilometers in fifteen minutes. The reptiloid sprang off Tailyn’s back and headed over to the control panel the moment they arrived, his expression looking as though riding around on slow humans was old hat for him. Placing
his hands on the buttons, Valrus began looking through his logs for the right combination. A long line popped up. Still, he refrained from entering it, turning to Tailyn instead.

  “It will take the door a minute to open after I enter the code, and both panels will open in that time. I’m not sure what Lesser Griala is capable of, so get ready.”

  “Why don’t we just head back to Mean Truk? We can use the main entrance to get into the lab,” Tailyn said. He wasn’t a fan of the situation.

  “And lose a week? You want to tell me you lost your lix for nothing?” Valrus shot back. “Get your cards ready, though I don’t think you’ll need them—ten kilometers is too much ground to cover in less than a minute. Okay, I’m starting.”

  The reptiloid’s fingers slipped nimbly across the buttons as Tailyn couldn’t help but watch. It really would have taken the academy mages a few thousand years to guess the number. Finally, the last digit was entered, Valrus tapped the Accept button, the mountain shook, there was a snap, and stone began to grind against stone. The boy’s Raptor showed intense activity in what had seemed like an empty corridor—it modified, revealing spaces and ledges, almost as if it was alive...or an ancient device.

  Suddenly, the boy realized the whole laboratory was a single mechanism built as both a main network and an auxiliary network that wasn’t supposed to lead anywhere. But was that really the case? A few of the ancient books Tailyn had read came to mind. With how intelligent the ancients had been, not to mention how advanced their technology had been, they wouldn’t have left a blocked location behind.

  “What happens if the main and backup entrances are both blocked off?” Tailyn asked, keeping a close eye on both corridors. While the entrances had opened, the light didn’t reach that far. Alternatively, the Lesser Grialas could have been keeping it from getting in.

  “Ridiculous.” The question had thrown Valrus for a loop, though he began defending himself by force of habit. “The system was perfectly designed!”

  “Nobody said it wasn’t,” Tailyn replied, also not giving in. “That’s the point. What happens if...”

  An unpleasant rustling in the tunnel distracted Tailyn from his question. Lesser Griala was rushing to follow instructions and devour its delicious if dangerous prey.

  “Later. Follow me!” Valrus yelled as he dove under the opening door. It was moving so slowly it felt like all its mechanisms had rusted over some time during the previous three thousand years. But Tailyn didn’t need to be told twice—he was almost as fast as the reptiloid. Leaping to his feet, the ancient creature began tapping away at a control panel identical to the one on the outside. Happily, the code for closing the door wasn’t nearly as long as the one for opening it. Door and mountain both shuddered once again, and the enormous metal panel slide downward to cut off the monster’s path.

  And it was just in time. As it turned out, Lesser Griala needed a touch more than a minute to cover ten kilometers, and the first shoots were reaching out and wrapping themselves around Tailyn’ and Valrus’ legs before the door could close. A hysterical screech rang out. Unlike the boy, the reptiloid didn’t have good armor, and the monster’s attack turned his legs into a bloody mess. The panel slide into place and sliced the stalks in half.

  “Drink this!” Tailyn reacted instantly when he saw his companion rolling on the ground in pain. Grabbing the latter’s head, the boy took the lesser regeneration potion and began pouring it down the reptiloid’s throat. Valrus was lost to the pain. He’d forgotten what it was like to feel an enemy’s rage without the protection of advanced attributes and skills—he had neither the resilience nor the steel skin that had helped him survive the red acid. Instead, all he could do was howl.

  The first thing the potion did was take away the pain, dropping the ancient creature into a deep sleep. Rectifying his previous mistake, Tailyn had set up a group, and that meant he could see the timer—Valrus was going to be asleep for the following ten hours. He’d apparently taken quite a good beating. The door shook as the monster threw itself against it. Having seen exactly where its victim had escaped to, it was trying to break through the ancient magic, and it took enormous force of will to keep from asking Valia to get the pair out of there. But no. Valrus had to be wrong. The ancient laboratory had absolutely rebuilt itself after Griala blocked off all the ways in, and Tailyn was going to prove exactly that.

  The tunnel headed sharply downward, ending in a large open area a hundred and fifty meters away from the boy. Picking the sleeping reptiloid up off the ground, Tailyn hovered and used the dragon to ease his way forward. The reptiloid had been right about one thing: there were plenty of traps to be found. They peppered the entire length of the tunnel.

  With the help of Raptor and his advanced perception, Tailyn could see all the recesses, not to mention their triggers. And while he didn’t know anything about things like motion sensors or activation beams, he could tell when he needed to freeze, when he needed to hurry up, and when he needed to fly up to and crawl along the ceiling. It took more than an hour to cover the hundred and fifty meters, but the boy pulled it off. The last obstacle behind him, he looked up to see the space Raptor had told him would be there.

  All the boy could do was swallow hard as he fought to keep his heart from beating out of his chest. Against the far wall of the area, which looked like some kind of warehouse, three metal giants were standing. They looked something like the body One was building on the outside, though there were some differences—they were half the size, they didn’t have as many different devices attached to them, and, most importantly, there was room for a human inside them. Tailyn had read about ancient robots, devices controlled by humans called pilots. But he’d never hoped to see one of the ancient wonders with his own two eyes.

  Just like the corridor, the warehouse turned out to be littered with traps, though getting past them in the open space wasn’t a problem. Tailyn placed the reptiloid down on the ground and flew up to the ceiling so the dragon could get him over to the open cabin of one of the devices. Not even the wave of involuntary fear elicited by the ancient technology could overcome his childlike curiosity in the face of the incredible. With no wind in the space, there was nothing to keep Tailyn from dropping right into the pilot’s seat.

  Intrusion detected!

  Access request submitted...

  The naivete disappeared the moment metal straps fastened around Tailyn’s arms and legs. Even with his strength up to fifty-two, the boy could do nothing to fight back, and he was overcome with panic, fear, and the sense that he’d crossed a bridge too far. But nothing happened. A minute went by. Then another. And a fifth. Gradually, the boy wore himself out, and he stopped struggling. It did, of course, cross his mind that he could use the dragon’s flame to cut through his bonds. Needless to say, that was going to cost him his arms, but they would grow back in a couple hours. The important thing was that he had a way out.

  Tailyn was already thinking about where the flames would do the least damage when the ancient device reminded him once more that three thousand years was nothing. It was perfectly functional.

  Wait time expired, request not processed...

  Reserve channel unavailable.

  Security protocol initiated.

  The mechanism came to life. Lights, instruments, and buttons on the panel began blinking. Clearly, Tailyn was supposed to do something, but the straps holding his arms and legs down made that somewhat difficult. A few minutes later, the machine reacted to his inaction.

  Response wait time expired...

  Attention! Error detected! Emergency management functionality blocked due to lack of connection with remote modules (no Device Control).

  Security protocol applied: reset.

  Enter the access code to cancel the protocol (30 seconds remaining to annihilation).

  The straps holding Tailyn down released him only to be replaced by a countdown in his field of vision. And while it was absolutely the right time to panic, Tailyn no longer had the inclina
tion. There were two artifacts on his virtual bookshelf: Lavr Nalin’s journal and Isr Kale’s journal. Both of the ancients liked writing down what was most important, and that included passwords for their ancient devices. Tailyn was sure of that. With the only question remaining whether the passwords would work, the boy somehow didn’t hesitate in the least, beginning with the simple fighter’s journal. Lavr Nalin had hidden the container somewhere in the depths of the laboratory, and that meant he’d been there. The System automatically opened to the right page and highlighted three access codes. The second turned out to be the right one—Lavr had indeed written down everything that was most important.

  Code accepted.

  New pilot parameters identified.

  Congratulations! You now control technical bot TB-2034.

  It made Tailyn nervous that the game didn’t give him any bonuses. When he’d activated his legendary card, he’d gotten access to a remote terminal. When he’d gotten into Isr Kale’s tomb, the same had occurred. He’d even been rewarded for becoming an academy student at level one. But there was nothing that time. Somehow, it seemed like the System didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in what he’d done. Did that mean someone else had already pulled off the trick? If so, who?