Let's put Kara's matter aside for now and return to the story of me when I was fourteen years old. At this time, I was walking into the dwarf fortress left from ancient times alone, not knowing what was waiting for me in front of me.

Behind the gate of the fortress is a corridor. I held the broken steel in my left hand and waved away the dust raised by the air circulation with my other hand, and continued walking in.

In fact, I don't have a choice. The mechanical colossus, or mechanical purifier, seems to be quite intelligent. It can be seen from its sentence "try this". Ordinary robots will not use such humane short sentences.

, I guess it must be blocking the entrance of the fortress, waiting for me to retreat.

Fortunately, the Stone Hammer Fortress was still brightly lit, with the wall lamps on the walls and the chandeliers on the ceiling emitting orange light, which prevented me from running around in the dangerous darkness.

The only thing I'm curious about is the energy source of these lamps. They don't look like kerosene lamps because the light is very stable and won't flicker. But they are definitely not electric lamps. I haven't seen any electricity since I entered Lozkaz.

Relevant facilities or equipment.

Then the answer is obvious: the dwarf is not only a master of steam, but also an expert in using geothermal energy.

The corridor at the entrance of the fortress is not too long. At the end of the corridor is a wooden door with two wall lamps on both sides of the door.

To the left of this wooden door, that is, on the corridor wall on my left, there was also a wooden door and two wall lamps. I thought about it and realized that the wooden door at the bottom was obviously leading to the inside of the fortress, so I decided to open the door on the left.

Check the door to see what's going on.

I gently pushed the door open a crack, and a ray of light came out from the crack. There seemed to be an extremely wide space behind the door.

I put my ear against the door again, listened carefully, and after making sure there was no sound behind the door, I took a deep breath, pushed the wooden door open with a little force on my hand.

As I guessed, there was a huge room behind the door, even divided into two floors. There were two tables on the lower floor, one big and one small. There were four chairs next to the small table, and there were twelve chairs next to it.

A series of cabinets.

Next to the cabinet are weapon racks mounted on the wall. There are two in total. One is neatly placed with steel long swords, and the other is filled with one-handed war hammers made of dwarf alloy.

Not far from the warhammer shelf was another larger table. I walked over and found a map engraved on top of the table. I guessed it was a fortress map. The table was filled with paper documents, but the words on it had all been read.

I couldn't figure it out, so I tried to twist one of the papers, but the paper suddenly turned into pieces.

I shook my head helplessly and turned to look at the map carved into the wall directly above the table.

Most of the map was covered in dust, and I had to wipe off most of the dust with my gloves before I could see clearly what was underneath. This is indeed a map of a fortress, but unfortunately only the rooms on the first floor of the fortress are distributed.

But this is also a big gain. Thanks to the dwarves' habit of carving important information, I have a detailed partial map of the fortress, which praises the dwarves.

This room was called the "Security Room" on the map. There was no specific function mentioned, but I could tell a few things from the name. I looked around the entire security room, and sure enough I found a lever in the corner. I thought

That should be the alarm device.

In the upper left corner of the room, there is a small gate next to the stairs leading to the second floor, and behind it is a lift. I think this is a quick passage to the top of the fortress wall, so that you can quickly enter the battle when the enemy attacks.

Unfortunately, I don't have a quill, ink, or writing paper that I can use. The dwarves may have some here, but they certainly can't be used after so many years of erosion.

This meant that I couldn't print out the map, so I had to rely on my own brain to remember every detail. I walked back to the map and started analyzing which rooms were useful to me.

This is a very important point. I will not be so naive as to think that all the defense facilities in this fortress have been dismantled or malfunctioned. The longer I stay here, the more dangerous it will be. Especially when encountering someone like a mechanical purifier.

robot.

I slid my fingers forward along the corridor. The room behind the wooden door at the end of the corridor is called the Lord's Hall. This name is easier to understand than the guard room. In the past, the lord of Lozkaz and his court members must have spent most of their time in this hall.

Here, I deal with various things in the city of Rozkaz.

There are three large rooms on the left side of the lord's hall, and a passage on the right, followed by a wider space. Behind the lord's hall, I guess it is behind the throne, there are two arc-shaped stairs leading to the second floor, at least

This is how it is drawn on the map.

I decided to focus on the right side first and look at the three rooms on the left. From top to bottom, they are "Food Warehouse", "Kitchen" and "Freezer Cellar".

I lost interest in the left after just one glance. What could I find here, food that even rot was exaggerated? Or an empty warehouse that could run away mice. I turned my eyes to the part behind the passage on the right.

.

There is obviously a lot to gain from this part. The area behind the passage is divided into many large rooms, each of which seems worth exploring: Weapons Research and Development Department, Artisan Research Association, Scholars Conference Hall... I used my fingers to select from one

I scrolled through the names of several rooms until a somewhat peculiar name appeared.

This name caught my attention at once, making me forget all the rooms in front of it, "Rune Artisan Department", this is the name of this room. The question now is, is this rune the dwarf is talking about, is it a rune?

Literary stuff?

I began to recall in my mind all the historical information and books I had read about the dwarves. No one mentioned that the dwarves could use runes, or that they did not know what runes were at all.

Wait, I suddenly thought of a possibility, and that is the principality federation that has always closed its borders.

According to what Chavez said, the only academy of rune masters is within the territory of this closed principality federation. It is definitely impossible for such a academy to be under the jurisdiction of the principality. Then there is only one possibility: rune masters, at least these rune masters in the principality,

I don't want them to be known to the world.

So it’s easy to understand that we can’t find any historical data or documents showing that dwarves are proficient in runes. It’s not that they don’t exist, but they are all collected or confiscated by the Rune Master Academy. This is the kind of information that will expose runes.

No outsider would understand the world of runes by reading such documents.

Of course, this is just my inference. It is also possible that the runes of the dwarves are completely different from the runes we are talking about. I might run over excitedly, only to find that I could not understand anything.

But no matter what, this place is still worth a trip. I keep its location in mind, right between the Scholars Conference Hall and the Armory.

These five large rooms are everything behind the passage. Oh, there is also a narrow staircase leading to the second floor, which is completely incomparable to the one behind the Lord's Hall.

I took one last look at the map on the first floor, and then went up to the second floor of the guard room to take a look. There were a total of twelve beds on the second floor, which should be where the guards rested.

After confirming that no information was missing, I left the security room, turned around and opened the door to the Lord's Hall.

"Creak!" As the wooden door slowly opened, I saw the most gorgeous room in this majestic dwarf fortress.

A red carpet stretched from my feet into the distance. The nearly ten-meter-high hall seemed very empty. To my left and right there were a row of stone pillars as tall as the room. They were next to each other at the same intervals until

Before the distant throne.

The pillars are engraved with beautiful rectangular carvings, the top square corners are modified, and the base is wrapped in dwarven alloy, or directly cast from dwarf alloy. I know this sounds ridiculous, beautiful rectangular carvings. But their

It does indeed have a unique sense of beauty.

A maroon flag was hung on each stone pillar, which was the flag of the Kulotaro Dynasty. On both sides of the throne in the distance were hung two of the largest dynasty flags.

The lord of this city must be a certain feudal prince of the Kurotaro dynasty, or the emperor himself. I thought with some curiosity that ordinary lords could not distinguish between such a magnificent city and an equally magnificent fortress.

I retracted my thoughts and saw that behind the stone pillar on the left were stone square tables one after another. They were carved into beautiful rounded rectangles and surrounded by stone benches that were also rounded rectangles.

There are plates on the table, and withered flowers are a rare thing underground. Even withered flowers, there are wine glasses. Looking at them, I can vaguely imagine the scene of bustling people and people drinking and drinking.

I looked at the end of the carpet. Like their city, the dwarf's throne was lifted up by circles of shrinking rectangular stone bases, until the top circle was the same size as the bottom of the throne.

There are seven chairs placed high and low on this stone base. Their positions are high and low, but none are as high as the throne. I guess they are provided to the court members of the dwarf lord.

A smooth stone staircase was cut out in front of the throne. From the ground to the bottom of the throne, the red carpet was laid along this stone staircase to the bottom of the throne.

I looked at the throne. It was the most luxurious and gorgeous throne I had ever seen. It was still the square style favored by dwarves. Under the rectangular backrest was a square base, extending from the base to the left and right sides of the backrest.

There were two rectangular handrails, and at the end of the handrails were two extremely smooth square rounded diamonds, used to place the lord's hands. The place where the lord sat was covered with a piece of luxurious fur from an unknown animal.

There is a window above and behind the throne, and the blue crystal light shines from the window, hitting the throne right on top.

I watched the throne slowly glow, and I was so surprised that I forgot to breathe.

Under the illumination of the crystal light, the entire throne emits a soft silvery white light. I am very familiar with this light. There is only one metal in the world that emits this kind of light under the illumination of light, that is mithril. This entire throne is made of

Made of mithril!

I took a deep breath, suppressed some crazy thoughts that suddenly popped up in my mind, such as poaching the throne, and ran directly to the passage on the right side of the Lord's Hall.

"Warning, unknown life form detected, under detection... No authorization list, activate intrusion prevention mechanism." As soon as I stepped into the passage, a series of blue-blue rays of light swept me from head to toe, and then

A harsh mechanical synthesized sound sounded. The entire passage also lit up with a red warning light.

"Put in the defenders." Following the command from the mechanical voice, the baffles on both sides of the passage opened one after another, and the blocks were ejected one by one. After they fell to the ground, they quickly stretched out and turned into a block similar to that of a normal person.

Tall humanoid machine.

I observed that the bodies and weapons of these defenders showed a color mixed with bronze and gold. There is no doubt that they are made of that special dwarven alloy.

I'm relieved, as long as they're not Mithril.

"The system has been started. Intruders are found and the violence mechanism is activated." The first batch of projected defenders have been deployed. They stared with blood-red eyes and raised their left hands that were made into bayonet swords and their left hands that were made into double blades.

The right hand of the battle ax is coming towards me.

"I'm not afraid of you mechanical geeks when it comes to close combat," I laughed, holding the broken steel in both hands and rushing forward. As long as there is no steam crossbow, everything will be fine.

Broken Steel is indeed the sword given to me by the fairy in the lake. Even the fuselage made of dwarf metal was easily cut into two pieces by me. As soon as we fought, I easily defeated the two defenders, and their swords

It stabbed my flame shield, but it only produced a lot of sparks.

I looked at the shield that was still in good condition, grinned widely, drew a few rune arrows to cover for me, and then rushed forward with the broken steel. Three times, five divided by two, all of them were destroyed.

The defenders were cut into several scattered pieces.

"Warning, rune power detected, throw in the rune destroyers." As soon as the flame arrow exploded, the mechanical sound rang again, and four slightly larger blocks were thrown into the not too spacious passage.

The passages in front and behind me were blocked.

Those squares were filled with strange dwarf writing. Although I couldn't read them all at once, these were obviously runes.

Coupled with what the mechanical voice said before about the detection of rune power, I dare to conclude that the dwarf's runes and my rune master's runes are of the same system.

The four Rune Breakers quickly completed their deployment. Their bodies were covered with runes. Their left hands also had a stabbing sword. Their right hands looked a bit strange to ordinary people, as they were empty.

But I know why their hands are empty. Although it sounds incredible, I think these so-called rune breakers can release runes.
To be continued...