The last basement.
After leaving the room where Anne and the others had been imprisoned, Rei and Ilunara arrived at the place.
(Lindy's intuition... well, in the sense that we found Anne and the altar at the very end, she wasn't exactly wrong, was she?)
Rei thought this to himself, but had Lindy heard his thoughts, she certainly wouldn't have been pleased. She had fought desperately to rescue Anne and Golias, and this was the result.
That said, while they had accomplished their greatest objective—rescuing Anne—they had yet to find Golias, someone just as important to Lindy as Anne, if not more so... the person she loved. As long as he remained missing, they couldn't claim to have fully achieved their goal.
(Golias might not even be here, though.)
Given that Golias hadn't been in the basement where Anne was held, the likelihood of him being anywhere in this building was naturally quite low. Lindy had clung to the hope that he might be in this underground altar, or perhaps on the right side of the T-junction where the mainstream faction alchemists' laboratories were located. But Rei couldn't bring himself to share that optimism.
Even so, he found himself hoping that Golias might somehow be beyond this door as he studied it and furrowed his brow.
The reason was the lock.
If it had simply been a matter of the door having a lock, there wouldn't have been much cause for concern. The door that had confined Anne and the others had been locked too.
What made Rei furrow his brow was the nature of the lock itself.
The lock on Anne's room had been ordinary—sturdy, certainly, and impossible to deal with under normal circumstances, but ordinary nonetheless. In contrast, the lock on the door leading to the altar was a Magic Item lock.
In other words, whatever lay beyond this door... if Jane's information was correct, it meant the altar was considered more important than Anne and the others.
As for what that specifically was—naturally, the altar itself.
"What should we do? Given that it's a Magic Item, we can't just carelessly..."
Forcibly destroying the lock could trigger any number of effects. It wouldn't be strange for the lock to explode, or to serve as an alarm that broadcast its destruction to the entire surrounding area.
Ilunara was trying to say that destroying a lock under these circumstances was dangerous. But Rei paid no heed to his words as he withdrew Death Scythe from the Misty Ring.
Normally, Death Scythe would be unwieldy in such a narrow space. In fact, when dealing with the door to Anne's room, Rei had used the Twilight Spear instead of Death Scythe for precisely that reason.
However, that was only true under normal circumstances. With the combination of Rei and Death Scythe, he could use it even in this confined space if he chose to.
"Eh?"
Ilunara, unaware of this, could hardly be blamed for wondering what Rei intended to do by producing Death Scythe in such a cramped area.
"Ilunara, step back. Get near the stairs. That way you won't be caught in the aftermath."
"...Are you serious?"
Rei held Death Scythe and told him to move back—not just a little, but all the way to the stairs. From that, Ilunara understood what Rei was planning. He understood, but he still couldn't believe it was possible, and that disbelief was what surfaced in his words.
"I'm serious."
The moment he replied, Rei swung Death Scythe while channeling magical power into it.
Death Scythe on its own was already a weapon of overwhelming sharpness and weight. When Rei wielded it, he could cut through iron with ease. So what would happen when he poured magical power into it and swung?
The answer was obvious without a second thought.
The surrounding walls were severed, the earth beyond them was severed, and the wall beside the door was severed as well.
Destroying the Magic Item lock itself, or smashing the door it was attached to, would have risked triggering some effect inherent to the Magic Item. But since it was neither the lock nor the door—just the wall beside them—the situation was entirely different. And above all, he hadn't crudely smashed it with something like an axe; he had sliced through the wall sharply and swiftly with Death Scythe.
Naturally, the strike had no effect whatsoever on the Magic Item lock.
(If it had a vibration detection feature or something like that, that would be another story... but it seems it didn't. Well, I can't say for sure whether such things even exist.)
With that thought, Rei stored Death Scythe back in the Misty Ring to keep it out of the way.
"This is it," he murmured.
"Eh? What is?"
Ilunara, having approached while still dumbfounded by what Rei had done, asked curiously at his muttering. To Ilunara, Rei's actions defied all common sense. Yet rather than boasting about what he'd done, Rei was muttering with a dead-serious expression—asking him not to read into it would have been impossible.
"That sensation I've been feeling since entering this section... I figured its source was here."
The severed wall had collapsed into the room, leaving a hole through which they could see inside. But even without looking, Rei could tell from the air and atmosphere drifting out that this was the place he had been sensing.
"...Something..."
Sensing the gravity in Rei's voice, Ilunara held his breath and peered through the hole. From the outside, the visible range was limited. Even so, he could faintly make out what appeared to be a magic circle.
"Let's go inside. The fact that it was locked suggests no one's in there right now."
Rei stepped through the hole in the cut wall and into the room. He had already sensed it from outside, but actually entering confirmed it with certainty—this was the source of what he had been feeling.
The first thing that caught his eye was the black altar.
Whether it was coated in some kind of paint or made of black metal was unclear, but the glossy black altar was striking. It was split into two parts, and depending on how one looked at it, it could almost resemble a balance scale—though the drastically different sizes of the two ends produced an intense sense of wrongness.
The other notable feature was the magic circle, visible even from outside through the hole in the wall. It wasn't painted on with pigment but carved directly into the floor.
"This magic circle... Ilunara, can you tell anything about it?"
"Give me a moment."
At Rei's words, Ilunara immediately began examining the magic circle.
Leaving that to him, Rei turned his gaze to the altar. Whatever he had been feeling since entering this section, whatever had grown stronger upon breaking through the wall—it was an unmistakable fact that the altar before him was the source.
(So what exactly is this two-part altar? Given the sensation it gives off, there's no doubt it's the source of something, but the real question is what specific effect it has. Looking at that magic circle, it's clearly not just a decoration.)
Having eliminated the least likely possibility, Rei left the altar and surveyed the room. Just as cutting through the wall had triggered no disturbance, the altar room contained no one besides Rei and Ilunara.
Golias—whom Lindy had been desperately hoping to find—was, naturally, nowhere to be seen.
Lindy would undoubtedly be crushed when she saw this. At the same time, it meant that while she hadn't abandoned hope, fulfilling that hope had become far more difficult.
They had rescued Anne and obtained evidence of the suspicious activities taking place within the Dolan Workshop. On top of that, they had knocked out the adventurers hired as patrol guards. Given all that, it was only a matter of time before their infiltration was discovered—if it hadn't been already.
Under the circumstances, there was no time to investigate the right side of the T-junction. Sure, if Rei were so inclined, he could defeat every attacker and then investigate at his leisure. But if it came to that, he would lose the ability to protect Anne and the other slaves, as well as Ilunara and the alchemists.
In other words, once they finished investigating the altar, they needed to get out of the Dolan Workshop immediately.
(Hm? Come to think of it... I egged Ilunara and the others on and got them involved, which was fine. But what are they going to do after this? If they stay at the Dolan Workshop, the mainstream faction will definitely suspect them. No, they'd be lucky if it ended at mere suspicion. At worst, they could be interrogated and tortured.)
Where Rei and his group had entered from would be immediately apparent to anyone who investigated the building. After all, Rei had damaged it during his fight with the golems. Hiding the fact that Ilunara and the others had betrayed the mainstream faction would be next to impossible. Even before that, there was the incident with the guards who had confronted them—concealing the betrayal was simply not feasible.
If they had killed every guard they encountered, they might have been able to cover it up to some extent, but only to some extent.
"Rei-san."
Rei, who had been mulling over what to do with Ilunara's group, snapped back to attention at the sound of his voice.
"What is it? Did you figure out something about the magic circle?"
"Yes. Though I haven't examined it in detail, so this is only a rough assessment. But at the very least, I can say with certainty that this magic circle has nothing to do with alchemy."
"...What?"
That was the last thing Rei had expected to hear. He had assumed this was surely the key to improving golem performance by using humans as materials.
Ilunara showed no particular surprise at Rei's reaction. He had probably expected Rei to be caught off guard by the revelation.
"I'm not deeply versed in the subject, so I can't speak with precision, but... it resembles a magic circle related to Spirit Magic or Necromancy."
"...Necromancy?"
"Yes. In all likelihood."
If Necromancy was involved, there was only one person Rei could turn to—Grimm. Someone who had lived in the same era as Zephyle, but had ultimately become Undead and continued to exist. Technically a monster now, but still a person.
That said, since he couldn't let Ilunara know of Grimm's existence, Rei needed to get him out of the room.
"Ilunara, sorry, but could you step outside for a moment?"
"...Huh?"
Earlier, a dumbfounded sound had escaped Rei's mouth. Now the same came from Ilunara's. Being told to leave at a time like this was clearly the last thing he had expected.
Even so, the fact that he didn't immediately erupt in frustration but instead directed an inquiring look at Rei was a testament to his competence.
"My master might be able to figure something out if he sees this magic circle and altar. But to speak with him, I need to use a Paired Orb, and he's the type who refuses to converse with anyone outside his inner circle. The kind of person who bristles at even being spoken to."
At the words "Paired Orb," Ilunara reacted. As an alchemist, he was evidently familiar with it. Even one specializing in golem manufacturing would reasonably know of such things.
"Wait... right... then, I'll wait outside."
With that, Ilunara exited through the hole Rei had made in the wall.
For Ilunara, the Paired Orb was an extraordinarily rare Magic Item. Under normal circumstances, he would have jumped at the chance to see one. But he judged that determining the nature of the magic circle and altar in this room took priority, and he swallowed his curiosity.