Chapter 30

  Ethan stood motionless in the dim workshop chamber, hands pressed against the newly formed alloy wall as his mind turned over solution after solution. The Strategist stood silently behind him, its smooth metallic frame utterly still. Unlike Chip, this one didn’t offer commentary, didn’t snark, didn’t care. It was, as the Silence had promised, efficient. Calculating. Obedient.

  “I need a method to shield myself from Observer scans,” Ethan muttered. “Some kind of—something to block or reroute system queries. Mask my signature. Filter my logs. If even one of them suspects—”

  “You are wasting your time,” the Strategist said, voice entirely devoid of tone. “You are under the Silence’s protection. No scan will breach.”

  Ethan turned, eyes sharp. “You sure? Because I’m not really looking forward to becoming a science project for a bunch of eldritch administrators.”

  “Affirmative. The Observer hierarchy recognizes the Silence’s priority tags. Your memory restoration and elevation were not flagged in system logs. The banishment of the Chip construct was cloaked. You are, for the time being, invisible.”

  That for the time being grated on Ethan’s nerves. But he’d take what he could get.

  “…Fine. Then explain the Saint Stage.”

  The Strategist’s head tilted slightly, like a machine slotting into lecture mode.

  “Saint Stage is a term created by mortals. The system does not recognize it as a true designation. It is a transitional state—an evolution of the soul-node and internal mana structure.”

  “So how does someone reach it?” Ethan asked.

  “There are three core requirements,” the Strategist said. “First, Tier 10 must be attained within the Mortal framework. Second, the user must compress and refine their mana core—known as condensation. This reformation prepares the internal vessel to stabilize a new type of energy. And third… the soul must accept conceptual permanence.”

  “Conceptual permanence?” Ethan echoed.

  “You cease to be a passive participant,” the Strategist said. “At Saint Stage, your soul becomes a persistent structure, capable of leaving echoes behind. You are no longer erased at death. Not entirely.”

  Ethan processed that.

  “So… that’s when you stop being someone in the system, and start becoming something outside of it.”

  “Partially. You gain system access permissions. You are granted the right to bend rules. To some extent.”

  “And the power source?”

  “Saints do not draw mana from the world,” the Strategist explained. “They generate it. Their soul, once condensed and aligned, acts as a fixed beacon. A battery and a reactor, both.”

  Ethan leaned back against the alloy wall, brow furrowed.

  “So, once I hit Tier 10 and do this… I become something the system can’t just delete?”

  “Correct. But Saints are still system-bound. Only post-Saint ascension allows true autonomy. And even that… varies.”

  Ethan closed his eyes for a moment. That future was still far off—but he was going to reach it. He had to.

  “Alright,” he said quietly. “Prep the forge. We’ve got work to do.”

  ____

  The first tribute shipments from the Guild arrived precisely on time.

  The crates were heavy with enchanted weaponry, processed ore, magical components, and mana-charged crafting tools. Most were low-tier, but some were impressive—likely looted from fallen dungeons or reappropriated from retired adventurers. The Guild, it seemed, knew how to pay respect without giving too much.

  Ethan accepted it all. Quietly. Without ceremony.

  He barely had time to review the manifests before the next wave came.

  It started small. A few merchants. A handful of pilgrims. But it snowballed faster than he’d anticipated.

  Within days, Redroot—no longer a village, but a city—was full of strangers. Caravans lined the roads. Banners fluttered from temple spires. People wore cogs around their necks, spoke prayers to “The Holy Forge,” and lit incense at roadside shrines.

  They brought offerings.

  Food. Gold. Tools. Crafted goods. One group even sacrificed a mana beast in front of the dungeon entrance—completely unprompted.

  Ethan didn’t know how to feel about that.

  The Strategist didn’t care.

  “The faith surrounding you reinforces your protection,” it said. “Their belief makes scanning more difficult. The Observers will assume your rising influence is a directed effort.”

  “And when they find out it’s not?”

  “They will not. The Silence sealed the logs. The construct Chip was erased from accessible memory indexes. You are simply… an emerging anomaly.”

  Ethan didn’t like it. But he knew how to use it.

  And with every offering, his dungeon expanded.

  The first tribute shipments from the Guild arrived precisely on time.

  The crates were heavy with enchanted weaponry, processed ore, magical components, and mana-charged crafting tools. Most were low-tier, but some were impressive—likely looted from fallen dungeons or reappropriated from retired adventurers. The Guild, it seemed, knew how to pay respect without giving too much.

  Ethan accepted it all. Quietly. Without ceremony.

  He barely had time to review the manifests before the next wave came.

  It started small. A few merchants. A handful of pilgrims. But it snowballed faster than he’d anticipated.

  Within days, Redroot—no longer a village, but a city—was full of strangers. Caravans lined the roads. Banners fluttered from temple spires. People wore cogs around their necks, spoke prayers to “The Holy Forge,” and lit incense at roadside shrines.

  They brought offerings.

  Food. Gold. Tools. Crafted goods. One group even sacrificed a mana beast in front of the dungeon entrance—completely unprompted.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Ethan didn’t know how to feel about that.

  The Strategist didn’t care.

  “The faith surrounding you reinforces your protection,” it said. “Their belief makes scanning more difficult. The Observers will assume your rising influence is a directed effort.”

  “And when they find out it’s not?”

  “They will not. The Silence sealed the logs. The construct Chip was erased from accessible memory indexes. You are simply… an emerging anomaly.”

  Ethan didn’t like it. But he knew how to use it.

  And with every offering, his dungeon expanded.

  And with every offering, his dungeon expanded.

  Mana density surged. The core chamber thrummed with raw energy, and the vast veins of copper, iron, and titanium he’d uncovered fed the automated forges at an inhuman pace. Constructs were churned out like clockwork—Combat Striders, Mirage Golems, and his newer modular frames, now refined to the point of near-seamless adaptation.

  He no longer needed to micromanage each component. The production systems he'd designed—carefully monitored by upgraded Engineer Golems—handled most of the process. They pulled from the sorting bays, processed raw ore in tandem with alchemical mana catalysts, and followed preset patterns for distribution. Everything had a place. Everything followed a rhythm.

  He’d already hit Tier 8.

  Not a huge leap from before, but enough that he could feel the difference. His dungeon wasn’t just deeper. It was smarter. The air itself responded more smoothly to his will, and the constructs moved with tighter cohesion. When he envisioned a new system or corridor layout, it no longer took hours of struggle to etch out the parameters. His will had weight now. Not godlike. Not untouchable. But noticeable.

  The Strategist confirmed as much.

  “System metrics show a twenty-three percent increase in command efficiency. Dungeon expansion protocols now require sixty percent less resource oversight. Tier progression has exceeded regional standards.”

  Ethan tapped a finger against the arm of his chair. “And the offerings?”

  “Still rising. Estimated thirty thousand mana stones’ worth in the past week. Assorted enchanted goods. Ritual food. Ceremonial beasts. One heavily annotated journal believed to contain divine schematics—incorrect, but interesting.”

  Ethan exhaled. “So the faith’s holding.”

  “Affirmative. Civilian perception links your rise directly to Observer intent. System does not contradict. Therefore, local myth is treated as effective camouflage.”

  “Lucky me,” Ethan muttered.

  His core hummed. The forge just beneath—newly upgraded and still, admittedly, a little ridiculous—spun to life. The nameplate across the control panel still read Chadmelter 9000. It wasn’t that funny anymore-in fact it was never that funny-, but… it stayed. Everyone needed something stupid to hold on to. Even a fake god.

  The Chad, as he now called it, ran a heat cycle for the next batch of Sentinel frames. He was testing new loadouts. Higher-tier alloy mixes, alternate power channels, reinforced processor lattices that could resist magical interference.

  His constructs weren’t just traps anymore. They were soldiers.

  “Distribution report,” he said.

  The Strategist spoke without delay. “Two hundred active constructs patrolling. One hundred forty assigned to layered defense corridors. Seventy-eight in active field testing chambers. Nine in repair.”

  “And how many Scavenger units?”

  “Zero. Replaced by direct mineral intake.”

  Right. Ethan had long since phased them out. When veins of raw material were now piped directly into core refining channels, there was no need to waste space or construct limits-not that it mattered much anymore considering he had a way to basically bypass it- on retrieval units.

  Now with his honestly insane amount of resources, it was time to expand

  ___

  The third floor was done.

  It stretched beneath the previous two like some deep, humming engine core—massive and silent, as if waiting to wake up. And in truth, it was.

  This floor wasn’t just a place. It was a statement.

  Where the second had still retained some dungeon-like design—corridors, ambush spots, an illusion hall or two—this one felt less like a challenge and more like a machine that had simply decided humans weren’t welcome.

  There were no walls in the usual sense. Just massive, interlocking rooms shaped by pistons, rotating bulkheads, and shifting floor panels. Walkways moved on cycles. Massive bridges extended and retracted on timers only the Strategist could predict. Heat pulsed from beneath—real heat, not just ambient mana pressure. Forging fire ran through ducts along the ceiling, sometimes bursting out in arcs of steam or gouts of actual flame.

  It was designed to disorient and exhaust.

  Even a seasoned party could get turned around just navigating.

  But for those who managed to adapt, to learn the rhythm of the place, to think with precision under pressure—there were rewards. Specialized constructs—gear-carrying models with enhanced defense and rare loot tucked into reinforced compartments. Secret rooms triggered by powering ancient factory consoles or solving old system runes carved into steel. And deeper still, the core forges themselves—reactivated by Ethan’s will—held blueprints, crafting tables, and energy sources lost to the outside world.

  The Observer logs would show nothing. The Strategist made sure of that.

  But what Ethan was really waiting for wasn’t data.

  It was them.

  Corwin’s team returned four days after the third floor opened. Same squad. Same quiet resolve. Just a little more worn down around the edges.

  “They’re smarter now,” Ethan observed from his core chamber. “More cautious.”

  “Experience. Repetition. Pain,” the Strategist replied flatly. “They are one of the few optimized parties suited to third floor traversal. Analysis: 63% chance of successful navigation. 48% chance of surviving boss encounter.”

  “Want to bet on them?”

  “I do not gamble.”

  The group entered without fanfare. No prayers at the shrines. No gold left at the entrance. Just a few quiet nods to the now-familiar terrain of the first and second floors. They moved quickly, efficiently—Corwin up front with his tower shield raised, Lena on his flank, Renna weaving spells with loose fingers, Osric silent in the back, and Derric slinking from shadow to shadow like he was born there.

  The first floor? Cleared in hours.

  The second took longer. They’d fought smarter, moved slower, rested where needed.

  But when they passed the final chamber and stepped onto the freight-lift that led to the third floor—the one Ethan had rebuilt from the bones of a mining shaft and the ribs of a derelict construct—they paused.

  The lift shuddered to life with a grinding screech, lowering them into the glow of forge-light and gear-motion. The heat rose as they descended. Metal sang below.

  “What is this?” Lena muttered. “It’s not even pretending to be a dungeon anymore.”

  Corwin didn’t answer.

  The floor greeted them with silence. A circular chamber lined with slowly moving walls, like the belly of a forge-god. Pipes hissed. Steam burst. And above them, a hanging construct rotated on chains—a rotating sensor array that watched their every move.

  They stepped into the trial.

  And the dungeon moved with them.

  Platform to platform. Conveyor belts that redirected mid-fight. Golem limbs rising from beneath walkways. At one point, Osric narrowly avoided being crushed by a falling loader unit that crashed into the floor like a meteor, scattering dozens of coin-sized drones that sparked with reactive mana.

  The group adapted. Barely.

  Renna lost her footing during a timed platform drop and nearly got separated, saved only by Derric’s grappling hook and Lena’s fast thinking. A new construct—thin, wiry, and disturbingly fast—nearly slipped past Corwin’s guard with a whip-blade.

  But they pushed through.

  And then they reached the Juggernaut chamber.

  No fanfare. No door. Just a set of titanic gears pulling apart to reveal the core room.

  Heat blasted them. Red light painted the ground. The boss dropped from above—limb by limb, armor by armor—assembling itself in real-time. First the armored form, then the weaponized module arm, then the reinforced legs. Sparks rained down from the ceiling.

  And the Modular Juggernaut stood to full height.

  Renna whispered something under her breath.

  “I know,” Corwin said tightly. “Fight smart. Burn it fast.”

  The first phase was almost manageable. A heavy slugfest. Tower shield versus pulse hammer. Sword swings parried with reinforced limbs. Renna blasted mana bolts into joints. Derric found weak points. Osric lined shots and tried to snipe modules mid-switch.

  Then came the transformation.

  The forge cracked open. The armor shed. The smaller, sleeker frame burst free, sliding across the molten floor with magnetic boots and high-frequency blades that screamed through the air.

  Lena nearly fell in the first five seconds.

  But they didn’t give up.

  Ethan watched it all unfold from above, silently.

  “Their cohesion has improved,” the Strategist said. “Tactics refined. Loadouts selected for balance.”

  “Will they win?”

  “Unknown. But they have earned the attempt.”

  Ethan didn’t smile. But deep down, buried beneath layers of mana steel, drifting far below the forge lights and illusions and traps—he wanted them to.

  Just once.

  He wanted someone to see it all.

  And survive… since he too was once a human no matter how much certain people would like him to forget it.