Len made his way to the front of the train. Rick stepped back from the wall, holstering his hammer.

  "Large cavern, maybe fifty meters across, over a hundred deep and twenty meters tall in places," Rick said. "reached the limit of how far I can sense. Water at the bottom, can't tell how deep. Can't tell if there's any entry or exits.

  "So there could be bad air trapped in there," Len said.

  Rick nodded.

  The older the ruins the more precautions one had to undergo stepping into it.

  "We should make cloth masks for everyone, same as the library. If we crack it open then we could get flooded with the bad air a spark or static could set off some of the gas," Len looked back at the train. "Can we avoid it?"

  "I think so, cut a bit to the right, then come back in. Make a big lazy arc. Also as we go around it I can get a better understanding of what the layout is." Rick said.

  "How far from the nearest wall of the cavern are we?" Len asked.

  "About four hundred meters I'm getting a range of about five hundred meters right now, its not the most accurate. Though seeing a great wide open space isn't that hard."

  Rick pulled out his sound transmission device as he started walking back towards the platforms, along the maintenance Len joined him.

  "Alright we've found a cavern, we're going to go around it," Rick said.

  "It would give us more room to dump stone," Christina said. "We could speed things up."

  "In old places where the air hasn't moved in a long time it usually goes bad. If we open up that space right now it could flood us with flammable gases that could explode and kill us, or it fills the tunnel with gas that we can't circulate out fast enough through our small ventilation shafts and it kills us," Rick said. "Going around is the safest. We avoid it, get to the other side and later we can deal with opening it up and seeing what's within the cavern."

  "Not blowing up the mountain sounds good," Captain Sam said.

  "Just got to do some adjustments up here and we'll be on our way," Rick said and lowered his sound transmission device. standing on the maintenance walkway next to two troops atop the first platform.

  "Angle all the way to the right."

  They turned the wheel at the front of the train moving the extruder, enchantments and rail feeders.

  The extruder dug into the wall on the left and Rick tapped against the tunnel with his hammer.

  "Good, its altering the tunnel ahead of us—" Rick pressed his eyelids together a. "Yeah that should take us past the cavern. Start it up! He put his fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle.

  The engine chugged and pushed forward again. Len and Rick jumping onto the platform as stone blocks began to flow once more.

  There was about two ingots work of iron and coal from the secondary extruders.

  The massive contraption they'd pulled together continued its work, carving through solid rock as the enchantments hummed with power.

  "How much further you think we have to go?" Len asked Rick.

  Rick shook his hand back and forth "About four kilometers to the other side of the mountain, give or take."

  "That'll take a day or two at this rate," Len said, eyeing the double-wide tunnel they were creating. "Could go faster if we weren't making it so wide."

  His gaze drifted to the neatly cut stone blocks lining the sides of the train, still waiting to be transported back. The modified hopper system had proved more efficient than expected, but they still hadn't solved the bottleneck of moving materials out.

  "Best to make it right the first time," Rick said.

  Len shrugged to signal his agreement.

  "I was talking to my Grandma earlier," Rick raised his voice to be heard over the cacophony of construction - the rhythmic thud of rollers, the grinding screech of stone being cut, and the steady chug of the train's engine that echoed through the tunnel.

  "They've got a prototype digger that's managing a kilometer per hour. They're looking for ways to improve that rate too. Got advanced teams moving north, along the path it'll follow putting in hidden ventilation shafts."

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  "Its what about eighty kilometers from them to the Vordun line and another twenty to up here?" Len asked, mentally calculating the timeline.

  "Yeah will take them four days around the clock to reach us," Rick said, wiping sweat from his brow with a dusty sleeve. "Assuming nothing major breaks down. they've got a second digger train that will be ready in two days. They'll send that one south toward Velkaris." Rick's voice held a note of satisfaction.

  "Got a request from Goran about the rail enchantments," Rick said, pulling out a folded paper from his pocket, the edges worn from being handled repeatedly. "They're trying to figure out how to move mana through the rail based on what you said."

  "I was half asleep through that call," Len shifted his chin strap to itch his growing beard trapped between it and his skin. The stubble was getting annoying, but there hadn't been time for a shave with all the work lately. He remembered vaguely mumbling something about power transfer arrays during that late-night discussion.

  "Well they say that they'll be able to speed up a lot with that modification." Rick smoothed the creased paper against his thigh, squinting at whatever was written there.

  "What design did they go with for the digger?" Len asked, his mind already running through the various configurations they'd discussed.

  "They made the front extruder from steel, same as the rollers, they've got six massive extruders to make blocks, two rows, one on the flatbed cars and two The other suspended above. They built the engines right into flatbed cars with your air pressure system they don't need the huge boiler and firebox."

  "Saves a lot of space, and make it easier for them to throw stone back not having to work around the engine," Len nodded.

  "Each of them has independent power to spread out the load. got so much stone moving above that steel is fed underneath the train to the rail extruders up front."

  "They using both tracks to carry material back?" Len asked.

  "Kind of, they're running the digger up one track of the tunnel and have flatbed cars moving up to take the stone and drop it off in Goran. They're still working on that problem to speed up getting the stone out. The other side they're pulling out the blocks by hand and loading up on cars and pushing them back into Goran. Much slower on that side."

  "I know that they're looking at Christina's new engine designs too - finding ways to squeeze more speed out of them. They're building lots of the flatbeds with the engines, though they're running low on steel. Thankfully coal has started to absorb mana and its become more efficient and less random as fuck. So it can be used to create steel."

  Len squinted at the rough-hewn walls of the tunnel, the dim lighting casting long shadows that flickered with each lurch of the train. "I hope we find some iron and coal in these mountains," he said, his voice steady but thoughtful. "Could really use a reliable source for our projects."

  Rick folded the paper he'd been reading from and put it away. "I've found traces already, marked them down on the maps," Rick tapped the tube over his shoulder. "We're in luck that this part of the mountain range wasn't destroyed by the mana storms to come."

  "Would suck to do all of this and then have it destroyed," Len grimaced.

  Their voices echoed softly, the train's steady rumble providing a backdrop to their conversation. Len's mind shifted to another concern. "Speaking of projects," he started, "we need to upgrade our gear. Now that charcoal isn't going haywire with explosions, I've been thinking about making weapons from the pipes we've got."

  Rick's face showed intrigue. "Pipes, huh? That would be one big damned round."

  "Going to be enchantment heavy," Len admitted. "Need to used enchantments to fire them. When we get back to Goran we can see about using proper rounds."

  "What you thinking?"

  "Lightning cannon that shoots out a lightning bolt, fast, accurate and deadly."

  "Blind the fuck out of anyone shooting it," Rick pointed out.

  "Yeah, have to teach them how to use mana sight to get around that," Len admitted. "Or make special glasses that dim."

  Rick tilted his head in acquiescence.

  "Then I'm thinking of a drop shotter," Len said.

  "A spitter?" One of those machine guns you drop bullets into and the enchantments along the barred shoots it out the other side?"

  "Yeah, though I want to make it less chaotic and more controlled," Len said.

  "How so?"

  "Modify the firing mechanism so it puts in a certain amount of bullets," Len said.

  "Could do that with some gears probably? Huh I guess you could put in an extruder, then have it punching out rounds, that feeds into a magazine of some kind. Then have an enclosed gear that moves with one of those lightning engines connected by enchantment to the trigger. Pull the trigger, completes the enchantment, turns the gear and it drops rounds into the tube which fires them off?"

  "Yeah that could work well," Len nodded.

  "Need to have a pipe to fire and another pipe of the same diameter that the rounds are extruded into then that goes to the loading gear at the back of the tube enchanted to shoot out the rounds. What are you thinking to fire the rounds?"

  "Was thinking force, or have it using air pressure like the pipe that we have supplying air into the train's engine," Len said.

  "Air pressure its going to be blowing all the time, hard to hide that, else you need a bit for it to build up the pressure before it fires," Rick said.

  "Yeah, with force its instantly applied, though the mana usage is higher."

  "Take some of the iron," Rick gestured at the extruders with his chin. "Use those to make grips for the weapon and the buttstock. Mana batteries."

  "Definitely some messing around to do there," Len said. "Now I think you'll like the last idea."

  Rick raised an eyebrow. "It go boom?"

  "It go boom." Len grinned, Rick sharing in it. "Thinking a shoulder cannon. Take them bigger pipes, have it done up with air pressure zones. The cannon keeps the air pressure high in sections. Then you spark it."

  Rick raised an eyebrow.

  "Set the air that's all focused in the back of the cannon right behind the round. It burns, throws the round forward which creates a seal with the pipe, punches through the next bit of concentrated air and the fire that is behind it from the first ignition sets the air on fire."

  "Ignition ignition ignition, each speeding up the round. With a big pipe that's going to be a big round."

  "Bout that big?" Len held up his fist.

  "Yeah that looks about right," Rick snorted and then coughed, spitting to the side. "Damn dust."