Len reached the front car, finding Rick and several workers clustered around a section of wall where water sprayed through gaps between the stone blocks. The liquid caught the light from their crystals, creating rainbow refractions across the tunnel walls.

  "How bad?" Len asked, moving closer to inspect the breach.

  Rick gestured at the floor where water pooled around their boots before trickling down through the gravel bed beneath the tracks. "Hit it about two minutes ago. Pressure's steady, not increasing."

  Len crouched to examine how the water was dispersing through the substrate they'd created under the tracks. The gravel and sand mixture was doing its job, allowing the water to filter down and away from the tracks rather than pooling.

  "We've got kilometers of drainage bed," Rick said, echoing Len's thoughts. "This has to be runoff from the mountain. We're almost through - less than a kilometer to go."

  Len nodded, watching the steady stream for any changes in pressure or volume. The flow was starting to slow already, suggesting Rick was right about it being surface runoff rather than part of a larger underground water system.

  Len stood, brushing his hands on his knees. "Let's keep the excavation going, but if the pressure increases or we hit any more water, we reassess."

  Rick clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll set up shifts." He waved to others signalling through gesture.

  The engine engaged again and started pushing them forward, water spraying through the extruder, then on either side of it as the stone was dragged into it.

  "How are the weapons coming along?"

  "Finished up with the first batch, all the pipe is either a spitter or a shoulder cannon," Len said, keeping an eye on the water as they rolled forward.

  "You making anymore?" Rick asked.

  "Not right now, the iron and steel is being used to make ammunition, for the new track and upgrading the train to be ready for a fight."

  "Yeah I guess a fair bit is going down the rail hole," Rick looked back at two men around a hole in the platform with iron blocks all around them.

  "That the rail extruder?" Len asked, moving towards it.

  "Yeah, guess you haven't had a look at it," Rick waved him on and kept watching the wall, he reached out with his hammer and tapped the wall to see ahead.

  Len walked across the first platform's wooden decking. The rail extractor that Wilbur and his team had created worked beneath, a marvel of engineering that had drastically simplified their track-laying process.

  The wood rails were above and ready if they needed to be used still.

  He peered down through the hole in the platform where raw metal fed into the hopper below. The extruder drew the iron through, shaping it into rails and ties, using the shape Harold had created in one continuous motion. Unlike their earlier wooden system, this setup was compact and efficient - the fresh steel rails emerged mere seconds before the stone wheels rolled over them, securing them into the sleepers below.

  One of the men next to the hole standing near the blocks nodded to Len.

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  The other grabbed iron from the front extruder and dropped it into the hopper.

  The system consumed their iron reserves at an alarming rate, but the quality of track it produced was worth the resource cost.

  Especially now that the train had increased in weight with iron and steel being used to replace wood and stone.

  A lot easier and faster to use than the first version we came up with.

  Still, watching their iron stockpile diminish with each meter of track gave him pause. They'd need to find more metal soon if they wanted to maintain this pace.

  Thankfully just a kilometer to go.

  A deep rumble echoed through the tunnel, and Len's head snapped up just as the wall ahead collapsed. Water rushed through the breach. Len raised his arm and braced himself with the others as the water crashed into them and washed over the platform.

  "Looks like we got that bath lads!" Rick yelled.

  "Bit fucking cold," Len yelled back.

  A few laughed out as the train kept on eating up the mountian and progressing.

  Water continued to flow, though the gravel and sand were doing their work, drawing the water away.

  "Everyone alright?" Len called out.

  Three workers had been knocked down by the initial surge. Corporal Morris clutched his arm where he'd hit one of the metal bars holding up the wooden railings. Sandra one of the civilian engineers had one eye closed, blood coming down her face as one of the soldiers tended to her wounds.

  Tom her colleague was cradling his shoulder as he got himself upright, a soldier moving towards him.

  "Anyone that's wounded head back to get checked on by the medics," Len ordered.

  He face forward once more.

  "Well at least we got that water heading to Goran," Len said.

  "Not much of a stream right now," Rick said.

  "Something's better than nothing. Should we get Simmons and some more of his lads up here incase we pop out of the mountain range?" Len asked.

  "Yeah, could you? I'm keeping an eye on what's ahead still. I'm aiming to stop us before we leave themountain range so we can prep everything."

  "Alright," Len pulled out his sound transmission device and let Simmons know.

  ***

  The water had come to a stop as they created a tunnel through where it was coming from and then Rick jumped off the train to create an inlet that let the water to trickle down into the tracks.

  "Not far to go now," Rick told Len as he moved back up next to him and signalled to Edward to go faster.

  "Why we going faster?"

  "Stone isn't as dense up ahead its going to be quicker for us to go through, also there's a lot more openings between the rock," Rick said.

  Len checked his spitter that Simmons had given him back and checked in on the soldiers around him.

  The platform had been upgraded to iron mainly with short walls at the corners and along the side of the train to give shooters cover.

  "Five hundred meters!" Rick called out.

  That got everyone shifting differently. It had been a long two-three days. Damn I lost track of time.

  Len felt the train's momentum shift as Rick signaled Edward to reduce speed.

  The stone blocks ahead of the train fell backwards, lighting shining through as they collapsed.

  After so long in the artificial glow of their crystal lights, the sunbeams felt almost painful against his eyes.

  The brakes engaged with a metallic screech, and the train ground to a halt. Warm sunlight washed over Len's face, a stark contrast to the cool dampness that had surrounded them in the tunnel. He inhaled deeply, savoring the fresh mountain air that rushed into the tunnel.

  Activating his mana sight, to keep seeing while his eyes adjusted to the new light.

  Below them, spread throughout a vast valley, lay an enormous deposit of mana stone - the foundation upon which Harmonia would one day be built.

  The raw power emanating from the deposit was staggering.

  "Its a crater," Len said.

  The forest was burnt around the valley, and the center raised up.

  "Its a dungeon," Rick said.