Mushroom Lord in the Underground City

Chapter 512 - 502: Ancient Combat Puppet

The underground ruins, silent for countless years, suddenly came alive with activity.

Tolin and Gleam dragged the Lizardman into a relatively intact dome structure, with the Cold Spirits chasing them multiplying from one to many.

The two dwarves struggled to hold the rusty bronze doors, slowly closing them with their shoulders.

The door hinges emitted a sharp screeching sound, and several shattered metal pieces fell off during the process.

Gleam looked at the base of the severely damaged door hinges, noting that most of the parts were missing.

"I don’t think this door will hold for long." He then turned to the Lizardman, "Baroque, are you alright?"

The Lizardman had been dragged all the way, looking extremely miserable, with large patches of scales missing from one side of his body.

He grimaced: "I said, is it possible that it’s just my tail that’s broken, and I can still run on my own..."

"..."

"Ha... Haha," Gleam awkwardly patted the intact shoulder of the Lizardman and helped him up, "The situation was urgent, don’t mind the details..."

Suddenly, a heavy crash sounded from outside, and the bronze doors shuddered as green rust flaked off.

Tolin glanced around: "There doesn’t seem to be another exit."

Gleam pointed to a spiral staircase leading deeper into the hall: "Then we’ll have to go deeper and take a look."

The internal space was more vast than expected.

Towering furnaces were scattered within the hall, with rusted teleportation chains hanging from the dome. Some walls still bore dark marks from soot and flames.

"I never knew there was a Dwarven city beneath the Northern Territory!" Baroque exclaimed in awe, enduring his pain.

"Don’t say you didn’t know, even as a Dwarf, I didn’t know!" Tolin darted excitedly among the furnaces, feeling as though he was uncovering history.

Gleam kicked aside a piece of metal scrap at his feet: "This looks like a forge, but it doesn’t seem to be for forging weapons and armor..."

Thud, thud—

The sound of pounding on the door continued.

"Tolin, stop pondering those antiques!" Gleam shouted at the crouching figure in the distance, "We need to find a sturdy room to hide in and wait for Fungus Castle’s rescue!"

"Come look at what I found!" Tolin’s excited voice echoed from behind one of the high furnaces.

"I’ve told you, we need to hurry..." Gleam intended to scold his companion for not recognizing the urgency, but as he rounded the furnace and saw the scene before him, his words caught in his throat.

On a shattered base, lay the remains of a metal construct.

The humanoid upper body was covered in dark rust, with menacing claws and rotating sawteeth at the ends of its arms.

Despite its incomplete state, one could still imagine its lethal potential when intact.

And most importantly, embedded in the chest of this metal puppet was a Demon Crystal, dull but still maintaining its complete prismatic form.

"A metal puppet, what’s so special about it?" Baroque was puzzled.

"It’s a Combat Puppet?" Gleam leaned in, incredulous, "But it’s completely different from what I’ve seen with the Deep Furnace Clan..."

"Driven by a Demon Crystal, what else could it be but a Combat Puppet! This is an ancient Combat Puppet forge!" Tolin caressed the metal body lines, his voice trembling with excitement.

The technology to create Combat Puppets was nearly lost.

The Deep Furnace Clan did have a batch of Combat Puppets, but they were used as trump cards, and losing one meant one less.

Though the Hall of Dwarven Heritage still retained the "Puppet Master" profession, today’s artisans could only craft low-level puppets for moving stones at best.

And this one Tolin found, just by its intricate joint structure and imposing weaponry setup, was clearly a true war machine.

Gleam snapped out of his shock: "It’s indeed an astonishing discovery, but escaping is more crucial now!"

Behind them, the sound of the door being smashed broke out, and Tolin reluctantly followed them deeper into the structure.

They traversed several areas, but none were suitable for hiding.

Finally, they entered a massive warehouse, where hundreds of identical metal Combat Puppets were stacked, like a slumbering steel army.

However, these once-formidable war machines were now severely rusted.

Most distressingly, the giant doors at the entrance of the warehouse had long collapsed, offering no barricade against the pursuing Cold Spirits.

"We’re doomed..." Baroque collapsed to the ground, defeated.

Gleam broke off a rusted saw-toothed arm from a Combat Puppet, preparing to fight to the death.

Tolin dashed into the pile of Combat Puppets, disappearing from sight.

Thud, thud, thud—

An ice crystal puppet entered the warehouse, its cold air quickly homing in on the sources of heat.

"Damn it, I knew I should’ve brought a shield and weapon to work!" Gleam cursed as he patiently waited for the Ice Spirit to make the first move before retaliating.

Just before combat ensued, a relatively intact Combat Puppet suddenly burst from the wreckage!

The Demon Crystal at its chest glowed with unstable light—that was a Demon Crystal Tolin carried as a spare part for his Magic Staff.

"Go!" Tolin shouted from amidst the ruins.

Under everyone’s astonished gaze, the Combat Puppet swung its right arm, where non-spinning sawteeth met the Cold Spirit.

Crash—

Ice crystals splintered, and the Cold Spirit was bisected, its shattered ice segments scattering on the ground.

"Woohoo! Awesome!" Gleam and Baroque also got excited, seeing a glimmer of hope for survival.

But their jubilation was premature.

The shattered Cold Spirit rapidly reassembled its icy form, and more Cold Spirits loomed in the distance.

Worse, the arm of the Combat Puppet, which had just achieved the miraculous, flailed a few times in the air before the rusted joints finally broke down completely, and the whole arm clanged to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

The Combat Puppet, deprived of its primary weapon, was soon beset by two more Cold Spirits and ended up completely destroyed.

"Gleam! Tolin! I’m really glad to have shared a dormitory with you; you’re my best friends in this life, and I hope we can be together as Fungus Folk in the next!"

In one breath, Baroque finished his last words, curling into a ball, awaiting death.

"Ohohoh, fight to the death!" Gleam swung the saw-toothed piece broken off the Combat Puppet wreck, charging at the Cold Spirit with a roar.

Boom—!

The metal ceiling shattered, and an ear-splitting explosion resounded through the warehouse. The massive magic power explosion instantly shattered the nearest few Cold Spirits into dust.

The shockwave hurled Gleam backward, slamming him into the Lizardman.

In the dust and smoke, Norris, piloting Jida, descended slowly through the large hole opened by the Resonance Cannon.

Jida’s jet propulsion sputtered uncertainly, providing seemingly unstable lift.

The shoulder-mounted Resonance Cannon was recharging, with the glow from magic power reflections swirling around the barrel.

"Found those three workers; they’re all alive!"

The second Resonance Cannon shot roared out, and the Cold Spirits pouring in from behind were obliterated in the magic bombing.

The one Cold Spirit that escaped the barrage was effortlessly shredded by Norris with a drill-wielding right arm.

Through the damaged dome, Gleam and the others could hear continuous explosions outside, clearly indicating Jida’s forces were clearing the surrounding Cold Spirits.

Norris frowned at the Cold Spirits, whose ice crystal forms were reforming: "These things are hard to kill... Are you still able to move? If you can, follow me and let’s retreat!"

The Lizardman had been knocked out cold, but it didn’t matter.

Gleam and Tolin each took one of his ankles and arms, respectively: "We can, we can, Lord Norris, lead the way!"