Navigating the labyrinthine tunnels of the underground mountain complex was a challenge to almost everybody when they went to the areas they were not very familiar with. Especially since large sections of the network were only illuminated by glowing moss and the locals kept taking it for various purposes.
Nino felt a moment of relief when the temperature around her began to rise and the sounds of the forge rang along the corridor. The path from where she lived to her destination had been relatively straightforward. But still, she had not been able to stop thinking about how humiliating it would have been if she had needed to beg or bargain to get guided to the forge.
"What are you doing here?" were the sharp but a bit surprised words that greeted Nino. Zion and a few of the other new acolytes were standing around a large metal door. All wore their usual black robes like she did.
"Receiving my weapon," Nino voiced. She tried to walk past the group but they moved to block her. Not that she could have moved past them since the door to the forge was closed.
"That demon hurt your brain or something? We all know you did not ascend," one of the acolytes flared. Nino did not even bother dignifying him by remembering his name.
"I did, envoy of the Holy Lord even invited me to come here," Nino shrugged. There would have been no way she would have bothered to make this trip without actually being summoned.
"That makes no sense, you did not take the lord's essence, so you are still weak," Zion voiced. The veins on his face were a bit darker than before and there was a weird tint to his eyes. But when he lunged for a quick strike to grab Nino's shoulder, she easily stepped to avoid it and even slammed her fist into his chest hard enough to make him fall back.
"You were saying?" Nino asked with a sigh. Despite the anger on Zion's face, he moved to create distance between the two.
"Are you some special pet then? What are you?" Zion flared. And even if Nino did not really know the answer to that, she was not sure if she even cared anymore. She had a source of power that seemed more than strong enough to match her peers.
"The same rank as you as far as I'm aware, so I don't need to listen to you, if you can't even beat me," Nino voiced. During the encounter, the noises coming from the forge had lessened and the door was suddenly pushed open.
"What are you bickering about?" a tall bald man wearing a leather apron asked with a low tone. He had a rugged but somewhat friendly face.
"We were sent to acquire our spirit weapons," Zion nodded. The other Acolytes gathered behind him with partially lowered heads like they were not sure if they should show respect to this smith.
"Come in, we have just enough time to set things up," the smith nodded. "Just call for Malik, that being me if the others are being too unreasonable."
The group of acolytes entered the forge. It was not the biggest cave they had ever seen but it definitely was one of the most cramped and heated. All kinds of glowing metal and stone constructs filled the space. They were connected with long chimneys and pipes to the ceiling. Not that Nino had much time to look at them as she was swarmed by a group of bald men wearing leather aprons.
"Hey there, looking for a high-class weapon?" the first smith asked with a wide smile. Though he was immediately shoved a bit aside by the second.
"Not from you, his creations break to dust on their own," the second smith grinned. "One of my creations is used by a venerated master."
"And how much a weapon from you would cost me?" Nino asked. After the initial rush, several of the smiths headed to bargain with the other acolytes. Like they had decided to not compete with the others for one reason or the other.
"Just sleep with me one night," the smith nodded.
"I'm fine with one hour," the other smith offered. All of them had clear signs of different stages of the Holy Lord's blessing on their muscles and veins so Nino thought at least their seed should be decent.
"You just want to fuck me?" Nino asked with a head tilt. Even if she picked one of these guys for such a deal, she had no idea how exactly to pick the best one.
"I can do it for two hundred pearls," another smith offered. Nino had trouble even imagining that amount of pearls, she had not even seen that many in all of her life. Novices were not usually paid from any task and the ones she had seen had been someone else bragging how they had found or got one.
"Like any new acolyte had that," a smith grunted and the others laughed a bit.
"Okay, all of you scram, we don't have time for this, so let me handle this," Malik boomed and he came closer while almost pushing the other smiths away. The others dispersed without complaints so easily that Nino immediately got a bit worried about what was going on.
"So here's my offer, go fetch me these things from the warehouses, and I can make you a perfectly decent sword," Malik offered and he opened the scroll he held in his hand. On it was written barely ten things and some of them Nino had never seen before.
"This is all?" Nino asked as she took the scroll.
"Tell me it's an easy job when you come back," Malik shrugged.
"Fine, where do I go?" Nino voiced. Malik was clearly in some high position among the smiths and if she refused his offer, chances were she would only get even worse offers from there on and she might never get even a decent spirit weapon.
"That door over there," Malik waved and Nino headed for it after a nod. He did not even wish her good luck and instead headed to talk with the others. But no matter how bad of a feeling Nino got, she headed for the door and went in.
Once on the other side, it became immediately clear the warehouses were a large network of tunnels filled with boxes, cabinets, and various other containers. All of them had weird markings that reminded Nino of the ones next to the list in her scroll. So she opened the scroll and began figuring out the labeling scheme. Even though some of the marks on the containers were almost familiar, the characters were something she had never seen before, like it used some code. So she headed deeper while trying to find matching symbols from the scroll.
The warehouse tunnels created a weird interlocking maze of tilted squares. Like someone had been digging into the stone and earth with a clear purpose of making it hard to see past the next set of corners. Nino kept navigating through the maze as straight of a line as she could but when she tried to get back, she still failed to find the door she had just used.
Nino was more than willing to admit she had done a minor mistake but when she tried to correct it, she still failed to find the door. Even the crates looked different than before so she somehow had managed to take the wrong turn. But no matter how hard she tried to map the area in her mind, things just kept changing after three turns.
Even when Nino tried to dash with speed to backtrack three turns, things had changed. But when she tried to just peek behind the same corner repeatedly, no changes happened. Like the three corner turns rule was somehow absolute to change things. Though when she began seeing familiar crate placements, she began using them as a marker.
It took a while but eventually, Nino managed to find a path that seemingly led somewhere. So she kept following it until she saw a door. She did not even think twice before opening it and rushing through. But on the other side, it took her only moments to register the large forge room filled with demons.
Hundreds of red-skinned and very muscular horned imps were working all kinds of mechanical and stone constructs. Nino took a stance to defend herself but nobody in the hall seemed to pay any attention to her. And all of them kept working with an eerie silence that was only broken by the metallic sounds from the devices.
"Greetings, is your master available?" Nino asked. It did not take her long to realize every single demon she saw was bound to the devices they worked with chains. It gave her certain courage to move away from the door to see if other doors were located behind the big clacking metal devices.
Besides just guessing everything in the hall being related to forging and metals, Nino had no idea what individual constructs were doing. Some of them had more moving parts than others and some were just weird stone ovens. But one simple device kept attracting her attention.
A large donut-shaped stone was being rotated on a metal pedestal by four imps. All of them were bound with chains to the poles that were sticking out of the stone. The hole in the middle was filled with all kinds of wooden crafts, fans, and other miscellaneous objects. And the only common thing between them seemed to be that they looked very old or straight-up broken. But what fascinated Nino the most, was the oven-like hole in the pedestal that contained a bowl of glittering dust. She even crouched down to see more of the dust slowly fall from above like the objects above were literally being ground to dust.
Nino could not even explain it to herself but the dust looked a bit delicious. Like she somehow knew it would sate her. So she looked around to make sure none of the demons were paying any attention to her.
"You guys won't mind if I just taste a bit, right?" Nino asked the imps that kept walking between her and the bowl to rotate the stone. With her power, she definitely could defeat something like a demon imp despite their ridiculously muscular bodies. But if she knocked them out to get to the dust, someone might notice and blame her. So she just straightened her index finger and prepared her body to quickly stick the finger into the dust.
"Just a small taste," Nino voiced. She was definitely fast enough to poke in and withdraw between the imps and just when one walked past the bowl, her finger lunged at the target, Though her slightly gleeful grin was suddenly turned into shock when a chain wrapped around her hand. When she tried to pull out, another chain wrapped around her other hand and pulled her to the pole they were attached to. She let go of the scroll and it rolled on the ground.