While she checked for traps, I turned to Derek. “That golem have any worthwhile parts we could take?”
He shook his head. “Not unless you’re a Caelish engineer. Huh.” He glanced at Vera. “Actually, maybe she could do something with it. I don’t know much about golems, but they’re mostly mechanical. Mana powered, but they’re mostly mechanical parts. I wouldn’t know how to get to the mana core without breaking it, but she might.”
It was a couple more minutes before Vera came back. “Room seems safe. Fountain seems safe, too.”
“Thought so. It’s a mana fountain. They’re commonly found in safe rooms.”
I blinked. “Mana fountain? As in, that’s liquid mana flowing in there?”
Derek laughed. “Nothing quite so grand. It’s just water infused with a bit of life mana and water mana. Helps speed up recovery after a particularly dangerous room, or right before one. Bad news is that I’m pretty sure the room we just went through was the easy room.”
“Meaning that the next room — or rooms — will likely be exceptionally dangerous,” Orden finished. “Very well. We should all head inside and indulge in the fountain.”
We headed in, but I frowned when I sat at the fountain’s side. “Is it really clean for us to drink from this? Wouldn’t there be, like, hundreds of years of diseases?”
Professor Orden laughed. “It’s self-cleaning. Look at the runes over here.”
Huh. I didn’t recognize most of the runes she showed me, but I was able to pick out the ones that made it refill with water, as well as ones that called mana and life mana into it.
I borrowed some of Vera’s paper and sketched the remaining runes down, tucking the notes away in my backpack, then drank the water.
It was cold. Like, goddess, I didn’t know I could feel that cold without experiencing pain.
As strange as the feeling was, though, it wasn’t strictly uncomfortable. After the first sip, I started to acclimate to it, drinking my fill.
Out of curiosity, I checked my mana watch afterward. 39/48.
So, it was restoring a bit of my mana, or at least accelerating my natural recovery a bit. But it wasn’t a mana potion, and it wouldn’t get me back to full strength immediately.
That was fine. I was more worried about Sera. She was drinking it as quickly as she could, and I didn’t blame her.
After she’d drank her fill, I passed her the mana watch again, and she registered at -10/112. Still pretty bad, but she’d recovered more mana than I had.
I looked around. “Any objections to resting here for a few hours?”
“Actually, I think we might want to plan to spend the night here. It’s very unlikely we’re going to find another safe spot like this.” Derek scratched his chin.
“I would advise against tarrying here quite that long, but a few hours might be tolerable.” Orden sat at the base of the fountain.
“Why? Are we in any sort of hurry? Thought we had days.” Derek asked.
“On Katashi’s deadline, yes. But it would appear that Edrian agents are active in our city, and I would prefer to resolve this before they have a chance to learn about where we are and plan a counterstrike.”
Derek nodded. “Makes sense. Few hours, then. Vera, want to help me take a crack at that golem? Maybe we can pry the core out of it.”
“Really? Maybe you really are a gentleman.” Vera grinned and looped her arm in his. “Let’s go take a swing at that bucket of metal.”
While they worked, I rested. And for a just a little while, I felt like we were finally safe.
I was, of course, dangerously mistaken.
Chapter XXI — Venom
My first order of business was making sure that Sera’s condition was stable. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any kind of medical expertise, so that meant the best tool at my disposal was the mana watch. I prodded her with it every few minutes until the result was a greater than zero value, after which we both relaxed a little.
She still wasn’t talking, but we scribbled notes to each other on borrowed paper. Mostly speculation about where we should be going next and general strategy.
Jin seemed content to stare at a wall most of the time, meditating or something similar. Maybe he was just considering tactics. I couldn’t blame him for that.
Professor Orden busied herself with drawing protective runes on the walls, writing some notes, and occasionally whispering into the air. Reporting to her superiors, I imagined. That wasn’t a bad idea.
Once I was convinced that Sera wasn’t getting worse, I followed Orden’s example and got to work.
My first order of business was writing down the runes from the previous room. There were three types; one clearly generated the wind, but I wasn’t sure about the other two. The second had a symbol of transference on the top, so I guessed that it might have been the one designed to recharge the main runes — especially since it was centrally positioned in the room.
The third rune? No idea. I’d assumed it was to exclude an area around the exit door from the wind, but it turned out there just weren’t any runes that were directing wind at that particular spot, so an exclusion rune wasn’t needed. Maybe the third one was a part of a puzzle that was meant to turn off the runes?
There had to be a way to handle that chamber without a powerful Enchanter to turn the runes off; maybe that third rune was an off switch.
After a while of studying in that room, I came to the belated realization that Derek and Vera were flirting nearby. And by “I came to the realization”, I mean Derek eventually told me, “We’re flirting, can we please have some space?”
Fair enough, Derek. Fair enough.
So, I, Corin Cadence, master of understanding human mating rituals, left that room to the two of them and tried not to think about that too much.
I decided early in the break that I wasn’t going to do anything reckless that could get us into more danger. That resolve lasted about as long as it took for me to get bored: meaning not particularly long at all.