Lifestealer: Cursed Healer [A LITRPG Isekai Survival]

At the end of the top floor hallway stood an ancient door made of wood so dark it was almost black. It was banded with dozens of strips of mana iron, not a single blemish to mark the decades of faithful work. It had kept everything, even the dust and pollen, from entering the Lady's private tower.

Now, it was wide open.

"Well, shit," Symon said as he peered in, unsure of what exactly he was seeing. The small torch in his hand was the only illumination — Keelgrave would be able to turn the hallway lights on, but they didn't want to recklessly wake up more defences. But what were they even defending?

Symon stepped slowly into the tower, Entisse following right behind him. He did his best to check for any traps, figuring that someone paranoid enough to have magical living armour guards wouldn't stop there. He gave the others a chance to look too, just in case it was something undetectable to his senses, but he got the go-ahead all the same.

The tower seemed to be packed top to bottom with stuff, and he had no idea what any of it was. The room was circular, with an upwards staircase on the opposite end and a ring of tables circling the outside wall, which were coated in metal scraps, tubes, pipes, and bits of glassware. It didn't stop there, either, as the floor was a mindfield of various pointy objects strewn about haphazardly.

Most things were damaged. The metal was tarnished and twisted, while the glass was cracked or shattered. A small bookcase near a desk and chair had all of its books spill out, and it looked like someone or something had gone through them, judging by how a few were still open on the desk.

The centre of the room was taken up by a thick, raised plinth, which supported a large, half-sphere of what looked like glass. Judging by the sharp, eggshell-like cracks along the rough top part, it was once perfectly spherical. Numerous small tubes, bronze in colour and perhaps in composition, came from the floor below, wrapped around the pillar and spread out across the ground like roots. All but one of them were clearly broken.

The final section of the floor appeared much more industrial, like a medieval smithy and modern-day factory mushed together. Perhaps literally, considering the mess. Bits of mechanical scrap rested on benches around a large, lifeless forge, which had honest-to-goodness mechanical arms. They were clearly inspired by the living armour, having the same gauntlet-like appearance, making it some kind of auto-feeding furnace. They hung limply, out of whatever powered them.

To its sides were more living armours, or at least he assumed that's what they would have eventually become. They hung on hooks, lay sprawled over tables, or in a discordant pile on the floor, although none of them appeared finished. They seemed to be roughly organised by how close to completion they were: the most incomplete to the left, while the most complete were to the right, closest to the door.

The first was barely more than unshapen sheets of metal presumably meant to be the breastplate, while the most complete one was an almost full suit of armour, only missing an arm and a leg. Despite their state, none of them appeared to have any actual damage on them. The pipes that came up from below snaked around to each of the hooks, and he traced the undamaged one to where it split in two, leading to the two rightmost hooks. The armour was conspicuously missing from them.

"What is this place? Who defeated all these knights? There must be at least a dozen of them," Entisse said as she stalked around the room.

Symon stopped in front of the forge, looking in. A half-formed helmet rested within, the face plate unattached. "I think it's a factory, and these were still being built when, well, when something happened and the Lady died."

<Damn, this is quite a getup for someone on the run,> Keelgrave said.

Symon agreed. The exact circumstances of Lady Renske's exodus from the Empire were unclear, but the old mayor Temuri had mentioned them leaving with some haste. He certainly hadn't brought up the burgeoning robot army factory.

He approached the central pillar, avoiding a few pieces of broken glass as he did so. It looked like a pretty normal block of stone, with a depression on top for the orb to sit in. The glass was transparent, but had a light blue hue to it. The colour was reminiscent of a core, but he was pretty sure this wasn't one. They were opaque, for one, and this orb must have been as big as his torso when it was in one piece. Only a truly gargantuan creature would have a core that big.

<Yep, that broad was a psycho.>

Symon blinked. "Uh, why's that?"

When Keelgrave next spoke, he sounded awed and perhaps a little nervous. <That pipe: the undamaged one. Try touching it, even you might be able to sense it,> he said by way of answer.

"Sense what?" he asked, but he still obeyed. He hesitantly reached out, but nothing happened when his fingers brushed it. It was cold, and the hollow ringing it emitted when he tapped it confirmed the pipe extended down, but he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Anything further out of the ordinary, at least.

<It's mana, and tonnes of it. Real dense stuff.>

Symon frowned, staring at the mundane-looking pillar and glass orb before his gaze lowered to the ground, trying to bore through the ground.

"She was siphoning mana from underground…" he mumbled aloud.

<God's below, you were actually right! She must have tapped straight into the dungeon's mana flows and linked it directly to the enchantment grid. What was she thinking? No wonder she got herself killed.>

Symon looked around at the out-of-place factory around him. "It looks like it was working, though. I wonder who it was that put a stop to things?" He was impressed by the scale of things, especially considering this was all the work of one woman, but he wanted an answer to his question. His first idea was that someone from the Empire had been sent to finish the job, but that didn't make sense. If an assassin made it this far, then they would have noticed the suspicious mana density.

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"The mana… it feels like home," Entisse said from right behind him.

He jumped in shock before wheeling on her. "Jeez, don't do that!" After he caught his breath, he continued. "You can sense it? The dungeon?"

She sniffed deeply. "Maybe. The mana is certainly denser here. It is like I can finally breathe fully."

Symon nodded. If Entisse could sense it, then surely an assassin sent across the ocean would have as well. They would have sent an elite, maybe even a third step, someone who surely would have been able to notice something so obvious to those with even a little ability to detect mana. The fact that no one had been by to reclaim the place decades ago meant the Empire had been unaware of the dungeon's existence. That only left one culprit.

"I think she got too greedy. Delved too deeply, you know, and woke something up," he ventured aloud.

Entisse nodded disinterestedly before prowling over to the bookshelf and rifling through it. He'd given her a quick rundown on Brackstead and the broad strokes of Empire's history that he was aware of, but she found it difficult to care much about something she spent her own life unaware of. It was a distant thing even to Symon, with his only connection to the Empire being his bond with Keelgrave.

<Could be,> Keelgrave said, <I doubt the dungeon was happy about having its mana stolen.>

"Yeah, about that. You mentioned before they were intelligent?"

The spirit hummed in thought. Considering his lack of a body, these little human touches had to be a deliberate effort from him. Symon wasn't sure why he bothered. <Maybe, but not in the way you're probably thinking. I'm hardly an expert on this, though, you know? There are plenty of stories about dungeon delvers, but it beats me how accurate they are. They don't think like you or me, or yes, even the elf does, but they have some type of awareness. So the tales go, at least.>

"Enough to recognise that someone is sucking out its mana?"

<Probably. If anything's enough to get its attention, it would be this. I guess you don't have the context for it, but there's a shipload of mana even in that one pipe. I would have seen it from outside the manor even, but she went to the effort of warding all the pipes, and there's nothing in the broken ones. Gotta respect the dedication, I suppose.>

Symon circled around the pillar, stepping over random scraps in the process. "How far down do you think the dungeon is?" Despite all but confirming its existence, he still didn't see a way to it. They were on the second floor, so there must be something below him, but he saw neither a way up nor down.

<A few metres, a couple leagues, I've got no clue. I don't sense it, but I can't see through much dirt anyway. I doubt the pipes pull from that far down, though; something would have broken all of them by now.>

Symon nodded slightly. "Any ideas on how we get down? We'll want to collect the others first thing tomorrow anyway, but it would be nice to make sure nothing's going to come up for us. If it happened once, it could happen again."

<No, but there's gotta be something. Maybe check around for a—>

A deep grinding sound reverberated through the air. He quickly turned to face the direction it came from.

Entisse was standing in front of the bookshelf, a thick tome in one hand. As he watched, she tried to shove it back into where she'd pulled it from, but the entire shelf was already sliding backwards.

It crept until it was flush with the wall, revealing a large trapdoor. It was currently shut, but he could see the large ring on it meant for opening. While he was distracted, Entisse quickly threw the book back into place.

"It moved on its own," Entisse said shamelessly. Her large eyes were locked onto his, the dark orbs barely visible in the light of his flickering torch. He still thought they were daring him to contradict her.

"I'm sure," he said neutrally. A faint flash of white from a little lower down might have been a tiny smile, but it was gone so fast he couldn't be sure.

"Shall we investigate?" she asked, already moving for the trapdoor.

"No, no, let's wait for everyone to get here tomorrow. I know if we go down there now, we're going to get trapped in there or something stupid. Let's lock everything up tight, make sure none of the armours are going to animate, and get some sleep," he said with a yawn, the excitement of the fight and exploration finally tapering off.

"Very well," she conceded, before the two did exactly as he'd suggested. The bookshelf was moved back into place — using a button behind a fake book, which Entisse inexplicably knew the location of — and the armours were all checked over. None of them had been enchanted, so it must have been something that Lady Renske did herself on the fully finished armours. Just like that, any dreams of a robot army evaporated.

He did take the half-finished helmet he'd found in the forge out and slipped it onto his head. It was far too big and didn't have any padding or way to tie it down; he supposed the animated suits of armour didn't need either of those. He took it off and laid it gently on one of the tables. A proper suit of armour, or even just something to protect his head and chest, would be perfect. There was no proper armourer in a town as small as Brackstead, but maybe he could get Delara, the Tailor he'd purchased some clothes from, to take a look at things.

He wasn't expecting a miracle, but she could probably find a way to make sure it wouldn't fall off using her Skills.

They double-checked the room for any other exits, but found nothing. In the process of sorting through everything, they also went through some of the books, both here and the ones he'd found in Renske's study, back when Keelgrave was sleeping.

No new information was found, but it was still nice to have confirmation. The books in the tower focused on enchanting and construct making. The magic-focused books were interesting, but not of much practical value for the manaless Symon. He'd come back for them later, if for nothing else than to sell them, but the book clearly wasn't meant for beginners and went way over both Symon and Keelgrave's heads.

The less secure study had contained more mundane information: smithing, mining, forgery and the like. He also found a few combat manuals, though these ones were aimed at beginners. They were simple but varied, showing how to both defend and attack with different weapons. It was all things that Keelgrave could already teach to Symon, but it was still helpful to have a beginner's guide laid out in an easily digestible format. The spirit was many things, but he couldn't be called a patient teacher.

Giving them a brief flip through, he recognised a wide sweeping slash from the two-handed sword section: it was the same one the living armour he'd fought had used. "Hmm, I guess the noblewoman wasn't much of a swordfighter herself," Symon murmured.

After adding all the loot to his pack and wishing Entisse a good night, he returned to his bed, manifesting his Ledger in the shadows cast by the tiny light in his room.

[ Status:
Name: Symon
Class: Cursed Healer
Strength: 1.03 {+0.03}
Constitution: 1.39 {+0.04}
Acuity: 1.09 {+0.02}
Intelligence: 1.14 {+0.01}
Will: 1.53 {+0.02}

Vessel (Vitality): 23/23

Passives:
Anatomy (12) {+1}
Bleeding Resistance (5) {+1}
Languages (16) {+1}
Pain Resistance (17) {+2}
Swords (8) {+2} ]

He thought it would take a while to relax after all the sudden attack, but the adrenaline from combat and excitement at the rewards weren't enough, and he drifted off to sleep shortly after lying his head down.