Beneath the Hills

The city at 4:30 a.m. was dead silent.

Outside a mansion in a rich neighborhood street that would be cleaned by the cleaners in half an hour, two men and one woman stepped into the silent night and felt their way in, while the other three spread out furtively to keep a lookout, with a clear division of labor among the five.

Assassination? Kidnapping?

The warlock, standing in the shadows, silently looked at the witch who kept looking around.

It wasn't until 10 minutes later, when she saw the man come out with a bag of stuff, that Fina realized that the guys were stealing.

What's worth all the fuss they're making?

After seeing them retreat in one piece very smoothly, the warlock also quietly disappeared into the shadows.

On the way back, the tavern 5 talked and laughed, completely oblivious to the fact that the entirety of their actions were being watched through.

...

North County, lightless night, a bare hill where Witcher is one with the darkness.

After half a day of surveying, Eleazar stands up silently.

All that could be seen in the transcendental vision was a faint luminescence seeping through the dirt.

This tweedledum hill, where odd humming sounds were said to be heard, was barren and uninhabited within a radius of a few hundred meters.

Without even thinking about it, something in the ground must have contaminated the soil.

"Well, how should I get in?"

Eleazar circled the hill again, trying to use his superhuman sight to find the hidden entrance.

The digging referred to in the info sheet is just a small dirt pit, which is perfunctory.

After a long time, he came to the edge of the cliff, looked at the waves churning below, and then looked back in the direction of the distant hills, his face full of thought.

"Anyway, digging from above is out of the question, a big job indeed..."

"Then, the only place that could hide an entrance to the relics could only be down there..."

Slowly opening his arms, Eleazar leaped over a cliff several dozen meters high.

"BOOM!!!"

Very thrillingly avoiding the reef, he dropped into the water like a depth charge.

Then ventured out of the water and searched the reef-strewn shore until dawn.

"Well, there's nothing up there either..."

Sitting on an exposed reef, Eleazar meditates a bit wearily.

Having lasted 2 hours in a transcendental state, the spirituality was a bit depleted.

Early in the morning, the light rolled in from the horizon, the golden light splitting the morning mist, and the sails of the fishermen's boats could already be faintly seen in the distance.

Listening to the constant lapping of the waves in his ears, in a peaceful atmosphere, he recovered and then dove headfirst into the water.

"Hm? It's toxic!!!"

A faint glow of fluorescent light on the dim, lightless bottom of the sea leaked out of the cracks in the rocky walls.

Eleazar quickly swam over to the crack, looked at it, and caught up with the strand of fluorescent light that was almost finished dispersing, inhaling a bit to taste it.

Well, the slight tingling of the tongue is indeed herbal toxicity without a doubt!

Remembering the location of this rift, he quickly returned to the surface for a change of air, then plunged headlong into the water again, never to be seen again.

...

Swimming into that circular passage that looked like a sandworm burrowing out, it only felt narrower and narrower the farther back you went, as if you were drilling into a bull's eye, and in the end, there wasn't even any open space to turn around, and after ten minutes or so, Witcher, who was forced to huddle his body together, finally felt the shadow of death looming down on him.

He straightened his arms and did his best to release the only cold energy he could use, condensing frost to spread wildly down the narrow passageway and ahead.

Less than a hundred meters away, Frost rushed out of the water.

After getting this result, he immediately snapped his ten fingers into the wall of the passageway, and after storing up his strength for a bit, he rushed forward like a cannonball.

"Boo!"

A lab sink splashed with water and ice shards as if it had exploded.

"Hoo... Hoo..."

Nearly suffocated alive, Witcher emerges with difficulty, breathing heavily of the dreary air.

"What a thrill..."

Eleazar looked back behind him with a heartbeat, the drain opening that had been the size of a television set and now had been blown up to the size of a manhole cover, the water around him gushing out like a whirlpool into that gaping hole.

Being in a wastewater pool with several tall gas tanks around him, housing several metal pipes that seemed to be for filtration, and several rows of glass containers as tall as a man in the distance, it looked as if it was a laboratory.

"Tik-Tok~"

On the ceiling, a drop of glistening green liquid gathered into a stream and dripped down a metal pipe, splashing onto the forehead of the one who happened to lift it.

The toxin, it's leaking out of that somewhat cracked pipe.

Eleazar muses, climbing out of the pool and resting for a moment before applying heat to dry his body again.

It's confirmed to be a Transcendent Ruin without a doubt, like an experimental facility, and that just means there will be rare material stored.

The prerequisite is that it is well preserved and has not been corrupted by time.

After checking the equipment on his body to make sure it all worked, he carefully checked around.

It was like an aqueous filtration chamber, and on a pedestal in the middle of the pool, Eleazar found the sapling of the World Tree, which had completely withered away.

It was a legendary material that was said to be able to flow clear water indefinitely.

After a little thought, he probably understood the purpose of this pool.

Clearwater is collected, filtered into pure water by gas tanks, and then transported separately by those pipes to various places in the experimental base, where pure water is available for use as soon as the faucet is unscrewed.

Jumping onto the platform in the middle of the pool, he crouched down and with some caution carefully peeled back the wreckage, searching for a moment.

The seedling of the World Tree, only one seed left that drew out yellowing branch buds, sensed transcendental activity around it, and it instantly wrapped itself up like a hand rope in death.

Eleazar slowly injected spirituality into the seed, pulling out a glass vial and using the remains of the branch as dirt, before unraveling the seed, which had grown a few sprouts, and dropping it in.

[4th Order Magic Plant Material: Seed of the World Tree]

And those glass containers...

Something seemed to have been stored inside before, but it all disappeared.

Eleazar stood up and walked over to the mist-covered containers again, standing on his tiptoes and reaching in from above to touch the glass walls.

"Well, it's a 2nd order material: Genesis Air, but unfortunately it's already been consumed."

The rows of glass containers, as tall as a man, had all become empty and had not been replenished for an unknown period.

One's guess was right, this was a filtering chamber for air and water.

After examining the room, which was the size of a ball field, to make sure no goodies were left behind, Eleazar carefully pushed the door open.

A dark passageway, surrounded by faded reddish-yellow metal plates, leading nowhere to the left or right.

"Overall metal? Filtered floors? This style of architecture should be a laboratory for the steam pathway..."