Grey grinned ear to ear. "Those fuckers are never gonna see this coming. I’m a fucking genius."
Amunet and Thi Lan blinked. Neither of them had any idea what this guy was talking about.
But when their glances flickered over to Barkeep Ji, they nearly jumped out of their skin. As wild as Grey’s grin was, the frog man’s was on an entirely different level. His lips spread so wide and thin it almost looked like he had cut a crescent moon right through his head.
His tongue continuously whipped inside of his mouth, the cracking and echoes of the shattering sound barrier growing louder, and yet they were sure it was somehow greatly muffled before it left the crevices of his mouth.
"Hey, barkeep." Grey said, still looking at Nebb.
"Mm." Barkeep Ji’s mumble of acknowledgement echoed like thunder.
"Would you say the gnomes like to be underground."
"Yes. Yes I would."
"Ah, just like those tall tales on Earth, then. Huh?"
"I guess your Cracked World is influenced by the outside in some fashion as it grows and becomes more of itself."
"Interesting, interesting. I had another gnome friend before. He tragically died. Horrible, really. I blame myself for what happened." Grey looked back toward Barkeep Ji, not put off by the sinister grin at all. In fact, he matched the frog man’s crazy. "I put the guy who did it in the dirt. Gave Globb a nice present in his head. That’s probably rotting under the sun right now while Globb and Memm are nice and toasty underground."
"As you should. A true warrior’s tomb should always have their enemies’ heads as fertilizer."
"Fertilizer." Grey laughed. "Yes, that’s exactly what it is. I’m sure that soon, strong, powerful plants will start to rise there. But what’s also interesting is that Globb happened to be working on an armor for a person quite interested in underground catacombs.
"And then I happened to get my hands on the Mechanical Jaw Spirit, and the moment I did, a huge underground space and passage appeared there too.
"That’s not a coincidence, now is it?"
Barkeep Ji started to laugh. He laughed so uproariously it felt like the entire tower would come crashing down any moment now. Rolling earth moved like the waves of the ocean, and by the time it settled down, Grey would have bet real money that they had moved a substantial distance.
Yet, here the outpost was, still standing tall, firm, and assured.
Grey didn’t reply, his mind was running at a million miles a minute.
There were huge underground networks all across the empire. That much had been proven true time and time and time again. It was just that Grey didn’t connect them originally.
He thought it was just the Old Ones and their stupid, big ass arms. He never made the connection with the catacombs back in Zone 234 because, to his defense, they seemed like completely separate matters.
Still, he felt like he was an idiot for not seeing it sooner. Much sooner.
The pattern he saw when he looked at the map was one he did recognize, it was the very same pattern as what he had seen on the armor that Giyoto was building.
The armor that he couldn’t store because it was too powerful. The armor that the Mech Soul would have fixed right back up.
But what if the Mech Soul wasn’t supposed to fix a little, rinky dink armor?
What if it was supposed to fix...
An entire country?
Giyoto had been working hard, running around everywhere to get this armor completed. He had probably spent years on it, copying patterns he got from who knows where before Grey finally managed to get him one of the last pieces of the puzzle.
No... that’s not true at all. Grey was pretty sure he knew exactly where the pattern came from.
The pattern came from Globb. The very same man who had information about the whereabouts of the Mechanical Jaw Lineage Tome, but had never personally laid eyes on it or the Spirit of his ancestors.
If Grey was correct, Globb had probably been working from a position of ignorance. He knew of the patterns, but he didn’t know exactly what they were from or what they were for.
Then Giyoto came along, and he, too, was working from a position of ignorance.
Both of them had had their countries, their homes, and their people destroyed. How could they have a full slate of information?
So, logically, they believed the patterns were related to what the Gnomes did best... mech building.
That only became an even more sure and certain conclusion when Giyoto brought forth information about the Mech Soul. Obviously, what else could the Mech Soul be applied to if not a Mech?
They had been correct.
But they could have never guessed the sheer scale they were looking at. They could have never realized just how much they had underestimated the strength of the gnomes at their peak.
All Globb had were fanciful tales. And by the time Giyoto’s prime rolled around, the Savage Races had long become second rate citizens in the hands of empires controlled by humans.
Maybe had they entered the Rare Instance in Grey’s place, they could have put the pieces together.
After all, when Grey arrived at the bottom of the catacombs...
Weren’t those Dark Kin suppressed? Weren’t they sealed and locked away? Hadn’t the Mech Soul, even in its own inferior and sealed state, been suppressing them nonetheless?
The Savage Races were once untouchable, existences that stood above God and man.
And this land, the land the Holy Empire had taken over, was once the core of their being, the center of everything...
An entire mech to form the heart of a country.
And fucking Giyoto was about to waste the Mech Soul and a damned inferior armor instead of putting it where it should be.
The Holy Goddess’ Empire.
And that was because Grey had also figured out why his gut was telling him what it was.
He knew exactly why the Holy Goddess was so two-faced.
And the answer was none other than his Goblin Warlord Spirit.