Kyle walked through a big door of the Inheritance Crypt and saw a big empty room.
"Oh yeah, this was where the first trial was, right?" he asked.
All the stones and rocks that had been there previously were gone now.
"Yes," Theodor said.
"Guess there's no reason to keep the ore and stone in this room," Kyle commented.
Theodor didn't answer.
After walking through the hall, Kyle entered another hall.
This had been where he had fought that one small golem.
When Kyle entered the third room, he saw a bunch of ore.
In fact, there was even more ore than back when Kyle had been here for the first time.
As Kyle looked at all the ore, all their properties shot through his head.
He knew all of the different kinds of ore stored in this room by heart.
Kyle walked to the other end of the room, the chunks parting and distorting to create a path for him.
The next room had several different doors, but they were all open.
Kyle just chose a random one and entered the hall that used to have the fourth trial.
"Oh, hey, the fire's still burning," Kyle commented as he looked at the fire.
Theodor didn't say anything.
As Kyle looked at the fire, several different numbers shot through his head.
'Huh, this is kind of meta. This is not really a Fragment, but just the image of something that could be considered a Fragment. Very crude but effective.'
Kyle moved his fingers a bit, and some of the coals on the bottom of the fire switched places.
After some switching, the diagonal line going through the fire moved by 90 degrees.
Instead of going from the bottom left to the top right, it now went from the top left to the bottom right.
Back then, comprehending the fire had not been easy for Kyle, but the past Kyle couldn't be compared to the current one.
Kyle continued walking and jumped into the big hole leading to the fifth trial.
By now, there were no more enemies in the fifth trial since the golems were now regularly patrolling this place.
From time to time, Kyle saw some golems, which just bowed to him whenever he walked by them.
The caves had been scrubbed clean of ore.
Most of the ore was stored in the room that had held the third trial, while the remainder was sold for profit.
Eventually, Kyle reached the gigantic cave that contained the ruins of Theodor's city.
"Speaking of," Kyle said. "Why's there even a city here?"
"When Hieronymus refused to give me my Ether Essences, I created a copy of my city in this cave. Sulfur did most of the work," Theodor said.
"After the copy of my city was done, I transported about 10% of my workers to the underground city."
"Why only 10%?" Kyle asked.
"Because I wanted to make it seem like I made a mistake," Theodor said. "I wanted to make it look like something destroyed my city."
"In Hieronymus' mind, I would have lost control and would have done some risky experiments, which eventually killed me and my city."
"If all of my workers were gone, it would be obvious that nothing bad had happened."
"Sure," Kyle said, "so, what happened to the other 90%?"
"They blew up together with my old city," Theodor said.
Ten years ago, when Kyle had been relatively new to this world, he would have been horrified.
"Makes sense, I guess," Kyle said.
But now, Kyle was no longer surprised by things like that.
These things were just normal.
"By the way, why did you even make a second city?" Kyle asked.
"To plan my revenge," Theodor said.
"And how will you take your revenge?" Kyle asked.
"With you," Theodor said.
"Yes, that's how it works now," Kyle added, "but how did your original plan of revenge look like? I mean, you don't need to have a secret, isolated city to make and hide an Inheritance Crystal. What was your original plan?"
"Invasion," Theodor said. "I would build a gigantic factory of golems in this place, and when there are enough golems, I would send them out into the world to wreak havoc."
"Mhm," Kyle uttered as he looked at the city. "But that didn't work, I assume?"
"The logistics were difficult," Theodor said.
"Yeah, I already noticed that as soon as you told me of your plan," Kyle said.
In fiction, there were plenty of stories of necromancers or demon conjurers or whatever summoning a bunch of stuff and terrorizing a kingdom with it.
Theodor essentially wanted to go down that route.
Sadly, stuff like that only worked in fiction.
Oh no, this guy was sending a bunch of stuff to different cities to cause terror. We dealt with the golems, but we couldn't find the Artificer. Guess we have to wait for the next attack.
Bullshit!
'You telling me you can't find traces? Can't find footprints of the golems? Can't follow Ether traces? Can't create a reverse tracker for the golem cores? You could just feed the cores to some Metal Elemental and watch it chase the Artificer like a rabid dog!'
'You telling me nobody saw the bunch of golems before they attacked?'
'No witnesses? No dead beasts? '
This was what made it so difficult.
Theodor would need a lot of golems to cause a lot of damage, but a big group of golems would be very conspicuous, which would lead the kingdom right to his doorstep.
Yet, if the group of golems were small, Theodor wouldn't be able to cause a lot of damage.
Theodor wanted to have the best of both worlds.
Cause huge amounts of destruction while not being found out.
But that was not how things worked.
Kyle was reminded of some of the darker bits of news from Earth.
Rampages by individuals who had access to guns.
Tens of dead people.
One instance that killed tens of people and heavily affected hundreds…
Out of over 200 million in the country.
Fewer than one in a million people were affected.
Was this what Theodor wanted?
No, he was angrier, and a rampage wouldn't be enough.
Theodor wanted to cause the damage that an actual war would cause.
Millions of casualties.
Yet, he wanted to remain secret and safe as well.
Of course, that was impossible.
"And in the end, you just decided to directly deal with the cause of your anger instead of throwing a tantrum?" Kyle asked.
"Your wording is misrepresentative, but the core part of your argument is correct," Theodor said.
"Hieronymus is the reason why I am dead."
"Hieronymus killed me."
"I want him to suffer more than anything."
Kyle just rolled his eyes.
'What a baby. Waaaa, waaaa, I'm angry. How dare you not give me literally 75% of all your belongings so that I can live a bit longer?!'
'Bro, the guy was your friend, not your husband or father. Giving you one Ether Essence is already way more than expected or necessary.'
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