Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 104: Into the tunnels

For the longest time, Callane remained silent, opting to just follow Theo around, observing her now-changed childhood friend as she did her best to both build her opinion of this new version of him while also slowly setting the foundation for rapport with him.

It was a task that proved to be rather difficult, given how Theo remained perfectly silent for most of the time, slowly pushing Callane closer and closer to questioning whether or not there was even a point to what she was doing.

A doubt that she kept harboring all the way until he brought her underground, a motion that Callane personally expected to lead towards some sort of intimate moment at the man's most deeply hidden retreat…

Only for all of her anxieties to vanish, replaced with nothing but endless shock and surprise.

'What the hell is this place?' she thought, unable to produce a single word out of her wide-open mouth as she stared at rows upon rows of machines connecting with some sort of magical paths that moved various resources around… all on their own.

Yet, if her first shock came from just how insanely expensive it would be to just gather the resources necessary to build something like this, if her second shock came from the sight of those magical lanes that completely eliminated quite the laborious task of moving the produce around, then her third shock was just a sum total of the first two combined with the observations she made a few seconds later.

'Those machines… There's no one working them!'

Just like the magical lanes, the neatly arranged machines took in various products, be it ores, ingots, or already processed items like plates or rods, turning them into objects that were far more complicated.

The fourth shock came from how the output of some machines simply couldn't match their input, not unless there was a great sorcerer hidden at each of the machines, taking the offering of one product and periodically rewarding the offering with a different product.

For how else could anyone rationally explain a machine that took in thin iron sheets and small iron rods only to produce thick iron plates that outright looked that much more solid than the items they were made with?

Or how could anyone explain taking several of those reinforced plates, adding up a bunch of rods… only to then receive cubic frames, made with seemingly nothing more than a bunch of rods arranged into a new, more complex shape?

All those shocks and surprises only continued from there, from how there were some sort of black lines connecting every machine to a greater network, all the way to when Theo manifested yet another building out of seemingly thin air.

A building that was infinitely more magical than any of the ones Callane saw before.

'Just what the hell is this?' she cried out in her mind, watching how a massive, house-sized cube of metal suddenly rose up from where it was slotted within the machine, only to then stay slightly elevated in the air, held up by nothing but sparks of lightning shooting between its edges and where it used to be slotted… Only to do nothing but slightly vibrate as it levitated?

That still wasn't the end of the surprises, though, for Theo merely needed to touch this new machine with his hand before pressing some sort of button for it to evolve, raising up a bit higher in the air while the frame that formerly held the floating cube in place had now started to move too, the support prongs now angling outwards while the intensity of the sparks shooting from the frame to the cube more than doubled.

It was there that the surprises finally came to an end, then and there when Theo suddenly turned silent, taking on a look of extreme focus on his face while his mind drifted away somewhere where Callane could no longer reach him.

'Just what is he thinking about so hard?' Callane thought, alternating her eyes between her changed childhood friend and crush and the magical machines he effortlessly raised.

"Good," Theo suddenly muttered, his face first relaxing a bit before regaining the same sharpness it had before he drifted away to his own thoughts.

"What's good?" Callane hurriedly asked, hoping to find at least some answers to the thousands of questions bugging her.

"Hopefully, you will see soon," Theo claimed while his lips twisted into a small smile. "But for now, we are going on a small trip."

With those words, Theo turned silent again as he started to walk with extreme confidence towards a seemingly most random direction. A direction that led him down to where all the magic of his underground happened, allowing Callane to see both the magic lanes and all the machines connected to them up close.

'Oh Gods…'

Now that she saw things up close, her perspective changed yet again.

Earlier, she was stunned, amazed by those magical machines capable of turning even the most simple products like raw iron ore into items the purpose of which she could no longer understand at times.

But it was only now that she actually saw it close and personal that she realized the one aspect of this entire place that eluded her until that point.

'Just how many of those is this place making per minute? Per hour? Per day?!'

With her merchant's senses tingling, Callane could do nothing but gulp her saliva down and then follow Theo all the way to what appeared to be the most remote corner of the entire underground.

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"To here?" she asked while nervously swallowing, not sure if this was the place where Theo wanted to cut her head off or finally cross the line and try exploiting intimacy to hopefully regain some of his memories.

"And what makes you think that?" Contrary to Callane's expectations, Theo merely shook his head with a small smile while waving around this strange, mace-like device he often liked to materialize out of nowhere in his hand. "This is not where our trip ends, but where it begins," he announced, only to wave his hand…

And for a several tens-of-meters-long tunnel to suddenly appear where, just a second ago, there was nothing more than the smooth surface of the cave's wall.

Wasting no time, Theo hurriedly stepped inside, his eyes shining with hints of excitement. Yet, as soon as Callane gulped her saliva yet again as she gathered her courage to make a step and follow him into the magically excavated tunnel…

"Oh, before I forget and before you go in," he said as he stopped and turned around, facing Callane properly for the very first time since they'd last talked before the feast.

"This trip might turn really dangerous, so be on alert at all times, and if I tell you to run…"

The excitement from before vanished from Theo's eyes, now replaced with nothing but cold determination.

"If you tell me to run, I'm to do nothing but turn back and run as if hell itself was chasing after me, right?" Callane asked while putting on a small smile on her lips, weirdly happy to see this man concerned about her.

Even though it was still obviously Theo… In a way, her relationship with him had to start from scratch. And if it took only a day for him to be concerned with her safety like that, then maybe, just maybe…

"Good girl," Theo smiled back before turning around and picking up the pace. "And don't take this as a pointless scare or a bragging attempt, but when I say it's dangerous, it really is. Do you remember that huge monster the corpse of which still rots within my walls?" Theo asked as he already pushed ahead into the tunnel.

"Yeah, what about it?"

With a strange sense of warmth spreading through her stomach, Callane happily followed, only to switch into an alert state the very moment she pushed into the darkness of the tunnel's narrows.

"I've encountered it before, during pretty much the same thing that we are doing now. And if I were any slower back then…"

Theo didn't need to finish.

The implication behind his words was more than just clear enough.

'Still, that enormous thing?' Callane thought as she recalled the sight of the massive shell the size of a castle's tower standing still, its insides perfectly emptied out.

'How did he encounter it while traversing tunnels of his own making?' she thought, squinting her eyes as she struggled to reconcile Theo's story with the reality and her own logic.

'Unless…' Callane then tensed up a bit as a heavy premonition hung over her head.