The building was in the middle of the forest at the foot of Mount Paparika, near the border with Rephan in the northern part of Triharan. It was a tower that appeared to be around thirty meters tall, roughly the height of Ortlinde Overlord. It was shaped like a rectangular box until around the second or third floor, and then a tall tower curved upward from the left-hand side. In a way, it resembled a lighthouse.
“This is the Maestro’s lab? What a lonely building.”
“Indeed. It doesn’t appear to have changed much since the last time I visited.”
“What boring taste. He should add more spice!”
Doctor Elluka, the Professor, and Doc Babylon all threw in their opinions after I brought them here. I agreed about the bad taste, at least—it felt like some abandoned old ruin. There was even ivy running all over the walls. Still, the Professor said it hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d been here. Did that mean it always looked like this? Did the Maestro just never clean the place?
“He’s never cared about his living conditions,” he elaborated. “Nothing was more important to him than his research and development. All he cared about was the facilities he had access to inside.”
It seemed that was why he ended up with this abandoned tower. Honestly, the foundation seemed stable, so it would definitely serve as a functional place to live.
“What’s the plan? Gonna break in?” Doc Babylon asked, but I didn’t actually have an answer ready. If this really was the enemy base, they should’ve realized we were here by now, yet there hadn’t been a peep. Being aware that there was the possibility they were waiting inside to ambush us, I used [Search] to check for the presence of any of them, but got no results.
Guess I’ll take this opportunity to act out one of those detective dramas.
I took out Brunhild and slowly sidled toward the wooden door with my back against the wall, and then I kicked it at full force, my foot going right through it.
“Whoa, it’s all rotten!”
I really just broke the door itself. The only thing left hanging there was my leg through the hole. That door wasn’t even acting as a door any longer.
Ow, ow, ow, the wood’s sharp...
As I hopped backward in pain, the part I kicked split in two and the door fell inward.
“That door looked about ready to break the last time I came here too. I suppose he never fixed it,” the Professor said, as the only person here who had ever visited this place before.
“Tell me that before I kick the door, please...” I groaned.
We peeked past the destroyed door and saw a place so desolate that it looked completely abandoned. Actually, upon further inspection, there was at least some furniture like tables and chairs around, but beyond that, it was basically empty.
The Professor led us through the dusty, empty space to the area that should’ve been the Maestro’s lab, but there was nothing there either.
“It seems he took everything with him.”
“Aw, does that mean we came out here for nothing?” Doc Babylon asked, disappointed.
It wasn’t completely devoid of things, but it surprisingly lacked much. The place probably would’ve been left to rot without anyone knowing it ever existed if we hadn’t shown up.
We made sure to check the tower too, but he’d taken absolutely everything from there. The top floor seemed to be the Maestro’s bedroom, but all that was left was a simple desk and chair, as well as three empty bookshelves.
“Not gonna lie, when I hear the title ‘great gollemancer,’ this is not the kind of room I expect,” I commented.
“He was very picky with his work, you see. You could try to tempt him with all the money in the world, but he still wouldn’t do anything he had no interest in. On the other hand, if he thought the work would be informative for him, he would even do it for free. He ultimately ended up chasing away most of his potential clients, though, given his thorny personality...”
One of those picky craftsmen, huh?
Maybe a little too picky, if you asked me. Then again, it was because of how picky he was that he managed to get his hands on the gold crown, so he was probably happy in his own way, even though achieving that goal meant giving up his humanity...
“Hm?”
Doc Babylon was looking at the bookcases from all different angles, pressing her hand against different parts of it.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Does it not look like there’s a bit of a scrape mark here?”
“Let’s see...”
She was pointing at the rock wall beside the bookcase. Right enough, it looked as though something had been dragged across it.
Wait, are these marks from the bookcase being moved?
“Did you not think it a little strange that we had to climb up some really steep stairs just to make it up here?”
“What’s strange about it?”
This tower was four floors, and we’d climbed up stairs that were practically vertical to get up here to the top. The only thing I thought was strange was that it felt like a Gollem engineer should be smart enough to build an elevator.
“Did you not notice? Pay attention to the size of this room, then think about the size of the tower. The room itself is rather small. What do you think that means?”
“Huh? Uh...the walls are really thick?”
“Good answer. But two meters thick seems a bit much for a simple wall, no? It’s not like the place is a fortress.”
Now that she mentioned it...compared to how the tower looked from the outside, this room did feel a little too small.
“Aha, now I see. What you want to say is that this room has empty space surrounding it, don’t you?”
“A space between the inner and outer walls? Could it be...?”
The Professor and Doctor Elluka seemed to have realized something.
Wait, don’t leave me in the dark. What are you guys talking about?
“This has to be it. If I just press along here...”
The small scientist pressed the side of the bookcase, and there was suddenly a little thunk! Then, the bookcase itself started to slide to the side. What appeared on the other side was a flight of stairs that was heading downward. It was a spiral staircase going around the sides of the tower; this had to be what was hiding between the inner and outer walls.
“We going?” Doc Babylon asked. Everyone nodded. We had no idea what was down there, but turning back wasn’t a choice anymore.
Using [Light Orb] to see where we were going, we descended the staircase. I was pretty sure we were already under the first floor by this point. Just what was hiding in the basement?
What awaited us at the bottom was a large room like a warehouse. Stored inside were about thirty or so dusty Gollems—stocky headless humanoid Gollems that were simply left there. They mostly looked adult-sized, though there were some smaller ones mixed in.
“They must be the Gollems that assisted the Maestro,” the Professor observed. “They’re older models, so he probably abandoned them here once he was done with them.”
“I absolutely despise the side of him that is so willing to just abandon things the moment he thinks he’s done with them.”
Though the Professor was calm, Doctor Elluka was clearly furious. I couldn’t blame her. The only reason you’d be able to so easily abandon creations that had spent so long looking after and helping you would be if you truly saw Gollems as nothing but tools. As an inventor who viewed her Gollems as her partners, Doctor Elluka couldn’t see his actions as anything but deeply cruel.
We did a thorough investigation of the place, but found nothing of use. We were definitely looking at a scene from after the Maestro had already grabbed everything he needed. He likely never intended to return here. I could sense the man’s conviction because of how empty the place was.
“Turns out this was all just a wild-goose chase, huh?”
Left with that dismal conclusion, we turned and left the Maestro’s laboratory. A tower to which its master would never return was a lonelier sight than I would’ve thought.