“Mhm…” Claud peered at the wall in front of him, and then pointed at a small knob. “What do you think of it?”

  “Suspicious.”

  “A defect during its crafting?”

  Lily and Claud glanced at the black cube, which was floating around the wall, bored, and then sighed in unison.  The entire wall was nice and smooth, so why did he think that this was a defect? It was small enough that only someone who knew what they were looking for, or someone with a keen eye who was very bored, would see…and more importantly, the two of them could see a moving part.

  “Please, do not look at me like that.” Lesser Half did a loop. “I am not familiar with mechanical constructions as intricate as this. I am more attuned to the wonders of life, rather than the miracles of machinery.”

  “But this is a wonder of life,” Lily replied. “I mean, it’s a wonder built by your creations, us!”

  “No, it’s not.” Lesser Half did another loop. “You, Claud and everyone who is a native of Celestia are indeed my creations. But there was never only one creator. In the sea beyond, there are innumerable arks of life that float, each of them created by their own creator.”

  “Oh.”

  “That is what it is,” Lesser Half replied quietly. “I am an expert in lifeforce.”

  “Which is why you presumably noticed my state quite early on,” Claud replied. “Still, you should branch out your talents, right? And this is also pretty exciting, because last I checked, there are no rules or regulations that forbid us from fiddling with random, uh, defects on the walls.”

  “Oh, so they’re defects now?” Lesser Half asked.

  Divinities could also feel a little…wronged, if nothing else. Of course, Claud, who knew that he could somewhat be classified as one, knew the feeling of being wronged very well too, so…

  “When the guards come to arrest us, probably.” Claud rubbed his hands, somewhat excited. This was a low-risk activity, all things considered, and he hadn’t done much in the way of sneaking around recently. There was also a solid chance that this little venture would lead them to some treasure trove…and he hadn’t done much in the way of being a thief for some time.

  “Alright, let’s do this!”

  Claud fiddled with the little knob, and then turned it to the right. A faint, grinding sound followed, and the two of them turned to look at the sudden appearance of a staircase that led into the metallic ground.

  “Ooh.” Claud gazed at the stairs. “Hmm. We should still be careful, though. Anything underground can be quite dangerous…let’s prepare for the trip.”

  He pulled out a bunch of artefacts and activated them. Multiple barriers to ensure coverage of most areas, an artefact that would regulate the temperature inside said barrier, and an artefact to provide fresh air constantly. This was the standard loadout for going underground if one didn’t know what was inside.

  “I see you’re using the same items,” Lesser Half noted.

  “Yeah. Just that this underground space isn’t built by us,” Claud replied. “Anyway, let’s go!”

  The two of them, a black cube and a bunch of sleeping meeplings entered the underground areas of Grandia. To be fair, this underground area had no soil at all; it was literally metal all the way through.

  Making sure to keep their footsteps silent, the two of them ventured underground.

  The experience was a bit similar to the time when they climbed the Stairway to the Skies, although this was definitely the reverse of what they were doing. Nonetheless, Claud paid his fullest attention to every step in front of them, his vision sweeping the area in front of them to check for weird signs of traps.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “One must wonder why this place has not been discovered by other people,” Lesser Half murmured.

  “Maybe other people were captured or something,” Claud replied. “It’s hard to say.”

  Before long, the three of them came to the base of the stairway, where there was a smooth metal door. The two of them stopped for a moment, before Lily gazed at the metallic rectangle next to the door.

  “Oh. There’s a keyhole there, here…we need to find a key or something, I suppose.”

  “A keyhole?” Claud tilted his head. In his time in Celestia, he had never seen a key before. Doors opened before people seamlessly, or stayed shut otherwise. A key was…not something he’d expected from a nation that had incredible levels of metallurgy and craftsmanship.

  “What’s wrong?” Lesser Half asked.

  “Doesn’t the keyhole seem out of place?” Lily asked.

  “Yeah.” Claud smiled at her. “It seems too mundane to be here. In fact, it seems like bait or something.”

  “Bait?”

  Claud turned back to the weird rectangle. There were buttons on it, each of them labelled with numbers from one to nine…and there was a glass panel that was shimmering faintly.

  “Hmm.” Claud looked at the labelled buttons, and then took a few steps back. Lily followed suit without asking, and then nodded at him.

  “You’re going to try it out?”

  “Yeap.” Claud pulled out a few more barrier artefacts and activated them, before raising his finger. Mana stirred, forming into a thin line that snaked through the small gaps in the barriers.

  His muscles tensed up as the little strand of mana approached the button labelled one, and Claud prepared to flee with Lily at any moment.

  “Ready?” Lily asked.

  “Yeah. Three, two, one…and go.”

  The strand of mana snaked out and pressed the button. A beep followed, and the number ‘1’ appeared on the glass panel. Claud gazed at it for a moment, and then pressed the other buttons in rapid succession.

  “Nothing happened,” Claud muttered, looking at the string of numbers. “Well, I should test them all, just in case.”

  The weird buttons beeped a total of ten times, but nothing happened. Claud relaxed a moment later, but before the tension could fully drain from his muscles, the weird pad abruptly beeped an eleventh time, and the door opened.

  “Eh?”

  “Eh?”

  “Eh?”

  Claud stared at the open door. “What? What the heck?”

  Lesser Half chuckled. “It would seem that the password to this place is 1234567890. It is…a convenient password, but I can tell why no one bothered to change it after looking at you two.”

  “You can change the, uh, password of this thing?” Claud asked.

  “Probably? I mean, I wouldn’t set such an easy password myself,” Lesser Half replied. “And the same goes for you two. But this…city was probably built for general purposes. Maybe this is a general password, an easy-to-remember one.”

  “Hmm. This is another aspect to consider, then,” Claud muttered.

  The human mind, and how it operated. Indeed, it was this aspect that he had picked up on earlier, when he saw the keyhole…which was probably a trap. Someone who knew to avoid this trap had to know two things.

  First, keyholes didn’t exist, if commonly, at least, in Celestia. Second, this city was something from Celestia, which one could learn either by asking the right people or drawing the right connections. Without either piece of knowledge, they wouldn’t be able to understand that this keyhole was almost certainly a trap of sorts, something that perhaps its latest owner created on purpose.

  “Still, this password…” Claud mulled on the numbers. It was indeed a convenient string of numbers to tap in, after all. However, wasn’t this a bit too…perfunctory? Wouldn’t someone try to press all the buttons like he did?

  He pondered for a moment. That wasn’t a good argument either. After all, the mounting fear and trepidation he felt back when he was pressing each button was real. Besides, rather than risking the unknown, most people would probably go after the keyhole inste—

  “Huh. What if this keyhole was meant to distract people?” Claud observed. “Maybe no one could change this weird password that someone like me would press, so its latest owners decided to distract other people with a keyhole.”

  “That’s possible.” Lily nodded. “But let’s move on to the main topic at hand first.”

  She gestured at the door. “Are we going to go in, now that it’s open?”

  “Yeah, why not?” Claud asked. “Lesser Half, you can go and scout ahead first.”

  “Sure— wait, what?” The cube turned to them. “You are asking me, a divinity, Lesser Half of the great Dark, the lesser spark, to scout out a dangerous place for you? Really? Do you two feel no shame?”

  “It is only right and proper that we use all our pieces at hand to their fullest,” Claud replied righteously. “Everyone and everything should be used to their maximum potential, and you aren’t really contributing anything…”

  “Mhm…the logic is sound, but emotionally, I’m not that fine with it…”

  “You’ll get around it eventually,” Claud replied. “I mean, we could use the RECON, but do you really want to be less useful than an artefact?”

  “…Well, you do have a point here.”

  Claud grinned to himself.

  “You’re evil,” Lily whispered.

  “Kek.”