The main building of the Swamp Exhibition Hall wasn't very large. During the "Golden Age," it had served only as an observation post and the core of an ecological zone, so it had just three floors. The hidden third floor had only been discovered thanks to a clue from the Bone-Biting King.
Even so, the place had everything you could ask for.
It had every function Murphy could think of—and plenty he couldn't. For instance, when he and Triss had "toured" the private bath last time, they'd discovered it even had a massage function. Now that the biological laboratory on the hidden third floor had been restarted, the elevator, which had previously only gone down to the first floor, had unlocked a new level and could descend farther.
Three vampires and a gnoll stood inside the futuristic elevator. This strange group, so out of place in their surroundings, looked up as the number above the elevator advanced to "-1."
With a soft ding, the doors slid open. Beyond them lay a pitch-black glass corridor.
Murphy stepped out first. The moment he set foot on the first pane of glass, the lights around them clicked on one after another, as if an invisible hand were pushing forward. The entire glass bridge lit up, and the darkness deep beneath the crust shimmered with reflected light.
He looked around. Huge silver-gray machines were running in silence, yet their movements possessed a mechanical rhythm. The massive devices exposed to view were especially striking: enormous, yet somehow imbued with a strange sense of precision.
They looked like drilling rigs and excavators burrowing deep into the crust, drawing some kind of energy from the magma at the far end below. Or like mechanical giants resting with their feet plunged into the lava.
"So this place is