Gatekeeper

The corridor began to slope downward after the exit of the third exhibition hall.

The incline was not steep, not even as much as the gentlest ramp in an ordinary building.

But anyone walking on it could instinctively sense that different feeling of gravity.

Ron kept a steady pace. The length of this descending corridor was not easy to estimate.

Every now and then, things were embedded in the side walls of the corridor.

They probably were not decorations. They looked more like tools placed there casually during work, then forgotten afterward.

Some were measuring instruments, the needles on their dials long since frozen in place, with no telling what readings they had recorded back then.

Some were the remains of model structures, unfinished cores of mechanical constructs, exposing side cross-sections of interlocking gears.

There were also several places with nothing at all, only grooves for insets and the marks worn into the edges of those grooves.

The aura of this corridor was completely different from the exhibition halls before, far more private.

He shifted his gaze away and continued forward.

At the end of the corridor was a door.

There was no lock on the door, nor a handle.

Only at the very center of the door was an extremely small recess, just large enough to fit a fist.

Ron pointed the divination disk at himself and quickly performed a danger prediction, then pressed his palm against it.

After roughly three breaths, the door opened.

The inner chamber was smaller than he had imagined.

Compared to the overall scale of the Artisan's Labyrinth, the proportion this inner chamber occupied was like the volume of a seed inside a mature tree.

Ron stood at the entrance and swept his gaze over every inch of the space.

Beneath the wall on