Setting Out Once More

Under the power of the Golden Curse released by the Golden Magic Box, the vast Mechanical Heart had been completely transformed into a city of gold.

The puppets and metal elemental lifeforms wandering within had all vanished, and every piece of metal had become gold.

It was a kind of luxury that inspired despair.

The precisely engineered differential engine gears had been forcibly altered at the atomic level.

They had lost the high-strength alloy properties that had originally made them "power cores."

They had become soft, heavy, and entirely devoid of magical conductivity.

"Gold might still be somewhat useful in the mundane world, but to wizards, it's far worse than that dilapidated, rusted wasteland from before. At least that could still yield some valuable rare metals through refinement."

Dago reached out and lightly touched the wall with a tendril of spiritual power.

All that returned was the fluctuation of inert matter, dead and silent.

This was not merely a material transformation, but an erasure at the level of laws. Yet it still followed the law of conservation of energy. Who would expend such vast power over laws merely to turn metal into gold?

Dago had originally planned to gather more high-grade metals from the Mechanical Heart for use as spellcasting mediums, but that plan had now fallen through.

Still, he was not upset. A wizard's creed was equivalent exchange and the maximization of benefits.

He had lost materials, but gained knowledge.

In other words, another shortcut to truth.

What he had obtained was the Mechanical Heart's most precious legacy, something even the Hammer of Thunder and Flame he had seen atop the metal Stele Tower in the central plaza could not compare to.

That hammer represented Dwarf Civilization's ultimate pursuit of "artifacts."

It was the pinnacle of external objects.

But