"That's enough."
Kale's voice was quiet, but Mia froze as she dismantled the magic array's base.
Her little hand stopped in midair, just as she was about to pry loose a few nearby mithril conduits too.
"They're only a few pipes..." Mia muttered, her tail swishing resentfully behind her. But under Kale's icy stare, she obediently withdrew her hand.
They were hundreds of meters underground.
Greed could get people killed.
"The escape route?" Kale turned to Thomas.
The priest was giving water to a weakened worker. At the question, he stood and traced a winding, concealed passage on the map.
"We'll take the abandoned Drainage Channel. It's a little filthy, but it leads straight to the Underground River behind the mountain. I've already sent two reliable workers ahead to scout."
Kale nodded.
He walked over to the empty magic array base.
Mia had already packed away the orb of light that had floated there, leaving only a bare stone platform.
But that was not enough.
For someone like Hector, as long as the Workshop's structure and its precision Alchemy Devices remained, he could rebuild it even without the core, given a few years and a vast sum of gold.
It had to be destroyed completely.
"Mia."
"Here!"
"I need you to do something for me..."
Mia leaned close to Kale's mouth. First, her eyes widened. Then she gave him a look that said she hadn't expected someone so respectable-looking to be capable of this. Finally, she licked her lips in excitement.
"I want this place turned into a tomb."
Kale finished speaking and patted Mia on the shoulder.
"Understood! I'll make sure His Lordship the Marquis gets a surprise big enough to wet himself!"
Before long, Kale and the others began their evacuation.
Under Thomas's reassuring guidance, more than a