Mechanical Alchemist

Number 19 didn't linger in the fight, by the time the large forces of the five great families and the city guards came to surround her, she was already long gone.

The commotion at Dawn Camp lasted all night.

Those guys probably wanted to find the accomplices of the fugitive, but ultimately came up empty-handed.

As an accomplice, Su Lun had an even easier time of it.

He found a secluded cliff to rest on for the night.

Camping on the rock wall wasn't so bad, except for the occasional peculiar-looking insects that would "say hello".

No one slept soundly, and early in the morning, Su Lun was squatting on the essential path not far from Dawn Camp, leading to the ruins.

He and a bunch of Scavengers, who didn't have the money to stay in the city, were waiting to be picked up by the large Scavenging party leaving.

Before long, the large troops began to leave the city in succession.

Hearing there were groups heading towards the eastern part of the city, Su Lun casually joined a team with a destination close to his own and set off.

Traveling with the group, he could find out some news from last night.

Going Scavenging also provided a good cover story for his "background".

....

In the eastern district near the central ring, there is a huge black lake.

There are building ruins by the lake where the [1911 Hotel] was discovered.

Before coming here, Su Lun thought there wouldn't be many people.

But upon arrival, he saw at least a thousand or two thousand people.

These guys had already built a small camp using stones and mechanical equipment.

Looking at the flags on the tents in the camp, there were dozens of Scavenging groups, both large and small.

In charge, naturally, were several of the large Scavenging groups directly under the five great families.

Su Lun didn't hurry to enter the camp like other Scavengers to gather information about the cursed space, but instead sized up the camp's defenses.

In his mind, he wasn't thinking about how to get in first, but instinctively about how to escape after coming out of the cursed space.

In his pocket, he still had the Card that Mr. Hei had given him the night before, which made Su Lun feel like the dangers of the instance might be much less.

But... he always felt something was about to happen.

Looking around, he didn't spot anyone resembling the Card Cloak Man he had seen before.

Su Lun didn't look any further and entered the camp.

In the camp, apart from the well-armed Scavengers, there were information dealers who looked like "touts", peddling information everywhere.

These guys took their business directly to the front lines of Scavenging, buying the latest information from Scavengers coming out of the ruins, then compiling it for resell, making a decent profit without venturing into the ruins themselves.

Those who come here to Scavenge are mostly capable ones.

Anyone willing to spend a bit on information to increase their chances of survival wouldn't be stingy.

The information dealers were doing good business.

And while Su Lun was wandering around the camp, a small-mustached middle-aged man approached him, "Hey, brother, want some information? The latest intel, guaranteed to be worth the price..."

"How much?"

"Fifty thousand."

"Forget it then."

"Ten thousand?"

"I don't have money."

"Tsk, a pauper..."

Su Lun didn't rush to spend any money, instead, he pricked up his ears to eavesdrop around him.

Hearing one version of the story is not as good as hearing them all.

After asking around, the information he gathered was similar to what he had bought from Fox "Red Nose," but there were also some new intelligence.

It was roughly said that the "ownership" of the cursed space belonged to the five major families, but it was too much for them to handle alone, so they opened it up to all Scavenger groups. After entering, one must complete a certain exploration mission designated by them, succeed and all loot was yours with extra rewards, fail and a hefty "entrance fee" had to be paid upon exit.

The ninety-nine guest rooms on the first floor of the restaurant space were mostly explored one by one like this.

These conditions didn't seem problematic.

Risk for reward.

As for what the five families aimed for, in their words, they only wanted the high-level items on the second floor and the final "source of the curse."

...

The twisted gate of the cursed space appeared twice a day, each time admitting around a hundred people.

As for the casualty rate, it fluctuated.

Sometimes everyone would mysteriously be wiped out,

other times most would survive,

On the whole, the death rate was around sixty percent.

This was still within an acceptable range.

Also, because exploration tasks were arranged in advance, people in the camp could somewhat infer which rooms on the first floor were the "high-risk rooms" that should not be explored, based on the casualty rate.

As for the second-floor information Su Lun wanted to know, it was still scarce.

To summarize, the first floor was mostly Tier 1 anomalies (iron and silver);

On the second floor, anomalies were said to start at silver, and there was an unknown number of Tier 2 anomalies.

...

With the high death rate of this instance, although there were a couple of thousand people in the camp, not many truly dared to go.

Conveniently, there were two groups per day, just about enough to gather a hundred for one run.

Su Lun registered for the next round to enter the cursed space and received a mission, to explore room 1088.

Then he sat in the waiting area, listening to the temporary team leader explaining some precautions.

"Once inside, no one is allowed to prematurely hunt down the guests of the hotel! Otherwise, after midnight, these deceased will definitely become 'ghostly entities,' and you will harm yourself as well as others!"

"1021, 1055, 1071... remember, these three rooms are off-limits for opening or disturbing their guests!"

"You may look for clues, but do not offend the guests or do anything strange. Otherwise, if caught by the hotel guards, being locked up means certain death! Last time there was a guy, driven by lust, who harassed a lady of nobility, he had his fun, sure, but he also caused that lady, who originally was a guest from the second floor, to not make it upstairs by midnight. She mutated into a Tier 2 anomaly right on the first floor, nearly wiping out the entire squad..."

"Before the ghost fog arrives, we have plenty of time to look for clues. But remember, don't randomly trigger some difficult plotline. The fewer the incidents, the greater our chance of surviving in the end."

"..."

Su Lun listened quietly, and it more or less matched his guesses.

While each entrance into the cursed space unfolded the same story, intervening humans made the endings different.

For instance, when the midnight ghost fog descended, there was a big difference between guests being in their rooms and not being in them.

Though all would turn into anomalies, the combat strength might range from iron to silver.

The difference between being dead and alive was also significant, the dead would become "ghostly entities," the living "zombie types"...

....

And just as Su Lun and the others were listening to the temporary team leader going over precautions,

the camp suddenly erupted into noise.

"Look quickly! The exit of the cursed space has appeared!"

"It's the 'Falcon Squad'..."

"Eh... Quite a number of people survived this time, and it seems they've got a good haul."

"..."

Not far from the camp, an elliptical, distorted portal suddenly appeared.

It sucked in the surrounding light like a black hole.

This was also the standard way a cursed space manifested.

Amidst the commotion, one by one, Scavengers, all bearing more or fewer injuries, emerged from the pitch-black portal.

However, despite their bedraggled appearance, they all had looks of relief on their faces.

Surviving meant their gains now turned into "real silver and gold".

The moment they emerged, professional merchants were already waiting at the portal's entrance, competing to bid on the treasures they'd brought out.

"Thirteen pieces of black iron, five pieces of silver cursed materials..."

"Oh, it's actually a rare piece of ancient inauguration material..."

"My god, Belock, old pal, where did you find so many alchemy tomes? This lot is worth at least seven million!"

"Wow~ High purity gemstones, they are great for enchanting. Just one is worth three hundred thousand, buddy you've struck it rich, this whole bag is worth..."

"..."

The merchants were busy tallying the Scavengers' finds.

Each bid further stimulated the excitement of the Scavengers outside.

Not to mention the treasures the Scavengers might have hidden away, just the finds displayed there meant an average profit of over a million each.

For the vast majority of ordinary Scavengers, this was already a fortune worth risking their lives for.

Su Lun also squeezed his way through the onlookers, but his gaze settled on the twisted portal.

The All-knowing Eye assessed it and identified the result.

[1911 Hotel]

Detailed explanation: A large composite cursed space, sealing a segment of a high-order creature's '***' limb. The guests have been contaminated by corpse qi, and at midnight, they will fully transform into aberrations. Survive for twenty-four hours within the space, and the exit will reappear; death within the space will cause blood qi to burst and damage the seal, current progress of breaking the seal is 1157/3000;

Su Lun remained unshaken upon reading this information about the cursed space.

Even though the source of contamination was a fragment of a high-order being's limb, he wasn't surprised in the least.

Without such a high-order existence, it wouldn't be possible for a whole hotel's worth of people to transform into aberrations.

Upon seeing the last sentence, he murmured under his breath, "Just as I thought, typical..."

Such a profitable cursed space had been shared, and the five great families clearly had ulterior motives.

Su Lun had previously only had his suspicions, but now, with this information, he had firm evidence.

It seemed they also knew of another way to break this space through some method.

That was to forego exploration and simply fill it with lives.

It was probably because the range of wasteland opened up recently had become progressively larger, and there weren't enough slaves to use, so these folks had thought to attract independent groups using this method.

"No wonder the death rate is persistently high; so that's the reason..."

In the same instance, logically speaking, the more times you clear it, the lower the casualty rate should become. Yet here, it had always maintained around a sixty percent death rate, which was quite strange.

But it wasn't all wipeouts; some survivors were allowed to leave and spread the word, luring more people in.

No matter how you looked at it, there seemed to be something fishy.

Having seen this, Su Lun lost interest in the relics' treasures. He focused his attention on each person that came out, paying particular attention to those without injuries, or those whose emotions didn't seem quite as elated.

It didn't take long for him to notice something.

....

The twisted light portal appeared, then vanished.

By evening, the entrance appeared once again.

And just then, the camp had gathered slightly over a hundred people, queuing up to enter.

Su Lun, who was planning to go anyway, led the animated corpses and stood in the middle of the queue.

His gaze swept across the queue going in this time, still unable to spot the person who might be the "Card Cloak Man."

"Could I have been wrong?"

Su Lun didn't dwell on it and followed the crowd into the space.

What he didn't know was that a little incident had occurred outside as he entered.

The number of people entering the space was not fixed, around one hundred or so.

But in reality, the stronger the people going in, the fewer the number.

Although they had prepared over a hundred people, as they entered, the light portal suddenly disappeared.

This abnormal event baffled everyone.

"Huh... why did the portal vanish after so few of us went in this time?"

"Seems like it was just over sixty, right?"

"That's not right... even when a Tier 2 professional led the team last time, over ninety people went in. How could it be so few this time?"

"Could there be a problem with the space?"

"..."

The news quickly reached the ears of the administrators of this small camp.

However, this did not draw much of their concern.

Weird phenomena of all kinds could happen in the ruins; in their minds, these fluctuations in numbers were probably normal.

What troubled the leaders of the major family-run Scavenger squads more was something else.

In the tent, several leaders were gathered together, looking worriedly at each other, discussing something.

"The higher-ups have issued a strict command to break the seal on this cursed space as soon as possible. But from what we see now, it will take at least a couple thousand more people before this space can be broken."

"I heard there was a big mess at the main camp last night, the mysterious item that the 'Blood Axe' group had found was stolen. It caused the higher-ups of the Black Tower to be furious..."

"Sigh, there's no use talking about that. Spread the word, find a way to draw more Scavengers here..."

"But no matter how much we advertise, only two hundred can enter per day. We can't just get people killed in there every time, right? If the mortality rate is too high, it might be ignored once or twice, but after that, we won't be able to attract any independent groups to come..."

"..."

....

On the other hand, Su Lun and his group had already entered the cursed space.

This was a street scene from Dawn City a thousand years ago.

The Scavengers appeared on the street, and in front of them stood a luxurious building with a sign that read "1911 Restaurant."

The temporary team leader at the forefront also noticed the unusual number of people, feeling a bit puzzled, but didn't think too much of it.

"We have fewer people this time, so everyone be careful. Remember the precautions I told you about before. Okay, go ahead and disperse..."

"Yes."

The crowd dispersed.

Seeing that the number of people who had come in was significantly lower, Su Lun guessed something and thought, "Has he really come in..."

But he wasn't in a hurry to search for treasures in the restaurant like the others. Instead, he found the faint source of "malice" and followed it.