The Profane Mechanism Fortress (First Stage)

The entrance to the fortress was a labyrinth of pipes exhaling boiling steam. Shadows of giant gears were projected against the walls, while mechanical sentries patrolled, their carbide eyes glowing like embers.

"Nice welcome..." Ayato murmured. "It feels like we're entering the rusty stomach of a dragon."

Isolde, transformed into mist to survey the terrain, returned to her human form with a grave expression.

"Each sentry has irregular routes. It's impossible to predict them with certainty."

As they spoke, a metallic roar echoed from the depths: the sound of a colossal engine starting up, as if the fortress itself had noticed their presence.

The gate of The Profane Mechanism Fortress opened with a prolonged creaking, as if the hinges were bones being torn apart.

More than an entrance, it was the mouth of a beast: jagged iron arches, tubes exhaling steam, and a constant roar of gears turning underground.

A shower of soot and ash fell from the sky, covering the streets leading to the fortress.

The towers smoked like chimneys, the windows were covered with bronze plates, and the walls seemed to pulse, driven by hidden pistons.

"It's not a castle," Vera murmured, her voice cracking between nausea and revulsion. "It's a breathing factory."

Ayato tilted his head ironically, his sword slung over his shoulder.

"Charming. Just what I wanted to see: a hell for engineering graduates."

Madelis didn't reply. Her fingers were already climbing the joints of the nearby wall, prying off a steam-blackened valve.

"Ah, real bronze! This stuff is resold on the black market like gems."

Vera sighed, covering her mouth so she could breathe in that area.

"I don't know what's worse: her disappearing or her coming back with junk."

Isolde narrowed her eyes.

"If a steel demon kills us while you're stealing scrap metal, I swear I'll slit your throat myself."

The thief shrugged, putting away her loot with a mischievous smile.

Dakim, speaking softly, couldn't hide his disgust.

"This woman is a danger to us all... and yet, I can't deny that she moves like no one else."

The floor vibrated beneath their feet.

The flagstones of the hall slid away, revealing a complex of moving platforms that rose and sank like cogs.

A deep rumble enveloped them, and before they could coordinate, trapdoors opened beneath their bodies, swallowing them into separate passages.

The group had been separated.

[Ayato's Route]

Ayato tumbled down a metal slide, crashing into a dark corridor. 

Hammer blows echoed around him. In the reddish light of the boilers, tiny figures worked with inhuman fervor: mechanical workers, their gnome-like faces corroded by rust, pounded pipes with steam hammers, as if replicating an endless labor.

Sensing his presence, one turned his head. His carbide eyes lit up like white coals.

"Oh, fantastic," Ayato growled, raising his sword. "Zombie steel smiths. Just what I needed on my resume."

The hammers stopped pounding the metal. And began pounding him.

[Vera's Route]

Vera fell onto a suspension bridge suspended over boiling boilers.

Scorching steam clouded the air.

On the catwalk, mechanical dogs awaited her: beasts of blackened steel, with spines like blades and fangs that twirled like circular saws.

One leaped, the sound of its gears echoing like a drill nearing bone.

Vera stepped back, readying her book.

"Really, Sire? Saws instead of fangs? Was that necessary?"

The creatures responded with a chorus of screeches. Vera inhaled, summoned a field of light, and moved forward.

[Isolde's Route]

Isolde emerged into a vertical shaft lined with moving gears.

She descended in a mist, but soon noticed that the walls weren't just steel: human torsos were embedded between the cogs, as if they had been used as organic fuel.

Her hands tried to free themselves, but the metal's jaws ground them down relentlessly.

“A mechanical altar,” Isolde whispered, her face frozen. “Flesh and steel transformed into a single prayer to the Unholy Artificer.”

With the blade of her sword and rapier, she mowed down the first sentinels that emerged from the shadows: automatons with skeletal bodies and lanterns for heads.

[Madelis's Route]

Madelis landed gracefully on a sea of ​​moving chains and pulleys. She stretched as if she'd stepped out of a carriage.

"Well, at least there are no dogs or corpses..."

The floor rumbled. 

Mechanical beetles emerged from the walls, copper insects with red eyes that swiveled like periscopes. Their jaws closed with a metallic crunch.

Madelis pulled out a handful of counterfeit coins and tossed them into the air.

"Economic distraction! Run, run after the glitter!"

The insects didn't rise to the bait. She sighed, grabbed a chain, and began to climb.

"I always get the unfairest path..."

***

Having passed their tests, the four emerged at the base of the Main Tower. 

The air was charged with static electricity: their hair stood on end, their weapons rattled in their hands, and a low hum reverberated in every bone.

The ground tore apart. A gigantic arm emerged, covered in sizzling, magnetic plates. Then a leg. Then another. A twisted torso assembled with a screech of metal on metal. Finally, the head: a hollow, faceless helmet, inside which electrical arcs crackled.

The Electromagnetic Dullahan rose incomplete, like a mechanical corpse searching for its lost body.

The parts struggled separately:

The arms tore the weapons from their hands with the force of an uncontrolled magnet.

The legs leaped out like hydraulic cylinders, splitting the ground into fissures.

The torso rolled like a mill drum, crushing everything in its path.

"Fantastic!" Ayato roared, his sword flying from his hands. "What's next? My pants sticking to the ceiling?"

Madelis, hanging from a beam, responded with laughter.

"That would be an unforgettable sight."

Little by little, they defeated each fragment. But the remains dragged against each other, fitting together like pieces of a blasphemous puzzle. 

When assembled, the complete creature loomed over them, radiating a magnetic field that vibrated the entire tower.

The Electromagnetic Dullahan roared with a burst of bluish electricity, and the ascent began: mechanical platforms rose to the top of the tower, forcing the group to struggle up the stairs, with the beast pursuing them step by step.

Sparks rained down, gears fell like guillotines, and in the midst of the battle, Madelis offered healing flasks as if she were at a street market.

"Special offer! The second flask is free if you survive this murderous tower!"

The Dullahan's roar drowned out her voice, as the entire tower shuddered in the thunderstorm. 

The true ascent had only just begun.

The tower shuddered with each impact from the Electromagnetic Dullahan. 

Platforms rose and fell in calculated chaos, forcing the group to fight as they climbed, the monster fitting its pieces together and roaring with a metallic echo that rattled the bones.

Arms ripped weapons from hands.

Legs pounded like jackhammers.

The torso spun like an infernal grindstone.

Ayato, covered in sweat and soot, cursed as he retrieved his sword for the third time.

"Great! A murderous puzzle that plays with magnets! Who the hell designed this, a psychopathic blacksmith with an engineer complex?!"

Madelis, dodging a flying arm, responded while dangling from a chain.

"Surely the same one my landlord designed!"

The fight dragged on, and the monster showed no signs of giving in. 

The group's blows barely managed to unbalance it; it was clear they needed a heavier weapon than they had.

It was then that Dakim appeared above, having crashed into a wall due to the trapdoor he was initially sucked into.

He stood on a balcony at the top of the tower filled with levers and creaking gears. His eyes lit up as he saw a huge mechanism: a colossal, armored elevator with spikes at its base.

"A divine punishment prepared in advance!" he shouted, raising his voice amid the din.

Isolde looked at him in disbelief from below.

"Dakim, don't touch anything thoughtlessly, you damned fanatic!"

But it was too late. The paladin pulled the lever with all his might, and a mechanical roar rippled through the tower.

"May Divine Power exterminate this abomination that defies the word of God!"

The elevator descended violently, transformed into a hellish steamroller.

 The air condensed in a roar of wind and metal, as the Dullahan, stunned by the previous attacks, barely had time to raise his arms.

KRAAAAASH!

The impact was so brutal that the entire tower shook like a drum. 

The Electromagnetic Dullahan was crushed to the core of the mechanism, its body exploding in blue sparks and fragments of twisted steel that flew like shrapnel.

***

Triumph almost turned into a massacre.

Isolde dissolved into mist at the last second, watching the elevator pass inches from her ethereal form.

Madelis climbed the wall, clinging with her "sticky fingers" as she laughed hysterically.

Vera, with no other way out, begged for help; Sylphidia staggered into view, and between sobs and gusts of wind, he lifted her to a safe corner.

Ayato looked around and, with a curse, dove headfirst into a narrow shaft in the tower, wedged in place as the elevator roared past him.

When the cloud of dust and sparks cleared, the Dullahan was no more. Only metallic debris remained, embedded in the pit, shattered by the divine-mechanical weight.

Dakim, from above, raised his arm proudly.

"It was God's justice!"

An awkward silence fell over the group. Then, Ayato emerged from the hole, his face black with soot and his hair standing on end from the electricity.

"...Dakim."

"..."

"You know you were an inch away from killing us all, right?"

Madelis, still hanging from the wall, added sarcastically:

"Well, at least we saved some ammo."

Isolde looked at him with cold eyes.

"Next time, I'll crush him."

Vera sighed, stroking Sylphidia, who had fallen asleep on her lap after the shock.

"If this is the first guardian of the fortress... I don't even want to imagine what awaits us up there."

The tower, still vibrating from the impact, let out a final roar of gears. 

And at the top, the smoke writhed as if the fortress itself had taken note of the group's audacity.

The ascent to the Unholy Artificer, Arkan Thélemor, was just beginning.