His voice coiled through the tunnel like a whispering snake, each word eating away at the craftsman's will.
-----------------------------
Barca remained silent. Seeing this, the god let out a soft laugh, and decided to play his trump card.
"Hehe, Barca. If this keeps up, not only will we fail to maintain progress, but even keeping your masterpiece intact will be difficult. As for completing it… that day may never come!"
"..." At last, Barca hurled his hammer onto the ground with a heavy clang.
Slowly, he turned around. His hollow, lifeless eyes fixed upon the god Thanatos. After a long silence, he finally spoke in a dull, empty voice: "Then… what do you want me to do?"
Thanatos's lips curved upward in a faint smile.
"Listen, Barca. I have a plan, a very good one, in fact. But to make it work, my followers and I alone won't be enough. Only you can do it."
Barca frowned deeply, his vacant eyes locked onto Thanatos.
"You mean… that area we just finished not long ago? You want to turn it into a battlefield? You would destroy the sacred work of my ancestors, our masterpiece, Thanatos!?"
Thanatos merely smiled at Barca's fury.
"That's not important. What is important is… if we're wiped out here by Loki Familia, not only will this great work be abandoned, all these years of effort will go to waste. That would be the real tragedy, wouldn't it?
Besides…", his tone grew casual, "you haven't forgotten, have you? The original reason you built that section in the first place was to deal with situations like this."
As he spoke, the god extended both hands from the depths of his black cloak.
"I'm counting on you, Barca."
"..." Silence, the best answer of all. Thanatos's eyes narrowed slightly, his grin deepening.
"Let me know when they invade."
Without another word, Barca turned his back on the god, picked up his hammer, and resumed chiseling the unfinished wall.
For this man, bound by bloodline shackles and stripped of a soul, nothing mattered more than the completion of his "work."
Whether it was joining the Evilus, cooperating with the scum of the underground, or even smuggling goods to raise funds, everything he did served that one purpose.
Thanatos's visit had already delayed him, and that made Barca irritable. In the end, he agreed only to get the god to leave.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The rhythmic sound of hammering once again echoed through the tunnel. Watching his cold, expressionless subordinate, Thanatos chuckled softly.
"So indifferent… and yet, that twisted, manipulated soul of his, truly a rare specimen, hehehe…"
Casting one last glance at Barca's shadowed figure, the god turned and left, laughing quietly to himself.
...
Meanwhile, Loki Familia remained completely unaware of the Evilus's trap.
But ignorance did not weaken their resolve to strike at the enemy's base.
This was confidence, born of strength, perspective, and duty. As Orario's strongest familia, Loki Familia bore the responsibility of protecting the city's peace and safety.
For the Evilus to have survived for years right under everyone's noses, and now regained the strength to stir up trouble again, was, in itself, highly unusual.
If they were left unchecked, no one could predict what might happen next.
Especially after that lunatic Enyo, declared his intent to blow Orario sky-high.
Unforgivable.
And as if that weren't enough, Loki herself had been humiliated by them, more than once.
For the mischievous goddess, the trickster of the heavens, such insults were beyond endurance.
And the enemy had repeatedly tried to slaughter her children.
Someone's trying to kill your family, how could anyone stay calm? Even the gentlest saint would fight back. And Loki? With her temper? She wouldn't rest until every last one of them was dead.
The next day, after discovering the entrance to the underground waterways, Loki Familia mobilized every available force and gathered at the site.
At the hidden entrance, the banner of the clown fluttered proudly. Members assembled in ranks, and the curious among them stretched their necks to get a better look at the massive, peculiar gate before them.
After all, a five-meter-high gate made entirely of orichalcum was a rare sight indeed.
"Whoa! I thought Finn was exaggerating yesterday, but seeing it with my own eyes… this is incredible!"
Tiona shouted excitedly, running her hands across the gate's smooth surface.
Her sister Tione grinned, a feral gleam flashing in her eyes.
"Heh, with a front door this grand, there's no doubt, this must be the enemy's main base. Who'd have thought they'd hide in a filthy hole like this?"
Bete stuffed his hands into his pockets and sneered.
"Tch. Just a bunch of rats clinging to life. Boring."
Standing beside Fron, Ais quietly brushed a hand over her beloved blade, Desperate. Her golden eyes reflected the gate's cold gleam.
"Orichalcum… unbelievable."
The hardest metal known to mortals. No matter what kind of weapon or armor was made from it, in terms of hardness, nothing in the world could surpass it.
Without such miraculous metals, humanity would never have survived the age of monsters before the gods descended.
Indeed, the ancients were far from weak, their wisdom alone rivaled, if not surpassed, that of modern blessed adventurers.
This gate, the crystallization of that ancient genius, was nearly indestructible.
Fron knew this well.
"There's really no way to destroy it?" Ais asked, turning to the blonde head.
Smiling faintly, Fron reached out and ruffled her hair.
"Precisely because I'm a master smith, I can say with certainty, no, this gate can't be broken. But…" He pointed toward the wall beside the gate, his tone playful.
"If we were trapped inside, we wouldn't need to break it anyway."
Everyone turned to look.
At that very spot, the younger members had already dug a hole into the wall, revealing the hidden mechanisms within the layers of stone.
[T/N: If I'm not wrong the wall was also made of mithril, right?]