When they moved away from the damp trauma of the mine room, the dungeon’s mask of a "natural cave" shattered completely. Now, the ground they stepped on was no longer cold stone, but massive copper plates and mana cables sparking with purple electricity. The cave ceiling had been replaced by a machine room smelling of rust and oil, filled with massive pistons moving up and down with a rhythmic thunder.

  "This... this isn't just a dungeon," Marry said, holding her analytical device with trembling fingers. "This is a gargantuan transformer! It sucks in the raw mana from the underground river, compresses it with the pressure of the dam, and converts it into a dark, destructive frequency here."

  "Just like an internal combustion engine," Eren murmured, fixing his eyes on the hypnotic movement of the pistons. "The dam pumps the mana—the fuel; the killer’s dark magic provides the ignition in the cylinders, and this beast we call a dungeon begins its rumbling work. And we are just pawns trying not to be crushed between the steel cylinders of this engine."

  The sour disgust in Eren’s stomach intensified with every step. The killer had used Lord Pitrosg’s insatiable dam as the hilt of a weapon. Without the dam, there would be no fuel for this machine; without the machine, that filthy greed accumulated by the dam couldn't have turned into such pure evil.

  "Look over there!" Macan said, pointing to a massive, armored glass partition ahead.

  Behind the partition, a branch of the underground river was imprisoned in an artificial pool. But the water was not clear; it was pitch black like tar, as if thousands of years of rage had been poured into it. Above the pool, thousands of the killer’s famous origami papers spun like fans, transmitting the dark energy to the pistons above.

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  "This must be the heart of the dam," Aslan said, gripping the hilt of his sword. "If we shatter this glass, everything stops..."

  "No!" Eren warned sharply. "The pressure is at its limit. If you break the glass, the tons of black mana inside will drown us all in seconds. The killer has turned the pressure created by this dam into a perfect defense mechanism. Lord Pitrosg built this dam to steal the mana; the killer turned that stolen mana into a bomb."

  Eren pulled the last cigarette from his pocket and tried to light it, but his lighter fell to the ground because of his trembling fingers. A metallic ring echoed in the darkness.

  "This man..." Eren said, irritable from being unable to inhale the smoke. "He took the Lord’s greed and turned it into a guillotine that would tear apart the Lord’s own children and us. And do you know what the worst part is? What the killer has done isn't more noble than what the Lord did. It’s just more creative, a more aesthetic atrocity."

  As Eren surveyed these massive gears of the dungeon and the black mana flowing through its veins, he pieced together the killer’s true intention like a puzzle. This wasn't a prison; it was a gargantuan evidence-erasing mechanism programmed to destroy itself. The killer planned for the dam to explode, burying the criminals, the evidence, and the police pursuing them into the depths of the White Forest, into the dusty pages of history.

  "Marry, Macan... we need to disrupt the timing of this engine," Eren said, suppressing the disgust in his voice. "The killer has indexed the dam's explosion to the end of the dungeon. If we can disrupt the rhythm of these pistons, we can delay the explosion and create a gap for an exit. But for this, we will need to enter the most dangerous room: the 'Combustion Chamber'."