After saying goodbye to Antonina, the team, now joined by Bronya, continued moving deeper into the inner mining area.
They wandered through the mine tunnels for a few rounds.
"Is this the right way? It looks like there's a roadblock ahead," Bronya spoke up.
"Don't say it like you've been here before. Come on, let's get closer and take a look."
Everyone quickly moved forward.
Seele and Bronya walked in front, while the Trailblazer squad followed behind, almost as if deliberately leaving some space for the two girls ahead.
Situations like this had already happened many times along the way.
No matter which of the two spoke first, the other was bound to nitpick.
In the end, the result was that the two of them would start bickering every now and then.
Soon, everyone reached the end of the tunnel. Here, the road was blocked by rocks, pipes, supplies, and a massive mine cart, taller than Dan Heng, completely sealing the path.
March looked at the obstacle in front of them and said, "It's blocked tight… what do we do? Blow up this mine cart?"
"Wait!" Seele hurriedly said. "These are all the mining team's property. You can't just destroy them. Let's think of a way to fix it instead."
"That's easy to say…" March looked at Seele. "Do you know how to fix it?"
"Of course. Who in the Underworld doesn't know the structure of a mine cart? Let me check it…"
With that, Seele immediately got to work, carefully inspecting the mine cart in front of her.
"…Hmm, the pin connecting the undercarriage is broken, and the rear wheel bearing is snapped too. One look and you can tell Svarog's lackeys did this. We'll have to look around for usable replacement parts. Tch, such a waste of time."
At that moment, Findie, who had been brought along, suddenly reacted.
["Beep-do… good partners, do you need to find something? Findie can help."]
March blinked. "…Why did this thing suddenly pop out on its own? Isn't your whatever function already broken?"
In response to March's doubt, Findie replied, ["Beep-do… the brainwave scanning module is indeed damaged. But the manual input search function can still operate normally."]
["Come on, come on, enter the name of the item you want to find. Findie will help."]
"Oh? That confident? Then let's give it a try. Where's the input interface? Oh, found it…"
March didn't hesitate and got straight to work. After finding the input interface on Findie, she entered "mine cart pin" and "mine cart wheel assembly," then clicked confirm.
After that, Findie really did start running.
After a whole lot of "beep-do" sounds and Findie's boring junk advertisements, everyone successfully found the two needed parts and shut Findie down.
It was still a bit unbearable, the whole "jump once to cancel personalized services" thing sounded like total nonsense no matter how you listened to it.
After gathering all the parts, everyone returned to the mine cart, and Seele took the lead in fixing it.
That said, the others didn't just stand around watching, they helped out as well.
"This should be mission accomplished!" Looking at the large mine cart that everyone had set back upright, March said in a relaxed tone.
This mine cart was the key part of the roadblock. Once it was moved away, the path would be mostly clear.
"Hmph, you're pretty quick with your hands. I thought you were all pampered types who'd never done hard labor," Seele said. "The tunnel ahead is probably already occupied by robots. Oh. Look, there's a big one."
Everyone looked in the direction Seele pointed and saw a huge robot nearly five meters tall, an Automaton Soldier, Gearwolf. Its right arm was replaced by a terrifying, massive chainsaw.
"That model… it's definitely one of Svarog's lackeys," Seele said confidently.
"Not a big problem," Nero said. "Since the mine cart's fixed, there's no need for us to fight that thing."
"What's your plan?" Stelle looked at Nero.
"Ride the mine cart. It's huge, and we all have some skills. Riding this won't be a problem."
"Yay! Riding a cart! I'm in!" Stelle was the first to agree.
Dan Heng nodded without saying anything, and March also happily shouted, "Getting ready to depart!"
No one in the train group objected to or questioned Nero's idea.
Seeing that everyone else agreed, Seele and Bronya exchanged a look. Then Seele said, "Riding the mine cart is fine, but it's really big. Once you add people's weight, it'll be very heavy. If you don't have enough strength, it'll be hard to push…"
"It's fine, I'll do it. I'm strong!" Nero put his hands on his hips.
"You?" Bronya looked at Nero. She suddenly thought of that gust of wind that had erupted in the Administrative District when they were about to arrest these outsiders, blowing everyone away.
Then Bronya nodded. "Alright. You do it."
Seele looked left and right. Seeing that everyone seemed to agree with Nero being the one to push the cart, she realized at that moment that this kid definitely had something extraordinary about him.
And judging from how he had suddenly snatched her scythe and performed that jumping cleave, he really was very strong.
With the decision made, everyone except Nero climbed onto the mine cart.
Then Nero lifted one foot, stepped onto the cart, and kicked hard.
"Departing!"
The next instant, the massive mine cart shot out like a cannonball.
Gearwolf was guarding the mine tunnel under orders, preventing unauthorized people from sneaking in.
Suddenly, Gearwolf straightened its body, as if it had detected something, and stared intently in one direction.
Its sensors detected a high-energy reaction, an object was approaching at an unimaginable speed.
In the blink of an eye, the sound of rails colliding with wheels rushed into Gearwolf's audio sensors, and then quickly faded away.
Within Gearwolf's visual processing, it only saw a black shadow dash past, like a huge black rat.
And before Gearwolf could react, a gust of wind swept by.
At that moment, Gearwolf heard two kinds of sounds.
One was the sound of steel and machinery being forcibly twisted and deformed, circuits collapsing.
The other was the voice of a human boy, "Let me borrow your weapon for a bit! Thanks! Bye!"
Nero was very polite, when borrowing someone else's weapon, he even said thank you.
By the time Gearwolf's processing units restarted and it recovered from the sudden incident, it had already suffered severe damage.
Its right arm, the weapon over two meters long, the giant chainsaw, was gone.
Deep in the mine tunnel, the sound of wheels striking rails echoed without end as the mine cart sped forward.
And beside the mine cart, Nero was stepping on the weapon he had borrowed from Gearwolf, surrounded by the wind, flying in sword-riding fashion as he rapidly advanced alongside the cart.
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