Hitman with a Badass System
chapter-853

Elidyr and Michael spent an entire day working together to finish the portal. They lost track of time and ignored everything that happened outside the hall. Gaya often entered the hall to bring Michael and Elidyr something to eat and drink. Other than that, Michael received no visitors; rather, Gaya took care of everything.

"Now, if you put a crystal in there," Elidyr pointed at a tubular-shaped golden pipe next to the portal. The metal tube ran into the ground and connected at the portal's bottom under the steps. It was Michael's task to build an intricate mechanism that turned arch energy crystals into pure energy that could be used to activate the portal. No one needed the mechanism outside the Southern continent since the atmosphere itself contained pure arch energy, and the runes could harness this energy. Considering the Southern continent's atmosphere had no arch energy, Michael had to build such a device. In other words, without Michael, no one could build a portal inside the void line, no matter how many rune masters tried.

Michael retrieved a big chunk of crystal, dropped it into the pipe, and waited for the portal to absorb the energy. The metal pipe vibrated, letting out a purr. White smoke slowly escaped the metal pipe as Michael sensed an intense heat radiating from the pipe.

"It's working," Elidyr said when he noticed the runes began to glow on the metal ring around the open space where the vortex was supposed to appear. These intricate symbols began to glow brighter and brighter until Michael felt the space around him distort. It was like an invisible magnet pulling him closer. With a suppressed boom, a crimson-red vortex appeared within the ring in a blink of an eye.

"Let's bring some creature and send it through the portal first," Elidyr said. But he was too late to realize Michael had already dashed into the portal. When Michael entered the vortex, everything went dark for a split second, and then, the scenery around him changed. He appeared right at the entrance to his forge. The forge looked the same as when he had left it a few days before. Before he stepped into the forge, he turned around to see if the vortex was still there. Surprisingly, there was no swirling vortex behind him. Instead, all he could see was a glowing rune on the wall.

Michael instinctively placed his hand on the rune that resembled a swirl. The moment he touched the rune, the wall trembled. Then, the wall slowly split open, forming an archway. Inside the archway, Michael saw the crimson-red vortex. Michael strolled toward the portal and entered it once again to reach Elidyr.

"That was dangerous," Elidyr snarled when Michael stepped out of the portal.

"We are the best at what we do. So I didn't have to worry," Michael shrugged. Besides, the system would have warned him if the portal led to somewhere else than the forge.

"Follow me. The forge awaits," said Michael. Elidyr followed Michael into the portal and stepped into the demons grave for the first time in his life. The forge welcomed Elidyr with its scorching heat. Elidyr didn't even spend a few seconds in the forge as he began to sweat bullets. As soon as Michael entered the forge, he removed his long coat and the full-sleeve shirt he wore beneath.

"Why is it so hot here?" The heat he felt was nothing like he had ever felt. It was like someone put him inside a boiling cauldron. On top of that, the furnace wasn't even burning. Michael chuckled, seeing Elidyr getting drenched in his own sweat.

"We are inside a volcanic mountain. Take a look at this," Michael walked to the furnace and pulled the lever as the golden lava oozed into the furnace through the pipes hanging above.

"What do you mean a volcano?" asked Elidyr.

"Come with me," Michael walked out of the forge and headed outside to show Elidyr where they were. Elidyr followed him through a dark narrow corridor until they reached a dead end. What he thought was a dead end turned out to be a door when the Dark Lord placed his hand on the wall. The moment Michael opened the door, an intense scorching heat wave brushed past Elidyr, almost burning his hair.

"Careful," said Michael, shielding Elidyr from tripping down the narrow path and falling down right into the bubbling lava. Now Elidyr realized what he meant by inside a volcanic mountain.

"As I said before, I cannot fly in the demon's grave. So to get up there, we need to climb," Michael pointed at the top of the mountain.

"But if you do not want, we can return to the forge," Michael knew although Elidyr was inside the body of a half-elf, he still behaved like a dark elf who was extremely sensitive to dry or hot weather. The last thing Michael wanted was to hear Elidyr bitch about climbing the mountain. However, Elidyr surprised Michael with his answer.

"I am not a delicate young flower. Of course, I want to climb. Follow my lead if you can, Dark Lord," Elidyr snickered and started to climb the wall like he was an expert mountain climber.

"I didn't expect that," Michael's brows arched up, looking at the elf crawling up the wall without slowing down. He was not going to lose to an elf in mountain climbing, so Michael started to climb as fast as he could. Elidyr was surprisingly fast, but Michael was faster than him. With a few leaps and jumpers, Michael reached the top and extended his arm to help Elidyr reach the top.

"Where did you learn to climb like this?" Michael asked Elidyr as the elf grabbed Michael's hand and reached the top. When Elidyr was about to answer Michael, he saw the vast open world of demons grave. The sight of red skies, thunderstorms, and smokey air stunned Elidyr to the core. On top of that, Elidyr saw the colossus bull in the distance, and his jaw dropped.

"What in the hell is that?" Elidyr asked, looking at the bull.

"Something we don't want to mess with," said Michael. Elidyr's gaze swept across the vast land. The demons grave looked more terrifying than he had previously imagined. He felt lucky Skyhall prisoned him in the Akilan realm. At Least he had a beautiful place for sightseeing. Almost half an hour later, Michael and Elidyr returned to the forge and started working on their next project, the torpedoes. Elidyr stepped outside the forge and into the dark castle to get everything they needed from the store room. Then, Elidyr returned to the forge to see Michael starting the furnace. When he thought the temperature couldn't go any higher, the furnace surprised Elidyr with its scorching heat lava.

Michael put the metal ores into a large cauldron and hung it above the lava. Because they weren't dark metal ores bought from the system, the hot lava provided more than enough heat to melt them into hot gooey goodness. While Michael was working near the furnace, Elidyr studied the invisible runes around the forge. To others, the runes were invisible, but to him, they glowed as bright as stars in the midnight sky.

The more runes he saw, the more he realized the similarity with his own work. To be more precise, they were his work. The runes were almost everywhere; the tables, walls, ceiling, and pipes. Everywhere he turned, he saw runes. This whole forge was a beautiful mix of runes and intricate contraptions, just like the portal. The forge was a symbol of friendship between the Dark Lord and Elidyr, the elf who stood by the Dark Lord's side till the last day when he reset the entire universe.

As Elidyr was studying the runes, Michael grabbed a five-meter-long and three-meter-wide metal pillar, created a mold in the shape of a cigar using the dark beams, and poured the melted metal into the mold. Michael let the metal cold down and take the desired shape. While the metal was cooling down, Michael returned to the work table and started to build the targeting system in which he needed Elidyr's help.

"Enough gawking around. We have work to do," said Michael. Finally, Elidyr snapped back to reality and turned around.

"This whole place has my runes,"

"Not yours per se. They belonged to the past you," said Michael.

"I wonder what else they left behind. Judging by the complexity of each rune, I must have learned quite too much,"

"No shit. We designed an array to reset the entire universe. So yeah, you did learn too much," Michael rolled his eyes.

"You can admire your work later. Now come here and help me with this," Michael ordered Elidyr. Then, the two of them continued to build the torpedoes while discussing their past versions. Building torpedoes were two man's job. First, Michael as a blacksmith had to build the outer shell and fill it with explosive materials. The second task fell on Elidyr's shoulder as he had to engrave runes inside and outside to enhance the explosion's power upon contact as well as to harness the power of arch energy crystals.

"It's done," After almost an hour later, Elidyr heaved a sigh of relief and motioned Michael to see the torpedo on the table. On the outside, the torpedo looked like nothing more than a one-meter-long cigar with fins at the end. The outer shell was built with metal and engraved with intricate runes which were barely visible to the naked eye. On contrary to how it looked, the torpedo was heavy as a boulder. Elidyr had to use all his strength to roll it around. Upon reaching the table, Michael ran his hand through the torpedo, feeling the surface of his new death bringer. If his calculations were right, a single torpedo could obliterate a frigate to pieces and had a range of twenty kilometers.

"Now that we finished the hard part, let's move on to the easy part," said Michael.

Obviously, he couldn't put these torpedoes into a cannon and fire it at his enemies. Instead, Michael had to build a special gun to use these torpedoes and an aiming mechanism. Thanks to Michael's Inventor trait, building them was as easy as crafting a new bow to Michael.