Perhaps this sort of answer was to be expected. This is the third time that Thomas has been burned by it and he was beginning to suspect that he was actually an idiot. Thomas figured that he had already paid for the s.p.a.ce to be able to transport it so he might as well bring it along. It looked like it could still be worth some money and even if he can"t sell it he could just toss it if he needed extra room. h.e.l.l, maybe he could even use it as a weapon to crush an enemy if he really needed to. The thing looked like it weighed at least 50 tons so it should be able to do a lot of damage.
After collecting the pedestal, walking down the opposite set of stairs, and collecting the statue; Thomas found that he was now using 182.5 cubic meters. That means that the statue and pedestal alone accounted for 23.6 cubic meters. That left him with 14 cubic meters to work with which was quite a lot of s.p.a.ce. Especially when considering that the ring which was giving off such a large presence only started with 4.5 cubic meters of s.p.a.ce.
Done with this treasure room, Thomas decided to try finding an exit to this room. The end of the path that was in the center of the mountains of gold that were once in the room seemed to be a good place to start. The wall seemed to be flat but in the movies they always had these sorts of entrances. n.o.body would hide this amount of treasure without hiding the entrance, after all. There"s no way that the hole in the ceiling was the only way to get in here since the ring he found couldn"t even fit the giant statue in it.
It took Thomas at least two hours to carefully search every inch of the wall that he could reach on the lower platform and yet he still couldn"t find anything. Even the system"s AI couldn"t figure out where the exit could be so Thomas decided to take a small break. There was still the upper-platform to search but he was mentally tired and felt a bit thirsty. Although Thomas now had a way to store food and water it came a bit too late and there was no way he could fill it up with food and water now.
Laying down under the hole that he jumped down from, Thomas didn"t really find it comfortable. The floor was rock. The walls were rock. The pillar was rock. Even the piece of rubble he was using as a pillow was rock. Right now the only thing around him was rock except that hole in the ceiling and Thomas was starting to feel that the ceiling above in the room that the hole was in might just be some sort of rock. While thinking about the different times that rocks have gotten in the way in his two lives, Thomas started to drift off to sleep. That is, of course, until a small rock fell from the ceiling above and smacked him on his forehead as if to tell him to stop blaming rocks for his problems.
"Ow! That hurt, you s.h.i.tty rock!" Now up and rubbing his forehead, Thomas looked at the culprit that caused him to become wide awake before he could get some sleep. Lining up, pulling his foot back, and then kicking at the rock with the side of his foot; the rock went flying towards where the statue used to be at a high speed. If someone else were here they"d definitely comment on how nice of a kick that was but unfortunately the only audience was an AI that wouldn"t even tell him important things without his command. With a loud thwack sound it hit against the wall--and then there were more sounds--unpleasant sounds.
The room started vibrating as the rock wall that was behind the statue began to collapse. Thomas unconsciously backed away from it even though it didn"t seem like the large bricks would be landing onto the platform that he was standing on. After the dust settled, Thomas made his way to the other edge of the platform; below there were a large number of bricks piled up. On the other side of the pile of bricks was a hole in the wall that Thomas couldn"t see into that well from his current angle. To Thomas this hole symbolized hope; hope that he could be from this rocky prison.
———————————
Outside the hole, things were much less peaceful. Right now the bandits wished that they could be bothered by small things like stones. .h.i.tting them on the head; especially the unlucky ones that got hit in the head with arrows. There were just too many enemies and the bandits weren"t prepared for an attack so many of the bandits had died before they could retreat to their camp. The village didn"t have any walls they could hide behind except the ones belonging to the destroyed homes but the camp had a small wooden barrier built around it that would offer the bandits at least a small amount of protection.
Susan had to abandon the girl called Gren that he sent into the hole to search for the treasure but there was no time to bring her up. It was doubtful that the enemy could get into the hole so she should be fine on her own for at least another day. Right now Susan had to care more about his life since if he died the treasure would fall into someone else"s hands anyways.
"What kind of threat are we dealing with here?" Susan asked one of his subordinates about the attackers on their way to the camp since it was too abrupt. Judging by the amount of arrows in each volley it definitely couldn"t be that group of soldiers unless they had backup.
"Sir, those pointy-eared savages are attacking again. This time it seems to be a larger group than the one we faced before." The subordinate that answered clearly had a grudge against the group that was currently attacking them. Few humans that lived in the pioneering villages would tolerate their presence since they"d attack anybody that invaded their land. The average citizen of the country they were in couldn"t even see them as people even though many of them were capable of speaking the common tongue.
"Them again, huh? They"re really going to be a pain unless we completely wipe them out this time." With the camp in sight, the bandits around Susan breathed a sigh of relief but Susan knew that this was just the beginning. There"s no way that those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would leave their cover while they still have an advantage. "Prepare the cannon." If those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds won"t leave the cover then he"ll just have to flush them out.