The world of lavender skies and apricot horizons stayed above , locked behind layers of perfectly woven shell-architecture. Down here, in the gut of the planet, the atmosphere didn't just feel heavy; it felt curdled. It was the kind of darkness that didn't rely signify a lack of light, but felt like a physical substance, cold and viscous, clinging to my skin.
I stood on a narrow walkway of grey, unpolished basalt that spanned an abyss so wide I couldn't see the opposite wall. The silence was absolute, but it wasn't the peaceful quiet of a library. It was the oppressive, pressurized silence of a tomb. As I moved, the sound of my boots on the stone echoed for miles, a rhythmic tapping that felt like a sacrilege in this place of stagnant secrets.
I leaned over the railing, looking into the darkness below the catwalk. My [Void-Lattice Perception] didn't find bedrock or a foundation. It found a nightmare.
Stretching from the unseen floor of the cavern to the jagged, basalt ceiling above were thousands of "cables." They were thick, pulsing mana-veins, translucent and terrifyingly, reminiscently organic. They looked like the arterial systems of a god, carrying a blinding, sickly yellow surge of compressed quintessence that lit the abyss with a rhythmic, sickly throb. It was a terrible reminder of the Kyorian draining machines or the Violet Conquest System.
"Another world, another siphon," I whispered. My breath ca out in a visible plu, despite the heat of my inner star.
The prosperity I had observed on the surface — the scholars, the light-river transit, the lack of conflict — all of it made sense now. The "Harmony Protocol" wasn't a technological or magical breakthrough; it was a cosmic parasitic connection. In the Greater Universe, Essence was the fundantal building block. Every soul generated it naturally through existence and cultivation of their Soul Gate, and very high-tier souls were practically infinite engines and batteries. But even an infinite generator had a maximum output rate. If you wanted to build a planet-sized palace of gold and floating gardens without centuries of brutal effort, you didn't cultivate Essence.
You stole.
I followed the visual line of one specific "bundle" of veins. They led to a jagged tear in reality — a small, stable portal anchored by iron rings that looked like an open, weeping sore. This world was draining dozens, perhaps hundreds of others, through a multi-dinsional plumbing system hidden beneath the rugs of paradise.
It was sickeningly sophisticated. I had dismantled Kyorian high-tier siphoning machines back on Ferra, but those were crude buckets compared to this planetary reservoir. Here, they weren't just stealing power; they were siphoning the massive potential from others to feed their own prosperity.
As I drifted closer to a bundle of these veins, my [Void-Star] pulsed with a sudden, predatory thrum. I looked at a leak. A fracture in the translucent mana-casing of a central vein was oozing a thick, dark-grey sludge. It wasn't mana anymore; it was the waste product of stolen potential, radiating a diseased, stagnant frequency that made my skin crawl.
"If I delete this segnt," I thought, raising my hand.
I focused [The Void-Star's Hunger] into a surgical point at my index finger. I intended to consu the leak, to simply erase the corruption and let the [Void] scrub the area clean. Simultaneously, the now vantablack Bracelet, Gluttony, reacted violently. The sentient curse-relic hissed against my wrist, expanding as if it were a lung trying to inhale the foul scent of the rot. It was a hungry, frantic agreent.
I pressed my intent forward.
A sudden jolt of cold, white-blue static slamd into my fingertips. It wasn't standard mana; it was a systemic override. It buzzed through my bones, vibrating my teeth until I felt a copper taste in my mouth.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Interaction Restriction In Effect.]
[Aegis Protocol: Unauthorized consumption of Nodal Siphons is strictly prohibited. The Aspirant must trace the corruption to the source world.]
[Warning: Further attempts at manual deletion will trigger a simulation reset.]
I pulled my hand back, my fingers tingling with numbing feedback. "Sorry, sorry. Of course. No easy buttons in the personalized hell-room."
I didn't imdiately rush for the nearest leaking portal. Experience and analysis had taught that these "Technician" trials often rewarded thorough investigation of the utility rooms. I abandoned the primary walkway, utilizing my [Void-Walk] to drift silently through the grey basalt corridors bordering the abyss.
As I traveled, the sheer alienation of this world's basent set in. Occasionally, I would spot a maintenance entity — spindle-limbed, eyeless beings that resembled marionettes carved from obsidian. They moved in silence, adjusting valves on the mana-veins with six-fingered hands, their auras cold and chanical. They weren't sentient, just mindless sub-routines of the planet's gut powered by strange ambient mana.
I found a secondary branch of tunnels, deeper and colder than the first. Here, the grey basalt was stained with iridescent trails of stagnant quintessence. It was a place of high-tier waste.
For two days, I navigated these tunnels, using my isolation to reflect and plan. Being alone inside the Trial pause gave a headspace that Ferra's looming invasion simply couldn't afford.
I looked at my status interface often, my thoughts racing about my empty skill slots. During the Mythic Five event, I hadn't felt the desperate need to "synthesize or die." The Origin skill I'd created was so comprehensive in its spatial authority that I didn't want to waste slots on redundant combat skills.
Subterfuge, I thought. And presence.
The plan for the Kyorian Patriarch remained at the front of my tactical planning. If I succeeded here and erged as an Ascendance candidate, the clone I left with the Patriarch — operating under the "Krom" signature — would be my primary lens into the enemy's camp.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
There were many other variables to keep in mind and the Crucible to prepare for but I had been constantly worried about the "veiling" assistance from the Pri System faltering once the trial ended. And since the Viceroy's contract wasn't truly signed by my soul, there was also a chance that he might eventually notice. I needed a way to solidify the Echo's signature as a permanent "Truth."
I should probably hunt for a Conceptual mimicry skill, I planned. Sothing that doesn't just copy mana-patterns, signatures, and Essence but copies the 'Logic' of a person's entire Soul.
My [Omnipresence] gave the territory; I just needed the disguise to walk it. I also thought about the quantum tether. In this dungeon, the connection to my friends and even my own inner world's deeper channels to Ferra was dead. I had tested my various communication thods dozens of tis. Crys was a silent violet spark on the edge of my mory; Forn and Anna were non-existent. I was truly, mathematically alone and I didn't know how to even begin tackling the issue of how I was being blocked.
It made the Patriarch plan more attractive. I liked the idea of focusing more of my skillset towards being a ghost.
On the third day of my subterranean trek, I arrived at a set of towering vault doors made of "Sorrow-Steel" — a dark, cold tal that wept moisture when subjected to high mana-frequencies. The vault was a relic room, disconnected from the primary siphons. It was secured by a vibration-based lock that relied on finding the precise resonant frequency of the planetary core.
I didn't force it. I had nowhere to be since the world outside was paused in perpetual twilight. I sat cross-legged before the obsidian doors, closed my eyes, and engaged the Zeroth-tier [Symphony of the Animus Arch].
I "listened" to the basalt.
I sent microscopic pulses of gravity into the seams of the door, probing the internal chanisms like a clockmaker working with a toothpick. I spent eighteen hours just trying to hear the difference between a click and a scrape.
I utilized my internal Domain, bleeding a sliver of the Phoenix's life-mana into the vibration, trying to see if the "Warmth" changed the density of the tal.
On the fiftieth hour, the door shuddered. A groan of ancient iron echoed through the dark corridor, and the Sorrow-Steel plates began to fold backward into the wall like an elaborate origami crane.
I stood and walked into the small, dust-choked chamber. There was no gold, no scrolls, no artifacts of war. There was only a singular pedestal made of a petrified root.
Sitting on the root was an orb of dark, tarnished silver about the size of a lon.
As I approached, a visceral jolt of recognition slamd into my chest. The [Void-Star] flared hot. It was a magnetic, screaming attraction. But more than that, Gluttony beca absolute. It began to vibrate on my wrist with such intensity it left bruising red marks.
The orb was a storage relic, designed to hold the final remnants of sothing that had already burned out.
I reached out, and as my fingertips brushed the cold silver, a whisper of a frequency hit my mind. It was a fla. Not the life-bringing Rebirth of the Phoenix that humd behind my own ribs nor was it the chaotic Fla of Entropy. This was a variant that was darker. Heavier. It didn't sll of incense or ash; it slled of furious lava and unyielding stone. It was a fla of utter destruction that didn't know how to stop burning. And it was ancient.
It resonated with my internal Domain as a sibling of the sa concept — Annihilation. But where mine felt refined, this felt... angry.
I picked up the orb, tucking it into my Void storage. I followed the resonance imdiately, ignoring the secondary vaults. The grey sludge on the pipes above was humming in perfect, unholy tune with the artifact in my pocket.
I followed the trail of diseased grey sli across miles of catwalks until I arrived at a specific portal node. Unlike the dozens of "Harmony" portals I had seen earlier, which looked like glowing lavender disks, this one was a jagged wound. It looked like soone had taken a massive axe to the fabric of reality and wrenched it open from the other side.
Wisps of red, charcoal-tinted mist were oozing out from the portal's edges, fighting with the atmosphere of the basent. The sll hit like a physical punch. It was a mixture of raw heat, the salt of sweat, and the overpowering, heavy copper scent of old blood.
Through my [Lattice Perception], the mana coming from the other side was terrifying.
It wasn't just "Power." It was starving. The air itself seed to be in a state of prehistoric madness. It was the scent of war that had lasted for millennia — a world that had ground itself into a jagged spike just to survive.
I looked at the leaking vein connected to this specific portal. The dark-silver residue I'd found in the orb was thickest here.
The donor world has grown teeth, I realized, a grim chill settling in my chest.
This utopian Aegis world hadn't just drained a defenseless battery world. They had reached into a sector of the universe that shouldn't have been touched. They had been draining a planet where the "Donors" had had enough and were attempting to send a poison back through the tubes.
The Harmony Protocol was failing because the world was choking on the very blood it was stealing.
Gluttony throbbed on my arm, practically pulling my hand toward the portal's tattered edges. My internal Fla, the spark of my Phoenix heart, crackled with a violent anticipation. The friction between my current state and the incoming frequency was like a lightning storm building inside my veins.
The mana on the other side bellowed. It was the sound of iron slamming on iron, of boots marching over crushed glass, and the primal scream of a creature that has decided that if it cannot have peace, it will have nothing but ruin.
It was an unknown risk but I didn't turn back. I couldn't. The System demanded the technical repair of this "Knot," but looking into that red haze, I knew I wasn't going as a chanic.
I adjusted my ntal Veil, centering the weight of the dark-silver relic in my pocket space.
"Ti to see who's screaming," I said, my voice barely a whisper against the roaring atmosphere.
I stepped into the jagged gash of the portal.
The world of shell-gold and apricot dissolved into an instant, blistering hell. I felt the heat first — a physical weight of four-hundred-degree air that tasted of sulfur and iron. I landed on a plane of pulverized black sand that felt like walking on broken teeth.
The sky above was a wounded, dark crimson, bruised by charcoal clouds that never stopped raining fine, volcanic ash.
From the horizon, I heard the rhythmic, booming percussion of a million war-drums that I felt more in my sternum than in my ears.
Everything here — the blood-saturated mana, the violent heat, the predatory nature of the atmosphere — scread at with an unyielding, prehistoric hatred.
The Fla in my chest gave one final, violent pulse of recognition, matching the raw vibration of the world around .
This wasn't just a world of mana. It was a world of ancient, unrelenting, all consuming fury.
I looked into the red mist, toward the sounds of the drums, and prepared for a different kind of war.
Reviews
All reviews (0)