[Chapter 113. Down to the Bone]
The heavy-duty cargo drone hovered with eerie stability over the severed, tallic arms that lay scattered across the ruined, polished floor of the node chamber. With cold, chanical precision, the drone targeted a massive limb and enveloped it within a localized spatial field, drawing the heavy tal into its internal storage compartnt. The segnted limbs vanished from physical sight in an instant. For Searanox, these cargo drones were proving to be an invaluable asset; they faced no actual size restrictions regarding the objects they could house, being limited only by a maximum carry capacity of five tric tons at his current level—a threshold the golem’s parts didn't even begin to approach.
Seconds later, Searanox signaled the drone to begin a preliminary, non-destructive disassembly. The arms reappeared on a cleared section of the black stone, but they had been stripped clean of their external armor plating. He leaned in, expecting to see a complex array of copper wires, hydraulic pistons, or clockwork servos. Instead, he found sothing far more alien. Beneath the shell, the arms consisted of a dense, complex network of muscle-like tissue infused with thousands of thin golden threads. These threads pulsed with a slow, rhythmic energy, glowing in the dim light like a subterranean heartbeat.
This tissue—more synthetic-biological than purely chanical—was connected directly to the solid, dark tal joints where the bundles anchored themselves with root-like tenacity. The density of the muscle fiber was so great that it completely obscured any internal skeletons or secondary chanisms that might have existed deeper within the limb's core. It was a masterpiece of magitech engineering, blending the fluid strength of biology with the durability of the machine.
anwhile, the drone thodically deposited the discarded armor plates to the side, creating a neat, organized stack of black-silver tal. Examining the plates the cargo drone had unloaded, Searanox noted that they were not rely plain protective shells. Faint, intricate golden lines traced their inner surfaces in a pattern that reminded him of a circuit board. Upon even closer inspection, he discovered a small, faceted crystal embedded at the very center of each plate’s interior. The entire plate, he realized, was rely a protective casing for an incredibly thin, crystalline layer—a blue-white substance that covered the entirety of the inner surface like a coat of magical frost.
Searanox reached out and lifted one of these curved plates with his right hand. The mont his Magitech Dronemancer's Gauntlet made physical contact with the material, the device began to glow with a soft, reactive light. The plate shifted in his grip of its own accord, vibrating with a high-pitched hum. When he reflexively released his hold, the plate did not fall; instead, it hovered perfectly above his gauntlet for a heartbeat before snapping forward and attaching itself seamlessly to his wrist.
The tal began to flow like liquid rcury, spreading upward over his entire arm in a smooth, silent wave. It ford a dense, form-fitting layer of armor that extended all the way to his shoulder. He turned his right arm, fascinated, flexing his fingers into a tight fist before opening them again. To his surprise, the tactile sensation and range of movent remained completely unchanged, as if the armor were a second skin. The difference, however, was starkly visible: his right arm now appeared as a heavy, dark silver—almost black—with faint veins pulsing beneath the surface, creating a sharp contrast with the unadorned gauntlet on his left.
A translucent system window materialized in the air before him, overlaying the dim chamber with a steady blue glow.
[System Notification]
─ Armor Integration: 1/2
The plate ward quickly against his gauntlet, its initial tallic coolness vanishing as the internal systems synced with his own biological and magical signatures. A sudden flood of sensory information surged through his mind—he could suddenly 'feel' the plate's energy reserves, monitor its structural integrity in real-ti, and visualize a basic schematic of its multi-layered configuration. This wasn't just a simple upgrade to his existing gauntlet; it was an entirely new, integrated defensive layer.
He reached for a second plate, and the process repeated itself with identical precision. The tal liquefied and flowed over his left arm, forming a matching set of dark, ornate armor that reached his shoulder. A second system notification chid softly, confirming the completion of the set.
[System Notification]
─ Armor Integration: 2/2
Emboldened by the success, he attempted to press another, larger plate against his Magitech Enhanced Coat, hoping for a similar result. However, the tal remained inert and cold. He paused, considering for a mont whether he should remove the coat entirely to allow the armor to bond directly to his torso, but then he noticed a peculiar detail. The armored plating on his arms now seamlessly extended over the coat's heavy sleeves, reinforcing them without hindering the fabric's flexibility. When he issued a ntal command for his left gauntlet to retract, the plates flowed smoothly back down toward his hand, opening like a blooming flower to release his fingers before settling into a dormant state.
`Neat.` He thought, a rare smirk touching his lips.
Despite his repeated attempts and various ntal commands, the remaining plates refused to integrate with the reinforced fabric of the coat itself. After several minutes of fruitless experintation, he finally abandoned the effort, concluding that the coat’s material was likely incompatible with the golem's specific alloy.
Stolen story; please report.
With the coat properly positioned and his new armants re-extended to their full shoulder-level glory, he returned his undivided attention to the exposed fibers of the golem's primary arm. Using a specialized tool from his belt, he began to carefully extract the strange, pseudo-organic material strand by strand. It wasn't quite fabric and it wasn't quite tal, though at first glance it bore a striking resemblance to fine steel wire. The strands possessed an incredible degree of both flexibility and elasticity. The golden veins flowing through their interior were not rely a static glow; he could see a viscous, luminous fluid actively moving within the translucent material, cycling like blood through a vein.
After he had painstakingly removed all the strands, they lay coiled beside the arm like a heap of golden-threaded rope. The skeletal structure revealed beneath the 'muscle' proved to be even more peculiar than he had imagined. There was no traditional, rigid skeleton. Instead, there was a series of interconnecting, floating parts that ford a basic geotric structure down the arm's length. The joints themselves weren't physically connected to this frawork by bolts or pins; they seed to be held in place by localized gravitational or magnetic fields.
Moving his focus to the golem’s cannon assembly, he found an unexpected, elegant simplicity at its core. The weapon wasn't a complex machine of gears and firing pins, but rather a large, focused crystal embedded within an intricate arrangent of geotric forms and deeply carved runes. Directly behind the primary focusing crystal, a perfectly spherical orb rested in a custom-tooled tal fixture, emitting a faint, steady amber glow that illuminated the interior of the housing.
He reached in and easily popped the orb from its fixture. As the tennis-ball-sized sphere settled into the palm of his hand, its weight surprisingly substantial, a system window materialized before his eyes, providing the identification he had been waiting for.
[Item]
─ NA: Small Magitech Core
─ TYPE: Power Source
─ RARITY: N/A
─ LEVEL: N/A
─ These cores serve as a supplentary power source for advanced magitech constructs and devices, or as a primary power source for simple magitech constructs and devices. They contain a finite but substantial amount of refined magical energy, channeled through the specific structure they are integrated into.
Searanox held the amber orb up to the light, rotating it between his fingers as he examined the swirling, nebulous golden light trapped within its crystalline shell. "Magitech cores, then," he murmured, his voice echoing in the vast room. With a thought, the sphere vanished into his storage ring.
The runes etched into the surrounding tal housing now lay completely dormant, their golden glow having vanished the instant the core was removed. He realized there was no imdiate way for him to decipher these ancient symbols or fully understand their specific function without further study. With that thought, he moved to the other severed arm, stripping it down with practiced efficiency to retrieve the second core.
While he worked on the limbs, his cargo drones were busy thodically disassembling the golem's massive torso. The internal structure proved to be mostly hollow, containing only the outer armor plates and a thick lining of the muscle-fiber strands beneath. These strands, featuring varying designs and thicknesses, all converged on a central, reinforced hub where a much larger variant of the core resided.
That was almost everything of imdiate value—except for the massive amber core embedded deep in the golem's central chest cavity. This one was roughly the size of a basketball and humd with a low-frequency energy that he could feel. It pulsed with a warm, rhythmic light against his gauntlets as he carefully unlatched the housing and removed it. The mont the core left its cradle, the entire construct finally went completely lifeless; the golden veins that had been dimming throughout the chamber finally faded into absolute blackness.
[Item]
─ NA: dium Magitech Core
─ TYPE: Power Source
─ RARITY: N/A
─ LEVEL: N/A
─ These cores serve as a supplentary power source for highly advanced magitech constructs and devices, or as a primary power source for advanced magitech constructs and devices. They contain a finite but substantial amount of refined magical energy, channeled through the specific structure they are integrated into.
Just as the core was secured in his inventory, a final system notification chid, announcing the formal clearance of the node.
Searanox, however, was far from finished. He continued to work in the silence, storing every scrap of useful material as his drones stripped the fallen arch. This process revealed nine additional Supplentary Magitech Cores embedded within the arch’s internal structure, likely used to power the devastating white-gold beam. Four more cores recovered from the leg cavities brought his total haul to fifteen small cores and one dium. He also noted that the leg cavities contained sothing else—not cannons, but a series of propulsion vents that were similar in construction to the arm-mounted weapons.
With everything valuable finally secured within a cargo drone, he approached the node’s center stone one last ti. He placed the Lodestone upon the surface, triggering the return sequence. The world warped once more, and he shifted back into the cool evening air of the forest surrounding his tower. He mounted his interdiate travel drone, the engine humming to life, and began the short flight back.
Sothing felt slightly off during the journey, a nagging sense of displacent that he couldn't quite identify. It was only when he arrived at the tower and Iris asked him if he had forgotten sothing that the realization finally struck him with the force of a physical blow.
His near-perfect internal sense of ti insisted that several hours had passed during the battle and the subsequent disassembly of the golem. Yet, when he checked his system's next-stage tir and observed the position of the setting sun, he realized that both indicated the passage of only a few re minutes since he had left.
`Interesting. From the perspective of the outside world, only the travel ti itself has elapsed...`
Iris began to inspect the various items as he unloaded the cargo drone, her eyes wide with curiosity, while Searanox remained deep in thought, leaning against the cold stone of the atrium.
`If the ti inside the node dilates to a near standstill compared to the outside world.` He reasoned, his mind already spinning with the tactical implications. `I can essentially do whatever I want in there—train, build, or research—with almost zero external ti cost.`
The discovery was perhaps more valuable than the cores themselves.
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