[Chapter 84. Purple Portal]
The dull, localized throb in his ribs finally subsided as the soft erald light of his healing drones flickered and then faded into nothingness. Searanox pushed himself up from the polished obsidian floor, his joints popping in the heavy silence of the chamber. With a sharp ntal command, he dismissed the drones, watching them dissolve into light. He crossed the fractured stone of the floor, each footfall echoing against the high, dark ceiling of the cavern. He stopped when he stood directly before the smoking remains of the Magitech Golem. The sll of burnt copper was overwhelming.
"Let's see what this skill can actually do," he muttered, extending his right hand toward the tangled heap of twisted tal, shattered gears, and scorched plating.
The Salvage skill activated instantly. He felt a sharp tug at his core as forty Tech-points vanished from his already dangerously depleted reserves. A soft, incandescent blue light enveloped the pile of junk, lifting the heavier pieces of the chassis a few inches off the ground as the energy worked its systematic deconstruction. It was a fascinating process—the matter seed to vibrate until it collapsed in on itself. When the glow finally died down, a small, tallic cube, no larger than a child’s building block, hovered in the air before him. Searanox snatched the cube out of the air and opened the Salvage Cache without a mont's hesitation.
Inside the cube was a single, solitary item—a small, perfectly ford black sphere that felt strangely cold to the touch. As his fingers closed around the smooth surface, a system window flickered into existence before his eyes.
[Drone Part]
─ NA: Hull, Obsidian Black
─ TYPE: Costic Modification
─ RARITY: Rare
"A joke," he said, the word falling flat against the cavern walls. "Costics for drones. What is the fucking point of a custom paint job in a world like this?"
He stood there for a long mont, the sheer absurdity of the reward sinking into his mind. It was utterly useless. The TP expenditure hadn't just been a waste; it was pure, unadulterated idiocy. He had traded his limited energy and risked his life for a luxury he didn't need in a survival situation. The "Rare" tag felt like a personal insult from the System itself.
"I’m never using that skill again," he vowed, his jaw tightening.
He shook his head—a slow, deliberate motion of self-reproach—and walked toward the center stone of the Node chamber. The golden veins in the walls seed to pulse in ti with his own quickened heartbeat. When he reached the pedestal, he pulled a Lodestone from his storage ring and placed it firmly on the vibrating, crystalline surface. The Lodestone lifted off the stone almost imdiately, hovering over the Node itself as it began to rotate in a slow, rhythmic circle. Nothing else happened. No grand explosion of light, no orchestral swell. It just spun—a silent, seemingly pointless dance of magnetism and arcane logic.
[System Announcent]
─ Node capture in progress
─ Ti remaining: 47h 59m 59s
His vision suddenly blurred as the physical space around him twisted and compressed. The nauseating sensation of being pulled through a straw gripped him as the portal spat him back out into the real world. He materialized on the damp forest floor, the cool night air refreshing against his heated skin. The Node's center stone now bore his guild's distinct logo—the letters KG wrapped in wings and a crown ontop—pulsing in a steady, erald rhythm. A quick tap of his interface brought up the familiar countdown window.
"Two days to claim the territory," he noted, checking the periter.
He stared at the stone for several minutes, waiting for so additional information or so hidden function he might have missed. Nothing appeared. With a frustrated sigh, he grabbed the reinforced edge of a travel drone, letting the machine's upward thrust pull him into the air and toward the silhouette of the tower.
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The entire ordeal—the fight, the injury, and the capture—had taken less than ten minutes instead of the grueling hours he had anticipated. Later, he sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the ceiling of his room. His eyes repeatedly checked the various countdown tirs in his head-up display. Once, he could have sworn the ti had jumped backward by thirty minutes instead of forward, the numbers ticking down with each passing second.
"Nah, that was just my mind playing tricks on ," he whispered to the empty room. "Just the fatigue talking."
When the global tir finally reached 10d 07h, he was already mounted on his drone and out the door, eager to maintain his growth curve and escape the suffocating silence of the tower.
The first few dungeons of the day were routine. He cleared a nest of Giant Spiders and the pack of wolfs—the sa old monsters, the sa predictable patterns, and the sa paltry rewards. But when he finally reached the entrance to the Burrowing Depths, he didn't enter. His drone landed softly in the clearing, and he stood before the hollowed-out tree that served as the entrance, his head cocked to the side as he studied the portal's swirling energy.
The hollow tree stood unchanged, its bark gnarled and ancient, but the swirling energy within the aperture was fundantally wrong. The portal was not the familiar, vibrant blue he had entered countless tis before. Instead, it churned with a deep, sickly purple core that bled into a darker, midnight blue at the edges. The colors coalesced in unnatural, jagged patterns that made his eyes ache and his stomach churn with a sense of primal "wrongness."
"What the fuck is that?" Searanox muttered, keeping a cautious distance.
Instead of investigating the anomaly alone, he called his travel drone back and ascended rapidly. The tower rose from the dark forest canopy like a tallic fang reaching for the sky. The drone slipped through the fourth-floor opening, depositing him with practiced ease. He strode to Iris's door without preamble, pushing it open with a sharp, echoing creak.
"Iris."
She stirred beneath her blankets, rolling over to face him with a start, her silver hair a ss around her face. "Yes, Searanox?" Her voice carried the heavy, thick rasp of deep sleep.
"What does a purple portal an?" he asked, his voice low and intense.
That question got her moving instantly. She shot upright in bed, her silver eyes wide with an alarm he hadn't seen since their first encounter.
"Purple?" Her hands trembled slightly as she stared at them, then back at him. "What... what are you talking about? Are you sure you saw it correctly?"
Searanox kept his voice asured and calm, despite the unease in the room. "The portal to the Burrowing Depths is purple. Deep violet core, dark blue edges. It wasn't like that yesterday. The energy feels... different. Heavier."
"I don't know," she whispered, shaking her head frantically. "Dungeon portals are blue. They are always blue, from the lowest tier to the highest recorded vaults of the core worlds. Blue is the color of a stable interface between our world and the pocket dinsions." Her gaze t his, panic swirling in her silver eyes. "What could it possibly an if the stability is failing?"
"I don't know either." He paused, weighing the tactical possibilities. "I'll scout it. If it is sothing genuinely beyond my capabilities or if the environnt is hostile, I will just leave imdiately."
"Sorry for waking you," he added, pulling the door closed before she could voice a protest.
The center stone teleportation array deposited him back in the Grand Atrium. He crossed the floor to the supply mountain, grabbing several days worth of preserved food and clean water, storing it all in his ring.
`The unknown doesn't have to an the unprepared,` he thought. The mantra was a fragile shield against the cold unease crawling up his spine. Too many stories he had read back when Earth was normal featured sothing like this—the mysterious, corrupted transformation of a known zone. But those were works of fiction. This was a System-defined dungeon with a specific na and a docunted level. There had to be a logical, technical explanation for the shift.
The drone returned him to the clearing near the hollow tree. The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, casting long, distorted shadows through the trees. His boots sank into the soft earth as he perford a final, exhaustive equipnt check, ensuring his Tech-points were at their absolute maximum before proceeding. With a ntal command, he pulled up the dungeon's official information window one last ti.
[Dungeon]
─ Na: Burrowing Depths
─ Level: 5
─ Status: Active
"At least that information is still consistent," he thought, though it offered very little reassurance.
For a long, silent mont, Searanox stood before the swirling violet portal. The urge to turn back, to return to the safety of the tower and wait for the "glitch" to resolve itself, warred with the burning, obsessive need to know. If the world was changing, he needed to be the first to understand why.
He checked his Magitech Rifle, feeling the cool vibration of the power cell against his palm. He checked the deploynt status of his defensive drones. Everything was ready. With a final, sharp exhale, he stepped toward the threshold of the violet light.
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