The return trip to the Dead Sector was a blur of calculated motion.
Kai didn't walk; he ghosted through the Sump. His new strength—2.5, the System called it, though to Kai it felt like he had swapped his muscles for hydraulic pistons—allowed him to traverse the treacherous terrain with terrifying ease. He leaped over gaps that had previously required cautious climbing. He bypassed the territories of the Rat-Kings and the scavengers, his Packet Sniffer painting a three-dimensional map of threats in his mind long before they could perceive him.
The hunger was gone, replaced by a buzzing, electric fullness. The Shuttle Power Cell he had consumed—devoured, really—sat in his Dantian like a second sun. It wasn't just fuel; it was raw potential, waiting to be compiled into reality.
He reached the hidden entrance of the bunker. The scrap metal he had jammed into the blast door was still there, undisturbed.
[ SECURITY CHECK: PERIMETER SECURE ][ NO RECENT FOOTPRINTS DETECTED ]
Kai exhaled, a plume of white mist escaping his lips in the cold, damp air. He pulled the scrap metal free with a single, sharp tug—the metal groaning in protest against his grip strength—and slipped inside.
The silence of the server farm greeted him. It was a heavy, dusty silence, broken only by the faint, rhythmic beeping of the single server rack he had activated earlier.
He moved to the corner where he had left Rin.
She was awake.
She was sitting up on the makeshift bed of his coat, her knees pulled to her chest. In her good hand, she held a piece of sharpened scrap metal, pointing it at the door. Her milky, blind eyes were wide, tracking the sound of his entry.
"Kai?" she whispered, her voice trembling but defiant.
"It's me," Kai said softly, raising his hands even though she couldn't see them. He projected his voice calmly, suppressing the metallic resonance that sometimes slipped into his tone since the upgrade.
Rin let out a breath that was half-sob, half-sigh. The scrap metal clattered to the floor.
"You were gone... a long time."
"I had to find supplies," Kai said. He walked over, his heavy boots making dull thuds on the dust-covered floor. He knelt beside her. "How do you feel?"
"Cold," Rin said. "But the burning... it stopped. The arm is quiet."
Kai looked at her prosthetic. It was dead, the power drained. The inflammation around the port had receded significantly, the flesh turning from angry red to a bruised purple. The Neuro-Stabilizers were holding the line.
"I have food," Kai said. He pulled the nutrient paste and a bottle of filtered water he'd snagged from a dead scavenger's stash on the way back. "And I found something better."
He didn't tell her about the power cell he ate. He didn't tell her about the Glitch-Walkers or the fight. Not yet.
Rin took the paste and water, eating with the desperate speed of the starving.
Kai watched her, his System vision analyzing her vitals.
[ SUBJECT: RIN ][ STATUS: STABLE / MALNOURISHED ][ NEURAL INTERFACE: OFFLINE (POWER CRITICAL) ][ REJECTION SYNDROME: SUPPRESSED (48 HOURS REMAINING) ]
Two days. The medicine bought them time, but it didn't solve the problem. As Cipher had said, she needed a firmware update. Or a new body.
"We're safe here," Kai said, standing up. He looked around the cavernous room. "For now. But we can't live in the dark."
< CORRECT. > Cipher's voice cut in. < A SERVER FARM REQUIRES POWER. COOLING. MAINTENANCE. AND YOU, HOST, REQUIRE A WORKBENCH. THAT TOY YOU CALL A WEAPON IS FALLING APART. >
Kai pulled the Plasma-Arc Rod from his belt. Cipher was right. The insulation tape was charred and peeling from the heat of the plasma. The copper wiring was fused in places. It had served its purpose, but it was a jury-rigged piece of junk.
"I need to fix this," Kai muttered. "And I need to fix the room."
He walked to the center of the bunker, where the dust was thickest.
"Decompile," he thought.
He didn't activate it on an object this time. He activated it on the environment.
He reached out with his Qi, expanding his field of influence. He visualized the dust, the grime, the debris scattered across the floor.
[ TARGET: PARTICULATE MATTER / SCRAP ][ EXECUTING: CLEANUP_PROTOCOL.EXE ]
A wave of invisible energy rippled out from his feet.
It wasn't a wind. It was a dissolution field.
The dust didn't blow away; it simply... unmade itself. The molecular bonds holding the dirt together snapped. The debris broke down into its constituent atoms—carbon, silicon, iron—and then, guided by Kai's will, settled into neat, separated piles of raw material.
In seconds, a ten-meter circle around him was pristine. The metal floor shone as if it had been polished.
Rin gasped, hearing the strange hiss-fizz sound of the matter separating. "Kai? What's happening?"
"Just cleaning up," Kai said calmly.
He looked at the piles of raw material. A pile of gray silicon dust. A pile of iron flakes. A small mound of carbon.
< BASIC MATERIALS. > Cipher sniffed. < USEFUL FOR BASICS. BUT IF YOU WANT TO CRAFT, YOU NEED BETTER COMPONENTS. STRIP THE DEAD SERVERS. >
Kai turned to the rows of silent black monoliths. He felt a pang of hesitation. These were relics of the Old World. Destroying them felt like burning books.
< THEY ARE DEAD, KAI. THEIR DATA IS CORRUPTED OR GONE. THE ONLY VALUE THEY HAVE NOW IS THE GOLD ON THEIR CIRCUIT BOARDS AND THE STEEL IN THEIR FRAMES. RECYCLE THEM. >
Kai nodded. He approached the nearest dead rack.
He placed his hand on the cold metal casing.
[ OBJECT: SERVER RACK (NON-FUNCTIONAL) ][ COMPOSITION: HIGH-GRADE STEEL / COPPER / GOLD / RARE EARTH MAGNETS ][ DECOMPILE? (Y/N) ]
"Yes."
He pushed his Qi into the machine.
This was harder than the concrete or the dust. The metal resisted. It had structure, density.
Kai gritted his teeth. The vortex in his Dantian spun, drawing on the vast reserves of the Shuttle Cell he had consumed.
Blue light flared around his hand.
The server rack didn't explode. It unraveled.
The metal casing turned to liquid, then to dust, separating into streams of iron filings. The circuit boards inside dissolved, the gold traces floating into the air like golden dust, swirling into a small, dense sphere. The plastic casing vaporized into carbon.
In ten seconds, the massive machine was gone. In its place sat several piles of resources.
[ RESOURCES ACQUIRED: ][ > REFINED STEEL: 40 KG ][ > COPPER: 5 KG ][ > GOLD: 0.2 KG ][ > SILICON WAFER: 2 KG ]
Kai stared at his hands. He felt a strange exhaustion—not physical, but mental. Decompiling complex structures took focus.
But the result...
He picked up a pinch of the gold dust. It was pure. 24 karat. In the Upper Ring, this would be worth a fortune. Here, it was just a conductor.
"Now," Kai said, turning back to his crude weapon. "We build."
The next three hours were a blur of creation.
Kai sat cross-legged in his clean circle, surrounded by his piles of resources. He didn't have a forge. He didn't have tools.
He didn't need them.
He used the Entropy Sutra to manipulate the materials directly. He floated the steel filings in the air, heating them with his Qi until they glowed red, then fusing them together layer by layer. It was like 3D printing with his mind.
He stripped the Plasma-Arc Rod down to its core components—the battery and the lens. He discarded the tungsten rod.
He crafted a new casing. Sleek, matte-black steel, reinforced with carbon fiber he synthesized from the waste. He wove the gold and copper into internal circuitry, far more efficient than the external wires he had used before.
He integrated the laser emitter properly this time, aligning the lens with microscopic precision.
When he was finished, the weapon looked like something a corporate assassin would carry. It was a baton, half a meter long, dark and deadly.
[ ITEM CRAFTED: ARC-BLADE (TIER 2) ][ QUALITY: SUPERIOR ][ ATTRIBUTES: PLASMA EDGE / SHOCK DISCHARGE / DURABILITY UP ][ SOUL-BOUND: USER KAI ]
Kai gripped it. It hummed, a sound barely on the edge of hearing. He thumbed the activation stud.
SNAP.
A beam of pure, stable blue plasma extended half a meter from the tip. It didn't flicker. It didn't hiss. It was a solid bar of destruction.
"Kai?" Rin called out softly. She was sitting up, hugging her knees. "The air... it feels static. Like a storm."
"I finished it," Kai said, powering down the blade. He walked over to her. "I made something else, too."
He reached into his pile of crafted items and pulled out a small, flat disk made of copper and silicon.
"Give me your hand," he said.
Rin extended her flesh hand. Kai placed the disk in her palm.
"What is it?"
"It's a heater," Kai said. "A thermal emitter. I used the copper from the servers. You press the center, and it generates heat. No flame. It runs on..." He hesitated. He had charged it with his own Qi. "...a battery."
Rin pressed the center. The disk warmed instantly, glowing a soft, comforting orange. She smiled, clutching it to her chest.
"It's warm," she whispered. "Thank you."
Kai felt a warmth in his own chest that had nothing to do with Qi.
< TOUCHING. > Cipher drawled. < NOW THAT DOMESTIC BLISS IS ESTABLISHED, CAN WE ADDRESS THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM? >
"What elephant?"
< THE NETWORK. YOU PLUGGED ONE SERVER BACK IN. YOU DIDN'T CHECK WHAT IT WAS CONNECTED TO. >
Kai frowned. He looked at the single active server rack in the distance, the one with the blinking green light.
"It's offline," Kai said. "This sector is dead."
< THE PHYSICAL CONNECTION IS DEAD. BUT THE WIRELESS PROTOCOLS... THE ETHERNET OF THE ANCIENTS... IT NEVER REALLY SLEEPS. >
Kai stood up, the Arc-Blade in his hand. "Show me."
He walked to the active console.
[ SYSTEM STATUS: STANDBY ][ LOCAL NETWORK: ACTIVE ][ WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED CONNECTION ATTEMPT DETECTED ]
Kai's eyes narrowed. "Unauthorized connection?"
< SOMEONE IS PINGING US. OR... SOMETHING. >
Suddenly, the screen on the console flared to life. The amber text scrambled, resolving into a jagged waveform.
A sound filled the room. Not from the console speakers—they had rotted away years ago—but from the air itself, vibrating against Kai's eardrums.
It was a voice. But it wasn't human. It sounded like a choir of broken hard drives screaming in harmony.
"...query... location... integrity... check..."
The voice was faint, ghostly.
Rin covered her ears. "Kai! What is that sound?"
"Cipher, block it!" Kai commanded.
< I CAN'T. IT'S NOT A SIGNAL. IT'S A DAEMON. >
[ THREAT DETECTED: DIGITAL ENTITY (CLASS: SPECTER) ][ ORIGIN: THE DEEP WEB ]
The shadows in the corners of the room began to lengthen. The dust that Kai hadn't decompiled began to swirl, rising up into a funnel.
It coalesced into a shape. A humanoid figure made of static and dust, hovering a foot off the ground. It had no face, only a swirling vortex of code where a head should be.
It reached out a hand towards the active server.
"...data... mine..." the voice hissed.
A Daemon.
In the stories the Glitch-Walkers told, Daemons were the ghosts of the old world—corrupted AIs, fragmented consciousness uploads that had gone mad in the dark. They lived in the Deep Web, the layers of the Heaven Server that the Sect couldn't scrub.
And Kai had just lit a beacon in their house.
[ ENEMY: DATA-WRAITH ][ IMMUNITY: PHYSICAL DAMAGE ][ WEAKNESS: LOGIC DISRUPTION / QI DISRUPTION ]
The wraith lunged. Not at Kai. At the console. It wanted the drive.
"No," Kai snarled.
He stepped between the wraith and the server. He swung the Arc-Blade.
SLASH.
The plasma blade passed through the dust-form. It didn't cut it physically, but the intense energy field disrupted the cohesion of the static.
The wraith shrieked—a sound of corrupted audio files. It recoiled, its form flickering.
"...admin... access... denied..."
It lashed out. A tendril of gray static whipped toward Kai.
Kai raised his left hand.
[ SKILL: STATIC FIELD ]
He pushed his Qi out, creating a barrier of dense air.
The tendril hit the field and shattered into harmless sparks.
"You want data?" Kai yelled. "Process this."
He dropped the blade and grabbed the wraith with both hands.
He didn't try to hit it. He tried to hack it.
[ INITIATING: DECOMPILE ]
He poured his will into the entity. He didn't try to break it down into atoms; he tried to break it down into bits.
The red text of the Entropy Sutra clashed with the purple code of the wraith.
[ PARSING ENTITY... ][ ENCRYPTION: ANCIENT ][ BRUTE FORCE ATTACK... ]
The wraith screamed. Its form began to unravel, turning into streams of binary code that swirled around Kai.
He felt a rush of memories that weren't his own. Images flashed in his mind—a city of white towers, a sky without a dome, a sun that was real.
The Old World.
Then, the wraith shattered.
It exploded into a pulse of pure information. Kai absorbed it. He couldn't stop himself. The Entropy Sutra was a vacuum.
[ DATA ABSORPTION COMPLETE ][ MEMORY FRAGMENT ACQUIRED: "THE SKYLIGHT PROTOCOL" ][ QI RESTORED: +5% ]
Kai stumbled back, gasping. The room fell silent. The dust settled.
The server console beeped once, then went dark.
"Kai?" Rin's voice was terrified.
"I'm okay," Kai said, though his head was spinning. "It's gone."
He looked at his hands. They were trembling.
He had just eaten a ghost.
< THAT... WAS UNPLEASANT. > Cipher sounded shaken. < BUT INFORMATIVE. THAT WASN'T A RANDOM WRAITH. IT WAS A SENTRY. >
"A sentry?"
< IT WAS GUARDING SOMETHING. OR HUNTING SOMETHING. >
Cipher paused.
< KAI. THE MEMORY YOU ABSORBED. "THE SKYLIGHT PROTOCOL." I ANALYZED THE METADATA. IT'S A MAP. >
"A map to what?"
< A WAY OUT. A WAY TO OPEN THE ROOF OF THE DYSON SWARM. >
Kai looked up at the dark, metal ceiling of the bunker. Somewhere, kilometers above that, was the shell of the world. And beyond that... the stars.
"The Skylight," Kai whispered.
The door to the bunker rattled.
Not a knock. A scratch.
Kai spun around, raising the Arc-Blade.
"Kai," Rin said, her voice trembling. "There's someone outside."
[ PACKET SNIFFER: ACTIVE ][ SIGNATURE DETECTED: MULTIPLE ][ TYPE: UNKNOWN ]
They weren't alone in the Dead Sector anymore. The beacon had attracted moths.
And in the Sump, the moths had teeth.