Back in the subterranean sanctuary, we were still taking in the news. my attention fixed on the chilling truth revealed by the lunar video.
"The Lunar Cry is a massive migration," Felicity stated, her voice echoing the terrifying reality of the beast swarm. I turned my gaze from the panoramic view of the collapsing tower footage replays from the news feed on the monitor to Marla who was walking the perimeter of the gutter nest on guard duty.
Marla and Koba were now fully powered, and completely restored, yet utterly subservient to the Obedient Discs. They remained frozen in their postures of submission.
I gripped the control rod feeding it a few wisps of psychic energy, just then Herja spoke up, "We can use the features of the control rod to actively syphon Marla's and Kobas orgone levels to accelerate our own cultivation level."
I couldn't lie. I felt a surge temptation. The potential energy—the power of two Genome Beasts being integrated into Herjas core—but I thought twice."No.no, I need my troops at peak fighting performance. If anything, I should focus on making them even stronger." I let my mind drift, lost in battle plans and strategic moves. Then I snapped back to the present. "Marla, how long do we have?" I commanded, my voice cold and absolute. "Translate that video. Give me CENO's strategic assessment of the incoming Lunar Cry threat. Everything you know."
Marla's head slowly rose. Her eyes, filled with hate but devoid of choice, locked onto the image of the lunar swarm.
"The swarm is estimated to reach Earth's orbit within 72 hours," Marla stated in a flat, clinical tone. "CENO's research indicated the only viable counter-strategy is the activation of the orbiting Cryo-Geo Containment Proton Array. Without that activation, all surface life will be overwhelmed and consumed within one solar cycle."
I gripped the Control Rod tighter, the fate of the world resting on this terrible truth. I looked at Felicity, who was taking in the news.
I turned my full focus back to Aegis Node 7. The existential dread of the Lunar Cry—a vast, mobile swarm of extinction—demanded immediate answers beyond CENO's simple strategy of hiding. I channeled my consciousness into the node, letting my mind swim through the ancient, advanced data the artifact contained. The Bonekin Engine file, first glimpsed during my first interaction with the A.I, glowed faintly in the data stream. I believed that perhaps this piece of advanced technology from the ancients could offer some help, or a vital clue.
I opened the 'Bonekin Engine' file. I sought solutions, and the AI answered in a violent, dazzling torrent of images and sensations.
I felt Brood mothers Zerask's long-dormant ambition, a vision for a new kind of world that transcended mere survival.
The truth of the Bonekin Engine slammed into my mind. It was a weapon, and a shield. It was a siege cannon terraformer. A colossal, living vacuum-weapon, designed to convert existing bio-mass into something else entirely—a "flesh pit." The visuals were overwhelming: the subterranean earth ripped open, organic matter fusing with soil and stone, creating a vast, undulating landscape forged from the primal essence of the Beast Vein itself. This biome, this living landscape, would be a complete, seamless extension of my will—a world I could command and control with a mere thought. A sanctuary utterly inhospitable to anything that was not of my command.
My heart hammered against my ribs, both terrified and exhilarated. This was more than power. It was godhood. A terrifying, absolute power to rewrite the world, offering salvation from the Lunar Cry by transforming the planet into a living fortress—my fortress.
The detailed schematics that flooded my mind were breathtaking and terrifying. But the sheer scale of the terraforming was horrific. To create my sanctuary, I would have to consume vast swaths of bio-matter. ''Perhaps the bio-mass of these lunar beast will suffice" I thought to myself. The Bonekin Engine offered a path to ultimate power and protection, but if I wasn't careful it could actually cost me the humanity I was technically still bound to save. The decision was crushing. The Lunar Cry forced my hand toward this terrible, magnificent power.
But the file was riddled with warnings and requirements. ' ' In deployment, the Bonekin Engine inhales available biomass to then deploy a kilometer-scale rhizome of iridescent, self-regenerating tendrils, burrowing into planetary crust to tap the Will of Beast Vein. Once interfaced with via neuron crowns, the user is amplified with intent essence, triggering exothermic bio-reactions that rewrite atmospheres and seed megafauna progenitors. Warning: Uncalibrated links risk Vein rage. ' '
Aegis 7 A.I pulsed with immense, cold intelligence, flowing the activation requirements directly into my mind through the multi-eyed node. The schematic of the Bonekin Engine was functionally complete, but I lacked the crucial components needed to construct its colossal power. I also needed to sync the living weapon with the primal energies of the beast vein to prevent a catastrophic systemic failure during terraforming fire.
I had all of the rare materials needed for the Bonekin Engine, except for one component that required two unique items.
The file specified the completion of the Engine's primary conduit, the Harmonic Resonance Anchor, which required two distinct and immensely powerful modules.
The first was the ''Quantum-Chrono-Orb.'' Its functioned as temporal regulator required to stabilize and localize the Engine gun's immense time/space vacuum effect. I channeled the Bonekin Engine schematics through the Aegis Node 7, cross-referencing the required components with the known data matrix of the Subterranean World.
Bonekin Engine: ''Localized Requirements...searching''
Aegis located the item within the 5th-Level Descent, ''Location: Level 5-6: Ex-Chronos labs, a.k.a Rot bone labs level.''
And the second item would serve as the power source, a primal Zohar crystal. That would need to be refined so that it could store and multiple energy. Aegis located a vein of raw primal Zohar crystals on level 9.
Resourcing these exotic ingredients was the Immediate Plan for the next 72-Hour Countdown.
I gripped the Control Rod, my gaze hard. My team was ready, my enemies were subservient, and the clock was ticking. "Marla, you know the Rot bone labs level better than anyone. Felicity, your cyber eye can help with any tech. We hit Level 5 first. Get the Chrono-Orb."
"Koba," I continued, turning to the massive War Beetle. "You will guard the Gutter Nest. If any uninvited guests arrive, you punch their tickets for them."
The two subservient beasts acknowledged the orders with cold compliance.
My eyes met Felicity's. "We move now. The Bonekin Engine is the only chance we have, and we're starting by raiding CENO's own haunted graveyard."
Felicity's cybernetic eye whirred softly, its iris contracting like a predator sizing up the hunt. She nodded, her lips curling into that familiar half-smirk—equal parts thrill and terror. "Raiding CENO's ghost town? Sounds like a date from hell. Lead on, boss. Just don't expect me to hold your hand if the dead start whispering."
We descended upon the Hand into the Gutter Nest's underbelly, the air thickening with the metallic tang of rust and forgotten ozone. The subterranean sanctuary's veins—those glowing conduits of primal essence—pulsed faintly under our bare beast feet, as if the Beast Vein itself sensed the storm brewing above. Marla moved like a shadow at the Hands flank, her Genome Beast form a gliding on the pressure currents released from her black bat wings. Her vipers writhed in restrained fury, a testament to the Obedient Disc's iron grip. No words from her, just the low hum of suppressed rage vibrating through her armored hide.
We reached level 5 where Felicitys cybernetic eye scanned the walls for the abandoned elevator access to the lab level. Her eye flashed the moment it detected the access point. I commanded the hand to dig away the debris and false wall that sealed the elevator point. We dismounted the Hand, I turned back to it "If anything goes south, I'll tap you. wait here, okay." The Hand dropped down like a puppy and wagged its wrist in the air. I inspected the elevator access point. I pushed the button and there was an audible ''Ding.''
Me, Marla and felicity crammed inside the somewhat cramped elevator. "Keep your snakes off me Marla" I hissed, as the little suckers creeped me out, and even killed me on our first encounter. I didn't bare them any good feelings at all. Marla turned away, her greenish blueish face flushed pink '''Yes Master Ash!" she scooted up as tight as she could against the far wall of the cramped elevator. It was an especially tight fit because of her and felicity's wings, I thought to myself.
The elevator to Level 5 was a relic of Ceno: a groaning cage of perforated steel that rattled us down from level 5C-c through layers of compacted earth and derelict machinery. Felicity hacked the descent protocols mid-drop, her fingers dancing over a jury-rigged data pad, bypassing CENO's residual security ghosts. "Old-school firewalls," she muttered. "Like trying to crack a caveman's safe. We're in."
The doors hissed open to a corridor straight out of a fever dream—Ex-Chronos Labs, CENO's aborted playground for time-bending research. Flickering holos projected fragmented timelines on the walls: spectral echoes of lab techs frozen mid-scream, their bodies unraveling into chronal threads like unraveling yarn. The air hummed with dissonance, a low-frequency whine that clawed at the edges of my sanity, making the past bleed into the now. I could almost taste the Chrono-Orbs promise—a shimmering orb of stabilized entropy, buried in the heart of this temporal mausoleum.
"Stay sharp," I whispered, Control Rod humming in my grip, its neural link feeding me faint pings from Marla's coerced senses. "Marla, you're on point. Sniff out traps or danger."
She prowled forward, her nostrils flaring, her vipers scanning the room with a faint green light. The labs sprawled like a mad surgeon's operating theater: dissection tables etched with fractal burns, vials of suspended moments that shattered at our approach, releasing bursts of inverted gravity that flung debris upward in lazy defiance of physics.
Felicity's cyber eye scanned the chaos, overlaying Aegis-sourced schematics in her HUD. "The quantum chrono orb is in the core chamber, sub-level 6. But we've got company—residual chronal anomalies. Think time-looped security drones. They'll repeat the same kill patterns forever unless we disrupt the anchor points."
A skittering echoed from the vents—three insectoid sentinels came skittering out, their chassis made of bug chitin and blades. They lunged in perfect timing, slash, pivot, thrust, reset.
Marla exploded into motion, a blur of obsidian scales and venomous fury. She intercepted the lead drone mid-slash, her vipers shot forward, jaws enlarging wider than they had a right to! The vipers jaw clamped its midsection with a screech of tearing alloy. Sparks flew as she hurled it into the wall, the impact rippling the air like a stone in a pond—time stuttered, the drone's halves reforming briefly before the loop snapped. But the other two adapted, their blades penetrating through her guard, nicking her flank with acid edged blades that burned like bad memories.
Felicity slapped a pulse mine onto the nearest anchor glyph—a glowing rune pulsing on the ceiling—and thumbed the remote detonator. A shockwave of pressure erupted, throwing and vaporizing incoming waves of insectoid sentinels, they're bodies collapsing into piles of scrap, another incoming wave glitched, Marla's tail whipped through there cores, and her vipers sent out jagged arcs of green lasers slicing through the remaining wave, ending the encounter.
I waved my ringed hand over the scraps focusing my psychic energy into it, with a whoosh I swooped up the bio-scraps with the inventory ring relic.
We pressed on, the corridor narrowing into a vein of exposed cabling that wept coolant fluid like blood. The core chamber loomed—a domed vault ringed by concentric rings of chronal stabilizers, their fields warping the light into prismatic tears. At the center, suspended in a stasis web was the Quantum Chrono-orb. It was a fist-sized technological quantum processor filled with mercury, veined with fractal lightning, thrumming with radio waves and space time essence.
''Touch it wrong, and you'll age to dust. Or be pulled through the event horizon of a black hole.''
Marla circled it warily, her eyes—those hateful crimson pools—flicked to me for the command she couldn't refuse. "Secure it," I ordered, steadying my pulse against the Rod's insistent throb. Temptation gnawed at me again and the rod seemed to speak to me ''siphon her now!'' ''boost your cultivation!'' ''Feed me.'' I found myself arguing back against the voice of the rod, ''No. no, she's needed. Peak performance. Always.'' After that the voice went away.
She extended a claw, precise as a scalpel, severing the web's primary filament. The Quantum Chrono-Orb dropped into her palm. Marla exhaled, grasping the chrono-orb. "Got it. Feels heavier than it should—must be because it's so full of time."
I took the Chrono-Orb from Marla's unresisting claw; As I took it into my hand I too was surprised by its deceptive appearance. Its weight did indeed not match its small size.
''One piece down. But the vein of raw primal Zohar crystal on Level 9 awaited—a deeper plunge into the abyss, where the Beast Vein's roots meet the gates of the inner earth.
"Back to the Nest," I said, voice like grinding stone. " We regroup, then we head to level 9, to snag a primal Zohar crystal to refine. Koba is holding the line. And Marla... report any anomalies in the ascent. We can't afford any thing following us back."
As we retraced our steps, the labs' ghosts whispered fading laments. The Bonekin Engine stirred in my mind's eye, its hunger growing. Godhood called, but so did the fragile thread of humanity. I'd weave them both—or burn trying.