When the vacuum compression bomb detonated on the outer shell of the clock tower, there was no deafening roar, but rather an extremely oppressive suction that could make one's soul leave their body.
In a fraction of a second, all the air was stripped away and the etheric energy within a one-kilometre radius collapsed entirely. The petrified labourers who had been wandering and wailing in the waste pool didn't even have time to utter a final cry before their bodies exploded due to the imbalance of internal and external pressure, turning into clumps of withered grey dust. "Quick! Get into the isolation chamber!'
Cyrus's voice sounded fragmented in the empty clock tower as he abruptly pulled a brass lever beside him. The dense array of gears inside the clock tower began to mesh in reverse at high speed. At the last moment, a semi-transparent etheric shield with ancient geometric patterns enveloped the three of them.
Aaryan knelt on the ground, gripping the cold metal floor tightly with her hands, her lungs burning. He felt an excruciating pain as if his spiritual energy was being drained from every cell in his body — a pain far worse than the burning sensation from the suppression bracelet.
However, something far more terrifying than suffocation was unfolding.
With the detonation of the vacuum bomb, the previously balanced structure of the underground cavity shattered and countless spiderweb-like cracks spread rapidly along the walls. Primal, concentrated ether, originally buried deep within the Earth's crust and considered 'waste' by the Holy Blood Council, was now gushing forth from the cracks like highly toxic magma.
This ether was neither a pure purple-gold nor a blue-white produced through industrial processing; instead, it was an intensely malevolent, nauseating deep purple fluorescence.
'That's... "Etheric Plague"?' Pau leaned against the bulkhead. The shockwave had destroyed his prosthetic arm, scattering gears everywhere. He stared in horror out of the window. Wherever the surging purple mist passed, all organic matter was mutating.
The remains of the labourers, reduced to dust, reformed upon contact with the mist like iron filings drawn to a magnet, sprouting twisted, crystalline limbs that resembled sharp blades. 'Vane isn't trying to kill us,' Cyrus said, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his blindfold. His hand trembled as he pointed to the star map. 'He's using this vacuum bomb as a "screwdriver" to pry open the final gate to the top floor of the laboratory.'
Aaryan looked in the direction Cyrus was pointing.
Directly above the clock tower, a massive breach had been blasted open in the once impenetrable barrier, revealing the deepest secret that the Maya District had kept hidden for the past three years.
A giant petri dish surrounded by countless transparent tubes.
Immersed in the petri dish was not a living being, but a pair of enormous golden wings pierced by countless chains and still slowly fluttering.
The wings were enormous, nearly filling half the laboratory space. Each feather seemed to be crafted from the purest crystal and radiated an indomitable brilliance within the purple plague mist.
They were the remains of Aaryan's father.
'Father...'
Aaryan's mind went blank. A destructive killing intent, suppressed for three years, instantly shattered the last shred of his reason. His purple-gold bloodline, sensing the feathers, disregarded the restraints of his bracelet and began to frantically refine the surrounding poisonous purple mist.
'Accept it.' The inner voice sounded grander and more sacred than ever before. 'These so-called plagues are nothing but "divine power" that the lowly cannot withstand. You are the King of the Celestial Veins, and all ether should obey your command, even the rotten ones. Aaryan! Do not be devoured by it!' Cyrus tried desperately to stop him, but was repelled by the violent aura emanating from Aaryan.
Aaryan's body began to undergo astonishing changes.
The fragment of the badge on his chest, imprinted under the purple mist, began to grow as if it were alive. Fine, translucent metallic lines spread along his ribs and integrated tightly with his nerves and blood vessels.
This was the 'refining' that Cyrus had mentioned.
It was no longer simply the cultivation of qi, but rather the forced fusion of the ancient secret techniques of the Celestial Vein Royal Family with the destructive power of the Industrial Age. His left pupil remained a deep black, while his right eye transformed into a pure, purplish-gold colour bearing the marks of a mechanical turntable.
'Click.' "
The suppression bracelet that had accompanied him for three years finally succumbed to the dual pressure from within and without. It shattered with a crisp crack, turning into countless flying brass fragments.
The restraints were released.
In that instant, Aaryan felt tearing fabric against his back and saw a pair of incomplete, dark red ethereal wings unfurling from his back.
'Dahlia's up there. She's waiting for me to come and get her.'
Aaryan's voice was no longer that of the timid co-worker; every word carried the resounding clang of metal hitting the ground. He turned to Pau and Cyrus.
'Take your parts. We're going to smash this damned machine, along with the god on it, to pieces.' Just as the three of them were preparing to break through the breach and storm the upper-level laboratory, the horns of the steam patrol vehicles, which had previously been evacuated, sounded again.
But this time, it was accompanied by the chilling, dense thud of limbs colliding, like a torrential downpour.
'Experiments A-03 to A-100 released.' Vane's voice, tinged with twisted ecstasy, came from above. 'Before you see your father, Your Highness, greet your "people".'
Thousands upon thousands of mutated labourers, their eyes glowing blue and their bodies covered in purple crystal clusters, poured into the underground chamber like a tidal wave, tearing through the pipes and walls. They had completely lost their human form, transforming into 'bee soldiers' driven by the etheric plague.
What suffocated Aaryan most was that at the forefront of these 'bee soldiers' was a familiar figure.
It was the boy he had rescued yesterday.
He was now shirtless, with a huge, rapidly spinning steam core sewn into his chest. His azure eyes were empty yet fixed on Aaryan as he uttered a single word in a mechanical, grating voice:
'Save me...'
The air inside the cavity appeared to solidify into a purple gel. The boy — or rather, the 'experiment' once known as 'the boy' — approached with stiff steps. The massive steam core in his chest let out a sharp shriek with each rotation, spewing out thick, rusty smoke.
'Save... me...'
The boy's voice was broken, each word accompanied by a grating sound as the crystals rubbed together in his throat. Thick, fluorescent purple liquid streamed from the corners of his eyes — a sign that the Etheric Plague had taken complete control of his brain. "He's beyond saving, Aaryan!" Pau struggled to his feet and grabbed a broken driveshaft with one hand to use as a makeshift weapon. 'He's just a living bomb now. Vane is remotely manipulating his nerves through that core!'
Aaryan didn't speak. His heterochromatic eyes — one deep as an abyss, the other a fiery purple-gold — were fixed on the gears in the boy's chest. Amidst the violent mechanical whirring, he could hear an extremely subtle, hair-like singing voice transmitted through the vibrations of the air.
It was Dahlia's singing.
It was no longer the cold indifference of their reunion, but rather a mechanical vibrato distorted by some high-frequency device, like an invisible hand guiding the movements of thousands of mutated labourers.
"I see…" Aaryan murmured.
Vane wasn't just killing; he was conducting a grand 'frequency tuning'. He was using Dahlia's royal resonance as a conductor to transform these plague-infected labourers into a vast shared-consciousness computational network. The endpoint of this network was the enormous golden wings in the laboratory above.
'He's using the agony of thousands of souls to "activate" my father's remains.' "Kill me... please..."
The boy suddenly let out a piercing scream. His right arm shattered instantly. Purple crystal clusters erupted from his arm and transformed into a two-metre-long crystal spear. Carrying the force of a tornado, the spear pierced straight for Aaryan's heart.
Aaryan finally moved.
Instead of retreating, he charged towards the crystal spear. His ethereal wings flapped violently behind him as he unleashed a dark red flame filled with destructive power, rather than a gentle breeze.
'Royal Secret Technique – Heart Refining.'
Just as the spear was about to pierce the boy's chest, Aaryan pressed his right hand precisely onto the scorching steam core within the boy's chest. This caused the purple-gold bloodline within him to surge wildly. Through the fragment of the badge already embedded in his bone, he injected a highly condensed ethereal vibration into the core.
This wasn't destruction, but a forceful 'takeover'.
At that moment, Aaryan's consciousness crashed instantly into an ocean of countless cries of agony, despair and shattered memories — the last vestiges of tens of thousands of labourers before their annihilation.
'In the name of the Celestial Vein,' boomed Aaryan's voice like thunder in the sea of consciousness, 'return to your place!'
'Boom!'
A muffled thud resonated from the core in the boy's chest. The original azure light instantly transformed into a pure purple-gold. The core ceased screaming and instead emitted a steady, deep rhythm. The emptiness in the boy's eyes gradually disappeared, replaced by a clarity akin to a final, fleeting moment of lucidity.
'Thank you... brother.'
The boy's body began to disintegrate rapidly, transforming into countless shimmering rays of light that merged with the wings on Aaryan's back. Not only him, but the surrounding swarm of bees also seemed to lose its power source, ceasing its movements. The purple crystal clusters on their bodies began to peel away, revealing dried flesh beneath. "You… you purified the source plague?" Cyrus stared incredulously at the scene, as in his calculations this was an almost impossible event.
"No, I merely gave them the chance to be free." Aaryan turned his head; his right eye was completely covered in mechanical patterns that made him appear both sacred and eerie. 'Now it's the instigator's turn.'
He looked abruptly up at the massive opening at the top of the cavity.
Following the massive influx of energy, Aaryan's bloodline awakening had escalated to an incredibly terrifying level. He could feel Vane's rapid breathing in the laboratory above and sense the tremor behind Dahlia's singing.
"Catch!" Cyrus pulled out an extremely complex-looking component — a 'spacetime anchor' that he had spent ten years researching, and which was capable of temporarily shielding the gravitational pull of the '1969' singularity.
"Take this. Once you insert it into the control panel at the centre of those wings, the energy cycle of this entire laboratory will collapse completely."
Aaryan fastened the anchor to the hidden clasp at his waist, then looked at Pau and Cyrus. His eyes were filled with resolute trust. 'If I don't return, blow up this clock tower. Don't let these things spill onto the ground.'
'Enough with the nonsense, Your Highness.' Pau grinned, revealing a set of yellow teeth. 'I'm still waiting for you to return to the palace and be appointed to an official position.' The words had barely left his lips when a deafening bang resounded.
Aaryan leapt into the air.
He transformed into a dark red streak of light and rushed straight towards the crack. The instant he burst through the gap, he was shocked by the scene before him.
Within the vast space known as 'Laboratory Zero', countless transparent tubes filled with cerebrospinal fluid were plunged into the roots of his father's golden wings. Dahlia was locked in a spherical cage made of pure magic stone and had numerous slender probes connected to her temples, forcibly extracting her spiritual energy.
Vane stood before the wings, pounding frantically on the complex mechanical keyboard of the control panel.
'Look! What a perfect masterpiece!' Sensing Aaryan's arrival, Vane whirled around; his sapphire prosthetic eye emitted a distorted light. 'Just one more step. Just one more living, intact royal heart to inject and this "Aether Weapon" will activate. You've delivered yourself right to my doorstep!'
He pressed the red button on the control panel.
The entire laboratory floor began to sink and four enormous, terrifyingly imposing 'Judge-class' steam-powered armoured figures slowly rose from the shadows. Their weapons were no longer serrated blades, but spears of judgment formed from pure etheric energy. "Aaryan… go… quickly…" Dahlia weakly uttered a single word from inside the cage.
However, at that moment, Aaryan became completely calm. He slowly opened his arms, igniting the air in the entire laboratory with the dark red wings on his back.
'Vane,' Aaryan's voice resonated through the air. 'You've studied royal bloodlines for three years, yet you've never understood one thing: the power of a king is never meant to be imprisoned in gears.'
He took a sudden step forward and the special steel beneath his feet instantly shattered.
"It was born to crush gears."