Volume 2, Chapter 28: The Catacomb Hunt
Lakan lay in his temporary bed in the academy dorms, staring at the ceiling.
He flipped his pillow over for the third time. It was too warm. He hated warm pillows. As the supreme God of this world, he could have simply commanded the fabric to stay cool, but that felt like cheating for something so small. So he just sighed and settled for the slightly less warm side.
Far below, deep beneath the earth of the Capital, he could feel a cold knot tightening in the dark. A lifeless grey presence was slowly spreading.
"Should I go down there?" he whispered to the empty room.
He pictured getting out of bed, putting his boots back on, and walking down endless flights of concrete stairs. He pictured the damp smell of the catacombs.
"Nah," Lakan decided, pulling the blanket up to his chin. "Builds character. Let the Paladin and the weird kid sort it out."
He closed his eyes, trusting the seeds he had planted to do their job.
•••••
The east stairwell was a narrow, winding shaft that smelled like old copper and stagnant water. The only light came from the glowing numbers painted on the walls, counting down the sub-levels.
Level B-6. B-7. B-8.
Yuhao walked in front. He had the collar of his jacket pulled up tight. The cold metal zipper rubbed against his chin, a small annoyance that helped keep him grounded. Behind him, Ye Guyi walked with stiff, precise steps.
She was trying very hard not to glow.
As a Leaf of the Angel, her natural state was to radiate light. Right now, she was forcing her soul power inward, suppressing the La marking. It made her skin look pale and almost sickly, and she was clearly miserable.
"How much further?" she whispered.
"I don't know," Yuhao replied softly. He tapped his forehead. The Gaze of Openings was active.
To him, the dark stairwell wasn't black. It was a wire-frame sketch of intersecting lines of energy. And painting the center of those lines was a thick, smeared trail of lifeless grey. It looked like someone had dragged something dead and ashen down the steps.
"The draining force is getting stronger," Yuhao said, wincing.
A dull throb started right behind his eyes. It felt like a bad sinus headache. The Third Eye was designed to read the movement of energy, but staring directly into that lifeless grey was like staring at the sun. It hurt.
"Are you alright?" Guyi asked, noticing him stumble slightly on a loose brick.
"Fine. Just a headache."
"Don't lie. Your breathing is shallow," she said. She reached out and touched his shoulder. A tiny spark of golden warmth passed from her glove into his muscles. It eased the chill in his blood, just a fraction. "Pace yourself. If your eye burns out, we are blind down here."
Yuhao nodded. He used the Eight-Cycle Breath Yan Shaozhe had taught them. He pushed the Crystalline Vessel energy up into his skull, reinforcing the blood vessels around his Third Eye to handle the pressure.
••••••
They reached the bottom of the stairs. Level B-12.
A heavy iron door hung open, its hinges completely eaten away by the grey decay. Beyond it lay a massive, unmapped cavern. This was the old foundation of the city, long forgotten by the modern Federation.
Why did the bad guys always build their worst things in the dampest, smelliest basements?
They slipped through the doorway.
Yuhao pressed his back against the cold stone wall and peered into the gloom. The headache flared into a sharp, stabbing pain that made his teeth ache. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, fighting down a wave of nausea.
"We found it," he breathed.
"I can't see anything," Guyi muttered, straining her eyes in the pitch black.
"Take my hand," Yuhao said.
She hesitated, then gripped his fingers. Her hand was surprisingly warm and calloused from years of sword training.
Yuhao channeled a tiny thread of his All-Seeing Library into her palm, sharing his vision.
Guyi gasped.
The cavern lit up in a terrifying wire-frame display. In the center of the massive room stood a tower of iron, glass, and heavy copper coils. It was a large energy jammer, easily ten times bigger than the ones the Copper-Grid team had used.
And it wasn't powered by steam or crystals. It was powered by the grey decay. Thick, ashen vines of Wilted Grass crawled up its metal legs, feeding pure lifelessness into the machine's core.
Around the base of the tower moved dozens of figures.
"Who are they?" Guyi whispered, her grip tightening on his hand.
"Puppets," Yuhao said.
They were Sun-Moon technicians. They still wore their dark red and silver jumpsuits. But their movements were jerky, like poorly made dolls. Their eyes were milky white and completely dead. The grey decay had eaten their internal stream of soul power, replacing their free will with a single, repeating command.
Build the silence.
"They're preparing to turn it on," Guyi realized, her voice tight with horror. "If that machine pulses, it won't just scramble our skills. It will cast a heavy blackout over the entire stadium. The Phoenix's laws won't work in the arena. It will be a slaughterhouse."
"We need to break the core," Yuhao said. He pointed to a large, glowing grey crystal suspended in the center of the tower. "But we can't fight them all at once. My head is already spinning just looking at this place. We have to sneak past the workers."
They moved deeper into the cavern.
Yuhao led the way, stepping carefully over loose cables and rusted pipes. He used the Gaze of Openings to read the patrol patterns of the puppets.
Because the puppets had no real minds, they moved in predictable loops. They were machines made of meat.
"Wait," Yuhao whispered, pulling Guyi behind a stack of wooden crates.
Two technicians shuffled past, carrying a heavy spool of copper wire. Their faces were blank, their mouths hanging slightly open. The smell of rotting leaves followed them.
Once they passed, Yuhao and Guyi darted to the next piece of cover. They were getting closer. The headache in Yuhao's skull was a constant, blinding drumbeat now. He tasted copper in his mouth. He was bleeding from the nose, a thin red line trickling down to his lip.
He wiped it away before Guyi could see.
They reached the base of the iron tower. The core hung twenty feet above them, suspended by a web of grey grass and thick chains.
"I can jump that," Guyi said very quietly. "If I ignite the La marking right now, I can shatter that crystal in one strike."
"Do it," Yuhao said. He leaned heavily against the metal leg of the tower, feeling his vision blur. "I'll cover you."
Guyi bent her knees, gathering her compressed soul power. The air around her began to hum with a suppressed, violent light.
And then, a tiny detail ruined everything.
Underneath Yuhao's boot, a patch of the grey Wilted Grass wasn't just dead material. It was a sensory nerve. As Yuhao shifted his weight, the grass crunched.
It was a tiny sound. But in a room built on absolute silence, it was a thunderclap.
The cavern froze.
Every single puppet stopped working. They dropped their tools. They turned their heads in perfect, horrifying unison. Fifty pairs of milky white eyes locked onto the spot where Yuhao and Guyi were hiding.
"They see us," Yuhao coughed, the pain in his head peaking.
"Change of plans," Guyi said. Her voice lost its fear. It became the cold, ringing command of a Paladin.
She let go of her restraint.
A blinding, explosive wave of golden light erupted from her body. The sheer force of the La marking shattered the darkness of the cavern. The shadows screamed as they were burned away. A massive, single Seraphim wing materialized behind her, casting a brilliant glow over the rusted iron and grey grass.
The puppets opened their mouths and let out a collective, soundless shriek. They surged forward like a swarm of angry ants.
"Go for the core!" Yuhao yelled over the hum of her light.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't have one. He stepped in front of Guyi, squaring his stance. He activated the Crystalline Vessel. His skin took on a hard, translucent sheen.
The first puppet leaped at him, swinging a heavy iron wrench.
Yuhao didn't dodge. He caught the wrench with his bare hand. The metal hit his palm with a dull thud, stopped entirely by his refined flesh. He twisted his wrist, applying an Agaw grappling technique. He threw the puppet into two others, knocking them into a pile of steel beams.
Guyi didn't waste the opening. She launched herself into the air, her golden sword materializing in her.
"Awit ng Bukang-liwayway!(The Song of the Dawn)" she chanted
She swung the blade of pure light at the grey crystal core.
But Chen Feng wasn't stupid. He hadn't left his masterwork undefended. As Guyi's sword neared the crystal, the grey grass wrapped around the tower suddenly lashed out. The vines thickened, forming a solid wall of lifeless grey right in front of the core.
Guyi's sword hit the wall.
Hiss.
The light didn't cut through. It sparked and sputtered, caught in a deadlock against the pure, suffocating silence of the Wilted Grass. Guyi hung in the air, pushing with all her might, her face contorted in effort as the grey decay began to creep slowly up the blade of her sword.
Down below, Yuhao was surrounded.
The puppets were slow, but there were too many of them. They didn't feel pain. One grabbed his jacket; Yuhao broke its arm with a sharp palm strike, but the puppet just kept coming, using its good arm to claw at his face.
Yuhao's Third Eye was screaming. He saw the movement of energy in the room. Guyi was losing the deadlock. If that lifeless grey reached her hand, it would infect her entirely.
"I have to find the gap," Yuhao grunted, throwing a puppet off his back.
He looked up at the wall of grey grass blocking Guyi. It was thick. It was terrifying. But it was still a system. And every system had a flaw.
Blood dripped steadily from Yuhao's nose as he forced the Eye past its limit.
End of Volume 2, Chapter 28