In the dead of night in the Maya district, the acid rain had temporarily ceased and been replaced by a thick, metallic fog. The city's neon lights blurred in the fog, creating eerie patches of colour that resembled a broken electronic screen.
Deep within Cyrus's clock shop, which was piled high with old, worn-out spring-loaded parts and discarded ether circuits, the four of them sat around a yellowed holographic map for the first time.
'The "Soul Core" warehouse is ostensibly the Holy Blood Council's energy transfer station, but in reality it's where all the Demonic Aether is collected,' Cyrus said, pointing to a red flashing building in the centre of the map — a corner of the clock tower's annex. 'The ether concentration there has exceeded the critical point. If it gets out of control, the entire Maya district will be swept into the spacetime turbulence of 1969.'
Balthazar examined his dark red greatsword; the magical runes on its blade resonated with an angry groan. Since the battle in prison, he had become even more silent, and the killing intent in his eyes was almost tangible. 'We're going to rescue those colleagues who haven't been fully transformed into the Demon Race, even if they no longer recognise us.'
'Hey, don't be so lifeless.' Pau was stuffing the last homemade flashbang grenade into his mechanical arm. Although his hands were still trembling slightly, his tone remained flippant. 'I'm going there for the high-purity ether crystals. One crystal will be enough for me to live like a king in the Maya District for the rest of my life. Nobody can stop me from making a fortune.'
Looking at this group of people with their diverse personalities and backgrounds, Aaryan felt a strange emotion he had never experienced before rise in his heart. In 1969, royalty always acted alone, but now this fragile connection was his only support.
'The operation plan is simple,' said Aaryan in a low voice, a faint purple-gold light gleaming in his pupils. 'Pau will cut off the outer sensor network. Balthazar will breach the barrier head-on. Cyrus will search for the logical flaws in the energy centre. And I will suppress any potential "big guys" that may appear.'
They extinguished the only ethereal light and disappeared into the darkness. On the street, patrol robots' electronic eyes scanned the cold puddles, but failed to detect the four ghostly figures. The initial infiltration went smoothly, but when they entered the B3 section of the 'Soul Core' warehouse — the so-called 'cold storage' — the situation changed.
Instead of the heavy security they had imagined, there was a chilling silence: countless semi-transparent isolation chambers were neatly arranged, each containing their missing colleagues. Their bodies were forcibly connected to a complex piping system and their skin bore deep red patterns resembling circuit boards.
"Damn it…" Pau stared at the scene before him, nearly dropping the decoder in his hand. 'These aren't living people; they've been transformed into "bio-gateways".'
Just as Pau attempted to unlock the isolation pod, a red alarm suddenly lit up from the ceiling.
'Alarm! Unauthorised bloodline fluctuations detected. Execute protocol: Physical clean-up."
The heavy metal gate slammed shut, sealing them in the narrow corridor. Hidden compartments on both sides of the walls simultaneously opened and dozens of bizarrely shaped, spider-legged 'Ether Hunter' mechanical dogs leapt out. Instead of electronic lenses, their eyes were demonic eyeballs radiating a crazed red light.
"Face them to the front!" Balthazar roared, sweeping his greatsword across and instantly cleaving the first row of mechanical dogs into twisted scrap metal with his dark red sword energy. However, once destroyed, the condensed ether within the dogs caused them to rapidly self-destruct, generating a violent blue shockwave.
"Back off! These are human bombs!" Aaryan reached out and pulled the stunned Pau behind him. He spread his right hand and a hemispherical shield of purplish-gold divine light appeared, blocking the continuous blasts.
At the same time, a dense grinding sound came from the ventilation ducts at the top of the corridor. Cillian's second-in-command — the elite assassin of the Holy Blood Council known as "Shadow Dancer" — appeared with a group of cyborg assassins.
'Aaryan, Lord Malakor expected you,' Shadow Dancer's voice echoed in the empty warehouse.
Just as Pau attempted to unlock the isolation pod, a red alarm suddenly lit up from the ceiling.
'Alarm! Unauthorised bloodline fluctuations detected. Execute protocol: Physical clean-up."
The heavy metal gate slammed shut, sealing them in the narrow corridor. Hidden compartments on both sides of the walls simultaneously opened and dozens of bizarrely shaped, spider-legged 'Ether Hunter' mechanical dogs leapt out. Instead of electronic lenses, their eyes were demonic eyeballs radiating a crazed red light.
"Face them to the front!" Balthazar roared, sweeping his greatsword across and instantly cleaving the first row of mechanical dogs into twisted scrap metal with dark red sword energy. However, once destroyed, the condensed ether within the dogs rapidly self-destructed.
However, this was only the first line of defence. As he probed deeper, Aaryan's consciousness sensed an extremely cold and immense aura slowly awakening from the lowest level of the warehouse — a nauseating, disjointed feeling unlike anything from this world.
'It's not over yet,' said Aaryan, wiping the blood from his face as he stared coldly at the spiral staircase leading to the bottom. 'The real monster hasn't appeared yet.'
The faint, flickering yellow glow of the emergency lights within the warehouse cast a dim light on the group huddled in the shadow of a massive, abandoned ether centrifuge. The air was thick with the smell of ozone from electric shocks, mingling with the stench of blood.
"Here, drink it." Aaryan pulled a pale blue ether potion from his tattered sleeve and handed it to Balthazar, who was panting heavily. The demonic warrior's greatsword was covered in small nicks, and his right arm was badly burned from the 'Ether Hunter's' self-destruction; the dark red runes were just visible beneath the charred flesh.
Balthazar didn't speak, simply taking the potion and drinking it down in one gulp. The madness in his eyes, fuelled by carnage, gradually subsided. 'Thanks, royal brat. I thought you 'upper class' people never shared water."
'Here, there are no royalty, only those who want to survive.' Aaryan leaned against the cold metal shell, his fingertips gently stroking the wind-up toy. The faster they ventured into the core warehouse, the faster the toy's internal mechanism spun, as if resonating with the pulse of some colossus.
Meanwhile, Pau, with his backside sticking out and his brow beaded with sweat, was dismantling the wreckage of a destroyed assassin. "I'm rich… the relay chip in this eye sensor is 'black gold' grade. If I can get it out of here, I can buy the whole street." Despite his words, his trembling fingers betrayed his fear.
"Don't waste your energy, child." Cyrus leaned on his staff, his gaze piercing the layers of pipes to the dense network of translucent conduits on the ceiling. 'These chips are inscribed with the Holy Blood Council's "spiritual imprint". Once they leave this area, they will self-destruct immediately. Malakor never leaves its pawns a way out."
The old sage's words plunged the atmosphere into silence once more. Aaryan suddenly spoke up. "Cyrus," he said. "The frequency you used in that chaos just now… that's not modern ether technology, is it?"
Cyrus remained silent for a moment, his withered fingers tracing the dim crystal at the tip of his staff lightly. 'That was the "Law of Harmony" before 1969. Before the great fire destroyed everything, ether wasn't a fuel for slaughter; it was the breath of all things coexisting." Aaryan, the amethyst light within you is essentially the highest form of this law. Malakor's mad reaping of the demon race was because he wanted to forcibly transform 'breath' into an 'explosion' through extreme pain and repression."
'So, this isn't just a warehouse.' Aaryan stood up, his gaze as sharp as lightning as he stared directly at the heavy lead door leading to the lowest level. "It's a massive pressure vessel. He's going to pour all the hatred and despair of the Maya District into it, then detonate it and completely tear open the 1969 spacetime rift."
At that moment, the dim light illuminated the shadows of the four men and projected them onto the mirrored surface of the massive energy storage tank behind them. They were no longer fugitives, gamblers, warriors or madmen, but rather the final four pieces in a shared destiny yet to be completed.
"The last level," said Aaryan in a deep voice. He could feel the obsidian scales on his left arm heating up as they sensed the agony of his comrades. "Whatever lies below, we must smash it." At the end of this level, Pau had secretly hidden a special red chip. The serial number engraved on the chip matched a code in a memory fragment in Aaryan's mind exactly.
As the heavy, rune-inscribed lead door crumbled inch by inch under the amethyst light of Aaryan, the 'Ruins Zone' at the bottom of the warehouse finally revealed itself.
There was no floor, just a network of transparent, ethereal conduits crisscrossing the space. At the centre of it all was a massive, pulsating, fleshy mechanical core. Thousands of demons, celestial beings and discarded human soldiers had been stitched onto this core as living parts. Their expressions were blurred, but their agonising screams, transmitted through the ether, formed a low-frequency noise that shook the soul.
'This... this goes beyond exploitation.' Pau's face turned deathly pale. He helplessly dropped the useless jamming device in his hand. 'This is treating people as ethereal "fermentation tanks".'
Just as the four of them were stunned by the horrific scene before them, an immense, mountain-like pressure descended from above the core.
'Welcome to the "Causality Laboratory", fellow rebels.'
With heavy, metallic footsteps, a colossal three-metre-tall creature emerged from the shadows — the Holy Blood Council's ultimate weapon, codenamed 'Thanatos'. Its body had been pieced together from the wreckage of a state-of-the-art Aether mech from 1969 and its head was the gigantic eye of a demon king submerged in a culture medium.
'It's the missing "Thousand-Eyed King" Griffin...' Baltazar recognised the eye and let out a desperate roar. Ignoring his injured right arm, he drew his greatsword and charged forward. 'Bastards! You don't even spare the dead!'
A massive clash erupted instantly.
Baltazar's greatsword, surrounded by dark red demonic flames, hit Thanatos's hydraulic legs, making only a dull metallic sound. The massive mechanical arm casually waved its hand and unleashed a hurricane that tore through the air, sending Baltazar flying like a kite with a broken string. He crashed heavily into a wall riddled with inverted pipes, and his fate was left unknown.
"Don't fight alone!" Aaryan roared, his figure flashing like lightning. Purplish-gold lightning coalesced at his fingertips into a long, narrow 'ethereal blade'. He knew the 'anti-magic coating' was frantically eroding his consciousness. Each swing of the blade felt like fighting against a torrent.
'Shadow Dancer' reappeared, leading dozens of assassins clad in specially designed 'insulated armour', coordinating with the mechanical behemoth to attack Aaryan relentlessly.
'Look around you, Aaryan,' Shadow Dancer mocked from the darkness. 'Here, there are no heroes, only expendables. For every drop of blood drained from your veins, this core absorbs it. Are you saving lives or adding fuel to this meat grinder?'
The sense of oppression was extreme. Aaryan realised that, whenever he unleashed his amethyst divine light in an attempt to rescue his companions, the 'living battery' connected to the core would scream in agony from energy overload. Their life force was being depleted rapidly by this foreign divine power.
"Stop… Aaryan, stop…" Cyrus collapsed weakly to the ground, his bronze staff broken in the aftershocks. Tears streamed down his face as he looked at the modified 'parts': 'Malakor's logic is a vicious cycle... As long as we harbour any compassion, we'll become his executioners.'
Pau hid behind an energy storage tank and watched as Balthazar coughed up blood again and stood up. Then he watched as Aaryan was locked onto by dozens of ethereal lasers. The "tragic comedian", who had previously only cared about making money, finally broke down. He pulled out the red chip he had hidden earlier — the chip engraved with the password from Aaryan's memories.
'To hell with it! I don't want this money!' Pau cried as he rushed towards the rapidly flashing control panel. He knew that this chip was the only key to the warehouse's self-destruct device, but if activated, it would vaporise everyone inside, including them.
Thanatos sensed the threat. The enormous demon king's eye locked onto Pau, and a 'Void Ray' powerful enough to destroy half a city block began charging in the mechanical behemoth's chest.
"Pau! Get down!" Aaryan roared, but he was tightly bound by the Shadow Dancer's chains.
In that instant, time seemed to freeze in the eerie setting of 1969. Aaryan watched the death beam as it prepared to erupt, watched Pau's resolute back and Balthazar's struggle to shield his companion with his body.
Despair, like the acid rain in the Maya district, extinguished all glimmers of hope completely.
'This is your end,' Lord Malakor's voice echoed like a ghost in the hall. 'You will be reduced to the purest fuel in an explosion unknown to anyone.'
Just as the deadly red light was about to erupt, the half of the 'Twin Clockwork Heart' in Aaryan's mind suddenly emitted a faint yet crisp click that could pierce through time.
A wisp of purple mist, out of place in this era and carrying the fragrance of gardenias, quietly emerged from the depths of despair. In this seemingly inescapable stalemate, when the self-destruct key was inserted, the warehouse did not explode. Instead, the entire spacetime structure of the 'Ruins Zone' began to fold in half in a bizarre manner. Amidst the distorted light and shadow, Aaryan saw a girl in a white dress smiling at him amidst the 1969 fire.
The 'Void Ray' roared from the mechanical behemoth's chest, its blinding crimson light illuminating Pau's terrified, almost transparent face. However, the instant the key was inserted, the laboratory lights abruptly shifted from hellish crimson to pure milky white. The chip wasn't a 'self-destruct key' at all, but a 'causal rewrite patch' that Cyrus had spent many years creating using remnants of the original 1969 algorithm. Pau had inadvertently preserved this logical core, which was capable of resonating with the consciousness of the Aaryan royal family, amongst the scrap he had been selling in Chapter 12. Rather than sounding an alarm, the control panel emitted a soft, hymn-like murmur.
The conduits that had previously connected to the demonic workers were no longer energy-draining claws, but pathways for delivering 'purification code'.
'What?' Shadow Dance recoiled in horror as she realised that the chains binding her were rapidly turning to sand. 'Spacetime is overlapping?' Aaryan's eyes snapped open, glowing purple-gold. The half of the 'Twin Clockwork Heart' in his mind was pounding violently, merging with the frequency of the entire laboratory.
'This isn't an explosion,' Aaryan's voice seemed to descend from the clouds, carrying an undeniable authority. 'This is "borrowing".'
He extended his left hand, which was covered in obsidian scales, and gently twisted it towards the void.
In an instant, the deadly 'Void Ray' shot out, but the moment it left the muzzle, space itself twisted 180 degrees like a folded sheet of paper — an upgraded version of Chapter 18, 'Cause and Effect Reversal'. The destructive beam that had been aimed at Pau emerged strangely from behind 'Thanatos', piercing the enormous demon king's eye.
'Roar!' The mechanical behemoth let out a scream that wasn't made of steel, and Griffin's King's Eye melted away in the beam of light. But this wasn't destruction; it was a release. As the King's Eye shattered, a surge of pure demonic ancestral soul power, suppressed for decades, flooded into Aaryan's body like a torrent. Temporarily regaining their sanity under the 'rewrite patch', the imprisoned workers resonated with Aaryan's ethereal wavelengths, creating an unprecedented 'mental tsunami'.
'For the Maya District!' The previously paralysed Balthazar suddenly propped himself up. He could feel an extraordinary warmth healing his wounds and his roar was no longer one of violent rage, but the resilient roar of a warrior under royal command. He leapt into the air, unleashing a purple-gold aura from his greatsword and shattering Shadow Dancer's insulated armour in a single strike.
As she was thrown back, Shadow Dance saw with despair that the anti-magic coating on the entire underground laboratory was being covered by some kind of golden lichen — the vibrant aether from 1969.
"Lord Malakor, your 'unity' has been torn apart." Aaryan walked over to the broken control panel and slammed it down. The fleshy core at the centre of the laboratory stopped pulsating and, like a withered flower, slowly released the surviving souls.
Although they had escaped the 'Soul Core' warehouse, Aaryan knew that this had merely changed the cause and effect in this one place. On top of the clock tower, Malakor's true form surveyed everything coldly, his scepter illuminating an array of city-wide destruction. The infiltration operation's localised victory thoroughly enraged the Holy Blood Council.
As Aaryan led her exhausted companions back to their secret base in the slums, the city's atmosphere suddenly turned an eerie dark purple and the steam pipes began to hiss under strain.
The grand clock tower of the Maya district, a symbol of advanced civilisation, began to spin at an impossible frequency.
'He's activated the "Pyromancy Forge",' said Cyrus, gazing out of the window with deathly stillness in his eyes. "He's forcibly fusing steam power with ancient magic, refining the entire district into an altar."
However, lurking in the shadows of the stronghold was an unexpected visitor: a girl named Dahlia, dressed in old-fashioned repair clothes and with half her face charred. Her eyes were no longer vacant, but instead gleamed with intricate runes composed of complex gears.
'Aaryan,' she whispered, 'the other half of the "Clockwork Heart" isn't with Malakor, but is at the bottom of that clock tower. But I need your help to complete this final 'synchronisation'."
The roar of steam and the chanting of spells mingled in the streets. The next battle would not be a clash of flesh, but an ultimate duel between soul and logic.