The familiar pattern of a rhombus with a circle in the centre stood before him, hundreds of lines shot out from the four points.
"Everyone ready for what's next?" he asked, glancing back at the group.
Rachel nodded, her right hand tightly gripping her left side. Lily steadied herself against the wall. Kyle and Clyde flanked the door on either side. Ollie stood at the rear by Lily.
"As ready as we'll ever be," Ollie said.
"Just get it over with," Kyle muttered.
Gale pressed his palm against the circle. The familiar blue-grey light pulsed outward along the four lines, and the door slid open with a soft hiss.
A sigh of relief escaped everyone's mouths. It wasn't the familiar hallway that they met before, but a different room that grew wider than the hallway.
"I'll check it first," Gale walked in alone.
Stepping through the threshold, he caught his breath as he saw the centre. The room stood as a vast circular chamber, and in the centre, a massive orb the size of a house hung in the air, levitating softly on a platform. Long cylindrical and square poles protruded from the orb, making it look like a porcupine as it slowly rotated on its unseen axis.
The intricate patterns that had covered the walls and corridors now converged here, all lines running across the floor to the platform and ending there. The platform itself was smooth and blank except for a single empty rhombus etched into its centre, directly beneath where the orb levitated.
Analyze.
[Origin Core]
[Core Class: Origin Awakened]
[Description: A sacrifice to the sanctuary by no ill will. The tribute shall forever provide logic to the system the Architect has created.]
[Main function: Orchestrates and computes all essential functions of Harmony Section.]
[Systems Designer: Erin Weber]
Gale's eyes widened at the last line. Erin Weber. That was the same maker as his sword, and his sword was literally called Weber. It definitely wasn't a coincidence. Even his pistol was branded as Weber. The word Origin Core also stuck out much like his own.
Guide, is analyze telling me this was once a Dainv? Gale mouthed.
[Affirmative. Based on analysis data, Origin Core of the Dainv had been repurposed for biotechnological functions.]
He didn't even know what to ask next. Maybe this Core was still alive or sentient. It also even had a Core Class.
What's an Origin Awakened?
[Dainv Core progression diverts after Harmonic from standard progression. Origin Awakened is equivalent to Mystic]
Mystic level. That was three levels above his current Attuned state. He doesn't even know anyone that's at that level except for maybe Gerard. Though, he didn't know the exact level of that butler.
"Gale, is it clear?" Ollie called from the doorway.
"Yeah, it's clear," Gale said. "No robots, no traps that I can see."
The group filed in cautiously, their footsteps echoed on the metal floor of the vast chamber. One by one, they stopped to stare at the massive floating orb.
"Holy shit," Kyle craned his neck up.
"It's... beautiful," Lily said, her eyes reflecting the soft blue glow emanating from the orb's surface.
"What the hell is it?" Clyde asked no one in particular.
While the others gazed upward, Ollie immediately made his way toward a bank of terminals positioned along the far wall. His fingers flew across the controls, eyes scanning the displays intently.
Rachel moved to stand beside Gale. "You okay?"
"I'm good," Gale said, forcing a smile. "Just... wondering what the hell I'm looking at."
They walked together through the room, circling the platform. Gale couldn't shake the feeling that if this thing is still sentient, it'd be looking at them like they were observing it or maybe the other way around. And the bigger question was, why repurpose a Dainv? Glancing at Rachel, the book had told him of the watching stars. Maybe that race had enslaved the Dainv to be… this.
"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Gale asked. "In any rift raids?"
Rachel shook her head. "Nothing this complicated. But if you're talking about how fucked this rift is, the Eclipsed comes in second to this."
"Right. And the Eclipsed was nothing like this," Gale said.
"No. The Eclipsed was its own beast. Literally," Rachel said.
From the other side of the room, Ollie called out. "Everyone, get over here! I found something!"
The group converged on Ollie's position at the terminals. Multiple screens displayed scrolling text and diagrams in a language that they shouldn't have been able to read.
"What did you find?" Lily looked over his shoulder.
"Information. Lots of it," Ollie said as he continued tapping on the terminal. "This place is called the Harmony Section. It's just one part of a much larger whole."
"What whole?" Rachel asked.
"This entire world," Ollie said. "They covered the whole planet with machinery, metal, or whatever. This whole thing was created by someone or something called 'the Architect.'"
"We heard about the Architect from RAE," Gale said.
"Well, according to this, the Harmony Section is number five out of twelve total sections," Ollie said. "And that big marble floating over there? It's called an 'Origin Core.'"
Gale felt Rachel tense beside him, but so did he. He tried to maintain a neutral expression as best as he could. He didn't realise that the information about Origin Cores would be on full display on the terminal.
"Origin Core?" Kyle said. "What the hell is that?"
"It says here it's the heart of something called a 'Dainv,'" Ollie said, pronouncing the word wrong. "Day-niv? Dane-iv?"
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"Maybe, day-nuv, but the u at the end is silent?" Gale said.
"Whatever. Pronunciation doesn't matter. What's a Dainv?" Clyde asked.
"Some kind of advanced life form, maybe?" Rachel said.
"That's what it looks like," Ollie said. "According to these files, the Architect created this world as a 'bastion against corruption.' But the citizens went mad over time in around 12 stars, stars being a measurement unit."
"Stars?" Lily frowned.
"Dunno. Best guess is, something really long for Earth standards," Ollie said.
"And there are twelve of these Origin Core things running the whole system?" Rachel asked.
"Yep. One for each section," Ollie said. "This one controls the Harmony Section specifically. Handles all the computational and logical functions only within this section."
Kyle whistled. "Somebody ripped out twelve hearts to power this place? That's brutal."
"There's information about rift generation too," Ollie said, "but it's locked behind some kind of security protocol. Access is only granted to someone with the user credentials 'E_W.'"
E_W obviously meant Erin Weber. The name from analysis, the Weber blade, and Weber pistol. Gale wanted to say something, but kept his mouth shut. Big edgy guy Cev did tell him to keep his mouth shut.
"Look at this," Ollie said. "Information about a race called the Cryils. And get this. There's detailed documentation on their 'Crystal Shard Mundane Awakening Method.'"
"That's what you were really after, wasn't it?" Lily sighed.
"Jackpot," Ollie said.
"We should look at the historical data first," Lily said, leaning forward. "Look there. There's an entire chronicle of this place. That'll give us context."
Ollie shook his head, fingers tapping on the terminal screen. "Medical records matter more right now. If we can figure out how they were dealing with 'crystal corruption' or whatever this was, we might find something useful for dust corruption."
"For your own research?" Lily said. "We need to understand what happened here, not just cherry-pick the parts that interest you."
Kyle slid down the wall near the terminal, his legs stretched out in front of him. Clyde joined him, sitting with his back against the same wall.
"Here we go again," Kyle muttered.
"Like clockwork," Clyde muttered.
Rachel pushed between Lily and Ollie, her hand pressing down on Ollie's shoulder. "Both of you stop. Ollie, check the security details first. We need to know if anything's still active in this place."
Ollie glanced up at her, mouth open to argue, then closed it. "Fine."
His fingers danced across the panel, dragging up a screen to full screen. The display flickered and showed what looked like a map of the multiple sectors. Red dots moved across several of the sections, clustered in groups.
"What are those?" Gale asked, leaning in.
"Spider mechs," Ollie said. "A lot of them. They're moving in formation through multiple sectors." He tapped the screen again and it zoomed in on something called Wisdom sector. "Look at this. They're hunting something."
The red dots converged around small, pulsing yellow markers that seemed to be retreating before them.
"A third hostile force?" Rachel glanced at Gale. "You think those're the watchers?"
"Probably. The spider mechs are also fighting them in this sector after all."
"Looks like it." Ollie pulled back to the larger map. "Whatever they're chasing, it's in at least three different sectors or more."
Gale studied the map, noting how the sectors were laid out. Twelve sections, each connected by transit tubes and shafts.
"What's at the centre?" he asked.
Ollie followed his gaze and tapped more commands. "Power plant. Seems to be the thing that connects all sectors together. Centralized power resource... that's a dumb system design. If it fails or runs out of juice, everything fails."
"Maybe they had their reasons," Lily said.
Ollie grunted. "Like what? Let's make sure one failure brings down our entire world? Real smart."
"Just look up the historical records like Lily suggested. Maybe they'll tell us why," Rachel said, pressing down on Ollie's shoulder.
"Fine, fine." Ollie pulled up another screen and grumbled. Text scrolled across in that foreign language that somehow made sense to them. "Here we go. 'At the start of date 120:0:402 [5SE0U0GAN], the Tomb was finished.'"
"What's that date mean?" Gale asked.
"Not sure. We got stars now and this alien looking timestamp. Really can't tell you anything about this," Ollie said.
"The Tomb?" Clyde lifted his head.
"Guess that's what they called it," Clyde said.
Ollie continued reading. "'Lifeforms used the planet as a place of refuge. However, the effects of what the Architect called the Collapse Era started to be felt in full force.'"
"Collapse of what?" Rachel asked.
"Doesn't say." Ollie scrolled further down. "'The race that he calls the 'sentinels' were hunted, and the 'sentinels' could no longer hold back 'the Tide.''"
The sentinels definitely referred to the Dainvs, no doubt about it. The Tide was also what the dark knight had referred to. And the hunters… the watching stars again.
"The Tide was malicious and covertly invaded the sections one by one, driving the citizens of each section mad." Ollie paused. "'By the 12th star, life was gone.'"
Lily moved closer. "What does it say about the survivors?"
"A few devoted had implanted their consciousness into the Architect's system, now living within the technology itself. Some moving, some not," Ollie put a hand on his chin.
Gale nodded. "That solves the issue of why the robots and spider mechs have ether signatures. Even Hellbringer and Stormbreaker were supposedly implanted into the technology."
Rachel moved away from the terminal and looked up at the Origin Core behind them. "So what was 'the Tide'? Some kind of invading force?"
"Could be anything," Ollie said. "Disease, hostile alien race, cosmic event. The translation doesn't give details. Heck, for all we know, we probably don't got clearance on it. Look, we can't even access the rift generation folder. This shit is probably just basic info for the public."
"Fine. Does it say anything about what we'll meet after this room?" Rachel asked.
Ollie smiled, tapping on the terminal screen. He exited out of the historical records and back to the security details of the world. The group clustered around him again, even Kyle and Clyde got up from their spot.
"Look at this," Ollie said, pinching the screen to zoom out. "Got a full map of how everything connects."
The display showed twelve distinct sections arranged in a hexagonal pattern. Lines connected each section to a hub like spokes on a wheel where each point of the hexagons met.
"Transit routes," Ollie said. "Each section connects to something called the Transit Hub. And from there..." He tapped the centre of the point. "From the transit hub, we can either go to different sectors or head straight to the Power Plant."
"Any idea what's in the other sectors?" Rachel asked.
"Each one seems specialized," Ollie said. "There's Wisdom, Creation, Protection, Abundance... Each with different functions." He paused, scrolling through more data. "The Power Plant supplies energy to everything."
"So what are we waiting for?" Gale asked. "Let's go to the Transit Hub and then straight to the Power Plant. Get this place running again so we can find a way out."
That'll also increase their chances of surviving, according to the mission the system gave him.
Kyle stood up straight. "I'm with the rookie. Let's get the hell out of here."
"Hold on," Ollie said, fingers zoomed in on a specific part of the power plant. "Something's weird."
As it zoomed closer and closer to the point, the 3D wireframe showed what looked like a pod or container of some kind. Inside was a small blue dot.
"What's that?" Clyde asked.
Ollie shrugged. "Don't know. Everything else in the system is marked either red for enemies or gray for the robots and spider mechs. This is the only blue dot I've seen on any of the maps."
"Could be a survivor?" Lily said.
"After who knows how many years?" Kyle scoffed. "Doubtful."
"You never know. These people counted their dates by the stars, and that's not something we can take lightly," Gale said. Truthfully, the timestamp notation looked eerily similar to the one he saw in the Dainv ship. If what he thought was correct, then anything that is still alive may be as old as that Dark Knight he fought in the Eclipsed, maybe even older.
"Well, it doesn't really matter." Ollie zoomed in on the wireframe. "We'd have to pass that area to get to the control panel of the power plant, and by the look of it, some orange dots are there which are definitely not spider mechs."
A stinging sensation appeared on the back of Gale's neck as if something peeled its eye out slowly. His head snapped to where he felt the sensation, but it disappeared immediately when he tried to look at it.
"Gale?" Rachel asked.
But when she said that herself, hundreds of the same watching sensations swept over him.
"Something's coming," Gale said. "It's coming from the other door."
"What is it?!" Ollie waved at everyone else to backpedal to the entrance. The group filed to the entrance and stood by the door. They'd use that place as a choke point to kill anything that comes through.
"The watchers. They're coming." Gale stood in front of the door.