Chapter 78: Chain Reaction
In the vault beneath the factory, the machine's whirring crescendoed into a deafening, high-pitched scream. The crimson veins along its structure blazed with unbearable light, and the sphere of prismatic energy in its core collapsed in on itself with a soundless implosion. Then, with a deep, tectonic BOOM that shook dust from the ceiling, the entire apparatus discharged.
A torrent of raw, focused energy, visible as a blinding white beam, lanced through the massive conduits and into the walls. The stone glowed red-hot around the pipes, and the air crackled with the smell of scorched ozone and shattered magic. For five full seconds, the vault was a nexus of apocalyptic power. Then, as suddenly as it began, it ceased.
The machine fell silent. The crimson veins faded to dull gray. The crystal viewport was now dark and empty. The device was inert, a hollow shell. It had performed its sole function: to fire its entire catalytic energy along predetermined paths.
"It... sent it," the Crow technician whispered, her voice trembling. "All of it. The energy signature is gone. It's just a dead husk."
Kael stared, his mind reeling. "Sent it where? The palace?"
"The trajectories from those conduits..." the technician consulted her device, her face ashen. "They don't all point to the palace. They're divergent. At least five primary vectors. The palace is one. The others... lead to different districts in the capital. Maybe other key buildings."
This was beyond an emergency. This was a distributed attack.
Val didn't wait. He pulled the blue communication stone from his coat. "Raiz. The device just fired. It sent its energy, not to one location, but to multiple points in the capital."
There was a moment of static, then Raiz's voice, taut with focus. "Describe the discharge."
"One massive pulse. The machine is dead now. But the energy is gone, transmitted."
Raiz was silent for a beat, his analytical mind processing at speed. "Then the worst scenario is real. The factory device was a battery, a capacitor. The real weapons are at the reception points, likely smaller, built to be hidden and stable until they receive the activation energy. One catalyst. We've been looking at the wrong end of it."
Kael, overhearing, shook his head, his professionalism battling disbelief. "That's impossible. The resources, the secrecy... to build one of these was a lifetime's work for a fanatical cell. To build two? They'd need the treasury of a dukes, kings and the silence of a dead man."
Raiz's voice came through, calm but laced with a cold edge. "Listen, mister. Probably, maybe and it couldn't be, won't save anyone. They built this network under your city for years, and your best spies only found it because we led them here. I'd bet my wings there are more. This was never about a single blast. It's about gutting at least one fourth of the capital in one strike."
He paused, and when he spoke again, his tone held the weight of command. "On that note, the mission parameters have changed. The danger level has exceeded acceptable risk. All clan members are recalled, effective immediately. Val, disengage. Bring Zion and get back to Cloustar. The homecoming party will have to wait."
Val had never seen Raiz ever this serious, he had only seen when he was joking around with Moon.
Val's jaw tightened, but he knew better than to argue with Raiz's tactical judgment. "Understood. We will leave."
---
In the Capital, Graham
High above the bustling streets, unseen by the citizens below preparing for an evening of royal celebration, Moon floated.
He had felt it. A deep, dissonant tremor in the mana field, a ripple of something profoundly wrong. It was a sensation he had never experienced in his long existence.
It was a creeping, existential threat that made his very essence feel thin and vulnerable. It wasn't fear, it was recognition. A recognition of a power that could unmake things on a scale that even he found disturbing.
"Truly a first for everything," he murmured to himself, his form shimmering with unease as he gazed down at the royal palace. The city below was a picture of peaceful twilight.
Mothers walked with children, merchants closed their stalls, cats slept in sun-warmed spots, and dogs barked at nothing. The calm before a storm he alone could sense. The cold sensation in the air.
Bzzt. Trrruure.
A soft vibration pulsed within him. A yellow orb of condensed communication energy, a sibling to Val's blue stone, emerged from his misty body.
"Moon, are you there?" Raiz's voice, uncharacteristically urgent, echoed in the orb.
"Yep," Moon answered, his attention split between the conversation and the malignant energy signatures he was now tracing beneath the city.
"Where did you go in this emergency situation?"
"I felt something different and dangerous. So I came to scout it out."
A brief, heavy silence. "Don't tell me you're at the capital."
"Hmmm. How would you know that?"
Raiz's sigh was a burst of static. "The device we intended to destroy just fired its entire energy payload toward the capital. I believe the real weapons are there, multiple ones. Whatever is happening, it's not something a man or even a squad can handle. We're recalling everyone. Get back to Cloustar."
Moon didn't answer immediately. His perception flowed through the streets, seeping into cracks, descending through the soil. He found them.
Five dense, complex knots of inert arcane machinery, buried deep beneath key landmarks. The palace, the grand temple, the military barracks, the central archive, the noble's council hall.
They were cold now, but they were connected. And they were beginning to hum, to glow faintly as the transmitted energy from Veor started to arrive, filling them like deadly cisterns.
He watched the peaceful city. The mother laughing with her daughter. The sleeping cat.
"Moon? Don't tell me you have a stupid idea swirling in your head right now?!" Raiz's voice was sharp with warning.
"Who knows?" Moon said, his tone distant. With a thought, he severed the communication. The yellow orb dissipated.
He had made a decision. He understood systems, energies, and consequences. Letting these devices activate would not just kill, it would unravel the mana in the city's heart, creating a blighted, toxic crater where life would never grow again. It was a perversion of natural order.
His form, usually a loose collection of mist, condensed and streamed downward, not as rain, but as a focused tendril of conscious atmosphere. He slipped through the ground as if it were air, entering a vast, forgotten subterranean vault far beneath the palace ballroom.
Here, the air thrummed with arriving power. In the center of the chamber stood the primary receiver device. It was a smaller, more refined version of the factory machine, its crystal core already beginning to pulse with a hungry, crimson light as it absorbed the incoming energy.
And standing before it, a figure in a stark white and black academic robe, was a man Val and the Thundersons would have recognized.
Professor Dio Basara. But not the hesitant, hollow-eyed man from the alley. His posture was straight, his eyes held a terrifying, serene focus, and swimming in the depths of his pupils was a lingering, dangerous red aura.
"The work of my life is about to be fulfilled," he said, his voice steady and resonant, speaking to the machine, to the vault, to himself. There was no one else to hear.
He did not notice the cloud that entered the chamber. Moon observed him, sensed the fanatical resolve. There was no time for debate who this man was. The device was the immediate problem.
Moon's form expanded, filling the vault. He didn't attack the professor. He enveloped the machine.
It was a sensation like nothing he had ever attempted. He wasn't swallowing a physical object, he was integrating a catastrophic, unstable arcane reaction into his own being.
His essence, normally serene and diffuse, suddenly seethed with violent, discordant energy. The five incoming streams of power, meant for five different energy bombs, were now all funneling into him.
The professor finally noticed. He spun around, his calm shattering into shock as he saw the humming machine disappear into a swirling, storm gray mass of cloud.
"What?! No! You can't! The harmonic balance is..."
Moon paid him no heed. With a colossal effort of will, he contained the raging energies, drawing them all into himself. He felt the searing pain of incompatible magic, the wrenching distortion as he became a living prison for a city-killing weapon.
He retracted from the vault, bursting back up through layers of earth and into the evening sky above Graham. His form was no longer a gentle cloud. He was a dark, churning thunderhead, lit from within by five distinct, angry colors of mana that swirled and crashed against each other. Bolts of chaotic energy crackled across his surface.
The peaceful citizens below finally looked up, pointing at the sudden, monstrous storm forming directly overhead.
Inside the maelstrom, Moon focused every ounce of his consciousness on containment. It was a desperate, agonizing act of self-sacrificial control.
"I truly might be cooked this time."
As he thought, the absurdity of the phrase a stark contrast to the reality. He was a cloud containing a chain reaction meant to erase a city. He had prevented the explosion on the ground, but he had become the bomb.
And the timer was now the limit of his own will, which was immense but not infinite.
He held as much as he could but it still ended with exploding.
Every creature in the kingdom heard this absurd explosion but only few understood what truly happened.