The atmosphere inside the heavy-duty transport shuttle was thick with tension and the smell of industrial coolant. At 0400 hours, the sky above Aethelgard was a bruised purple, the stars beginning to fade as the "Simulation Zone"—a massive, hollowed-out canyon on the floating island's underside—loomed below.
Ken sat in the corner of the jump-seat, his oversized helmet tilted forward to hide his eyes. He clutched a standard-issue Bronze Wing toolkit like a lifeline, playing the role of the terrified "0.8" perfectly.
Across from him, Dorian was a vision of golden arrogance, checking the edge of his mana-blade. Isabella Thorne sat perfectly still, her silver-white hair tucked under a tactical headset, her gaze fixed on the holographic mission map. Elara Vance was the most unsettling; she sat in the corner, her violet eyes periodically pulsing with light as she "scanned" the internal mana-flow of the shuttle—and Ken.
"Three minutes to drop," the pilot's voice crackled. "The Aegis-Golems are active in Sectors A through D. Your squad's LZ is Sector C—The Iron Forest."
"Remember the plan," Dorian said, his voice dripping with command. "Isabella, you take the high ground and suppress their optics. Elara, you disrupt their logic-links. I'll go in for the core-strike." He glanced at Ken with a sneer. "And you... just try not to scream too loud. It might distract the Golems."
"I'll... I'll just hide behind the rocks," Ken stammered, his voice trembling.
"Green light! Go! Go! Go!"
The floor of the shuttle hissed open. Dorian and Isabella vanished into the dark, their descent slowed by expertly controlled gravity-wells. Elara followed, her violet aura shimmering like a ghost. Ken "fell" last, flailing his arms and screaming as he plummeted.
The moment he passed the cloud line and broke line-of-sight with the shuttle, the flailing stopped.
Ken's body went rigid and aerodynamic. He didn't use a gravity-well; he used the Void-Coded Key. He reached out and touched the "code" of the local gravity field, temporarily "deleting" his own weight. He drifted through the air like a piece of ash, landing silently atop a massive, rusted pillar in the Iron Forest—a graveyard of ancient construction beams.
Below him, the forest was alive with a heavy, rhythmic thudding.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
An Aegis-Golem marched through the clearing. It was six meters of reinforced star-metal, its "eyes" glowing with a cold, analytical blue. In its chest, protected by a triple-layer crystalline housing, was the power source—and the Second Relic.
"Ken, do you hear me?" Selene's voice was a needle-sharp whisper in his ear. "Dorian and the others are engaging a decoy unit two clicks north. You have exactly six minutes before Elara realizes the energy readings in Sector C don't match the hive-mind logs."
"Copy," Ken whispered. He pulled out the "broken radio" he had modified. "Initiating frequency match."
He leaped from the pillar. He didn't use mana-flight; he used pure physical momentum, guided by his Eye of Truth. He landed on the Golem's massive shoulder. The machine's sensors flared red instantly—it had detected a biological presence, but its logic-core struggled to identify it because Ken's Null-Core produced zero mana-trace.
Target: Unknown. Threat Level: Error, the Golem's internal speakers growled.
Ken didn't give it time to recalculate. He jammed his modified tool into the maintenance port behind the Golem's neck.
"Eye of Truth: Sequence Break," he hissed.
The silver rings spun. Ken didn't just hack the machine; he saw the Golem's "soul"—the strings of commands that dictated its existence. He reached into the code and found the Root Access.
The Golem froze. Its blue eyes flickered to a dull gray.
Ken scrambled down to the chest plate. He didn't smash the crystal; he touched it with a finger coated in a thin film of void-energy. The crystal didn't shatter—it unlocked. The housing slid open, revealing a core that didn't look like a battery. It looked like a pulsating, metallic heart.
"The Aegis Heart," Ken murmured. "The Second Pillar."
As his hand closed around the relic, the Golem's "Hive-Link" screamed. Far away in the command center, the Architect's monitors would be flashing with a critical system failure.
"Ken! Move!" Selene shouted. "Elara is turning! She's detected the vacuum where the Golem's signature used to be!"
Ken ripped the heart out. The Golem collapsed into a heap of dead metal. He shoved the relic into his lead-lined toolkit and turned to run, but a bolt of violet energy slammed into the ground inches from his feet.
He looked up. Elara Vance was hovering twenty feet in the air, her violet eyes burning with a terrifying intensity.
"I knew it," she whispered, her voice amplified by the mana around her. "The 0.8 isn't a failure. He's a thief."
She raised her hand, her Ocular-Circuit glowing so brightly it began to bleed. "Show me what's in the box, Prince, or I'll peel the skin from your bones to see what's hiding underneath."
Ken slouched his shoulders, his face twisting back into the mask of the "Lazy Prince." He gripped the toolkit tight. "I... I found it! I found the weak spot! Please, Elara, don't shoot! I just wanted to help!"
Elara didn't blink. "Liars don't have voids in their souls, Ken. You're coming with me."
End of Chapter 10.