The legendary workshop of Hephaestus was a symphony of organized chaos. Mountains of rare alloys sat beside piles of common scrap metal. Holographic blueprints flickered in the air like captive ghosts, displaying schematics for devastating energy cannons and intricate spiritual armor. At its center, surrounded by the smell of ozone and molten steel, the master craftsman himself was not working with any of his priceless materials.
Instead, he was hunched over a workbench cluttered with components that any back-alley electronics merchant would sell for cheap. A common audio amplifier board, a handful of salvaged power converters from commercial drones, a bag of low-grade focusing crystals that most artificers would use as paperweights.
His hands, capable of forging S-Rank artifacts, moved with a speed and dexterity that defied his age. A soldering iron danced in his grip, connecting circuits with inhuman precision. He wasn't just building a device; he was reverse-engineering his own genius, stripping it down to its barest, most essential components. He muttered and cursed under his breath, a running commentary of grudging admiration.
"Absurd... to achieve a stable 27.3 kHz resonance with a standard T-9 amplifier... the power feedback loop should be uncontrollable." He'd solder another connection. "Unless... unless you use a recursive energy buffer here. Hah! Deceptively simple. This Oracle bastard, he didn't just give us a theory, he gave us the answer key to a test we didn't even know we were taking."
For twenty-four straight hours, fueled by strong tea and a fire of intellectual passion he hadn't felt in decades, he worked. The result was not a beautiful weapon. It was ugly, a utilitarian block of wires and circuits housed in a simple plastic casing. It was heavy. It was inefficient. But it was cheap, and it was devastatingly effective.
He picked up the finished prototype, a grin splitting his magnificent white beard. He had already created a multi-angle, idiot-proof blueprint, complete with a list of commercially available parts. He uploaded the file to the secure [Channel: Zero].
Hephaestus: Blueprint complete. I call it the OSE-Model 1, for Oracle Sonic Emitter. It's crude, it's ugly, but it will work. Now, don't bother me again unless the problem is actually interesting.
The architect had delivered his design.
In her spartan, temporary room at the forward operating base near Sector 7, Captain Lin Mei received the notification. The blueprint file from Hephaestus downloaded onto her tablet. She opened it, her eyes widening in amazement. She had expected something complex, something requiring specialized tools. But this... this was something her tech specialist, Xiao Zhang, could probably assemble blindfolded. This was a weapon for the common hunter.
Her fingers flew across her keyboard. Her task was to translate this elegant design into the brutal, practical language of the battlefield. She wasn't writing an academic paper like Oracle, nor a technical manual like Hephaestus. She was writing a survival guide.
Her words were blunt, direct, and peppered with the gallows humor of the front lines.
[OSE-Model 1: A Hunter's Field Guide - By Nomad-Lead]
[Introduction: So, you want to kill Shriekers? Good. This little box will help you do it. But if you're an idiot, it will just get you killed faster. Read this guide. Memorize it. It will save your life.]
[Assembly - Step 1: Unplug the damn thing from the power source before you start soldering. If I have to explain why, you're too stupid to be a hunter in the first place.]
[Tactical Deployment - Note 1: This device is your 'get out of jail free' card, not your primary sword. It's for singling out Shriekers. If you try to take on a whole flock at once, you're just ringing the dinner bell for them. Don't get greedy. Get greedy and you get dead.]
[Tactical Deployment - Note 2: Optimal range is between 40 to 60 meters. Any further, and the sonic frequency might scatter in the open air. Any closer, and if this homemade gadget fails, you won't have enough time to even scream before the monster turns your brain into soup.]
She wrote for hours, pouring all her hard-won combat experience into the document. She included sections on power management, aiming for the creature's head to maximize exposure to the sound waves, and emergency shutdown procedures in case the device started to overheat. She embedded Hephaestus's clear, simple blueprints directly into the file.
When she was done, she had created a masterpiece of practical lethality. She uploaded the completed guide to the channel.
Nomad-Lead: Field guide complete. Package is ready for distribution.
The soldier had written her doctrine.
In his quiet, wood-paneled tea house, General Jiang Wei, known online as Old-Man-Jiang, watched the two files appear in the channel. He took a slow sip of his perfectly steeped Silver Needle tea, a faint, appreciative smile on his lips. The efficiency was breathtaking.
Now, it was his turn. The strategist.
He didn't use high-tech hacking or digital wizardry. His weapons were far older and more reliable: trust, reputation, and a network of human connections cultivated over half a century.
He picked up his old, non-descript mobile phone and began to make calls. His conversations were short, calm, and filled with code phrases he had established with his former subordinates and students years ago.
To a gruff guild master in another city: "Old Wu, good morning. I hope your 'tea ceremonies' are going well. I have discovered a new brewing technique, a rather potent one for clearing the head. I am sending you the instructions. I think the other local tea clubs would find it... invigorating."
To a young, brilliant information broker he had once mentored: "Little Sparrow, I trust you are singing well. I have composed a new 'folk song' for you. It's a rather catchy tune. I think it will be very popular if you share it with the other choirs in your network."
"Tea ceremony technique" meant a new piece of technology. "Folk song" meant a viral information packet.
He made a dozen such calls. With each call, a seed was planted. And from those seeds, a forest began to grow. The file containing the OSE-Model 1 blueprint and Lin Mei's guide did not appear on the major public forums. Instead, it spread through the digital underworld. It was shared in the encrypted, private chat groups of independent hunter squads. It was passed from one trusted friend to another on untraceable back-channels. It moved like a whisper, like a rumor, like a secret prayer being answered.
For the mega-guilds and the government trying to track it, it was a nightmare. Trying to stop its spread was like trying to stop the rain. By the time they shut down one source, a hundred more had already sprung up.
The people's weapon was now in the hands of the people.
The fury in the Director's office at Aegis Dynamics was a palpable, freezing force.
"What do you mean, it's out of control?!" she hissed, her voice dangerously low.
Her chief analyst flinched, sweat beading on his forehead. "Director, it's everywhere. The design is too simple, the materials too common. Hunter squads are already building them in their garages. We've received reports... the success rate of independent missions in Shrieker-infested zones has skyrocketed. Their casualty rates have plummeted."
The Director stared out her panoramic window at the city below. Her multi-million credit research project, the one that was supposed to develop a proprietary sonic weapon and cement her guild's market dominance for the next decade, was now worthless. Oracle hadn't just revealed a secret; he had deliberately and maliciously destroyed her business model.
This was not an act of benevolence. This was a calculated attack. It was a declaration of war.
"Find him," she snarled, her voice a venomous whisper. "Find this Oracle. And find every single person associated with this 'Project Zero'. I don't care about the cost. I don't care about the methods. Burn them. Burn them all to the ground."
Back in Apartment 1204, Qin Mo sat at his desk, dutifully working his way through a complex physics problem set. On a small holographic screen to his side, the evening news was playing quietly.
As the anchorwoman discussed trade policies, a small news ticker scrolled along the bottom of the screen.
[...regional independent hunter casualties have dropped by an estimated 70% in the last 48 hours. Military experts are 'baffled' by the sudden and dramatic increase in mission success rates against Abyssal Shriekers...]
Qin Mo's eyes flickered to the text for a fraction of a second. The corner of his mouth twitched, a minuscule, almost imperceptible upward curve that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
'Phase one complete,' he thought, his attention already returning to the differential equations on his homework paper. 'The network is established. The proof of concept is successful. The primary actors have been provoked according to predictive models.'
He solved the equation, writing down the answer with a steady hand.
'Now... for phase two.'