"Brace yourself, Black-I," Seraphina's voice was strained but professional. She flipped a series of manual overrides, bypassing the safety protocols. The Aether-Cutter was now flying purely on the edge of destruction, guided by the computational truth gifted by Elias.
Elias didn't brace. He didn't even clench his muscles. He pushed his Black-I Mana into the ship's structure, calculating the exact tensile strength of every rivet and joint. Simultaneously, he flooded his own nervous system, calculating the biological breaking points of his bones, organs, and blood vessels.
"I am running the structural reinforcement in real-time. Injecting counter-pressure at points 4, 11, and 27 on the primary fuselage stress webbing," Elias instructed, his voice low and clinical, masking the internal agony.
Seraphina slammed the acceleration lever forward.
The force of 9.1 Gs was instantaneous and horrific. It was no longer an elephant; it was a black hole forming in the cockpit.
CRACK.
Elias heard the sound inside his own body. A small, non-critical fracture—a rib near the sternum, precisely point 18 on his calculated internal stress map—snapped under the strain. He felt the pain, but his Instant Comprehension immediately relegated the sensation to a background process, flagging it as Non-Fatal, Status Quo Maintained.
His vision didn't just grey out; it shattered. He was seeing the molecular structure of the airlock, the electromagnetic frequency of the incoming Chrono-Lens pulse (which had just launched from the Zero-Zone), and the pure, white light of Seraphina's Mana core, all simultaneously.
Cognitive Overload: 99.9%. Immediate data deletion required.
The survival protocol initiated the emergency purge. This time, it wasn't a vague memory. Elias felt a vast, cold emptiness open up in his mind, and the memory of his mother's face—the warmth of her smile, the scent of her hair—was vaporized to make room for the ship's complex velocity data.
A tear, forced by the G-force, tracked down his cheek, but Elias didn't notice. He was a machine now, a Mana-powered supercomputer overriding its own humanity.
"30 seconds of peak acceleration remaining, Seraphina," Elias gasped, his voice barely audible over the screaming engines. "The Chrono-Lens Array has launched. Impact predicted in 65 seconds. We must reach Luminar-1 in 40."
Seraphina was pushing her own S-Rank limits, using her Psychic Ability to gently dampen the G-force on Elias, creating a fractional cushion that bought him precious milliseconds of processing time.
"I'm draining my Core, Black-I! Don't let me waste it!" she mentally projected, the strain radiating into his mind like heat.
"The satellite is in range! 20 seconds! Preparing for zero-G deceleration!" Elias's mind screamed the instruction, but his body was too slow.
Calculation update: Manual piloting deceleration too slow. Required maneuver: Gravitational Sling using Luminar-1's own localized Mana-field.
Elias, without conscious thought, violently projected his Black-I Mana—the truth of the required trajectory—into the Aether-Cutter's flight controls. The ship didn't decelerate; it executed a terrifying, immediate curve, using the satellite's tiny gravity well as a pivot point.
They whipped around Luminar-1, coming to a dead stop barely five meters from the satellite's primary transmission dish. The sudden cessation of G-force was almost as violent as the acceleration, sending Elias's body crashing against the restraints.
"We're here," Seraphina breathed, her Core dangerously low. "30 seconds until Chrono-Lens impact."
Elias, ignoring the throbbing pain in his side and the cold void where his memories used to be, ripped his helmet off and reached for the Mana-interface harness.
"I need to be outside," Elias stated. "The physical contact is necessary to achieve the Mana-frequency lock. My patch is informational, not kinetic. It must be delivered via the primary input node—the Century Signal Uplink."
Seraphina didn't argue. She knew he was right. She opened the airlock just enough to allow Elias to quickly enter the vacuum.
Elias stepped out into the total blackness of space, held by a tether, his boots magnetically locked to the Aether-Cutter's hull. He scrambled across the dark metal surface, finding the ancient, circular plate of the Uplink Node.
"15 seconds!" Seraphina's voice was a frantic shriek in his comms.
The Chrono-Lens Pulse was now visible—a faint, crimson energy wave arching up from the Zero-Zone on Earth, a horrifying arrow aimed directly at the satellite.
Elias placed his hand against the cold metal of the Uplink Node. He closed his eyes and pushed his entire, overwhelming, informational existence into the satellite.
Luminar-1. Stability pulse. Century Signal. Injecting Black-I Truth Firewall.
His Mana didn't flow. It coded. He wasn't giving the satellite energy; he was giving it absolute, uncorruptible logic. He wrote a single, self-correcting protocol into the heart of the Century Signal: Any input that contradicts the established 7.08 Hertz stability profile is FALSE. Reject and revert.
5 seconds.
The crimson wave of the Chrono-Lens Pulse hit Luminar-1.
The satellite screamed—not a sound, but a horrific Mana-frequency disruption. Elias felt the external force trying to tear his code apart, trying to rewrite the Century Signal into a language of chaos.
But his Truth Firewall held. The Black-I Mana, simple and undeniable, instantly corrected the corruption. The satellite didn't fail. It blinked.
The corrupted signal was rejected. The Chrono-Lens Pulse dissipated harmlessly, absorbed by the rejection field.
Seraphina let out a massive, shuddering gasp of relief in the cockpit. "Success! The Core… the Century Signal is stable!"
Elias pulled himself back into the airlock, utterly spent. He had saved the world. Again.
But as he looked out at the distant Earth, his mind registered another chilling piece of information, a residual echo left behind by the Architects' failed attack.
The Chrono-Lens Array was an auxiliary test. The primary weapon is located in the Zero-Zone deep research lab—an artifact known as the 'Planar Schism Key.' And the only thing they needed was a powerful, S-Rank Mana signature to activate it.
He realized why Seraphina had been so necessary on this trip. The Architects didn't need her to fail. They needed her signature.
Elias turned to Seraphina, his eyes wide with renewed horror. "Director! We didn't stop them. We just gave them the activation key!"