Containment Protocol Alpha. The term hung in the magically expanded silence of the carriage. I recognized the archetype: isolate, study, neutralize. I had authored similar protocols for pesky celestial intruders in my old domain.
Seris's hand was a steady force on her sword hilt, her aura a contained sun, ready to incinerate impurity. Arion's fascination was a colder, more probing flame. Bran was catatonic with fear. Lira looked at me as if I'd been replaced by a doppelganger.
My mind, the part that was still Zarathos, analyzed the tactical landscape in nanoseconds.
· Threats: Seris (combat specialist, holy affinity, high magic resistance). Arion (control specialist, arcane mastery, analytical). The sealed carriage (spatial lock, likely warded against teleportation).
· Assets: My knowledge. The unstable Corrupted Core Fragment's location (a potential distraction). Their own curiosity.
· Goal: Avoid immediate neutralization. Redirect the narrative.
I raised my hands, palms out—a gesture of non-aggression, not surrender. "Containment is a suboptimal solution," I stated, my voice stripped of Kael's youthful uncertainty, leaving only calm analysis. "You are correct, Mage Arion. I have integrated data from the fragment. I am, effectively, a symbiotic repository of its corrupt matrix and my own… anomalous class."
Arion's eyes gleamed. "You speak of integration as if it were a scholarly process. Not a horrific spiritual contamination."
"It is a process of information," I countered. "The fragment is a data-storage device from a dead system. Its 'corruption' is merely unstructured data, leaking. I have provided a structure."
"A human cannot be a structure for dungeon essence!" Seris snapped, but her grip on her sword loosened a fraction. The theological contradiction gave her pause.
"Yet your compass indicates otherwise," I said, nodding to the device still pointing at my chest. "You have two options. Option one: Contain me. You will gain a volatile, human-shaped specimen that may decay or explode, losing all data. You will also leave the primary corruption source—the fragment's physical locus—unattended in the sewers. Its leak rate will accelerate without my… mitigating presence."
I let that hang. Arion's brow furrowed. He was following the logic.
"Option two," I continued. "You gain a cooperative consultant. I can lead you to the fragment's physical location. I can interpret its corruption patterns. I can even hypothesize on its origin based on the data I've absorbed. You get the artifact and the decoder. A complete package."
"And in return?" Arion asked, his voice hushed.
"You do not imprison my friends," I said, glancing at Lira and Bran. "Their memories of tonight can be edited for their safety and your secrecy. And I am not treated as a specimen, but as a… contracted specialist. With appropriate remuneration and mobility."
Seris laughed, a short, sharp sound. "You presume to bargain? A child touched by abyssal power?"
"I presume," I said, meeting her gaze, "that the Dawnhammer Order's mandate is to protect, not to destroy that which they do not understand. Destroying me may trigger a catastrophic data-release—a corruption burst—in the heart of your city. Is that a risk your protocol covers?"
It was a bluff. Mostly. But it was built on their own assumptions about how unstable magic worked. I saw the doubt flicker in her eyes. She was a warrior of absolutes in a suddenly gray situation.
Arion leaned forward. "The fragment's location. Describe it."
I gave a precise, technical description of the cistern, its dimensions, the mineral deposits on the walls, the flow rate of the water from the broken pipe. Details no one who hadn't studied the location would know. I omitted, of course, that I had moved it.
He exchanged a long look with Seris. A silent, complex argument passed between them. The scholar's hunger versus the inquisitor's duty. Finally, Seris gave a minute, reluctant nod.
"The companions will be mind-wiped and released at the Guild with a story of a minor gas leak," Arion declared. "You, Kael, will be placed in a secured observation chamber at the Azure Scroll's local chapter. You will provide full analysis. This is not a contract. It is a conditional probation."
It was a cage, but a gilded one with a purpose. It was acceptable. For now.
The next hours were a blur of efficient, chilling procedure. Bran and Lira were gently, magically rendered unconscious. Arion whispered incantations over them, weaving false memories of a sewer gas leak causing hallucinations. I watched, my Analysis Mode recording the spell's harmonic structure. It was… crude. A blunt instrument. It would leave psychic scar tissue.
They were deposited at the Guild steps like forgotten packages. I felt a distant pang, an echo of a humanity I was supposed to possess. They were liabilities, but their neutralization was a cost I had calculated.
I was taken not to a dungeon, but to a pristine, circular room in a white stone tower. The Azure Scroll chapter house. The room was a containment cell disguised as a scholar's den: a bed, a desk, books on basic magic theory. The walls hummed with layered wards. Fault Sight showed me the lattice: mana suppression, scrying negation, dimensional anchor.
"Rest," Arion said, standing at the doorway. "In the morning, we begin. Do not attempt to probe the wards. They are keyed to your unique signature. Any aggressive action will trigger a full suppressant field." He paused. "Your intellect is remarkable, boy. Do not waste it."
The door sealed with a sound of finality.
Alone, I sat on the bed. The first phase was complete. I was inside. Now, I needed to understand my true asset. Not the fragment. Not my knowledge.
It was the Legacy System. The sealed functions. My "admin privileges" were gone, but the architecture remained. And this cell, saturated with diagnostic magic, was the perfect environment to… listen.
I closed my eyes, turning my perception inward, away from the physical ward-lattice, and towards the deeper, darker seals within my own soul.
Final Boss Template (Sealed). Dungeon Core Mechanics (Sealed).
I focused on the Dungeon Core Mechanics. Not to break the seal, but to feel its shape, to understand what the seal was containing. I allowed a single, focused query, pushing it against the iron-clad vault door of the seal:
What is the nature of the Corrupted Fragment in the sewers?
A torrent of information, raw and chaotic, tried to burst forth—blueprints, mana schematics, bestial roars. The seal held, but a crack formed. Not in the seal, but in the interface. A sliver of data leaked through, formatted not as a feeling, but as a system message:
<< LEGACY QUERY RESPONSE >>
Target: [Corrupted Beast-Type Dungeon Core Fragment – Tier C]
Origin Analysis: Artificial. Not a natural dungeon core. A manufactured replication. Design lineage: 44% match to "Fangwood Lair" (Destroyed, 312 Post-Convergence), 31% match to "Goretusk Warrens" (Destroyed, 298 P.C.).
Primary Anomaly: Core contains foreign command overrides. Signature: [Necrotic/Order].
Conclusion: Fragment is not a random hazard. It is a seed. A planted, faulty seed. Its purpose is not to grow a dungeon, but to fail and spread corruption in a controlled manner.
Hypothesis: Part of a larger dispersion pattern. Probable objective: Destabilize regional ley lines.
My eyes snapped open in the sterile cell.
This wasn't an accident. It wasn't a natural dungeon death.
It was sabotage. An attack on the city's magical foundations. And Arion's people, for all their power, were looking at the symptom, not the disease. They saw a corrupted rock. I now saw a weapon.
This changed everything. This wasn't just about my survival. Whoever was planting these seeds operated on a level of understanding that rivaled… well, me. This was a problem that needed a final boss's perspective, not an adventurer's.
A soft chime echoed in the room. A section of the wall, seamless to normal sight, shimmered. Fault Sight highlighted a microscopic flaw in the ward matrix—not a weakness, but a designed entry point. A communications conduit.
A familiar, smirking face appeared in the shimmering air, rendered in faint blue light. Sylas.
"Cozy," he said, his voice a tinny whisper in the cell. "I give the accommodations a three out of ten. Lacks a view."
"Player," I stated.
"Observer. Analyst. Fellow irregular," he corrected. "I tapped into their diagnostic feed. Nice bit of theater in the carriage. The 'walking repository' gambit. They bought it because it's 68% true."
"What do you want?"
"To offer you a player-two slot," he said, his expression turning serious. "Arion and Seris are NPCs with high-level assets, but they're stuck in their storyline. They'll study you, maybe even use you to find a few more 'seeds,' but they won't see the pattern. I will. And I think you already have."
He knew. Or he guessed.
"The seeds are planted," I said, testing him.
"In seven cities that we know of," he confirmed. "Always in the sewage, the foundations, the places where ley lines converge with waste-magic. It's a slow-burn script to cripple infrastructure. Classic pre-invasion tactic."
My mind raced. Seven cities. A coordinated, multi-vector attack. This was large-scale strategy.
"Who is behind it?"
"That's the quest, isn't it?" Sylas smiled. "The Azure Scroll will keep you in this box, running diagnostics until the world starts cracking. I'm offering you a tool to get out and actually do something."
"What tool?"
"Their ward matrix is a seven-layer harmonic lock. Brutally strong. But every lock has a key. In exactly ninety seconds, the tower's mana will dip for 0.3 seconds as the central furnace cycles to process moon-ore. That will cause a minute fluctuation in the third layer of your ward. If, at that exact moment, you introduce a counter-frequency to the flaw-point I'm showing you…" A schematic, impossibly complex, flashed in my mind through the connection. "…you'll create a temporary door. Six seconds of null-field. A bolt-hole."
"And where does the bolt-hole lead?"
"To the one place in this city even the Azure Scroll fears to scry," Sylas said. "The Abyssal Auction. A black-market hub for things like you, me, and corrupted dungeon seeds. Meet me there. We have a lead."
The connection began to flicker. "Why help me?"
"Because," Sylas said, his image dissolving, "the world doesn't need another contained anomaly. It needs someone who can think like the thing that built the trap. And according to my scans, you don't just have a fragment in you, Kael. Your soul itself is built on a foundation of dead dungeons. Who better to hunt a dungeon-seed poacher?"
He vanished.
The schematic burned in my memory. The countdown began in my mind, a perfect internal clock. I looked around the sterile, safe cell. It was a cage that promised survival at the cost of irrelevance.
Outside was a conspiracy that threatened the stage upon which my new, mortal life was to be played. A problem of architecture and malevolent design.
The furnace cycle reached its zenith. I felt the microscopic dip in the room's mana. My hand, charged with a precise trickle of my own anomalous energy—the "Nullifier" power—shot out, not at the wall, but at a specific, empty point of air three feet to my left, tracing the counter-frequency Sylas had provided.
The air ripped open. A tear of nothingness, a six-second doorway into swirling, chaotic darkness that smelled of ozone and secrets.
I didn't hesitate.
I stepped through.
The wards screamed silently behind me as the hole sealed. I stood in a narrow, dark alley piled with strange refuse. The sound of the city was different here—muffled, distant. Ahead, a single, rusted door flickered with a sign that showed a scale balancing a gem and a skull.
The Abyssal Auction.
My probation was over. The real game, the one that matched my original pay-grade, had just begun.
<< NEW QUEST LOGGED (SYLAS NETWORK) >>
Objective: Infiltrate the Abyssal Auction. Find the Seller of the False Seeds.
Risk: Catastrophic. (Enemies: Unknown Syndicate, Azure Scroll, Dawnhammer Order)
Reward: Answers. Allies. A purpose.
Failure: Death or a fate worse than containment.
I adjusted my borrowed, plain tunic and walked toward the flickering door. A faint, cold smile touched my lips—the ghost of Zarathos, finally seeing a problem worth his attention.