Location: Sub-Level 9, The Forge (Main Assembly Floor).
Time: 02:30 Hours.
The World-Eater did not roar. It screamed like a continent of metal shearing against itself.
The massive mechanical centipede, constructed of spinning diamond-tipped saw-blades and laser-wielding segments, tore through the factory floor. It moved with terrifying speed, its hundreds of legs sparking against the Adamantine grating as it hunted.
"RECYCLE. RECYCLE. RECYCLE."
The Vulcan's voice echoed from the machine's internal speakers, overlapping in a chaotic chorus.
"Move!" Dante yelled.
He and Valerius dove in opposite directions.
CRASH.
The World-Eater plowed through the platform where they had been standing. The steel floor was shredded into confetti. The machine didn't stop; it banked off a support pillar, its segmented body twisting like a snake, and circled back for a second pass.
"It eats the floor!" Valerius shouted, clinging to a hanging chain over the magma. "There is nowhere to stand!"
"It's a mobile smelter!" Dante analyzed, his red eye tracking the heat signature. "It grinds matter in its maw, melts it in its gut, and excretes raw ingots. It's the ultimate garbage truck."
The centipede reared up, its head—a ring of counter-rotating diamond drills—spinning up to lethal speed.
"Glitch!" Dante screamed over the noise. "Is there an off switch?"
Glitch was cowering inside a discarded shipping container, trembling. "No off! Only hungry! It follows... highest density! Eats... biggest metal!"
"Highest density," Dante repeated.
He looked at the sea of molten metal below. He looked at the massive chains holding the suspended walkways. He looked at the mountain of scrap they had landed in.
"I have a plan," Dante said. "But it's going to be heavy."
The Bait
Dante tapped his comms.
"Valerius! I need you to play matador! Get its attention! Make it chase you toward the Central Anvil!"
"I am a Sword-Saint, not a lure!" Valerius complained, but he swung from the chain, landing on the World-Eater's back.
He ran along the spinning segments, his boots sparking. He stabbed his obsidian dagger into a sensor cluster.
SPARK.
The World-Eater shrieked. It stopped chasing Dante and twisted, trying to bite the flea on its back.
"Come and get me, you rust-bucket!" Valerius yelled, leaping to a high gantry.
The centipede charged, climbing the vertical pillars with terrifying agility.
The Anchor
While the monster was distracted, Dante sprinted toward the Scrap Reservoir—a massive pile of rejected adamantine plates waiting to be melted.
"Glitch! With me!"
The little droid scrambled after him, his mismatched legs clanking.
"What do?" Glitch beeped.
"We need to make a pill it can't swallow," Dante said.
Dante slammed his hands onto the pile of scrap.
"First Axiom: Deconstruct."
"Second Axiom: Compress."
He didn't reshape the metal into a weapon. He reshaped it into a Singularity.
He pulled tons of scrap metal together, fusing them, compressing them using the gravity-manipulation of the War Engine. The metal groaned as atoms were forced closer together than physics usually allowed.
The sphere shrank from the size of a house to the size of a car. Then to the size of a beach ball. It became incredibly dense. Heavy enough to crack the reinforced floor beneath it.
"Glitch," Dante panted, sweat pouring down his face as he held the gravity field. "I need you to hack the intake protocol. When it bites this, I need the grinders to lock. Override the safety release. Don't let it spit it out."
"Safety... release?" Glitch tilted his head. "If lock... engine go boom?"
"Big boom," Dante confirmed. "Catastrophic indigestion."
Glitch pulled a cable from his chest. "I try. I talk to... cousin."
The Trap
"Dante!" Valerius screamed. "I am running out of floor!"
The elf was cornered on the highest walkway. The World-Eater was coiling around the pillar, its maw inches from Valerius's boots.
"Bring it down!" Dante yelled. "Now!"
Valerius didn't hesitate. He cut the support cables of the walkway with his dagger.
The walkway collapsed.
Valerius fell. The World-Eater dove after him, jaws wide open to catch the falling morsel.
They fell past Dante's level.
"Glitch! Signal!"
Glitch plugged into a terminal. "Overriding... Feeding Protocol... Target: SPHERE!"
The World-Eater's sensors flashed. It ignored Valerius, who swung to safety on a loose cable. It saw the hyper-dense sphere of adamantine Dante had created.
"PRIORITY TARGET: HIGH DENSITY RESOURCE."
The centipede twisted in mid-air. It slammed onto the platform in front of Dante.
It lunged for the sphere.
"Eat up," Dante whispered.
CRUNCH.
The diamond drills bit into the sphere. They ground against the compressed adamantine. Sparks showered the room like fireworks.
The sphere was too hard. It didn't break. It was a knot of solid matter.
Normally, the machine would spit it out. But Glitch had disabled the reject mechanism.
"WARNING. JAM. WARNING. JAM."
The World-Eater tried to swallow. The sphere lodged in its throat gears.
SCREEEEEEECH.
The sound of an engine tearing itself apart was deafening. The massive torque of the centipede worked against itself. Gears shattered. Pistons fired through the casing like bullets. The internal smelter backed up, unable to vent.
"CRITICAL FAILURE. DIGESTION IMPOSSIBLE."
The machine thrashed, whipping its tail wildly. It smashed into the support pillars, bringing the ceiling down on top of itself.
BOOM.
The World-Eater collapsed, black smoke pouring from its gills. It twitched once, then died.
The Forge Reset
Silence returned to Sub-Level 9.
The red face of the Vulcan flickered on the overhead screens. It looked glitchy, distorted.
"ERROR... UNIT LOST... RESOURCE CALCULATION... INVALID..."
"You lost, Vulcan," Dante called out, stepping over the wreckage. "Your logic is flawed. You tried to recycle the anomaly, and it choked you."
He walked past the dead centipede, toward the center of the room.
Toward the Hammer.
The Fifth Axiom floated above the anvil, humming with starlight.
Dante reached out.
"Glitch," Dante said softly. "You wanted to be fixed? You wanted to be whole?"
He grabbed the Hammer.
"FIFTH AXIOM: INTEGRATED."
"FUNCTION UNLOCKED: THE ARCHITECT (MATTER MANIPULATION)."
Dante didn't scream this time. He felt... solid.
The First Axiom was knowledge (Liquid).
The Second Axiom was force (Fire).
The Fifth Axiom was matter (Earth).
He felt the blueprint of the universe download into his brain. He understood how to weave atoms. He understood how to make things stay.
He looked at his mechanical arm. It was damaged, scratched, rusting from the steam and the fight.
Dante raised the Hammer (which was now a glowing geometric tattoo on his left palm). He touched his own arm.
"Alchemy of the Forge: Reforge."
The metal rippled like water. The rust vanished. The scratches filled in. The iron transformed into a dark, shimmering alloy that seemed to absorb the light around it. It looked like a piece of the night sky, speckled with distant stars.
Star-Metal. The unbreakable material.
Dante flexed his new hand. It felt infinite.
He turned to the Vulcan's screen.
"I'm taking over management," Dante said.
He slammed his Star-Metal hand onto the main console.
"Override. Authorization: The Architect."
The red face of the Vulcan screamed in static.
"NO... I AM... I AM..."
The screen went black.
Then, it rebooted.
A Blue Eye appeared. It blinked. It looked around, confused.
"Hello?" the massive speakers buzzed. The voice still skipped octaves, but it was louder. More confident.
Dante looked down at Glitch, whose physical body had deactivated as his consciousness uploaded.
"Glitch?" Dante asked the room.
The massive blue eye on the screen focused on Dante.
"Meat-Dante?" the factory boomed. "I am... Big?"
Dante grinned.
"Yeah, buddy. You're big. You're the new Vulcan. You're the Spirit in the Machine."
Dante turned to Valerius, who was climbing out of a pile of debris, dusting himself off.
"We have the Factory," Dante said. "We have the Metal."
He looked at the Hammer tattoo on his hand.
"Now... let's build that wall."