The air between the collapsing servant quarters and the High Shaman didn't just part for Soren; it shattered.
To his 3D Energy Vision, the space was a dense grid of atmospheric pressure and ambient Qi, and he was a solid projectile punching through a pane of glass.
The "Green Static" that surrounded the Shaman wasn't a passive aura; it was a reactive defense system.
As Soren descended, the emerald light coalesced into hundreds of needle-thin points.
Each of the needles hummed with a high-frequency vibration designed to pierce Jade-Alloy and scramble the neural pathways of any living organism.
"Threat identified as numerous Biological Drones," Soren's instincts got the internal prompt; the Master Builder Gene assessing the threat in microseconds.
"Threat level: High. Countermeasure: Void Absorption."
Both the threat and the maneuvers were being transmitted straight from the depths of Soren's genes in form of instincts, hitting his nerves as they formulated into facts in his mind.
It was a biological evolution of impossible capabilities, limits and potentials.
The Shaman raised his twisted blackwood staff, his face a rictus of ecstatic malice.
"The Void was not meant to eat the World, it sole reason for existing was to house it!" he shrieked, his voice layering over itself like a chorus of drowning men.
The green needles launched.
They didn't fly in a straight line; they swarmed, a chaotic cloud of virulent energy seeking the path of least resistance.
Liora, buried herself into Soren's chest, squeezing her eyes shut, as her small hands gripped his tunic so hard her knuckles turned white.
She expected pain. She expected the end.
But Soren didn't evade. He didn't block. He simply opened the furnace door of his chest.
The Black Sun, a singularity of compressed antimatter and biological hunger, flared aggressively.
It was still indignant of its previous slip-up, and its hunger was on a high, it didn't sense the incoming projectiles as threat, it saw them as dessert.
It didn't emit light; it swallowed it.
The green needles, moments from striking Soren's matte-red skin, were caught in the sudden, violent gravitational shear of his internal vacuum.
They didn't break; they unraveled.
The virulent green energy was stripped of its "Intent," broken down into raw, neutral energy, and sucked greedily into the abyss within his ribcage.
The Shaman's ecstatic expression faltered, replaced by a flicker of genuine, primal confusion.
He had expected to see a shield in response, not an invisible mouth.
Soren slammed into the Shaman not with the grace of a martial artist, but with the kinetic inevitability of a falling anvil.
The impact cratered the stone walkway, sending shockwaves through the surrounding architecture.
The blackwood staff snapped like dry twigs.
The Shaman was driven into the ground like a screw, his moss-green robes soaking up the violet ichor of the "Tranquil Poison" he had once administered.
They flooded every single orifice on his body, pouring and exiting his own ruptured meridians.
Strangely however, there was no blood.
Soren's hand clamped around the Shaman's throat, hoisting him up.
To his horror, the neck felt wrong. It felt was spongy, and hollow.
Soren's tricolor eyes scanned the creature thrashing in his grip, as a swift analytical inference surfaced within his thought.
"80 percent fungal biomass. 20 percent residual human tissue. Subject is deceased. Reanimated by Colony Intelligence."
In conclusion, the Shaman wasn't a man anymore. He was a husk, a skinsuit filled with the Envoy's green slime.
Soren squeezed harder, but he Shaman's head didn't snap back; it deformed, the jaw unhinging to reveal a throat clogged not with a tongue, but with a pulsating, green root system.
"You... cannot... kill... the Garden," the Shaman gurgled, the voice bubbling up from the wet mass inside him. "We... are... roots."
"I am not a gardener," Soren whispered, his voice a grinding mechanical bass that vibrated through the Shaman's hollow bones.
"I am the drought."
Then he activated the Chimera Cub's thermal venting.
His hand, still gripping the throat, turned a searing, incandescent white.
The heat didn't just burn; it sterilized.
The green root system inside the Shaman shrieked—a high-pitched, psychic wail that Soren felt in his teeth.
The biomass boiled, turning into steam that smelled of ozone and rotting flowers.
The Shaman's body went limp, the green light in his eyes flickering out like a blown fuse.
Soren dropped the husk, allowing it to crumble into ash and dried sludge upon hitting the stones.
Liora gasped, pulling away slightly to look at the remains.
"That was... Elder Arola," she whispered, her voice trembling. "He was the one who supervised the Truth-seeker Orb during the Awakening Rites. He... he's empty."
"They are all empty," Soren said, scanning the perimeter.
The "Green Static" in the distance was reacting violently to the Shaman's destruction.
The hum of the hive-mind had turned into a scream.
"We need to move. The signal loss will draw the high-tier predators."
"The tunnels," Liora said, her survival instincts kicking in over her fear.
She pointed to a heavy wooden grate near the base of the wall nearby the servant barracks.
"The old drainage tunnels. They lead under the Artisan District. Gary... Gary never went down there. He said it smelled like the dead."
Soren nodded, as he sensed the Master Builder Gene confirm the viability.
Subterranean movement would mask their thermal signature and dampen the Envoy's line-of-sight control.
He moved to the grate, hooking his fingers into the wooden bars.
With a grunt of exertion that was more for show than necessity, he ripped the grate from its stone setting, the metal groaning in protest.
They dropped into the darkness.
The air in the tunnels was thick, humid, and smelled of rust and decay, but to Soren, it was cleaner than the perfumed air of the surface.
Here, the "Green Static" was faint, dampened by layers of earth and stone.
He activated his Quartz-Nerves, allowing a soft, bioluminescent glow to emit from his skin, illuminating the slick, mossy walls.
Liora stayed close to him, her hand gripping the back of his tunic.
"Soren," she whispered, the echo of her voice bouncing down the tunnel.
"The letter... it said 'Harvest at Maturity.' What did they mean? You were just a boy."
Soren kept walking, his steps silent on the wet stone.
"I wasn't just a boy to them," he replied, his eidetic memories cross-referencing the information he had stolen from the Elite's letters in the Wastelands.
"I was a container. They poisoned me not to kill me, but to hollow me out. To make room."
He stopped, turning to face her.
The tricolor light of his eyes reflected in the damp walls.
"They want to put something else inside me.
The Shaman said Kaelen needed a body that won't rot under his power.
The Envoy needs a vessel that is already dead but still walking for Kaelen's stimulated awakening ritual."
Liora stared at him, horror dawning on her face. "So... erasing you... banishing you..."
"Was the final test," Soren finished.
"If I died in the Wastelands, I was a failure. If I survived... if I came back... I was ready."
He clenched his fist, the Jade-Alloy knuckles grinding.
"They think I returned to be claimed. They think I am a ripe fruit falling from the tree."
A low, rumbling growl echoed from the darkness ahead of them.
It wasn't a rat. It was too deep, too heavy.
The Chimera Cub on his back hissed, its hematite plates rattling.
"Something is down here," Soren whispered, extinguishing his bioluminescence instantly.
He switched to pure Thermal Imaging.
Fifty meters ahead, a large heat signature was blocking the tunnel.
It wasn't "Green." It was a cold, mottled blue—a beast of the deep earth, likely a Subterranean Drake that had wandered into the drainage system.
But there was something else.
Attached to the Drake's spine was a pulsating green node.
"They are expanding," Soren realized.
"The Envoy is assimilating the local fauna. Even the rats aren't safe."
"We can't fight it," Liora whispered, sensing his tension.
"If we make noise, the ones above will hear us through the vents."
Soren analyzed the creature. It was blind, relying on vibration.
"We don't fight," he agreed.
He grabbed Liora's hand.
"Do exactly as I do. Step where I step. Breathe when I breathe."
His Master Builder Gene responded to his needs, initiating a Skill Breakthrough: Seismic Synchronization.
He attuned his own heartbeat and Liora's (through his grip) to match the ambient frequency of the dripping water and shifting earth.
To the blind Drake, they would become nothing more than background noise.
They moved past the massive, sleeping beast.
Soren could smell the ammonia reek of its breath.
He saw the green node on its back pulsating like a heartbeat, sending sensory information back to the Spire.
It was a biological camera.
They had been inches away from discovery.
Liora held her breath until her lungs burned, her eyes fixed on Soren's back.
She trusted him. Not the monster, but the calculation.
And the calculation held.
They slipped past the beast, dissolving into the shadows on the other side.
Once they were safe, Soren leaned against the wall, allowing his systems to cool.
The strain of maintaining the Seismic Synchronization while suppressing the Black Sun's hunger was immense.
Steam curled off his shoulders.
"We are under the Artisan District now," Liora said quietly, reviewing her mental map of the tribe's inner rim.
"If we go up through here, we will be entering the smithy's vents.
That's near the armory. But why are we going there? We should be running."
"We aren't running," Soren said, looking up at the stone ceiling.
"The Envoy is waiting for a Harvest. If I leave, he will burn the tribe to find me.
He will burn you."
"He's going to burn us anyway!" Liora cried, though she kept her voice to a desperate whisper.
"Soren, look at yourself! You are strong, but there are thousands of them. And the Envoy... he could control the Chief!
He even controls the Matron!"
"He controls the biomass," Soren corrected. "But he can't control stone. He doesn't have control over metal either."
He looked at his hands.
"I need to upgrade.
My current frame is sufficient for guards, but for the Envoy... I need density. I need mass."
He looked at Liora.
"The Artisan District. That's where they keep the Star-Iron ore for the Chief's weapons."
Liora's eyes widened. "You... you want to eat the ore?"
"I want to integrate it," Soren said.
"Apparently, there is something in my genes that can restructure my skeletal density if I provide the raw materials.
If I am to be a vessel, I will be a vessel too heavy for him to lift."
He pushed off the wall.
"Lead the way to the smithy, Liora. Tonight, I feast on iron."
As they moved deeper into the tunnel, the silence was broken by a sound that made Soren's blood run cold.
It was a slow, deliberate clapping.
Coming from the darkness behind them, back where the Drake was.
"Impressive," a voice echoed—smooth, cultured, and utterly out of place in a sewer.
"Most 'Guests' would have panicked. You... you adapted; and so well at that."
Soren spun around, shielding Liora.
Standing near the sleeping Drake, stroking the green node on its back as if it were a pet, was a figure.
It wasn't a Shaman. It wasn't a guard.
It was a young man, handsome in a sharp, predatory way, wearing the silk robes of a diplomat.
But his eyes were bandaged with a strip of green silk.
"You don't know me," the blind man smiled, revealing teeth that were slightly too perfect.
"But I know you. I read your file. 'Subject: Vessel-7(7).' The Oman House sends its regards."
Soren's 3D Energy Vision couldn't penetrate the man's robes. It was like looking at a blank spot in the universe.
"You aren't one of the Golden Body Elites, and neither are you one of his biomasses." Soren stated.
"No," the man bowed theatrically. "I am the Quality Control."
The Drake woke up.
It didn't roar. It simply exploded into motion, its massive claws tearing through the stone walls as the green node on its back injected a massive dose of adrenaline directly into its spine.
The blind man pointed a manicured finger at Soren.
"Let's see if the product is durable enough for market."
Instantly, the tunnel collapsed behind them.
The only way out was forward, into the Drake's maw, or through the blind man.
Soren pushed Liora toward the vent ladder.
"Climb!" he roared.
He turned to face the beast, the Black Sun spinning up to maximum velocity.
The first ripple of his presence was about to become a wave.