As the silver alloy hatch etched with [PROJ: E.D.E.N - Sec. 04] slowly slid open, a blast of bone-dry, freezing air rushed up from the abyss. It carried the distinct, heavy scent of metallic oxidation and some kind of chemical preservative.

  The sudden draft instantly snuffed out the torches held by the workers.

  Forcing my hammering heart to slow down, I clicked on a high-powered flashlight and stepped through the doorway.

  Zayla shadowed me. Her twin blades were already drawn, the hackles on her neck and tail.

  Sarak squeezed in as well. As a goblin—a species with a natural, almost pathological obsession with subterranean engineering—she couldn't resist the pull of an unknown underground structure.

  Brad brought up the rear, acting as the rearguard.

  We descended an incredibly deep, spiraling industrial steel staircase.

  I swept the flashlight beam across the walls, catching peeling yellow paint, stenciled next to the words:

  [EMERGENCY EXIT]

  And every ten meters, a newly sprayed zone designation:

  [SEC.04 - DAMPING SUB-LEVEL]

  “Alex...”

  Zayla leaned close, her amber slit-pupils completely dilated in the dark. She kept her voice to a harsh whisper, as if terrified of waking something up. “There isn't a single trace of mana down here. It’s freezing. What kind of monster’s stomach are we inside?”

  Staring at the familiar English letters on the wall, my stomach tied itself into an uncontrollable knot.

  “We aren't in a monster’s stomach, Zayla.” I inhaled a lungful of the bone-dry air that made my throat burn. “This might be the belly of a ship. Or... a cellar built to hold the entire world.”

  This massive Blackrock Mountain range, stretching for hundreds of miles, appeared to be nothing more than a colossal camouflage net. Inside, it was either the wreckage of a massive interstellar colony ship or a planetary-scale terraforming control center.

  We descended the stairs for roughly a hundred meters.

  The claustrophobic shaft suddenly opened up. We stepped into an unimaginably vast subterranean hall.

  I swept the searchlight around, but the beam couldn't even reach the far walls. I could only faintly make out dozens of absurdly thick, load-bearing pillars supporting the cavernous ceiling.

  This entire space was a graveyard for ultra-heavy technological hardware.

  Massive, dust-covered circular metal tracks lay silently in the dark, looking like the ribcages of prehistoric leviathans. In the dead center of the tracks sat a completely bone-dry reactor vat, easily over fifty meters in diameter.

  “By the Creator...”

  Sarak let out a shrill, borderline-hysterical shriek. She sprinted toward a massive gear assembly, her filthy hands trembling as she stroked the metal bearings. Even after two thousand years, they fit together flawlessly, without a single millimeter of warpage or deformation.

  “This is impossible! Absolutely impossible!”

  The goblin engineer dropped to her knees, actual tears welling up in her eyes:

  “This level of machining precision... without high-frequency magical induction heating, so perfectly that not even a single hair could fit into the seam?! Boss... compared to this, those steam hammers we’re so proud of up top are just cavemen banging rocks together!”

  I tried to run a structural scan through my retinal UI panel to locate a control node. But the system, which usually hacked through anything in this world, threw up a cold wall of red text:

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  The system was completely blind.

  Pushing deeper into the hall, we finally located a designated zone sectioned off by thick, radiation-shielded glass—The Control Room.

  The heavy blast door was jammed halfway open.

  We stepped inside. The air was thick with a suffocating, dead silence. Time had been frozen here for millennia.

  A heavy layer of dust coated the main console. My eyes immediately locked onto something.

  Across several of the manual input keys, I spotted dried, blackened bloodstains, alongside several deep, violent gouges that looked like they’d been ripped open by a high-frequency cutting torch.

  Had there been a mutiny down here?

  “Boss, I got a faint heat signature over here!”

  Sarak found something beneath the main console.

  It was a localized emergency backup power supply, heavily shielded in lead plating. The indicator light on the casing was still weakly pulsing a dying red.

  Grabbing the battery pack, I forcefully slammed the connector into the primary power intake beneath the control board.

  Zzzzt—CRACK.

  Directly above the console, a violently harsh microphone feedback squeal blasted through the hall. The high-frequency screech made Zayla wince, clapping her hands over her sensitive, furred ears.

  After a brief burst of static, heavily distorted, fragmented audio echoed through the cavernous underground space.

  It was the voice of a man. Incredibly old, exhausted, drowning in despair, and carrying the absolute dead weight of someone waiting for the end. He was speaking pure, unaccented Earth English.

  “...Bzzzt... Final log entry... The experiment is a total failure.”

  The voice wheezed, every breath sounding like a punctured bellows.

  “I warned them... those higher-dimensional ‘magical variables’ are an uncontrollable toxin. They’re burning through the lifespan of the continent’s core... but they wouldn't listen.”

  “They rejected my proposal. They refused to reboot Sector 04 [Main Processing Chip] to drain all ambient mana from the atmosphere and seal the tectonic fissures... If we just purge the mana, the world reverts to standard physical laws...”

  “But they’ve all gone insane... bzzzt... They’re addicted to that synthetic power they’re calling ‘divinity’...”

  The control room was dead silent.

  The recording kept playing.

  “They took the flagship’s Golden Conduction Core and the Main Processing Chip... They headed South. They plan to use the genetic modification tech to completely enslave the indigenous surface population... They actually... they actually believe they are gods...”

  “The foundational physical code of this continent is collapsing... I don't have the clearance to stop them anymore.”

  The static grew heavier, the voice fading, as if the speaker’s life was draining away with the battery.

  “If you are listening to this log... it means you found my anchor point.”

  “Go South... find those false gods... retrieve the chip, slot it into the drive... and initiate the reboot...”

  “It is the only way to stabilize the tectonic shear... remember... do not trust the magic... bzzzt...”

  The recording cut out.

  I stared dead center at the control console.

  Right where the recording had indicated, I saw a highly obvious, violently pried-open square slot. Hundreds of pure gold data-conduction pins had been sheared off at the base, looking like a brutally torn spiderweb.

  That was the exact socket designed to house the Main Processing Chip, the key to booting up the subterranean damper and stabilizing the earth's crust.

  Now, it was just a fatal, empty hole.

  I slumped back against the dusty console, the blood running cold in my veins.

  In that single moment, my entire understanding of this continent violently realigned.

  Magic isn't a divine blessing; it's a toxin that's eating this continent alive.

  The “Creator” Zayla spoke of wasn't a deity. They were interstellar colonists who used high-tech chips to forcibly genetically modify and enslave the ancestors of the Cat-kin and Eagle-kin.

  And the man who left this recording was an engineer who tried to save the planet. He died alone in this freezing bunker, watching the world tear itself apart.

  Suddenly!

  THOOOOOM!

  A violently massive tremor ripped through the entire subterranean bunker!

  The sound didn't come from above. It originated from far, far deeper within the planet’s core. It was an incredibly heavy, slow, yet soul-rattling thud.

  A heartbeat.

  The heartbeat of the Dragon King. Triggered by the kinetic impact of the floating island and the massive disruption in the mana grid, the destroyer that had slept for millennia was waking up.

  I whipped around.

  Brad, Zayla, and Sarak had all instinctively staggered half a step back, their faces completely drained of color.

  “Bro...” Brad swallowed hard, cold sweat gleaming on his forehead under the flashlight beam, his voice shaking. “That sound we just heard... is that the legendary oversized lizard down there?”

  “Yeah. The Dragon King is waking up.”

  Grinding my teeth, I tightened my grip on the heavy flashlight.

  “The damper can't boot without the chip. Our operational window is closing fast.”

  “Alex, what’s the next move?” Zayla stayed practically glued to my side.

  “We get topside.”

  I turned and power-walked out of the bunker.

  ...

  Ten minutes later, we breached the surface, leaving the abyss behind.

  Without pausing to bleed off the subterranean chill, I marched straight into the custom glass enclosure holding Selena.

  She was huddled in the dark corner of her cell. Clearly, that terrifying tremor radiating from the deep crust had completely shattered the former “Lord of the Sky,” leaving her pale and stripped of all her arrogance.

  “Selena.”

  I stepped right up to the glass wall and slammed both hands hard against the ballistic pane, the sharp crack making her jump. I locked my eyes onto hers.

  “What do you know about the nations in the South?”

  Selena snapped her head up.

  For the first time, absolute, unadulterated terror and disbelief flooded her arrogant silver eyes.

  “I warned you not to disturb the Dragon King below! What the hell did you just do?!”

  Taking a ragged breath, she grabbed the iron bars of her bed frame, grinding her teeth in near-hysteria:

  “The Kingdom of Golden Sands in the South... that is the domain of pure-blooded humans! They are the most terrifying heretics on this entire continent!”

  “They possess 'Ancient Relics' capable of annihilating and reshaping the earth! They are the only force in this world capable of truly enslaving us! That is a restricted zone even I wouldn't dare cross into!”

  My chest tightened.

  Jasta.

  I immediately thought of that greedy fox.

  Before he rolled out, he explicitly stated he was heading to the Kingdom of Golden Sands to secure venture capital.

  Turning around, I looked at Brad, whose face was equally grim.

  “Brad, figure out a way... we have to drag Jasta back here right now!”