Chương 434: Timeout

I stood in the scorched, smoking wreckage of the inner Sanctum, adjusting my cloak as the dust settled. I didn't just assume the Phoenix Anima was dead. My [Lattice Perception] scanned the surrounding space in deep, microscopic detail, tracing the residual lines of uncompiled causality. Sure enough, right where the spirit had detonated its core, a hair-thin, translucent thread of golden soulfire stretched through the slate floor, fleeing toward the subterranean levels below.

The bird hadn't committed suicide; it had ejected a microscopic core-spark, leaving behind a fake kinetic explosion to cover its retreat.

"Clever little bird," I chuckled. I wove my star-cores into a zero-friction rotation and activated [Void Emperor's Omnipresence]. My physical coordinates collapsed, following the faint causality thread instantly across three miles of lead-alloy slate. I re-emerged inside a narrow subterranean maintenance tunnel, stepping directly into the path of the fleeing core-spark. The tiny, thumb-sized golden phoenix was sprinting down the tunnel as fast as its microscopic wings could carry it, trailing wisps of blue smoke.

Before it could register my arrival, I flicked my wrist, trapping the tiny spark inside a gentle, transparent sphere of localized gravity. The tiny phoenix slammed into the inner wall of the gravity bubble with a soft piff, tumbling backward onto its tail feathers. It looked up at me, its microscopic golden eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated terror.

"HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?!" The tiny bird shrieked, its high-pitched voice sounding like a squeaky toy.

"I detonated a peak Tier 9 kinetic implosion in your face! You're a monster! A demon! Let me go!"

"Now you want to talk?" I asked, holding the floating gravity sphere up to eye level, a dry smile touching my lips.

"I'm not talking to a monster!" The bird puffed out its chest, flailing its tiny wings against the glass-like barrier.

"My Master will be back any second! He'll flatten your soul gate into paste! He'll feed your core to his magma-drakes! Leave right now or you'll face a horrible, painful death!"

"Is that so?" I asked mildly, turning around and walking deeper into the Sanctum's lower corridors, carrying the caged bird beside me.

"I think your Master has been gone for a long time, little buddy. But I'm happy to wait for him."

"He's not gone! He's just... out on an extended errand!" The bird snapped back, pacing frantically inside its bubble.

"Put me down! You can't just carry me around like a lantern!" I ignored its squeaky protests, keeping a passive, non-hostile barrier around the spark while my [Lattice Perception] scanned the surrounding facility. The lower levels of the Sanctum were incredible. The corridors were lined with ancient, pre-Shattering runic arrays — complex, non-systemic security networks that operated on forgotten spatial equations.

Twenty yards down the corridor, we reached a heavy lead-alloy blast door wreathed in a spinning, violet-and-gold runic wheel.

"Ha!" The tiny phoenix cackled from inside its sphere, pointing a tiny wing at the door.

"That's the Spatial-Shatter Gate! It's sealed with over seven hundred ancient locks! You'll never get through! The moment you touch it, a hundred spatial blades will cut you into soup! Just give up and turn back!" I stepped up to the door, ignoring the bird's gloating. I raised my gauntleted hand, activating my zeroth-tier [Symphony of the Animus Arch] to read the door's runic frequency.

I simply identified the three structural anchor-runes holding the spatial barrier together and applied a microscopic pulse of [Voidflame] to delete their semantic permissions. The massive, unpickable blast door groaned, its glowing runic wheel dissolving into harmless sparks, and slid smoothly open. The tiny phoenix froze. Its tiny beak hung wide open in complete, stunned silence.

"Wait... what? How did you do that?! That's a Class-Seven security gate! You cheated!"

"I didn't cheat. I just removed the lock," I said, stepping through the doorway.

"That's not how locks work!" The bird squawked indignantly, flailing its wings.

"My Master spent years designing that array! You can't just... just make it vanish!" We continued down the corridor, encountering one ancient trap after another. A hundred yards later, the floor vanished, revealing a mile-deep pit filled with churning, white-hot entropic soulfire.

"Aha!" The bird gloated again, puffing its tiny chest out.

"The Sea of Oblivion! The heat here is fifty thousand degrees! Even if your body is tough, the thermal pressure will melt your soul gate!" I didn't even pause. I wove my [Primordial Shell], locked my physical density, and stepped casually onto the surface of the boiling liquid fire, walking across it as if it were a paved sidewalk while my [The Void-Star's Hunger] passively drank the excess heat to refill my [Void-Battery].

"WHY ARE YOU WALKING ON IT?!" The bird shrieked, pressing its face against the gravity bubble in absolute horror.

"IT'S LIQUID OBLIVION! STOP WALKING ON IT LIKE IT'S DIRT!" Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"It's actually very soothing," I noted dryly, stepping onto the far bank. By the time we cleared the third trap room — an intricate spatial-gravity maze that I bypassed in four seconds using [Void Emperor's Omnipresence] — the tiny phoenix had given up on gloating entirely. It sat slumped on the floor of its gravity bubble, its head buried in its tiny wings, muttering dark, frustrated complaints.

"Unbelievable... forty eons of state-of-the-art security... bypassed by some edgy guy with red eyes and a dark cloak who doesn't even seem to need to resort to brute force..." Finally, we stepped into the grand central core of the Sanctum. The room was a breathtaking, vaulted dome carved from polished opalescent quartz. Floating in the center of the hall was a gargantuan, uncompiled crystal archive that hummed with terabytes of ancient, pre-Shattering data.

I set the gravity bubble containing the tiny bird onto a slate table, opening my arms with a warm, theatrical grin.

"Welcome home."

"This isn't your home!" The bird pouted, turning its back on me.

"You're a trespasser! When my Master returns, he'll punish you swiftly!"

"Your Master must have been an extraordinarily powerful figure," I said smoothly, leaning against the table.

"To carve an entire planet into a private cultivation domain requires immense authority. What was his name?"

"I'm not stupid!" The bird snapped, glaring at me over its shoulder.

"You're trying to trick me into giving you information! I won't say a word!"

"Fair enough," I smiled. I turned toward the central crystal archive, pulling several blank data-crystals from my [Armory of the Ashen]. I connected my storage arrays to the Sanctum's central pedestal, beginning a high-speed extraction of their ancient archives. The data slates were massive — filled with detailed pre-Shattering research on soul-gate geometry, uncompiled elemental affinities, and ancient spatial architectures.

"Thief!" The tiny phoenix yelled, banging its tiny wings against the barrier.

"Plunderer! You're stealing my Master's research! Stop it!"

"I'm not stealing it," I corrected calmly, watching the progress as I transferred data from the crystals.

"I'm just making some digital copies. Your Master's slates will remain completely intact."

"That's still stealing!" After ten minutes, I realized the archive contained far too much information to analyze on site. It would take Kasian and me weeks of hyper-accelerated study to decode the full script. Just as I pulled the final copied crystal from the pedestal, the ambient temperature in the hall abruptly plummeted. The liquid magma pipes along the walls froze into solid obsidian as a heavy, metallic vibration rattled the slate floor.

From the far shadow of the central dome, a second guardian Anima awakened. A colossal, fifteen-foot-tall Magma-Golem wreathed in plates of glowing, white-hot molten brass stepped into the light. Its eyes burned with two spheres of pure, radiant light, and in its four massive hands, it held two-handed war-hammers carved from volcanic iron. The tiny phoenix bird inside the gravity bubble instantly perked up, its eyes lighting up with hysterical joy.

"FINALLY! BROTHER BRASS! How long were you going to stay asleep for?! Kill him! He's stealing from the library!" The Magma-Golem let out a subterranean roar, raising all four war-hammers, and charged toward me at light-speed. I didn't blink. I stepped inside its reach before the first hammer could swing down, wove my [Primordial Shell] into absolute density, and brought a heavy gravity clamp from my [Domain of the Ashen] straight down onto its shoulders.

The massive brass golem's knees buckled, its four war-hammers clattering to the slate floor as fifty thousand atmospheres of gravitational pressure pinned it flat to the stone. I channeled a quick pulse of [Omnipresence] to lock its mana conduits, rendering the giant construct completely immobile. The fight was over in less than two seconds. The tiny phoenix bird's joyful cheering cut off mid-cheer. It stared at its massive, pinned brother, then slowly turned its squeaky head to look at me, its wings trembling.

I picked up the pinned Magma-Golem's spirit-core with my gravity-slopes and floated it over to the slate table, setting it down directly beside the caged phoenix bird. I constructed a second, comfortable gravity bubble around the brass golem, effectively creating a side-by-side "timeout corner" for both guardian spirits on the table.

"Alright," I said, pulling up a wooden stool and sitting down in front of both caged Animas.

"You two are in a timeout. Please behave. As I've said three times now, I am only here to learn, and then I will leave." The tiny phoenix bird puffed out its chest, glaring at me through its bubble.

"You're a thief! It doesn't matter how politely you word it, you walked into our home, bypassed our locks, and copied our records! You are a thief!" The pinned Magma-Golem grunted from its bubble, its molten brass eyes narrowing in agreement.

"Thief." I sat on my stool, rubbing my chin as I thought about their words.

"You know what?" I admitted cleanly, giving them an honest nod.

"You're actually right. By standard definitions, I am a thief. I apologize for taking your archives without permission." Both Animas blinked, completely caught off guard by my sudden admission of guilt.

"Wait... you agree?" The phoenix bird asked, its squeaky voice confused.

"I do," I nodded.

"So, instead of stealing, how about we turn this into a legitimate business transaction? An exchange of resources."

"We don't want your money, thief!" The bird huffed.

"I wasn't going to offer money," I smiled faintly. I reached into my Sanctum's [Singularity] within the Void and pulled out a large, steaming wooden tray. On the tray sat three freshly baked, golden-brown sweet pastries filled with spiced berry jam, alongside two thick, perfectly roasted cuts of seasoned meat from Bastion's finest kitchens. A rich, divine aroma of roasted spices, melted butter, and sweet fruit instantly filled the cool air of the central hall.

The tiny phoenix bird's squeaky tirade stopped instantly. Both Animas went completely frozen, their eyes locked onto the steaming food. I watched in amusement as the tiny phoenix's beak began to visibly salivate, its tiny throat swallowing hard, while the massive Magma-Golem's molten eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. They were spiritual constructs, yes, but they hadn't tasted actual, physical food or seasoned essence in several thousand cycles.

I held up a warm, delicious pastry, letting the sweet steam drift toward their gravity bubbles.

"I bet it's been a really long time since either of you had something decent to eat," I said smoothly, a dry grin spreading across my face.

"How about we discuss an exchange of information... over dinner?"