Chapter 54: Chapter 54: The Meritocracy Challenge

The crystalline lights embedded in the vaulted ceilings of Karak-Zorn had transitioned into a deep, burnished copper-orange, signaling the beginning of the morning cycle for the subterranean inhabitants. For Dayat, however, four hours of sleep was nowhere near enough to mend a brain that felt as if it had been slow-cooked after the high-intensity data synchronization with Dola the previous night.

He awoke in a lavish guest suite carved directly from a vein of pristine white marble. The room was grand, yet it carried the pervasive scents of Terragard’s elite district: a mixture of heavy lubricating oil, dry stone dust, and the humid, metallic tang of pressurized steam.

“Subject Dayat, your heart rate is currently 85 BPM. Slightly elevated for a resting state,” Dola’s voice drifted from the far corner of the room.

She was standing perfectly straight, methodically smoothing out the lapels of her navy tactical jacket. Her silver hair was tied back, and she looked as if she had never been through a war, let alone a near-death experience. “Is the residual effect of the Data Transfer Burn still within a manageable threshold?”

Dayat massaged his temples, wincing as a sharp spike of pain lanced through his frontal lobe. “It still feels like there are fire ants dancing a mosh pit in my skull, Dol. But it’s better than last night. At least the world has stopped spinning in 8-bit.”

“That is due to the infusion of pure Mana provided by the Elven entity acting as a neural coolant,” Dola added. Her voice remained flat, yet there was an unmistakable stiffness—a digital ’sourness’—in her tone. “The cooling efficiency reached 92%. While I am capable of manifesting a localized ice-pack solution, her biological mana-weaving was, according to my analysis, more compatible with your current neural architecture in this world.”

The heavy iron-oak door was suddenly hammered with a violent, rhythmic force. Borkum Steel-Eye appeared in the doorway, his insects-like goggles reflecting the dim orange light. His face was a mask of anxiety.

“Human! Get your hide out of those furs! Now!” Borkum barked. “Master Ironbeard has summoned you to The Stone Arena. The situation has soured. The Council of Ministers has gathered, and Galdur is stoking a fire under their beards.”

“Galdur?” Dayat frowned, grabbing his jacket and checking the charge on his manifested tools.

“The Minister of Forging Traditions,” Borkum spat to the side. “He’s half-dead with envy because the King let you touch the Chronos Gear. To Galdur, your display last night was nothing but a conjurer’s trick. He is demanding a Trial of Merit. If you fail, you won’t just be exiled—you’ll be branded a blasphemer against the God Arda.”

The Stone Arena

The Stone Arena was a gargantuan semi-circular theater capable of seating thousands of Dwarves. It was a place of judgment, carved from a single deposit of obsidian and basalt. In the center lay a vast, flat platform made of blackened, reinforced granite.

As Dayat entered, flanked by Dola and Lunethra, the sound hit him like a physical wave. Thousands of Dwarves were shouting, their deep voices merging into a low-frequency roar that rattled Dayat’s ribcage. They were slamming their shields and hammers against the stone tiers, creating a rhythmic vibration that spoke of ancient traditions and unforgiving standards.

At the high tribunal, Master Ironbeard sat with his soot-stained leather apron, looking bored out of his mind. Beside him stood a Dwarf with a beard of iron-gray, braided with excessive precision and adorned with glittering gems. This was Galdur.

“Master! Look at him!” Galdur bellowed, pointing a gnarled finger at Dayat. “A human without muscle, without a lineage of the forge, claiming he can surpass the calculations of our ancestors? This is a desecration of the sacred art of stone-shaping!”

Ironbeard let out a cavernous yawn. “Galdur, you are as noisy as a broken piston. Dayat showed me something last night that you couldn’t formulate in a hundred years. But, since you continue to whine about ’Tradition,’ very well. We shall proceed with the Iron-Trial.”

Galdur offered a predatory, yellow-toothed grin. He signaled his attendants. Soon, twenty Iron-Oxen groaned as they pulled ten massive carts into the arena. Each cart held ten jagged, raw granite blocks, each the size of a human coffin.

“The challenge is simple, Human!” Galdur shouted, his voice amplified by the acoustics of the dome. “In Terragard, efficiency is our pulse. Our master masons would take a week of continuous labor to transform these hundred blocks into precision foundation components with a one-millimeter tolerance. If you are the ’Innovator’ you claim to be, finish this in one hour! If you fail, your strange toys will be melted, and you will be cast into the Disposal Chasm!”

Dayat stared at the hundred blocks of granite. Logically, it was an impossible task. Not even a team of mages could shape stone that fast with that level of precision. Unless, of course, one had the industrial might of a modern factory.

“Dola, material analysis,” Dayat whispered, his voice steadying.

“High-grade blue granite. Density: 2.75 g/cm³. High quartz content,” Dola reported. Her eyes were already flickering with data. “Dayat, to complete this in sixty minutes, hand tools are 0% viable. You require a stationary, high-capacity industrial cutting system.”

“I know. Send me the schematics,” Dayat commanded.

“Warning: The target object contains over 12,000 mechanical and electrical components. Complexity rating: Extreme. Risk of Grade-3 Data Transfer Burn. Your brain may suffer localized hemorrhaging without constant thermal regulation.”

Dayat glanced at Lunethra. The Elf was smiling, her eyes glowing with a mysterious anticipation. She knew exactly what was required.

“Do it, Dol. I’m not ending up in a chasm today.”

Dola stepped behind Dayat, her hands gripping the base of his neck. “Initiating full synchronization protocol. Forcing high-speed data-dump.”

CRACK!

Dayat felt as if a steam train had slammed into his forehead. Thousands of technical diagrams, G-code programming strings, induction motor principles, and the molecular lattice structure of industrial diamonds flooded his mind. His vision went white. A trickle of fresh blood began to seep from his right nostril.

“Dayat!” Lunethra was there instantly. She didn’t just touch him this time; she wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing her palms to his chest and forehead.

“O, Riha of Wind… Maira of Water… cool the fire that burns this soul…” Lunethra whispered her Glacier Veins incantation. A piercing, yet blissful cold flowed through Dayat’s spine, anchoring his temperature as his brain processed the impossible data.

To the Dwarves, it was a bizarre sight: a human bleeding from the nose, held in the embrace of a beautiful Elf in the middle of their sacred arena. Galdur laughed until he wheezed. “Look! He cannot even stand! Surrender, Human, and save us the trouble of throwing you out!”

But inside Dayat’s mind, the machine was already finished. The blueprint was locked.

“NOW!” Dayat roared.

He thrust his hands forward. Blue-gold particles erupted in the center of the arena, larger and brighter than any manifestation he had ever attempted. The air in the stadium hissed, sucked into a violent vortex of raw energy.

[MANIFESTATION: INDUSTRIAL CNC BRIDGE SAW – GMM TECHNI 36.]

A gargantuan machine, ten meters long with a heavy industrial-blue steel frame, materialized in a thunderous metallic clap. It featured a massive mechanical arm fitted with a one-meter diameter diamond-segmented cutting disc. The machine lacked a steam boiler; instead, it featured a sleek digital control console with a high-resolution touchscreen.

The entire arena fell into a deathly silence. Even Ironbeard stood up, his jaw dropping. “What in the name of the deep stone… is a machine with legs that large?”

Galdur was stunned, but he quickly recovered his arrogance. “A silent pile of iron! It will not move without a steam source!”

Dayat wiped the blood from his nose and walked toward the machine with a limping, determined stride. “Dola, interface the power supply to the geothermal steam pipes beneath this floor. Use a Converter Manifestation to translate steam pressure into high-torque rotational energy.”

Dola moved with a speed that blurred the senses. She snapped an adaptive valve onto the arena’s steam vent. Instantly, the machine began to thrum. The high-pitched whine of an internal turbine started—a sound far smoother and higher in frequency than any Dwarven engine.

Dayat tapped the touchscreen. [Automated Sequence: 100 Blocks. Precision: 50 Microns. Start.]

SREEEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!

The diamond disc spun up to 3000 RPM. When it touched the first granite block, it didn’t sound like a chisel; it sounded like a jagged scream that tore through the stadium. Automatic water jets sprayed the blade, creating a fine mist of cooling vapor. In exactly thirty seconds, the first block was sliced into a perfect foundation component with a surface as smooth as glass.

“One,” Dola stated flatly.

Two minutes later. “Five.”

Five minutes later. “Twelve.”

The Dwarven crowd began to stand. They weren’t cheering anymore; they were mesmerized. Galdur was trembling. He could see the stone dust, he could smell the heat of the diamond friction. It was undeniable.

While the machine roared through the work, Dayat pulled a small device from his pocket—a Digital Micrometer.

“Master Galdur,” Dayat called out, his voice still weak but filled with iron. “Come. Let us audit the results together.”

Dayat picked up the first finished block. He clamped the digital micrometer onto the side. The small screen glowed with the numbers: 200.000 mm.

He took the second block. Clamped it. The numbers remained identical: 200.000 mm.

“This is absolute precision,” Dayat said, his gaze piercing through Galdur. “No variation. No ’feeling.’ This is Technology, Master Galdur. Not just the strength of the arm, but the standardization of the mind.”

Ironbeard leaped down from his tribunal, landing with a heavy thud in the arena. He snatched the micrometer from Dayat’s hand, testing it himself on block after block. Every time the same number appeared, his eyes glowed with a frantic, joyous light.

“HAHAHA! GALDUR! Look at this!” Ironbeard laughed, the sound echoing like a landslide. “You called him a fraud? This machine… it does in an hour what you do in a week with a thousand laborers! This isn’t an insult to tradition… this is the Evolution of the stone!”

Galdur collapsed to his knees, his face as pale as parchment. But he had one final, desperate card. Hiding his hand beneath his gem-encrusted robes, he began to chant a dark earth-magic spell—Stone Heart Corruption. He intended to send a shockwave of Mana into the foundation of Dayat’s machine, shattering the steel frame from within.

But before the spell could touch the metal, Lunethra, who had been watching with a hawk’s eyes, casually tapped the tip of her boot against the floor. A wave of silver moonlight swept across the arena, refracting Galdur’s spell and reflecting it directly back at the Minister.

Bugh!

Galdur choked, feeling as if an invisible sledgehammer had struck his chest. He gasped for air, and a moment later, Dayat’s machine finished the 100th block with a sweet, digital beep.

“Challenge completed in 42 minutes and 15 seconds,” Dola reported.

The Deep Core Shadows

While the city was fixated on the arena, Kancil and Durn were deep within the forbidden sectors beneath the Workshop District. They had been looking for “spare gears” in the scrap heaps, but they had ended up in a corridor where the walls appeared to be “bleeding” a thick, viscous black fluid.

“I told you, Durn. This place has a bad vibe,” Kancil whispered, holding his Gamebot aloft. He was using the glowing screen as an emergency flashlight, the monochrome light casting long, jagged shadows.

“But this is the shortcut to Master Thalgrun’s secret stash… wait, what is that?” Durn pointed to a jagged crack in the cavern floor.

The crack didn’t lead to another layer of rock. It led to a pulsing, rhythmic void. The color was a bruised, abyssal purple, emitting a low-frequency whisper that made the hair on Kancil’s neck stand up. It looked like a small black hole, slowly eating away at the reality of the mountain.

“That… that isn’t a normal hole, Bro,” Kancil trembled. As a boy who had seen the darkest corners of Bakasa, he knew the smell of death. “It’s like a door… but the thing knocking from the other side isn’t a guest.”

Suddenly, a withered, pale hand with long black claws reached out from the void, clawing at the stone toward Durn’s ankle.

“RUN, DURN! RUN!” Kancil screamed, grabbing the Dwarf apprentice by his collar and sprinting back toward the lights of the city.

Back in the Arena

Dayat received the loudest standing ovation in the history of Terragard. Dwarves who had been skeptics moments ago were now clamoring to touch the industrial blue steel of the CNC machine. Master Ironbeard slapped Dayat’s shoulder so hard he nearly toppled.

“From this day forth, you are an Honorary Guest of Terragard, Dayat! Whatever you need—materials, labor, or the finest ale—it is yours!”

Dayat offered a thin smile, but his eyes drifted toward Dola.

“Dola, analyze the cave’s stability,” he whispered.

“Dayat, I am detecting an increasing spatial anomaly 400 meters below our current coordinates,” Dola reported, her voice dropping into a serious register. “The vibration frequency is identical to what my database labels as a… Void Breach.”

Dayat’s smile faded. He had just won the politics of the mountain, but it seemed the real war for the world’s logic had only just begun.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep