October 2nd, 626

“What a pain in the fucking ass.”

I sighed and sat back into my seat, deploying the program I had just finished developing. 

The Mantle really knew how to piss a guy off. I understood why they were so careful with their systems, were so complex with their software, but it made my job that much harder. 

I had understood the breadth of their programming languages a while ago. The only thing I still couldn’t do was manufacture one of those automaton cores but that wasn’t necessary knowledge for this task. Unfortunately the Mantle was autistic with their programming and soon after understanding things I was left to figure out how the hell they managed to seal the Heart. 

The massive device that constituted the “Heart” was composed of several parts. First were the Stabilizers. Because the Anomaly of Mana was so powerful back then, in order to even see the Vigor, they created the tunnels across the island to draw Mana away from the Anomaly. The Stabilizers were once located at the ends of those tunnels, generating the power that drew the Mana away. 

However, once the Scourge attacked, the Stabilizers were brought back to this central complex and installed around the Heart directly. They were then repurposed into directors and formed into a weapon. That weapon was what, according to the leftover logs, managed to kill the Broodfather. They then developed the dual cored automatons to eradicate the rest, but they obviously failed to clear the island completely before getting wiped out themselves. 

In the end they sealed the Heart away with this barrier. The directors around the Heart were turned into suppressors, attacking the heart enough to allow it to be contained. Then the remaining power of the Heart was injected into the system and used to perpetuate its own chains. The only power that could overcome the barrier, therefore, was something far greater than the power of the Heart itself. 

That would demand a Sovereign, at least. 

So I was left to find another way. I had to find that crack in the armor, the door left behind by the dead. 

After a handful of days I was pretty sure I found it. The answer, the key, lay in the barrier itself. 

Since the Heart was powering it, the barrier was composed of Mana and Vigor, but intertwined and given purpose by Psyka. From the logs there were vague mentions of the barrier needing to be coded. Initially I had thought that they were just coding some kind of enchanted projector for the barrier. 

But there were no devices capable of projecting anything around the Heart. There were only the suppressors, the Heart, and the devices locking the whole complex in space. There was nothing to create the barrier. 

Not unless the device creating the barrier wasn’t even tangible. 

Things like White Crystals gave off resonant frequencies and fields. It was the key to making Elemental Crystals at Wonderland, and Psyka was absolutely capable of interfering with these fields and frequencies. After all, in the construction of Elemental Crystals, the summoner was required to highlight the resonant field itself so the warlock and knight could stabilize and adjust. 

Without the summoner, it was extremely difficult if not impossible for a knight and warlock to find the field and frequency. In fact, with higher authority crystals, there was not a single instance of a knight and warlock being able to create an Elemental Crystal without a summoner. 

If that was the case, then perhaps the summoner did more than just highlight the field for them. Perhaps they gave that field form, turning something abstract into something tangible, capable of being interacted with. 

I hadn’t thought much of that before, thinking it was just a consequence of increasing power scales and the complexity therein. But now, before this barrier, I got ideas. I likened the effect of a summoners intervention to a wavefunction collapse.

With some testing I was able to confirm that there was Psyka within the barrier. Some more testing said that the Psyka was capable of being interfered with. By injecting codified Psyka into the barrier I could create disturbances. The only issue was that those disturbances were wiped away almost instantaneously. 

That was my crack. 

Days of testing further and I was able to curate a program to find out which kinds of interferences messed with the barrier the most. From there I was able to pinpoint certain frequencies and certain batches of code that didn’t just disturb the barrier, but outright eliminated it.  

Those eliminations were incredibly small and only lasted tiny fractions of a second, but the crack got wider. 

The barrier was being held together by a perpetually error checking Psykic array, but those openings I created were only possible because I had found what seemed to be the ‘key’ to this array. Now I just had to unlock the millions of constantly resetting locks all around the array. If I didn’t do it fast enough, the barrier would just reform. 

If I could brute force with enough computational power, it would only be a matter of time before the barrier collapsed. 

This was where the Death Shrine had failed. I wasn’t sure if it had found the key, and even if it did, I wasn’t sure it was smart enough to realize it was the key and know what it had to do to break the barrier. 

I didn’t really blame it though, because after loading my SEER Knife with the code and stabbing the barrier, I got painfully insignificant results. The barrier so far outclassed my Knife that the two couldn’t be compared. It was the difference between a phone and a supercomputing complex. 

But that didn’t mean it was hopeless. After all, even supercomputers could be infected with viruses. I just had to use its power against itself. 

That was the premise behind my last program. Like in my battle against the Death Shrine to open the door to the Heart, I just needed to be able to hold the territory that I took. If the locks couldn’t reset, then I could just give it time and it would unlock everything eventually with a self-perpetuating program. So I reversed engineered the arrays of the barrier based on the key and tailored my own systems to the Mantle’s. 

Then after pushing my program, I sat back and waited, watching the screen in front of me. 

And I smiled when I saw the data point, a number of locks that grew in size but didn’t decrease. The number jumped to just 222 and then stopped, remaining there for an entire two minutes. 

I chuckled, confirming just how much of a genius I was, before closing the program and letting the barrier reset. 

I made a few more modifications and dropped the program into the SEER Knife. Then, with a jump out of my chair I skipped over to the barrier itself. 

Umara looked up at me, her brow raised. 

“What happened?”

“I solved it.”

“The barrier?”

I didn’t respond, simply drawing the dark purple blade of the Knife and smiling at her. 

Then, I stabbed the barrier. 

It started crumbling around my knife. Like an infection, the program spread and the barrier started disintegrating, pure Psykic arrays flashing with impossible density across the barrier. 

Umara’s eyes widened as, after just ten seconds, a quarter of the barrier was reduced to inert atmospheric magic. 

Another thirty, and the entire barrier evaporated, revealing the Heart in all its magitechnical glory. 

Everyone else was within the lab there to witness it, rising from their beds or nests to walk over to where I stood. 

That’s when a device deployed from the Heart, a terminal with a single screen that flashed with flickering light, clearly aged. The software booted and I saw the seal of the Mantle of Wisdom. 

After being shown a page of options, I started tapping through it. Within, I discovered a massive archive of the data they had collected on the Heart and the new automatons they derived from its transmutation. I couldn’t suppress my grin. The data was completely untouched, not infected like everything else touched by the Death Shrine. 

There were also controls to operate the devices around the Heart, as well as a monitor for tracking its status. 

A quick glance at that told me that the Heart was massively underpowered. A graph showed me that it had been draining power steadily over the last several decades, its regeneration diminishing as it aged accordingly. That made me frown. 

I tapped some more of the controls and the suppressors, those massive crystalline constructions around the Heart’s four cardinal directions, detached. Then the Heart lowered, coming within reach. 

The two pylons that locked the Heart in space were deactivated, and the Heart itself, a pulsing metal orb about 10 feet in diameter, lowered into a cradle. 

Another tap of the button, and that orb was opened. 

Inside was revealed the Anomaly, so much Mana and Vigor spilling out that it was visually tangible as a liquid. It was only a foot around, a White Crystal in the shape of an actual heart, the heart of the Lordbeast King. 

Despite being Crystal it actively beat with life. It constantly pumped in a loop that transformed Mana into Vigor and Vigor back into Mana. Within the metal orb was a whole plethora of sensors and containers. 

That this Heart alone could unleash such absurd elemental power to line the Stabilizer tunnels across the island with pure Elemental Crystals was a thought I had a hard time wrapping my head around. However, it was clear now that after so many years of suppression and draining, the Heart had been massively weakened, a fading fire of what it once was. 

It would recover some of its power since I had taken it out of the suppressors, but it would never be what it once was. Perhaps that was a good thing though. It made observing the transmutation process even easier than the Mantle had it back then. 

Still, I was a bit annoyed at the Mantle’s lack of foresight and general stupidity. 

“Amazing…”

Umara, including everyone else hounding around me, were in awe watching the Heart. Unlike me, they could actively sense the Mana and Vigor in incredible detail, so they were probably watching a never-before-seen spectacle of the greatest magical feat thus far in human history. 

After giving them a minute, I tapped the screen and shut the orb. Umara sulked. 

“Aww, I wanted to watch it more. Can I hold it too?”

“I don’t intend to let you hold such a powerful item so close to your body. We won’t do anything with it until we can get the Wonderland teams here to do tests. Until then, it stays in its container. That way it also won’t radiate like a beacon for every Shade on the island.”

I turned to them. 

“With this, our mission here can be considered complete. I have teams ready for deployment, which I will call today. Once they get here, we’ll be heading back to the mainland.”

They smiled, relieved that we’d finally be getting to go back home. I smiled with them. 

I was ready to get out of this hell. 

……

…

“What an ungrateful bastard.”

Vatsy cursed before throwing a batch of papers on top of another pile on his desk. 

Another letter, another report, another signature, and countless promises and favors. 

The work was endless and yet he was doing it for, currently, little to no reward. 

“A steaming pile of dog shit, huh? Nothing but a shack, huh?!”

The sight of the other papers he had to go through made his bristling anger worsen. 

“You insult me, send your pretty fiancé to change my mind, and then have your assistant reject every meeting and communication request?! It’s not like I’ve saved you from two dozen laws and regulations that would have stifled your trade with every noble in the kingdom! It’s not like I’ve saved you millions of coin by preventing new tax laws from being implemented! It’s not like I managed to quell a brewing boycott! It’s not like I’ve kept my mouth shut about that damned Trojan of yours! I mean, could you be any more obvious?!”

He kicked the desk, his butler moving over and catching a fallen item. 

“Perhaps you should retire for the night, sir. There’s no need to invest so much effort in one night.”

“I understand that.”

Vatsy huffed and calmed himself, sitting in his chair and refusing to touch another paper. 

He didn’t know what John was doing. Nobody did except those closest to him. He had just expected to get some recognition for what he had done, perhaps an apology at the barest minimum for the insults hurled his way. 

He could admit that he would’ve never imagined what John had built Sawn Industries into. He took Umara’s advice seriously, but becoming an industrial behemoth overnight was out of his expectations. Even the Whetted City, a place that Vatsy knew was in close connection to John, had exploded economically, fighting to become a major exporter of all manner of goods. 

Vatsy had a feeling that they were tied to Sawn Industries’ vast industrial capability directly, both feeding into it and off of it. Of course, the details were kept so well hidden that even with his connections, he had little to no information about it short of what was public within noble circles. 

So he wouldn’t allow such an opportunity to go to waste. He knew what John thought about him but he also knew that Umara had taken on the role of being John’s mediator. If she promised him something then chances were that, by proxy, John would deliver. He just had to show them the results of the many dozens of meetings, lunches, dinners, parties, and favors he had exchanged trying to keep the entire noble world from turning on Sawn Industries like a virus. 

Or, at least he would, but none of them were ever available. Vatsy had gone to that assistant Boris several times over the last two months and yet he got nothing for it. 

It was driving him up the wall. He had hemorrhaged millions of coin for his efforts and so far he was still underwater. The auction house remained the only thing keeping him afloat, the one foundation that allowed him to negotiate with nobles at an equal standing. 

He sighed, feeling the frustration build again. 

“I will go to that assistant once more two weeks from now. Perhaps that psycho is doing something.”

“What could possibly demand his undivided attention for so long?”

“Who knows. But I will have my payout, one way or another.”

……

…

“What the hell is this?”

A summoner’s eyes narrowed at the screen in front of him, another coming forward and peeking. 

“What?”

“This thing. A file named cow.png.”

“What does it do?”

“Nothing. It’s just a picture.”

The summoner opened the file, an artistic rendering of a cow appearing. It was oddly personified, a smile on its face as it stared forward blankly. 

The other summoner raised his brows in confusion. 

“That’s weird.”

“Duh.”

“Well, take it out. It’s probably junk.”

“Alright. Code should be ready for a test run.”

“Let’s do it then.”

The summoner deleted the picture and compiled everything. After injecting it on an Aerial, they powered it and ran a test. 

“Let’s see if we can get it to operate properly this time.”

“Last time we couldn’t access the Nodenet. Did we resolve that?”

“We’ll see. This is the first test since then.”

The two watched the aerial’s screen, waiting. 

Even after giving the boot command, nothing happened. It remained black for over a minute before throwing out thousands of red error lines. 

They were baffled. 

“What happened?”

“Hell if I know. We’ve never gotten this before.”

“Shut it down and bring over the change list.”

The Aerial went off and the two summoners brought back up their programs. As they looked through the small list of changes they had made since last test, the first summoner got curious, staring at the name of that picture. 

After restoring some files and bringing the Aerial to its last bootable arrangement, the summoners did another test. However, it still refused to boot, throwing out even more red errors than last time. 

They did several other changes and edits, spending nearly four hours trying to get the aerial to run, anything to get another screen besides a black box of red lines. 

After pulling his hair out, the summoner made an edit. 

“Hang on.”

“What?”

“Let’s try this.”

“We’ve tried two hundred other things. What are you doing now?”

“I’m putting this picture back.”

The other summoner scoffed. 

“Whatever.”

“Let’s just see.”

The summoner restored the cow.png, quickly doing another boot test. 

The screen lit up, booting to the normal OS. 

Their eyes bulged. 

“What the fuck?”

“…Are you sure it was that cow?”

“Pretty sure…”

They took out the picture, running another boot and getting the same screen full of errors. 

When they put it back once more, everything resolved immediately. 

They ran a dozen more tests, but without exception, if the cow wasn’t there, absolutely nothing would work. 

The two looked at each other and cursed. 

“How the fuck did he design this?”

“…I guess I’ll put it in the notes.”

The summoner sighed and brought up a document detailing a list of files and their purposes in the code. 

At the top, in big bold letters reserved for the most critical components of the code, he slotted in the cow.png. 

Next to it was the comment:

“OS does not run without cow.png. Its purpose is unknown. Its ties to other sections of the code are unknown and cannot be found with normal tests. Until everything can be rebuilt from the ground up, under no circumstances should it be removed.”

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