Garrelt stared up at the tube where the unconscious Bosco floated and furrowed his brow at the unfamiliar word.

  “Converter?” he asked, finally turning to stare at Bill.

  Bill waved his hand side-to-side. “An artifact used to transform energy. Like how a ritual attunes multiple people’s energies to a single effect, but more… direct.”

  Garrelt frowned. “A ritual? More direct?” his eyes suddenly widened. “The Dungeon Core is using Bosco as a node!” He took a step back, horror clearly visible on his face. “A one-man ritual?! How? Why?”

  A ritual was a type of array so powerful it couldn’t be used by any single person. Instead, each person acted like the individual nodes of an array, transforming and directing the energy into a more uniform state that could power the array or connect other arrays together into a greater whole.

  Most sects and cns were built atop massive ritual circles, which generated a powerful barrier or illusion. Each member would act as an individual node, and thus, the more members a sect or cn had, the more powerful their defenses often were.

  A ritual with a single node should not only fail to provide enough energy, but would also leave the user either a withered corpse or a burned-out husk.

  Yet…

  Garrelt looked back at Bosco’s limp form floating in the tube. Despite the wires and tubes protruding from his body and the unnatural stillness of his limbs, there were flickers of life, detectable only to a keen observer. The green-tinted fluid glowed faintly, casting eerie, wavering shadows on Bosco’s hollowed face.

  Hugo and Bill, however, seemed unaffected by the sight. They moved with a casual, even nonchant, demeanor. Bill’s fingers danced across the control panel, activating intricate systems that whirred to life with a low hum. Lights around the room brightened, and several machines started pulsing rhythmically, each in time with Bosco’s shallow breaths.

  “In a way,” Bill responded, “though not quite.” He gestured to the machinery around the room. “A typical array node amplifies and connects. They’re bridges that let multiple arrays work together as one. Bosco’s part in this is… simpler.”

  Bill reached up and flipped a lever on the side of the tube’s base.

  The low hum of the machine intensified, and the green liquid filling the tube bubbled. There was a deep thump from somewhere deeper in the room. Thick wires extended from the base, snaking outward to a ring of machines humming in rhythmic unison. Beyond them, the etched lines of a massive array stretched across the floor, feeding into circuits embedded in the cavern walls. The entire room pulsed with energy, each beat synced to Bosco’s shallow breaths.

  Raw, chaotic energy flowed through the wires and into the man. Bosco convulsed slightly, his face twisting into a grimace, though he didn’t wake.

  Garrelt felt sick to his stomach. “Is he being forced to cultivate? Absorbing energy like this is going to destroy his foundation.” He narrowed his eyes and observed the process closer. “No… that’s not quite it either. It’s almost like —”

  “Wait for it,” Bill said. Another thump sounded, and Spirit Energy flowed out of Bosco through another set of wires. Where the energy being pumped into the man was raw and wild, the energy leaving him felt…

  Calmer. Softer. More…

  Garrelt’s eyes flickered between Bosco’s bound form and the lines stretching across the cavern walls, the tangled mess of arrays and circuits glowing as the refined energy circuted through them. Soon, the entire room was alive with the soft hum of pulsing arrays and rumbling machines.

  Garrelt stared, his jaw hanging as he turned around in circles, taking in the full extent of the ritual room that would make even the more powerful cns back in Halirosa green with envy.

  “How?” was all he could ask after a while.

  Bill chuckled as he tapped a few more commands. “I haven’t the slightest clue, friend. Mr. Alpha only let me train to work the machine aspects of all this. I’m a ‘natural grease monkey,’ according to him.”

  Garrelt turned and frowned, one brow raised, but Bill waved him off before continuing.

  “Look, as far as I understand, it works like this,” Bill expined, gesturing at the machinery. “Raw Spirit Energy gets pulled from the environment — unfiltered, chaotic, unusable. It’s pumped into Bosco, where his dantian condenses and refines it. Think of him as a living spirit stone, processing energy so it can power the arrays.”

  Garrelt frowned. “And the artifacts?”

  “They keep it stable,” Bill replied. “Without them, the energy flow would kill him — or worse, destabilize the arrays and blow the pce sky-high.”

  Garrelt shuddered, watching the wild energy entering Bosco transform into a calm, steady flow. The implications were staggering. This wasn’t just a breakthrough in array design; it was a weapon, tool, and warning.

  Garrelt paled at that, though Bill didn’t seem to notice. “Amazing, isn’t it?” the man grinned.

  Garrelt frowned, but Hugo’s hand gently gripped his shoulder. Garrelt turned to see Hugo mirroring his own expression. Instead of addressing Garrelt, however, Hugo turned to Bill.

  “Bill, we talked about this. Tone it down. Not everyone will understand or be comfortable with this,” Hugo said.

  Bill rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. It’s not like it’s actually doing him any harm. Besides, you know how Bosco was. That bastard deserves whatever happens to him.”

  Hugo stood straighter and gred at Bill. “Regardless, you represent the dungeon now. Please be professional.”

  Bill opted to turn back to the controls and grumble to himself rather than respond.

  Hugo sighed and turned to Garrelt. “I apologize. Bosco was not the… kindest of people. Even to his own men.”

  Garrelt turned to look at the man floating in the gss tube and then back to Hugo before nodding. “I understand. What do you want with me, though? This entire setup is way above me. Hell, I’m not even sure the top Array Masters in Halirosa could build something like this. What help could I possibly be?”

  “I might be able to answer that,” said a new voice.

  The two of them turned to see an ant entering the room. An ant wearing a moss-green helmet decorated with various odd medals. The turtle-shell-like helmet was far too small for the horse-sized ant’s head, but it remained firmly in pce, even as the ant tilted its head back and forth as if examining the room and its arrays as well.

  Both Hugo and Bill snapped to attention, saluting the ant.

  “Welcome, Boss!” both men echoed each other.

  Garrelt turned and frowned at the newcomer. “The Dungeon Core, I presume?”

  “Correct!” Alpha responded through the antborg. “As for why I’ve called you here, Mr. Riverwalker, the reason is simple. Despite all this,” Alpha waves with an ant limb around the room, “the system is far from complete. We can get it working, but barely.”

  Alpha walked forward and motioned the two of them to follow. The antborg waved as they passed Bill, still working at the console, and Bill waved back. Alpha continued to speak as they walked deeper into the room. “This is a little project I’ve been working on since before we started getting… visitors. But I’ve only recently made genuine progress after getting my hands on various manuals the bandits carried. Most of it was trash, but a few gems have been the st puzzle pieces I needed.”

  Garrelt frowned but nodded to himself after a moment. It was strange that such a powerful and knowledgeable Dungeon Core could glean anything from bandits. Yet, who knew how long it had been since anyone had found this pce? It was understandable that new things would be discovered or new techniques invented over the ages.

  Alpha continued. “Unfortunately, that also means I haven’t had time to test most of this.” Again, the antborg’s legs swept around the room. They approached a section of the cavern cut off from rest by a tall grey wall twice Garrelt. Not tall enough to actually stop anyone, but enough to make the section its own ‘area.’

  “Current events demand this project’s time frame be pushed forward, but we also don’t have time to make sure everything is going to py nice with each other when we start it up,” Alpha said. “That’s where you come in, Mr. Riverwalker.”

  They stopped before a sealed gate set in the wall, and Alpha turned to Garrelt.

  “You asked why I would want you here? Put simply, I need what you know to ensure this thing doesn’t blow up in all our faces. Literally.”

  The antborg threw out its front legs in wide motion. “Welcome to the Guardian’s Heart!”

  The gate slowly creaked open, and Garrelt once more found himself unable to speak.