The air crackled inside the reinforced construction dome as the fusion cores hummed like caged lightning. White-blue light swirled around the Core Conductor Array, a newly completed component of Project Fallout—now the heart of the most dangerous weapon the new world would ever witness.
Iden stood within the energy field, his eyes locked on the live feed from LUMEN's neural relay.
[SYSTEM UPDATE – FALLOUT: Core Conductor Array Completed]Component Status: Online.Containment Efficiency: 97.6%Blast Channeling Grid: Stable.Status: 64% Total Weapon Completion.
Outside the dome, thunder rumbled. But it was no storm—it was the resonance of power folding into itself, ready to be unleashed with a whisper.
"We've finished the shell," Arlen reported, voice shaking with exhaustion. "But if we go any further, we'll have to initiate limited core cycling just to keep the sub-level stable."
Kael nodded grimly. "That's why we've got the mana feed running into the geothermal taps. The arc-pumps are keeping it below critical. Barely."
Iden glanced at the newly constructed control console—a half-mechanical, half-skeletal interface with pulsing glyphs etched into plates of obsidian and titanbone.
Behind him, the system chimed.
[FALLOUT DEVELOPMENT QUEST – MILESTONE COMPLETE]Bonus Unlocked: "Magna Plate Cascade Core"+10% Mana Compression EfficiencyWorld Threat Radius Estimate: Increased to 91 kilometers.
"Enough to wipe out a kingdom," Arlen muttered under his breath.
Iden didn't answer. His gaze drifted upward, beyond the reinforced ceiling—toward the frozen peaks where something darker stirred.
Three figures stood in reverence before a pit carved into the frost-split mountainside. Once a den of death, now only heatless ash and twisted bone remained.
The scent of sulfur still lingered.
These were not ordinary people—they were Abyssbound Lords, remnants of the Valtross hierarchy, now crawling from the wreckage of their defeat.
"He's dormant," the tallest said, voice like rust on iron. "We move his corpse. Extract every scale, every drop of marrow."
They did not know the truth.
Tzakaroth had never died.
He had slumbered, wounded by the superweapon's fallout, weakened... but watching.
And as the Lords scrambled to harvest him, the corrupted fog clung tighter to the walls of the hollow like a sleeping predator licking its wounds.
[SYSTEM ALERT]The remnants of Valtross's faction have begun mobilizing to recover Tier-Omega Class Entity [Tzakaroth].Fallout Detonation Radius Overlap: Confirmed.
Deep within Sanctum's subterranean command center, Zivra and Vesrin ran a full simulation of the current energy propagation from the Fallout dome.
"If they keep moving," Zivra said, her eyes glowing with mana-trace, "they'll be within the kill radius in less than 38 hours."
"Are we informing them?" Vesrin asked.
Iden stood in silence.
Then: "No."
"Why not?"
He turned, the glow of the core reflecting in his eyes. "Because they made their choice long ago. And now… it's time the world understands that Sanctum doesn't warn."
Arlen's breakthrough had not come from invention alone—but from memory.
He'd fused principles of arcane circuitry with Earth's concept of nuclear fission dynamics, creating a cascading grid of magnetic-anchored mana pulses—what he called the QAC Grid.
"Think of it like a chain lightning loop," he explained to Kael, "but the bolts increase in power every loop. Instead of decaying, they amplify. All we need is the stabilizer core."
Kael held up the artifact they'd retrieved from the Crypt of Legion's Rise.
"Then we build it."
With undead smiths working alongside engineer skeletons and Arlen's new Arc-Gunman elite, the assembly began. Every hour pushed the Fallout project forward by 3%. Every 1% meant one less region the enemy could hide in.
As Sanctum upgraded, so did its soul.
The Builders finalized a defensive trench ring integrated with mana-flare explosives and skeletal gunner outposts.
The Farmers activated their newly formed Agricultural Alchemists, growing mutated grains with mana-nutrient roots for long-term food security.
The Civilian Blacksmiths assisted in crafting the fallback bunker doors, triple-layered with drakebone plating and warded iron.
Iden's people were no longer villagers. They were pioneers at the edge of the end.
Rael knelt at the temple's garden, praying not to a god—but to the memory of her parents.
"They'd never have seen this," she whispered. "A world where monsters hunt the sky, where my brother becomes a legend before twenty."
A warmth settled beside her. Nyra.
"Maybe they see it now," Nyra said gently. "Through you."
[SYSTEM] – FALLOUT: 72% COMPLETEMana Reactors: 92% LoadRegional Mana Left: 27%
[Tzakaroth – Waking Protocol… Initiated]Threat Tier: OMEGA++Behavior Pattern: Passive Aggressive → Aware
[Time Until Detonation Readiness: 36 HOURS]