Dungeon
New Sol continent (former seven continents of Terra)
Terra, Gaea, Solar system
Milky Way Galaxy
Luminary Star sector
15th Vetraeus cycle, 50 New Solaris Prime
"Automaton…" Sam echoed under her breath, her tone dark with realization.
Without hesitation, she activated her Eyes of Mathias—the mystical ocular ability she had awakened decades ago after inheriting a fragment of the Natural Law of Creation. At the time, the strain of using such a divine faculty had nearly driven her mad. But now, standing firmly in the Master Realm, her enhanced mental fortitude allowed her to open her mind fully to the infinite lattice of cosmic truth.
Her pupils shifted instantly, becoming a cascade of interlocking geometric sigils—sacred mandalas etched in golden light, overlaid with swirling musical notations that glowed with harmonic resonance. They spun slowly within her irises, mapping patterns not of mere vision, but of fundamental structure. To look through the Eyes of Mathias was to read the language of reality itself—every form, every function, every law.
Emily, watching from nearby, caught the gleam in Sam's gaze. She recognized the transformation. Those musical patterns weren't decorative—they were notes of creation, equations of existence rendered into form. Each glowing mark allowed Sam to peer deeper into the metaphysical design of the Knight that stood before them.
And what she saw confirmed everything.
This was no demon of flesh and essence.
It was an engineered being, its outer shell composed of flowing strands of enchanted alloys, forged at the nanite scale. These microscopic constructs were layered with accursed energy seals, cleverly woven to emit the essence signature of a Greater Demon. The illusion was near-perfect. To most internal senses, it felt like an Infernal creature. But to Sam's awakened sight, it was artifice—brilliant, intricate, and deceptive.
The Demon's corrupted aura was nothing more than an overlay, a spectral mimicry generated by the runes lining its inner circuits. The enchantments were inscribed so deeply into its framework that it would've taken a team of Grandmasters days just to recognize them, let alone decode them.
And then Sam saw it—the Core.
It pulsed at the center of the Automaton's chest like a black star, its energy swirling in layered spirals of compressed essence and code. This was no mundane power source. It was a high-order mana reactor, likely fueled by condensed accursed Flame or something equally rare, strong enough to propel the construct to a combat tier equal to that of a Master Realm Ascendant.
But despite its terrifying power… Sam noticed a glaring flaw.
There was no will behind its movements. No intuitive reaction. No adaptive strategy. The Automaton executed complex battle patterns with precision, but they were prewritten—unchanging, soulless. The power was there, immense and untapped, but the spark of intention, the drive to dominate and survive, was absent.
"It's incredible…" Sam whispered, more to herself than anyone else. "A masterpiece of arcane engineering, but ultimately… hollow."
Emily nodded grimly, her blades still humming with residual energy. "So someone built this thing to look like a Demon. Whoever created it must've designed it as a guardian—programmed to protect this vault and the treasures within. Their craftsmanship… It's far beyond anything we've encountered. Advanced enough to fool even high-level Internal Senses."
Sam's expression darkened as a name surfaced in her thoughts.
"The AurenIdril Empire," she said quietly.
Emily looked at her, a flicker of recognition in her eyes. Ever since Sam had entered the Echo Field—a temporal rift that allowed her to glimpse fragments of a forgotten era—she'd become obsessed with the mysterious civilization known as AurenIdril. What she had seen there had shaken the foundation of everything she knew. Before the Merging, in the records of the Mundane World, there had been no mention of AurenIdril. Nothing in any archaeological archive, no myths, no whispers. The world had believed that the Sumerians were the first great civilization.
But the Echo Field revealed otherwise. They had existed before time had names.A civilization of impossible architecture, cosmic understanding, and fusion between arcane and quantum sciences. The Hidden World had always been the clearest evidence—an entire magical society tucked beneath the veil. But now that the Hidden World had merged with the Mundane, Sam was free to pursue these mysteries in full. Every ruin, every anomaly, every sealed dungeon could hold another piece of the puzzle.
And now… this Automaton.
It was too perfect to be anything but an AurenIdril design.
Sam's eyes narrowed, her mind made up. "I want to study it," she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.
Her aura shifted.
The very air grew heavy with intent as ambient Od solidified around her. Motes of green light flickered into existence, like leaves caught in a timeless wind. Around her form, ethereal armor began to take shape. Green, metallic filaments emerged and layered themselves around her body, coalescing into a crystalline armor forged of rhythm and elemental resonance.
In seconds, her full Symphony Armor had formed—a gleaming fusion of energy and structure, wrapping her in a living second skin. It was more than armor. It was the embodiment of her three fused disciplines: Terramorphosis, Resonance, and the divine martial art Adamantius Validus.
The result was overwhelming.
The Symphony Armor granted Sam not only augmented physical defense but a massive increase in both offensive potential and energy control—her presence now radiated at the level of a Sage Realm combatant, despite her still standing within the Master Realm.
Then she moved.
A blur of motion. A rhythm.
Rhythm Echo—a high-level movement art from the Adamantius Fist Style, designed to harmonize movement with breath and energy pulses. The air around her blurred as Sam vanished from sight, reappearing instantly in front of the Knight.
Before it could even raise its sword in defense, her armored fist slammed into its chest.
The impact detonated through the Knight's frame, launching it like a cannonball. It smashed through three massive stone pillars, each one shattering like glass as seismic waves rippled through the entire chamber. The structure groaned under the weight of her force.
But Sam wasn't done.
She appeared above the Knight mid-air, her body wreathed in golden-silver arcs of energy. A soft, harmonic hum filled the space—soothing, sacred. Unlike the chaotic cacophony of most battle arts, this one was measured. Gentle. Balanced. Like a melody waiting for release.
Her fist pulsed with tranquil, radiant light.
[Consonance – Thunderclap Harmony]
Upon release, a symphonic shockwave surged outward in all directions, resonating with everything it touched. Unlike the chaotic detonation of Thunderclap Discord—a technique she had once relied on in her younger, more reckless days—this wave moved in seamless accord with the very fabric of space. It did not tear or disrupt; it harmonized, stabilizing the ambient energy while simultaneously amplifying Sam's raw physical force.
At the heart of the technique was Consonance—Sam's signature evolution of resonance-based combat. It drew matter and mana into a singular point of focus, synchronizing their frequencies into unified motion. When fused with the explosive core of the Thunderclap technique from the Adamantius style, the result was devastating, not in chaos, but in clarity.
This was an attack born of refinement, redirection, and perfection. Rather than shattering what it touched, it dispersed unstable energies, stripped away disorder, and delivered force with unerring precision. In other words, it was not merely a weapon—it was a harmonic resolution made manifest.
The Infernal Knight slammed into the ground with a thunderous impact, embedding itself deep into the shattered stone. The floor cracked and cratered beneath the force of the blow, a ring of burning green light pulsing outward like a shockwave, leaving scorched fissures glowing with residual energy. The chamber trembled, dust cascading from the ceiling above. For a moment, all was still.
Its once-imposing demonic aura flickered and stuttered, failing to reassert itself. The illusion of infernal might was unraveling.
Moments later, Sam descended gracefully, landing just outside the rim of the crater. The air still vibrated with the harmonic echoes of her technique—the final notes of her Consonance lingering like the fading hum of a celestial chime. She kept her eyes fixed on the fallen construct.
Her mana had already begun to seep into the Automaton's frame, threading through the cracks in its enchanted armor, attempting to harmonize with the internal matrix and purify the accursed energy it was infused with. But something pushed back.
Sam narrowed her eyes.
A defensive enchantment—deeply embedded—resisted her energy. It was old, precise, and far more advanced than typical barrier magic. Her Eyes of Mathias flared, layers of sacred geometric patterns shifting behind her pupils as she peered deeper into the construct's design.
"Tssk," she muttered, recognizing the complexity. This thing wasn't just a puppet—it had been shielded against purification. But the fight wasn't over yet. Emily moved like a shadow unfurling in moonlight, using the opportunity Sam had carved open.
Her hand stretched forward, fingers splayed, and from her palm spilled a dark, mist-like energy—Umbral Fog, the first stage of her secret technique. It snaked through the air and latched onto the Automaton's helm like spectral tendrils. The Knight convulsed slightly as the mist began to siphon its remaining energy.
Emily's unique technique—Umbral Synthesis—took hold. The dark mist was not simply feeding on the construct's energy; it was deconstructing it on a metaphysical level, separating the accursed force from its binding matrix, and filtering it into her body. She inhaled sharply, her form shaking slightly as the tainted energy poured through her meridians.
Unseen to Emily, her shadow deepened—grew denser, heavier. What was once a simple silhouette stretched behind her like a living entity, pulsing with faint waves of entropy. A transformation that had started long ago… now stirred once more. Something buried within her core continued to evolve, fed by every stolen essence.
Within moments, the Automaton stilled completely. Its power source—drained. Its frame—silent. It collapsed like a hollow shell, motionless, void of strength. Emily stood still for a moment longer, letting the mist recede. Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. Sam watched her closely.
With a thought, Sam deactivated her Symphony Armor. The green crystalline plates that wrapped her body dissolved into luminous motes, vanishing into the air. Her energy signature dropped back to its normal state, the echo of her earlier power now dimmed—but not forgotten. She walked over to Emily, eyes softening ever so slightly.
She had always known about Emily's Ability Factor, though it was rarely used. Umbral Synthesis was a technique of immense potential—but with a cruel cost. Sam remembered the night Emily first explained it: how absorbing external energies ravaged her body from the inside out, how her cells screamed, her nerves burned, and her soul itself seemed to fracture under the strain. It wasn't just physical pain—it was metaphysical agony, a torment that scarred both mind and spirit.
And yet she had used it. To end the battle. To protect them. Sam's gaze lingered on Emily's form, her expression unreadable. There was something stirring in her chest—an ache she couldn't quite name. Admiration. Concern. And something else, quietly blooming beneath the surface.
The others had finished dealing with the summoned demonic beasts, their forms lying in scattered heaps across the chamber floor. But Sam had already discerned the truth—those creatures weren't true demons. Her Eyes of Mathias had seen through the illusion.
They were mechanical, just like the Knight.
Constructs—meticulously designed to mimic the form and aura of Infernal beings. Hollow shells cloaked in accursed energy, built for deception and fear. Once that illusion was stripped away, they had been dispatched with relative ease.
Emily knelt beside the collapsed Infernal Knight, her hand pressed against the chestplate as she closed her eyes and extended her Internal Senses deep into the frame. Threads of mana pulsed from her fingertips, mapping the residual enchantments and structural pathways within.
"It's… a sophisticated piece of art," she said after a moment, her voice tinged with both awe and frustration. "Even with my Forgemastery skills, I can't determine exactly how it was made. The craftsmanship is beyond anything I've ever studied."
Sam nodded, arms folded across her chest. She wasn't surprised. While her own Forgemastery abilities were still in their infancy—barely past foundational theory—Emily had studied the art for years. If even she couldn't decipher the Automaton's origin, then this construct truly belonged to a forgotten era.
"The techniques used here… they feel ancient," Emily added. "Layered enchantments, micro-engineering, spiritual binding... It's not just magical. It's architectural."
"Then we'll need to take it to Ginny," Sam said decisively.
Ginny—the resident Arcane Engineer of the Golden Dawn. A prodigy among technomages. She specialized in analyzing and deconstructing sentient Automatons and relic-level constructs. If anyone in the sector had the expertise to peel back the layers of this mystery, it would be her.
Sam turned toward the treasure-strewn vault, her gaze passing over glittering mounds of coin, raw gems, and weapons humming with dormant power. But something else caught her eye.
Ores.
Among the treasures were clusters of raw materials—glowing mineral clusters, blacksteel veins, and motes of translucent crystal. Some of them pulsed faintly with World Energy, others shimmered with unfamiliar essence frequencies. She made a mental note to have them cataloged later.
But her real focus returned to the raised platform.
The spherical object still hovered slightly above the basin, as if waiting for her touch. The faint white light that bled from its surface continued to swirl within its porous shell like a captured star.
Without hesitation, Sam approached, her palm outstretched. The sphere floated gently into her hand with no resistance. She turned it over once, sensing no further energy from within. With a brief pulse of mana, she activated her Dimensional Band, and the sphere shimmered once before vanishing into spatial storage.
Her expression grew resolute.
"We need to alert Emanu about our success," Sam said, turning toward Emily. "Whatever this place was… it was no ordinary Dungeon."