Reborn With A Technology System In A Fantasy World-Chapter 304: Awakening

The six remaining Vassals found themselves standing on soft green grass. For a moment, they had the chance to feel peace.

But that peace wasn’t long-lasting. It settled on them like a blanket, heavy with the realization of the lives that had been lost.

They all stood in silence for several minutes. No one said a thing. No one could look anyone else in the eye.

A new figure soon materialized in the Factory, stumbling onto the grass. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Lady Lunu was panting. She looked at the solemn group and her eyes went wide with trauma.

"I’m so sorry," she gasped, falling to her knees. "I failed... I couldn’t help anymore. The whole Galaxy is gone. I had to warp here to save myself."

The news was a heavy blow, but at this point, they were numb. They had watched their family disintegrate. The loss of the galaxy felt like a distant, abstract tragedy compared to the hole in their hearts.

Lunu stopped panting, her eyes scanning the group frantically. She counted only six.

"Where’s Mara? Where is Charles? What of Karl? Where are they?"

A sob broke from them as she questioned.

With dread, Lunu closed her eyes, trying to find the signatures of the missing Vassals.

Nothing. Just cold, empty void.

"They’re gone," she whispered in realization.

She got no response other than sobs. It all felt useless. The fight, the struggle, the years of building an empire; it had all been for nothing. In about twenty hours, the Factory would eject them back into real space, and the Lord of Darkness would be waiting to finish the job.

Nyra fell onto the grass, clutching her knees to her chest. She was broken.

"I guess it’s over," she murmured, staring blankly at the sky. "It was all futile in the end."

Lunu crawled over to her, reaching out a trembling hand to pat her shoulder and offer comfort.

But suddenly, Lunu froze.

"ADRIAN!" she screamed.

Everyone turned around on instinct, expecting to see their leader standing beside them.

But there was no one. Just the wind rustling the grass.

The disappointment was crushing. "Lunu..."

"Not there!" Lunu clarified quickly, scrambling to her feet. She pointed a shaking finger at her own chest. "Look here."

Nyra frowned, placing a hand over her own heart.

Then she felt it.

The bond. The tether that connected every Vassal to their Sovereign. For fifty years, it had been a faint, but now it was roaring.

It was getting stronger and stronger by the second, surging with an intensity that felt like Adrian was standing right in front of them, breathing down their necks.

"He’s coming back!" Nyra gasped, scrambling to her feet, tears of a different kind welling in her eyes. "He’s awake!"

***

Deep in the heart of the now-dark Celestial Palace, in a pocket dimension designed to exist outside of normal space, the ultimate prison was failing.

The Singularity Vault was a masterpiece of containment. It was a sphere of folded space-time, held together by the Emperor’s Authority and the stabilizing frequency of the Galactic Core. It was designed to hold a god for eternity.

But the Emperor was broken. And the Core was inverted.

The darkness that had flooded the palace had seeped into the vault. The twelve layers of psionic dampeners that kept the prisoner asleep dissolved into mist. The gravitational crushers, meant to keep his conscious form pinned, deactivated.

In the center of the vault, suspended in the cube of Starlight Amber, the frozen soul of Adrian Sparkborn floated in the abyss.

He had been dreaming for fifty years.

It wasn’t a normal sleep. It was a fugue state, a hibernation mode where his consciousness drifted through the datastreams of the System, watching, waiting.

For decades, a slow trickle of data from the passive sales of his tech had kept him sane. A steady drip of +500 TP here, +1000 TP there. It was enough to keep the pilot light of his soul burning, but not enough to ignite the furnace.

But then, the floodgates opened.

The System, which had been sipping water through a straw, was suddenly hit by a tidal wave of oceanic proportions.

[TP: 10,000,000...]

[TP: 500,000,000...]

[TP: 50,000,000,000...]

[TP: 999,999,999,999...]

[TP: 999,999,999,999,999...]

The counter smashed past the limits of what the System was originally designed to display. It ceased to be a number and became a concept.

[ALERT: Galactic Dependency Achieved.]

[CRITICAL THRESHOLD REACHED.]

[Admin Access: RESTORED.]

[Sovereign Authority: ONLINE.]

Inside the amber, the figure twitched.

The Starlight Amber, the strongest material in the universe, reputed to be indestructible even by supernova impacts, developed a hairline crack.

Then another.

The crack didn’t glow with the gold of the Emperor. It didn’t glow with the white of the old Core.

It glowed Violet. The color of a bruised reality. The color of the Void.

~KRAAAAACK!~

The sound was not loud, but it was heavy. It was the sound of a cage breaking.

The amber exploded outward, turning into dust before it even hit the floor.

’Reconstruct,’ came the command from the ether.

On Adrian’s command, the scattered particles of his essence coalesced. His body manifested around his soul, knitting bone, muscle, and skin from pure energy. He didn’t age a day. He looked exactly as he had fifty years ago, but also infinitely older.

His iconic Power Suit formed around him, shifting from liquid metal into a sleek, black armor traced with pulsing blue veins. His white hair flowed gracefully in the zero-gravity of the vault.

Adrian took a deep breath and his eyes snapped open.

The pupils were gone. In their place were swirling nebulas of blue energy, turning slowly like galaxies. He looked at his hands, watching the digital code of the universe flow over his skin like water. He clenched his fist, and the space around it warped, unable to withstand his density.

He tilted his head.

He could feel it. The silence of the Galaxy. He could see the emptiness of everyone. He could feel the severed bonds of Karl, Mara, and Charles.

He knew what had happened. And he knew what was responsible.

Adrian knew it was finally time for the game to end.

He spoke within himself to the now-evolved System.

"Tech Core. Buy everything."

[Transaction Approved.]