Chapter 669 - Fellowship

There is no panel next to the door we could use to hack the controls or anything like that. That leads us to think the replicas of the last elf have some kind of Bluetooth like item on them that sends a signal to open the door.

Hell, maybe he opens it mentally, or maybe behind every door there's some poor dead monster with a golden halo opening the way for him.

Our little fellowship already went to check all the hallways, and we fought another wolf there, like the one Io sent into outer space.

Part of me admires how the Thylarin just toss them aside like garbage, trying to ignore them, maybe hoping they'll drift close enough to that hellish planet and fall to its surface.

At this point, I’m also convinced we’re orbiting that planet for some specific reason, and I keep asking myself a bunch of things. Would I survive on its surface? Would I survive crashing down like an asteroid that could wipe out all of Earth’s dinosaurs?

I’m an optimist at hearts, so I guess I could. What really makes me nervous is the heat I can sense from the planet. As someone who deals with absorbing heat, thermal energy, and uses thermal senses I can feel the hotness of the surface even from this far away when I focus on it.

It’s not something I like to acknowledge, but I think I’d be able to survive down there for a few minutes, maybe a few hours at most.

Something is deeply wrong with that planet.

Once again, I shake my head and refocus on trying to hack into the door.

The item guy already cut a small square hole into the wall near the door, something that took him an hour just for that tiny piece. That’s how durable the wall is. He also worked slowly to avoid triggering any traps or mechanisms. 

Sure, the last elf knows about us, but our exact location in this massive asteroid should be a mystery. Someone at our level could probably find us in a few seconds if there were no defenses in place.

That’s where we have a bit of an advantage, since he doesn’t know our power levels. He probably assumes we’re strong enough to deal with him, or we wouldn’t have been sent on this quest at all. So he’ll be careful. 

Possibly. 

He should be. 

Who the hell knows.

“How does it look, Barion?” Io asks the item guy.

Barion doesn’t even look up. He keeps connecting wires from a device tied to his waist, linking them to parts of the inscriptions visible through the hole he cut.

He says, “I think we found an important storage area. Otherwise, it makes no sense for this door to be so secured. The wall is built from layered mana-reactive composite. No standard alloys. You can see the lattice lines and the tight crystal memory structure, probably bonded to a separate root core from the one deeper inside the asteroid.”

Barion threads a thinner wire through one of the exposed inscription nodes. “There’s a interference signal running across all outer channels. Full suppression net and lots of communication lines. That means any remote intrusion gets phase-cancelled before it even reaches the central array. You could try to disrupt it with a powerful interference-type skill and it’d likely do nothing.”

His hand adjusts a small dial on his belt. “There’s no active mana circulation on the surface layer, but I can feel something underneath. Likely a hidden weave, one of those systems with its own power source and that feeds on ambient mana. If you trigger it wrong, it spikes and sets off all the traps. The good thing is that it probably can’t be activated remotely.”

Another wire connected. Another tap. Then a pause.

“It’s running a negative feedback circuit too. Closed-loop resonance siphon as well. Similar setup they used to use for very old safe rooms. All of this here is extremely old-school really. Ancient even.”

He finally looks up, just briefly, then back to work, slower now. “I’m bypassing one of the external locks through the script anchor. Should take a few more hours unless the system is scheduled to shift frequencies. There’s a setup for even that, and it could add a few hours longer.”

Next to me, Malika stops and shoves my shoulder. “Do you know what he’s blabbering about?”

“Yup.”

“Bullshit.”

I turn to her and straighten up. “He says the wall is made of weird smart metal. It remembers stuff and blocks magic.”

Malika stares at me, but slowly her mouth twists into a wide smile that shows her teeth.

Before she can say something stupid, I walk past her and plop down on the ground near Barion. I draw a few ley lines that reach inside in a way similar to how his wires do.

There’s a strong hint of panic from him as I do that, but I ignore it and form more lines while separating a bigger part of my mind to focus on the task. Then, just like him, I continue to work on the lock.

Negative feedback circuit. Closed-loop resonance siphon.

What is wrong with all these people?

***

Just like Barion said, it takes a few more hours. In the end, the two of us are forced to cooperate. The guy behaves like the wall’s alive and just pretending to sleep. Everything he does, it’s like he expects something to lunge out and take his hands off. Can’t blame him. The trap that... nevermind, we don’t talk about that one. It wasn’t my fault at all.

It could happen to anyone. Even the best of us.

So Barion continues like he’s trying to read the damn wall like it’s a book written in landmines. The others obviously aren’t there the whole time. They go on a few shorter expeditions through the base, only to be stopped by the doors. Not even close to being as defended as the ones we’re unlocking, but still nothing they could get through without causing a lot of damage.

Even Io can’t teleport through them. At most, he could probably reach outer space and try to find a way around from there, but something tells me he didn’t like it out there.

"Careful..." Barion whispers next to me for the damn who-knows-how-many-th time.

As before, I ignore him and quickly bridge the gap I made by using [Ley Line]. Since I’ve gotten used to doing it, I try to partially activate [Manifestation] while doing so, in hopes it’ll help me train my new skill and understand it better. I have a theory that anything I materialize could be influenced by that skill and hopefully made stronger.

That line starts glowing like a wire about to melt, so I strengthen it and create another weave around the first so they share the charge.

Somewhere next to me, Barion starts sweating profusely, but finally, it looks like there is some progress. It took close to 24 hours. One entire seventh of the duration of our quest, mostly just to maybe open these doors.

I find it amusing that the others don’t even mind it that much. Either they’re as curious as me, or they know they’ll probably have to destroy the other door without me or Barion, so they decide to wait.

“Okay, now—and I really mean it this time—PLEASE, be careful,” Barion says, drawing out the please like it might physically stop me.

I glance at the mess of wires and inscriptions, then back at him. “You say that every five minutes.”

“This time I mean it like, seriously mean it. Capital letters. Bold text. You break that link, and this whole place might try to throw us all into outer space, or explode, or just lock us in forever.”

I hover my hand near one of his thinner, fragile-looking wires and raise an eyebrow.

“Don’t,” he says instantly.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“From what I’ve seen from you so far, it looks like you were absolutely going to.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

Barion mutters something I pretend I don’t hear.

I think there’s an opportunity to pretend to cut one of the lines we made and scare the crap out of him. I even hesitate and think about it, but then give up and let him do the rest while I observe. The way he uses all these items around him is just way too fascinating.

He even carries a lot of materials and half-finished items, so he completes the work in whatever way he needs. Working next to him, I recognize some defensive drone-like cubes floating around him, some shields, and a lot of weapons for different types of opponents: ranged, close, mid-range, some explosives and such.

Something clacks, and the door opens ever so slightly.

Same as the wall, they are made from that silverish matte metal. No keyhole, no window, no handle. There are not even seams around them as they smoothly materialize into the wall. If you don’t know where to look, you probably wouldn’t even see them while passing by.

Air rushes in as they slightly open, making a hissing sound.

Everyone else gets on their feet and watches as I grab in between the gap created and pull them toward myself to open them. Barion moves further back, but keeps connection to his wires, and I’m sure he’s keeping an eye on them.

The door opens very slowly, almost like it weighs way more than it should or is fighting back against being opened. But by using a bit of kinetic energy, I gradually get it open enough to see inside the room.

It’s the size of a small bedroom, with walls, floor, and ceiling made from the same silverish metal as the door. In the room, a single item sits, just thrown on the ground in one of the corners.

The cage.

Small, no bigger than both my fists pressed together. It sits in the corner like it was dropped there carelessly, maybe even forgotten. But nothing about it feels casual.

It’s made of metal rods forming the edges of a perfect cube. The strange part is the material. Each rod is a different shade, not painted or coated, but naturally colored. Blues, greens, rust-reds, golds, deep violets, and something close to black. There’s no opening, no hinges, no lock.

Barion’s already scanning it, of course. A glass-like bluish visor drops down from the helmet he’s wearing. 

I don’t move yet. I just stare at the thing. Everything else in this base screams locked-down and triple-secured and glued to the floor so the loot enjoyers like me can’t take it away. Meanwhile, this one item is sitting there like trash.

You don’t build vaults with mana-reactive whatever walls like that and then toss an item away on the ground like it’s one of these fake meat vegan burgers.

Before I realize what’s happened, I take a few steps forward after checking if it’s safe, and I crouch next to it. The metal doesn’t reflect light normally, but in some way I can’t identify. And it’s cold and weirdly still around it for some reason.

Barion steps in behind me, already scanning it with some different device and a cautious glance.

“It’s empty,” he says.

“Yeah,” I reply, and poke it with a mana arm I create and control from a distance, purposefully disconnected from my body.

Nothing happens.

Then I reread the item’s description again.

Thermal Nullframe (Low Pristine) - Cubic containment frame built from seven different mana-insulating alloys, each resistant to extreme elemental saturation. It is designed to suppress and isolate high-density thermal objects or heat-based entities. Neutralizes surrounding temperature buildup and prevents internal reactions from affecting external environments. Resistant to environmental damage and immune to energy feedback. Remains stable under indefinite exposure.

So very fun, isn’t it? And even more so as I watch the expressions of the others while they read the item description and take a note of its rarity, one after another.

After all, the absolute cheapest item of this rarity probably starts at… a shitload of shards.

A fuckton.

A lot.

Probably illegal in some countries.

Could probably buy a horse.

A ridiculous amount.

I mean, like, really really a lot.

***

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