Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Tier-100 entities, but not the same kind that had stopped the Regalons in Suryax’s depth. These were not refined, crystalline guardians. They were native to the chaos that the depth contained — twisting, asymmetric creatures whose bodies shifted between solid and energetic states, whose limbs reformed faster than they could be severed.

There were a lot of them.

Marshal Veylara reacted first. Her storm-armor expanded outward in three rotating layers, and the Virexion-Kezryx forward line opened with their newly integrated lightning-lance arrays — heavy weapons that fired arcs of compressed storm energy in disciplined, sequenced barrages. Six Tier-100 creatures fell in the first volley.

The Suryax-Ananta line answered in the same heartbeat. Marcus’s shield expanded into a layered hexagonal wall, and the Mega Dreadship-derived defensive pre-tensioning that Ainen and Saffa had built into his combat gear engaged before the next wave reached him. His sword carved through three creatures in a single arc.

Silvester and Hiroshi worked in their now-familiar interlocking pattern, but with a difference — Maya moved with them this time, her exotic ice embedding fragments along the seams where the chaos creatures attempted to reform. The fragments anchored. The reformation failed. The creatures came apart for good.

Vael Drakhar’s fabricated constructs unfolded into a rotating defensive radius around the rear of the expedition, each construct shifting form mid-rotation, each strike calibrated by the probability layer Natalia’s training had integrated into them. Seris Vanthell’s shadow-derived constructs moved through the swarm like a stain that could not be cleaned.

Almond’s three Exalted Grimblades worked in concert. Abyssbreaker carved a deep furrow through the leading creature, and Grim Severam’s effect spread across the wound, denying regeneration. Two more Grimblades pivoted around him and struck flanking targets, each one applying Triad Denial that propagated through the swarm’s interconnected energy structure.

Lily, beside him, was already at work in a way no one on the Virexion-Kezryx team could fully read. Her Dreadlings were not visible at the engagement line. They were elsewhere, growing, fed by the death of every creature that fell, multiplying in spaces along the depth’s edges that the joint expedition had not yet entered. By the time the first wave was halfway broken, Lily had more Dreadlings in this depth than she had begun the descent with.

Ainen did not fight. He stood at the rear of the Suryax-Ananta line with his cooking array deployed and a single dish in active preparation. The exotic flames around him pulled in residual energy from every Tier-100 creature that died within his range, and each death contributed to the dish in progress. He was, in his own quiet way, processing the battlefield into a buff.

Jaskrit himself joined the engagement at the wave’s midpoint. His personal combat power flared visibly as he met three of the heavier creatures simultaneously. They fell within seconds.

The wave broke after fourteen minutes.

No casualties on either side.

A small silence followed, the kind that occurs when two forces that had been cooperating realize they are now alone with each other and a substantial quantity of recovered ground.

The chamber beyond the engagement zone opened gradually.

It was not as ornate as Suryax’s geneline chamber had been. The walls here were rougher, the inscriptions darker, the energy more turbulent. At the center floated not an artifact but a projection — a complex three-dimensional schematic of dense overlapping lines and geometric patterns, rotating slowly in suspended water that did not flow.

Aryan recognized it before anyone else.

“It’s a blueprint.”

Fraisea — who had insisted on accompanying the expedition specifically for this — moved forward and extended her scanning array. The reading took fewer than ten seconds.

“Tier-100,” she said. “It’s a harnessing weapon. A direct-conversion array that draws ambient depth energy and channels it into projected destructive output. The energy signature is — ” she paused, calibrating. “The energy signature is chaos-aligned.”

Jaskrit was at her side immediately. “Define chaos-aligned.”

“It runs on the same resonance Oblivion Tyrant Sovereignty’s combatants natively produce. Anyone else can use it, but the conversion efficiency drops by an estimated sixty to seventy percent outside that resonance. Oblivion Tyrant operators would run it at full output. We could run it. Virexion-Kezryx could run it. But neither of us would extract more than a third of its potential.”

Marshal Veylara spoke quietly. “Then it primarily denies.”

“Yes.”

“Whoever takes it removes a future asset from Oblivion-Velkarion. They do not necessarily gain a corresponding asset themselves.”

“Yes.”

The chamber was silent for a long moment.

Then Jaskrit spoke. “Our previous agreement specifies that disputed items are resolved by mutual evaluation. I would like to propose, for evaluation, that Virexion-Kezryx is the appropriate recipient of this item. We have closer baseline resonance compatibility with chaos-aligned technology than the Suryax-Ananta Alliance does, owing to the storm-energy interference patterns common to our combat doctrine.”

Almond’s eyes did not move from him. “An interesting evaluation.”

“It is offered in good faith.”

“I am sure it is.”

Lily smiled faintly. “I would like to offer a different evaluation. The Suryax-Ananta Alliance is closer in geographic proximity to Oblivion-Velkarion than Virexion-Kezryx is. Should they pursue retaliation for the recovery, the defensive burden falls primarily on us. We should therefore receive the asset most likely to draw that retaliation, so that the asset and the burden are at least colocated.”

Jaskrit’s expression did not change.

“That is also an interesting evaluation.”

“It is offered in good faith.”

The air in the chamber shifted.

Not literally. The water did not change. The energy did not spike. But every member of the expedition on both sides registered the same transition simultaneously. The cooperative phase of the operation had ended. The next phase had not yet been named, but everyone present knew its shape.

Marcus’s hand moved fractionally toward his sword. Marshal Veylara’s storm-armor pulse cycle accelerated by half a step. Silvester and Hiroshi had not appeared to move, but their positions in the formation had shifted by approximately two meters each. Vael Drakhar’s constructs had stopped rotating.

Almond and Jaskrit looked at each other across the chamber.

Neither of them moved.

“Marshal Veylara,” Jaskrit said quietly, “please secure the blueprint.”

“Vael,” Almond said, in the same even tone, “please ensure she does not.”

Marshal Veylara took a single step forward.

The chamber’s water rippled outward from her foot.

And then the ripples reversed.

A pressure wave entered the chamber from above — not from either expedition, not from the depth, but from somewhere beyond, channeled down through the layered approach corridor at a velocity that should not have been possible.

Every member of both alliances looked up.

The corridor above the chamber lit with energy that did not belong to either of them.

Two distinct signatures. One was the unstable crimson-black of Oblivion Tyrant Sovereignty and Velkarion Dominion. The other was the cold, precise pale-blue of Thalmyr Ascendancy and Ronethis Apex Sovereignty.

Lily’s smile did not change.

It became, if anything, slightly more focused.

“Oh,” she said softly.

Jaskrit’s expression broke for the first time since he had walked into the Suryax reception hall ten days earlier. The break was small — a slight narrowing at the corners of his eyes, a fractional shift in the angle of his jaw. But it was there.

“Thalmyr,” he said.

“They found you,” Almond said. “Or your movements. They put it together. And they brought the people who would most want this depth back.”

Above them, the first Velkarion war-construct emerged from the corridor and began its descent toward the chamber, followed by an Oblivion Tyrant battle priestess, followed by a precise crystalline formation of Thalmyr aerial units in textbook ambush spacing, followed by — at the center of it all — a single figure whose energy signature registered at the upper edge of Aryan’s slate before Aryan turned the slate off entirely because the reading was not going to provide useful information about who was about to enter the chamber.

Ronaisan El Topov.

Rank two.

He descended slowly, surrounded by his fleet’s elite, and his gaze passed across the chamber once, taking in both expedition forces with the kind of professional detachment a surgeon might apply to a body being prepared for procedure.

He stopped at the upper edge of the chamber and inclined his head courteously.

“My apologies for the interruption,” he said. His voice carried evenly through the depth’s pressure. “I believe you have something that belongs, by reasonable claim, to our colleagues.”

The chamber was silent.

The blueprint rotated slowly between them all.

The expedition’s situation had changed completely.