Chapter 22 — Arming the Mortals

The Embers Camp was brightly lit deep into the night.

The originally pungent stench of sulfur and high-radiation micro-particle dust in the air were frantically extracted by powerful air purification arrays, replaced by a biological life-support gas carrying a faint sweetness and moisture. It was the breath of survival dreamed of by the low-dimensional mortals on the wasteland, granting rebirth to the over two hundred survivors who had narrowly escaped death.

Yet, not a single person went to sleep peacefully.

The scrap iron plaza and the underground explosion-proof workshop were filled with ear-piercing sawing, heavy hammer blows, and extremely bright sparks caused by welding electromagnetic pulses.

Veteran Caleb wore a coarse tactical vest covered in grease. His heavy, thick mechanical iron arm spewed a high-frequency cutting air stream. Leading dozens of bare-chested veteran miners whose muscles were as hard as charred stone, he welded carburized lead armor plates—dismantled from the wreckage of Deadzone warships—piece by piece onto the outer layer of the Embers Camp's corrugated iron defense line.

"Tighten all the welds for me! Don't leave even the slightest gap!"

Caleb's military electronic prosthetic eye shot out bloodshot scarlet light. He roared hoarsely, slamming a palm heavily against a newly welded explosion-proof lead plate, producing a deafening crash of metal:

"Once those dog envoys of the Divine Court discover the anomaly in the blind spot, their first wave of strikes will absolutely be high-energy gravitational crushing! This layer of lead armor and heavy hydrogen sandwich is the only shield we have to block the first round of divine carpet bombing! Anchor the bases of the heavy electromagnetic overload cannons into Position Three for me; the crossfire net must cover the entire central concave plaza!"

Behind him, dozens of coolie miners who previously only knew how to swing shovels hundreds of meters underground were now holding modified overload electromagnetic rifles. Under the veteran's rough scolding, they practiced rapid cover-switching and three-stage crossfire suppression formations over and over. Blisters and calluses wore into the palms of these rough men, but no one backed down.

"What I'm teaching you isn't how to beat the gods, but how to use high-radiation cover to stay alive!" Caleb grabbed a young miner's tactical vest, coldly correcting his firing stance. "Once a divine envoy descends from the higher dimensions, don't look at their faces, look at the high-dimensional polarization runes under their feet! Aim your muzzles at the Node Three where the runes intersect! Empty all your ammo into it!"

The veterans nodded silently. Sweat mixed with black ash flowed freely down their coarse cheeks, but in their eyes, there was no longer the cowardice and numbness of the past, only a fierce light thoroughly polished by blood feuds. Under Caleb's tactical training, these bottom-tier coolies who were once entirely at the mercy of others deep in the mines were transforming at an astonishing speed into mortal warriors who dared to fire at the gods.

Meanwhile, in an abandoned high-pressure explosion-proof workshop thirty meters beneath the Embers Camp.

The temperature here was over forty degrees Celsius, and the air was saturated with intense electromagnetic radiation emitted by high-energy decaying waste ore. An ordinary mortal staying here for half an hour would suffer bloodshot eyes and organ failure.

However, at the heavy titanium alloy workbench in the center of the workshop, Elias stood bare-chested, gripping a high-purity electromagnetic overload coil with his bare hands. The meridians on the boy's body bulged slightly from the high-energy radiation, gleaming with a faint pitch-black dark light, but his hands were as steady as a precision machine.

Beside Elias, the astrologer Lyra had her long hair tied up, her forehead covered in dense beads of sweat, a few strands clinging to her pale, moist cheeks.

The girl's slender hands held an Astral Engraving Needle ground from high-hardness diamond. With extreme concentration, she delicately engraved impossibly complex astrolabe law runes onto the surface of a fist-sized, pitch-black dodecahedron high-energy decaying crystal core.

"We cannot have even a ten-thousandth of a millimeter of error on this deviation calculation track..."

Lyra's voice carried a faint tremor from extreme tension. She bit her tender lower lip, even biting a tiny bloody scratch into the corner of her mouth:

"The principle of the 'Prototype Shell' recorded in the black box blueprints is to use the overloaded black pulse generated in a split second by this highly radioactive decaying ore to resonantly disrupt the crystal phase of a high-dimensional divine envoy's gravity shield... If the rune deviation angle is off by even a hair, this crystal core will detonate right here in the workshop and vaporize all of us!"

The air in the workshop seemed entirely frozen; even the rapid breathing of the two was clearly audible. Beside them, dozens of young Self-Defense Force soldiers held their breaths tightly, their palms covered in cold sweat.

Hum—!

Suddenly, a teeth-jarring high-frequency oscillation rang out from inside the high-energy crystal core in the center of the workbench! Circles of blinding black electromagnetic halos burst violently from the pitch-black crystal's surface. The intense radiation deviation, accompanied by a piercing shriek, caused the lightbulbs in the entire workshop to instantly pop and shatter! Dozens of explosion-proof batteries simultaneously spewed blinding sparks!

"Oh no! The high-energy crystal core's magnetic deviation fuse is overloading! The energy channel is going to explode!" Lyra screamed, her dark, bright eyes showing extreme panic and despair, her delicate body paralyzed by the clash of high-dimensional radiation.

In this perilous split second!

Without any hesitation, Elias half-squatted beside Lyra. His slender, calloused palms directly covered Lyra's trembling hands, firmly pressing the girl's icy fingers and the Astral Engraving Needle against the crystal core's surface!

"Don't panic! Keep engraving!"

Elias roared lowly. The high-dimensional dark energy and Anomaly off-track frequency surging in his blood vessels erupted instantly! A hidden amplitude, as pitch-black as the night, followed his palm and arm meridians, violently pouring into the oscillating, overloaded high-energy crystal core!

That was the Anomaly Frequency capable of severing the law of causality and suppressing all astrolabe algorithm deviations! The agonizing scars on the boy's body writhed violently due to the surging high negative energy, but his eyes were fixed dead on every microscopic line on the crystal core.

The moment the violently oscillating high-energy crystal core touched Elias's negative energy, it was like magma frozen by a blizzard. That blinding black electromagnetic halo abruptly shrank. The deflected radiation particles were miraculously straightened out, settling steadily back into the pitch-black crystal!

Lyra looked up blankly, tears still brimming in the girl's large, dark eyes. The boy's scalding body heat and solid chest were right behind her, so close at hand, and she could clearly hear Elias's strong, incredibly reassuring heartbeat by her ear. That steady, powerful sense of security caused the girl's heart, beating violently from fear, to instantly settle, and her tense body relaxed.

"Keep going... I'll hold your hand steady," Elias said softly by her ear, his voice as steady as a towering mountain.

The girl's face flushed slightly, and she nodded heavily. She took a deep breath, gripped the engraving needle tightly once more, and with absolute resolve and concentration, slashed the final stroke of the astral rune fiercely into the bottom of the crystal core!

Click!

Accompanied by a crisp physical locking sound, the first prototype of the "Prototype Shell"—designed specifically to counter high-dimensional divine shields—was officially assembled under their joint effort!

Dark purple rune light flowed across the surface of the pitch-black dodecahedron crystal core. Though its exterior appeared somewhat bulky and crude, the high-microfrequency black pulse energy and decay resonance frequency contained within were enough to tear apart a mid-level high-dimensional divine envoy's gravity shield in a split second! Under the dim explosion-proof lighting, this small black crystal exuded a cold, fatal aesthetic of destruction.

"It worked... Elias! We really did it!"

Lyra's eyes flushed red with excitement. Cheering, she spun around and threw her arms tightly around Elias's neck. The girl's warm body, carrying the scent of herbs and sweat, crashed against the boy's solid chest. Her silver-dusted arms wrapped tightly around him as she let out a tearful, joyful laugh into the crook of his neck. The suppression and fear of two full days and nights without sleep transformed into a flood of ecstasy at this moment. The girl's heart pounded wildly in her chest, her small canine tooth gently biting her lower lip, an alluring flush coloring her cheeks, her eyes full of unreserved adoration and love.

Elias's body stiffened abruptly the moment he was hugged.

The boy lowered his head, looking at this petite, drenched girl in his arms, her face covered in sweat and silver dust. But in the depths of his mind, a violent roar crashed in an instant!

In that moment, the annihilation black light descending on the underground city of Tartarus ten days ago, the tearful little face of his sister Aira before she was torn apart and melted by high-dimensional laws—unwarned, it completely overlapped with Lyra before him. His sister's desperate, reaching cry of "Brother" before she died pierced his heart like a steel knife.

In this cruel, despairing wasteland, the thin yet resilient astrologer girl before him looked so much like the sister Aira he had failed to protect.

The originally cold, hard ice deep in Elias's eyes melted into endless sorrow and softness at this moment. He didn't push the girl away. Instead, he slowly raised his calloused palms and extremely gently patted Lyra's drenched back, his movements as tender as when he would coax his sister awake from a nightmare in the underground ruins:

"Yeah, we did it." The boy's voice was low and steady, carrying the heavy weight of an older brother protecting his sibling. "With this thing around, the gods' shields are no longer invincible walls. I won't let you repeat the tragedy of Tartarus."

After a long time, Lyra, blushing and a bit shy, finally released her embrace, stepping back half a pace. The girl pulled a roll of wool gauze soaked in pain-relieving herbs from her small tactical pouch, stood on her tiptoes, and gently held Elias's palms. Just now, to forcibly withstand the electromagnetic overload, Elias's palms had been burned by high radiation, leaving a blinding patch of charred black and bloody scars.

"Sit down. Don't move," Lyra said in a hoarse, low voice. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her eye sockets dancing with a heart full of worry. She carefully used tweezers to clean the residual high-microfrequency particles from Elias's palms, using a cotton swab dipped in herbs to apply it to the boy's wounds. The warmth of her fingertips and the cooling sensation of the herbs intertwined, bringing a trace of reassuring comfort.

"You're the backbone of the Vanguard..." The girl sniffled, her eyes incredibly focused as she wrapped the gauze for him. "If your hands are ruined, who's going to lead us to fire at the gods?"

Elias quietly watched the earnest, meticulous girl before him. The blurry image of his sister bandaging his wounds in the past surfaced in his mind, and a warm, restrained brotherly concern flashed in his eyes. "I'm tough to kill, they won't be ruined. You, on the other hand, don't exhaust yourself. Aira used to always take care of me like this too."

Hearing this name, Lyra's fingers tying the gauze paused slightly. The girl looked up at Elias, reading a certain steady, mountain-like brotherly gaze—yet crossed by a deep longing—in the boy's clear, fiercely protective lake-green eyes. The girl's little heart trembled slightly, then she bit her lip, smiled sweetly, and tied a beautiful dead knot in the gauze.

With the birth of the first prototype, the assembly line in the underground workshop rapidly went into overdrive.

Dozens of selected young mortal Self-Defense Force warriors joined in. Under Lyra's guidance, they cut waste ore, wound high-frequency electromagnetic coils, and assembled Prototype Shells and overloaded electromagnetic cutting rifles around the clock. The mortal warriors, armed with crude tools, worked frantically under intense radiation and high heat. Everyone's faces burned hot from the high-energy arc light, but no one voiced a complaint.

In less than two days and nights, a full eight Prototype Shells calibrated with astrolabe runes and thirty modified overloaded electromagnetic rifles were boxed and locked, continuously sent up to the outer defense line.

Deep in the shadow of a high-voltage transformer ruin not far from the workshop.

"Vespera," wearing a rough cloth dress, stood quietly in the dark.

With the sharpness of her high-dimensional divine consciousness, everything that happened in the workshop, even the microscopic structure and resonant frequency of the high-microfrequency black pulse inside that "Prototype Shell," was reflected with extreme clarity in her mind.

High above, Umbra, the God of Darkness, had the high-dimensional dark gleams deep in her eyes swaying violently.

"These low-dimensional mortals who haven't even unlocked their genetic locks... actually used the lowest quality scrap copper, rotten iron, and high-energy waste ore to tinker out a microscopic law weapon capable of resonantly tearing apart divine restriction shields."

Umbra sighed faintly in her heart. That cold admiration spread a complex ripple that couldn't be unraveled deep within her dead-silent divine core.

In the cold logic of the Divine Court, mortals who hadn't mastered high-dimensional divine arts were no different from dirt dogs on the ground. Yet, this boy named Elias and this astrologer girl with the little canine tooth before her had broken this iron rule. Using mortal wisdom and bloodlust, they had forcibly clawed out a path to slaying gods from the mud.

The cold wind of the wasteland howled past. The entire Embers Camp had already been fiercely fortified into an underground fortress as solid as a wall of copper and iron. The first mortal uprising armed force possessing actual combat capability and tactical discipline was thoroughly assembled in extreme oppression and fiery fanaticism! And the high-and-mighty hounds of the gods were about to step into this bloodthirsty killing field!