Cracked Pillars of Fate

Chapter 15: The Architect’s Knowledge Base

The leftover wood from the lab table crackled in the devouring flames, sending orange sparks into the deep purple night sky. Around the makeshift campfire, the silence felt heavy. Archen Huge leaned his back against a cracked concrete pillar, his eyes staring blankly at his palms, which still occasionally sparked with a black glow. Beside him, El Joe was cleaning his iron pipe with a tattered cloth, his movements slow and rhythmic.

Dylan Smith sat a bit further from the fire, cradling a crystal device he had scavenged from the remains of a technological cathedral. The blue light from the device reflected off his glasses, of which only one temple remained intact. His fingers moved quickly over the crystal surface, as if dancing with shadows.

"You've been staring at that thing for two hours, Dylan. Are you trying to get that machine to talk?" Archen broke the silence with his raspy voice.

Dylan didn't answer immediately. He swiped a line of light in the air, then turned. "Not talk, Archen. I'm reading the logs the system left inside our bodies. You feel different after that battle, don't you? More... connected?"

Archen snorted, rolling his broad shoulders. "I feel like I just got hit by a fully loaded truck, then was forced to pull that truck uphill. If that's what you mean by connected, then yeah, I feel it."

"That's because we're no longer just users," Dylan replied, his voice rising a pitch with enthusiasm. "Earlier, when we combined our attacks, we performed something called overriding. We took over the system's core functions for a moment. And now, I've found a way for us to do that permanently."

El Joe stopped wiping his weapon. He looked at Dylan with the sharp gaze of a leader. "Permanently? You mean we can reset our own powers?"

"Exactly," Dylan projected a small holographic image between them. The image showed fragmented clusters of light. "These are Arcana Fragments. Until now, the system has given us abilities like pre-made toys. But these fragments are the raw materials. If we know how to assemble them, we can create abilities that aren't on the standard list."

Archen frowned, his face showing signs of confusion mixed with impatience. "Dylan, I'm a dockworker. I know how to lift weights and how to hit things until they break. I don't understand your technical talk about fragments or arrangements. Can you explain it in human language?"

Dylan sighed, searching for the right analogy. He picked up a small stone from the ground and a piece of burning wood. "Listen, Archen. Your gravity power right now is like a hammer. You use it to hit anything. But if we combine my logic fragments with your gravity energy, that hammer can turn into a razor-sharp drill, or an impenetrable shield. We aren't just relying on power, but on how that power works."

"That sounds really complicated," Archen grumbled. "Why should I care how it works as long as the enemy in front of me dies?"

"Because the Architect of Nothingness we saw earlier cannot be defeated with muscle alone!" Dylan stood up, his voice rising slightly. "He is the owner of this system. If you attack him in the way he expects, he only needs to press one button to delete you. We must attack him with something he never designed. We have to become an anomaly."

Archen fell silent. He stared at the campfire, then at Dylan, who looked incredibly certain. All this time, Archen had felt that his presence in this team was merely as a meat shield. He felt he wasn't smart enough to understand this crazy new world. However, seeing Dylan so passionate about protecting him with intelligence, a strange sense of respect began to well up in his chest.

"So... you're saying you can make my punch more than just a punch?" Archen asked softly.

Dylan nodded, approaching Archen. "I need you to trust my calculations. When you feel your gravity energy overflowing, don't release it immediately. Let me direct the flow through the protocols I've created. It will feel like you're trying to hold a waterfall inside a bottle, but the result will be worth it."

El Joe smiled faintly at the dynamic between his two comrades. "It seems 'The Brain' has found a way to sharpen your muscles, Archen. I need my part too, Dylan. My environmental adaptation still feels too slow if we have to shift dimensions."

"I've already thought about it, Joe," Dylan replied, returning to his crystal. "We will build our own Class Architecture. We'll call it the Pillars of Fate. Archen in the front as the destroyer, you as the anchor controlling the field, and I... I will be the one to ensure this system stays on its knees before us."

The night was spent with Dylan trying to teach Archen how to manipulate his internal energy. It was a painful process for Archen. He groaned repeatedly as he felt his nerves being tugged by the virtual code Dylan injected. However, every time Archen was about to give up, Dylan patiently explained every step, making Archen slowly understand that strategy was not a weakness, but a power multiplier.

"Try it now," Dylan whispered after hours of attempts. "Focus the gravity at your fingertip, not your entire arm."

Archen closed his eyes. He imagined his energy as a narrow stream of electricity. Suddenly, a tiny, pitch-black dot appeared at the tip of his index finger. The dot was so dense that the surrounding air seemed to be sucked into a small vacuum.

"Incredible," El Joe muttered, having watched the whole time.

Archen stared at the dot in awe. He didn't need to exert great force, yet he could feel an extraordinary destructive power there. "This... this feels much more efficient."

"That's called precision, Archen," Dylan said proudly. "We just rewrote a line of code inside you."

The quiet stillness of the night was suddenly shattered by a deafening high-frequency whine. System notifications in all their eyes flashed bright red at an alarming speed.

[Warning: Mass Anomaly Detected.]

[Location: Sector 7 Settlement – 12 KM from Current Coordinates.]

[Status: Large-Scale Organic Invasion in Progress.]

Dylan immediately activated his larger holographic screen. The visuals that appeared made their hearts skip a beat. A village built from ruins—a place where human survivors gathered—was being besieged by thousands of giant shadows that looked like distorted piles of flesh and machinery.

Faint human screams could be heard through the corrupted audio transmission. The images showed collapsing buildings and people running aimlessly, while the creatures devoured everything they touched.

"Is that... is that Joe's place?" Archen asked, his face immediately tensing.

El Joe stood up quickly, his iron pipe gripped so tightly his knuckles turned white. "No. That's the settlement near the old flea market. There are many children there."

"The signal says these are Void Wardens," Dylan swallowed hard, his face pale. "They are the system's cleaners. If they're there, it means the system considers those people as trash to be discarded."

"We can't let this happen," Archen slammed his fist into the ground, creating a small crack filled with a black glow. His hesitation had completely vanished, replaced by a focused rage. "Dylan, you said you could make me an anomaly? I think now is the perfect time to prove it."

El Joe looked at his two comrades. "Preparations complete. We move now. Don't let a single life be lost tonight."

As they began to run through the darkness toward the glow of the fires on the horizon, Archen realized one thing. He was no longer just a strong laborer. Under Dylan's guidance, he had become a weapon with a mind of its own. And for the system trying to erase them, it was a nightmare that had only just begun.