Dungeon King: I Rule

Chap 21: Blood Lock Vault

The sky over Delhi was a festering wound... choked with ash from dead System cities. Against this bruise-colored dusk... Eclipse Prime’s fortress rose like the ribcage of a murdered god. Its walls weren’t stone or metal... but biomechanical flesh... slick with black lubricant that dripped... hissed... and burned craters into the poisoned earth. Each rhythmic pulse of the structure... expansion... contraction... echoed the labored breathing of something ancient and wrong. Before it... the Blood Lock glowed... a vertical maw of interlocking gold teeth taller than Bombay’s fallen clocktower.

System Alert:

[ ENTERING RESTRICTED TERRITORY: ECLIPSE PRIME (BEAUTY RANK #3) ]

[ DEFENSES DETECTED: BIOMECHANICAL REGENERATION / BLOOD LOCK / CLASS-IV ARCHITECT GOLEMS ]

[ PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: VAULT CORE (SHARD #1 STABILITY: 0.5%) ]

[ HARVEST WINDOW: 7 HOURS, 22 MINUTES ]

Selene stumbled... boots slipping on enzyme-slicked ground. The veins beneath her skin ignited... molten gold light mapping rivers of corruption up her neck... etching jagged branches across her jawline. Her breath hitched... a wet, static-filled rattle.

"It’s... singing..." she gasped... clawing at her sternum where the light burned brightest. "Can’t you hear it? The Lock... it’s humming in my bones..."

Luna spat onto the nearest wall. The saliva evaporated instantly... consumed by the fortress’s hungry enzymes. She hefted her scarred glaive... its edge still faintly smoking from Bombay. "Looks hungry. Let’s feed it your regrets... not your guts."

Kai’s void-scorched eye twitched... the corrupted orb throbbing with phantom pressure. On the pulsating wall... shadows coagulated. Not shadows... Linda. Translucent... fractured... her ghostly hand pressed against the biomechanical flesh from the inside... mouthing silent words. Kai blinked... and the vision sharpened... her voice threading directly into his crumbling sanity:

"Don’t let her touch it, Kai! The Lock isn’t a door... it’s a siphon! He’ll drain her dry... turn her light into fuel!"

Nyx’s chuckle vibrated... a cold drill bit boring into Kai’s inner ear: "Let the frozen heart burn... Architect. Her corruption makes such... radiant kindling. Imagine the warmth..."

SANITY CHECK: FAILED

[ REASON: PROXIMITY TO ARCHITECT-CORRUPTED STRUCTURE + NYX AMPLIFICATION ]

[ SANITY: 55% → 53% ]

[ HALLUCINATION STATUS: PERSISTENT (LINDA MANIFESTATION) ]

Ignoring the screaming ghost... the whispering void... Selene lurched forward. She pressed her bare palm... already webbed with luminous gold cracks... directly against the lowest row of the Blood Lock’s burning teeth. A scream tore from her... not pain... but violation. Black frost exploded from her touch... jagged... desperate... but the Lock consumed it... melting the ice before it could fully form. In its place... her corruption light bled out... thick as molten gold... pouring into the mechanism.

BLOOD LOCK ACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATED:

[ MECHANISM: CORRUPTED FROST INTEGRATION ]

[ COST: CORRUPTION INFLUX +2% PER MINUTE OF CONTACT ]

[ CURRENT CORRUPTION: 60% → 62%... 63%... ]

The massive gold teeth groaned... grinding against each other like tectonic plates. Slowly... agonizingly... they began to retract... revealing a yawning darkness beyond that smelled of ozone... decay... and sterile laboratories.

Selene sagged... arm trembling violently as she maintained contact. Gold-tinged tears tracked clean lines through the grime on her cheeks. Her voice... when it came... was a broken rasp aimed at Kai’s back... where he stood frozen... watching the hallucination of Linda pound soundlessly on the wall.

"Always... a choice... isn’t it?" Selene choked out... each word costing her. "Your ghost... or my life? You trusted his lie... his fake resurrection... more than you trust me... to open this damn door..."

Corruption: 64%.

With a final, shuddering clang... the last gold tooth retracted. The darkness beyond the Lock pulsed... a hungry throat. The fortress breathed its fetid air over them... and swallowed them whole.

The antechamber wasn’t a room... but the fortress’s gullet. Pulsating data-conduits... thick as ancient tree roots... snaked across walls weeping black lubricant. The air thrummed... a bass note that vibrated teeth and bone. And lining the path towards a deeper, rhythmic throbbing... stood the Weeping Angels.

Twelve stone figures... frozen in postures of eternal grief... wings folded like broken radar dishes. Their faces... though featureless stone... streamed rivulets of the same black lubricant that coated the walls... pooling at their clawed feet. As Kai... Selene... and Luna crossed the threshold... twelve pairs of empty eye sockets snapped open... emitting faint, ghastly blue light.

System Alert:

[ WEEPING ANGEL GOLEMS (ARCHITECT DESIGNATION: SENTINELS OF SORROW) - ENGAGED ]

[ ABILITY: OBSERVATION PARADOX ]

- DIRECT VISUAL CONTACT: SUSPENDS GOLEM MOTION

- VISUAL CONTACT BROKEN: ACTIVATION + SANITY DRAIN (-3%/SEC)

[ SECONDARY HAZARD: DATA-STREAM RAVINES - CORRUPTED CODE FLOW ]

[ SOLUTION REQUIRED: FROST BRIDGES (SUBJECT: SELENE) ]

Luna planted her glaive... its point screeching on the slick floor. "Staring contest with crybabies? Fine. But I blink... you scream." She fixed her gaze on the nearest Angel... its blue eye-light flickering under her scrutiny.

Before them... the floor fell away into a seething chasm. Not empty... but filled with a rushing torrent of liquid data-streams... corrupted code fragments snapping like piranhas made of fractured light and static. The chasm spanned fifteen meters... its far side lost in the conduit-thick gloom.

"Bridge!" Luna barked... not taking her eyes off her Angel.

Selene raised shaking hands... the gold cracks glowing brighter. Black frost... threaded through with dangerous veins of corruption-light... spiraled from her palms. It snaked across the chasm... freezing the seething data-streams... forming a precarious... groaning bridge of dark ice.

"Cross! Now! It won’t hold!" Selene’s voice was strained... her corruption meter ticking: 64% → 64.5%.

Kai hesitated at the edge. The bridge looked solid... but deep within its frozen depths... the corrupted gold light pulsed... like a trapped heartbeat. It mirrored the frantic pulse he felt in his own void-scorched eye. The hallucination of Linda flickered beside him... pointing frantically at the bridge’s core.

"It’s unstable! He’s woven his corruption into her ice! It’ll consume you!"

Nyx slithered: "Or set you free... little king. Step into her fire... let it burn the ghost away..."

"Move or fall, Romeo!" Luna’s voice cut through. She hadn’t blinked... but her Angel’s stone fingers twitched. Kai felt a hard shove between his shoulder blades... Luna’s impatient gauntlet. He stumbled onto the bridge.

The ice held... but barely. It groaned under his weight... cracks spiderwebbing instantly. Below... the corrupted data-stream leaped... a tendril of snapping code lashing out. It grazed Kai’s boot. Instantly... the replica material hissed... the code-strands beneath blackening... withering like poisoned roots. Sharp... cold pain lanced up his leg.

System Alert:

[ REPLICA INTEGRITY: 88% → 85% ]

[ WARNING: CORRUPTION TRANSMISSION DETECTED (MINIMAL) ]

[ ASSIMILATION RISK: INCREASED WITH REPLICA DAMAGE ]

Halfway across... disaster. The Angel Luna was staring down... its head turned with a sickening stone-on-stone grind. Not much... just a fraction. Luna’s gaze... locked for so long... flickered instinctively towards the movement.

EYE CONTACT BROKEN.

SCREEEEEECH!

The Angel erupted from stillness... stone claws blurring as it lunged... not for Luna... but for Selene... still concentrating on the bridge. Kai reacted... Legacy Shards flaring in his palm... not aimed... but detonated as a concussive blast between Selene and the claw.

BOOM!

The force wave staggered Selene... her bridge flickering violently. The Angel froze mid-lunge... Kai’s desperate gaze now locking it in place. But the cost...

Sanity Drain:

[ LUNA: -9% SANITY (PHANTOM CLAWS RAKING HER NECK - TEMPORARY DEBUFF: TERROR SHIVER) ]

[ KAI: -6% SANITY (NYX WHISPERS BECOMING SHOUTS: "WEAK! PATHETIC!") ]

[ CURRENT SANITY: KAI 47% ]

Nyx crowed: "You saved the vessel! For what? To watch her rot from within? Let the berserker die next time... her rage is... monotonous."

Another chasm... wider... the data-stream below a roaring maelstrom of corrupted violet and sickly green light. Selene... panting... face pale beneath the gold glow... thrust her hands out again. The frost bridge that formed was thinner... translucent... the corruption veins within it pulsing like exposed nerves.

Corruption: 65% → 66%.

This time... Kai didn’t hesitate. He stepped onto the fragile span... forcing himself not to look down at the devouring code... or at the flickering image of Linda trying to pull him back. He ran... Luna close behind... dragging a shaking Selene the last few steps as the bridge dissolved into dripping sludge behind them.

Safe... for a moment... on the other side. Kai whirled... Legacy Shards ready... but the Angel he’d frozen was shattering... crumbling like rotten sandstone. Within its hollow chest cavity... glistening bio-wires pulsed... snaking back into the wall... towards the deeper thrumming.

"Conduits," Luna rasped... rubbing her neck where phantom claws had scored. "Follow the tears... follow the wires. Core’s that way."*

Black lubricant wept from the ceiling... thicker here... forming viscous trails down the snaking data-pipes. The dirge-like harmonizing of the remaining Angels’ sobs filled the chamber... a sound that seeped into the skull.

System Alert:

[ ANTECHAMBER SECTION CLEARED ]

[ CORRUPTION: 66% (SELENE) ]

[ SANITY: 47% (KAI) - HALLUCINATION THRESHOLD BREACHED (NYX VOICE AUDIBLE) ]

Ahead... the vault core’s hum deepened... became a tangible pressure. Linda’s shard pulsed within it... a faint... fading ember against the oppressive dark.

"Almost..." Selene whispered... leaning heavily against a conduit... her breath fogging in the suddenly cold air... every exhale tinged with gold light. "...almost got her back..."

Kai stared not at the core... but at the light leaking from Selene. Nyx whispered... now sounding almost like his own thoughts: "Liar. She’s the key you turned... the lock you opened... and her light is the price."

The vault core wasn’t a room… but a beating heart.

Pulsing data-conduits converged here… throbbing like veins into a central chamber where the air itself vibrated with power. At its center… suspended in a column of liquid light… Linda’s shard flickered weakly. Around it… twelve Legacy Shard conduits rotated slowly… their alignment forming a shifting puzzle of light and shadow.

System Alert:

[ VAULT CORE MECHANIC: CONDUIT SYNCHRONIZATION ]

[ REQUIREMENT: LEGACY SHARD HARMONY (PRIME USER: KAI) ]

[ WARNING: ARCHITECT’S INTERFERENCE DETECTED (HALLUCINATION PROTOCOL ACTIVE) ]

Kai’s void-scorched eye burned. The conduits weren’t just physical… they bled into his vision… multiplying… fracturing. Some pulsed with the familiar cobalt of his own power. Others… a sickly gold… matched Selene’s corruption. And between them… ghost-conduits… illusions woven by Nyx.

"Three real… nine lies," Nyx whispered… tendrils of darkness curling around Kai’s optic nerve. "Choose wrong… and the core detonates. Choose right… and the ghost is yours again."

Selene slumped against a conduit… her breath ragged. Gold light seeped from her pores… her corruption meter ticking: 66% → 66.3%.

"Align them…" she panted. "Before his golems… regroup."

Luna positioned herself at the chamber entrance… glaive ready. "Clock’s ticking, kid. That shard’s fading faster."

Kai stepped forward… raising his palm. Legacy energy flared… reaching for the first conduit—

—and the vault shrieked.

HALLUCINATION TRIGGERED:

[ MEMORY PROTOCOL: SIMULATION PLAYBACK ]

Suddenly… he wasn’t in the vault.

Hyderabad Lab. Pre-System.

Linda… alive… strapped to the Architect’s table. Her hand reached for Kai… fingers brushing his. "Align the conduits, Kai! Save me!"

Real or fake?

The real conduits pulsed… waiting.

Kai’s hand trembled.

"Focus!" Selene’s voice sliced through the vision. She slammed her frost-encased fist into the chamber wall… sending a crack through the illusion. "That’s not her! It’s his script!"

The Hyderabad memory shattered… but the damage was done.

Sanity: 47% → 45%.

Gritting his teeth… Kai forced his energy into the first true conduit. It flared cobalt… locking into place with a resonant hum.

One down. Two to go.

The remaining conduits spun faster… their light blurring. Nyx’s laughter echoed… and suddenly… two Lindas materialized beside each real conduit.

One wept static tears. "Please… I’m real!"

The other smiled… gold light in her eyes. "You know me, Kai."

System Alert:

[ NYX INTERFERENCE: HALLUCINATION MATRIX ]

[ PENALTY: -10% SANITY ON MISALIGNMENT ]

Kai’s hand hovered over the second conduit.

Selene watched… her frost creeping across the floor. "You trusted his simulation once…" she murmured. "Will you do it again?"

The words stung. Kai had believed the Architect’s fake resurrection. Had held that false Linda… let her poison his mind with hope.

His fingers twitched… reaching for the left conduit—

—then jerked right at the last second.

Legacy energy surged… connecting with the true second conduit.

HUM.

The vault core trembled… the column of light around Linda’s shard brightening.

One conduit left.

Nyx hissed… the illusion-Lindas dissolving into smoke. The final real conduit pulsed… but now… it was encased in gold corruption-light.

Selene’s breath hitched. "That’s… mine."

Corruption: 66.5%.

She pushed off the wall… stumbling toward it. "I’ll do it. You’re too… unstable."

Kai grabbed her wrist. "You’re at 66%. Touch that… and you spike past 70."

Selene yanked free. "And you see ghosts! Choose!"

The chamber rumbled. Distant… but approaching… the screech of reactivated golems.

Luna’s glaive ignited. "Hurry the hell up!"

Kai and Selene moved at the same time.

His Legacy energy… her corrupted frost… lashed toward the final conduit—

—and collided mid-air.

SYSTEM OVERRIDE:

[ CONDUIT CONFLICT DETECTED ]

[ RESULT: CORE INSTABILITY ]

The conduit exploded.

A shockwave of light and data blasted them backward. Kai’s replica flickered… code-strands bursting from his shoulder. Selene’s gold veins flared… her scream lost in the cacophony.

System Alert:

[ VAULT LOCKDOWN INITIATED ]

[ REASON: UNAUTHORIZED ENERGY SIGNATURE ]

[ COUNTERMEASURES: GOLEM ACTIVATION + DATA-FLOOD ]

The chamber doors began grinding shut.

Linda’s shard… now fully visible in the destabilized light column… pulsed weakly.

"He plans… golems…" her voice whispered through the static. "For her body…"

The explosion’s aftermath left Kai’s ears ringing. His HUD flickered… displaying the damage:

System Alert:

[ REPLICA INTEGRITY: 85% → 79% ]

[ ASSIMILATION RISK: 59% → 61% ]

[ VAULT LOCKDOWN: 60 SECONDS TO SEAL ]

Across the chamber… Selene groaned… pushing herself up on shaking arms. Gold light… thicker now… oozed from a gash on her temple. Her corruption meter climbed: 66% → 67%.

Luna was already moving… glaive slamming into the grinding vault doors… buying seconds. "Get the damn shard!"

Kai scrambled toward the light column… where Linda’s shard floated… projecting ghostly blueprints into the air:

Golem Prototypes: Dozens of lifeless replicas… each with Linda’s face.

Resurrection Chamber Schematics: A pod lined with Legacy Shards.

Soulforge Integration Notes: *"Subject: Linda Prime - Neural Upload requires emotional resonance anchors (See: Kai-7, Selene-9)."*

Memory Fragment:

The Architect’s voice from the simulation: "Love makes the best keys, Subject: Kai. It unlocks… and destroys."

Sanity: 45% → 43%.

Kai reached into the light… fingers brushing the shard—

—and the blueprints shifted.

New images: The Architect standing over a stasis pod… inside… a perfect Linda replica… breathing… alive.

"Resurrection isn’t recovery," his voice whispered from the shard. "It’s replacement. But she’ll never know the difference."

The shard pulsed weakly into Kai’s palm… its light dimming.

System Alert:

[ SHARD #1 RECOVERED ]

[ RESURRECTION PROGRESS: 0% → 5% ]

[ DATA UPLOAD: ARCHITECT’S GOLEM PROJECT ]

Selene staggered to his side… staring at the blueprints. Her frost… usually so precise… crackled erratically.

"You believed this?" she whispered… voice raw. "This fake heaven? This puppet of her?"

Kai’s grip tightened on the shard. "I believed I could save her."

"By trusting him?" Selene’s gold-veined hand slashed toward the schematics. "Look what he really wanted! Not her… not you… just our pain as fuel!"

The vault doors groaned… Luna’s glaive screeching against them. "Less talking! More running!"

Kai pocketed the shard… its faint pulse a weight against his ribs.

Selene didn’t move. Her eyes… the frost in them now threaded with gold… locked onto Kai’s. "You were willing to let him erase her… replace her… just so you wouldn’t have to grieve."

The words struck like a blade.

Desire Tree Flicker:

[ SKILL UNLOCK ATTEMPTED: FROSTBOUND HEART ]

[ BLOCKED BY GUILT PATH ]

Luna’s boot slammed into the door… buying another inch. "NOW, GENIUSES!"

Kai grabbed Selene’s wrist… dragging her toward the exit as the first golem’s claws scraped into the chamber behind them.

The shard’s voice… barely a whisper now… echoed in Kai’s skull:

"Stop… his simulation preyed on both your fears…"

Then they were through… into the fortress’s lower ducts… the screams of reactivated golems chasing them into the dark.

The sewage pipes beneath Eclipse Prime reeked of rotting code and stagnant data. Flickering bioluminescent algae cast ghostly green light on Kai’s void-scorched hands as he clutched Linda’s shard… its pulse weak but steady.

Selene leaned against the damp wall… her corrupted frost sputtering in the humid air. Gold veins branched across her collarbone like cracks in porcelain.

"You knew," she said… voice hollow. "You saw the simulation for what it was… and you still wanted to believe."

Kai’s grip tightened. The shard’s edges bit into his palm. "I wanted her back."

"As what?" Selene’s laugh was a static-filled rasp. "A golem? A puppet with her face?" She shoved off the wall… gold light leaking from her pores. "You’d rather have a thing that looks like her… than accept she’s gone."

System Alert:

[ SHARD #1 INTEGRATION: RESURRECTION PROGRESS 5% ]

[ CORRUPTION FEEDBACK DETECTED: SELENE 67% → 67.3% ]

Luna rolled her eyes… sharpening her glaive against a pipe. "Romance is dead. Literally."

Kai’s void-eye pulsed. Nyx whispered: "The ice witch fears replacement too… for herself."

"It wasn’t about replacement," Kai snapped… too harsh… too fast. "It was about fixing what I broke."

Selene went very still. The gold light in her veins dimmed. "You didn’t break her, Kai. The Architect did. Just like he’s breaking us."

The shard flared weakly between them:

"Stop… his simulation preyed on both your fears…"

A distant boom shook the pipes. Golem screams echoed through the tunnels.

Luna was moving before the echoes faded. "Time’s up."

The trio ran… boots splashing through ankle-deep sludge that hissed against Selene’s frost. Behind them… the screech of stone on stone… the thud of heavy bodies dropping into the tunnels.

System Alert:

[ WEEPING ANGEL GOLEMS: PURSUIT MODE ]

[ ESTIMATED INTERCEPT: 90 SECONDS ]

Kai risked a glance back. The lead golem’s face… featureless save for those weeping black tears… twisted as it ran… molding itself into something horribly familiar.

Linda’s face.

"Kai…" it moaned… voice a perfect mimic. "Don’t leave me again…"

Sanity: 43% → 41%.

"Don’t look!" Selene yanked him forward. Her corrupted frost lashed out… freezing the sludge behind them into a brittle barrier. "It’s not her!"

The golem hit the ice at full speed… shattered it… but bought them three precious seconds.

Ahead… faint light. The exit grate.

Luna reached it first… glaive slashing through rusted metal. Monsoon rain poured through the opening… washing the filth from their armor as they tumbled onto the ruined streets of outer Delhi.

The Blood Red Fortress loomed behind them… its walls pulsing angrily. Then… a new sound cut through the storm.

A voice.

Not from the fortress… but from the sky itself… booming across the ruins in a hundred amplified echoes:

"CORRUPTED VERMIN."

The rain parted… as if sliced by an invisible blade. Above… hovering on anti-grav platforms… a dozen Eclipse Prime enforcers clad in gold-and-crimson armor. At their center… a throne of woven data-streams… and upon it…

Beauty Rank #3.

Her face was hidden behind a holographic veil… but her voice was a scalpel dipped in honey.

*"Selene-9… fallen from grace. Kai-7… the Architect’s favorite failure."* She raised a hand… and the city itself shuddered. "Your Leaderboard fall begins now."

System Alert:

[ BEAUTY RANK #99 (SELENE) - OFFICIAL DEMOTION ]

[ EFFECT: GOLD SCOURGE DEBUFF (ALL NPC HOSTILITY +50%) ]

[ CHAPTER 21 END - RESURRECTION PROGRESS: 5% ]

As the first energy cannons charged… Luna spat blood and grinned.

"Well… that escalated."