The air inside Subterranean Research Sector B hissed with thick ozone, scorched flux, and raw electromagnetic static that stood every hair on Li Xiaoyao's arms straight on end.
Hovering twenty feet above the parallel rows of titanium server racks were thirty-six gunmetal-grey spheres. Each measured two feet across, cold-formed from high-tensile Grade 5 titanium alloy, suspended inside counter-rotating magnetic levitation gimbals that put out a piercing, ultrasonic gyroscopic whine.
Beneath each sphere, a circular optical targeting iris dilated open, glowing with blinding electric-violet energy that threw harsh, strobing shadows against the polished terrazzo floor.
In the historical chronicles of the Western Cultivation Continent, these flying mechanical terrors were written of in the blood of fallen patriarchs as **The Wrath of the Celestial Slaughter Spheres**.
Three hundred and forty years ago, sixty seasoned Golden Core elders and two half-step Nascent Soul sovereigns of the Heavenly River Sect had breached the outer wards of this very data vault. They came seeking the ancient tablets of creation. They thought they had entered the treasure vault of the gods.
Instead, thirty-six Celestial Slaughter Spheres dropped silently from the ceiling flues.
The sect scrolls recorded the aftermath with shuddering ink. The spheres' violet destruction rays sliced through thousand-year spirit-turtle shields like red-hot wire through lard. Master-grade flying swords melted into puddles of slag in three heartbeats. Sixty-two grand elders dissolved into drifting plumes of violet ash in less than twenty seconds. Only a single half-step Nascent Soul elder crawled back to the surface, dragging himself through the scree on his elbows with half his torso melted away, spending his final hours babbling in terror about "the floating eyeballs of the ancient god of death."
Now, thirty-six optical lenses tracked across the room and locked squarely onto Austin's midnight-blue safety hard hat.
*BZZZZT—LOCKED.*
A synthesized, dual-toned firing sequence chimed through the ceiling acoustic baffles:
**[TARGET ACQUIRED: HOSTILE INTRUDER (CLASS-A SALVAGER)]** **[COUNTERMEASURE: 15,000-VOLT PULSED RF PLASMA ARCS]** **[AUTHORIZATION: LETHAL TERMINATION AUTHORIZED]**
Li Xiaoyao scrambled behind the end-post of a 42U server cabinet, raising his spirit sword with both hands, his knuckles chalky white and his teeth chattering like dice in a cup:
"Senior! Run! It is the Slaughter Spheres!" Xiaoyao yelled, his voice cracking on the syllables. "Half-step Nascent Soul patriarchs were vaporized into thin air! Their rays dissolve the flesh and sever the soul! We have to pull back to the airlock!"
Austin stood dead center in the cold aisle. He pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles up the bridge of his nose with a gloved thumb, squinting through the ambient static as his system HUD parsed the numbers.
"Look at those stepper motors," Austin muttered, tapping his yellow grease pencil against his chin. He whistled low and slow. "High-torque, sealed ceramic bearings, zero cogging, and neodymium permanent magnets. Those would make unbelievable feed-drive actuators for our Floor 2 structural drill rigs. Save my guys forty hours of hand-cranking on the boring mill."
Austin dropped his right hand toward the handle of his five-foot Stellar-Steel pipe wrench hanging at his side.
Before his fingers could close around the knurled grip, a deep, rumbling vibration shook the concrete under his work boots:
*Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.*
Cerberus Pug stepped out from behind the laden handcart.
The eight-hundred-pound Three-Headed Nether-Solar Cerberus tilted all three broad, wrinkled heads toward the ceiling. His six glowing golden eyes locked onto the thirty-six spinning, humming metal spheres hovering twenty feet overhead.
To an ancient sect master, they were the floating executioners of cosmic karma.
To Cerberus Pug, they were flying, glowing, buzzing laser balls.
All three of Pug’s stubby tails started hammering against the terrazzo floor:
*Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!*
The rhythm sounded like three pneumatic framing nailers firing on rapid-cycle into two-by-fours. His three black snouts twitched in rapid, snuffling succession. His six velvety ears stood straight up like radar dishes. Three thick pink tongues flopped out past rows of jagged obsidian teeth, slinging thick strands of eager dog spit across the tiles:
*PANT, PANT, PANT!*
*ZAP-ZAP-ZAP!*
Ten sentry drones opened fire at once! Blinding violet plasma lances tore through the room with a deafening crackle of thunder, converging squarely on Pug’s broad, barrel-chested torso!
*BOOM-CRACKLE!*
A blinding flash of ultraviolet lightning broke over Pug's jet-black coat, splashing blue-white sparks across the server aisles!
Behind the rack, Li Xiaoyao covered his face with his sleeves and shrieked in grief: "PUG! NOOOOO!"
Xiaoyao peeked between his trembling fingers—and his brain locked up.
The fifteen-thousand-volt plasma arcs didn't scorch the hound. They didn't singe a single black hair. They didn't even make him blink.
Cerberus Pug spent every evening sprawled out beside Austin’s runaway solar-reactor core, soaking up the radiant warmth of a million-degree stellar furnace while gnawing on charred scrap pipe. To an eight-hundred-pound nether-solar hellhound forged from compressed star-matter, a twenty-kilowatt static plasma arc felt like a warm bath towel fresh out of the dryer.
Pug closed all six eyes, leaning into the buzzing plasma beams with a happy, rumbling canine purr:
*Awoooooooooo!*
Then, his massive rear haunches bunched against the floor.
*BOOM!*
The terrazzo cracked beneath his paws as eight hundred pounds of hyper-dense muscle launched upward like a surface-to-air missile!
*WOOF!*
Pug cleared twelve feet off the deck in a single explosive leap.
*CHOMP!*
His left head clamped shut around the first drone, crushing the spinning anti-gravity ring like a dry soda cracker.
*CRUNCH!*
His right head snapped sideways, intercepting a second sphere trying to bank toward an exhaust vent. The jaws bit straight through three millimeters of titanium ballistics casing, pinching the main power capacitor into a shower of sparks: *Zzzzt-pop!*
*WHAM!*
In mid-air, Pug’s heavy front paw swatted a third drone out of the sky, driving it flat against the floor with the force of a steam drop-hammer.
Pug landed on all four paws—*THUD!*—spun around with breathtaking agility, and trotted proudly up to Austin’s steel-toed boots.
He opened his middle jaws and gently set the crushed, twitching titanium sphere right on top of Austin’s left work boot:
*Clink.*
Pug sat back, chest out, looking up with six soulful, intensely eager golden eyes, panting in three-part harmony:
*Pant, pant, pant!*
Austin looked down at the dented drone, then grinned. He bent over and dug his knuckles behind all six of the hound's velvety ears, scratching hard:
"Who's a good boy? That's my boy! Fetched a Grade 5 titanium housing with the stepper motor and the ceramic bearings completely intact! Outstanding recovery mechanics!"
Pug’s three tails blurred into an ecstatic propeller of joy.
"Get the rest of 'em, boy!" Austin pointed his pipe wrench at the swarm. "Fetch the scrap metal!"
*BARK! RUFF! ARF!*
Cerberus Pug went into full golden-retriever overdrive.
For the next three minutes, the sacred sanctum of the ancient First Gods looked like an aggressive game of indoor fetch.
Pug bounded across the tops of the 42U server cabinets—*Boing, boing, boing!*—launching across thirty-six-inch aisles with terrifying grace, snapping drones out of the air with crisp, metallic crunches:
*CHOMP! (Drone four down!)* *CHOMP! (Drone five down!)* *SLAP-CRUNCH! (Drones six and seven down!)*
Three drones tried to retreat toward a high-volume return-air plenum near the ceiling. Pug intercepted two in his outer jaws mid-leap, pushed off a titanium Unistrut trapeze with his back paws, and snatched the third drone straight out of the air with his center mouth before dropping back to the floor with an enormous, toothy grin.
The surviving drones panicked, spraying wild, erratic bursts of violet plasma across the room. Arcs bounced off the racks, sizzling harmlessly against the concrete. Pug ignored the fireworks completely, shaking his pelt and treating the crackling electrical discharges like confetti at a parade.
In three minutes and forty seconds, the high-pitched gyroscopic whine died out entirely.
At Austin’s boots sat a neat, symmetrical, four-tiered pyramid of **Thirty-Six Crushed Titanium Security Drones**.
Pug sat beside his haul, chest puffed out, front paws aligned, all three tongues dripping happily onto the tiles as he waited for his cut.
Austin reached into the cargo pocket of his dungarees, pulled out a thick stick of home-smoked beef jerky, snapped it into three clean pieces, and tossed one to each head:
*Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.*
"Good work, Pug," Austin nodded, rubbing the dog's center forehead. He leaned down and examined the twisted metal with a practiced eye. "Look at this planetary gear reduction on the drive spindle. Hardened stainless pinions with bronze bushings. Every tooth sitting pretty. And these optical lenses are high-purity fused silica. We can repurpose these for the infrared pyrometers on the blast furnace tuyeres."
Austin pulled out his yellow grease pencil and wrote across the curved surface of the top drone:
`[FACILITY SALVAGE: 36x MOTORS / 144x BALL BEARINGS - PROPERTY OF SUNSET PEAK]`
Behind the server cabinet, Li Xiaoyao slowly crawled out on his hands and knees. His robes were soaked with cold sweat, his jaw hanging limp, his entire understanding of the cosmos shattered into dust.
"Senior..." Xiaoyao whispered, his voice trembling as he stared at the mountain of dented metal spheres. "The... the purple tribulation lightning... was it truly not the divine judgment of the ancient executioners?"
"It's twenty-kilowatt radiofrequency plasma, Xiaoyao," Austin sighed, wiping a speck of motor oil off his thumb. "They run high-voltage RF across a stream of pressurized argon to create an ionized conductive arc. It's the exact same principle as the plasma cutter we use back in the machine shop to slice three-quarter-inch boiler plate. Dangerous if you're standing in your socks on a wet floor, sure, but Pug here sleeps next to a micro-star. To him, twenty kilowatts is just a stiff static shock from petting a cat in the winter."
Xiaoyao blinked down at the panting, three-headed hound, then up at Austin, looking like a man whose world had slipped completely off its axis.
"A... a cat in the winter..." Xiaoyao muttered into his sleeves.
Austin grabbed the handles of his loaded handcart and leaned into the frame, rolling it down the center aisle toward the eastern wall of Sector B:
*Rrrrrr-clatter.*
At the end of the hall, the amber strip lights gave way to a massive, circular blast portal forty feet in diameter.
Unlike the previous trial doors, this monolithic slab was cast from iridescent obsidian-steel, held in place by eight hydraulic locking cylinders the size of ancient redwood trunks. Hovering above the center was an enormous holographic glyph pulsing in deep, rhythmic azure:
**[FACILITY CENTRAL CONTAINMENT DOME: VAULT 04]** **[ACCESS RESTRICTED: ROOT ADMINISTRATIVE CLEARANCE REQUIRED]** **[ACTIVE SYSTEM ENTITY: OVERSEER-04 (PRIMARY SERVER DAEMON)]**
Austin rested his five-foot Stellar-Steel pipe wrench comfortably across his shoulder, admiring the four-foot-thick vault door with a critical eye.
"End of the trial gauntlet," Austin said, tapping his yellow grease pencil against his wooden clipboard. "Beyond this door is the main facility server room. Time to have a little chat with the network administrator."