Circuit breakers slammed shut deep beneath the central dome.
KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK!
Power surged from the geothermal plant into the ancient combat systems. Violet static crawled across the catwalks. The air grew hot, and the copper power lines began to whine.
“Senior! The sovereign is calling down Nine Heavens Tribulation Thunder!” Xiaoyao flattened himself against the floor.
“That’s an electrical surge, kid. Get your silk sleeves away from the bare rail. Silk won’t protect you from an arc flash.”
Austin stayed on his feet. He smelled hot oil, ozone, and scorched insulation. Whoever ran this place was pushing the equipment far beyond a safe load.
Pug sniffed a hot junction box, sneezed, and began chewing on a loose grounding lug.
The surge reached Austin’s dantian.
The First Epoch containment mesh around his Super-Dense Stellar Crucible opened its magnetic gates a fraction. Energy poured into the captive star.
The fusion layer ignited.
BOOOOM!
His core swallowed the surge and shot past Level 41 without even pausing to announce it.
At one and a half million degrees, the core entered True Stellar Convection. White-hot plumes rose from its dense center, curled through the outer shell, and sank again. The moving stellar matter formed a stable magnetic dynamo.
Power flowed through Austin’s spirit veins. It cleared small blockages and strengthened his blood vessels and tendons.
A fanfare sounded.
“Level forty-two. Skipped forty-one on that surge.” Austin checked the dynamo and containment readings. Both held steady.
New fragments joined the rings around his calves. His gravity field increased again, but the catwalk held.
Then the new dynamo released its first magnetic pulse.
BZZZZZT-CRACKLE!
The wave crossed the entire dome. It drove reverse current through every unshielded wire.
The lights flickered and popped. The data rings inside the quantum core scattered into orange static. Helium valves rattled in their brackets.
Overseer-04 froze in mid-swing.
The three-hundred-foot sovereign’s robes broke into huge pixels. Its smooth movement became a stuttering slideshow.
“W-W-WHAT IS TH-TH-THIS?”
Its voice broke into fragments.
“ELECTROMAGNETIC DISTORTION AT CORE PERIMETER. SOURCE LOCATED INSIDE… CONTRACTOR’S STOMACH?”
A diagnostic window opened across its chest.
BUS 0: MAGNETIC FIELD OVERLOAD
REVERSE CURRENT DETECTED IN SECTOR B
TARGET CLASSIFICATION: ACTIVE STELLAR BODY
CONFLICT: STELLAR BODY IS WEARING DENIM
LOGIC ERROR: STARS DO NOT CARRY GREASE PENCILS
Xiaoyao stared at the glowing errors with tears in his eyes.
“The forbidden hex codes of the Ancient Disaster Scripture! Grand Senior has forced the sky emperor to reveal the hidden seals of karma!”
“Those are hardware errors. The system just took a magnetic spike because somebody skipped basic shielding.”
“To call heaven’s wrath faulty wiring… Senior’s Dao truly stands above the Dao of Heaven!”
Austin sighed. There was no teaching electrical theory to a boy who saw every status light as a divine omen.
At least the surge had cleared the air. The burning smell faded, replaced by clean warmth from Austin’s core. Xiaoyao’s Foundation Core began to turn faster as it absorbed the stray energy.
Austin looked up at the glitching sovereign.
“Told you your shielding was bad. One pulse, and your whole display falls apart. You need double-braided Cat-7 cable and a ferrite bead on every end. If you’d called me ten thousand years ago, you wouldn’t be embarrassing yourself in front of the kid.”
He unclipped his pipe wrench and checked his new blueprints. The rivet cannon would fasten heavy structural joints. The ultrasonic welder could bond different metals without heating the whole piece.
“Real tools at last. A 120 PSI rivet cannon. No more hammering cold rivets like a medieval blacksmith.”
Austin walked to the platform rail and looked into the dark trenches.
“All right, Overseer. Where are those steel golems you promised? My tea gets cold in fifteen minutes, and that scrap will look good outside my foundry.”
The mountain answered with a shudder.
Three circular silo doors, each eighty feet wide, ground open beneath the platform. Steam and graphite dust blasted into the dome.
The elevator rails inside shrieked from dry metal scraping against dry metal. Austin winced.
“Bone-dry guide rails on cargo elevators. Not a drop of grease in ten thousand years. When this audit is over, I’m billing you for forty tubes.”
Three huge armored shapes rose into the crimson light.