“Okay.” Tess forced herself to breathe. “Let’s think this through. If the containment field is failing and there’s a spawner in Lab 9…”
BEE: The risk is significant. Based on my records, spawners generate spawns when exposed to sufficient Aether. Without a dungeon system to regulate them, they will continue producing spawns indefinitely. And if the containment field is offline, any spawns already created are loose. Or will be soon.
Petra looked at Tess, her face drawn. “What do we do?”
Tess turned back to the console, pulling up the containment field diagnostics again. “Bee says if that thing is a Spawner we need to get this fixed before it gets enough Aether to start up. Most of the systems are here in the control room, but I can’t use my skills on them. But…”
She could fix it in the regular way. Probably. reroute power, stabilize the primary field, maybe get the system online.
But that meant helping House Tertian contain whatever they’d created here.
It meant being complicit.
“Tess.” Petra’s voice was quiet. “What the hell is my family doing here?”
Tess didn’t answer. She just stared at the diagnostic screens, red indicators flashing, and tried to figure out how she’d ended up in a research facility with a dungeon spawner and a failing containment field. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of when she’d taken the Tertian contract—getting pulled deeper and deeper into something she couldn’t walk away from.
And she was in it now. No way out but through.
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” Tess said finally. “But if that spawner is active and the containment field stays offline, people are going to get hurt. None of the researchers looked like combat classes, and the guards are outside.”
Petra’s jaw tightened. “I noticed.”
“They can’t fight spawns. They can’t run fast enough to matter.” Tess pulled up the power distribution schematic on the center console. “Whatever your family is doing here, we can yell at them about it later. Right now, I need to get this field online before something gets out.”
If something hadn’t already. Director Allen’s sudden departure made Tess worry even more.
“Alright.” She rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles. “I can’t fix the skill crystals directly. Let’s see what else we’re working with.”
Tess activated [ANALYZE] again, focusing on the power distribution pathways.
Four primary nodes controlled the containment field. Crystal A handled field generation—the actual barrier keeping things inside Lab 9. Crystal B managed boundary stability, preventing fluctuations that could create gaps. Crystal C regulated Aether flow, and Crystal D maintained environmental sealing.
According to the readouts, Crystal A was completely offline. The other three were in critical condition but still functioning. Barely.
POWER_DISTRIBUTION_NETWORK {total_capacity: 8.47 AWcurrent_load: 4.12 AWavailable_headroom: 4.35 AWNODE_A (FIELD_GENERATION) {TECH_required: 7status: OFFLINEpower_requirement: 3.40 AWsignal_status: DISCONNECTEDnote: "Primary power coupling severed. Signal relay damaged."}NODE_B (BOUNDARY_STABILITY) {TECH_required: 7status: CRITICALcurrent_load: 1.56 AWmax_safe_load: 1.80 AWheadroom: 0.24 AW}NODE_C (AETHER_REGULATION) {TECH_required: 8status: CRITICALcurrent_load: 1.28 AWmax_safe_load: 1.40 AWheadroom: 0.12 AW}NODE_D (ENVIRONMENTAL_SEAL) {TECH_required: 7status: CRITICALcurrent_load: 1.28 AWmax_safe_load: 1.50 AWheadroom: 0.22 AW}}
Tess stared at the numbers. Node A needed 3.40 ArcWatts of power, and she had 4.35 available. Simple math said it should work if she fixed the connection.
But nothing was ever simple.
“The field generator is offline because the power coupling is severed,” Tess said, half to Petra, half to Bee. “Physical damage, not system failure. And the signal relay is damaged too—that’s why the entire system keeps throwing ‘parent node unresolved’ errors. It’s looking for a handshake that isn’t coming.”
BEE: Can you repair the physical damage?
“Can you fix it?” Petra said at the same time.
“Maybe. But here’s the problem.” Tess pointed out the three nodes in the system. “These are all running hot. If I just reconnect Node A over there and dump 3.4 ArcWatts of power into the system, the surge is going to ripple through the entire network. The other nodes can’t handle the spike.”
Petra moved closer, studying the readouts. “How much of a spike?”
“Depends on how I route it.” Tess looked deeper through [ANALYZE] at interconnections between nodes. “The power network is designed for load balancing. When Node A comes online, it’s going to pull from the shared distribution bus. It looks like it’s going to pull across the whole thing, which means the other three nodes on the way.”
“How bad?”
Tess did the math in her head. “If I route power directly through the main bus, the surge would hit maybe 15% across all nodes simultaneously. Node C would blow immediately—it’s only got 0.12 ArcWatts of headroom. The others would probably survive, but…”
“Let me guess,” Petra finished. “That’s the most important node?”
“Exactly.”
BEE: This is a resource allocation problem. You need to distribute the power restoration in a way that keeps all nodes within safe operating limits.
Tess nodded slowly. She was already working through the possibilities.
The containment system had four power routing pathways she could access. Each pathway connected different combinations of nodes, and each had different surge characteristics.
Pathway Alpha: Main distribution bus. Connected all four nodes. Fastest restoration, but highest surge potential.
Pathway Beta: Secondary trunk line. Connected Nodes A and B only. Lower capacity, but isolated from C and D.
Pathway Gamma: Auxiliary feed. Connected Nodes A and D. Moderate capacity, some bleed-through to other nodes.
Pathway Delta: Emergency bypass. Connected Node A directly to the primary power supply, bypassing other nodes entirely. But it required physical access to the junction box, which meant leaving the control room.
Tess stared at the huge schematic in her vision. She could only directly change one pathway at a time—her TECH 6 wouldn’t let her interact at all with the skill crystals involved. It was a physical puzzle she’d need to solve with good old-fashioned tools. A frustrating, high-stakes puzzle where the wrong answer meant people could get hurt.
“Okay,” Tess muttered. “Think it through. What do I actually need to accomplish?”
Two things. Restore power to Node A. Restore the signal connection so the system stops looking for a parent node that doesn’t exist.
Figure out power first, then signal. Or maybe she could do both at once if she were clever about it.
Pathway Delta would let her bring Node A online without affecting the other nodes at all. Zero surge risk. But she’d have to physically access the junction box, which meant following the connection through the halls to find it.
Pathways Beta and Gamma both had surge bleed-through, but directed to different nodes. Beta would spike B, which had 0.24 ArcWatts of headroom. Gamma would spike D, which had 0.22 ArcWatts.
What about using both?
Tess shifted her view to the power routing interface and started running calculations. If she split the power restoration across two pathways simultaneously, the surge would be distributed rather than concentrated. Beta carried a 2 ArcWatt maximum capacity. Gamma carried 1.8.
She needed 3.4 total ArcWatts for Node A.
If she routed 1.8 through Gamma and 1.6 through Beta…
The surge from Gamma would hit Node D, 1.8 AW through a pathway that connected to a node running 1.28 of 1.5. The transient spike would be maybe 8%, or about 0.14 AW. That put D at 1.42, under the 1.5 limit. Safe.
The surge from Beta would hit Node B: 1.60 AW through a pathway connecting to a node running 1.56 of 1.8. Spike of roughly 7%, or about 0.11 AW. That put B at 1.67, under the 1.8 limit. Safe.
And Node C stayed isolated from both pathways. No surge at all.
Tess exhaled.
“I can do this.”
Petra straightened. “Don’t tell me you you figured it out… that fast?”
“Split the power load across two pathways. Route 1.8 through Gamma, 1.6 through Beta. The surges stay within tolerance for all three critical nodes, and Node A comes online with full power.”
BEE: That is an elegant solution. What about the signal connection?
Tess pulled up the signal routing schematic. The relay damage was in Junction Box 7, which sat between the control room and Lab 9. She couldn’t fix the physical damage from here.
But maybe she didn’t need to.
“The system keeps looking for a parent node handshake, which I assume isn’t coming,.” Tess said slowly. “Can we spoof it?”
BEE: If this equipment was extracted from dungeon infrastructure. It still expects to operate within that hierarchy.
“So we make one. Clearly it was running before. Maybe we try to see how they did it?”
BEE: Explain.
Tess was already pulling up the signal configuration interface on the terminal. “The handshake protocol is just a call-and-response. Child node sends a ping, parent node sends an acknowledgment code. If I can figure out what acknowledgment code it’s expecting, I can configure Node A to respond to its own pings. Look, right there, someone has already set it up that way. I just have to restore whatever that subroutine was doing.”
“They made it think it’s talking to itself?” Petra asked.
“Someone did, yeah. There’s some kind of signature on it.” Tess’s fingers flew across the console. “It’s a hack. Someone created a custom bypass profile named ‘pwnd_lol’ to force the handshake. It’s terrible and inelegant, but it’s how they had it working. I just need to reactivate it.
BEE: I… can help with this. Transmitting a standard acknowledgment format for dungeon infrastructure handshakes.
A string of alphanumeric codes appeared in Tess’s vision—Bee’s text coming through her {NULL} class directly.
BEE: The specific authorization key will be unique to this system, but the format should be consistent. You will need to extract the key from Node A’s configuration.
“Bee! That’s… wow, that’s long. I can’t memorize that—just keep transmitting it.”
Tess didn’t need her interface for this. Instead, she pulled up node A on the terminal and started scanning through glitchy directories and unreadable code.
Buried in the chaos, she found what she was looking for: the authorization key. A massive string of letters and numbers that Node A used to identify its parent. If it weren’t for Bee, she wouldn’t know what she was looking for.
PARENT_AUTHORIZATION_KEY: "7f3d-91a2-cc48-b6e1-..."
Tess scrolled through the text, comparing it to the one Bee was transmitting. Some sections of it were definitely shorter, melted together without dashes, but she could fix that with an example in her vision.
“What can I do?” Petra asked.
Tess didn’t look up from the console. “There should be a terminal on the left side of the room. See if you can access any research documentation. Let’s find out what’s actually going on here.”
Petra moved to the indicated terminal. Tess heard her tapping at the interface, heard the soft beep of biometric authorization.
“I’m in. Whoa, I’m very in,” Petra said. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything that explains why they have a dungeon spawner in a research facility.”
More tapping. A pause.
“There’s a lot here,” Petra said, her voice strange. “Project files. Research logs. Experiment documentation.”
“Read me some titles.”
“‘Spawn Behavior Analysis: Controlled Environment Testing.’ ‘Aether Signature Mapping: Extraction Protocol Results.’ ‘Manifestation Rate Optimization: Phase Three.’”
Tess kept working on the signal configuration, repeating each title for Bee to hear.
“‘Combat Training Application Assessment,’” Petra continued. “‘Level Progression Correlation Study.’ ‘Spawn Difficulty Scaling: Proposed Implementation.’”
BEE: They are attempting to create spawns for training. So that people can level up by fighting them.
“Bee says they’re trying to train people with spawns outside of the dungeon?” Tess paused in her work. “That’s… actually not the worst motivation I could imagine.”
“It’s still wrong,” Petra said flatly. “You can’t just manufacture dungeon creatures outside the dungeon. There’s no floor reset. No containment. Nothing managing the population.”
“I know,” Tess said grimly.
She returned to her work, fingers moving faster now. A dash there, there, remove a space.
“There’s more,” Petra said. “‘Extraction Methodology: Revised Approach.’ ‘Fragment Viability Assessment.’ ‘Living Crystal Integration.’”
“Living crystal?”
“The spawner. They’re calling it living crystal.” Petra’s voice was bitter. “Makes it sound like a potted plant instead of a dungeon component.”
Tess filed that observation away for later. Right now, she had bigger problems.
The signal key was complete. She committed the changes, watching the system status update in real-time. Node A’s signal indicator shifted from red to amber, searching for the spoofed handshake.
Three seconds. Five. Seven.
The indicator turned green.
SIGNAL_STATUS: CONNECTED (LOOPBACK MODE—pwnd_lol)PARENT_NODE: SELF-REFERENCE ACKNOWLEDGEDHANDSHAKE: VALID
“Hacked signal’s up,” Tess said, staring at the signature on the status screen. “Time to fix the power.”
She pulled up the routing interface and began implementing her split-pathway solution. Gamma first: 1.8 ArcWatts flowing through the auxiliary feed. She watched the surge indicators, ready to abort if anything spiked beyond tolerance.
Node D flickered. Its load jumped from 1.28 to 1.41, then stabilized at 1.39. Within limits.
“Gamma pathway stable,” Tess reported. “Implementing Beta.”
The second pathway required more precision. She had to coordinate the power flow so that both pathways reached Node A simultaneously. A staggered restoration would create an imbalanced load that could destabilize the entire system.
Tess’s hands hovered over the console. This was the tricky part.
“Petra, I need you to monitor the surge indicators on your terminal. If anything goes red, tell me immediately.”
“Got it.”
Tess initiated the Beta pathway with a tap. With 1.6 AW of power flowing through the secondary trunk line, synchronized with the Gamma feed already in progress.
Node B’s load jumped from 1.56 to 1.66. It held for a moment, wavered…
“B is at 1.66,” Petra called out. “Climbing. 1.67. 1.68.”
“Come on,” Tess muttered.
The surge peaked at 1.69, then fell as the system equalized. 1.68. 1.67. 1.66. Stable.
“We’re good,” Petra said, relief clear in her voice.
Node A’s power indicator shifted from red to amber to green.
NODE_A (FIELD_GENERATION) {status: ONLINEpower_supply: CONNECTEDsignal_status: CONNECTEDcontainment_field: INITIALIZING...}
Tess watched the initialization sequence progress. 20%. 40%. 60%.
The viewport overlooking Lab 9 flickered as the containment field manifested—a faint shimmer in the air around the spawner structure, like heat haze but more deliberate. The crystalline growths were still pulsing, still reaching, but now there was a barrier between them and the rest of the facility.
80%. 90%.
CONTAINMENT_FIELD: ONLINEINTEGRITY: 78%STATUS: STABLE
Not perfect. The damaged nodes were still degrading the overall system performance. But 78% was a lot better than 31%. And she didn’t even need to use AP, not that she could with the TECH requirements.
Tess let out a long breath and slumped done against the console.
“It’s up,” she said. “Field’s online.”
Petra stepped away from her terminal, moving to stand beside Tess, staring out over the facility.
“My family built this,” Petra said. “Or paid someone to build it. Same thing.”
“Yeah.”
“For training. So people could level up without having to enter the dungeon.”
“That’s what the documents suggest.”
Petra sighed and slumped down next to Tess. “Until recently, this might have actually been a good idea. It’s not like the dungeon was really a viable option.”
Tess checked her interface.
{NULL} LEVEL 6TECH 6AP 6/6Level Progress 44%
Forty-four percent. She’d just pulled off one of the most technically demanding repairs of her life, dealt with dungeon-extracted technology, and solved a resource allocation puzzle under time pressure.
Forty-four percent.
Tess stared at the number. Was it because she didn’t use [INTERFACE]? Didn’t use AP?
Before Tess could respond to Petra, the console behind her began beeping loudly. She stood and checked the screen. The containment field coming online had triggered additional system connections. Sensors, monitoring equipment, status trackers that had been dormant when the field was down were all coming online.
The primary display populated with a facility-wide overview. Camera feeds. Motion sensors. Environmental monitors. Everything fed into a single integrated security system.
Tess watched the data scroll past. Her fingers paused on the console.
Something was wrong. Petra stood and looked over Tess’s shoulder.
The motion sensors were showing activity. Not in Lab 9; that was contained now. But in Corridor 7, and at Junction 4, and near the entrance to this part of the lab.
“Petra.”
“I see it.”
Tess pulled up the camera feeds, cycling through the facility’s internal surveillance network. Most showed empty hallways, abandoned workstations, a lack of researchers that had evacuated while she’d been focused on the repair.
Then she found Corridor 7.
The feed was grainy; the emergency lighting dim. But the movement was unmistakable.
Something was running through the hallway. Fast. Too fast for a person.
It was mechanical—that was Tess’s first impression. Articulated limbs, a low-slung body, multiple joints bending in ways that weren’t natural.
“That’s a spawn,” Petra said, her voice flat.
“There’s more than one.” Tess switched to another feed. Junction 4. A second construct was visible, this one smaller but just as fast. It was moving toward the research wing.
A third feed showed motion near the control room they were in. She couldn’t see details, just shadows and the flicker of movement.
Three spawns. At least three.
The sensors hadn’t detected them before because they were tied to the containment system. When Tess brought the field online, she’d also brought the monitoring network back to life.
She’d fixed the containment field. And in doing so, she’d revealed that containment had already failed.
Klaxons wailed. Red emergency lighting pulsed through the control room.
Tess pulled out her multi-tool, opened a panel and snipped a wire. The klaxon in the room went dead, but the light continued pulsing.
“The spawner must have been already been active,” Tess said. “I can’t tell for how long. Without containment, without monitoring…”
“They didn’t know.” Petra was already moving toward the door, her hands going to the vibroblades at her hips. “Those things have been loose this whole time? While Allen was giving us tours and demanding repairs. His urgent departure certainly makes more sense.”
“And he didn’t tell us.” Tess grabbed her tool belt, checking that everything was secure. “He left us here working on the field while spawns could have been running around the facility.”
“I’m going to have words with him. Later.” Petra drew both vibroblades, the weapons humming as they powered on. “Right now, we have a problem.”
Tess looked at the camera feeds again. The spawns were fast, aggressive, clearly hunting for something. But they weren’t huge. Nothing like the alpha spawn that had been stomping around Floor 1 when she met Petra.
“Can you handle them?”
“I’m a level 5 Blade Dancer, Tess,” Petra’s smile was thin and sharp. “I’ve got this.”