The space had been repurposed into a crude, makeshift operating theater. There were no shadowless surgical lamps here; instead, dozens of hovering orbs of light cast a stark, bleached glare over the workbench, making every mote of dust floating in the air visible to the naked eye.
Savage sat shirtless in an iron chair modified from a heavy hydraulic press. At his right shoulder, the sleeve that usually hung empty had been sheared away, revealing the ugly, pink-scarred surface of the stump.
"Ready, old friend?"
Carlyle stood beside him, wiping a razor-sharp alchemical scalpel with alcohol. Suddenly, Savage raised his remaining left hand and gripped Carlyle’s wrist.
"Before you start cutting, I’ve got a question."
The dwarf’s gaze was no longer its usual carefree self. It held a piercing, scrutinizing edge—the look of an old soldier. "Back in those godforsaken ruins... why did I trust you? I’m an old scoundrel, and you’re a high-value fugitive of the Order of Syntax. By all rights, I should have put a bullet in you and collected the bounty."
Carlyle stopped. He didn't answer immediately. He looked at the blade in his hand, his eyes lost in a momentary trance.
"To be honest, I didn't trust you either," Carlyle said flatly. "We were both standing on the edge of a cliff."
"Bullshit," Savage spat. "I’ve seen too many people stab each other in the back on the edge of a cliff. I trusted you because of your eyes."
Savage pointed to Carlyle’s eyes. "That day in the ruins, when you looked at that massive machine, there was no fear in your eyes. Only... hunger. I’ve seen that look before. It’s the look a craftsman gives a perfect blueprint. In that moment, I knew you were a madman—but you were a madman who knew his craft."
Carlyle remained silent for a moment, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"I can tell you a secret now... The Mirror Hall has been asleep for six hundred million years. But to the facility itself, the last shutdown might have felt like it happened yesterday."
Savage’s jaw dropped as he looked at the silent machinery around them, his eyes filled with shock. But as a veteran scavenger, he quickly spotted a flaw. "Wait. By all laws of nature, even divine metals should have turned to dust over six hundred million years. Why does the equipment here look brand new? It’s illogical."
"You hit the nail on the head."
Carlyle ceased his calibration work. He turned and gestured toward the obsidian walls, which were as smooth as mirrors. "In a world where physical laws function normally, entropy is irreversible. Six hundred million years is enough to turn oceans into mulberry fields and grind mountains into plains. But this is the Mirror Hall."
He paused, his voice echoing through the hollow chamber. "You think 'Mirror Hall' is just a poetic name? No. This is a 'Suspended' system process."
"Suspended?" Savage clearly didn't recognize the terminology.
"Simply put, on the eve of the Second Era’s destruction, their ultimate defense system was activated. It 'cut' this space out from the Primary Material Plane and hid it within the folds of the dimensions."
Carlyle walked to the power furnace, gently stroking the cold, pristine metal casing. "Outside, time flows wildly; species go extinct and are reborn. But behind the mirror, time is 'locked.' There is no entropy here, no oxidation. Even the falling of dust is stretched into infinity."
He turned back to the stunned dwarf. "But nothing is truly immortal. Even the Second Era’s perpetual motion technology has an expiration date. About fifty years ago, this facility’s backup power exhausted itself. It could no longer maintain its 'Dimensional Stealth.' And so, it 'dropped.'"
"Dropped?"
"Like a submarine running out of fuel and being forced to the surface," Carlyle explained. "It squeezed out of high-dimensional space and jammed itself into our reality. Its location happened to be beneath this forest. To prevent the core’s 'Time Freeze' from failing, it activated an emergency plan: The Parasite Protocol."
Carlyle pointed to a red zone on the holographic map, extending from the Black Thorn Woods deep toward Black Tooth City. "It extended countless tendrils, frantically draining life force, geothermal heat, and even mana from the environment to keep the core alive. That’s why the forest above mutated. The monsters there are the products of leaked radiation and warped logic."
"Good gods..." Savage looked around. "So we’re living inside the belly of a... starving vampire?"
"You could say that. Right now, the Mirror Hall is in 'Ultra-Low Power Mode.' Most of the sectors are folded and locked. What we see is just the tip of the iceberg." Carlyle clenched his fist. "But if we feed it... give it more legacies of high civilizations to devour, give it enough energy, it will 'decompress.' It will expand, grow, and perhaps... ascend back into the sky."
Carlyle looked at Savage, his eyes burning with the fire of conquest. "Then, it won't be a shelter anymore. It will be a living, mobile fortress."
Savage’s breath hitched. This wasn't just a warehouse; this was eternity stolen from the river of time. "Brand new... antiques..." he muttered. "Damn. So I’m just a lucky bastard who picked up a god-tier weapon fresh off the assembly line?"
"In a manner of speaking." Carlyle picked up the scalpel again. "So, don't worry about obsolete tech or aging materials. What we hold in our hands is the freshest legacy of a peak civilization. Now... are you ready for your 'new' arm?"
"Lyria, inject the medium."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Lyria stood two paces away, holding a glass jar filled with nutrient solution. As a contractor of Nature, she felt wretched. In her heightened senses, the mana fluctuations radiating from Carlyle were no longer light, but a piercing, dissonant noise. When Carlyle activated his [Sight of Truth], Lyria felt a wave of intense tinnitus, like nails scraping violently across a chalkboard.
It was the sound of "Logic Code" forcibly overwriting the "Laws of Nature."
"Must we do this?" She looked at Carlyle, her amber eyes filled with instinctive revulsion. "Natural magic could heal him. It would be slow, but at least—"
"Natural healing cannot grow a hand capable of crushing steel."
Carlyle didn't look at her. His left eye flickered frantically as data streams constructed a 3D model of Savage’s shoulder on his retina. "Lyria, I know this makes you uncomfortable. It feels like listening to a song played out of tune, doesn't it?"
Lyria blinked. He knew?
"Endure it," Carlyle’s voice held a rare, subtle hint of gentleness. "Think of it as... a necessary static one must tolerate to survive."
Lyria took a deep breath, suppressing the stinging sensation like static electricity crawling over her skin, and opened the jar.
Sizzle—
The long, translucent Neural Vines contact the air and immediately began to writhe like a pit of vipers. They caught the scent of blood from Savage’s wound—their most craved nourishment.
"Hold him down."
Carlyle’s scalpel descended. Without a shred of hesitation, he precisely sliced through the scar tissue of the stump. But the moment the blade bit in, Carlyle’s fingers stiffened almost imperceptibly.
He remembered Mentor Eldridge.
He remembered the old man atop the Stargazing Tower, his body crystallizing to protect him. On that day, the Mentor’s hand had been just like this—holding a probe, precise, steady, without a single tremor until the very end.
“Keep the hand steady, the heart cold. Truth lies beneath the scalpel; it allows no ripple of emotion.”
The Mentor’s teachings echoed in his mind. Carlyle closed his eyes, forcibly shoving the surging grief back into the depths of his heart. When he opened them again, only absolute rationality remained.
Flash!
The flesh was peeled back, revealing deep red muscle and the stark white cross-section of bone.
"Nnggh—!!!"
Savage’s entire body convulsed. His weathered face turned a deep purple, the veins in his neck bulging like earthworms.
"Connect the neural bundles."
At Carlyle’s command, Lyria closed her eyes and began to hum the suppressed Elegy of the Primal Source. Guided by the song, a dozen neural vines acted like living parasites. Following the grain of the cut muscle, they burrowed forcibly into Savage’s marrow cavity.
Squish—
It was a wet, skin-crawling sound of drilling. Lyria felt her stomach churn. She could "hear" the screams of Savage’s nervous system—the agony of an alien invasion, like red-hot iron wires being shoved into one’s marrow.
"Rejection reaction is starting!" Carlyle’s speech accelerated. "His immune system is attacking the vines! Lyria, increase the soothing output! Don't let the vines retaliate!"
"I’m trying! But they’re so hungry!" Cold sweat poured down Lyria’s forehead. The "static" grew louder, vibrating until her head felt like it would split.
"If they are hungry, feed them."
Carlyle grabbed the heavy Black-Star steel skeleton. The surface of this frame was etched with dense magitronic circuits he had spent all night recording. Every groove was filled with highly conductive mercury.
"Interface!"
He slammed the metal skeleton into the socket of Savage’s scapula.
CLANG!
The sound of metal meeting bone was agonizing to hear. But it wasn't enough.
"Shadow! Seal the pain nerves around the wound!"
The shadows in the corner writhed instantly, wrapping around Savage’s shoulder like a cold bandage. In that same heartbeat, the blue light in Carlyle’s left eye exploded.
[Edict: Forced Compatibility]
He didn't use a healing spell. Instead, he directly modified the "Identification Code" of the cells at the stump. He deceived the cells, tricking them into believing the invading metal and plants were original parts of the body.
In that moment, Lyria heard a sound like something "snapping."
It was the sound of natural laws being forcibly bent.
Zzzzt—HUMMM!
A miracle occurred. The once-violent neural vines seemed to find their purpose. They rapidly coiled around the Black-Star skeleton, growing frantically along the pre-etched grooves. Within seconds, they encased the cold metal, forming a dark red protective layer that looked like muscle fiber.
As the final circuit closed, the entire arm ignited with an eerie violet-gold glow.
The surgery lasted three full hours.
When it ended, Carlyle leaned against the workbench, his hand trembling as he fished a long-expired peppermint from his pocket—one he’d scavenged from an abandoned clinic on the run. It was the same brand his Mentor used to love. He peeled the wrapper and popped the candy into his mouth. The cheap sweetness allowed his nerves to relax slightly.
Savage looked as if he’d been pulled from a river, drenched in sweat, the leather strap in his mouth bitten clean through. But he had not fainted. In his clouded old eyes, a fire of unprecedented fervor was burning.
He looked down at his right shoulder. It was no longer flesh, nor was it entirely mechanical. It was a massive metal arm of matte black. The Black-Star steel was polished as smooth as a beetle’s carapace. Between the gaps in the plating, the dark red neural vines were pulled taut over hydraulic rods like muscle fibers, heaving slightly with Savage’s breath.
It was dissipating heat—not through vents, but "sweating" through the surface. A faint, herbal-scented red mist rose from around the limb.
"Move it," Carlyle said, crunching the candy. "Try it out."
Savage swallowed hard. He tentatively tried to clench his fist.
Clack!
There was no noise of grinding gears, no lag from hydraulic pistons. It felt just like his original flesh—perhaps even faster. The moment the thought formed, the black metal fist clenched tight. The air between his fingers was squeezed so suddenly it let out a sharp pop.
"This..." Savage stared, wide-eyed, at the steel monster that seemed to have grown from his own body.
He reached out and grabbed a solid steel bar from the nearby workbench. The moment his fingers touched the metal, a strange sensation traveled back to his brain via the red vines. He felt the coldness, the hardness, and the microscopic texture of the metal.
"I... I can feel it," Savage’s voice trembled. "I can feel the temperature of this bar, its hardness... This isn't just a hand. It’s an extension of my senses!"
"That’s the neural vines at work," Carlyle explained. "I’ve suppressed the pain signals by 80%. You can go ahead and punch through a wall without worry."
"To hell with punching walls!" Savage exerted his strength.
Creeeeak—SNAP!
The solid steel bar, thick as a man's wrist, was twisted into a pretzel by one hand before snapping clean under the immense grip.
"Hahahaha! Power! This is POWER!" Savage laughed wildly, leaping off the chair. He walked to Lyria and made a clumsy gesture with the massive metal hand, as if wanting to pat her shoulder, before hesitating for fear of hurting her and simply waving it in the air. "Thanks, Long-Ears. It hurt like a bitch, but... thanks."
Lyria looked at the terrifying arm. Though she still felt an instinctive discomfort, she saw the light in Savage’s eyes. It was the light of dignity restored. She managed a small smile. "Just don't use it to bully the weak."
"Hmph. I only bully the bastards who deserve it."
Savage turned to Carlyle. Their gazes met. No words of thanks were needed. In that look, Carlyle saw absolute loyalty. The veteran soldier who had once met him in the ruins with suspicion had now become his sword and shield.
"Don't get too excited," Carlyle said, brushing metal shavings from his hands. "This is just a prototype. We still have a lot of work to do."
He pointed to the holographic map on the console—the power distribution of Black Tooth City.
"The arm is fixed, and the army is trained. It’s time to collect some interest."