First Intergalactic Emperor: Starting With The Ancient Goddess-Chapter 396: The Engagement Ceremony (xii)

Rin kept pace beside Xavier as they moved through another half-collapsed corridor, stepping over broken panels and cables that sparked every few seconds.

"You actually know where this teleportation gate is?" Rin asked, keeping his voice up over the noise. "Or are we just running in circles until the tower finishes the job for us?"

Xavier shook his head as a chunk of ceiling came loose behind them. "I don’t know the exact floor. It’s unmarked. Elevators don’t stop there, and it doesn’t show up on any public schematics."

Rin frowned. "That floor could’ve collapsed already. In this mess, how are we supposed to tell which one is unmarked?"

Xavier slowed near a junction where three hallways met, the metal beneath their feet creaking under strain. "A teleportation gate like that can’t run on auxiliary power," he said. "It needs a dedicated energy core. High-density flux reactor, redundant stabilizers, its own containment field. You don’t hide something like that quietly."

Rin glanced at him. "So we look for the biggest power signature still alive in this wreck."

"Exactly."

Xavier reached into his pocket and pulled out his glasses. One lens was cracked straight through, the frame bent enough that it shouldn’t have worked at all. He slipped them on anyway, blinking as the display flickered to life.

"They still work?" Rin asked.

"Barely," Xavier replied. "Sensors are damaged. No wall penetration, no floor mapping. But if we get close enough, they’ll pick up abnormal frequency spikes."

Rin let out a breath that was half a laugh. "So we’re playing hot and cold in a collapsing skyscraper."

"Pretty much."

They moved again, letting the glasses do their work while they navigated around fallen beams and warped floors. The tower swayed as another internal detonation went off somewhere above, forcing them to grab onto the walls until the shaking eased.

Xavier checked the readouts, adjusting his path slightly each time the numbers twitched. "This way," he said after a moment. "Power density’s rising."

Rin followed without arguing, vaulting over a torn-open maintenance cart as the floor dipped sharply beneath them. "You really think this thing’s still intact?"

"If it isn’t," Xavier said, stepping across a gap that dropped straight into darkness, "then we’re already dead. So it’s better to assume it is."

They pushed deeper into the tower, moving floor by floor, avoiding sections that groaned too loudly or leaned too far to trust. Somewhere beneath the noise and the chaos, a steady hum began to bleed into the air, low and persistent, different from the dying systems around them.

Xavier slowed, eyes narrowing behind the cracked lens. "There," he said. "That’s it. Whatever’s powering this floor is still very much alive."

Rin tightened his grip on his weapon. "Then let’s hope it doesn’t shut off before we get there."

They finally broke through into a floor that didn’t feel like the rest of the tower. The structure was different the moment they stepped in. The walls were layered with dense composite plating, dull and scorched, built to contain radiation and energy surges rather than people. The floor didn’t sway here. It felt anchored, reinforced for something that was never meant to move.

Even so, it wasn’t intact. One side of the chamber had been torn open, internal conduits hanging loose, several energy cores cracked or completely blown apart. Arcs of unstable light snapped between exposed nodes, buzzing low enough to crawl under the skin.

Xavier took it in, eyes moving over machinery he didn’t recognize. "I’ll be honest," he said, glancing at Rin, "this is new to me. I knew the gate existed, not how it works. I planned to learn this stuff once I was off this planet."

Rin crouched near one of the damaged housings, studying the ruined components. "I’ve used a teleportation device before," he said. "Field-grade, short-range. I wasn’t exactly the expert. Lowest rank in the unit."

They kept at it anyway, both of them moving on instinct more than knowledge. Rin rerouted what little power the remaining cores still had, stripping safeguards and forcing current through damaged conduits that sparked every time he touched them. Xavier held the warped stabilizer rings in place with telekinesis when they threatened to shear apart, sweat running down his neck as the pressure fought him back.

The gate finally reacted. Its frame lit up unevenly, sections bright while others dimmed, the surface rippling like it couldn’t decide what shape it wanted to hold. Warning indicators stacked across the interface, flashing faster than Rin could dismiss them.

Xavier keyed in the destination anyway. "Jupiter."

The system rejected it immediately. Then it tried again on its own and failed harder. Power deficit warnings flooded the display, followed by stability errors and a countdown showing the remaining energy bleeding away by the second.

Rin looked up from the exposed core housing. "This is bad. If we use it like this, there’s a real chance we don’t arrive intact. Best case, we lose limbs. Worst case, we get vaporized between coordinates."

Xavier exhaled through his nose. "So what are our options?"

Rin wiped his hands on his jacket and glanced around the chamber. "I’ll see if I can repair at least one of the secondary cores or bypass the limiter. It won’t be pretty, but it might buy us a few more seconds of output."

He climbed onto the platform, pulling open a scorched access panel and digging into the internals. Tools sparked. Metal groaned. The whole floor shuddered again as something collapsed above them.

While Rin was busy tearing into the damaged core housing, Xavier stepped back and pulled up his system menu.

[Dimensional Store]

[Justice Points Available: 3]

The first one was easy to remember. The pervy professor. The man thought money and influence could erase what he did, thought the system would protect him the way it always protected people like him. Xavier had delivered justice the system refused to, and the system itself had acknowledged it.

The second one came from Lucas. Not just the killing, but the completion of the full Mira quest tied to him. That point had felt heavier when it landed, like the system knew that one wasn’t just personal.

The third point had surprised him.

It had appeared quietly, almost casually, after everything with Commander Althea. Learning her past. Understanding what Sterling Industries had done, how deep that rot went, and how Alexander Sterling’s death fit into a larger pattern instead of being a random act of violence. The system had flagged it as a resolved justice chain, even if Althea herself would never see it that way.

He didn’t linger on it. Justice points weren’t meant for nostalgia.

He didn’t browse aimlessly. He filtered for energy sources, core substitutes, anything that could feed a teleportation array without caring what it was originally meant to power. Most of the listings were useless to him right now, weapons or artifacts that required time he didn’t have.

Then he saw it.

[Item: Eye of Asterion]

Description: A condensed stellar relic formed from the last gaze of Asterion, an ancient celestial sentinel that once watched over collapsing star systems. The Eye contains a self-sustaining energy matrix capable of stabilizing spatial distortions and fueling high-demand constructs for short durations. Unstable when exposed. Not meant for mortal hands.