From Moving Crates to Killing Gods-Chapter 96: Voidstone

Damian’s expression stayed blank for exactly two seconds. Then he exhaled through his nose in a slow controlled sound, the kind that meant he was organizing information rather than reacting to it.

"You have three questions." He said as he settled back in his chair. "I will answer them in order."

I waited.

"The cleansing requirement." He folded his hands on the desk as he spoke. "When you kill a dungeon creature, the system sometimes generates an item from what remains of that creature’s essence, its soul. These items carry residual corruption from whatever the creature was, and they cannot be appraised or used until that corruption is removed."

He paused briefly. "The process is called cleansing. It requires either a person with a specific ability to purify corruption, or a consecrated location."

I thought about the armor sitting in my inventory, untouched since the sixth outpost. "So these items should be very strong." I said.

"Stronger than anything that can be crafted from physical materials." He replied plainly. "The bones and hide of a creature can make tools. The soul of a creature, properly cleansed and shaped by the system, creates something categorically different."

Information I would need to sit with later. The more immediate question was where in Argent I would find someone capable of cleansing corruption. Though I already knew no one would be able to.

Unless maybe Phinyx used some cleansing vibes? I’d try it later.

Damian continued.

"Your second question, the sixth outpost." He looked at me with the measured focus of someone who had already decided how much to reveal. "I was aware of that location and intended to investigate it once the current situation stabilized." One of his fingers shifted slightly against the desk. "What I did not know was that it contained a power plant."

It contained more than a powerplant, there was a skeleton, a liquid Corruptor and canned food. Though I wasn’t going to correct him.

"But what powers it?" I asked.

"Voidstone." He answered. "The same resource that powers Argent’s barrier and generates the electricity running through this building." He paused briefly. "A functioning voidstone reactor outside the citadel walls has significant implications for Argent’s expansion."

Expansion. He had already moved past the discovery and placed it neatly inside a structure of future plans. The man processed information the way I moved boxes, immediately moving each piece of the puzzle into a larger arrangement.

I stayed quiet. The third question was still waiting, and something in the way he had paused told me this one was different.

"The rectangle on the mountain." I said.

He went still.

"It pulsed violet light." I continued as I watched him carefully. "My Sense registered it as an absence rather than a presence, like a hole in the world. The material was obsidian, identical to this building. "

Damian looked at me for a long moment.

"It is a portal." His voice dropped slightly as he spoke. "An unclosed dungeon portal. A passage between this world and whatever exists on the other side. The violet light means it is still active. It has not collapsed."

For a second I just stared at him. A portal. An actual doorway to somewhere else had been sitting in a cave a couple of days from Argent.

"And the obsidian material." I asked.

"Voidstone." He replied. "Portals are made of it. They fall from the sky carrying dungeons inside them. When the dungeon is completed and the creatures within are killed, the portal closes. What remains is the voidstone frame."

I looked around the office. Dark stone. Clean edges. The same flat textureless surface as the rectangle on the mountain, the same material Wip had gone rigid at the sight of when we approached the Spire entrance.

"This building." I said slowly.

Damian didn’t answer.

"Our ancestors built this." The pieces were arranging themselves without my help. "They completed dungeons, killed what was inside and harvested the voidstone after. Then they did it dungeon after dungeon, over and over, until they had enough to build something with it."

My eyes drifted to the ceiling, then the walls, trying to grasp the scale of what I was sitting inside.

"How many dungeons did they clear?" I asked quietly. "To build something this large."

Damian’s expression shifted in a way I had never seen before. Not emotion exactly, more like the weight of a very old fact becoming visible on his face.

"The records do not give a number." He said calmly. "They describe it only as a generational project. The ones who began the collection did not live to see the Spire completed."

Generations of clearing dungeons. Generations of harvesting voidstone frame by frame, portal by portal, stacking the material across lifetimes until enough existed to raise a structure at the center of what would become Argent.

And somewhere on a mountain two days from here, one portal had never been finished.

The dungeon inside it was still active. The creatures were still alive. The voidstone frame still pulsed violet because the conditions for collapse had never been met.

"The portal on the mountain." I said. "If someone cleared the dungeon inside it."

"The portal would close." Damian replied. "And the voidstone would remain."

The room went quiet.

Damian continued. "And as you can imagine, if the portal never closes, then monsters from the other dimension would be able to walk through."

That made some sense, but not entirely.

"If that is true then why isn’t the wasteland filled with portals and monsters besides Corruptors and silver snakes?" I asked, now realizing I had made way more than three questions.

Damian listened to the question, savored it and stood up. He walked toward the window and stood there looking out over the wasteland.

"I don’t have the answer to that question." Damian said.

Those words felt strange coming out of his mouth. I had always assumed Damian knew everything, but apparently even he had limits.

"But I have a theory."

I leaned back slightly in the chair.

Of course he did.