SSS Rank: Spellcraft Sovereign-Chapter 120: Drift core (1)

He turned.

Nobody behind him.

No projection. No floating face.

Just that voice again.

"System anomaly detected. Spell logic: unique. Classline: unknown. Welcome."

Lucen frowned. "Welcome to what?"

"To the core."

He glanced around. "No offense, but you guys need a better lobby."

Silence.

Then the voice again.

"Purpose?"

Lucen scratched the back of his neck. "If you’re asking why I’m here, it’s because your local drift elves tried to screw me, and I don’t like being volunteered for ritual anchor duty."

"Accepted."

"...What?"

"Intent registered. Link calibration initiated."

Lucen narrowed his eyes. "I didn’t agree to anything."

"You stepped in."

"Yeah, well, stepping into problems is basically my job lately."

There was a pause. Then something shifted.

A shape pulled forward from the far wall, like a statue that hadn’t been there suddenly was. Human-shaped, vaguely. Cloaked in drifting runes. Face covered. No feet. No eyes.

It didn’t move.

But the glyphs around it did.

Fast.

In circles.

Around Lucen.

Around the core.

His system pinged hard.

[System Sync Attempted]

[Unique Class Signature Detected — Override Possible]

Lucen stepped back.

"Nope. You try to rewrite me and I will light this room on fire."

"Denied," the voice said.

Lucen blinked.

"...You’re denying me?"

"Rewriting you would be inefficient. Your path is already fragmented. Your core is unstable. Perfect for extraction."

Lucen’s fingers twitched.

[Ignition Burst] spun behind his knuckles, half-cast.

"I swear to whatever glitching relic built this place," he growled, "you try to ’extract’ anything from me and I’ll sell your entire architecture for parts."

The glyphs paused.

Then slowly retracted.

Lucen didn’t lower his hand.

The voice returned, quieter now.

"...Interesting reaction."

"I’m not here for a personality quiz."

"You are here," it said. "And that’s enough."

Lucen lowered his hand slightly. Just slightly.

The rune-covered figure didn’t move.

The voice asked, "Do you wish to activate the core?"

Lucen exhaled once.

"No."

The pause was longer this time.

"Then why stay?"

"Because if I don’t find out what you’re hiding down here, someone else will."

Another long hum.

Then:

"...Accepted."

A slot opened in the floor ahead of him. Just a small one. Like a drawer from a machine older than it had any right to be.

Inside?

A single shard of something black.

Lucen stepped closer.

No prompt.

No ping.

Just instinct.

He reached for it.

The second his hand wrapped around it, the voice said:

"Link completed. May the Sovereign record hold."

Lucen froze.

’Sovereign?’

The floor dropped again.

This time?

Fast.

And the core opened for real.

—

Elaren sat against the edge of the stone ridge, wrists still cuffed in Lucen’s rebounded glyph pattern. The light flickered every few seconds, slightly unstable now that its caster had dropped below.

His boots scraped slightly against the stone, just trying to shift for better balance.

Varik stood over him.

Silent.

Watching.

The blood on his coat hadn’t dried yet. He hadn’t wiped his hands.

Elaren glanced up, jaw tight. "You gonna finish it or stare me to death?"

Varik answered without blinking. "I’ll finish it if you give me a reason."

"You killed my people."

"They tried to enslave a sovereign-tier core and sacrifice a kid to stabilize it. You’re lucky I didn’t get creative."

Elaren spit to the side. Blood in it. "He’s not a kid. You know that."

Varik crouched. Slow. Balanced. Like a predator with time.

"I know you didn’t know what he was."

"Didn’t matter," Elaren said. "The core responded. That made him useful."

Varik leaned slightly closer.

"You’ve dealt with sovereign-tier cores before?"

Elaren didn’t answer.

Varik grabbed the elf’s collar, yanked him forward a few inches, and said flatly:

"You’ve seen one of them before?"

Elaren’s mouth twitched. Not fear. Not pride. Just hesitation.

Then: "We thought it was a drift compression artifact. Old anchor tech. Something layered over the zone. We didn’t know it was alive."

Varik let go.

Elaren slumped back.

"You feel it, don’t you?" the elf muttered. "The weight? The pulse in the stone? That thing doesn’t just collect mana. It eats it. Slow. Patient. Like it knows it’s waiting for the right user."

Varik stood again. "So why trap him down there?"

"We weren’t going to trap him. Just... borrow him."

Varik stared.

Elaren added, quieter now, "We were trying to trigger a system resonance. Use his thread logic to sync the older mana loops. We needed a caster with unstable glyph flow."

Varik’s voice dropped, colder. "So you picked someone who didn’t even volunteer?"

"You think any of us volunteer for what we do down here?"

Varik exhaled.

Then pulled something from his coat, a thin, obsidian pin.

Elaren’s eyes widened.

"Where did you—?"

"You’re not the only ones who’ve seen a sovereign-grade mark before," Varik said. "And you’re not qualified to be anywhere near one."

Elaren swallowed hard.

Varik stepped back.

"You’re staying up here."

"Restraints won’t hold long."

"They’ll hold long enough."

Varik turned.

And walked to the edge of the drop where Lucen had disappeared.

He looked down into the glowing spiral below. Still no movement. Just soft pulses. Core logic in full sway now.

’If he’s lucky, it won’t kill him. If he’s unlucky, it’ll make him remember everything.’

Then he crouched.

And dropped in after.

—

Lucen stepped through another arch that didn’t connect to anything.

Just more of the same. Half-built walkways. Glyph-etched steps leading up to nowhere. Walls that ended three feet above his head and floated mid-air like they forgot how to finish themselves.

His system was trying, bless it.

[Spatial Logic: Non-Euclidean – Sync Incomplete]

[Warning: Memory Anchor Influx Possible]

[Stability: ...Variable]

’Variable. That’s the same thing it said when I blew a hole through a rift ceiling.’

He paused near a stairwell made of hexes. No railing. No support. Just hanging plates of glass-stone that curved sideways instead of up.

Then he heard the drop. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

A low thud. Behind him. Clean landing.

Lucen turned, not surprised.

Varik stood there. Coat fluttering slightly from the fall, hand adjusting his cuff like he’d just stepped out of an elevator.

Lucen raised an eyebrow. "Took you long enough."

Varik looked around. "Took me ten seconds."