Death… And Me

Chapter 4395: Modifications

Flying around the light pillar structure, Rean saw many more of those worker cores moving busily between different sections of the enormous building, while the guardian cores continued their silent patrols around it.

However, despite circling the structure several times from different angles, an entrance simply couldn’t be found anywhere. Rean changed the airplane’s altitude more than once, inspecting both the lower sections near the ground and the upper portions where the pillar disappeared into the sky. Nonetheless, there was nothing that even resembled a doorway.

”Is there even an entrance at all?” Kentucky couldn’t help but ask after watching them circle the structure for so long.

Roan narrowed his eyes, his attention remaining on the worker cores rather than the structure itself. ”They’re keeping this thing in pristine condition after who knows how many years. They have to be getting the repair materials from somewhere.”

”I agree,” Rean nodded. ”I think it’ll be better if we follow the worker cores instead of searching blindly. We wait until one of them goes to replenish its materials. From the looks of it, they all have spatial compartments inside their bodies. Every time they repair something, the materials simply appear out of nowhere. Even so, those compartments can’t be infinite. They have to run out eventually.”

Harksha looked at the countless worker cores scattered throughout the structure. ”And how exactly will we know when one of them is about to run out?”

”There isn’t a way to know beforehand,” Rean admitted with a shrug. ”But there is a way to speed the process up.”

As soon as he finished speaking, his eyes shifted to the Godly Pressure Detection Radar. He quickly searched for a quieter section of the pillar, one where considerably fewer worker cores could be seen moving around.

”This should do.”

The airplane slowly approached that side of the structure before stopping beside another wide ledge. Rean immediately stepped outside, studying the runes covering that area.

”As expected,” he muttered after examining several of them. ”These runes seem to activate far less often than the others, so they require much less maintenance. If my guess is correct, the worker cores assigned to this section probably don’t carry as many repair materials as those constantly working on the busy areas.”

As he spoke, Rean had already taken out his array crafting equipment. ”Fohui, come out and give me a hand. We’re going to start messing with these runes.”

Fohui floated out of the airplane, but remained doubtful.

”Will that really be alright?” he asked. ”Won’t the worker cores—or worse, the guardian cores—consider us a threat if we deliberately damage the structure?”

Rean simply shrugged. ”Who knows? Just like before, we’ll only find out by trying. If they react badly, we’ll deal with it then.”

Fohui didn’t particularly appreciate that answer, but there wasn’t much else to say.

”...Very well.”

The two immediately got to work.

Rather than causing obvious destruction, Rean and Fohui carefully introduced small defects into the runes. A disconnected energy path here, a damaged junction there, a slightly misaligned circuit elsewhere. None of the damage was severe enough to destroy a rune outright, but every single flaw was large enough that the worker cores would recognize it as something requiring maintenance.

They worked surprisingly quickly, especially Rean. One defective rune after another appeared across that section of the pillar, and before long, worker cores from nearby areas began converging there.

Soon, that entire side of the structure became crowded with them.

White and golden threads stretched across the surface like countless glowing spider webs as the worker cores efficiently repaired every damaged rune one after another, barely pausing between jobs.

Rean naturally didn’t waste the opportunity.

The moment one worker core produced repair materials from its internal storage, he reached toward them, hoping to snatch a sample before the repair was completed.

Unfortunately, the response was exactly the same as before.

The worker core immediately extended several energy threads, gently but firmly pushing Rean away before continuing its work as if he didn’t exist.

Rean could probably have forced the issue if he truly wanted to, but he quickly decided against it.

There was no reason to push his luck.

The fact that the worker cores continued repairing everything while completely ignoring him was already the best outcome they could have hoped for. More importantly, the guardian cores floating around the airplane, still endlessly displaying their update error messages, didn’t react to either him or Fohui despite everything they were doing.

Unfortunately, the plan turned out to require far more patience than Rean had expected.

It wasn’t because he and Fohui were slow.

Rather, whenever one worker core started running low on materials, another nearby worker core would simply transfer part of its own stock over before the first one became completely empty. Their resource management was remarkably efficient, preventing any single worker from needing outside supplies too quickly.

As a result, all Rean and Fohui could do was continue creating defects while waiting for the entire maintenance group assigned to that area to exhaust its combined inventory.

Time slowly passed.

One day became another, and before anyone realized it, a day and a half had gone by.

Everyone watching from inside the airplane was thoroughly bored.

Even Harksha had started entertaining the idea of simply blasting a large section of the pillar apart to force the system into sending massive reinforcements.

Fortunately, she knew that would almost certainly be a terrible idea.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Rean finally noticed something.

A worker core, several dozen meters away, floated toward one of the runes he had deliberately damaged.

It stopped.

And... it did absolutely nothing.

The rune remained broken while the worker core simply hovered there in silence.

A moment later, the runes inside the core shifted color, and countless unfamiliar symbols began flowing through its body.

Rean’s eyes lit up.

He immediately returned to the airplane and ran those symbols through the translation database.

”Oh!” A grin appeared on his face. ”It’s requesting additional repair materials.”

He immediately looked outside. ”Great! Fohui, come back. Something should arrive soon to deliver supplies. Or maybe it will take the supplies itself.”

”Finally,” Fohui replied, wasting no time returning to the airplane.

After that, everyone simply waited. Fortunately, this time they didn’t have to wait very long. Barely twenty minutes later, something new appeared.

It wasn’t another worker core, though. Nor was it a guardian core. Instead, a floating silver box quietly approached from the distance, moving directly toward the waiting worker core.

The exchange lasted only a few seconds.

The silver box accessed its spatial compartment, transferring large amounts of repair materials into the worker core. Once the transfer was complete, it turned around without hesitation and flew away from the light pillar.

”Let’s follow it,” Rean said as he immediately accelerated the airplane.

The silver box never returned to the pillar itself. Instead, it flew away from the structure at a surprisingly fast speed, following a route that led deeper into the surrounding ruins.

Eventually, the guardian cores escorting the airplane reached the edge of their assigned patrol zone.

Without hesitation, they all stopped. Then they turned around and quietly returned to the light pillar. Just as Rean had suspected, they couldn’t leave their designated area.

The silver box continued onward for another twelve minutes. If you think about the speed and consider it had taken roughly the same amount of time to travel from this location back to the pillar, its storage point was located surprisingly far away.

Eventually, a lone square-shaped entrance came into view.

Unlike the surrounding ruins that had long since surrendered to time, this entrance looked remarkably well-maintained, standing alone among the weathered remains of ancient buildings.

*Zush!*

Without slowing down, the silver box flew straight through the opening and disappeared underground.

The airplane stopped a moment later directly in front of the entrance.

”...That doesn’t seem very helpful,” Harksha commented with a disappointed sigh.

They couldn’t move too far away from the airplane without losing the disguise, so following the silver box on foot wasn’t an option.

As for the airplane itself...

There wasn’t even the slightest chance it would fit through that entrance.

”Hum...” Rean landed the airplane before jumping outside.

His Godly Sense immediately spread downward through the entrance. ”There are a lot of those silver boxes stored beneath us,” he observed. ”Looks like an entire warehouse.”

Roan extended his own Godly Sense as well.

”They’re almost identical,” he said after a brief inspection. ”There are only a few minor differences between them. More importantly, they’re arranged in separate rows according to type. Each row probably stores materials intended for specific repair tasks.”

Harksha’s eyes immediately brightened. ”Wouldn’t that mean this entire warehouse is filled with resources used to maintain the light pillar?”

”Most likely,” Rean nodded. ”That alone would already be an enormous harvest for the Besgol Region.”

He paused before adding, ”But it still doesn’t solve our biggest problem.”

Everyone looked toward him.

”We still don’t know how to produce the Sacred Relic’s ancient runes. We never managed to get inside the light pillar itself. I honestly expected these delivery boxes to lead us there, but instead they brought us here.”

Kentucky suddenly tilted his head. ”Wait a second... If the runes outside can break, and these floating boxes deliver materials to repair them... then wouldn’t the worker cores inside the light pillar also need repair materials eventually?”

”...That actually makes sense,” Rean admitted.

When Roan had observed the interior of the light pillar structure before, he had indeed seen worker cores operating on the inside of the structure as well.

Senkiyu shrugged. ”Sure... but who knows when that will happen?”

”It doesn’t matter,” Roan replied while looking directly at Rean.

Rean immediately understood what he meant. ”Oh! Right!”

A grin spread across his face. ”We don’t need to wait for anything.”

He turned around and walked back into the airplane while already taking out his Array Master tools. ”We only need one of the boxes responsible for delivering materials inside the tower.”

A mischievous smile appeared on his face as he spread his tools across the worktable.

”Let’s make a few modifications.”