Lily immediately sent Sky off to go grab Cat. She had opted to stay back where they fought Kevin in his altered state and take a nap. Now that they had found the structure, it seemed better for her to come along with them. After all, Caeden and Erik encountered some kind of killer robot in the last one. There was no telling what they might run into.
Interestingly, Sky could travel just as fast in her miniature form as she could when full-sized. It made her a perfect messenger. Cat flew over to them on a spectral pegasus, Dave riding with her. Caeden was still injured, so the War Wight volunteered to act as the vanguard going down. Something that Caeden was grateful for. His left side was still devastated.
"Couldn't Asherta fix this? She basically repaired Kevin." Caeden asked, the thought occurring to him before they entered. Everyone turned to look at the dragon-girl.
"It's worth a shot." Lily shrugged. Another game of charades followed. Asherta didn't seem to understand why Caeden would want her to use her power on him. But eventually, they managed to convince her.
When she laid her hand on his shoulder, Caeden almost immediately knew this wasn't going to work. Bone-deep, intense pain began to radiate from her as Asherta's shroud started to flicker across his skin. Caeden realized the problem the second it started. For her to use Age on him, their new companion would have to perform an occupation.
Caeden's two shrouds fundamentally rejected her shroud's presence. It seemed that, unlike most healing shrouds, his shrouds considered her's to be a hostile force. They fought the effect without his input, and any attempt he made to curb their efforts only increased his pain.
"Stopstopstopstop." Caeden hissed. Asherta, despite not understanding the words, got the message. She immediately released his shoulder with an apologetic look. Caeden waved his hand; he didn't want her to blame herself. "Well, that didn't work."
"What happened?" Lily came over and offered a supporting hand.
"My shrouds treated hers as hostile. Apparently, reverse aging isn't considered a healing effect in shroud terms. They treated it as an occupation."
"You know…" Cat looked thoughtful.
"What?"
"Wouldn't reversing your age normally undo your memory? That's a pretty negative effect." She elaborated. Both Caeden and Lily looked at her strangely.
"Cat, Kevin had all his memories. We know her ability doesn't affect the mind." Lily reminded her.
"Actually, about that." Cat smiled awkwardly. "I think the same soul damage that disconnected Kevin's control of his body also protected his mind from the age regression. That's also why he was comatose after Ash turned him into a child. The machine that was controlling his brain was regressed out of existence. But his soul wasn't fully connected to his body, so it wasn't affected like it should have been. If Caeden had let Ash occupy him with his shroud, she probably would have ended up erasing his memories of everything before he got hurt. Which would be inconvenient at a minimum."
"Are you sure about that?" It sounded more like a theory than anything, and Caeden would rather get healed before they encountered some kind of danger in the metal halls below.
Cat shrugged. "I'm too new at this soul stuff. I couldn't say anything for sure. But I'd say it's a pretty strong guess."
"Cae." Lily gripped his good hand. "It's not worth the risk. We'll get you healed up as soon as we get back to school. We have enough power in our group to handle whatever is down there."
"I know that; I just hate to feel useless," Caeden admitted.
Cat came over and slapped him on the back. "Now you know how I felt for months. It sucks, doesn't it?"
"Cat, not helping." Lily pinned her with a flat stare.
"Sorry, sorry. We'll go first." Cat headed into the structure right behind dave. Her hand lit up with Necroflame.
"Guess I'm next." Erik followed. It was unfortunate that the passage was too small for Sauma to fit. She would have been helpful, probably more so than Erik's usual abilities. Dave already had damage covered, which meant Erik's main benefit in a coming fight would be his restraint abilities, something Sauma did better than him.
Lily followed, with Caeden at the rear of the group. Whatever they encountered, he wouldn't be the one fighting it. The interior of this structure was exactly the same as the first. Same recessed weather lights, same refined metal decor. It was identical in every aspect. Down to the entrance leading directly to a staircase and closing behind them once Caeden entered. The walls folded in, blocking the exit.
"So, we just go down?" Cat asked, suddenly looking more nervous now that they had no way out. "Also, why didn't you mention that the walls blocked aura?"
Caeden shrugged. "I forgot, honestly. At the time, my aura senses weren't anywhere near as refined as they are now. I knew they existed, but they weren't trained at all. So it wasn't the part of this place that stood out the most to me."
"What did stand out?" Cat asked sarcastically.
"All the stairs. The last one just went down and down and down. We literally spent hours walking downstairs. Admittedly, we were stopping every flight to try and break down doors, but there were still a lot of stairs."
"Coulda mentioned that sooner." Cat huffed. Caeden didn't bother to respond.
"How will we know where the CMS is? If there is one here?" Lily asked. "How did you find it last time."
"We didn't." Erik jumped in. "We heard some revolutionaries and followed them. They were messing with the giant glowy circle thing Cae used to make Forged Infinity. We never actually got through one of these doors on our own. Whatever they're made of is stupid tough."
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"Well, that's comforting." Cat sighed. "We might not even be able to get out of this stairwell."
"We got in because the door opened on its own. I think we'll manage to get out one way or another." Caeden was not going to listen to Cat complain the entire time they were in here.
"But you don't know that!" She continued.
"Cat, give it a rest. I'm sure we'll manage to find a way out between the four of us." Lily jumped in. Caeden was sure she didn't want to hear it either.
"Fine, fine. I see everyone else has no problem with being trapped in an ancient facility full of deadly ethertech and unbreachable walls. I guess I'm the weird one." Cat huffed before brooding silently.
It's not like Caeden didn't understand her concern, but it wasn't high on his list of worries. The structure had let them in; they would find a way out somehow. Something about either him or Erik had triggered a reaction in this place, causing it to open up. And not to sound conceited, but Caeden was pretty sure the trigger was him. Something about his status as duel shrouded or something about one of his domains, likely Physical Enhancement, had reacted with the ancient ethertech running through this building hidden inside a pillar of rock.
He was more or less betting on that connection, that resonance or bond that seemed to exist between him and this place. He wasn't sure of the source, but this place had ethertech even more advanced than what he had seen from the Revolution. Even the machine-human abomination that Kevin had been paled in comparison to the ethertech behemoth he and Erik had discovered in the last one. He had only managed to beat that one by abusing the rigid nature of its thinking and turning its own weapons against it. Otherwise, he never could have damaged it or hoped to survive its attacks.
Once again they proceeded down the stairwell. This time, Caeden and Erik tried every door, simply attempting to push it open before moving on instead of trying to force open all of them. Their descent went much faster. It was after thirty-some doors that Caeden laid his hand against one and felt Forged Infinity thrum in the back of his mind.
Central Management System Chamber unlock verification. Access denied: Insufficient clearance. Override, repairs necessary. Forged Infinity code 999. Override accepted. CMS Chamber access granted.
The door opened under his push, swinging easily. Caeden smiled, thinking of how much trouble they had getting in the last time. Erik had to blindly stitch the door to the floor inside the room when a revolutionary opened it. This was much easier. Before he could step in, Lily tapped his shoulder. Frowning, Caeden let Dave past him to clear the room.
Entering, Caeden was mildly surprised to find that, though the room was the same wide-open cube-shaped space he remembered from the last one, it had entirely different contents. The last room had looked like some kind of forgotten storage with hyper-advanced ethertech hidden under thin white sheets to keep the dust off. Those sheet-covered tools had filled most of the room, creating a maze of lumpy sheets.
This room did not have ethertech equipment in it. Instead, it had crates. Hundreds of metal crates. Made of the same flat grey material as the walls, doors, and stairs, they were laid out in neat rows and stacked ten units high. Each crate was roughly five feet tall. Once again, Caeden had to recognize that this whole building had to have an insane amount of spacial enchantments. This room was much taller than the distance they had traveled from one floor to the next.
Dave stepped aside, and Lily slipped into the room. In the same moment, she vanished, formshifting into a cloud of invisible gas. Caeden's aura sense operated just fine within the limits of the room, but considering how much this place could limit their aura, none of them were going to risk running into something dangerous just because they couldn't sense anything. After all, Kevin had managed to hide from Caeden for weeks using an ethertech artificial aura, something centuries ahead of CA tech but also millennia behind what he had experienced in this ancient hold.
Lily returned shortly, having weaved her way through the whole room in under a minute. She could travel pretty fast as a gas cloud. After giving the all-clear, they started exploring the room. Upon closer observation, Caeden noted that the crates had no obvious lids or seem that would indicate how to access their contents. Each had a series of markings along the center on each side. The same markings showed up on every side of the same crate, but other crates had different markings. Caeden figured it was likely a language used to keep track of whatever was inside.
"Hey, the glowy thing is in the same spot as last time!" Erik yelled across the room. He had found the door in the same spot as the last structure. Rather than immediately follow him, Caeden decided to check something.
He checked for the other door. The one that led to the ethertech giant that had nearly killed him. There was a door in the same place. Peeking inside, Caeden found an exact copy of the giant standing in the middle of the room beyond. It seemed that many aspects of this place were a copy of the last one. Or maybe that structure was a copy of this one. Either way, the same design had been copied overall. Only the contents of some storage spaces seemed to vary.
With that hunch settled, Caeden met up with the rest before the door to the Central Management System.
"Are we sure this is ok?" Cat asked. "Didn't that thing threaten to blow up a continent last time?"
"That was because of whatever the revolutionaries were doing to it. They turned the thing into a weapon, and Erik and I overheated it. That's what almost caused the meltdown. That's what gave me Forged Infinity." Caeden gripped the shrouded weapon tightly. "This time, it'll be fine. There's nothing to cause problems. The CMS should just fix my shrouded weapon, and we can figure out how to leave here."
Despite his own reassurances, Caeden felt nervous. They still had little understanding of the CMS or what had happened to make Forged Infinity. Or why it had happened. What was it managing? How had the Revolution turned it into a weapon? How was it capable of destroying an entire continent? It was obviously dangerous, containing more raw power than anything Caeden could imagine. It dwarfed the entire Academy campus while occupying a hundredth of the space. That kind of power shouldn't be taken lightly.
Taking a deep breath, Caeden entered the room. The Central Management System was the same as the last. Concentric rings of metal constantly floating and circling, tightening layer by layer with the center invisible through the mass of swirling metal. Glowing white lines of power ran along the rings in patterns of some kind. It didn't look like a language to Caeden, but they were obviously placed with precision and purpose. Ultimately, it was a construction beyond his understanding but built with a level of skill and knowledge that was self-evident. It was awe-inspiring.
"Man, am I glad I don't have to shoot this one." Erik laughed. "That was nerve-wracking last time. Please don't blow up the continent, Cae."
Awe disappearing faster than he thought possible, Caeden shook his head. "Yeah, yeah. Thanks for going along with my bullshit plan last time."
"No problem." Erik waved him off, leaning back against the wall by the door. "Didn't even break my top ten worst days."
Caeden approached the CMS, wondering what exactly he was supposed to do. Forged Infinity needed repairs, but Caeden had no idea what that entailed. On a hunch, he lifted up the hilt toward the whirling rings, waiting for some kind of feedback.
On queue, his shrouded weapon started to hum, and the circling motion of the CMS changed, shifting to a new pattern. Unbidden, Caeden felt his shrouds well up inside him, coursing from his soul into his chest and then up along his arm into Forged Infinity. From there, dense strings of Sharp and streams of Physical Enhancement radiated off the weapon and up into the glowing metal rings.
His shrouds blended into the motion, forming paths through the rings as the manifestations were pulled toward the center of the massive ethertech machine. For the third time in his life, Caeden felt endless reserves of shroud pour from within him, portions he never felt except for when he was evolving a shroud or interacting with a CMS.
The pull grew heavier, moving faster than Caeden had ever felt before. Overwhelming amounts of shroud pulsed through his body, conducted into the machine at a furious pace. When every ring, every inch of the CMS was pulsing with his shrouds, he felt a pull on his mind, and the world fell away, disappearing to reveal something else.
Finally. Caeden, it's about time you and I had a talk.