The silence that followed Silas's chilling revelation was heavier and more suffocating than the wasteland's grey sky. The very air seemed to crackle with the weight of his words. A Fallen Founder. A hero's ghost, retaining all its skill and purpose, now hunting us.
My survival instincts, honed by a lifetime of playing games where a tactical retreat was always a valid option, screamed at me. Every fiber of my being, every logical neuron in my brain, came to the same, singular, undeniable conclusion.
"We have to go back," I said, my voice coming out as a harsh, strained whisper. The words felt clumsy, inadequate for the sheer, overwhelming terror that was clawing at my throat. "Now. We need to run."
I looked at each of them, my gaze frantic, pleading for them to see the simple, brutal logic of the situation. "We can't fight that. You heard him! A legendary hero with the power of a Lineage Monster? That's not a fight; it's a slaughter! Our slaughter!" My voice was rising, bordering on panicked. "We go back to the city, we warn the Builder, we warn Vulcan. We get a real Founder to deal with another Founder. This is not our fight!"
I expected them to agree. I expected a swift, orderly retreat. I expected them to see the sheer, suicidal folly of staying here for a second longer.
Instead, Elara shook her head, her expression a mask of profound, sorrowful resignation.
"It is too late for that, Kael," she said, her soft voice cutting through my panic with a chilling finality. "That… presence… it is not a mindless beast. It is a sentinel. It felt the moment our data, so different from the corrupted chaos of this wasteland, entered its domain. It has already detected us."
She raised a hand, and the air around her shimmered, a faint, violet afterimage of her gesture lingering for a moment. "I can feel its focus. It's like a beam of light in the darkness, and we are the motes of dust caught within it. It is already moving. If we run, it will hunt us. And it will be faster."
Her words were a cage, its bars snapping shut around me. We were marked. We were prey. The option to retreat had been a comforting illusion, and it had just been shattered.
"So that's it?" I asked, my voice hollow. "We just stand here and wait for it to come and 'delete' us?"
"No," Elara replied, her gaze shifting, a new, strange light entering her violet eyes. "We must re-evaluate. You must understand, Kael, an encounter like this, with a data-ghost of this magnitude, is not a coincidence. It is an answer."
"An answer to what?" Erina asked, her hand still resting on her sword, her knuckles white.
"To our mission," Elara explained. She looked at me, her eyes filled with a strange, fatalistic clarity. "A fragment of a Founder, retaining its original data, its memories, its very being… such a thing is incredibly rare. It is a complex, high-fidelity piece of information. For it to persist for so long without corrupting into a mindless beast, the 'ground' it rests upon, the foundational code of this specific zone, must be almost perfectly stable. More stable than anything we could have ever hoped to find."
The horrifying implication of her words dawned on me slowly, like a dreadful, creeping sunrise.
"You mean…" I began, my throat dry.
"Yes," she confirmed, her voice barely a whisper. "The place where the Fallen Founder resides is the perfect location. It is the only place in this entire wasteland strong enough to hold a data-signature that powerful. It is the one place we can build."
The irony was so thick, so cruelly perfect, it was almost laughable. Our goal, the promised land for the future of our city, was located in the one place guarded by an unbeatable, god-like entity whose sole purpose was to destroy us.
"So, to get to the only place we can build, we have to fight an enemy we can't possibly defeat," I said, the hopelessness of it all washing over me. "That's a great plan. Fantastic. Any other brilliant ideas?"
The silence returned, heavier this time. Even Erina's usual fiery determination seemed to flicker in the face of this impossible dilemma. Silas was already scanning our surroundings, his face a grim mask, calculating escape routes that he knew didn't exist. We were trapped in a paradox of our own mission.
It was Miyuri who broke the spell. Her eyes, which had been darting back and forth between us as if processing a complex equation, suddenly widened behind her glasses. A sharp, audible gasp escaped her lips.
"Ah," she said, her voice a sudden, sharp spike of revelation in the grim silence. "The beacon."
All eyes turned to her.
"The beacon!" she repeated, a frantic, brilliant energy igniting her features. She looked at me, her gaze sharp and intense. "Kael-san, the survey beacon the Builder gave you! What were its precise activation parameters?"
I fumbled with my pack, my mind struggling to keep up. "Uh… he said to plant it in a stable data zone. That once it was activated, he could lock onto its signal and establish a teleporter."
Miyuri's face broke into a triumphant, desperate grin. "Exactly! A teleporter! He's not just locking on to a signal; he's creating a direct, stable gateway between Out of Boundary City and the beacon's location!"
The new plan, born from her sudden insight, slammed into me with the force of a revelation. Our mission wasn't to scout and report back. It was to plant a flag.
"We don't have to defeat it," Erina whispered, her eyes wide as she grasped the new strategy. "We just have to survive long enough to get there."
"We move toward the Founder," Silas cut in, his voice now sharp and tactical, the fear replaced by the cold focus of a hunter. "We find the most stable point, the epicenter of its presence. Kael plants the beacon, we activate it, and we hold that position until the cavalry arrives."
It was an insane plan. A desperate, suicidal gambit. It meant running toward the monster, not away from it. It meant facing a Fallen Founder head-on, with no guarantee that we could survive long enough for the teleporter to even open, let alone for reinforcements to come through.
But it was a plan. It was a sliver of hope in a hopeless situation. It was the one, single path forward that didn't end with us being systematically hunted down and deleted in this grey, forgotten wasteland.
My first instinct, the deep, primal part of my brain that was screaming for self-preservation, still wanted to run. To take my chances alone. To abandon this suicide mission and try to slip away while the others provided a distraction. The thought was ugly, cowardly, but it was there, whispering its poison into my ear.
I looked at them.
I saw Erina, drawing her sword with a grim smile, the fear in her eyes replaced by the familiar fire of a warrior who had found a battle worth fighting. I saw Miyuri, tapping furiously on her slate, already calculating approach vectors and activation sequences, her intellect a weapon as sharp as any blade. I saw Elara, her hands glowing with a soft, violet light, ready to shield us from the worst of the data-corruption. I saw Silas, pulling his crossbow from his back, his cynical smirk gone, replaced by the lethal focus of a protector.
They weren't just a party. They were my faction-mates. They were my friends.
The thought of abandoning them, of letting them face that nightmare alone while I tried to save my own skin… it was unthinkable. The shame of it would be a heavier burden than any cursed orb.
My fear didn't vanish. But a new feeling rose to meet it: a quiet, stubborn resolve. I had been a bricklayer. A messenger. A scout. Now, I was the key to their survival. It was a role I hadn't asked for, but it was mine.
I reached into my pack and pulled out the beacon. It was a simple, metallic cylinder, cool and solid in my trembling hand.
"Alright," I said, my voice quiet but steady. I looked each of my friends in the eye, a silent promise passing between us. "Let's go plant a flag."