The Authority Headquarters was a fortress of polished granite and psychic suppressors. Elias and Seraphina were now in the Director's private, heavily shielded office—a room designed to prevent even the faintest Mana leak from escaping or entering.
Seraphina produced a portable field terminal, connecting it to the office's internal network. "The Omega Vault is seven levels beneath us. This terminal has a connection to the external sensor array. The manual override code is 4712. But that code only initializes the sequence. It still requires all four locks to register simultaneously."
Elias sat down, the gravity of the situation settling upon him. He wasn't just performing a Mana trick; he was calculating the source code of the security system and writing a custom, instantaneous patch using pure Mana energy.
"The problem isn't the locks themselves, Director," Elias explained, tapping the screen to display the schematic Seraphina had provided. "The problem is the Mana-Core Frequency Scrambler. It's looking for the signature of a high-ranked Authority member—an S or A-Rank—but it accepts only a specific, chaotic frequency that confirms the Core is under high stress, suggesting authorized access under duress."
He pointed to a small, intricate coil on the diagram labeled 'Frequency Filter.'
"My Black-I signature is pure Information. It doesn't have the required chaotic signature. If I inject my Mana directly, it will flag me as an unauthorized data query, triggering a catastrophic data wipe of the vault."
Solution: Elias's mind raced through the millions of possible interactions. He needed to make his perfectly stable, information-rich Black-I Mana signature look like a high-stress, chaotic S-Rank signature.
"I need to inject two things simultaneously," Elias declared. "First: a focused pulse of my Black-I Mana carrying the manual override code. Second: a temporary, artificial Mana-noise field to mimic the chaotic frequency the scrambler expects."
Seraphina frowned. "Artificial Mana-noise? That's S-Rank Ethereal manipulation. You can't generate matter or energy."
"I can't generate it, but I can comprehend it," Elias corrected, closing his eyes. He focused on the residual Mana trace left by Seraphina herself—the lingering signature of her Core's collapse and subsequent stabilization after the Core crisis.
The residual signature of Director Seraphina's Core stress has a distinct harmonic profile: three major dissonant frequencies, centered on 5.38 kHz, interspersed with random phase shifts. If I can instantaneously calculate and emit this exact spectral profile using ambient energy, I can spoof the system.
Elias lifted his hands above the terminal, not touching it. He took a deep breath.
The air in the office was thick with ambient Mana—the faint energy leakage of the hundreds of staff members in the building. Elias didn't draw it in; he simply read it.
Instant Comprehension surged, not calculating a problem, but directing an orchestra of sub-atomic particles. He was using the residual Mana as a painter uses paint.
A thin, almost invisible black shimmer pulsed around his hands, a pure Mana wave of information radiating outwards. Then, a second frequency overlaid it—a complex, chaotic, white noise generated by Elias manipulating the micro-vibrations of the room's ambient Mana field to perfectly mimic Seraphina's stress signature.
It was the perfect forgery. The Black-I Mana—the truth—wrapped in the lie of an S-Rank on the verge of collapse.
He directed the combined pulse at the terminal's power intake port.
On the screen, the quadruple security icons blinked rapidly:
Kinetic Lock:Unwavering Force Signature Detected. ACCESS GRANTED. (Seraphina's kinetic profile was the easiest to fake.)
Ethereal Dampener:Chaos Frequency Matching S-Rank Stress State. ACCESS GRANTED. (The perfectly manufactured noise field.)
Retinal Scan:No Biological Input. Bypass Code 4712 Accepted.
Frequency Scrambler:Input Signature Black-I. Core Protocol Override Detected. ACCESS GRANTED.
VAULT OPEN.
Elias slumped back, completely exhausted, the shimmer fading. His Instant Comprehension was physically draining, far more so than a traditional Mana blast. It wasn't energy loss; it was the sheer neurological cost of running a universe-scale computational cluster in his head.
Seraphina stared at the screen, her composure finally breaking into a thin, astonished smile. "You didn't just hack the vault, Black-I. You essentially became me, mentally and physically, for a fraction of a second. That is terrifying."
"Inefficient, yes," Elias gasped, catching his breath. "But necessary."
He focused on the terminal screen, where the index of the Project Omega Files now appeared. The titles were cryptic, ancient, and disturbing: The Planar Schism. The Architects. The First Core.
Elias immediately clicked on the single largest file: Omega-001: The Cascade Origin & The Century Covenant.
He didn't read the file page by page. He put his head down, placed his forehead against the cool screen, and let the sheer, unadulterated truth of the 100 AC world flood his mind.
Instant Comprehension overloaded.
The world went silent. He saw a vision of the past: not a magical apocalypse, but a vast, cold, intentional process. He saw figures—the Architects—who used Mana not as a power, but as a tool to engineer reality itself. He saw the Cascade not as a fracture, but as a wall erected between two dimensions. And the people who survived—the ancient organization watching him now—were those who lived on the wrong side of that wall.
Then, he found the entry for Luminar-1, the repurposed satellite.
Luminar-1 is not a communications hub. It is a key. It transmits the 'Century Signal'—a stabilizing pulse that keeps the Cascade wall intact.
The organization that attacked the Neo-Kyoto Core wasn't trying to destroy the city. They were trying to shut down Luminar-1's stability pulse by creating a localized Mana-vacuum, which would force the Authority to take the satellite offline. They want the Cascade wall to collapse.
Elias pulled his head back, panting, the truth burning in his mind.
"Director," Elias whispered, his eyes wide with a horrific realization. "The organization—the Architects' residual cells—they aren't trying to end the world. They're trying to undo the Cascade. They want the wall down. And if they succeed, the old world… the true apocalypse… will come back."
He looked at Seraphina. "The Luminar-1 satellite is the key. They're going to hit it next. And I know precisely how they're going to do it."