I rose higher into the sky until I reached the perfect center above the asteroid. The whole base lay beneath me: tower, teleportation gates, abominations, and drifting deathmist clouds.
Then I activated my Right to Insight. The world shifted instantly. My perception stretched outward, then downward, then deep into the layers beneath the surface. Everything sharpened, gaining a strange clarity as if the veil between reality and its blueprint had been peeled back.
That was when I saw it. The true source of the deathmist.
The asteroid wasn’t producing it on its own. It was pulling Essence from outside, thin streams of pure green energy drifting in from the void, sucked into the rock like water pulled through soil. The Essence flowed straight into the tower and from the tower, the same energy came back out... but changed.
It poured underground as thick deathmist and then churned above ground feeding the army of abominations around the fortress. The entire asteroid was acting like a machine, drawing in life and exhaling corruption.
I narrowed my eyes and pushed my perception further. The next thing I noticed was the barrier.
An invisible bubble wrapped around the entire asteroid. At first it was nothing but a faint shimmer, then my Right to Insight revealed the drifting runes floating along its inner surface, thousands of them.
Every rune pulsed softly, and each pulse released a thin ripple into the bubble. I traced the connection backward with my eyes. It originated from the tower.
Something deep inside it was projecting this shield. I focused more, narrowing my sight, letting it pierce through layers of stone, corridors, floors, and walls. The interior of the fortress burned away in my perception, becoming transparent.
Finally, beneath the tower, underground, I saw it. A hollowed-out area. Perfectly circular. More like a chamber carved into the core of the asteroid. At its center floated a spinning cube.
A world core. Or at least... what was left of one.
But this one wasn’t glowing with Origin Essence. This one was filled entirely with deathmist: dense, swirling. The cube spun slowly, every surface carved with thick runes that crawled and changed shape with every rotation.
And surrounding the core was something else. A small, translucent bubble. Covered in runes and pulsing. Every pulse sent a ripple outward that matched the ripple I’d seen on the barrier wrapping the asteroid. They were perfectly synchronized, systematically feeding each other.
The moment I saw that little bubble, everything became clear. This corrupted world core was powering the entire asteroid’s protective shield. So this was the source.
A stolen world core. My conclusion was immediate.
"A corrupted world core."
That was all it could be.
And now that I knew where it was, I didn’t waste another second.
I flashed forward, space bending instantly around me.
One moment I floated above the asteroid. The next, I stood inside the hollowed chamber.
I stood in front of the spinning cube, watching more closely now. The corrupted world core pulsed in steady intervals, and every pulse sent a ripple into the small rune bubble around it. The bubble responded with its own ripple, which shot upward through the tower, then spread across the asteroid-wide barrier like a heartbeat.
Perfect resonance. A cycle meant to keep this place invisible and disconnected.
Once I understood the pattern, I raised my hand and tapped into my major Law of Space. Essence swirled around my fingers. With a single twist of my will, I created a tight pocket space around the cube.
A thin layer of warped space folded around it, sealing it inside a separate dimension and slicing off its link to the outer bubble.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then a sharp pain stabbed the back of my skull, like someone drove a needle straight into my mind. I clenched my teeth as white sparks flashed across my vision.
A system window flickered in front of my eyes.
I grinned.
"So this was the problem."
But the system still couldn’t fully connect. The bubble outside was still active, still disrupting every signal. I reached into my Law of Resonance and sent out a frequency of my own. A low vibration, precise, controlled, tuned perfectly to clash with the bubble’s ripple.
My pulse hit the outer bubble. And the bubble shuddered. Then it cracked and unravelled completely. The moment it vanished, the connection slammed back into place.
Three system notifications appeared instantly.
[Notification 1]
[You have located one of the hidden branches of the outlawed Hollow Star dark organization.
Hollow Star members carry a universal Kill-On-Sight bounty for crimes against the Prime Universe.]
[Notification 2: Quest Assigned]
Objective 1: Investigate the base
Reward: 10 Merit Points
Objective 2: Capture the traitors
Reward: 20 Merit Points
Objective 3: Kill Abominations and Phantoms
Reward: 100 Merit Points
Objective 4: Destroy the base
Reward: 500 Merit Points
[Merit Points]: [ Currency used by the System to measure contribution to the war against the Eternals. Can be exchanged for Rank Evolution, Skill Evolution, Ability Evolution, Secrets, Treasures, Protection, and more.]
[Notification 3]
[ Good luck, Executor.]
I smiled faintly. The system was finally back and it returned with a new trick this time.
A Merit Point system.
I had never heard of it before, never even seen a hint of something like this in my previous ranks. But I liked the idea immediately. A currency earned by destroying the enemies of the Prime Universe... that was exactly my kind of motivation.
And if I completed all the objectives, which I already knew I would, I would earn a total of 630 Merit Points. I assumed it was a very generous reward for something I was planning to do anyway.
Since the quest was clear and the path ahead was straightforward, I moved to the next step. I lifted my hand and pressed my palm directly against the spinning cube. Deathmist swirled around my fingers, but I ignored it and instead connected myself to something inside me, something I had gained when the Dawn Core evolved.
[Star of Origin (Dormant)] : A lifeless celestial seed formed within the Dawn Core. Stores and condenses Origin Source gathered from external forces. Awakens gradually as more Origin Source is absorbed.
This was the perfect moment to confirm my suspicion. Was a corrupted world core still a world core? Could it still be absorbed by the Star of Origin? I believed Deathmist was one of the Origin source out there.
I took a slow breath and willed it. The dark, barren, planet-like sphere floating within the Dawn Core shuddered. Just a small tremble but enough to show me that it had reacted.