The pod hadn't been empty.
But it wasn't generous, either.
Lu Chen swept aside cracked panels and shattered polyglass. Most of what remained was junk—burned-out circuits, a medkit with fossilised stimulants, fragmented data wafers. Still, he dug. Desperation made for excellent excavation.
And beneath the floorplate, wedged behind a fused maintenance latch, something resisted.
A sealed case.
Scorched. Locked.
Not a treasure chest. Just another dead tool.
But he had the console.
He tapped it—not with faith, but with force of will. The Celestial Net flickered in reply, like a half-conscious ghost.
[Foreign Module Detected: Legacy Tool Container]Decrypt? Y/N
"Try," he muttered. "But I'm not waiting on you."
The system buzzed—then hesitated, like it didn't quite know how.
Lu Chen didn't. He reached deeper, mentally overlaying old code fragments, splicing commands like he was rewriting a broken game mod. It wasn't beautiful. It was brute-force.
The latch gave.
Inside: cloth-wrapped metal. Compact. Dense. Marked with glyphs faded from war and time.
Not some divine artifact.
Just a survival dagger.
Rough black alloy. Edge uneven. Bloodstained.
But it fit his hand. Like it wanted to.
He held it a moment, absorbing the weight. Then turned to the console again.
Because stabbing alone wouldn't do it.
He'd seen the Engager. That stuttering movement. That flicker at the edge of vision.
An Eidolon.
Not a beast. Not a machine. Something wrong—a remnant. A corrupted echo that mimicked mass but wasn't truly anchored. Slashing at it might slow it. But it wouldn't end it.
It had to be cleansed. Disrupted. Overwritten.
He took a breath. Opened the skill editor.
The system didn't offer answers.
So he stole them—from memory.
Old forum theories. Forgotten xianxia chapters. The way mortals survived before they cultivated. Before they flew. When all they had was sweat, steel—and a trick or two whispered through firelight.
He started sketching.
Not spells. Not techniques.
A function. A reactive field. A force-script that triggered on contact—burning through instead of just cutting.
He took a breath. Opened the skill editor again.
The console pulsed dimly in the corner of his vision, but it didn't offer guidance. No highlighted suggestions. No glowing tutorials.
If he wanted to live, he'd have to guess right.
He closed his eyes and pulled from memory. From the stories—the old ones. The kind where mortals didn't ascend by chance or blessing. They earned it. Scraped it together with grit and stolen fire.
The creature he'd faced—its type wasn't just hostile. It was wrong.
Eidolon-class. Not alive, not fully dead. Somewhere in between—a phantom bound to corrupted logic, echoing through both flesh and code.
A stab wouldn't be enough.
This wasn't about piercing it—it was about disrupting it. Cleansing it. Pushing back against the distortion with something real.
He looked at the dagger.
Then he looked at the editor.
And started writing.
It wasn't elegant. Nothing divine. But it was built on reactive triggers and resonance theory—a burst of constructed "light," tied to kinetic impact. Heat. Feedback. A lie of purity scripted by a mortal hand.
He called it Falselight.
[Skill Registered: Falselight][Type: Mortal Overlay — Reactive Field][Status: Bound to Weapon][Description: Generates a pulse of radiant interference on strike. Effective against unstable or ghost-coded entities.]
The blade shimmered for half a breath.
Then stilled.
No magic. No glow. Just a promise.
The blade in his hand felt heavier now—not in weight, but in consequence.
Falselight wasn't a guaranteed kill. It was a chance. And if he missed?
There might not be a second one.
Lu Chen crouched in the shattered pod, pulling up the interface again—but not to code. This time, he mapped. Thought. Simulated.
He wasn't strong. He wasn't fast.
But he could be clever.
The Engager—no, the eidolon—had limits. Glitches in its motion, like corrupted animation. It stuttered between states, as if the world itself couldn't decide where it belonged. That gave him something.
A delay.
And in that delay… a window.
He retraced his steps in his head. Counted the milliseconds between each twitch, each charge. The way it skipped—aggressive, yes, but predictable once you saw the rhythm.
Lu Chen planted two scavenged shards at the entrance of the corridor. One powered. One broken. He wired them to trigger a noise burst—not to damage, but to force a response.
He would use its reflex against it.
"Right hand. Drop. Step back. Swing," he murmured. "Lead the strike. Don't aim for the core. Aim for where it wants to be."
He exhaled, then whispered the skill name like it might crack the silence.
"Falselight."
The console flickered.
No dramatic flash. No divine flare.
Just… a shimmer.
The blade responded—not with light, but with wrongness. A hue that didn't belong, like moonlight rendered through an error in the engine. It didn't glow. It bent the air, quietly, subtly—pulling shadows toward it, tricking the eye.
A lie made of edge.
Lu Chen tightened his grip, watching as the faint distortion coated the blade. It didn't hum. It didn't burn. It simply was—like something real pretending to be holy.
"Alright," he murmured. "You work. I hope."
The dagger felt cold now. Like a rule broken.
He reached over, tapped the improvised shard circuit. The trap was simple: a noise pulse when tripped. Enough to snag attention. Enough to trigger a frame skip.
He backed up. Hid in the curve of the corridor. Just enough room to lunge.
Every part of him was screaming this was insane.
But stories weren't built on calm.
They were built on commitment.
[00:18:02 Remaining]
Lu Chen watched the shard blink twice, then red.
Triggered.
The Engager was coming.
And he was ready—dagger drawn, light bent, reality skewed.
Lu Chen's mind raced as he lined up the blade, heart pounding in his chest. He had the weapon. He had the skill.
Now, he just needed the opening.
He crouched low, muscles coiled, waiting for the sound—just a second too late, just the right amount of unpredictability. His fingers brushed the console, activating the Ghost Signal.
A slight distortion in the air. The shimmer of his own presence fading as if he'd never been there at all. The Engager's twitching, frame-skipping form slammed into the trap's zone, its unnatural limbs jerking toward the pulse.
Lu Chen was already gone.
In the blink of an eye, he'd retreated into the shadows. His senses heightened, every part of him screaming for him to move, to get away from the path of destruction. The Ghost Signal was working—at least, it was buying him precious seconds.
The Engager paused, confused, its body jerking in place, the flickering form searching, scanning the space where Lu Chen had been. The creature couldn't understand the absence, couldn't register the misstep.
Lu Chen's breath caught, but he was already moving again. One corner turned into another. The signal wouldn't hold for long. But it was enough to breathe.
Just a moment longer.
[00:14:56 Remaining]
He knew the risk. The Engager would recalibrate soon. It wouldn't be long before the signal faded and it would tear through the corridor like a comet through sky.
But that gave him time—time to reset, time to consider. The dagger felt colder now. The skill felt sharper. He wasn't just planning a hit. He was planning a deathtrap.
Lu Chen pressed his back against a cracked column, eyes glued to the creature's flickering silhouette as it lumbered past his hiding spot. It was about to turn. He had one shot.
He tightened his grip on the hilt of the dagger, every part of him locking in focus.
This was it. The moment.
The Engager's silhouette flickered again, jerking in and out of reality like an old, corrupted recording. Lu Chen's fingers tightened on the hilt of the dagger. The seconds crawled, every passing moment thick with anticipation.
He could feel the weight of the blade in his grip—felt it hum with potential, with purpose. The creature was close now, close enough that Lu Chen could smell the static charge, the burnt ozone radiating from its fractured body. It was turning, its jagged limbs swinging in erratic arcs.
Now.
Lu Chen sprang from the shadows. His muscles coiled, pushing him forward with explosive force. The trap had worked—the Eidolon was distracted by the noise pulse, its attention torn away. The opening was there.
He closed the distance in a blur of motion, his dagger raised, Falselight shimmering in the air. The strike wasn't a single fluid motion, but a precise, controlled cut through the corrupted form of the Eidolon.
The Falselight didn't just cut—it tore through the creature's essence, bending the air around it as it made contact. The blade didn't just meet flesh, it clashed with energy, with the twisted, corrupted remnants of the Eidolon's being.
For a split second, the creature's movements slowed. Its body spasmed, flickering, as the strike hit its core. The Eidolon shrieked—soundless, but the very fabric of reality trembled with the force of it.
Lu Chen didn't hesitate. He twisted the dagger, pushing more of that Falselight energy deeper into the wound. The blade was hot now, buzzing with the intensity of the reaction. The Eidolon's form flickered again, this time slower, its corrupted body fragmenting in a way that felt wrong—like it was being erased, not destroyed.
The creature tried to resist, but it was too late. The Falselight was doing its work, unraveling it from the inside.
The Eidolon's limbs twisted in unnatural directions, the glitching movement growing more erratic. The creature screamed once more, but its body was disintegrating, pixel by pixel, until there was nothing left.
With one last flicker of light, it was gone.
The air stilled.
The timer stopped.
The Falselight skill flickered out, leaving behind a silence that felt too thick. The Engager's disintegration was still fresh in his mind—the crackle of energy, the desperate push of his body as he struck—but as the dust settled, a new realization dawned on him.
He had done it. He had killed it.
He exhaled, trying to steady his racing heart. For a moment, it felt like the world was about to give him the reward he'd been hoping for. Maybe this was the end of it. Maybe the timer would stop. Maybe—
[Quest Complete: Engager Defeated]
[Timer Reset: Entire Night | 6 Engagers Remaining | Final Engager: ???]