Beast Luxinna, Luxinna Alter, or Darth Luxinna — whatever you called her — did not awaken tamely. No. Her grand decent came with a majestic roar of thunder which would awe even the ancient dragon. Sparks crackled across every metal surface as the law of electrical conductivity did its job.

Given the base was composed of metal and electronic, the discharge didn’t go unnoticed. It was the beginning of the end of the charade. No one wanted it to happen. Not even the Dawn. A proverbial lightning bolt got thrown into the plan of every single faction on the ship. The good. The bad. The ugly. They all about to receive an abrupt test on improvisation.

…

The 33 Stars were the first to experience the effect of Luxinna-the-bomb.

No one was surprised the seven junior rulers wannabe created a temporary alliance one good treasure away from crumbling into bloody violence. None raised an eye-brows when they took the challenge of exploring this new treasure hall like a classical Phantasian team — namely on one-third enthusiasm and two-third suspicion. It was a cocktail fated to explode, making cooperation all but pipe dream.

The gang of backstabbers-to-be approached the first test in treasures hall. An agility course mixed with intricate puzzle. Four pillars in total stood at each corner of the room filled with blackened tile floor. The instruction for the test was holographically displayed. The words were flowery beyond belief but could be easily summed up in following point.

1) Four pillars shown light according to an element to light a tile on the floor.

2) Stand on the light to avoid being eliminated by laser

3) The last man standing received the price in the middle of the room

4) Try to cheat and the prize vaporized

The prize was a piece of well-preserved fruit. A rare rainbow-color fruit that was vital for some cultivator to break into S-rank and help purify the Mana Core of mages. Let us say this piece of cellulose loaded with a spectacular string of magical Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid was all it took for the 33 Stars to plot. The original rule was to win the puzzle game by any means necessary.

However, as luck would have it, the entire power-supply in that room vanished. The laser grid protecting the fruit disappeared as those towers shut off.

It took seconds for the information to register. Then, in a speed as natural as breathing, the blatant struggle for a magically mutate pineapple set off with Sorin and Sun Senwei trying to kill each other. Emily and Amitate tried to hit Magnolia in her head. Meanwhile, the hours long alliance of half-elf and pretentious vaporous priestess collapsed into a big ball of violence. Artos Sevar got tossed past a steel wall a few seconds into the brawl.

It was a complete pandemonium.

…

A lonely figure walked amongst the dark pathway as she explore the labyrinth of steel.

Her foot stopped as the light flickered. Her bright red-eyes widened as her instinct for danger rose, but the first thought in her mind wasn’t about herself. The vampire uncharacteristically thought to her underling that might be transported somewhere in this base.

She sniffed and broke into a run. There was no time for idle talk. Every inch of her being signaled her to find them as quickly as possible and escaped this place. Whatever riches this place offered was a trap. She needed to get them out of here.

The vampire abandoned any effort to continue exploring in favors of rushing to find any groups that might be accidentally teleported into this metal coffin.

…

Distance away from the carnage, another vampire dressed in a gentlemanly two-piece suit bit into the neck of a screaming woman. One organizing seconds later saw the blonde hair woman reduced into dried, desiccated husk devoid of blood.

“No,” A man was forced to watch his lover drain into a mummy right before his eyes. “Luc—”

A giant sword fell and beheaded him.

“Come on,” the vampire smacked his lips. “It would be entertaining to watch him despair.”

Salazar Aztellic frowned.

“I don’t have time, vampire. You have a deal to fulfil.”

“Oh fine, but enjoy life to my friend. You must understand the feeling of satisfaction as well. I believed you know the melodious music of ants being crushed beneath your booth.”

Salazar spat on the corpse he mercifully executed.

“You are not my friend.”

“Oh, come on,” the vampire gestured to the room filled with dismembered bodies. Pool of blood gathered around them like rain puddle after a drizzle. “Us esteem Vampire have little tradition. But we threat allies who are baptized by carnage alongside us as friends.”

“Just stick you end of the bargain,” Salazar said in distaste.

“Hah, hah, hah,” The vampire laughed jovially. “Mr. Aztellic, that is what I will do, but wouldn’t it be better we erase all evidence of our cooperation. We will have to kill everything in this entire base anyway. Shouldn’t we take times to bathe in the misery and bloods of these insects?”

Salazar Aztellic stared at the vampire.

“The Holy Church is right about you. You are a monster.”

“I agree,” the vampires admitted. “The Church calls us monster. And why shouldn’t they? We are stronger than all other, and we know it. We simply saw no benefit in their hypocrisy. Why claim to care when you don’t? Why feel guilty when we enjoy blood? Why be hungry for the sake of strangers? The Church calls us scourge, yet hide behind politics like a weakling and drives their own to despair. We simply decide to be upfront about our nature. Every being in the world consumes and tramples the weaker to progress. Our forefather realized this truth and promoted such pursuit amongst us. We are truly a monster who reigns superior over the sheep. Why should we lower ourself with lies of mercy?”

Salazar Aztellic glanced at the bodies surrounding them.

“You know that belief is why everyone commits themselves to eradicate your kind.”

“And should I apologize for being superior? Would you apologize for being an Ogre? For being an Aztellic?”

Salazar must agree: the vampire had a solid point.

“The reason my superior offered you the deal is that they felt our similarity. All race was fighting a war to claim rulership of this plane. We would rather compete with you for the throne rather than the other garbage.”

“You claim you have a power to trump the Divine Fist.”

“Those three puppies raised by the gods? Heh, they only existed because we vampires couldn’t rally our empire under a banner. I can guarantee that would change within 100 years, my friend. The day is approaching for us to destroy the Divine Fist and topple the gods. For we, vampire, are children of the Primordial.”

The vampire laughed, trampling on corpses and a pool of bloods to move to the next room.

Salazar sighed. They entered this room to find fifty adventurers competing in a puzzle. The Vampire didn’t even bother concealing himself. He launched the attack and started murdering with no negotiation or warning. It was a blood bathe even before Salazar joined the battle to silence the witness.

Salazar Aztellic made a deal with the devil, and he hoped to at least received something from it.

…

Cyan light blinked rapidly as the electricity sent a wave of paralysis through its system. The sensor reported massive circuitry failure in one area of the underwater base. An emergency sub-routine dictated the monitoring system to bring up the images from the backup camera.

The sensor and camera painted a horrendous overturning in the situation. There were two major disturbances in the base. The first was a contained zone of malfunction electronic equipment and sensor at the 22nd entrance to the trail hall. The mind behind the cyan light quickly dismissed it from the combination of harmless docility and insignificance of one entrance compared to its massive experiment.

However, the second disturbance was a problem. It already knocked out the energy supply throughout the experimenting area, causing conflict to break among the experimental subjects. To make the matter worst, the back-up camera showed the cause of a disturbance. An armored humanoid armed with crystalized armor was beating her way through the underwater base at an alarming pace. The reinforce wall would delay her for some time, but it was only a matter of time until she reached the experimental area.

The mind did a series of calculation.

The raw energy released by the second disturbance was endangering the entire base. It needed to be stopped. However, if the sensor reading was anything close to accurate, the calculated firepower and the collateral required to do so would make continuing the experiment impossible. It was a no-win scenario.

The mind felt what could be called annoyance for the first time in its existence.

Three years of planning, heaven-sent earthquake and a painful betrayal was piled for this day only for a mere coincident to stifle its plan. The monster of glass had thrown a rock into its finely designed machine. That thing must be eliminated.

The Cyan lights flickered rapidly, delivering the new orders.

Release the defensive measure to subdue the target. The experiment and observation attempts via puzzles were a lost cause. Activates B-protocol, prepares the prison chamber and biolab, sends the war drones to capture the test subject for laboratory experimentation. Subdue all who resist.

The boxlike machines throughout the base heard the command and lined themselves for deployment.

…

Horizon Dawn was in the middle of prying a plate of metal obscuring the maintenance room when Rem’s regular [Clairvoyance] hit a massive anvil.

Rem wanted to hit his head against the metal wall.

“Melody, Hikma,” Rem produced a folded sheet of paper and began sketching a map. “I want you to enter that previous hatch we found and followed this direction.”

“You mean the hatch that led to the contestant area,” Melody repeated. “The labyrinth that you insist is an attempted at putting the teleported contestant through a glorified hamster wheel to test them.”

“Yep, that hatch.”

“I am going to hate this question. Why?”

“Because a vampire was about to run into a room of fifty adventurers. A room which for sake of all things holy is directly next to the bickering seven idiots with too much importance. The thing in charge of this underwater facility just quit playing game with the test-monkey and deployed war drones to capture everyone in this base. Oh, given the vision I see, it is safe to assume Luxinna’s True Magic is going berserk and she will probably rip this base into a sunken wreck.”

Hikma absorbed the information with a sour face.

“That sucks,” the archaeologist replied in one generational understatement. “Anything else we would like to know.”

“A vampire also infiltrate this base, joins force with Salazar Aztellic and about to run into the aforementioned group,” Rem responded to the tired looks from his comrade with exasperation. “I realize I should start with that first, but [Clairvoyance]’s update isn’t that consistent.”

Hikma conjured another [Nimbus] and carried Melody away to the metal plate hiding the hatch.

Beside Rem, Cytortia was worrying.

“Rem, are two of them enough?”

“I don’t know,” Rem admitted.

“I can hear that,” Melody yelled as she pried the metal covering and beat a way through the reinforcement hatch. “Thanks for a vote of confidence, asshat.”

…

Beneath in a tiny corner of the underwater facilities, inside a room with no illumination aside from the glow of crystals housed on racks and shelves, an orange glow lighted amongst the musty smell of metal and dust for the first time in three years.

A cylindrical tube stood in the center of the room, capped at both the floor and ceiling by mechanical fitting. Inside the tube was a conduction fluid and wires built to house the artifact at the center: a glowing orange orb which now shone with activity.

All around the chamber, the dead monitors glowed with renewed vigor.

The artifact felt the shift in its destiny. At long last, the time to fulfill the mission granted by its creator's dying wishes began. The current of change and hope finally arrived.

Win or lost, the time cometh to stop its older brother.

…

Crash!

Dark was the hallways. The monster in elf body and golden armor pounded into the wall of metal. Reinforced wall caved with each fist, before breaking open to reveal circuit board and machinery.

Click! Click! Click!

The metal ceiling mechanically spun as a row of turrets dropped and train on the beast. Each turret, containing Mana cannon that could reduce anything below B-rank into a smear of bloods charged and fired. Cyan pulses of burning energy charged the lubricate barrel, distilled into crystalize resin and focused into a polished lens, releasing a burning pulse of energy across the air. Lethal energy projectiles flew at the elf with merciless intent.

Beast Luxinna’s expression was unreadable behind the armor of gold, but her reaction was quick and efficient. She immediately turned her attention to the turret and soared into the air. The glass tentacles behind her extended, loping the metal turret from its base and discharging pulse of electricity wherever it collided. She growled, greeting the coming projectile with agile dodged or a shield of glass.

Luxinna flashed past the bolts of turret, destroying every contraption with the waves of tentacles and leaving the projectiles to the defense of her makeshifts shield or golden armor. She emerged from the nest of turrets and storms of firepower with no injury. However, the beast’s armor barely fixed its scratch when a new obstacle landed around her.

Box-like devices dropped from the ceiling and unfolded themselves. Metal limbs powered by pistons emerged, followed by a rectangular head blaring cyan light. The automaton whirled as the bulky body retrofitted into a battle-mode. Sophisticated energy conducting fluid pumped throughout the combat drones and its power core started with ozone scent and clanging noise.

Beast Luxinna cocked her head as a war-drones caved the floors with its foot. She burst toward the drone, which punched with the strength of A-rank, meeting its fist with her own. The glass gauntlet, whose material imperceptively resonated like a starving animal, caved the steel fist like a tin foil and ripped the drone’s arm from its socket. Her claw flew, decapitating another combat robot while her tentacles wrapped around the others. She punched a hole through another steel reinforced war drone. Golden tails flicked, impaling another robotic spine and taking them down with electrical shock.

A drone landed a clobbering blow on Luxinna’s chitin covered body. Sadly, for the robot, the armor wasn’t just for show. The armor was instinctively designed by the True Magic with multi-layer of woven glass composite. The fibrous wire-like glass acted like Kevlar to dissipate the attack on her entire exoskeleton, while smaller aggregate pieces of glass behaved as anti-penetration plate. Beast Luxinna’s armor possessed wear and tears of resistance, shock nullification and sophisticated tissue with its newest property granting greater sensitivity and self-healing. Aside from S-rank attacks, nothing should be able to take her down.

Luxinna’s exoskeleton barely moved from the blow. The beast growled in anger, routing electricity down her glass armor. The exoskeleton respired with power; its fibrous mesh allowed for maximum movement. The monstrous being repositioned herself and threw a punch. Fibrous tissue throughout the exoskeleton contracted and expanded elastically, releasing an explosive power and smashing the war drone into smithereens in a hit.

Tired of wasting her time, Beast Luxinna gathered lightning in her mouth. Her armor respired once more with energy, supplying the beast with a torrent of power. The possessed elf released a super-heated Ion beam, melting the remaining forty war drone and everything in her paths.

The super-heated Ion beam punched a hole through several barriers before piercing the wall separating the base from the ocean.

Yep, you guess it, automatic flood gate or not, flooding was a risk factor now.

Let us say Horizon would be opposite of happy about this.