"The clouds were no longer suspended sky—they had become the sleepless heart of a machine."
The mist shimmered with electric whispers, each a breath away from thunder. Within a thin channel of ionized light, the Lightning-Sprite danced, its tiny limbs trailing streaks of neon, like the reins of a solar horse.
---
Life-Sense flickered as he paced the radius—60 meters out from Beacon-0. Electro-thermal spirals unfolded like silent hurricanes in three perfect corners of a triangle. The spiritual eye confirmed it: weak chaos fields clustered at those points, ideal for grounding excess discharge.
He planted two crystal rods per site, watching as the system generated a live heat-map.
Three glowing red flares pulsed across the landscape.
---
He summoned the stone-shelled mollusk companion, strapping carved bone fragments across its back. One Pulse-Dash sliced through a lightning-born bone shrub—the tissue hummed. He bled 30 QP into a flowering conduit plant, accelerating its growth until it bled conduction resin.
---
Hollow vertebrae of lightning-bone stacked into a resonant stem. At its crown: a charged memory-shard pulsing with the rhythm of the last storm.
A spiral trench formed around the base, filled with powdered steam-lizard stone to absorb surplus heat.
[Sub-Mast #1 ONLINE. Safe Load: 1,200 QP/strike. Memory-Hook: Active (low)]
---
The second mast wasn't yet sealed.
A rogue cloud fractured above. The bolt came early, blue and wide.
Flash-slice: Child hands. A fence. Crackling metal. Regret.
Back—now. He ripped the reserve Heat-Core from the refinery, linked it by bone-thread. The energy veered downward, scorched the resin. The mast stood. Just barely.
Chaos % ➜ 4.7%
---
He whistled the Lightning-Sprite to hover. It drank ambient chaos like misted sugar—sweetened by a memory-crystal from the gamma tier.
Soul-Seed pulsed. A silver loop formed: empathy-thread.
[Soul-Seed ➜ 55%. Chaos Leakage: 2.9%. Sprite Bond Tier-δ.]
---
Built from twin opposing vertebrae, its crown serrated for aerodynamic shredding.
He discharged a 300 QP pulse: it arced clean to the ground.
It was ready.
---
A shallow wound dug 6 meters deep.
Salted humidity. Magnesium sting. He set the Channel-Stone: a slow pull downward. Chaos mist dropped like heavy gray breath.
Daily disposal: 2%.
---
He ran twin threads—pulse-electric and soul—between the three masts.
From above, the grid glowed like a three-limbed star.
Spirals turned clockwise. Moss-like chaos flushed clean.
---
Sky-Grid v1.0 ONLINE
Projected Gain: 21 QP/min
Projected Waste: ≤ 2.5% Chaos
[Soul-Seed: 55% – Empathy-Link Active]
[Safe Strike Limit: 6/min. Exceeding may trigger foam-event.]
---
Above, the clouds folded in.
A void spiral bloomed—deeper violet than before.
Chaos Bloom Detected
ETA to Beacon-0: 11h
The Sprite trembled. "Light… with no memory. That's a different kind of hunger."
[Storm-Shred or Deep-Drain Required. Prepare immediately.]
He looked to the crystal map. Beneath his feet, the gravity cave waited.
"Then we'll feed the earth… the sky's greed."
---
He threaded lightning through the flesh of the sky.
But now the sky stirred, stripped of its stories, hungry as a dawn with no sun.