parentshiftbook Chapter 620 - Bad Rhythm
Chapter 620 - Bad Rhythm
Reports came again.This time, they were not about recovered fragments.
They were about interference.
A slime in Ley Slumber shuddered when a false pulse entered the ley current.
A lock released a rhythm that mimicked the world’s heartbeat but carried a hook inside.
A relay station sent command pulses toward three pressure-bearing sites.
An abandoned shrine began humming after its fragment had already been removed.
Marie’s expression chilled.
"They started."
Lucien looked at the new markers.
The Keepers had moved fast.
He pointed to the relay station first.
"That one is not pressure-bearing."
Marie checked.
"No. It feeds commands into three locks, but the earth does not lean on it."
"Then it goes."
Seran straightened.
"Finally."
Lucien looked at him.
"Capture if possible. Destroy if needed. Do not let the command pulse reach the slimes."
Seran smiled.
"And if Keepers guard it?"
"Then clear the operating room."
That was enough.
Seran vanished through reflection.
At the same time, orders moved across the map.
The Keepers had decided to poison the veins.
Lucien had found the first hand holding the poison.
And this time, it was not buried inside a world scar.
This time, there was no need to be gentle.
•••
There was no need to be gentle.
Not anymore.
The phrase did not need to be shouted.
Everyone in the Origin Core Shrine understood it the moment Lucien gave the order.
Pressure-bearing locks had required restraint.
World scars had required caution.
Slimes in Ley Slumber had required protection.
But a relay station that poisoned the leyline from outside the wound was different.
It was not a scar.
It was a hand holding poison over the scar.
That hand could be cut.
...
Lucien lifted one finger.
The projected map zoomed.
Continents pulled away.
Mountain ranges blurred.
Rivers became silver threads.
Then the image settled on a buried relay station beneath the Middle Continent, hidden under an old road that no caravan had used for three thousand years.
The station looked like a black knot in the leyline network.
Three command lines stretched from it toward three pressure-bearing locks.
Each line pulsed with a false heartbeat.
The rhythm was close enough to the world’s pulse to deceive the wounded leyline.
Close enough to hurt a slime that listened too deeply.
Lucien’s gaze sharpened.
The map shifted again.
A reflection opened inside the relay station.
Seran stepped through.
He arrived like a mistake in the enemy’s mirror.
The relay chamber was vast and low. Thin channels ran through the floor like veins carved by something that hated blood but copied it anyway.
At the center stood a rhythm core.
It looked like a dark heart made of stone, metal, and old law.
It beat without life.
Around it stood five black-robed Keepers.
Not two. Not three.
But five.
They had stopped underestimating Lootwell.
Seran glanced around once.
Then smiled.
"You prepared a reception."
The nearest Keeper’s voice was cold.
"We prepared a delay."
The rhythm core beat again.
One false pulse moved down the first command line.
On the projected map, Lucien watched it begin traveling toward a lock where a slime remained in Ley Slumber.
The slime marker trembled faintly.
Lucien spoke through the channel.
"Seran, pulse one is moving."
"I see it."
"You have little time."
"I heard that too."
The five Keepers spread out.
One guarded the core.
Two moved toward Seran.
One stepped into the shadow of the command line.
The last opened his palm and released a law that made every reflection in the chamber turn dull.
Seran’s smile deepened.
"Oh. You studied."
The Keeper answered, "We learned from the last failure."
"Good."
Seran’s body split into three reflections.
Then nine.
Then twenty.
The suppression law pressed down.
Half the reflections shattered.
The remaining half smiled.
"Learning is healthy."
The five Keepers attacked.
•••
In the Origin Core Shrine, Lucien did not move.
His eyes remained on the map.
Seran’s battlefield occupied the center of the projection, but it was not the only one.
Other false pulses had begun to appear.
The Keepers had not relied on one relay station.
They were testing multiple points.
Lucien read everything.
Then he began issuing orders.
"North. Do not reconnect. Trace the pulse."
A marker shifted.
"East. Let the slime rest. Send a scout along the false rhythm."
Another line brightened.
"South. Calm that team and identify the source."
The slimes did not take grievances quietly.
That became clear very quickly.
The false pulses had hurt them.
And slimes, for all their soft bodies and cheerful movements, were not harmless creatures.
Once they felt the false rhythm, they remembered it.
Once they remembered it, they traced it.
Their connection to the leylines gave them something ordinary scouts could not imitate.
They could feel where the lie came from.
Lucien did not ask for details.
He only marked the locations.
One by one, enemy hands appeared on the map.
Lucien gave commands from the Origin Core Shrine.
The projected map had become his battlefield.
Every report was a nerve.
Every order was a blade.
•••
Inside the relay station, Seran fought five Keepers.
The answer to the unspoken question came quickly.
Could five Eternals stop Seran?
No.
But they could delay him.
That was the problem.
Seran struck one Keeper through a reflected crack in the floor and sent him skidding into a wall.
Another Keeper’s law seized the broken reflection and twisted it into a trap.
Seran let that body die.
A second Seran emerged from the polished curve of the rhythm core.
The core’s guardian reacted at once.
His hand slammed down.
The core beat harder.
Another false pulse entered the second command line.
Lucien’s voice came through.
"Second pulse moving."
Seran’s eyes sharpened.
The Keepers were not trying to win beautifully.
They were trying to buy beats.
Every breath they delayed him sent another poisoned rhythm toward the slimes.
Seran stopped smiling.
That made the chamber colder.
"Fine."
The reflections changed.
They no longer multiplied wildly.
They narrowed.
Instead of becoming many, Seran became precise.
One reflection stood in front of the first command line.
Another appeared behind the second Keeper.
A third knelt beside a shallow pool of black ley residue.
A fourth faced the reflection-suppression Keeper directly.
The suppression law pressed down.
Seran stepped through it.
His shoulder cracked.
He smiled again, but this time there was no humor in it.
"You studied reflection."
He punched the Keeper in the chest.
The Keeper flew backward.
"You forgot the person using it."
The chamber shook.
The ancient road above them cracked.
The rhythm core beat again.
The guardian tried to release the third pulse.
Seran raised one hand.
The core’s reflection appeared above it.
Upside down.
Wrong.
The third pulse entered the reflection instead of the command line.
For a breath, the chamber went silent.
Then the poisoned rhythm turned back.
It struck the guardian who had released it.
The Keeper stiffened.
His own law channels spasmed as the hook meant for the slimes latched onto him instead.
Seran looked at him.
"Bad rhythm."
Across the other fronts, the counterattack bloomed.
•••
The first relay station did not fall easily.
Seran had broken two Keepers.
One was bound in reflection.
One had his own poisoned pulse eating through his law channels.
Three remained.
The rhythm core still beat.
The first two pulses continued moving along the command lines, though both had slowed after Seran damaged the chamber.
Seran moved again.
His bodies collapsed into one.
For a single breath, the five broken reflections of the chamber all aligned behind him.
The Keepers realized too late that he had stopped fighting them as opponents.
He was using them as mirrors.
Seran stepped forward.
The world reflected wrong.
The rhythm core appeared in front of him.
The guardian tried to block.
Seran’s hand pierced through the reflected space and closed around the core’s shadow.
The second pulse was still moving.
Seran crushed his hand.
The rhythm core did not explode.
It screamed.
Every false pulse connected to it snapped backward.
The command lines went dark.
In three pressure-bearing sites, slimes in Ley Slumber stopped trembling.
The black heart at the center of the relay station cracked from top to bottom.
The three remaining Keepers tried to flee.
Seran’s reflection seals were already waiting.
One escaped by tearing off half his own law authority and throwing it into the collapsing station.
Two did not.
The relay station died.
The world scarred by it did not.
That was the point.
In the Origin Core Shrine, the first poisoned marker vanished from the map.
One by one, false pulses failed to reach their targets.
The slimes survived.