Chapter 214: Chapter 214

Lake didn’t keep Harper waiting for long.

Reaching into his system space, he pulled out the multidimensional Rubik’s Cube.

Harper’s heart jumped as she watched Lake retrieve something out of thin air.

"Hm? Just a simple storage space," he replied casually.

"S-Storage space? How does it work?"

Lake offered a wry smile, noticing Harper’s growing fascination with his system storage.

"...What’s the big deal?"

Elisabeth, who had been idly playing with the various holograms in the room, shot a side glance toward them.

"Isn’t it just subspace dimensional magic? Although it’s rare to see someone use it without a tool, it’s not much different from the ones sold on the market."

Silence fell over the group as all eyes turned toward her.

"...What? Did I say something strange?"

She frowned, her red eyes flickering between confusion and mild irritation.

"...No, you didn’t say anything wrong," Lake said, already picturing the future Elisabeth had unknowingly signed herself up for. "It’s just that subspace magic—or technology—hasn’t been invented in this world yet."

His words settled over everyone like a lead weight. Elisabeth blinked, realization slowly dawning on her face as she finally grasped the implications of what she’d just revealed.

Just then, she felt a sudden chill. Her gaze darted around, but nothing obvious stood out.

Harper slowly retracted her intense stare from Elisabeth, quietly making a mental note to check in with her demon coworkers at a later date.

"...Anyway, let’s just hurry up and install the AI." Harper’s voice was slightly strained as she forced herself to focus back on the cube. "What is that?"

"The storage device," Lake answered. "The entire AI’s code is stored inside."

Harper squinted at it, her brows furrowed. "How do you even use it?" she asked, baffled. "It doesn’t have any cords... or even a signal output."

"It’s... complicated," Lake admitted, scratching the back of his head. "It took me over five hours just to reach this far."

He raised the cube in his hands. The colors were all mismatched, the edges imperfectly aligned.

"Are you supposed to solve those?" Kate asked, noting the jumbled appearance.

"Indeed—and I’m only one move away from solving it."

Everyone continued to stare, clearly not following his train of thought.

’I don’t blame them,’ Lake thought.

From the outside, it looked like he had just scrambled it at random. But in reality, this was the closest step to solving the puzzle.

He carefully twisted one of the blocks.

In the next instant, the entire cube began to shift. It leapt from his hand and hovered midair, spinning as its many corners rotated rapidly. The mixed colors began aligning automatically.

Everyone stared in wide-eyed amazement.

Just from the visuals alone, it was obvious how deeply advanced the strange object was.

When Lake said it took him five hours to get to this point, what he really meant was that it had taken him five hours of effort after paying a price to his system for the answer code. All he’d done since then was input the solution—one move at a time.

Beside him, a translucent window appeared, displaying the status of the cube:

[Architect Model Four Dimensional Puzzle Cube. Status: Completely solved. Reward available for extraction.]

Back when he first acquired the cube, he was told it was the simplest storage device operable by humans.

Seeing this now... really put into perspective just how advanced the Architects must have been.

Just then, the final node clicked into place. The cube, once a chaotic blend of colors and segments, collapsed into a swirling mixture before reshaping itself—its angular layers folding inward—until it became a perfect sphere.

{###### ### ####....}

A robotic voice echoed from the orb, the words indecipherable. Then, the light dimmed. The colors vanished.

The sphere fell to the ground.

It broke apart on impact, crumbling into fine dust. Within seconds, the debris disappeared completely.

The girls stared at the scene, confusion etched across their faces.

Harper spoke first, having recovered her composure faster than the others.

Lake smirked. Right on cue, the lab’s holographic systems around them began to flicker and shift.

Lights surged to life. Interfaces blinked and danced across the walls and floors.

The entire lab came alive with motion—far more than the girls were comfortable with.

All around them, holograms displayed a single message in large, readable letters:

{Seizing control of the nearest suitable device in progress...68%...72%...80%...}

The progress bar ticked steadily upward as the room buzzed with activity.

"W-What’s going on?!" Elisabeth shouted, backing away from one of the flickering displays. Her earlier confidence had evaporated.

{Warning! Facility Storage reaching critical levels! Storage levels at 86% capacity!}

{Warning! Facility Storage reaching critical levels! Storage levels at 92% capacity!}

The alarms blared louder.

Harper, Kate, and Elisabeth all turned pale.

Their eyes darted between the warning messages and the status bars rapidly filling on every display.

And yet, Lake remained perfectly still—arms folded—watching the chaos unfold with quiet confidence.

The bar climbed until only 2% remained.

{Beep! Transfer Complete. Beginning boot-up process.}

As the robotic voice echoed, all of the lights and red warnings abruptly stopped.

Silence returned. The lab went still once more.

Harper’s legs nearly buckled beneath her. Her heart was pounding in her chest.

"W-What was that..." she whispered.

In the corner, Elisabeth sat trembling. At some point, her demonic wings had unfurled and wrapped around her like a protective shield. Her whip-like tail curled close to her chest, trembling.

Cautiously, she peeked out from behind her wings, blinking at the now silent lab.

Kate’s voice came next, soft but resolute. The whole ordeal had almost given her a heart attack. She’d poured a fortune into the construction of this facility—out of her own pocket. If they’d been forced to abandon it or rebuild from scratch, she wasn’t sure she’d have remained sane.

At the center of the platform, Lake stood motionless.

A new holographic screen appeared in front of him, displaying the image of a black rose blossoming against a stark white background.

{...Boot-up process completed...}

{Beep! Good day, Mr. Egoven. I am the Biological and Genes Modification Artificial Intelligence Program, also known as Bloom. How may I be of assistance?}

Listening to Bloom’s response, a slow, confident smirk rose on Lake’s lips.

As fast as her legs could carry her.

Her wings—once radiant and shimmering with color—had dulled, stripped of their luster, too weak to lift her anymore.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn’t dare look back.

Not even as the world behind her went up in flames.

Agonized screams echoed through the inferno, rising like a funeral dirge to pierce her ears. But she kept her head down, forcing herself forward, trying to outrun their pain—even as it threatened to drown her in its grief.

Her vision spun. Her thoughts fractured.

But still... she ran.

She ran from the darkness.

From the thing that had taken everything.

A voice called to her from within the shadows—gentle, coaxing—but she refused to listen. She clenched her jaw and pushed forward, even as the path ahead began to unravel, crumbling away into the growing abyss.

She wanted to scream. To cry for help.

But there was no one left to hear her.

They were gone. All of them.

Swallowed whole by the dark.

And the darkness was gaining.

Tendrils of black smoke—twisted arms with clawed fingers—stretched out from behind her, coiling through the void like living things.

They didn’t lunge. They didn’t rush.

They simply followed.

Matching her pace, encircling her.

The ground beneath her finally gave way, and with a choked gasp, she plummeted.

Down into the endless, colorless void.

Even in free fall, she couldn’t scream. Her lungs were frozen. Her thoughts numb. Her fate sealed.

And then, slowly, she turned her head.

There—floating above the collapsing world—stood the figure she had been running from.

Her emerald-green hair flowed like a celestial river, billowing with unnatural grace. Black flames curled around her form, not consuming her, but shielding her—adorning her like armor. Her eyes glowed with multicolored light, gleaming with an intelligence far too ancient... and emotions far too raw.

All of it—aimed directly at her.

The woman raised one delicate arm.

Black fire spiraled along it like serpents awakened from slumber—hissing, writhing—before launching forward in a streak of incandescent death.

It struck her in less than a second.

Sylph jolted upright in her bed with a blood-curdling scream.

She scrambled backward, crashing into the far corner of her room, eyes wide with panic. Her hands clawed at her body, desperate to wipe away the phantom flames still licking at her skin.

Her breath came in sharp, ragged gasps.

The burning... she could still feel it. Still smell it.

Even though it was only a dream.

Tears poured from her eyes, uncontrolled and bitter.

It had been two weeks now. Two weeks of nightmares—each one more vivid, more terrifying than the last. She hadn’t slept through a single night. Her thoughts were fraying. Her strength fading.

His name escaped her lips before she could think. A subconscious whisper.

She didn’t know why she always called for him.Only that, somehow, she believed the pain would stop—if he were near.That the darkness couldn’t touch her—if he would only look at her.

But as soon as his name passed her lips, a chill settled over her like frost.

Because for the past two weeks, Lake had been avoiding her.

Not once had she seen his face. Not once did she hear his voice.

Even when she tried to sneak up on him or chase him down like she did before, he would always disappear, long before she could approach near.

The sudden distances between them had left her at a lost.

At first she thought he was just busy, but after two weeks of it, even she could sense it, especially after how close they had gotten recently.

That the distance between them wasn’t that simple.

And she felt it like a wound—one that bled in silence. An emptiness growing inside her, hollowing her out.

As if something precious had been taken from her.

And she didn’t even know what it was.