Ren stood there, lost in deep thoughts, his right palm pressed flat against the warm, humming metal of the containment dome, and he finally pieced together why the prisoner was digging faster.
Listening to the rhythmic, mechanical grinding echoing through the bedrock, he compared the current pace of erosion against the baseline equations he had calculated the day before.
The discrepancy was undeniable...
The construct trapped inside was operating with a noticeable surplus of kinetic power.
When he aligned that sudden spike in output with the timeline of the surface war, only one logical explanation remained: the Shadow Core.
Selthia's horde had failed to hold the southern mountain, and they had lost the elemental ring to Sirius and Liu, yet they had managed to salvage the dead guardian's heart. Somehow, from miles away, that stolen core was actively feeding the beast buried beneath the capital through its ethereal net.
