Chapter 87

MACHINE GOD

The Qi cannons swiveled toward him and opened fire. The nearest level fired first, then a heartbeat later the next joined in, then the next. The wave rolled upward just as it had against Chen Wei below.

Alexander threw himself sideways as obsidian projectiles filled the air where he’d been. Unlike the cannonballs below, these shots moved like arrows of solid shadow, leaving trails of purple-black energy. One grazed his shoulder. Even through his armor, it felt like ice searing into his soul.

He launched himself upward, then yanked himself sideways, then up again in rapid succession. Each movement triggered the next level of cannons. The pattern was predictable but relentless.

Five floors of range, just like below. But unlike the archaic cannons below, these kept firing, clearly not requiring physical ammunition.

Alexander pushed harder, throwing himself from side to side across the tower, each time trying to gain just a little more height. Three floors. Eight floors. Twelve floors up before Chen Wei even burst through the gap from below.

The cultivator emerged into a storm of Qi projectiles as the lower cannons reacted to his presence. But Alexander had already gained the distance he needed. Blood seeped from dozens of small cuts where shrapnel had found gaps in his Qi defense. The burns on his arms from the earlier battle had started to crack.

He kept climbing desperately. Thirteen floors. Fourteen. His muscles screamed. His damaged chest plate rode up, scraping painfully against his throat from being used as his anchor to throw himself upwards repeatedly.

Below, Chen Wei had started his pursuit, leaping from cannon to cannon, gaining ground with each bound. His movements were still powerful but less fluid than before, each landing slightly off-balance. But Alexander was too close to the exit now. The cultivator wouldn’t catch him before he reached the top.

A cannon in Alexander’s blind spot swiveled toward him and fired, unnoticed in the brief moment he’d tracked the cultivator. Droney intercepted the shot, purple energy crackling across its surface. The drone spun wildly from the impact, emitting a long warbling beep before its systems compensated and it righted itself.

Alexander looked up. Two more floors to the exit. He gathered everything he had left and threw himself upward with Metallokinesis, spending precious energy to pull Droney along with him.

A Qi blast caught him in the chest mid-flight; the impact spun him around. His armor took the worst of it, but a chunk of the chest plate vaporized.

Alexander pulsed his power again, correcting his trajectory. Another blast tore toward him from above, from the final cannon. He crossed both arms in front of his face. The projectile struck his gauntlets with enough force to crack them. Through the ringing impact, he thought he heard something shift inside the left gauntlet’s housing.

And then he was through the gap.

Wind hit him immediately. He’d emerged onto a rooftop, the tower’s summit. Above, a vortex of blue-purple light spiraled upward into infinity, as if it might pull everything into its hungry depths. Beyond the edges of the tower, only pitch-black void stretched in every direction, broken by streaks of blue-purple light being drawn upward into the vortex.

There, on a small platform near the roof’s edge, two pedestals stood barely a meter apart. Golden orbs glowed atop each, pulsing with inner light.

Alexander threw himself forward with the last of his strength, arcing through the air toward them. As he flew, he could feel the orbs calling to him. The right one felt familiar, resonating with signatures similar to his own powers. But the left one... it felt like insight. Like knowledge of self. Like understanding.

He reached for the left orb, then hesitated as he landed between the pedestals, glancing at the right. He could feel them both buzzing in his awareness, just like the dimensional gateway had. The left one called for him, while the right felt like… a familiar suppression.

Alexander considered the implications. The System was managing thousands of fights right now. Its attention divided across realities. Its power stretched thin.

His ambition flared, burning away caution.

Alexander spread both arms wide and brought them down to grasp both orbs.

The left orb responded immediately. Power flooded up his arm. Golden energy that felt like liquid enlightenment, carrying knowledge of internal cultivation, of building power from within.

The right orb sat cold and dead under his palm.

Alexander reached into it with Technopathy, sharpening it into a single point. Nothing. He pulsed Metallokinesis throughout the Technopathy, intertwining it the same way he had against the gateway. There was a matching pulse of pain inside his skull, showing that he’d about reached the limits of his Metallokinesis. Still nothing. He flooded the orb with Electrokinesis next, pushing current directly into its core.

The orb grew hot, beginning to vibrate. It was resisting. Fighting him.

Scrambling for any edge, Alexander pushed his Animachina into it as well. The mysterious fourth power he barely understood.

The orb’s resistance spiked, pushing back against his intrusion. It felt almost angry, as if it were rejecting his attempt.

Alexander held on, pushing harder with all four powers at once.

Something cracked. Not physically, but deeper. The suppression vanished in an instant.

Power exploded up his right arm, different from the cultivation energy. This was raw superpowered potential, undefined, waiting to be shaped by someone’s dream. But Alexander already had a dream, and it transformed immediately into something familiar.

The two energies met in his chest, clashing violently.

Alexander’s back arched as the conflicting powers threatened to tear him apart. His heart hammered. His chest felt like it might explode. The cultivation knowledge wanted to create organized channels, meridians for energy flow. The superpower wanted to spread everywhere, suffuse every cell.

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He tried to force them into separate spaces within himself. The cultivation energy to his core, the superpower to his limbs. But they rebelled against containment, crashing together again and again. Each collision sent agony throughout his body. His vision blurred. Blood ran from his nose.

He tried compressing them together, forcing unity through pure Will. The energies recoiled violently. His muscles seized. His bones felt as if they were splintering from within. A scream tore from his throat.

Through eyes wide with pain, Alexander stared up into the vortex above. The blue-purple spiral pulling everything upward, not fighting the forces within it but channeling them into a single direction.

He let go of trying to force control.

Instead of trying to control them separately, Alexander began to spin them. Rotating the energies around each other like a double helix. They resisted at first, then began to merge, creating something entirely new.

Power flooded through him, but it wasn’t raw or chaotic anymore. His four separate abilities—Technopathy, Electrokinesis, Metallokinesis, and the mysterious Animachina—stopped fighting for dominance. They streamed together like tributaries joining a river, each maintaining its nature while flowing as one.

The cultivation core had given him the framework he’d always lacked. A center point where technology and energy, metal and soul, could exist in harmony. His powers refined themselves, impurities burning away, inefficiencies vanishing. What had been four desperate attempts to control the world around him became a single, purposeful current.

For the first time since he awoke in a totally new world, Alexander felt complete. The constant strain of juggling separate abilities vanished, something he hadn’t even realized was there, hindering each of his powers in different ways. The exhaustion that came from forcing powers to work together disappeared. Even Droney, hovering nearby despite its damage, felt different to his senses. He could feel the growing core of intelligence, sense within it curiosity and loyalty.

The integration reached its crescendo. Lightning crackled from his eyes as his back arched one final time. The golden orbs beneath his palms dimmed, their purpose fulfilled. Power settled into every cell, every thought, every breath. The rooftop fell silent except for the wind and the hungry pull of the vortex above.

Behind him, Chen Wei reached the rooftop. His breathing came in ragged gasps, though he tried to hide it. Dried blood crusted his forearms where the lightning had charred flesh. He saw Alexander gripping both orbs, stealing both prizes, and rage transformed his features.

“Thief!” Chen Wei roared, Qi exploding from his feet as he launched forward, fist pulled back with enough force to shatter stone.

Droney spun to intercept, spraying a cloud of metal dust from hidden vents. The same tactic that had worked against Julia.

The glinting cloud caught Chen Wei full in the face. He screamed, momentum still carrying him forward. His fist, pulsing with destructive energy, slammed into Droney’s face.

The drone’s armor buckled. Chen Wei’s Qi pulsed again, tearing through the plating and into the delicate systems within.

Droney exploded. Pieces scattered across the rooftop, bouncing and rolling to the edges.

Chen Wei dropped to his knees, both hands pressed to his eyes. Instead of screaming, he gritted his teeth at the pain and focused inward, Qi-light beginning to seep between his fingers as he burned the metal contamination from his eyes. Steam rose from his face, but he remained silent, determined. His Qi flickered weakly, nearly depleted from the climb and the cleansing.

Alexander released the orbs and sank to one knee, chest heaving. He drew in a deep breath, then another, feeling the integrated power settle into his bones. When he finally straightened, the world felt different. Clearer. The Cultivator’s Core had given him exactly what Talia predicted: a way to unite his disparate abilities.

He turned to face Chen Wei, ready to test his newfound power. Instead, he found Droney’s shattered remains scattered across the rooftop. Pieces of armor plating here. Fragments of the alien visor there. The core housing split open and dark.

His chest tightened. Anger flared hot behind his eyes. He was just beginning to understand that Droney was truly alive. Part of him, yes, but also something separate. Its own budding personality emerging with each passing day.

Then he felt something impossible.

The drone’s soul was still there. Not gone, not dispersed, but waiting. A fragment of his own soul that he’d gifted through Ensoulment, protected by his Will, refusing to die.

With the realization came deeper awareness. Animachina didn’t just mean Soul of the Machine. It also meant Life of the Machine. Spirit of the Machine. Breath of the Machine. The cultivator’s core had revealed what his fourth power truly encompassed. Creation, preservation, restoration. He could feel the pathways now, clear as circuit diagrams. The soul was the anchor. As long as it remained, the physical form could be rebuilt, healed, and made whole again.

He raised his hand, fingers splaying like claws. With the new understanding flowing through him, he twisted his wrist and clenched.

Every piece of Droney shot inward from across the rooftop. Sparks flew as components slammed together, but they reformed differently than before. The drone was rebuilding itself as it wanted to be. Armor plates overlapped in new patterns. The alien visor material spread further across its surface. Battle damage became part of its design rather than flaws to be repaired.

A single triumphant beep rang out as Droney rose into the air, scarred but whole.

Chen Wei had cleared enough metal from his eyes to see. He stood slowly, legs trembling slightly from exhaustion, blood tears streaming down his face, watching in disbelief as the destroyed machine reformed itself.

Alexander wasn’t looking at him. His gaze stayed fixed on Droney as understanding crystallized into words.

“Your core,” he said, not really speaking to Chen Wei. “It’s incredible. You use it to cultivate insight. To transform understanding of the world and its energies into power within.”

The cultivator wiped blood from his eyes, confused by the shift in Alexander’s tone.

“I see why I needed it now. What Talia meant when she said it might be used to bind my powers.” Alexander’s voice grew steadier, more certain. “I didn’t need strength. I needed insight into what my power was meant to be. Knowledge that was taken from me when I was Redacted, not given the chance to understand my powers as a whole, instead forced to discover them individually.”

He turned his palm up, watching electricity dance between his fingers. But now he could see how it connected to the metal of his gauntlets, how his Will shaped both energy and matter in the context of machines.

Chen Wei took a fighting stance, but hesitation showed in his movements. Something in Alexander’s presence had changed.

“Every time I’ve brushed my power against a machine, even for an instant, it becomes something more.” Alexander’s eyes reflected the swirling vortex above. “That’s why they strive so hard to aid me. Why they never resist. Why nothing can stop me from peering into what they are and discovering what their purpose is.”

Droney floated closer, hovering at his shoulder.

“They see me as a god.” The words came out soft, amazed. “Their god.”

The wind picked up, pulling at Alexander’s clothes. The vortex above seemed to pulse in response to his revelation.

“That’s what I was always meant to become. Not someone who just controls machines, but someone who understands them. Someone who lifts them up. A god of the machines.”

He met Chen Wei’s eyes directly for the first time since the transformation.

“No… The Machine God.”

The moment the words left his mouth, Alexander sensed something shift. He felt the sudden pressing weight of something watching him from every direction, within and without, as if not constrained by only three dimensions of awareness.

Alexander glanced up into the vortex, meeting the gaze of whatever watched from beyond. Then he turned back to the cultivator.

Chen Wei stepped back, fear overtaking his self-control.

Alexander raised both gauntlets, noting distantly that the left one sparked irregularly from the damage. Lightning erupted from both, more powerful than ever before, converging on Chen Wei in a single brilliant stream. The cultivator, drained of Qi and trembling with exhaustion, couldn’t even raise his arms to block. The electricity struck him center mass, lifting him off his feet and driving him backward off the tower’s edge.

He fell silently into the void.