Chapter 107: Runes Awaken, Light Moss Spreads

Heavy darkness enveloped Copperbeard, and agony crashed against his fading consciousness like ceaseless waves. From the severed arm came a searing, heart-tearing burn; every heartbeat struck the wound like a heavy hammer. The chill of blood loss bored deep into his marrow, as if it would freeze his very soul. In this lightless deep sea of consciousness, only the steady, warm, resilient pulse of energy at the stump's junction held fast — a tough rope barely tethering him to reality.

Within that pulse came countless cold, ancient, inhuman shards of intent, striking his awareness like shattered stars:

【…Thorns entwined…Wall of guardianship…Impassable…】

【…Roots sunk deep…Drawing from the ley lines…Spring of life…】

【…Runic array…Energy conduit…Node repair…】

These intents were not language, but more like a stream of information seared directly into perception, carrying the elven sense of order so tightly bound to natural law. Like the tide, they washed over Copperbeard's consciousness again and again, trying to sketch out a vast, precise blueprint of the sanctuary — marking the regions fallen silent from lack of energy or damage, and… the energy-guiding paths needed to repair them.

Copperbeard's dwarven soul struggled through the agony to grasp the information. He could not respond, only receive it passively, like a dying apprentice receiving a final infusion of wisdom. The information was far too vast and arcane, well beyond his understanding of metal and furnace. He could only seize the most essential, most urgent intents — 【Life Sustain】, 【Purification Cycle】, 【Core Stabilization】.

He did not know how long passed before a thread of faint yet unusually resilient warmth rose from the stump's junction, slowly driving back the chill in his consciousness. It was the power of the Life Altar — once running stably, it had begun to feed back into him, the forcibly connected "node."

Copperbeard's single eye cracked open with great effort.

Soft emerald light met his gaze — no longer guttering as if about to die, but steadily bathing the stone chamber. The Life Altar's orb of light had regained some of its volume; though still only the size of a pomelo, far from its prime, its glow was warm and steady. The cyan-gold runes flowing across the base pulsed in stable harmony, and the "conduit" forged from his flesh and blood, metal, and elven runes now showed a strange, half-crystallized state, its surface covered in fine cyan-gold patterns — a living work of art.

He rolled his eye.

Xiang Lingna still lay on the glowing moss beside the altar, but her little face was no longer the dead white of before — a faint flush of color had returned. Her breathing was steady and long, the rise and fall of her chest clearly visible. What warmed Copperbeard's heart most was that one of Xiang Lingna's small, unconscious hands rested lightly on a thick clump of "light moss" beside her. Where her fingers touched, the originally low, pale-green moss had visibly grown thicker and more emerald, its glow much brighter — and several new, sprout-like clusters had even spread outward!

"Natural affinity…" Copperbeard rasped, recalling Priestess Liyana's gift. The girl, even in slumber, was answering the sanctuary's power of life.

His gaze turned to Lin Mo. His charred body, nurtured by both the altar's light and the stardust's faint glow, seemed to have improved — ever so slightly — at least those terrible carbonized cracks had not worsened. The stardust crystal on his chest still glowed dimly, but with a steady light, like an eternal tiny ember. The Corrupted Claw Mark on his right arm was covered by a thin membrane of interwoven emerald and blue-white light, its pulse so faint it was barely perceptible. Safe — for now.

From the corner came a faint groan.

Wrench was awake!

The goblin's beady eyes opened in confusion, then the agony made him bare his teeth in a grimace. His twisted arm hung at an unnatural angle. But the goblin's survival instinct and his mad technician's gift seemed to overwhelm the pain. He first looked around the strange environment in terror — his gaze swept past the odd elven altar, the glowing walls, the light moss on the ground — and finally landed on Copperbeard, sitting against the wall, drenched in blood, his severed arm joined to that bizarre crystallized conduit.

"B-boss?" Wrench's voice cracked with disbelief and a sob. "Did we… go to hell? This place… is kinda weird…"

"Not dead… elves… sanctuary…" Copperbeard forced out a few words, his voice hoarse as sandpaper on stone.

Wrench's beady eyes went wide, then blazed with fanatic light: "Elves?! Sanctuary?! Oh, god of my wrench!" He struggled to sit up, but the motion tugged at his broken arm and he hissed in pain. "Ow! Hand! Boss! My hand's busted!"

Copperbeard had no strength to explain; he gestured with his eyes toward the tool belt and pile of relatively intact metal parts and cables scattered at his feet, salvaged from the mechanical prosthetic. "Fix… it yourself…"

Wrench followed his gaze. When he saw the parts — especially those few special alloy plates with natural energy-conducting patterns — the goblin's technician's soul ignited in a blaze, and he forgot most of the pain. "Fix… fix it? Good! Good! I'll try!" He wriggled over like a worm, grabbed the parts and tools with his still-working right hand, and began measuring them against his twisted left arm, muttering neurotically: "Energy conduit… nerve bridge… thornsteel for bone… now that's interesting…"

Copperbeard paid him no more mind. He closed his eyes, gathered every shred of focus to fight the agony, and strove to receive and understand the elven shards of intent pouring in from the stump's junction. He needed to master the sanctuary's most basic functions as soon as possible — especially… 【Purification Cycle】.

Guided by those cold intents, his consciousness seemed to extend outward and touch a dormant runic array deep within the stone chamber's walls. That array was linked to the altar; its function seemed to be filtering and purifying air and water. At its core, a tiny energy node sat dark and lifeless.

Copperbeard tried — with his will, he guided the gentle stream of energy converted from the Root Furnace and filtered through his flesh-and-blood conduit — along the runic array's path, slowly feeding it into that core node.

Hmmm…

A very faint tremor came from within the walls. In the corner of the chamber, at that shallow depression Copperbeard had discovered earlier — covered in glowing root-plants and seeping tiny beads of water — the seepage clearly quickened! Clear droplets gathered into a thin stream, pooling into a small spring of clear water at the bottom of the depression! At the same time, the air in the chamber seemed to grow fresher; that ever-present, extremely faint mustiness of the deep earth was completely driven away!

"Water… clean water!" Copperbeard's spirit lifted. He had succeeded! Though it was only the most basic of facilities, it meant they now had a stable water source!

He guided energy once more, trying to light up more of the glowing crystals on the chamber walls. Where his will reached, several dim crystals awoke like summoned stars, casting a brighter, gentler white light that illuminated the chamber far more brightly.

Just as his heart eased and he prepared to try grasping the other shards of intent, a cold, sharp "gaze" pierced through the barrier of space without warning and fell upon him!

It was not through the eyes, but a prying sensation acting directly on the soul — filled with inhuman calculation, scrutiny, and a trace of… curious interest?

Copperbeard snapped his single eye open and swept the chamber in alarm! Not a soul — only Wrench groaning in the corner as he fussed with his broken arm, and Xiang Lingna and Lin Mo lying quietly.

But the feeling of being watched was so real — like being fixed upon by an invisible venomous snake!

He instantly thought of one person — that Doctor in the observation post, who had looked down on everything like a player moving pieces on a board!

Cold sweat instantly soaked Copperbeard's back. Could that monster peer even into this elven sanctuary buried deep underground?!