Waking up to the sensation of rock cutting into his cheek cleared the disorientation fog from the exciting round 2 of teleportation. His ears still rang with the phantom echo of the control room's hum. As his senses slowly settled, a low moan of wind across open ground replaced the phantom hum. He blinked, grit scratching under his eyelids. Grey, overcast sky met his gaze, utterly devoid of the impossible purple hue or the three moons he’d barely registered before being pulled away again.

  God! Those colours were so much, this feels so muted, so… normal. I think I escaped…

  He lay still for a long moment, hand over his chest, ribs aching from the first landing and heart racing from the adventure before. He rubbed away the lingering phantom pain from his solid chest, remembering how the sentinel threw what looked like lightning at him the last moment.

  This memory of almost being skewered sucks!

  He tasted dust and something metallic, maybe the lingering ozone or, worryingly, blood. Slowly, cautiously, he pushed himself up, testing limbs that felt bruised but functional.

  He was lying spread-eagled on a large, circular platform of cracked, weathered stone – some kind of altar? It was heavily damaged, sections missing, intricate carvings worn smooth by time and elements, suggesting a battle or simply ages of neglect. Weeds pushed up through the cracks.

  In the center of the altar stood a simple stone pedestal, and resting upon it was a fist-sized, dull grey gem that pulsed with a weak, intermittent light, like a dying heartbeat.

  Around the altar, the ground was uneven, littered with more broken stonework and half-buried shapes obscured by surprisingly tall, dry grass that swayed listlessly in the wind.

  As he shifted to get his legs under him, something clinked against the stone near his hip. He looked down.

  Then his eyes widened. Scattered across the altar surface around him, nestled in cracks or resting against broken edges, were smooth, crystalline orbs – softly glowing with faint internal light, identical to the ones in the Sentinel's alcove.

  No way!

  They came with me? A surge of fierce, opportunistic glee shot through him, momentarily eclipsing the fear and disorientation.

  The data banks! They actually came!

  YES!

  Despite the aching ribs, the concept of loot excited him. No time to waste wondering how.

  He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the protest from his ribs, and quickly shucked off his outer shirt. Tying the sleeves together in a practiced knot learned from farm work years ago, he created a makeshift sack.

  Crouching low, he moved rapidly across the altar top, scooping up the cool, smooth orbs. They felt faintly energizing to the touch, pulsing with a low vibration. He dropped them into the shirt-bag, mentally counting: ...seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty... twenty-one.

  He paused, scanning the altar again. His gaze fell on the central pedestal, on the weakly pulsing grey gem. Lying near its base, almost touching it, was the twenty-second orb. He hesitated. Every instinct screamed to grab it – complete the set, maximize the information.

  But the pulsing gem… it felt different from the Sentinel's crystal technology.

  Older.

  Quieter, yet holding a latent something that made the hairs on his arms prickle.

  Power source? Guardian? Alarm system?

  Despite his reservations, he tried to reach out for the orb slowly while constantly observing the gem on the pedestal. When he crossed the half way point, his fear was slightly overtaken by his boisterous audacity and he sped up a bit, only for the sudden movement to make him feel he saw the gem brighten.

  My entire body just jumps back, I lose a step and land on my ass, but the thought that the gem brightened which didn’t, but the mere possibility made me reach to violently! Am I traumatised already? My adventure just began!!!

  As I sit there pondering, my internal voice of fear, the one that had kept him alive around dangerous men, warred with the gambler's urge to take every possible advantage.

  Twenty-one encyclopaedias from the future should be enough, right?

  But just as he walked far enough, his insidious 'goblin self' kicked in. After much debate, realizing he was a sucker, he turned around. He took a step closer, hand slowly reaching out towards the orb, his eyes glued to the dull grey gem on the pedestal. Again. As his fingers neared the crystal orb, the weak pulse in the gem seemed to stutter, AGAIN? The faint light dimmed for a fraction of a second, as if it were taking a breath, drawing energy in. An irrational wave of dread washed over him, cold and absolute.

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  Nope. Definitely nope. He snatched his hand back as if burned, his heart hammering against his ribs again. Okay, message received. Twenty-one it is. Let sleeping, creepy rocks lie. He carefully secured the neck of his shirt-bag, the weight of the orbs surprisingly significant.

  Time to get bearings. He looked past the ruined altar. The tall, dry grass waved around it, obscuring the immediate surroundings. Beyond the grass, maybe fifty yards out, he could make out the shapes of structures – broken walls, collapsed roofs, the unmistakable silhouette of a village, long abandoned by the looks of it. Civilization? Or remnants of it? Better than nothing. A path, maybe resources, maybe just answers.

  He cautiously pushed his way through the thick, tall grass, the dry stalks rustling loudly around him, making him jump at every sound. The grass ended abruptly at the edge of a wide, dusty clearing that surrounded the cluster of ruined buildings. He took a step out into the open, squinting towards the nearest collapsed structure—

  And froze.

  Every hair on his body stood on end. An intense, suffocating pressure slammed down on him – the unmistakable feeling of being watched.

  Not the curious awareness of the island vegetation, nor the cold scrutiny of the Sentinels. This was primal, predatory. The focused gaze of something that saw him purely as meat. It felt like a physical weight, settling between his shoulder blades, ice flooding his veins.

  Run.

  The thought wasn't even fully formed before his body reacted.

  Years of carefully crafted composure vanished in an instant. Artur spun on his heel and bolted, crashing back through the tall grass with reckless abandon, adrenaline erasing the aches and pains. He didn't stop until he scrambled back onto the relative elevation of the broken altar, crouching behind a crumbling stone block, chest heaving, eyes wide with terror.

  He stayed there, hidden, straining his ears over the sound of his own ragged breathing. Silence. The wind whispered through the grass. Nothing moved in the clearing. Slowly, painstakingly slowly, the intense feeling of the predator's gaze faded, like a light being dimmed.

  Gone? Or just waiting?

  Did it see me run back here?

  He took several deep, shuddering breaths, trying to regain control. The adrenaline left him shaky. He clutched the heavy shirt-bag containing the orbs.

  Okay!

  Okay, Lobo.

  New data point: Leaving the immediate vicinity of the creepy altar is apparently frowned upon by the local welcoming committee.

  He mentally reviewed his haul again, a small anchor in the sea of fear. Twenty-one orbs. Twenty-one chances to figure this world out before something with big, hungry eyes decides I look like dinner. His gaze drifted back towards the pedestal, towards the orb he'd left behind, nestled near the dimly pulsing stone. And when he looked up, he could see dusk creeping in slowly as the day seemed to settle behind the grim, cloudy sky.

  This is gonna be an exciting camp out indeed!

  INTERLUDE 1

  Interlude 1

  An anomaly?! I get excited!

  It's been a long while since the last deviation, and a really, really long time since one felt… interesting! A System flag from Farm 7-Gamma-9, locally designated… 'Emberia'.

  Not the usual noise—Deviant attrition rates fluctuating within predicted norms, resource yields slightly off-cycle—but a direct Counterbalance Optimization alert.

  Three unscheduled biological infusions;

  External interference confirmed;

  Trajectory divergence…

  Delightfully messy.

  My excitement reverberates through my domain; surging mana accelerating growth, wealth, and the inevitable tragedy across countless systems under my purview. A welcome ripple in the stagnant pond of millennia.

  One forgets, across the endless cycles, the sheer scale required for something to even register as novel. When I first experienced mana as a nascent consciousness, I considered it merely a natural part of my world, something to be cycled, accumulated. Even crossing into the Ninth Threshold, when my perception suddenly spanned galaxies. I could visit realities far wider than before—mentally, at least, given my own inclinations towards thought over crude physical interaction. Mana was still primarily a tool, albeit an infinitely complex one. It let me see more, learn faster, outmanoeuvre and outlast rivals who focused only on force. Such primitive short sightedness! I saw those fascinating worlds without mana, utterly alien in their quiet persistence, how they simply accepted limitation and lived.

  But crossing the Tenth Threshold… that changed the fundamental equation. Mana stopped being just a resource; A part of me merged it. My intent joined a flow far waster and grander, no longer just observing mana but feeling its underlying purpose. It was then I realised it was more than just a resource; it was the Will of something vaster than imagination, fighting a battle on scales that render stars insignificant.

  And I, reaching this stage, became a component in that battle, no longer just drawing from the well but adding to it. I received the boon: the ability to generate my own mana, not just cycle what exists. A rare privilege, I learned in hindsight. The System, the very architecture of this reality, is highly selective about such upgrades, wary of creating components that might consume more than they contribute, disrupting the balance it strives to maintain across its myriad farms.

  So, to see the System personally intervene on Emberia, applying counterbalance protocols usually left to the oversight of the local Barons… that is significant.

  Especially on a designated contender farm, considered a key asset incubator.

  The System handed over direct management of most such farms cycles ago.

  Is a Baron challenge on the horizon?

  Or did this anomaly bypass their notice entirely?

  When I look closer at the specifics—the external interference, the barrier on choice, the forced 'Nature Core' integration on one anomaly, the 'non-standard cognitive parameters' noted on another—the intrigue deepens.

  Is this anomaly, this trio of fragile beings from mana-less Terra, simply a momentary disruption? A glitch whose resource cost outweighs the fleeting amusement it provides in the face of long monotony?

  Or is it something more?

  A genuine contender, perhaps? A variable potent enough to add a real kick to this long, boring game?

  That possibility makes the resource expenditure potentially worthwhile. Observation protocols intensified. Let us see if this ripple becomes a wave.