Ch 67: Problem
Two years.
That's how long Kael had been working under Lora.
In those two years, Gron had changed.
Infrastructure had improved.
Energy distribution had stabilized.
More industries had emerged, using old-world technology patched together by brilliant minds.
And at the center of it all?
Kael.
Not officially, of course.
On paper, he was just a technician.
A cog in the machine.
But anyone paying attention knew better.
He wasn't just fixing things.
He was reinventing them.
Lora had overseen countless engineers before.
Geniuses. Innovators. People who could do the impossible.
But Kael was different.
His hunger for knowledge was insatiable.
His drive for crafting and experimenting was borderline obsessive.
It was almost like he had a Datachip for a brain.
A mind that never stopped calculating, analyzing, improving.
He didn't just follow instructions.
He rewrote them.
He didn't just fix broken systems.
He made them better.
And that was the problem.
Because in fixing things too well, Kael was drawing attention.
Dangerous attention.
Lora's job wasn't just about keeping the lights on.
She had a second responsibility.
One that Kael had unknowingly begun to interfere with.
There were places in Gron that weren't supposed to exist.
Facilities, research labs, underground factories—each one hidden by careful mismanagement of power records.
It was her job to make sure no one noticed.
Energy redirection.
False consumption reports.
Artificial inefficiencies to disguise where the real power was flowing.
It was a delicate balance.
And Kael?
He was shattering it.
At first, it had been small things.
He would fix a failing relay system, and suddenly, the energy flow was too efficient.
He would optimize a distribution grid, and power shortages that were supposed to exist disappeared.
Now?
More and more people were noticing.
Workers. Engineers. Even outsiders.
They were starting to ask questions.
They were starting to notice which areas were drawing too much power.
If this continued…
The hidden parts of Gron would be exposed.
And when that happened?
Lora would be the first one with a knife to her throat.
She had thought about reigning Kael in.
Limiting his access. Slowing him down.
But how do you control a force of nature?
Kael wasn't just smart—he was relentless.
If she restricted him, he would find another way.
If she pushed him away, he would dig deeper.
And worst of all…
She had started to depend on him.
He was too valuable to discard.
Too skilled to let go.
Too dangerous to keep unchecked.
And that left Lora with only one real option.
She had to figure out what to do with him—before someone else did.