Chapter 8 - World Axis-E110
The purple portal shimmered before Ashborn like a living wound in space. Its swirling core blinking between streaks of starlight and cybernetic glyphs. Just beyond its surface, he could see a world unlike anything within the Dungeon.
A cyberpunk city.
Skylines of crystalline towers pierced the heavens, trimmed with neon glyphs that pulsed like heartbeats. Flying citadels floated beneath digital auroras, tethered by beams of gravitational magic. Hovercrafts darted between towers, outmaneuvered only by winged beasts and drake-like familiars with mechanical feathers. Streets throbbed with etheric pulse-lights, where runed-carved circuitry etched into the sidewalks glowed underfoot.
Elves in techno-robes, beastkin with spirit-linked drones, and cyber-mages channeled runes directly through their arm implants. A world where magic and machine were one.
Ashborn's hand reached for the light.
"Almost there..." he whispered
But the damage caught up to him.
[System Collapse Triggered]
[ALERT: System instability]
• Genesis Fragment: UNSTABLE
• Genesis Thread: UNSYNCED
• Cosmic core Amplification: INCOMPLETE
> Stabilization Failure: Imminent
His knees buckled.
He didn't even feel the fall. His body crumpled face-first, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Dust and fractured data motes kicked up as he collapsed before the portal, trembling.
Inside his body, the [Genesis Fragment] was suffocating, gasping like a drowning soul. The [Genesis Thread] flickered, no longer resonating.
And his [Cosmic Core] pulsed irregularly like a heart losing sync with time itself. There was no stable energy left in the tower to restore him. The environment reeked of entropic saturation left behind by Null-Crown.
"I can't... breathe..." Ashborn choked, his voice cracked and distant. "Too far from starlight... from truth..."
His fingers clawed at the earth. Black veins fractures from anti-cosmic exposure webbed across his arm and chest. His aura flickered in and out, trying to draw energy from the environment but the dungeon offered only silence and void.
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Suddenly--
The purple portal surged.
Its shimmering veil convulsed like water touched by thought. A tendril of translucent light extended from the rift, swirling with cosmic harmony and digital lattice code, like a heartbeat of the very world beyond.
It hovered.
Paused.
Then, like a gentle hand, it reached out to Ashborn.
As if... the World Axis-E110 had seen him. Felt him.
[Subject identified: Cosmic Thread Variant.
- Genesis imprint: Damaged.
Core Stability: <14%
Emergency protocol: assimilation checkpoint initiated]
The tendril of light split into thousands of microscopic glyphs, each shimmering with mystical circuitry and planetary will. They swirled around Ashborn's form, scanning, analyzing, and reading his suffering.
[Entity origin: External to Axis-E110.
System classification: Fragmented sovereign. Authorization pending...]
Ashborn twitched, groaning.
His vision was blurry but he could feel it: a presence. A planetary awareness. Something not mechanical, nor divine, but a harmonized construct of both. Like a world that had chosen to grow sentient.... and was now watching him
[Stabilization Matrix 110-R: Initiated.]
From the portal, more tendrils of light descended. Gentle. Cool. Stabilizing.
One wrapped around Ashborn's broken wrist, another around his chest, feeding him ether-rich particles laced with digital stardust. Where the dungeon had offered emptiness, this world offered air, cosmic breath, tuned to his signature.
[System Sync Reboot (partial]
[System Notice: World Axis-E110 integration attempt in progress]
• Genesis Thread: Partial Resonance restored [13%]
• Cosmic Core: Stabilizing via external field
• Thread-sync: Rebooting...
• New interface detected: "World Axis-NEOS YGGDRASIL"
• Environmental Compatibility: 74.7%
Ashborn's eyes blinked open, barely. The world was glowing around him. Glorious, strange, alive. Like the future had collided with myth.
Hovercrafts. Dragons. Rune-chants sung by machines. Sky-banners written in code and divine light. He saw it.
"This world... it breathes..."
He muttered.
The stabilizing field gently lifted his body upright, letting him float toward the portal's veil, like a drifting soul being accepted by a higher plane.
But the field wasn't done.
[Final query: Shall world Axis-E110 grant you asylum, Ashborn lionheart?]
The voice echoed from the light. Not mechanical. Not emotionless. But compassionate. Curious. Almost maternal.
Ashborn, broken and half-conscious, let out a ragged chuckle.
"If you're offering..." he whispered, "I could use a bed that isn't made of pain."
The portal was accepted.
[ENTRY GRANTED]
[Welcome, Ashborn Lionheart]
• Synchronizing with Planetary Code
• External System Detected: Genesis Interface
• Category: Interdimensional Sovereign - Fractured Class
• Permission Tier: Conditional Observer - Level Omega (Temporary)
• Stabilization Field: Active - All internal cores in repair
With a gentle hum, Ashborn crossed into World Axis-E110.
As he passed through the veil, his wounds were temporarily suspended in stasis. He felt time flow around him instead of against him. His Genesis Fragment hummed faintly, like it remembered how to dream again.
On the other side, an airship hovered in the distance. Magic towers blinked. He heard chanting woven into advertisement screens. Cybernetic hawks flew overhead. A world of impossible logic and harmony. His new stage.
And somewhere deep beneath it all... this world knew.
It had just accepted a cosmic being unlike any other into its weave.
The moment ashborn passed through the veil of the violet portal, a hush fell over the chaotic rhythms of his damaged internal systems. His limbs, still trembling from the cosmic strain, barely managed to steady him upright. He stumbled forward and saw it.
A skyline like no other.
Neon rivers floated mid-air like magical veins pulsing through the heavens. Colossal spires made of crystalline steel and mirrored mana-glass reached to the stratosphere, wrapped in holographic constellations that shimmered with ancient runes and corporate logos alike. Hovercrafts zipped between floating platforms, their engines quiet, sleek, and surreal. Creatures of Myth walked side by side with synthetic lifeforms. Drones with feathered wings, beastkin in arcane armor, elven engineers scribbling runes into glowing blue circuit-walls.
Skydocks floated beside flying pagodas. A dragon made of segmented plasma coils curled around a skyscraper carved from obsidian light. Ashborn's eyes, even dulled by exhaustion, widened slightly.
"....A digital arcana civilization," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "This world runs on both code and myth."
Ashborn's feet touched solid ground, or what passed for it in this unfamiliar realm. The tendrils of the purple portal glow behind him like torches exhaling, leaving motes of ether-rich stardust clinging to his skin, gently soaking into his pores, nourishing and rebuilding what the Dungeon had nearly stripped away,
Where the Dungeon had been a static void, suffocating and this place breathed, the very air here shimmered faintly, like liquid prism light refracted through astral lenses. Every breath he drew now came laced with cosmic breath tuned to his unique signature. It didn't just sustain him... it recognized him and yet--
The stabilizing tendril of the portal finally receded, fading behind him with a subtle hum. Ashborn dropped to one knee, gasping. His vision blurred, the System flickering.
[System alert]
• Genesis Fragment Sync: 44%
• Cosmic Core Amplification: Incomplete
• Vital signs: Stable - Recovery mode engaged
• Genesis Thread alignment: Adjusting to foreign reality...
• Astral Breath disconnected - External Cosmic Energy required
His breath came shallow, his body convulsing briefly under the lingering trauma of the Null-Crown's assault. Yet something tugged at his soul, a frequency, ancient yet familiar, radiating from beneath the city's skin. This realm wasn't just a world, it was a hybrid engine of spiritual innovation and techno-faith, and it had recognized him.
The air, saturated with ambient cosmic particles and high-spectrum mana, began gently seeping into his cracked core.
[Core Sync: 91.4&]
[External energy absorption active]
[Genesis Thread anchor: localized field match detected]
> "Pulse Weaving Mode: Calibrating to world Axis-E110 leyline symmetry."
His threads, once limp and flickering, began twitching like nerves catching wind. Faint glows sparked from his wrists and ankles as the [Genesis Thread] adapted. Thinning out into filaments of pure translucent ether, subtly weaving themselves into the ground, pulling vitality and harmony from the world around him.
A HUD flickered across his vision. The city's leyline grid. Dozens of magical circuits overlapped with digital blueprints and spatial anchors. Names pulsed across his interface:
• Spire 77: Soul Engine Hub
• Mag-Tek Cathedral: AI-Runed Archive
• Dusk Street: Entropy Market
• Central Spire: Axis Lord Tower - Access restricted
VoidNet Terminal 3
Dragon-Blood Forge - Registered Artifact Compression Site
Ashborn coughed once, then slowly stood up, his posture re-stabilized by the first wave of ambien cosmic nourishment from the city. The wind was fragrant with oil and ozone, but underneath it, he could smell magic. It pulsed. It sang. It hummed in harmonics that only Cosmic Spirit would notice.
He clenched his hand and saw the microfractures across his fingers pulse with healing light. His blood, previously sluggish, now surged again with interdimensional fire.
[Cosmic Core - Evolution Stage II: Stabilized]
[Core Sync now: 94.3%]
[Genesis Thread - Living Loom Engaged | 3 constructs Available]
[Status: Stable. Combat Readiness: 81%]
Then the static flickered.
A signal burst directly into his mind through the system:
[Welcome, Designated Entity: Ashborn Lionheart]
[World Axis-E110 acknowledges the Genesis Frequency and grants temporary Inter-Realm Asylum]
[Detected Class: Cosmic Knight - Discrepancy with Local Ranking structure]
[Auto-Assimilation: Cosmotechnic Class Conversion pending...]
Ashborn narrowed his gaze as a sudden surge of data pushed into his system. Interfaces merged and Recalibrated. Circuitry lanced with mythic intent began to reshape the interface of his Cosmic Core.
[New Data Thread Installed]
[Cosmotechnic Class system - Tier conversion Table Accessed]
[World Axis-E110 law detected: combat registration required before weapon deployment]
[Cosmic Core Reading: Above World Axis-E110 Tier Threshold - Authority Conflict Flagged]
A digital glyph etched itself into the air before him. A request beacon. Someone had already noticed him
Incoming ping:
Source: [Private Entity] - "You're not from here... but you're not entirely foreign, either your Threads pulses like our myth. Care to test your spark in the city of Echoes?"
He didn't reply immediately.
Instead, he turned his head toward the glowing skyline once more, eyes simmering like nebulae behind his calm exterior. Despite his fractured core and brutalization, the same defiant grin returned.
"Let's see what your myth is worth, then."
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Ashborn blinked, gaze drifting through the chromatic skyline of what resembled a cyber-mystical city. Floating spires traced artificial constellations, some pulsing with ley-circuits while others flickered with ancient sigils etched into metal, glass, or void-silk. Despite the world's vibrancy, a thick mental fog weighed down his thoughts.
He muttered to no one in particular, voice dry like cracked marble
"Temporary Inter-Realm Asylum? ...what the hell does that even mean..."
Despite his exhaustion, the System Panel flickered before his eyes, ever-present and unrelenting:
[System alert]
• Genesis Fragment Sync: 44%
• Cosmic Core Amplification: Incomplete
• Vital signs: Stable - Recovery mode engaged
• Genesis Thread alignment: Adjusting to foreign reality...
• Astral Breath disconnected - External Cosmic Energy required.
[Core Sync: 91.4% > 92.1&]
[External energy absorption active]
[Genesis Thread anchor: localized field match detected]
> "Pulse Weaving Mode: Calibrating to world Axis-E110 leyline symmetry."
Ashborn gave a half-smile. Weak, but genuine.
"Hmph... at least something's working."
Another notification scrolled in with sharp golden script:
[Cosmic Core - Evolution Stage II: Stabilized]
[Core Sync now: 94.3%]
[Genesis Thread - Living Loom Engaged | 3 constructs Available]
[Status: Stable. Combat Readiness: 81%]
But then came a harsher pulse of data, less welcome:
[Cosmic Core - Evolution Stage III - Paradox Crown Engine - Still stabilizing]
● World Axis-E110 law detected:
Combat Registration is required before weapon deployment.
● Cosmic Core Reading: Above World Axis-E110 Tier Threshold - Authority Conflict Flagged.
Ashborn groaned aloud.
"Confusing... It's like breathing equations."
He rubbed at his temples. Even if his bones had mostly mended, the mental toll was another monster entirely. His soul felt like it had just wrestled through the belly of a dying galaxy.
He spotted a nearby passerby, someone humanoid, face hidden behind a translucent screen of light shaped like a mask, their body cloaked in flowing robes made of encoded circuits and threadbare starlight.
Dragging his feet forward, Ashborn spoke in a low, half-slurred voice:
"Hey... sorry... uh, where's the closest hotel or inn or whatever you call rest around here?"
His tone was laced with cosmic fatigue. Not just physical. Spiritual. Mental. Dimensional. Even reading the system interface had cost him more clarity than it offered.
The masked citizen turned, eyes unreadable behind a shimmering interface.
"Closest certified Rest Core facility: Loomlight Sanctuary. One kilometer east. A combat clearance is required for admission. You're leaking raw cosmic, we recommend temporal shielding."
Ashborn gave him a tired thumbs-up.
"Yeah... thanks. I'll leak quieter."
(AN: Huh?)
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[Loomlight Sanctuary]
Ashborn stood before the Loomlight Sanctuary, a monolithic structure suspended on intertwining strands of translucent ley fiber. The building itself shimmered like a breathing nebula. Walls refracted color like opal dipped in stardust, and spiraling glyph-chains hovered around its perimeter like orbiting satellites. Above the entrance floated a pulsing emblem: a loom threaded with light, its needles weaving constellations across the sky.
'So this is a hotel...in this world, Ashborn thought. Looks more like a temple fused with a quantum machine.
As he stepped forward, the ground beneath his feet adjusted. Each footfall resonated with the local leyline's rhythm an invisible chorus syncing with his Genesis thread, gently scanning and buffering his aura so it wouldn't tear the foundation apart with excess cosmic bleed.
A soft chime echoed.
[Security notice - world Axis-E110]
Access Node: Loomlight Sanctuary
● Genesis Wielder Detected - High anomaly Tier
● Combat-Class Aura Registration Required
● Authority Flag: Unregistered Origin - External Syncing Pending.
The door pulsed open, folding like a dimensional petal. Inside, floating lanterns composed of coded dreams bobbed along the corridor, each humming to the ambient music of the sanctuary's etheric core. A smooth, melodic voice greeted him through the air, feminine yet mechanized:
"Welcome, Genesis-tier Entity. You are entering protected Asylum under the Peaceful Thread Act. All weapons, spells, and constructs must remain sealed unless lawfully deployed under world Axis-E110 protocols. Do you accept the sanctuary conditions?"
Ashborn sighed, his thoughts still fogged with system noise.
"Yeah, yeah... whatever lets me sleep."
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[Sanctuary Interior - Genesis-Class Suite]
Once cleared, the corridor brought him to a private chamber. The room unfolded in layers, walls adapting to his aura signature, stabilizing space and temperature to match his homeworld memory. A bed floated mid-air like a dream suspended in gravity-null, woven from soft light, breath metal. And quantum silk. A balcony overlooked a city that never stayed still, buildings shifting, floating, re-threading themselves in real time.
Collapsing onto the bed, Ashborn let out a long breath. The Genesis Thread within him began stitching itself tighter to the local plane, the room helping him decompress reality from a higher-order perspective. Yet the system didn't let him rest just yet.
[World Axis-E110 Core Law Detected]
• Combat-Class Must Be Registered and Ranked Before Deployment of Genesis constructs
• Unauthorized Weapon Manifestation in Public Sectors Results in Temporal Strike Sanction (Level II)
• Genesis-Level entities are flagged by authority surveillance until stabilized
• Tier Conflict Penalty: If your Cosmic Core surpasses the local Tier limit, Authority Conflict may trigger region-scale nullification protocols.
Ashborn narrowed his eyes.
"So I'm too powerful for this world's scale.... and because of that, I get flagged?"
"Didn't ask to crash land here, system."
[World Axis-E110 - Laws, Tiers & Authority Breakdown]
World Axis-E110 is governed by a Cosmotechnic Class system, structured to maintain balance between native beings and extra-dimensional anomalies. Each being is ranked by three measurable scales:
1. Tier Level (Power Expression)
Tier I: Mortal Spectrum (Basic mana/artifact use)
Tier II: Ether-Wielders (Spirit-tech and Class Systems activated)
Tier III: Astralbound (Leyline Sync Users)
Tier IV: Dimensional Anchors (Construct Manifesters)
Tier V: Realmwalkers (Plane-Tuned, Space-Warp Entities)
Tier VI: Genesis Thread Bearers (Authority Threshold Breachers)
Tier VII: Exolords / Crown Engines (Illegal Class – Universe-Bending Tier)
Ashborn's status had flagged him between Tier VI and VII due to his Genesis Thread, Genesis Fragment, Cosmic Core - Paradox Crown Engine, and Unsealed Core Evolution State.
2. Combat-Class
° Must be formally registered in a planetary database.
° Grants permission to deploy weapons, spells, and constructs.
° Each Combat-Class is tied to Tier Synchronization Laws, deploying a weapon above one's legal tier triggers Genesis Interference Protocols.
3. Genesis Authority Flags
° Genesis Thread users must declare allegiance to one of the three major world Axis-E110 sovereignties:
> The Looming Citadel - Law-bound keepers of stability and narrative preservation.
> The flux Concord - Agents of change, chaos, and innovation through entropy and paradox.
> The Null Core - Enforces reset, extinction, and pure lawless void logic.
° Unaffiliated Genesis Users like Ashborn are classified as Rogue Cores, automatically flagged for observation or absorption.
Ashborn sat up slowly, glancing toward the moonless sky beyond his balcony.
"So if I use anything too strong I get sanctioned."
"If I use a sword? I need clearance. If I summon a construct? Registration. If I fight someone? Paperwork."
"Cosmic bureaucracy..."
He rubbed his eyes, then chuckled softly.
"Maybe that horror dungeon wasn't so bad. At least no one asked for a license when I broke their faces."
His breathing slowed. The bed's support systems wrapped around him with warmth not physical, but conceptual. He felt the sanctuary's threads patching not just his body, but his sanity.
Ashborn's eyes flickered beneath closed lids, his breathing shallow, chest rising in sync with the lull of the sanctuary's ether-infused cradlebed. His physical body remained wrapped in quantum comfort... but his mind had drifted into Genesis memory layers, dreamscape threads pulling him across planes of myth, memory, and madness.
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To be continued....