Chapter 404: Ancient Power Grid

The elevator kept descending, and Kai watched from the hallway as the numbers disappeared from its display. Nobody spoke. It had already passed levels that shouldn’t have existed beneath Nexus.

Then the hallway lights flickered once, twice, and the ancient elevator stopped. A low hum passed through the building, and everyone looked around.

Lily checked her tablet, and her eyes went wide. "Something just changed in the energy network." She turned the tablet toward them, and the readings were climbing fast.

Aren stepped closer. "How fast?"

"Too fast."

The lights flickered again, and then every light in the hallway came on at once. It wasn’t only the modern fixtures. Ancient blue lights appeared along the walls, one after another, until the whole hallway was glowing.

Kai looked up. "What’s happening?"

Lily stared at the readings. "The reactors. The ancient mana reactors." She looked up. "They’re activating."

...

Across Nexus, the first reactor came online, and at first, nobody noticed. It was buried beneath an old industrial district and had been classified as an inactive ruin for decades, with no power, no movement, and no energy readings at all. Then a deep vibration rolled through the ground, and its core began to glow. Blue light filled the chamber, ancient symbols spread across its walls, and the reactor began producing mana in enormous amounts.

Modern systems picked it up immediately, and power stations across Nexus began receiving energy. One engineer stared at his monitor. "What the hell?"

His colleague turned. "What?"

"The grid. It’s rising."

"How much?"

The engineer checked the numbers again, and his expression changed. "Too much."

A second reactor activated, then a third and a fourth. All across Nexus, ancient mana reactors were coming online, some buried beneath buildings, others hidden under roads, and several outside the city entirely. Nobody knew how many there were, and none of them had ever been connected to the modern grid. Until now.

The hospitals noticed first. One in the eastern district had been running on emergency generators since the previous night’s activation, and several intensive care units had already been placed under power restrictions. Then the lights stopped flickering, and the backup generators shut off on their own.

A doctor looked up at the ceiling. The lights stayed on, and when a nurse checked the equipment, everything was running, the monitors, the ventilators, the scanners, and every emergency system.

A technician ran into the room. "Power’s back."

The doctor looked at him. "From the grid?"

"Not exactly. We’re getting energy from one of the ancient systems."

The doctor stared at him. "Is it stable?"

The technician checked his tablet. "More stable than the modern grid."

For the first time since the awakening began, the doctor smiled. "Then leave it alone."

Another reactor came online beneath the Hunter Association, and the effect was immediate. Mana levels throughout the building jumped, equipment charging stations filled instantly, training rooms stabilized, barrier systems returned to full strength, and the emergency teleportation platforms that had been running at reduced power came back to normal.

One Hunter picked up his weapon. "Did someone upgrade the building?"

Another shook his head, looking at the ceiling. "No. The ancient system did."

A cheer went up in the training hall. "Finally!"

Another Hunter laughed. "Maybe these ruins aren’t so bad."

A senior Hunter turned around. "Don’t say that. Every time someone says that, something terrible happens."

The first Hunter went quiet. "Fair."

...

The change spread through the entire city.

Traffic systems stabilized, emergency communications grew stronger, and mana barriers around critical buildings recovered, while water treatment plants, construction equipment, and airship docks all came back to full power.

Even several damaged districts got enough energy to restore basic services, and for the first time since the ancient awakening began, Nexus felt something close to relief.

The news networks changed their headlines.

ANCIENT POWER RESTORES NEXUS.

CITY ENERGY CRISIS ENDS.

"Whatever civilization built these systems," one commentator said, "they clearly understood energy on a scale beyond anything modern Nexus has."

"Could this be the beginning of a new technological age?" another asked.

People cheered in the streets. Businesses reopened, factories restarted, and hospitals returned to normal operations. Nexus had spent months struggling to adapt to Hunters and monsters, and now an ancient civilization seemed to have handed it an enormous source of power. For the first time, the awakening looked like a gift.

Kai wasn’t convinced.

He stood in the Hunter Association’s command center, where Lily was monitoring the network, Aren was comparing the ancient energy readings against old ruin records, and Gabriel was on a call with Church officials. On the main screen, the energy graph kept climbing.

"How much power are we getting?" Kai asked.

"Enough to supply most of Nexus," Lily said without looking up.

Kai frowned. "Most?"

"For now."

"How long can it last?"

Lily hesitated. "We don’t know."

"Can the reactors overload?"

"Possibly."

"Can we shut them down?"

"Probably." Kai waited, and Lily sighed. "But I don’t know how."

Kai nodded. "Of course."

Sera walked in carrying two cups of coffee and handed him one. "You’re going to need that."

"Thanks."

She looked at the screen. "The city seems happy."

"Yeah."

"That’s good."

"It is."

Sera studied his face. "But?"

Kai looked at her. "There’s always a ’but’ with you."

"Because there’s always a ’but’ with you."

Kai almost smiled, then looked back at the readings. "It started too fast. The reactors didn’t wake up slowly. They all activated at almost the same moment."

Sera frowned at the screen. "So?"

"So something told them to."

A few minutes later, Kai stepped into a quieter corner of the command center and took out his phone. There was only one person he wanted to talk to about this.

The call connected after three rings, and Elden appeared on the screen, standing in Mythal’s main infrastructure control room. Behind him, large displays showed the city’s defensive network, and Kai could hear machinery running in the background.

Elden looked at him. "You’re calling late."

Kai glanced at the clock. "It’s evening."

"For Nexus," Elden said with a shrug. "Mythal doesn’t care what time Nexus uses."

Kai smiled. "Fair."

Elden looked at him more closely. "What happened?"

Kai turned the camera toward the energy readings. "Ancient mana reactors activated."

Elden stared at the screen, and for several seconds he said nothing. "How many?"

"We don’t know."

"How much output?"

"Enough to power most of Nexus."

Elden’s expression changed. "Send me the data."

Kai transferred the readings, and Elden’s eyes moved quickly across the numbers. He didn’t say a word, and Kai waited. After almost a minute, Elden finally spoke. "This isn’t a power grid. It’s a backup system."

Kai’s expression hardened. "A backup for what?"

Elden didn’t answer right away. He enlarged one of the energy graphs, then another, and another, and his eyes narrowed. "Look at the distribution. These reactors aren’t sending power where it’s needed. They’re following routes that were set in advance."

Lily, who had been listening nearby, immediately came closer. "Set in advance?"

Elden highlighted several of the energy channels. "They aren’t prioritizing the hospitals, the Hunter Association, or the residential districts."

Kai frowned. "Then what are they powering?"

Elden zoomed out, and the answer was obvious. Most of the energy wasn’t flowing through modern Nexus at all. It was flowing through the ancient network beneath it.

Lily’s eyes widened. "They’re powering the old infrastructure."

"Exactly," Elden said.

Kai looked at the map, at the ancient roads, tunnels, reactors, and communication systems all coming back online, not because Nexus needed them, but because something beneath Nexus did.

"Why?" he asked.

Elden leaned back. "That’s what worries me." He pulled up another section of data, showing that the reactors weren’t producing a steady amount of energy. They were producing just enough to keep something running, then storing everything else.

"Storing?" Kai said.

"An enormous amount," Elden said, highlighting several underground structures. "In storage chambers, backup batteries, mana reservoirs, emergency power stations, all over the network."

Kai stared at the map. "A civilization’s emergency system."

"That’s what it looks like," Elden said.

"Why would they need that much backup?"

Elden zoomed out again. The ancient system wasn’t just a city. It was a civilization-wide network with multiple power sources, routes, communication lines, and storage sites, and every one of them had a backup, so the whole thing could keep running even if part of it failed.

"This wasn’t designed to power a city," Elden said, and his voice grew quieter. "It was designed to keep something running after the city was gone."

Nobody spoke. Lily stopped moving, Sera’s expression changed, and even Aren, listening from the side, turned serious.

"You’re sure?" Kai asked.

"No," Elden said, looking straight at him. "I’m saying that’s what the architecture suggests." He brought up the energy reserves, and the numbers were enormous. "These systems were built to hold power for a very long time. Years. Maybe decades."

"Maybe longer," Lily whispered.

Kai thought of the message on the door beneath the city. If the world above fails, the world below will continue. They had read it days ago, but he hadn’t understood how literally it was meant. These systems weren’t restoring Nexus. They were restoring the infrastructure that had been waiting underneath it.

Sera was staring at the map. "You’re thinking the same thing, aren’t you?"

"Yeah," Kai said, and he looked back at Elden. "If the ancient system was built to keep running after its civilization disappeared..."

"Then whatever happened to that civilization," Elden said, "was bad enough that they expected their city to die."

Nobody said anything for several seconds.

Aegis had prepared for something coming, and it had built walls, shelters, and weapons to survive it. This civilization had planned for the aftermath, for keeping things running even if nobody was left.

On the screen, one of the seven ancient signals pulsed, then another, as the network kept waking.

Elden suddenly frowned. "Wait. The reactors just changed their output. They’re drawing more power."

"From where?" Kai asked.

"That’s the problem."

The graph kept rising, the ancient network beneath Nexus consuming more and more energy.

Lily looked at the numbers. "What is it powering?"

Elden traced the energy path, and his expression slowly changed. "I don’t know."

The line disappeared into the deepest part of the network, the same place the elevator had been heading. The foundation.

Kai’s eyes narrowed. The ancient system wasn’t just restoring itself. It was preparing something, and whatever that something was, it had just started using Nexus’s new power supply to do it.