System S.E.X. (Seduction, Expansion, eXecution)

Chapter 401: The Sovereign’s Harvest

As Ethan and Anne walked toward the yawning mouth of the shaft, the soldiers they passed stood a little straighter, their exhaustion momentarily forgotten under the gaze of their leader.

"Your men look like they’ve been fighting a mountain and winning," Anne remarked, glancing at the massive concrete beams being lowered into the earth.

"They aren’t fighting a mountain, Anne" Ethan said, stepping into the industrial elevator. "They’re unearthing a new era. And I don’t intend to let a little bit of rock and ancient metal slow us down.

The industrial elevator cage rattled as it plunged into the abyss, the magnetic brakes hissing against the rails. The rapidly passing layers of rock became a blur of gray and ochre.

"I thought we were here for a beast, Ethan," Anne said, leaning against the cold steel mesh of the cage. "Are you planning to excavate the entire canyon just to find it? What kind of rare creature is this that requires an army and laser drills?"

Ethan looked at her, the red emergency lights of the shaft casting long, sharp shadows across his face. "The beast is elsewhere, trapped within a specialized containment matrix. She is incredibly powerful—beyond anything I’ve seen. I don’t believe we can actually kill her yet, and frankly, I don’t intend to. But if you’re curious, we can pay her a visit later."

Anne tilted her head, her interest piqued. "Then why all this? Why the drills and all this equipment?"

"We are unearthing a matrix node," Ethan explained. "According to the data Crul recovered, this place was either a high-security warehouse or a prison designed to hold something specific. We don’t know exactly what it hides, but the suppression field is so powerful it keeps a Worm Queen contained only with the residual energy of the matrix, which means there is something very powerful, important, or dangerous in here. We want what’s inside—and we want the Worm Nectar."

"Worm Nectar?" Anne repeated, the name sounding foreign and disgusting.

"It’s the name we’ve given it," Ethan said, a ghost of a smile appearing. "It’s a substance the Queen secretes to feed her hatchlings, but its effect on humans is nothing short of miraculous. It allows a warrior at the Skin Refinement stage to possess the raw physical power of someone at the Bone Refinement stage. You saw my soldiers at the assembly? How they intercepted the Scavenger Ancestor without breaking a sweat?"

Anne’s eyes narrowed. "I noticed their strength was... inconsistent with their perceived rank."

"That’s the nectar," Ethan said. "We created one hundred super-soldiers in just two weeks. If we can extract the entire reservoir, I expect to field hundreds of thousands of soldiers with that same level of power."

Anne felt a sudden, cold chill wash over her. She couldn’t help but let out a sharp, silent breath. As the Matriarch of the Blackwood family, she knew better than anyone the brutal cost of ascending the ranks of human cultivation.

To take a normal human and push them into the higher stages required training that brought them to the very edge of death. It involved ingesting volatile, experimental potions filled with toxic impurities; the slightest miscalculation in a formula meant instant heart failure or permanent crippling. For every successful high-tier soldier in her family’s private army, thousands of promising recruits had been buried in unmarked graves.

And here was Ethan, claiming he could mass-produce that same level of power in a matter of weeks? Were her family’s centuries of tradition and astronomical expenditures on alchemy just a joke?

"You have to be joking, Ethan," Anne said, her voice dropping to a low, serious whisper. "How is that even possible? Do you have any idea how many lives it takes to forge an army of that caliber?"

Ethan turned to her as the elevator slowed, his expression calm. "The wonders beneath the heavens and the earth are infinite, Anne. We were simply lucky enough to find them. Follow me; I’ll show you why the Union is so afraid of the dark."

The cage doors hissed open. Immediately, the sounds of industry roared to meet them. Hundreds of workers in Royal jumpsuits were swarming the widened tunnels, spraying quick-set resin and bolting massive steel plates to the walls to create a high-efficiency extraction corridor.

"Hail, King!" a group of engineers shouted, snapping into salutes as they paused their work.

Ethan nodded to them, moving with a purposeful stride toward the Central Hall. "Keep the pace up! I want the heavy transports in position by midnight!"

"Yes, My Lord!"

As they walked, Anne watched the precision of the ’Ant Work.’ Every man knew his place; every laser strike was calculated. She followed Ethan deeper into the mountain, the air growing warmer and more vibrant until they finally stepped out onto the overlook of the main hall.

The spectacle of the Fire Snakes swimming through the air stopped her in her tracks.

"The Central Hall," Ethan said, gesturing to the glowing matrix below. "Welcome to the treasury of the new world."

Anne stood at the edge of the overlook, her super-developed senses firing all at once. Her pupils dilated, drinking in the impossible dimensions of the chamber—the eight colossal, sealed gateways, the hypnotic dance of the Fire Snakes, and the sheer scale of the operation below.

Thousands of men resembled a colony of disciplined insects, dragging tons of shattered granite toward the center of the hall to clear the peripheral paths. Because the main tunnels were currently choked with logistics equipment, the debris couldn’t be hauled out yet, turning the center of the hall into a rising mountain of rubble.

As their boots hit the cavern floor, Commander Jason detached himself from a group of engineers and strode toward them, his face smeared with red dust and oil. He snapped a crisp salute, though his eyes remained sharp and weary.

"Good afternoon, My Lord," Jason said, his voice echoing. He turned slightly, acknowledging the woman at Ethan’s side. "Greetings, Matriarch."

"Let’s skip the formalities, Jason," Ethan said, his eyes already scanning the nearest sealed gate. "Give me the ground truth. How are we looking?"

"We’ve cleared the surface-level granite and common rock from all primary sectors," Jason reported, gesturing toward the dark, obsidian-like veins of Cold Steel that now stood exposed against the gates. "Only the Cold Steel remnants are left blocking the thresholds. As soon as the heavy transport trucks break through the final tunnel bottleneck, we’ll move the large-bore laser arrays into position and begin the extraction of each gate simultaneously."

"And the timeline for the first breach?" Ethan asked.

"Six hours," Jason replied confidently. "We’re pacing ourselves to ensure the structural integrity of the matrix doesn’t fluctuate. So far, we haven’t had any direct contact with the beasts. However, we aren’t taking chances. I’ve organized the labor into specialized ’Cell Units.’"

"Explain the configuration," Anne interrupted, curious about the Royal doctrine.

"Each unit consists of five men, Matriarch," Jason explained. "Two logistical laborers for the heavy lifting, one engineer constantly monitoring the localized seismic and sonar radars for hatchling movement, and two fully armed soldiers with high-output rifles ready to react in a split second. If something breathes near them that shouldn’t be there, it dies before it can even hiss."

Ethan nodded, a cold satisfaction settling in his chest. "Good. The Queen is dormant, but her children are opportunistic. Don’t let the silence of the hall fool the men into complacency."

"They know the stakes, sir," Jason said, looking back at the shimmering Fire Snakes. "Every man down here knows that if they fail, they won’t just be losing a job—they’ll be losing their lives to something that hasn’t seen the sun in a thousand years."

"Excellent work, keep it up," Ethan said, giving a sharp nod of approval at the efficiency of the operation. "I’m going to take the Matriarch to explore the surrounding areas for a bit; notify me immediately the moment we have the first tunnels cleared and the Cold Steel gates exposed."