Nexus Awakened (An Isekai LitRPG Gender Bender Story)-Chapter 1110. The Door of The Fate Mechanism

The hallways were gone.

Open air surrounded her. With nothing to grapple onto, she formed barriers to use as footholds and combined it with [Thermal Propagation] to maneuver through the skies. Distant booms of thunder displaced the fog. The dark silhouette of a Milinid leg moved from behind the fog. It stabbed a hallway. Seconds later, a deafening crack reached Frost.

It plucked a hallway like how one would stab an olive with a toothpick. Then, ten more joined it, plucking a hallway each. Another set of legs stabbed somewhere behind her. She did not need to turn to know that they were removing the corridors she had passed through.

One by one, they were dislodged and replaced with new corridors. They latched into place with a hollow click, and the contents of the broken rooms were raptured towards the main body of the Milinid.

She could not see it due to the fog, but it existed above the Headquarters. She had wondered how the castle was able to restructure its rooms. She didn’t need to wonder anymore.

The Milinid tended to the Nest like it was its own. Further in the background she saw flashes of blue lighting. Legs followed its path, hastily repairing every corridor Cer destroyed in her warpath.

“Closer… We’re getting closer. She’ll be waiting for me, huh?”

The Director

< You will find her roost further ahead >

* * *

The floating halls faded the further Frost pursued Marionette’s Light. She skipped from barrier to barrier. Distant roars of thunder accompanied her heavy leaps. Nothing but fog obscured her vision after fifty meters.

Eventually, she noticed strange outlines hanging just behind the wall of fog. She moved closer and found a floating arm. The metal device was attached to an ethereal string. It was the same prosthetic that Wandering Healers and the Liquidators wore to administer their Serums.

One became two. Two, to eight. Soon, there were hundreds of floating prosthetic arms. They dangled and swayed in the wind, emitting a faint chime as they rubbed against one another. The further she moved in, the larger the arms became.

Finally, her feet touched ground on a white platform. Pale motes of tiny hair flew out from beneath her feet as she scraped her boots against it. She caught a handful and took a closer look.

[Analyze Object].

Nilhinid Strings

< The pathetic strands of a Nilhinid. Unusable due to their fragility. They are extremely rare as a result. Produced by the lacrimal apparatus of a Nilhinid. Discarded Nilhinid newborn are often found entombed in their strings shortly after birth >

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Frost brought the strings to her mouth and gave it a lick. She didn’t taste anything. Suddenly, she shoved a hand into the platform and devoured a chunk. It dissolved on her tongue as quickly as fairy floss, and she nodded to herself after confirming her suspicions.

“Taste report?”

“Tastes like sea water. The lacrimal apparatus is the tear system of a human. Are the strings of a Nilhinid tears?”

Did it belong to Beholder Marionette? Assuming that Marionette could cry meant that there was a chance she could reach her. Hope filled her heart as she pushed onwards, the fog gradually disappearing to reveal more of the world around her.

Prosthetic arms as long as ten meters hung overhead. Further down, the prosthetic arms reached twenty meters, then fifty… one hundred. Then, she heard rumbling. Her foresight predicted movement ahead, and she sidestepped in time to watch a five-hundred-meter object swing by.

It was a prosthetic arm, and it swung back like a pendium. Its claws barely scraped the ground. Noticing this, she realized that there were subtle markings etched into the silken platform.

“The patterns of a harmonograph. Her roost must be a foucault pendulum.”

The sand pendulums? I had a webbed nest in mind.

Indeed. With the spider aesthetic, and her origin as an Anid, it was safe to assume that she was entering a nest, rather than a Zen garden. The chimes of the larger prosthetic were dissonant crashes. They caused the hairs on Frost’s back to rise, and for a moment, she noticed that she had gained the [Silence] Condition, which prevent one from chanting magic.

The skies cleared, and the remainder of the platform gradually came into view. One figure stood in the center of the nest, her arms hidden beneath her pale-blue garbs, and her back turned towards Frost.

Her head was tilted backwards, her eyes gazing at the light above the unshrouded skies.

It was a blue light, the same that they had always seen and followed since they entered Act X’s territory. It floated idly like a distant star, yet it shone like the sun. Its light chilled everything it touched, as though sapping it of its warmth.

And further above it, covering the skies and the sun, were instruments of a cosmic scale. Their size rivalled the Nexus, only because Frost could not gauge how large they were. A faint mist enshrouded them, giving them an illusion of scale.

Interlocking metal rings, colossal gears, and components of both contemporary and ancient machines made up what she could only describe as a wall of steel.

It covered the Nexus. She could not find the Nexus no matter how far high she looked. In the very center of the mural of steel was a dome-shaped seal. It carried the mark of an ‘X’.

“The Tenth Act draws near. Do you feel it? The vibrations in the strings talk of the pilgrimage.”

Marionette’s voice sapped the world of sound. The distant rumbles of thunder ceased in an instant. The chimes disappeared, and Frost could no longer hear Nav’s voice. Total silence befell Beholder Marionette’s domain. Her back straightened with several loud snaps as she then moved her gaze to the horizon.

Frost was rendered speechless by the sight. Her mind twisted at the thought of how a structure of such a scale existed yet was kept hidden away from the rest of the world. She imagined a spatial phenomenon or a Zone was responsible for this.

Unbelievable. It doesn’t feel like I’m in Elysia anymore. It’s hard to see, but those gears are spinning. Slowly. Indefinitely… Nav…?

A low buzz formed in her chest. Nav had tried to respond, but her voice was blocked by an unknown force.

The awe that came from witnessing the Nexus for the first time returned. She devoured the scenery but quickly wiped her awestruck face away. She dragged her eyes down to meet Marionette’s back.

“Where are we?”

“An entrance of the mechanism that spins fate. The mouth that speaks, and where I serve as its interpreter.”

A hand unfurled to her left.

“And its translator.”

Another to her right.

“We stand at the precipice of fate. I was also enamored by it when I first laid my eyes on its seal. I knew then and there that I owed my existence to it.”

“To an Advent?”

“Is it strange, when there are religions based on the Nexus? The Magicalis that have been born from the shavings of the Nexus. A genesis for the pale beings. A heaven for millions, and a site of pilgrimage for millions more. Beliefs are in itself a form of purpose. But purpose derived from the self is laden with the burden of meaning. To think is to comprehend. To comprehend is to suffer.”