Chapter 687 : Penetration

Inside a luxury suite of a high-end hotel in Flots, Dorothy, clad in a loose cotton nightdress, was currently seated on a sofa behind the coffee table, communicating with Beverly through her Literary Sea Logbook. After Dorothy proposed her own speculations regarding the Machine Cognition Core, Beverly noticeably paused for a moment, then promptly responded in writing.

“Your idea does have some feasibility. According to the Machine Cognition Core’s battlefield adaptive functions, it indeed possesses an option to optimize away useless mystical mechanisms to free up resources for others. If the Machine Cognition Core determines that the user's stealth mechanism is useless on the current battlefield, it really will cease maintaining position concealment to avoid wasting resources.

“However, if you wish to exploit this to counter Federico’s personal stealth, you would need to convince the Machine Cognition Core that you already have perfect knowledge of him, rendering the concealment completely meaningless to you. But if you can truly achieve that... then why even bother tricking the Core at all?”

So wrote Beverly to Dorothy, and Dorothy immediately replied.

“As for that, I have my own method. Right now I just need to confirm with you whether the Machine Cognition Core has this optimization function.”

“Alright then. Since you’re saying that yourself, I won’t press further. But I must remind you: even if you manage to deceive the Machine Cognition Core into optimizing away the stealth function, if you perform any kind of reconnaissance against Federico—say, pulling out a Lantern item—it will immediately notice something is wrong and rapidly reboot the stealth function. After all, if you already know everything, then any further detection action is unnecessary.

“Therefore, even if you fool the Core into disabling Federico’s stealth, attempting to perform mystical detection on him would still be extremely difficult. The moment you make any detection move or use even a bit of Lantern, the Machine Cognition Core will instantly react and readjust. Its reaction speed is faster than most Crimson-rank Beyonders.”

On the pages of the

Literary Sea Logbook

, Beverly's printed words offered this warning to Dorothy, and after reading them, Dorothy nodded seriously and wrote back.

“Got it… I’ll be mindful of that issue. My plan is already laid out. In less than a week, everything should begin. Before that, I’d like to borrow a Machine Cognition Core from your side to run some validation tests. Is that possible?”

Beverly quickly responded.

“That’s no problem. Your target is a senior figure of the Dark Gold Society, who count as our enemies as well. I’m happy to help—given how long we’ve worked together, I won’t even charge you a rental fee this time.

“Taking direct action against Crimson-rank members of other societies is not a decision we can make lightly. You’re my source of intel on Federico, and I have no plans to reveal your situation to anyone else. So we won’t provide direct assistance for this operation, but if you really manage to take that guy down, I’ll do my best to prepare a big gift as your reward.”

Beverly’s printed words appeared on the page before Dorothy’s eyes. Seeing them, she nodded lightly and replied.

“Then... I’ll let you wait for my good news.”

…

Returning to the present, somewhere in the wilderness of Falano, at the foot of a crumbled mountain, Dorothy, cloaked in a cape, floated mid-air under the morning light. Her cold gaze was locked onto the massive Aurum Gargoyle that had just burst out of the mountain. At her extended fingertip hovered a counterfeit golden pedestal, now fully primed.

With a sharp hum, Dorothy activated her spirituality, instantly triggering an acceleration magnetic field hidden in the invisible air. The counterfeit golden pedestal at her fingertip shot out rapidly, propelled layer by layer through successive magnetic fields in mid-air. In a flash, it tore through the air, transforming into a brilliant orange beam as thick as a cannon blast, blasting forward.

In an instant, the high-speed projectile formed from the counterfeit golden pedestal crossed several hundred meters, skimming past the thief's head before slamming directly into the lower right chest of the towering Aurum Gargoyle. The tremendous impact drove Federico’s massive body backward, and the impact point on his body shattered, golden stone fracturing into spreading cracks. Until now, Federico had emerged from battle unscathed—but in this moment, his seemingly invincible defense was finally broken. Even his expressionless eyes widened in shock.

Just like her first encounter with the gargoyles, Dorothy chose her strongest armor-piercing technique—Railgun—when facing the Aurum Gargoyle.

Back when she was White Ash-rank, Dorothy’s railgun already had enough power to penetrate gargoyle defenses. Now that she was Crimson-rank, her full-powered railgun could naturally pierce through an Aurum Gargoyle’s body. Yet even so, she only used it for the first time this late into the battle—because she had multiple concerns.

The first concern was ammunition. Though she now possessed a Crimson-rank Railgun with immense power, she lacked matching ammo. Without qualified ammunition, the projectile would melt from the heat it generated before even reaching its target.

What resolved this concern was a favor she had asked of Beverly. In order to convincingly replicate the original, the White Craftsmen’s Guild had produced an extremely high-fidelity counterfeit golden pedestal, including its durability. To simulate this degree of sturdiness, they used a highly durable exotic metal—perfect for Dorothy’s railgun ammo.

The second concern was the location of Federico’s “Treasure Vault”—his vital weak point.

According to intelligence Beverly had provided, Aurum Gargoyles possessed a critical organ called the “Treasure Vault,” which had to be destroyed to defeat them. But the organ’s location within their bodies was not fixed; only Federico himself knew where he had placed his.

Therefore, finding the weak point without alerting Federico had been the key to the preceding sequence of events. What helped Dorothy locate this vital spot wasn’t any active detection method—but the ultimate target of her current operation: the Crystal of Maria’s Light.

The crystal of Maria’s Light and the golden pedestal were originally a single object—a genuine relic of the First Dynasty. Though they showed no mystical trace before activation, their locations were recorded and sensed by the Grand Library’s factual awareness. Using the positional information of the crystal, Dorothy was able to determine exactly where inside Federico’s body it was hidden.

According to Beverly, the so-called "Treasure Vault" weak point of an Aurum Gargoyle is precisely the place where it stores and digests treasures it has swallowed—a compressed space located inside its body. The moment Federico sensed that the crystal was under threat, he immediately swallowed it into his belly. Therefore, the location of the crystal was precisely where the "Treasure Vault" resided. Dorothy only needed to use the golden pedestal to confirm the crystal’s coordinates in order to calculate the location of Federico’s weak point.

However, this positional data wasn't so easily obtained. For the Grand Library to record the crystal’s location, it needed to sense the crystal itself—and once the crystal was hidden in a cloaking-protected environment, it could no longer be tracked. This was exactly what had happened before: after the Dark Gold Society realized the value of Maria’s Light crystal, they sealed it away in a cloaked space, preventing Dorothy from using the golden pedestal to locate it.

Unfortunately, the inside of an Aurum Gargoyle was precisely such a cloaked environment—capable of cutting off the Grand Library’s ability to sense the crystal. If Dorothy wanted to use the crystal to pinpoint the Aurum Gargoyle’s weak point, she would first need to eliminate the effects of that cloaking, either by expending massive amounts of Lantern to brute-force detect it—or by tricking Federico into disabling his own stealth mechanism.

Dorothy chose the latter. With Beverly’s intelligence support, she enlisted Adèle to participate in the battle, having her use her repeatedly-enhanced Desire Control ability to influence Federico—making him realize that he was under psychic interference, thereby prompting him to activate the Machine Cognition Core in defense.

Once the Machine Cognition Core formally took control of Federico’s movements, it immediately caused a collapse of the mountain, trying to bury everything. Nephthys, playing the role of Thief K and aided by Dorothy’s Dreamscale Censer, transformed into her dream-form and phased through the collapsing earth and rock to escape.

During this process, Nephthys continuously drew the attention and aggression of the wall-phasing Federico. Inside the enemy's absolute home terrain—the rocky mountain—she repeatedly dodged with near-perfect timing and predictions. Such evasion, once or twice, could be coincidence, but as it continued, the Machine Cognition Core began to question itself: perhaps its stealth mechanism was indeed useless against this enemy and should be optimized away to free up resources for other, more effective functions.

And so, as Dorothy had predicted, the final result of that prolonged skirmish inside the mountain was that the Machine Cognition Core, after failing countless times to land a hit on Nephthys in what should have been its home territory, decided to deactivate its seemingly useless stealth mechanism. That allowed the Grand Library to once again perceive the crystal’s location.

But to achieve this, Dorothy needed a method of tracking Federico’s real-time movements inside the mountain—one that didn’t rely on Lantern. That secret was hidden within the earth and stone themselves: in the tiny iron sand scattered throughout.

Simply put, Dorothy had been using her perception of the countless tiny grains of iron sand spread naturally throughout the rock to determine Federico’s position. These fine iron grains existed abundantly and were normally easy to sense. However, if there was any unusual behavior in a particular region—say, if the iron sand there suddenly couldn’t be sensed—it indicated that Federico, with his stealth active, had passed through and affected the material in that area.

For example, when the stealth-enabled Federico overlapped with a section of iron sand, that section would become imperceptible to Dorothy, while the surroundings remained clear. That contrast told her exactly where Federico was moving within the mountain.

Inside the mountain, Nephthys was receiving constant positional updates from Dorothy. Dorothy had even created a dream-form clone to assist in disrupting Federico. In this way, Nephthys survived the encounter in the enemy’s home terrain and successfully escaped the mountain—while the pursuing Federico was struck head-on by Dorothy’s long-prepared railgun.

A blazing orange beam struck Federico squarely in the body. Amid flashes of electricity and light, the massive Aurum Gargoyle’s lower right chest was blasted open, fissures spreading wildly across his form. The high-temperature counterfeit projectile, carrying tremendous kinetic force, pierced his once-impenetrable surface and slammed straight into the weak point—his “Treasure Vault.” For the first time, Federico opened his mouth wide in shock.

Just as the projectile was about to pierce clean through the “Treasure Vault” and Federico’s entire body, something unexpected happened. As it struck the vault, a protective sigil embedded in its exterior activated. Bathed in strange light, the projectile’s material composition suddenly changed.

The counterfeit cannon shell transformed from superheated molten-metal into a soft cluster of fine sand. The once-solid metal round became a mass of granular dust, drastically reducing its destructive power—it could no longer pierce through Federico’s body. This mysterious sigil was clearly a life-saving trump card!

Although the sigil could transmute the shell into sand, it couldn’t eliminate its massive kinetic force. The sand retained the projectile’s momentum and still smashed into Federico’s interior. While not fatal, it did destroy the sigil and cracked the outer wall of the “Treasure Vault,” destabilizing the compressed space inside. A gaping black fissure began emitting chaotic distortions.

Even in his Machine Cognition Core-enhanced state, Federico let out a thunderous roar of pain from the heavy blow. The Core’s emergency retreat protocol was immediately triggered—Federico turned and attempted to phase back into the mountain behind him.

Seeing this, Thief K—Nephthys—frowned slightly, then swiftly launched herself toward Federico’s wounded form. Her target: the large opening blasted open on his body, the now-open “Treasure Vault.” Because she had been close to him all along, and because Federico was still reeling, the thief dove straight into the wound created by the cannon blast, heading into the Treasure Vault.

Federico immediately reacted, raising his hand to clamp over the wound—trapping the thief inside his body. At the same time, he began channeling elemental power to sterilize his interior with extreme heat, trying to incinerate her from within. But in the air dozens of meters behind him, a flash of distortion rippled—and the thief reappeared.

Using the last of her escape arts, Thief K successfully fled from within Federico. This time, she emerged not only having stolen something, but even left behind a parting gift. For example—her hat. She’d been wearing it when she went in, but it was gone when she came out.

Floating in the air some distance away, Dorothy, upon seeing Nephthys successfully escape from inside the golden-stone monster, proceeded with her next move. She reached into her clothes and pulled out a golden coin, flipped it lightly, then caught it and assumed a flicking stance, hand extended toward the distance.

But this time, Dorothy wasn’t aiming at the Aurum Gargoyle in the distance—but rather at a much nearer object: a black top hat floating in mid-air, its opening pointed toward her.

“Then... let’s bring this to an end...”

She murmured as she flicked the coin. Under the acceleration of a powerful magnetic field, another blazing beam of light shot out—striking the hat squarely. The orange beam drilled straight into the darkness of the hat’s mouth—and vanished without a trace.