The Core: The Dark Enemy

23. Answers

"There, dissection complete." the Designer stated once the pain stopped, and I could think again.

I blinked, or at least tried to anyway. The Designer still had me muted for some reason and didn't seem to think that having a conversation was needed.

"Look, I am already gone. If you are wondering why I am not interested in giving you conversation rights, I have already seen what is in your mind and made this decaying copy of myself to answer and correct what I deem necessary." The eye in front of me said as it took its tendril away from me, finishing whatever it had just done inside me. In truth, the eye did seem to be rapidly shrinking and it looked like whatever it was going to say wasn't going to take very long.

"One of the biggest questions you had that I see as pertinent to the viability of your succeeding is: "What is the Skism and what is its purpose?". The answer to that is rather simple, it is a high-concept cleaning robot. Its whole purpose when it was dropped off in your dimension was to seal away any outbreaks of what you nonsensically call Void entities." I said as a Skism Sentinel materialized behind the eye.

"The problem is, even with all of our containment and sterilization concepts, subject ^44-Degeneration_Lifeform-1004-3... you know what, never mind, to you it is a Void creature," it said before pausing, seemingly showing a personality for the first time.

"Whatever, anyways, all of our concepts only manage to cause the Void to be frozen in place without the ability to curtail sustenance and stimuli by observing and draining hosts with susceptible ocular organs. On your level, they infect and spread through sight, both from themselves and to their host who looks at them. Somehow, the Void can still sense lifeforms through the skism field and can stimulate mental stimulation that resembles attempts at communication." the remnant of the Designer said as massive Void eyeballs were created off to the side, seemingly squeezing through the core of a sun and spreading out in search of prey. After a few minutes, the Skism Sentinel would show up and contain the entire galaxy with a skism field.

"So yes, your Void Seedling, once you fed it enough, used its seedlings and they all went off in search of fertile husk material," it said as a replay of the burst of light was replayed as well. "Husk material that exists in your dimension in several locations due to the Void having successfully breached those suns in the past." It said, showing massive skism fields dotting the cosmos before zooming quickly in on one and pointing a massive arrow at the black tentacle substance making up most of its body.

"The Void Seedling knows that husk material exists in your dimension, from previous Void invasions, but it was unable to determine the exact location in which it needed to spread, hence the circular explosion of seedlings."

The eye had shrunk considerably, and I became alarmed that it would completely vanish before it actually got to any of the other questions that I had burning in my brain. It seemed to think the same as well because it started to talk faster and severely cut down on the explanation length.

"Anyways, continually active skism fields draw a lot of power, hence we left some batteries in your dimension. Originally, they were considered invulnerable, due to your dimension being made up of weaker material and energy density, but with your updated knowledge, we now know that this is not true. Protect these batteries at all costs!" It said as it showed the six red egg-like objects that the Last Engineer had made a note of breaking open.

A wave of fear rushed through me. I had intended to open them myself to see what was inside them. I hoped that the Last Engineer didn't have them and that my friends had not decided to open them as well.

"Finally, yes, we had abandoned these three dimensions. It was known that it was all a matter of time before our creations powering the shield fell and the Void escaped and killed off everything. With you, however... there might be a chance at saving and empowering the shield again, seeing that your species possesses a compatible mind. I dissected your absorbed abilities and fixed them so that you can go back to working on fixing the problem without worrying that you might accidentally kill your friends. I cut away each ability's need to bond completely to a dominant part of you and simply made them usable as needed. I changed corruption to something else that will help you fix your problem. Clarification, this is your problem, not ours even though we made it. No, we won't save you, we have our own problems to deal with." it said as I felt a ball of rage flame up inside me.