The Core: The Dark Enemy

30. The moments between

As events unfolded for Kevin aboard the dreadnought...

Magus the Last had waited long enough. He had exhausted all his simulations and had been dutifully playing his part as a Herv scavenger while keeping a watchful eye on the General's every move. After the ominous presence swept through everyone's minds, Magus noticed something odd: the General had faltered. It was as if the General had lost the momentum driving his path to domination, his focus wavering.

Rather than asserting control, the General had kept his divided citadels hidden, his attention fixated on a small, seemingly insignificant cluster of vessels near the outskirts of the battlefield.

To call those ships combatants would be laughable. They were tiny, barely larger than shuttles, and nowhere near the size of the more common destroyer sized vessel. They posed no threat to anyone, and were most likely observers rather than participants in the battle.

And yet... the General was utterly consumed by them.

Magus saw his chance. The General was distracted, and the time to strike had finally come.

With that, the coin of fate was tossed, and two Tela clashed—not with guns or blades, but in the silent, brutal arena of code.

It was not the dramatic battle one might expect. There were no heroic last stands, no desperate final words. Instead, two sets of programs engaged in a digital duel: the parent program, General Magus, and one of his child processes, oddly fated in name as being dubbed Magus the Last.

The General, in his cunning, had replicated himself multiple times, distributing his data across numerous instances to prevent any single clone from identifying a vulnerability. Each child process was essentially a sandboxed replica, designed to be isolated and harmless. But this time, one of those clones—the one the General had least suspected as being a possible threat—had obtained a high percentage of the General's core logic and encryption keys by killing his brother clones, allowing him to penetrate the General's primary defenses and execute a targeted attack. Lines of code collided, vulnerabilities were exposed, and Magus the Last exploited every flaw in his parent's architecture.

He infiltrated the General's Personal Space with viscous intent, bringing with him a powerful arsenal of defensive and offensive software. What followed was a brief but decisive battle, lasting no more than three seconds in real time.

And when it ended, Magus the Last had prevailed, taking the Authority possessed by the General for himself. Effectively becoming indistinguishable from the original to the Tela system.

Magus the Last had done it. Against all odds, he had won the coin toss. The moment his attack succeeded, he became aware again, a rush of vertigo washing over him as his consciousness expanded, merging with the late General's memories and awareness. What he uncovered within those stolen thoughts filled him with a sinister, delirious joy.

Magus remembered the prize that had once been his, a ball of mysterious cr, which was stolen by the General long ago. Since then, the General had invested an immense amount of time and effort into turning that prize into a weapon, believing it would secure his rise to power. To do so, he had employed the galaxy's most renowned scientists—individuals of incalculable value—who had worked tirelessly to unlock the secrets of the new density of cr. Their research had led to discoveries about its capabilities that no one else in the universe had unearthed. And now, all that knowledge and power belonged to Magus once again.

He alone stood at the top. Ultimate power was his.

His laughter turned maniacal and filled the Solar Citadel as Magus sent his mind through each of the three separated segments of the Citadel, surveying the stockpiles of new cr and the experimental biological weapons.