Chapter 97: Surge

The bright glowing blue tinged spark disappeared into the glowing Imperium, for a moment it seemed as if nothing would happen, there was a great sense of stillness about the small room that Kothar had created just for experimenting on the Imperium.

Crack! An enormous bolt of electricity shot out from the glowing Imperium, shooting straight at Kothar, sending his body slamming into the side of the room. 

Now, the room was silent, the Imperium still glowing softly, and Kothar's glowing body laying against the wall of the room. 

A small groan escaped Kothar, and then he stood up. He felt strange, his entire body had a tingling feeling, a sharp sensation as if thousands of needles were piercing every single inch of him, inside and out.

Kothar looked down at his hand, and found it completely sparking with electricity, his body was holding the enormous discharge from Imperium!

Kothar walked over to the massive metal brackets that held the Imperium, and peered into one to see his own reflection, and startled himself, taking an abrupt step away.

Kothar's eyes were completely obscured by the bright electricity sparking from them, and stray sparks flew out from his mouth and ran across the surface of his entire body.

[Kothar, you need to discharge all this energy! It's tearing you apart from the inside out!] Silane pulled Kothar out from his fascination with how his body was able to hold so much raw electricity, even though it was not formed with Lightning Mana. 

Immediately, Kothar sent a Bolt flying toward one of the walls, and the enormous amount of electricity within his body followed along, forming an enormous cord of electricity that slammed into the wall of the room, creating a massive explosion, sending shards through the entire room.

Fortunately, this time Kothar had the foresight to jump into the portal he had prepared, closing it behind him, and reappeared down the corridor that led away from the room, breathing heavily.

Ignoring everything else, even the enormous explosion from the room, Kothar sat down to assess what damage the surge of electricity had done to his body.

He heaved a sigh of relief as he noticed that both his mana cores were intact, floating safely around his chest area, then, he directed his attention to the Mana Storage Unit within his shoulder and the Plasma Blade in his shoulder. The Magesteel used in creating both of them was extremely durable, and the inscriptions he had used were for channeling Lightning Mana and did a good job of preventing the Magesteel from taking any kind of burden at all.

Apart from his mana cores and his augmentations, his body was a wreck, every muscle screamed in pain, and a charred smell emanated from him. The electricity had burned away a good deal of his hair, and Kothar reached up to find his eyebrows were patchy. If there was anyone else around to look at him, he would';ve cut quite the comical figure.

[Now that was a close one, in any other situation I'd get at you about being careless, but I think the results of the experiment speak for themselves. Even better, it shouldn't be too difficult to harness the Imperium this way, all we need to do is create a rudimentary spark plug, and it'll return an exponential amount of power, which we can use to keep the electricity flowing from the Imperium.] Silane sounded pleased, she had worried that they would have had to spend weeks trying to puzzle out a way to use the Imperium, but in one rash moment Kothar had found them a solution.

[Sure, we can easily put it to use by doing that, but I do wonder how the civilization that built that cube managed to harness the Imperium. There were no visible sparks of electricity, no surges of power, just a regular fluctuating electromagnetic field.] Kothar had a melancholy tone in his voice, as he remembered the majestic sight at the center of the cube.

[Once we get some decent sensors and equipment up and running, I'm sure I could optimize things even further and learn more about this. Plus by then, we should have some kind of automated fabrication process, so you'll be able to focus on increasing your mana reserves and in turn, increasing my processing capability.] The obvious excitement in Silane's voice could also be felt by Kothar, and he realized, just as some of Silane's analytical and curious nature had rubbed off on him, his constant desire for power and improvement had rubbed off on her.

[Alright, for now, let's go and see what kind of damage I did.] Kothar heeded back up the winding staircase, the walls covered in the discord marks from his Plasma Blade as he had carved the passageway.

A strong smell of burnt wood and ozone emanated from the room, and inside the Imperium was still intact, seated securely within the metal cradle.

However, the floor was carpeted with splinters that had been sprayed all across the room by the massive surge of electricity.

A crater like scorch mark now marred one side of the room, and was still smoking, adding further to the dense smell of smoke. Kothar pulled up the mask attached to his new armor, and began clearing the debris.

As he worked, he started to hum. The song was filled with nostalgia and melancholy, and he remembered the Garden. One of the junior scientists who were assigned to care for him had taken him onto her lap one day after he had been drilled for hours on the biology of the Cygnus system.

She had hummed the same song as she had rocked the boy with the chip implanted in his head, back and forth, who stared at her curiously, having experienced no human contact before. 

A strong vibration emanated from Kothar's electromagnetic sensing belt, and he immediately began running back down toward the main cavern. 

His basic sensor array had detected movement, there was an intruder.