The Dawn of the New World

"Danger level...cosmic?" Hao Xuan repeated, uncertain if he had heard it right.

"Yes, that's what it says," Baracus confirmed.

Hao Xuan took a deep breath and took a few seconds to gather his strength again. With some effort, he stood up, turned back around and started walking back silently.

"Where are you going?" Baracus inquired when Hao Xuan was halfway back to the area he had come from.

"To find another way out," Hao Xuan replied placidly.

"What about the escaped prisoner?"

"None of my god damn business. Anything that has a danger level equivalent of the freaking "Cosmos" is something I should not be anywhere near off."

"You don't have to interfere but at least find out a little more and inform the people in charge of the competition. What if the thing breaks out? I don't think anyone here would be able to stop it, whatever it is."

Hao Xuan's pace slowed just a smidgen. Baracus saw that and continued.

"The intelligence that contacted me, it doesn't seem to be conscious, just very good at mimicking intelligent creatures. Right now its only objective is to replace the so-called 'warden' of this prison, and for that, it will do whatever is necessary. We can make use of it."

Hao Xuan slowed down, finally coming to a stop.

"We can exploit it you mean? Seems like a dick move."

"It's just a tool. Either you use it or someone else will, you don't have to think about it too hard."

With a sigh, Hao Xuan turned back around and started walking towards the gate.

"Some people would say the same thing about you, you know..." he mumbled but didn't get a response.

Reaching the gate once again, he kept a distance of 10 meters this time.

"Now what?"

"Go to the extreme left, where the door ends."

Hao Xuan did as told. It took him over a minute of walking to reach the other end of the gold gate.

"Woah," Hao Xuan peered over the edge and of what seemed to be an endless abyss.

Right as the gate came to an end, so did the floor it was attached to. There was nothing but a sinister darkness that seemed to fill this chasm. Not even the echo of Hao Xuan's own voice returned from it.

Grabbing on to the sidewall like his life depended on it, Hao Xuan stared at the small panel at the end, inside the black wall the gate was attached to. There were three holes in the panel, in the shape of a triangle.

"Place the index, middle and ring finger of your right hand in the holes, the sequence doesn't matter," Baracus instructed once again.

When Hao Xuan did so, he felt a tinge of pain as the tips of the three fingers opened up and inch long metal spikes came out of them.

"What the fuck is that?!" Hao Xuan asked, shocked that this was coming out his own body and he wasn't aware of it.

"They're just the nanomachines. I can create structures like this with their help. When they are inside your body, you can't differentiate between them and normal blood cells. You can relax, they are not dangerous to you," Baracus informed.

"Still..." Hao Xuan watched with skepticism as the metal spikes fit perfectly into the three holes. A few seconds later they retracted and his skin close like it was never damaged in the first place, not even leaving a scar.

"So? What'd you find?" Hao Xuan asked while looking at his fingertips with narrowed eyes. It was like his body wasn't his own anymore, at least not exclusively.

"Not too much, you will have to enter the prison and connect me directly to the central control system, the information I can reach from here is very limited."

"Tell me what you found first!" Hao Xuan asked impatiently.

"Just some general information. This planet is actually created around this structure and it goes all the way down to the planet's core. It was created by someone simply referred to as the 'architect' in the records, no other information is given. This.... "prison" is made to contain only one being."

"The population above the surface is not actually completely native to this planet, at least it wasn't at first. It started when a ship crash-landed here millions of years ago. The warden of the prison deemed them worthless and didn't even bother killing them."

"But a few thousand years ago something went wrong. A meteor crashed on the surface and wreaked havoc even down here. The 'thing' imprisoned inside made an attempt to escape and the warden sacrificed himself as a last-ditch effort."

Hao Xuan's brow raised on its own, his interest was piqued.

"Is that normal? Using an entire planet to imprison one...being? Or a creature? What is it exactly?"

"No, it is anything but normal. From what I can tell, there are numerous other prisons that hold millions of prisoners of the temple of the God of War but to have one all to yourself, this 'thing' cannot be underestimated. Also..." Baracus paused, seemingly unsure if continuing any further was at all useful.

But Hao Xuan didn't give him a chance, "What?? Say it already!" he ordered.

Hesitatingly, Baracus continued, "The warden that sacrificed himself to keep the creature from escaping, it was a True God, a pure-blooded God. And all it could do was die to keep this thing here. I don't think you're going to find another warden here capable of keeping it contained."

Hao Xuan's eyes almost popped out of their sockets. His throat went dry as he forced himself to swallow some saliva.

"Does.....it say? What this thing is?"

"Negative. There is no description, just a few names it was called a long time ago."

"W-What names?"

"Depravatio, Eluvias, Insanitas, Desunt Aniae, among many others."

Hao Xuan rattled his brain but the words didn't translate. This meant that it was a language that even Poriverse didn't know.

"What do they mean?"

"Roughly translated, these words mean something like: The Corruption, the Flood, the Disease, the.....Soulless."

"I...I don't think it's a creature that's imprisoned here, but something else."