"You have such good posture, REN! LUNA, doesn’t he have great posture? You know, it is so wild being in the future... WERE LUNA AND OLD DADDY SIRIUS SEEM TO LOVE ME MUCH MORE! Everything seems off but YOU ARE BOTH SO CUTE TOGETHER! OH MY GOD, ARE YOU TWO GOING TO HAVE BABIES SOON?!"

Ren desperately power-walked in circles around the colossal crystal formation, frantically trying to focus on his theories to block the noise out. Lykea power-walked directly behind him, shouting her observations. Sirius power-walked directly behind Lykea, desperately, quietly pleading with his wife to lower her volume. And Luna power-walked directly behind Sirius, burying her face in her hands, desperately trying to calm both of her parents down before she died of sheer embarrassment.

Mayo found the entire spectacle absolutely phenomenal.

She couldn’t help herself. Every single time Lykea lobbed a chaotic, unfiltered comment into the air, Mayo immediately followed it up with a perfectly timed, razor-sharp joke, ruthlessly feeding the chaos. She possessed the deadly accuracy of a woman who had waited her entire life for a situation this perfectly, hilariously ridiculous.

The rest of the vanguard stood quietly by the walls, highly entertained. They watched in complete silence as the "Starweaver Little Train", consisting of Ren, the entire reunited family, and a stowaway Mayo, made a frantic, incredibly loud, circular procession repeat around the glowing supercomputer.

Therefore, when Zhao finally slammed feet-first onto the stone floor of the chamber, sweating heavily and breathing hard, carrying the frantic urgency of someone who had sprinted through the sky without a single second of rest, Ren welcomed the man with a profound, overwhelming joy that went vastly beyond mere gratitude for the delivered cores.

It was finally time to escape... I mean, activate the system.

Ren didn’t waste a single second.

The moment Zhao landed, breathing heavily from his relentless flight, Ren practically snatched the two harvested cores from his hands.

Fire and Water... The Crystal hearts thrummed with raw elemental power. He immediately carried them toward their corresponding sockets at the base of the colossal crystal brain.

Actually, he only needed one of them.

But Ren’s fast mind had already run the calculations, and the conclusion was undeniable: physically slotting both cores was going to be vastly faster than asking Lykea to step into her designated position and actually stay put.

He needed her to remain perfectly still, far away from Sirius, for the random amount of time required for the ancient supercomputer to read her signature and give him access.

By using his wildcard beasts, he could easily cover one extra of those elemental slots and completely bypass the terrifying, unpredictable variable that was his dreamy eyed, always cheerful, future mother-in-law.

Sirius, for his part, was operating with a level of blind obedience that was deeply unsettling to witness.

The legendary, terrifying Commander Starweaver, a man whose unshakeable composure had been etched into the kingdom’s soldiers, was currently executing every single one of Ren’s requests without a drop of hesitation. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t offer any pushback. He moved with the crisp, absolute readiness of a loyal foot soldier taking direct orders from a vastly superior officer.

Ren had handed him his wife back. At this exact moment, if Ren casually asked him to do a handstand and try to touch the vaulted ceiling with his boots, Sirius would probably genuinely attempt it.

Ren deliberately chose not to ask Lykea to take her place. But, entirely true to her positive nature, she stomped over and took her position anyway.

It wasn’t because the system strictly required her anymore; with the Fire and Water cores successfully seated, the math was already covered. She stepped up to the massive structure simply because she absolutely refused to stand by and be useless. If everyone else was physically touching the glowing, ancient thingy to save the world, then by the gods, she was going to touch it too.

There was just one massive, infuriating problem.

Her designated socket, the Light element, was positioned on almost the exact opposite side of the colossal crystal brain from Sirius. The massive, towering structure completely blocked her line of sight.

"SERIOUSLY, WHO DESIGNED THIS THING?!" Lykea’s voice echoed deafeningly off the cavernous walls. She aggressively planted her palm against the glowing rune, violently twisting her neck at impossible, aching angles as she desperately tried to find Sirius’s reflection in the translucent facets of the brain.

"WHY IS IT BUILT LIKE A GIANT, OBSTRUCTIVE WALL?! I CAN’T SEE MY HANDSOME HUSBAND! I AM TRYING TO LOOK AT HIS NEW SCARS IN THE REFLECTION AND IT’S ALL DISTORTED! THEY CLEARLY DID NOT THINK ABOUT WIVES WHO JUST CAME BACK FROM THE PAST AND WANT TO STARE AT THEIR HUSBANDS WHILE THEY SAVE THE WORLD! THIS IS TERRIBLE ARCHITECTURE!"

Ignoring the shouting echoing around the chamber, Ren focused entirely on the final count.

Water and Fire were securely covered by the Goldcrest cores. Shadows was locked in, utilizing the black heart belonging to Orion’s crystallized wife. Sirius was acting as the living proxy for Wind, courtesy of his residual petrification brand. Lykea was anchoring Light through hers.

Only two slots remained empty: Wood and Earth.

He would cover both of them himself, utilizing the unique elemental flexibility of his wildcards.

Ren reached into his shadow and pulled out the Mantis clone again. He pressed the deep jade crystal into the Earth depression. It clicked into place perfectly. The ancient system accepted the multi-elemental beast as a valid proxy for Earth without a single spark of resistance.

Next, he drew the Wolverine clone. He carried the swirling core to the final empty socket, Wood, and firmly slotted it in.

It seated perfectly.

The exact millisecond the final crystal touched the bottom of the slot, the massive circuit violently closed.

The raw data hit Ren’s mind like a tidal wave crashing into an almost dry subterranean cave.

This wasn’t the thread of intelligence he had experienced during the partial activations. This wasn’t a controlled, deliberate drip of information. This was an entire ocean violently breaching the dam.

Now that all seven elemental nodes were successfully anchored, the colossal system unleashed its full payload all at once.

Across the circle, Sirius and Lykea both gasped as a faint, echoing ripple of that tidal wave crashed into their own minds.

But Ren took the absolute brunt of it. His consciousness violently expanded.

It was a sensation he recognized instantly, yet magnified on a scale he had never expected. It felt exactly like when his fungus fully awakened, that sudden, breathtaking widening of his mental bandwidth that allowed him to process data far beyond human limits.

But this was larger.