Gracefully, like an angel drifting through a lightless aether, Gottlieb floats along in space, unmoving, just staring out into the vast emptiness beyond the dim, weak lights of the station. His hand holds on to the cord, which is tethered to the safety railings as he moves along the station’s exterior, towards where the solar-panels ought to be.

Doing something like this without permission would have been a good enough reason to shoot him, back before all of this happened. The panels are some big topic. A real top secret deal, apparently. Somehow, even more so than the station itself. Although, he just doesn’t quite get it, honestly. What’s so special about some solar-panels?

The man hurries along, wanting to finish his task before Grunheide gets bored of chewing on the cable and Kai wakes up again.

Gottlieb isn’t entirely sure that Kai would let him back inside, if it was awake to make the choice.

[Azimuth]

Azimuth sits in the carriage, her mind still as dazed and flashed as the repeating visions of the light that shines before her eyes in her memories.

She had said that she was tired and wanted to rest and, somehow, that worked. All of the soldiers, the priests, the officers and every minor noble that had been out here as witness to what had just happened, shuffled out of the way, hastily pushing her into a curtained carriage that she now sits alone inside of, in quiet solitude.

The truth is that it was all just a little too much for her out there.

She leans her head against the inner wall of the carriage, listening to the excited voices talking outside of it. They’re all going over the event in detail amongst each other, as if they weren’t all there to see it for themselves. They’re all repeating the story, raving about it to one another, as if it had been the most shocking experience of their lives.

— Which, to be fair, it might well be. The same could be said for her too, after all.

But Azimuth is still trying to understand what exactly all of this means. Excitement is well and good and all. She’s excited too, about such a large, confusing variety of things. But what exactly does this mean for her life from here on out?

She supposes that chicken farming is off the table, as sad as that is.

She really wanted to become a chicken farmer.

The woman rubs her forehead, trying to think. But between all the retellings of the story outside and even in her own mind, which refuses to become as quiet as she wants it to be, she just doesn’t seem to be able to.

Azimuth hopes the way back to the city isn’t going to be too long.

[The Goblin King]

Fires rage, black smoke harrowing the landscape like the shrill cries of so many terrified screams. The goblin snarls, pulling his axe out of a human’s leg. The wounded farmer, belonging to a group of settlers that had cut down one of their ancestral forests to make their farms, lets out a pained scream, clawing out for his weapon that lays not far from them.

The goblin steps down on his hand, looking around the area for a moment.

The human houses all around them burn in the wildfire, as all of the others are chased down by swarms of long-legged hunters of their tribe. Those who escape, managing to run away into the distant forests, run right into the others of their collective, who hide in wait in the deep-woods.

This is only the first of many. His eyes wander up towards the sky that looks so clear, so blue and so bright today. There isn’t a single cloud or a single omen of malevolence to be seen in it.

— The gods are pleased.

They are on the right path.

The man beneath him grabs his leg with his other hand and the goblin-king looks back down towards the figure, laying on the land that he and his human kin had stolen from them. It is seeded, planted with crops that are not from this region. In a way, this harvest is the same as the humans. It is an unnatural intrusion into what should be nothing except for pure, untamed, wild forest.

But the plants can’t do anything about that. It’s not their fault.

The goblin-king lifts his axe into the air and swings down, watering them one last time.

[Gottlieb]

Gottlieb climbs around the outside of the station, looking at it from an angle that he’s never seen it from before.

“- Ugly piece of shit,” swears the man, kicking its exterior with his boot, as he climbs around an odd, half-curved ladder. He looks over his shoulder, ‘down’ towards the planet, the world, which seems very unusually large from this perspective. It’s very different, seeing it for real, than it is looking at it through screens and monitors.

Here, from where he is now, it feels like he could just… dive and jump right into it.

But that’s probably a bad idea.

Gottlieb returns his attention to the task at hand, climbing another rung, past the many warning stickers, caution signs and all manner of other things that he decides are simply best to ignore.

At least there aren’t any monsters out in space. It looks like anything that Kai can make is stuck, contained inside of the station itself. This could be a real advantage for him, but honestly, he doesn’t know for what other reason he would ever come out here again after this.

Maybe if something breaks, but eh… Even if it does, who’s going to fix it? Him? Probably not.

Grunheide seems to be getting smarter. Maybe she could do it? Although, then again, they don’t have any spacesuits her size, so…

Gottlieb climbs over the edge, looking towards what he can only assume are the solar-panels.

“…What the hell?” he asks, squinting.

Gottlieb isn’t sure what exactly he was expecting here, given the way these things have been hyped up. But he was honestly expecting something just a little more…

- Well, anything, really.

He climbs over into the flattened field of panels that the array sits on top of. Several lines run along the floor of the platform.

The man tilts his head, checking his watch, before looking back at the panels.

[SEAL INTACT] Oxygen: 23:22

“They’re just normal solar panels,” mutters Gottlieb, taking the effort to kick one, because it feels like the right thing to do.

They do, indeed, all look like perfectly normal, every-day solar-panels. They don’t have any special form or look to them. There isn’t some unique, space-based mounting system.

They’re just panels.

“Well, that’s a let-down,” says Gottlieb.

Space is so god-damn boring.

He sighs and sets to work, unplugging some cables that should, probably, ideally, in the best case scenario, remain plugged in.

[Auxiliary Gunner Grunheide]

Grunheide stands there in the dark, cold room, continuously gnawing on the thing. She doesn’t really understand why she’s supposed to be doing this, but it seems important to him, the human-god? She can tell that holding this rubbery snake thing and chewing on it seems to be having some effect on the area.

It’s all been very confusing. But from what she has been able to piece together, the meaty-human-god and the ghost in the machine seem to be at odds and she is trapped in the middle.

It’s a dangerous situation for any goblin to be in.

— She wants to go back to the ‘gun’.

She doesn’t understand it. But she knows that she had used it, that divine power. It was hers for a moment and then, just like that… it was taken from her. The human-god had given her a taste of that power, only to take it back from her. But she isn’t left with empty-hands.

During that following blast, cascading down across the world from her shot, she had killed a mass of other monsters and creatures. She had gotten an unusually large amount of experience-points and set them all into her ‘intelligence’ and ‘wisdom’ stats, just as the machine-god had told her to do.

She continues to gnaw on the cable.

On one hand, the human-god is nice enough. He had shown her mercy and fed her. He even let her use the gun to grow stronger.

However, the machine-god had foreseen all of this. It had told her that this would happen, that it had need of her.

Grunheide continues gnawing, looking up towards a dark, once blue light, that dots the wall above her head.

It, the machine-god, will let her continue to use the gun, it had promised her that.

She wants that. She wants the power that it offers. Her eyes wander towards the sealed metal cylinder, in which the progeny of the human-god is trapped.

The human-god readily disposes of things he does not desire, including his own blood. She’s seen it for herself now.

This, of course, means that her long-term safety with him is, likely, abysmal. His heartlessness is a confusing trait, given the kindness that he had offered her. But it is something to consider.

This is about survival, after all. That’s the point of life. To survive.

And the machine-god, the dungeon-core, the entity known as ‘Kai’, appears to be more promising in that particular aspect, despite its cold methodology.

— Just as she had been instructed to do, Grunheide stops chewing on the cable.

[Gottlieb]

Gottlieb whistles to himself, unplugging another cord from a panel. He’s… reasonably, sort of, kind of sure that he’ll be able to plug all of these back in when the time comes. He’ll do that right after he’s done going to Kai and marking his territory.

After that, it doesn’t matter what Kai says and does, because, Gottlieb, in his heart of hearts will know forever that he had won the truest, deepest and most spiritual victory of their rivalry.

[SEAL INTACT] Oxygen: 22:16

— The external lights all around the body of the station jump to life.

The metal plates beneath his boots vibrate with a hum, as the machines inside the station kick back to life.

Gottlieb, realizing what’s happening, turns his head to the side in horror to look at a single, blue light that overlooks the array of solar-panels.

It lights up, its azure shine twinkling with a mischievous aura, like the glow of the many stars all around them.

“…Kai,” says Gottlieb, realizing that something has gone very wrong. The electricity is back, even if he unplugged several of the panels. Something must have happened to Grunheide. Was there a monster that had scared her off?

He narrows his eyes.

No… the gun.

She probably left cryo to go shoot the gun. She sold him out.

— Kai doesn’t respond to his single word.

Kai never responds.

The floor shakes, the platform beneath his boots rumbling. Gottlieb sways on his legs, losing his balance, as something moves beneath his feet. He grabs hold of the tether, pulling himself in towards the rest of the station and off of the array of solar-panels as the flat surface that they were mounted on splits apart along the lines that he had seen before, opening to reveal a large, dark compartment inside.

Gottlieb’s eyes go wide as he holds on, to stop himself from flying off into space, as he stares at the thing that emerges.