Chapter 198: The World Has an Incident While Lucian Is Asleep

Four more years passed before the morning at Station Eighty-Eight.

At five thirty, frost clung to the mana cables over the western gorge. Inside the control room, an amber alarm began to chirp.

The night technician checked the pressure chart and felt his stomach drop.

He had miscalculated the thermal relief cycle. The seasonal ley-line surge was running fifteen percent above average. And the high-voltage inductor was two months overdue for replacement; last week’s parts train had been delayed by a landslide.

Three ordinary problems had arrived at the same time.

The primary regulator overheated with a harsh hum, releasing a plume of white smoke.

He pulled the emergency disconnect.

The sudden transfer hit the secondary line harder than it could bear. Voltage sagged across the district. Two nearby towns lost their lights and heating.

On the monitor, ten kilometers away, a Rank D dungeon’s contain-ment barrier began to flicker.

* * *

In his bedroom at the Vance estate, seventeen-year-old Lucian slept with one arm wrapped around a pillow.

A sparrow hopped along the branch outside his window. He pulled the blanket over his ear.

Unified System v3.0 processed the incoming telemetry without sounding an alarm.

[REGIONAL INCIDENT DETECTED: STATION 88]

Severity: Moderate. Local response: Active.

Escalation threshold: Not reached.

[NOTIFICATION HANDLING]

Continue monitoring. Do not wake Host.

Lucian turned over and went on sleeping.

* * *

“Secondary line at a hundred and twenty percent!” the night technician shouted. “Dungeon containment is unstable!”

A patrol knight hurried into the room with his sword drawn. “Should we send an emergency summons to Young Vance?”

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Chief Engineer Varik looked up from the relief valve he was securing.

“Why?”

“The dungeon—”

“We’ve got a failed inductor. Are you proposing to wake a continental financier to replace it?” He pointed his wrench toward the yard. “Trip the dwarven drop breaker. Now.”

The knight ran.

Half a ton of lead fell through the breaker housing. The contacts opened, isolating Station Eighty-Eight from the regional trunk.

Varik opened the operating manual, its technical instructions compiled by Evelyn’s teams and its language standardized by Sylvia’s institute.

The cable tags were blue and yellow, with plain words and distinct symbols: CAPACITOR LINE. NORTHERN STANDARD CONNECTION. No tiny Ancient Titan mark for somebody to miss in a panic.

A maintenance railcar arrived. Four certified technicians un-loaded a replacement inductor from the regional Vance ware-house stock and lifted it onto the support frame.

Meanwhile, the cross-border energy-sharing protocol Eleanor had negotiated the previous year activated at the adjacent Tartarus station. Refined dark mana flowed through the interconnector into the dungeon barrier’s reserve supply.

The barrier stopped flickering.

Varik checked the replacement-load calculation and handed it to the crew.

An assistant caught his sleeve.

“Wait. Wrong resistance factor for the granite conduit. That’s five percent over. We’ll cook the new coil.”

Varik put his glasses back down over his eyes. He read the figures, then crossed one out.

“He’s right. Use the corrected value. Check the alignment again.” The assistant checked it. Another technician read it back.

At six forty-five, they closed the main circuit. Lights returned in the two border towns. The heaters began drawing power.

Varik wiped grease from his cheek and opened the incident log.

One old regulator burned out. A failed inductor. Repair work on the secondary line. The clinic confirmed seven minor injuries from the initial arc and hurried evacuation. No deaths.

He entered all three contributing failures, not just the broken component. Replacement intervals would shorten from twelve months to eight. The district would increase spare stock and require an escalation when a delayed shipment left a component beyond its service limit. Relief-cycle calculations would receive a second check at shift handover.

The operating incident was closed. Procurement and clinic follow-up had named owners and due dates.

Nobody in the control room made a speech about doing it without Lucian Vance.

Varik signed the report and asked whether somebody had put the kettle on.

* * *

At eleven oh four, Lucian woke.

He stretched both arms out from beneath the blankets and yawned. Sunlight filled the room.

A whole morning. No alarm, no knocking, no one insisting that his presence was essential to the continued existence of the world.

Excellent.

He reached for the tablet beside his pillow to check the morning book sales.

An archived infrastructure notice sat beneath the revenue sum-mary.

[WESTERN REGIONAL INCIDENT LOG]

Station 88 regulator and inductor failure. Incident began: 05:30.

Supply restored and operational incident resolved: 06:45. Deaths: 0.

Minor injuries: 7.

Lucian sat back against the headboard. He read the word resolved again. “Already?”

He opened the full report.