Rostvan closed his eyes. Twelve hours. Twelve hours until the planet-sized weed bloomed and turned his prize-winning radish patches into a void-riddled crater. Twelve hours until he had to *stay awake* for possibly longer than a full day, an outrage against his planned forty-eight-hour slumber. “Unacceptable,” he mumbled, kicking at a stray pebble. “Absolutely unacceptable.” Eteri, still clutching her sword, watched the remaining Harvester crumble to dust, its final power draining into the throbbing Ignisia. “Unacceptable?” she repeated, knuckles tightening on her grip. “Rostvan, a world-devouring entity is about to bloom! The Spire, the continent, everything will be consumed!” “Precisely,” Rostvan said, rubbing his temples. “And I’m not losing another night of sleep over it. Manual pruning is out of the question. I need a solution that works while I’m unconscious.” He snapped his fingers. “A continent-sized automated lawnmower. Yes. Perfect.” He pulled a small, battered pickaxe from his dimensional pouch, its handle wrapped in what looked like dried kelp. With a grunt, he plunged it into the bedrock beneath his feet. The ground groaned, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through the soles of their boots. He struck again, chipping away at the seemingly impenetrable rock with surprising speed. “What exactly are you doing?” Eteri asked, stepping closer. The air grew colder, thick with the scent of ancient minerals and something akin to ozone. “The roots of the Spire must go somewhere,” Rostvan replied, not looking up. “And if this thing is going to eat the world, it must have a power source. I’m betting it’s under my feet. And if it’s under my feet, I can hijack it.” He swung with frantic rhythm, driven entirely by the horror of future chores. Rocks flew, dust plumed, and within minutes, a gaping maw opened in the floor. A rush of hot, stale air billowed out, carrying the faint tang of scorched metal. A narrow, spiraling tunnel stretched into the darkness below, too perfectly carved to be natural. “Well, I’ll be,” Rostvan muttered, peering down. “Looks like the previous owner left the lights on.” Eteri followed him into the tunnel, her hand on her sword hilt. The passage narrowed, the walls shifting from rough rock to smooth, dark metal inscribed with intricate schematics. The air grew thick with ozone. Rhythmic vibrations vibrated through the metal floor plates. They emerged into a vast, cavernous space. Here, the true nature of the Zeda Spire was laid bare. Spindly, crystalline pipes pulsed with violet mana, feeding into a colossal, central vortex. Gears the size of houses ground silently, their surfaces etched with runes that hummed with latent power. It was the Spire's subterranean core, a labyrinthine marvel humming directly beneath Rostvan's cabbage rows. “Jackpot,” Rostvan grinned, his eyes gleaming with a mad inventor’s glee. “This is perfect. A pre-built power grid.” He began pulling out an assortment of arcane tools from his pouch: wrenches that shimmered with stored light, screwdrivers that hummed with kinetic force, and a spool of wire made from what looked suspiciously like Gorgasla’s whiskers. Eteri watched him, a strange mix of awe and melancholy on her face. “You know,” she said, her voice soft in the echoing chamber, “when I first came here, I expected to die.” Rostvan paused, a glowing mana-clamp halfway to a glass siphon. “Oh?” he asked, his tone surprisingly devoid of his usual flippancy. He turned to her, his expression uncharacteristically serious. Eteri looked away, her gaze drifting to the swirling mana vortex. “The Platinum Zenith, the constant battles, the endless hunger for more power… it all felt so pointless. I thought if I went deep enough into the Spire, fought the biggest, nastiest thing I could find, then at least it would be a meaningful end. A quiet death, away from the screaming and the politics.” Her voice cracked almost imperceptibly. “Instead, I found… stew.” Rostvan set down his brass wrench with a sharp clink, stepping over a thick coil of copper. The thrum of the Spire's core vibrated through their boot soles. “No,” he said, his voice low, firm. “No quiet death. Not here. Not for you.” He reached out, his hand hovering for a moment, then gently took her wrist. His touch was surprisingly warm, steady. “You want peace? You want quiet? You want stew? I have unlimited stew. I have enough quiet to last a lifetime. And I will make sure no warlord, no monster, no *world-eating vine* ever takes that from you again. Do you understand?” Eteri blinked, lowering her blade by a fraction of an inch as warmth tinted her collarbone. “Rostvan…” “Good,” he said, picking up his wrench. He released her wrist, returning to his work with renewed vigor. “Now, about this continental lawnmower. I’m thinking a network of oscillating mana-blades, powered directly by the Spire’s core. We’ll need to reroute the primary mana line through a series of pressure regulators, then filter it through a reverse-entropy array to prevent feedback… Here, hold this.” He shoved a brass tube bristling with sparking wires into her hands. Working together, they became a strange, effective team. Eteri, accustomed to complex spell matrixes from frontline vanguard duty, quickly grasped Rostvan’s outlandish schematics. She held glowing cables steady while he spliced circuits, her keen eyes spotting potential overloads before they happened. Rostvan, for his part, worked with a furious intensity, his pathological laziness manifesting as a desperate race against the clock to *avoid* future manual labor. He explained his designs in rapid-fire bursts, a whirlwind of technical jargon and absurd metaphors. “Think of it like a giant cheese grater for the void-vine, but instead of cheese, it’s… existential dread,” he elaborated, tightening a bolt on a gargantuan mana-accumulator. “And instead of a grater, it’s a self-replenishing array of synchronized reality-shears.” Hours blurred into a racket of sparking wires, humming valves, and Rostvan’s increasingly bizarre instructions. The chamber crackled with their combined effort. Sweat beaded on Eteri’s brow, and even Rostvan looked slightly disheveled, a rare sight. [IGNISIA SEED: BLOOM IMMINENT: 2 HOURS.] A booming announcement from the Monolith made them jump. “Almost there!” Rostvan yelled over the rising crescendo of newly awakened machinery. He jammed a final, massive lead into the central mana vortex. A blast of purple light roared through the shaft, shaking the very bedrock. “It’s ready!” he declared, wiping a smear of grease from his cheek. “The Pruner-of-Worlds is operational! Now, for that nap!” Just as Rostvan straightened up, a sickening crack echoed from above. The ground shuddered. A massive, thorny root, black as pitch and thick as an ancient oak, burst through the reinforced floor, sending shards of metal and rock scattering. It thrashed violently, tendrils snaking out with unnerving speed. Another, larger crack split the ceiling, revealing the underside of Rostvan’s farm. The colossal roots of the Ignisia seed, now thick with absorbed Harvester essence, were tearing through the bedrock, seeking a deeper purchase, seeking more… sustenance. “Oh, come on!” Rostvan groaned, “The timing is just atrocious!” One particularly aggressive root lashed out, coiling around Tato, who had trailed down the steps clutching an empty sack, trembling so violently his teeth clicked. “R-R-Rostvan!” Tato shrieked, as the massive root tightened its grip, pulling him inexorably towards a newly formed, gaping maw that pulsed with sickly green light, lined with rows of jagged, crystalline teeth.

The Engine Room Under the Cabbages