The blinding electric current and searing cosmic energy continued to surge fiercely through the nervous system of Zulfa's right arm, casting a dazzling sapphire glow across the dim, ancient cavern. Inside the capsule cabin, Naya stared blankly through the glass window, her fingers clawing tightly against the frame as her sobs caught in her throat.

"Zul... please, hold on..." Naya whispered hoarsely, tears streaming down her face without pause as she watched the youth endure excruciating agony on the crystal stone platform.

Captain Danu stood beside Naya, clenching his left fist until his knuckles turned stark white. The war veteran locked his jaw tight, refusing to look away out of respect for the young engineer's final struggle. "He's risking his entire soul, Naya. Don't let this sacrifice go to waste by turning away."

Out on the platform, Zulfa gritted his teeth. His neck veins bulged rigid, and sweat mixed with fresh blood from his wounded arm streamed down to drip against the earth's core crystal altar. The pain tearing through his consciousness was brushed aside. His engineer's brain took complete control, converting physical agony into fuel for pure concentration.

"I... I cannot fail here," Zulfa muttered with a heavy, trembling voice.

Instantly, Zulfa's eyes flared with bright light. Through the conductor cable embedded in his arm's nerves, his consciousness linked directly to the flowing vein network of the earth's Ley-Lines. Within his mind, the dark underground cavern and the fracturing cosmic energy sphere warped into an extraordinarily complex, giant urban architectural blueprint, stretching out in a three-dimensional holographic projection all around him.

Focus, Zulfa... Treat this like designing the foundation of a skyscraper, but on a cosmic scale, his inner voice guided, steering every technical calculation he needed to execute under real-time pressure.

Using his free left hand, Zulfa moved agilely across the crystal altar platform, tapping and remapping the unstable Ley-Line nodes.

"The northern sector main node has shifted three degrees... shift it back to the nodal axis!" Zulfa shouted to himself, channeling a stream of blue energy from his palm to patch the first fracture on the cosmic sphere's surface.

Bzzzt—Clank!

Modern civil engineering visualization blended magically with ancient Arkian sorcery. Each time Zulfa etched an architectural calculation line in mid-air using his conductor energy, the black fractures on the cosmic energy sphere began to seal slowly, responding to the new geometric layout engineered by the young man.

Inside the capsule cabin, Naya stared at the emergency diagnostic screen that abruptly flickered back to life. "C-captain! Look at the graph!" Naya gasped, pointing at the monitor with wide eyes filled with a mix of awe and dread. "The energy insolase from the Ley-Line core is stabilizing! He's genuinely rebuilding the seal structure manually from scratch!"

"That kid... he's using all his civil engineering knowledge to tame the primeval magic of the cosmos," Captain Danu murmured in wonder, shaking his head slowly at the extraordinary resilience unfolding before them.

Yet that manual sealing process under real-time pressure was not without risk. The more fractures Zulfa sealed, the greater the backlash of cosmic energy from the alien galaxy pushing back against the closure.

The signal from the edge of the galaxy surged sharply, spitting a high-pressure feedback shockwave that slammed straight into the altar platform where Zulfa stood.

"Argh...!" Zulfa grunted as the shockwave lashed his body mercilessly.

The purplish-black energy wave clashed violently with his conductor's blue luminescence. The collision of those two cosmic forces spawned minor explosions across the altar, hurling sharp crystal shards that tore through Zulfa's clothing and skin.

Naya clapped both hands over her mouth, gasping as she watched Zulfa get battered by the brutal feedback wave. "Zulfaaaaa!"

Zulfa staggered backward, nearly losing his footing at the altar platform's edge. Fresh blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and his breath scorched his throat. Yet he knew he couldn't stop now. One final node at the upper core of the energy sphere remained wide open, serving as the last gateway for the alien galactic anomaly.

"Not yet... the final node... must... lock it now!" Zulfa snarled with the last remnants of strength in his frame.

He raised his left hand, mustering every scrap of cosmic energy and intellectual capacity to fuse the convergence point of the final node onto the seal's architectural blueprint.

Right as his fingers brushed against the convergence point—

BARRR-GH!

A pure cosmic energy backcurrent far more massive than before detonated violently, slamming squarely into Zulfa's unprotected frame.

The brutal impact robbed his lungs of their remaining oxygen, shattering the conductor circuitry in his right arm in a single flash of blinding white light.

Zulfa pitched backward, collapsing in a pool of blood across the cold crystal altar surface.

Bzzzt... click... click...

Inside the capsule cabin, the primary monitor screen—previously tracing a stable graph—suddenly went pitch black. The digital heartbeat synchronized with Zulfa's biometric sensor outside slowed, then morphed into a long, silent flatline.

Beep......................................................

Naya stared at the monitor screen with bated breath, her eyeballs trembling violently. Her heart felt like it stopped beating right alongside the vanishing life signal on the display.

"Zulfa...?" Naya whispered, trembling as hot tears spilled uncontrollably down her cheeks.

The cosmic energy backcurrent that had hammered the youth's frame had caused Zulfa's heart to stop beating momentarily, leaving a chilling silence deep within the ancient cavern beneath the earth's belly.