Guardians of Terraria II: The World of Calamity

Episode 24.2 - Silence before the storms

Lord Yharim sat upon his throne.

He truly deserved finally being back in the Nexus. Once upon a time, he had ruled many worlds. Worlds that had been full of inhabitants who hadn't known better than their own pitiful and meaningless existence.

Every single one of their conflicts, their squabbles, their wars... it was all meaningless. All a distraction from what truly mattered. Something that Yharim alone had realised. No, been enlightened to.

He gazed out at the bones that remained of the Lihzahrd race, still strewn out across the throne room's brick floor. Soldiers were cleaning them up, but they served as a stark reminder to his days as the Jungle Tyrant.

"My lord."

He turned his head to the entrance of the chamber, spotting one of his generals approaching him.

"We have an update on the status of Calamitas."

"Did she fail?" Yharim asked.

The general seemed to stiffen. A common reaction when under the fear of punishment from his hand. "Calamitas was slain."

Yharim made no reaction beyond asking another question. "What of the Guardians?"

"We are uncertain, my lord," the general said.

Yharim rose to his feet. No matter, he thought to himself. In fact, he had been expecting Calamitas to fall. She was only a clone, weaker than her source, and certainly not strong enough against the power and ingenuity of the Guardians.

Yharim beckoned to the pile of scrap metal by the side of his throne. Recovered from the remains of one of the citizens that had fallen during his invasion of their village. "Give this to the head of Project Hodgepodge. See to it that he puts these parts to good use."

"Yes, sir."

***

"As rank progresses, so often does the lethality of equipment. In the hands of competent soldiers, the weapons have the ability to make change. However, competent soldiers take no action but orders from above.

"Addendum: If you read this, you have come far. Do not disappoint. Go now to Hell, for the next component stored in what were once my forges."

William looked up from the Codebreaker as Draedon's voice finished speaking, casting his eye over Sid and Meg.

"That is some whacko stuff there, Will," Sid said.

"So let me get this straight," Meg said, "In the Sunken Sea lab there was a schematic that told you to go find a lab underneath the snow biome? Then you decrypted that schematic and it told you to go to the jungle?"

"And the schematic from that lab is the one we just decrypted," William said. "But we have already have the schematic from the Underworld lab. That was actually the first schematic we found, but we didn't have the means of decrypting it."

"And each of these schematics, aside from having a creepy voice note, have crafting recipes for these special weapons?" Sid asked.

"Correct." William said. "Your new laser-turrets that you like so much were thanks to the ice lab's schematic. Same with Meg's Gauss Pistol and my Hydraulic Volt Crasher." He turned back to the Codebreaker, staring into its computer screen and quickly reading off the crafting recipes for the new items.

"The problem is, we can't yet craft any of the new items here," he said. "The Advanced Display I believe will let us decrypt the Underworld schematic, but it requires something called a Life Alloy. The weapons all need that too along with Infected Armor Plating."