Lancelot's eyes widened, disbelief flickering across his usually calm face. "A… Rank 7?" he muttered under his breath.
The weight of that realization settled over him like a storm cloud. Every record, every report, every experiment carried out in the past three years screamed that what he was seeing was impossible.
The corruption that plagued Pandora followed strict progression patterns. After an environmental tether manifested, it spawned a corruption cluster and those clusters always began weak. Rank 1, sometimes Rank 2. A Rank 3 was considered a nightmare, but even then, growth took time, sometimes weeks even months.
If left unchecked, a cluster would evolve, its creatures mutating and their strength increasing until even containment became meaningless. That was why sealing corrupt beasts had always been a temporary measure. The corruption didn't die. It just waited, festering, until it surpassed whatever power had sealed it.
But this?
