He detected an entrance of some sort that led downwards for quite some ways, multiple miles buried into the Antarctic.
As he moved over to where the entrance to this elevator shaft was, he pointed his hand towards the sheet of snow that obscured it.
["Heat Wave"]
Emitting from his palm, heat waves that distorted the air pressed against the snow, filling the surrounding land with steam as he melted the veil that hid the entrance to the Sentinel research facility.
'Found you,' he thought.
His eyes laid on it; a metal hatch that led to his desired destination, grabbing onto the handle and casually lifting the heavy-duty, thick seal of metal. The hatch itself was forged of clean, unblemished metal, making it doubtless that it was what he was looking for.
Peering below the hatch, he found an elevator waiting below, which he hopped down into as the metallic flooring echoed beneath his shoes. After he landed, the hatch automatically closed itself with a loud 'thud'.
"...Alright…How do we get down?" He mumbled.
There were a few buttons in the jet-black, steel elevator, though nothing was exactly labeled, so he had to guess.
["Divination"]
It wasn't a certainty to find the answer he was looking for, but in this situation. ["Divination"] was his best solution as it secluded an answer for him from a simple enough process.
Using the passive spell to find a light gust of mystical air swirling around the circular green button, he pressed it before a 'buzz' sounded out.
VRRRRR.
Finally, the elevator began to move downward, sliding down the tunnel that led deep below the Antarctic surface.
As he stood there, simply waiting for the elevator to reach its destination at the bottom floor he instructed it to go, casual 'elevator music' began playing with a relaxing chime.
"Huh," he remarked, surprised to hear music.
Distracted by the existence of music, the elevator suddenly stopped, opening up to a random floor that definitely wasn't the lowest layer he requested.
'It stopped–?' He realized.
Bringing his gaze forward, he watched the thick, metal doors of the low-profile facility open to reveal multiple turrets pointing towards him from the room ahead.
"Really?" He narrowed his eyes.
Before he could get another word out, the set of turrets unleashed a storm of lead towards him, blaring out as steaming bullet cases bounced and rang off the floor, filling the elevator with smoke from the barrage of gunfire.
After a solid minute of rapidfire bullets, the turrets finally winded down as steam exuded from their barrels.
Revealed past the veil of smoke, the black-haired sophomore was standing there with a displeased expression, holding a chromatic barrier in front of him that had caught the projectiles.
["Absolute Barrier"]
Just as the ceiling-mounted turrets began winding up again, he quickly dismissed his mystical shield and acted swiftly as he dashed over while summoning a weapon into his hand.
["Weapon Construction: Vanta Black"]
Bringing the all-black sword into his grip, he leapt up, swinging it with a line of darkness etching itself in a curve that decapitated the turrets as sparks sprinkled down from the destroyed technology.
"...Now, where the hell am I?" He questioned to himself.
Looking around, the room he found himself in seemed to be an unused lab of some sort, housing experiments that were held from public light. He leisurely looked around for a minute, finding tubes on shelves that held morphed fetuses of creatures that barely resemble humans.
'Secret experiments? Can't say it doesn't fit the bill of an Antarctic facility,' he thought.
There was technology that seemed at least a decade ahead of what was normal for the rest of the world; handprint-scanning keypads for heavy-duty doors, laser-protected shelving, and robotic limbs that occupied workstations, fiddling with constructing new tech.
Though none such security mattered for him as he simply blasted through the next door with a propulsion of drilling air pressure, walking into a vast, metallic dome that was eerily empty.
"--" He looked around.
Suddenly, the entire dome began to rumble before it locked down around him; the doorway at the end of the chamber and the place he came from were heavily barricaded by layers of unknown metal and white-hot lasers.
A voice came in through a speaker system, addressing him directly:
"You're earlier than expected, but expected nonetheless, Noah Grays."
It was a masculine voice interlaced with a light, Russian accent that spoke elegantly with silvery words.
"Asiimov," Noah said.
Even his quietly spoken word was picked up by the chamber as the voice on the intercom responded in kind.
"Ah, so you know my name? It's as I suspected; Yukio has defected, then," Asiimov dribbled on the speaker, "...I warned the Boss as much. I knew that man was a snake. It wasn't just me, either. Nonetheless, it changes nothing. You've only expedited your execution by coming here, Noah Grays."
"Is that so?" Noah responded.
"Very much so," Asiimov replied.
The speaker went silent before a hum of vibrating metal resounded, emitting small tremors beneath Noah's shoes as he witnessed panels in the floor open up, allowing an entity into the locked-down chamber with him.
A massive lion infused with technological components growled, having half its body be of a pitch-black metal with a completely mechanical tail that housed a laser on one end.
"Tacky," he muttered, not intimidated.
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