Chapter 137: Chapter 133: Ghost in the Wires
Will pulled his bleeding fist out of the ruined machinery. Shattered glass rained across the metal desk in a jagged shower. Bright sparks cascaded over the stagnant blood pooling on the cracked keyboard. The violent destruction of the corporate terminal did not bring any kind of closure. It triggered a dead man’s switch.
Deep, grinding mechanical gears engaged behind the drywall. Heavy iron blast shutters dropped rapidly over the primary double doors. The thick steel slammed into the concrete floor with a deafening crash, sealing the corridor behind them.
Tyson immediately lunged for the barrier. He wedged his Goliath-Plate fingers under the bottom lip of the iron shutter. The pneumatic pistons inside his arm shrieked in protest. He tried to deadlift the massive barricade. The steel did not budge a single millimeter. He dropped his arm, breathing heavily.
P.A.C.I.F.I.C. had built this butcher shop specifically to contain test subjects. The Faction Vanguard was now locked securely inside the corporate kill-box.
The ceiling shuddered directly above the shattered glass vats. Four concealed metal panels slid back into the architecture with a sharp pneumatic hiss. Massive, dual-barreled automated turrets descended on heavy hydraulic arms. They were rusted and caked in twenty years of grime, but the heavy-caliber ammunition chains feeding into the firing chambers gleamed with pristine, deadly intent.
The brass casings were larger than a grown man’s thumb. A single grazing shot would completely sever a limb. A direct hit to the chest would turn any member of the Vanguard into scattered mist.
They did not fire immediately. The ruined terminal had disrupted the localized power feed. The Qliphothic ward governing the targeting AI struggled to reboot through the damaged copper wiring. Four harsh red laser sights flickered on. The beams swept the dark tile, aggressively hunting for movement among the wreckage.
"Freeze!" Will snapped.
Elizabeth stopped mid-step. She locked her knees, holding her balance precariously over a pile of pulverized bone. "You broke the primary diagnostic interface. The system thinks the test subjects are staging a riot."
Maddie stared blankly at the ceiling. One of the red targeting lasers dragged slowly across her broken ribs, illuminating the cracked purple plates of her carapace. Her chest screamed for oxygen. Every instinct demanded she gasp for air to feed her exhausted lungs. She stopped breathing entirely, forcing her body to endure the suffocation rather than trigger the motion sensors.
"Are those fifty-caliber—" Maddie whispered.
"Shut up," Will ordered. He kept his jaw perfectly rigid, tracking the beams with his eyes alone. "Don’t breathe. They’re motion-linked."
The red lasers danced methodically across the chamber. The Vanguard stood absolutely motionless in the open. They could not fight four heavy machine guns without any structural cover. The metal desk offered absolutely no real protection against armor-piercing rounds. Thick bundles of power cables pulsed with heavy ward-magic beneath the floorboards, feeding the mechanical reapers bolted to the ceiling.
Elyas did not ask for permission. He operated on pure survival instinct. The rogue activated his advanced progression skill.
The magic did not look clean. It did not glow with heroic light or shimmer with refined mana. It was a horrific, agonizing biological collapse. Elyas lost his structural cohesion entirely. His skin sagged violently off his skeleton. His bones rapidly dissolved into a gelatinous paste. He melted into a heavy, reflective black liquid that pooled directly over his combat boots.
He radiated a sickening, unnatural wet heat. The transition smelled exactly like melting plastic mixed heavily with raw stomach acid. His human form broke down into highly corrosive sludge, abandoning his humanity to meet the strict requirements of his class architecture.
The rogue dropped his entire loadout. His scavenged leather vest hit the tile with a wet slap. His twin daggers clattered loudly against the floor.
The targeting lasers instantly snapped toward the sudden noise. The red beams painted the exact spot where Elyas had been standing a second prior.
The black sludge rapidly slithered up the leg of the metal desk. The viscous mass slid directly into the jagged, broken screen of the monitor. Elyas poured his dissolved body down into the exposed copper wiring of the mainframe.
"Keep the guns looking at you." His voice warbled unnaturally from the ruined speakers, severely distorted by the total lack of vocal cords. "I’m taking the back door."
Tyson kept his massive iron arm perfectly still. He spoke softly through gritted teeth. "Don’t cook yourself in the wiring, idiot. We don’t have a bucket to carry you out."
"Just stand perfectly still," Elyas gurgled from inside the casing. "And try not to sneeze."
The narrative perspective shifted brutally down into the architecture. Elyas crawled blindly through the electrical guts of the facility. The space was a rusted conduit pipe barely wider than a human fist. It was a pitch-black, claustrophobic nightmare illuminated only by violent blue sparks jumping across the degraded copper lines. He dragged his liquid form over jagged screws and broken glass left behind by sloppy corporate contractors.
The Qliphothic current acted exactly like a meat grinder. The raw electricity boiled his liquid edges. It applied excruciating crushing weight to his scattered consciousness. He possessed no solid nerve endings in this state, but the corporate magic directly attacked his underlying LitRPG architecture.
The demonic ward actively vaporized fractions of his maximum health pool with every single inch he pushed forward. His stamina bar plummeted into the red. His mana reserves drained rapidly just keeping his liquid state cohesive.
A jagged red System warning violently seared his formless retinas.
[WARNING: Biomass Cohesion Failing. Demonic Ward Intersecting Class Architecture. 8 Seconds to Liquidation.]
He forced himself relentlessly upward. He spilled through a cracked junction box and poured into the central breaker housing beneath the concrete floor. The space was barely large enough for a man to crouch in. Elyas aggressively reconstructed his upper torso. His skin was completely slick with black fluid. He gasped desperately for the stale, bleach-scented air.
He found the primary power core mounted to the wall. The corporation had not installed a standard industrial battery to run the guns. P.A.C.I.F.I.C. had utilized the butcher shop’s abundant inventory. A massive, mutated demon heart hung suspended in the center of the housing.
Thick iron heat-sinks encased the awful, pulsing muscle. Black veins ran across the organic tissue, throbbing with violet light. It pumped raw mana directly into the ceiling turrets with a deep, unnatural thump.
Elyas wrapped his liquid hands around the scalding iron casing. He pulled hard. The ward aggressively burned his sludge. The current fried his half-formed skin, rapidly filling the cramped box with the foul stench of cooking meat.
The rat is boiling, Khan said. The ancient warlord’s voice rang flatly inside Will’s skull. He will not survive that current for ten seconds.
Will tracked the sizzling heat radiating up through the steel floor grating beneath his boots. He barely moved his lips. "Pull it, Elyas."
"It’s stuck!" Elyas screamed directly up through the rusted floor grates. The distortion in his voice carried absolute, raw agony. "The bastards welded the casing to the rebar!"
Tyson locked his jaw. "Rip the floorboards up with it!"
Elyas refused to let go. He leveraged his liquid mass to harden his grip. He anchored his dissolved legs firmly against the concrete foundation. He ignored the ticking LitRPG death-clock burning his retinas. He braced his shoulders against the top of the cramped breaker box. He channeled the last dregs of his stamina into his grip.
He violently ripped the entire iron housing unit straight out of the foundation.
Thick metal shrieked loudly as it tore free from the heavy rebar.
The demon heart burst under the violent shearing force. Black blood sprayed violently across the breaker box. The heavy ceiling turrets instantly lost power. The mechanical whirring died completely. The sweeping red laser sights flickered out a split second before the heavy firing mechanisms could trigger.
A jagged blue prompt flickered over his formless vision as the blood soaked into him.
[Lethal Voltage Survived. Corrupted Qliphothic Marrow Absorbed. +150 EXP.]
Absolute silence crashed back down over the Red Room.
Black sludge violently erupted upward from the floor grating. The corrosive fluid spilled aggressively across the rusted metal. It crashed onto the blood-stained tile right next to Tyson’s boots.
Elyas violently reconstructed his body. The process looked exactly like a reversed autopsy. Muscles knit together rapidly over bare bone. Skin stretched tightly over the raw muscle tissue. He lay completely naked on the floor. Severe electrical burns scored his entire chest. He aggressively coughed up a thick puddle of black fluid.
Tyson stepped forward immediately. The heavy veteran grabbed Elyas by the shoulder. He hauled the rogue up from the gore with a single brutal pull. Tyson stripped off a scavenged canvas jacket and threw it directly over Elyas’s raw chest.
Elyas dragged the heavy canvas over his burns. He looked down at the floor. He stared directly at the puddle of bubbling acid where he had left his gear.
He wiped black fluid off his chin and glared at the smoking remains of his boots. "That was my last intact pair of soles."
Tyson slapped his back hard enough to rattle his jaw. "Nice work, sludge."
"Get dressed." Will stepped away from the ruined terminal. "The guns are dead, but the doors are still locked. We need the blueprints."
