CHAPTER 45 Internal Explosion and Alien Scrap

The descent to the eighty-fifth floor of the Forgotten Necropolises greeted our trio with an absolute, almost sacred silence. The suffocating, howling blizzard and raging winds of the upper plateau abruptly vanished, replaced by a monumental, oval cavern whose walls and vaulted ceiling were coated in a layer of pristine, mirror-smooth black ice. The pale, subterranean glare of the dungeon reflected off the dark glass-like sheets, casting sharp, deep-blue glints across the stone floor that almost hurt the eyes. The cold here was so extreme that it transcended any natural winter anomaly—every breath taken into the lungs felt like inhaling crushed glass, and the moisture on my coat collar froze into fine, white crystals within a fraction of a second.

I walked at a leisurely, strolling pace, keeping my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my black coat. My upgraded Vessel, cemented firmly at a stable thirty percent output of my internal sapphire reactor, operated with quiet, industrial efficiency. The energy pathways running through my limbs distributed the condensed mana in a smooth, frictionless flow, maintaining a comfortable internal temperature while the passive kinetic barrier around my boots pushed away the biting chill of the black floorboards.

Beside my left shoulder, Shnee walked soundlessly, her Celestial Silver rapier held loosely at her side. Her diamond-like eyes constantly scanned the dark, glass-clear shadows of the cavern, her assassin instincts fully calibrated to the environment.

"The temperature here is completely artificial, Dave," Shnee whispered softly, her breath forming a thin, instantly frozen plume of mist in the air. "The dungeon is attempting to freeze the very mana pathways inside our bodies before we even reach the boss chamber."

"Let it try, darling," I replied with a relaxed, brazen chill, adjusting my collar. "Temperature is just the kinetic vibration of particles. When you control the density of space, extreme cold is just another environmental variable to be managed."

"Boss, radar ping!" Kaede's squeaky, high-pitched voice echoed directly in my left ear, her tiny chitinous head poking out from beneath my coat collar. Her custom sapphire-slime powered armor gleamed with a faint blue light, keeping her completely insulated from the freezing draft. "W góry! Coś wielkiego idzie na nas z sufitu! Czysty, ciężki tonaż kinetyczny!"

I didn't even slow my pace. I didn't need to look up. My active 3D sonar instantly rendered a crisp, monochrome makieta of the cavern ceiling in my mind.

From the dark, black-ice ceiling, dropping several tons of frost, shattered stalactites, and ancient ice boulders, the boss of the eighty-fifth floor slid down with a deafening, echoing crash.

It was the Frost Crawler.

The monster resembled a gargantuan, mutated centipede over thirty meters long. Its massive body was encased in a thick, segmented shell of petrified, black-ice armor that gleamed like polished obsidian. Hundreds of razor-sharp, chitynowe legs clicked against the icy walls as it descended, its multi-eyed head emitting a rasping, sub-zero hiss that caused the air in the cavern to crackle with frostbite.

"Zero class. Tragic acoustic entrance," I evaluated coldly, stopping a dozen meters from where the beast landed.

The Frost Crawler roared, its massive mandibles snapping together as it reared its front segments up into the air, preparing for a crushing, multi-ton charge. The sheer physical mass of the creature, combined with the extreme cold radiating from its shell, would have turned any standard party of high-level hunters into frozen meat within seconds.

"Shnee, hold the flank line. Kaede, keep the radar active," I commanded calmly, stepping forward without taking my left hand out of my coat pocket. "I'm going to perform a surgical, internal disposal."

The Frost Crawler launched itself forward, its thirty-meter body gliding across the black ice with unnatural, erratic speed. Its front mandibles, dripping with liquid sub-zero venom, aimed straight for my upper torso.

I didn't dodge. I didn't form a heavy kinetic shield.

As the massive head of the beast reached within a meter of my chest, I executed a minimalist, zero-distance side-step. The monster's multi-ton charge whistled past my coat, missing my chest by mere millimeters.

Before the Crawler could correct its momentum or sweep its tail, I withdrew my right hand from my coat pocket.

I opened the pores on my right palm, releasing a concentrated stream of Sapphire Slime. The blue mercury instantly coated my fingers, compressing under my will to the density of solid black diamond and forming my sharp Abyss Claws.

With a swift, full-body rotation of my hips, I drove my diamond-hard claws directly into the narrow, segmented joint connecting the beast's third and fourth armor plates.

CRACK!

The anti-magic, petrified black ice shell couldn't withstand the multi-ton physical tonnage and point-blank kinetic pressure of my Vessel. My Abyss Claws sheared through the thick armor joint like a hot knife through butter, plunging deep into the soft, unarmored biological interior of the monster.

The Frost Crawler let out a deafening, high-pitched screech of agony, its entire thirty-meter frame thrashing violently as thick, dark posoka sprayed onto the black ice floorboards.

I didn't pull my hand back. Instead, using pure, brute force and telekinetic leverage, I gripped the inner edges of the broken armor plates and pulled in opposite directions.

SNAP!

The sound of tearing chitin and breaking ice shell echoed through the cavern like a cannon shot. I forcibly ripped open a massive, three-foot gap in the monster's protective shell, exposing its pulsating, wet internal organs and glowing mana conduits.

Before the beast could react to the pain or swing its tail, a bright, sapphire flame ignited at the tip of my index finger. I constructed a simple, highly condensed fire spell, fed it a raw, dense charge from my internal reactor, and with a short, precise flick of my wrist, hurled the burning plasma sphere directly into the open, gaping wound.

The blue fire drove deep into the monster's guts.

And in the exact same millisecond, using a sharp, downward jerk of telekinesis, I slammed the cracked, heavy armor plates shut!

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The internal mechanics of the strike were clinical and completely devastating.

The superheated fire spell, locked tightly inside the soft, compressed, sub-zero internal structure of the Frost Crawler, had absolutely no path of escape. The internal moisture and fluids melted instantly into high-pressure steam, the gas expanded violently within the sealed shell, and the internal pressure exceeded the physical limits of the monster's armor in a fraction of a second.

BOOM!

The Frost Crawler literally exploded from the inside out with a deep, bass thud that shook the entire eighty-fifth floor.

Hundreds of tons of shattered black ice, sharp armor fragments, torn flesh, and smoking gray ash erupted in all directions, painting the pristine walls of the cavern in dark, smoking goo. Zero unnecessary theatrics, one hundred percent industrial slaughter.

In the middle of the falling debris, a massive, brilliant blue essence core flashed in mid-air. With a light, effortless pull of telekinesis, I drew the heavy stone straight into my open palm, deactivating my Abyss Claws and letting the slime absorb back through my pores.

I tossed the three-kilogram core into my spatial pouch, where it clinked hollowly against our other spoils.

"The last stop with the frost is officially checked off," I threw to Shnee with my default, brazen chill, using a light breeze of telekinesis to flick the gray ash off my sleeves. "Let's head back to the surface. It's time to cash in this haul with Silas and let our Vessel digest some solid carbohydrates."

The transition back to Oakhaven's Lower City through the Sapphire Prism was a sudden, familiar sensory shock. The pristine, freezing gloom of the Necropolises vanished, replaced by the damp, heavy, and stuffy air of the Lower City, smelling of wet wood, horse sweat, and stale chimney smoke.

We pushed open the heavy, creaking oak doors of Silas's fence office. The interior smelled of old tobacco, moldy parchment, and sour ink. The old merchant sat behind his cluttered oak desk, scratching away with a rusted quill in a thick ledger.

Without playing at empty greetings or useless polite chatter, I reached into my coat, pulled out my bottomless spatial pouch, and unceremoniously dumped our entire haul from the ninth ten directly onto his desk.

BANG!

The heavy countertop groaned under the multi-ton weight of the drop. Silas's ceramic inkwell launched into the air, spinning once before splashing black ink across his freshly written ledger. A dozen copper coins slid off the edge, rolling across the floorboards with a loud clatter.

An avalanche of sparkling, high-level ice cores, crystalline thorns, and deep-level essence stones flooded the desk, illuminating the dark room in brilliant shades of neon sapphire, violet, and deep blue.

Silas's merchant brain suffered a massive, catastrophic system lag and a complete bluescreen. His rusted quill slipped from his trembling fingers, his gliniany pipe dropped from his teeth onto his trousers, and his jaw hung open so wide it seemed physically unhinged. He stared at the mountain of deep-floor crystals, completely paralyzed.

"Oż w rzyć chędożone..." Silas finally wheezed out, his voice cracking like a maturing boy's as he frantically wiped cold sweat from his bald head with a dirty sleeve. "Dave... you absolute, unhinged psychopath! Are you... are you trying to buy out half the craft guilds in the Upper City?! You cleared the entire ninth ten in a matter of weeks?!"

"Standard resource management, old horse," I answered calmly, leaning my shoulder against a wooden support pillar with my hands shoved deep into my coat pockets. "Money doesn't sleep, and my machine requires continuous burning. Prepare the gold, clean these stones through your hidden channels without raising unnecessary noise on the market, and let's wrap this transaction."

Silas nodded frantically, his hands trembling as he pulled open a deep desk drawer to retrieve our gold. But as he reached into the back of the drawer, his veiny fingers hesitated.

He pulled out a small, blackened piece of metal and placed it on the edge of the desk beside the glowing cores.

"While you were downstairs, one of my scouts pulled this scrap from the outer trenches of the Necropolises," Silas muttered quietly, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Take a look at this, Dave. It doesn't fit any blacksmithing style in Midgard."

My eyes narrowed slightly.

It was a jagged, melted fragment of an alien mechanism, crafted from an unnaturally cold, dense alloy that completely absorbed light. On its scorched surface, a deeply engraved, geometric symbol of a twisted, vertical eye smoldered with a faint, corrupted violet energy.

My active Yomi sonar and internal Battle IQ immediately flashed a cold, tactical warning.

This scrap didn't belong to the dungeon system. It was hard proof that an outside entity—a high-level player or an alien anomaly—was actively digging around in the Forgotten Necropolises, infecting monsters, and modifying the code of Oakhaven from the shadows.

However, my expression remained a completely unyielding, cold monolith. My brazen chill didn't flicker even by a millimeter.

"Just a piece of useless, plain scrap," I stated coldly, casually picking up the blackened metal and dropping it into the bottom compartment of my spatial pouch alongside my junk. "Scrap like any other. Add a few coppers for it to the total bill. We are returning to the Griffin."

Silas didn't ask further questions, thoroughly intimidated by my cold demeanor, and quickly counted out heavy pouches of gold.

We returned to the Necropolises an hour later, stepping off the return teleporter straight onto the eighty-sixth floor.

I didn't intend to waste time exploring corridors or navigating mazes. I focused a massive charge of raw, condensed kinetics inside my Vessel, stepping forward at a slow, strolling pace with my hands deep in my black coat pockets.

From my Vessel, I released a continuous, forward-facing shockwave—an invisible, multi-ton spatial ram of compressed pressure.

The effect was utterly devastating.

The mirror-smooth, black-ice walls of the eighty-sixth floor cracked with an echoing, deafening roar, shattering under the sheer weight of my kinetic momentum. We walked straight through the center of the labyrinth in a perfectly straight line, tearing through multi-ton ice barriers, ancient stone arches, and structural walls as if they were made of thin, wet paper.

The violent seismic vibrations immediately awakened the local fauna.

We broke through the final, crumbling wall into a monumental, circular hall carved from dark basalt.

Standing in the center of the arena was the boss of the eighty-sixth floor.

The Mirror Colossus.

It was a towering, fifteen-meter giant constructed entirely of sharp, crystalline mirrors that reflected the ambient light into blinding, searing beams of focused energy. Around its body, dozens of optical projections flickered, creating hundreds of false illusions that danced across the hall, attempting to disorient the senses and hide its true core.

"You stand wrong, blockhead," I murmured with complete, mocking nonchalance, ignoring the dazzling optical show entirely. "Illusions are just cheap light tricks for amators. Physics doesn't need eyes to crush mass."

I deactivated my visual sight and opened my Yomi II radar.

My active 3D sonar instantly rendered a crisp, monochrome makieta of the entire hall in my mind. The optical illusions evaporated into non-existence, and my spatial perception pinpointed the dense, pulsating, and heavy core of the Colossus right in the center of its chest cavity.

"Shnee, stay close. Watch how we dispose of a tower," I threw casually.

I didn't draw Orcrist. I didn't form a sapphire blade.

I extended my right hand, focusing my wolicjonalna telekinesis directly around the entire fifteen-meter structure of the boss. I locked the Colossus in a massive, invisible spatial vise, encircling its entire body in a multi-ton grip of pure, physical pressure.

And then, with absolute, cold strength, I simply clenched my fist.

MIAZGA!

A terrifying, high-pitched screech of shattering glass and collapsing crystalline structures echoed through the hall. The Mirror Colossus had no mechanism to dissipate or reflect direct, spatial compression. Under the multi-ton, omnidirectional pressure of my will, its entire fifteen-meter frame imploded inward.

The colossal glass body shattered into millions of harmless, tiny shards that rained onto the basalt floor with a loud, rustling sound before instantly dissolving into black, dead soot.

The optical beams and illusions vanished in a single millisecond, leaving behind only a sterile, quiet silence.

From the cloud of settling dust, I telekinetically glided the heavy, deep-blue essence core of the boss straight into my open hand, dropping it into my pouch.

"Clean deconstruction on pure logic," I summarized coldly, turning on my heel toward the stairs leading down. "Pack the loot, girls. Our slaughter is just getting into proper gear. The eighty-seventh floor is waiting."