Chapter 230: Plugging a Toaster

Evren looked at Amber and Zephyra beside him on the riverbank. Both women nodded, tightening their grip on their weapons as the red crack in the canal water pulsed with heavy spatial heat.

"Stay close together when we jump," Evren said, raising his Frost-Bane Cleaver. "We don’t know what kind of terrain is waiting on the other side."

"Right behind you," Amber said, her twin sabers humming softly in her hands.

The three of them vaulted over the stone promenade railing and plunged straight into the glowing red tear.

Instead of hitting the river bottom, the world spun around them for a brief moment. A cold rush of air swept over their faces, followed by a splash as their boots hit solid ground.

Evren caught his balance and looked down. Thick, murky red water sloshed against his legs, coming all the way up past his knees.

"Well, this is unpleasant," Amber muttered, lifting one leg and shaking her soaked leather boot. "My boots are completely ruined."

Zephyra stood quietly to Evren’s left, her whip-blade held low above the dark water. Her violet eyes darted around the cavern, studying the rough black stone walls that stretched high into the darkness.

"We’re in a sunken trench," Zephyra said in a low voice. "The ceiling is at least fifty feet high, but the floor is completely flooded."

Clumps of jagged red crystals jutted out of the cavern walls, casting a dim, reddish glow over the surface of the water. The air was cool and damp, carrying a strong smell of old iron and wet rust.

Amber stepped closer to Evren and looked up at his face. "How is your head feeling? Any more of that terrible headache?"

"No, the pain is gone," Evren replied, shaking his head. "It was just a sharp spike when the rift opened. My thoughts are completely clear now."

"Good," Amber said with a relieved sigh, resting a hand on his forearm for a second. "That shock through our bond scared me."

Evren smiled faintly, appreciating her concern, then turned his gaze back toward the dark expanse of water ahead. "Keep your guard up," he warned quietly. "Something is moving under the surface."

Small ripples spread across the knee-deep water twenty yards in front of them. Dark shapes darted beneath the red liquid, moving with frightening speed through the flooded passage.

A second later, half a dozen creatures burst out of the water with loud, wet hisses.

They looked like four-legged amphibious hounds covered in thick, dark-red armor plates. Their mouths were lined with rows of jagged teeth, and sharp spines ran along their backs.

A quick glance from Evren’s interface identified them immediately:

[LEVEL 78 SANGUINE TRENCH-HOUNDS]

"They’re fast!" Amber yelled, stepping in front of Evren.

Two of the beasts lunged directly at her chest. Amber slashed her right saber in a swift diagonal arc, cutting the first beast cleanly through its neck.

She tried to turn to hit the second monster, but the knee-deep water dragged heavily against her shins, slowing down her footwork.

The second hound snapped its jaws toward her thigh. Before its teeth could touch her, Zephyra’s whip-blade tore through the air with a sharp whistle, wrapping tightly around the beast’s muzzle and yanking it backward.

Evren stepped forward through the water and swung his Frost-Bane Cleaver downward. The steel blade crushed through the hound’s skull, dropping it into the red pool with a dull thud.

Cold frost flared out from the cleaver’s edge, turning the water around the dead monster into chunks of frozen slush.

"Fighting with our legs underwater is a real hassle," Amber grunted, pulling her left foot out of the mud beneath the water. "We can’t dodge properly, and every swing takes twice as much effort."

"More are coming," Zephyra said, her voice turning sharp.

Dozens of glowing red eyes surfaced from the dark water ahead. Splashing sounds echoed off the cavern walls as a massive swarm of trench-hounds rushed toward them from every direction.

There were at least forty beasts cutting through the water, their barbed tails whipping behind them as they closed the distance.

Amber gripped both sabers tightly, preparing to stand her ground. Zephyra drew a pair of shadow daggers with her free hand, her muscles tensing for a messy brawl.

Evren looked at the dark red water sloshing around their knees, then looked at the dozens of beasts racing toward them through the same pool.

A clear, simple idea flashed in his mind. Water was an excellent conductor of electricity, and all these beasts were standing directly in it.

"Amber, get in the air!" Evren shouted. "Zephyra, blink to that high rock ledge on the left!"

Both women had complete trust in him and reacted without asking a single question.

Amber tapped into her core, and two radiant mana wings spread from her back with a bright rush of light. She kicked off the muddy bottom, shooting ten feet straight up into the air above the waterline.

At the exact same moment, Zephyra’s body blurred into dark smoke. She shadow-stepped in the blink of an eye, reappearing on a dry granite shelf eight feet above the flooded floor.

With both of them safely out of the water, Evren bent his knees and jumped straight up.

As his boots cleared the surface, he channeled his Heavenly Lightning into the Frost-Bane Cleaver. Bright golden sparks danced wildly across the heavy blade, crackling with raw, high-voltage energy.

"Let’s see how well you handle this," Evren said, aiming the tip of the cleaver downward.

He unleashed a massive bolt of lightning straight into the knee-deep water below.

A deafening roar filled the cavern as the electric current exploded outward through the flooded floor. Bright golden lightning branched in every direction, turning the entire pool into a web of blinding electrical fury.

High-pitched shrieks broke out as the voltage tore through the bodies of all forty trench-hounds at once. Smoke rose from their armored hides, and their bodies twitched violently as millions of volts fried them from the inside out.

Within seconds, the thrashing stopped completely. The water fell still, filled with floating, scorched carcasses and charred scales.

Evren landed lightly on top of a flat stone that stuck a few inches above the water.

His passive Core Siphon ability activated instantly. Dozens of glowing red monster cores floated out of the dead beasts, streaming across the air like tiny red fireflies before disappearing into his spatial ring.

Amber hovered down from the air, folding her golden wings behind her back with an impressed grin. "Now that was brilliant. Why bother wrestling with forty wet dogs when you can just plug a toaster into the puddle?"

Zephyra dropped down from the high ledge, landing beside them on the dry rock without a single drop of water on her clothes. "Very efficient. You saved us at least ten minutes of messy blade work."

"Work smart, not hard," Evren chuckled, wiping a stray drop of water from his cheek.

He looked down the long, flooded canyon. The path continued for another two hundred yards, sloping downward into a wider cavern where the water grew shallower.

"Look over there," Zephyra said, pointing toward the far wall of the cavern.

Ahead of them, the rough, natural black stone of the canyon abruptly ended. In its place stood a flat wall of reinforced pre-war concrete and thick, interlocking titanium plates.

Built directly into the center of the metal wall was a pair of massive blast doors, each at least twenty feet tall. They were covered in thick green moss and rust, but the solid metal remained intact.

Carved into the center of the doors was an emblem that made Evren freeze in his tracks. It was the three-spire seal of the Pre-War Imperial Citadel. He recognized it immediately from his visit to the Citadel sub-vaults when he researched the Archive Seed.

Beneath the seal, faded capital letters were stamped deep into the steel:

OUTPOST 7 — SPECIAL RESEARCH DIVISION