Chapter 231: Hold Your Ground

Evren waded through the remaining two hundred yards of the flooded canyon, with Amber and Zephyra following close behind. The murky red water gradually became shallower, dropping from their knees down to their ankles as the stone floor sloped upward.

They stepped up onto a raised concrete apron that fronted the massive titanium blast doors.

Standing right beneath them, the twenty-foot metal barrier felt even larger and more imposing than it had from a distance.

Evren stopped right before the entrance and looked up at the three-spire seal carved into the center of the metal.

His thoughts immediately went back to the classified files he had reviewed beneath the Citadel. Seeing that exact same division seal stamped on a bunker buried inside a dimensional rift sent a cold prickle across his scalp.

"Outpost Seven," Amber read aloud, tracing her fingers along the cold, rusted edge of the metal frame. "I’ve studied imperial military history for years, and I’ve never heard of a man-made structure inside a dimensional rift."

"Neither have I," Evren said quietly, looking at the massive doors.

Zephyra walked along the perimeter of the door, her violet eyes scanning the mechanical joints. "There are no modern power conduits on it. The entire locking mechanism is purely mechanical."

She stopped beside the right-hand wall and pointed toward an alcove. Set deep into the concrete was an iron manual release wheel covered in thick red rust.

Evren walked over and gripped the iron wheel with both hands. He channeled his strength and turned it hard to the left.

The lock snapped open with a sharp, ear-splitting crack.

The massive blast doors shuddered, then swung inward a few inches. Because the dark facility inside sat far below the canyon floor, the pressure difference created a sudden, violent vacuum.

The water across the canyon floor surged forward like an open drain. Before any of them could react, the raging current tore their boots clean off the ground. Evren, Amber, and Zephyra were swept off their feet, sucked straight through the gap in the doors along with thousands of gallons of rushing water.

The world went pitch black as they tumbled down a steep, slick metal spillway. Evren activated his Gravity Domain to slow their slide, wrapping his arms around Amber and Zephyra as water roared around their ears.

A second later, they shot out of the drainage pipe and plunged into a vast body of water with a loud, echoing splash.

Evren kicked his legs, bursting back up to the surface. He shook the dark water from his eyes and looked around, keeping tight hold of Amber and Zephyra.

A few yards to their right, a wide steel platform sat ten feet above the dark pool, connected to a long network of catwalks. Evren swam over, hoisted Amber onto the rusted metal grating, then pulled Zephyra up before climbing out himself.

All three of them dropped onto the cold metal, coughing up water and catching their breath. Amber leaned against the railing, wringing out the hem of her jacket.

"I take back what I said earlier," Amber wheezed, wiping wet strands of black hair from her face. "My boots aren’t just ruined, they’re practically waterlogged weights."

Zephyra wrung out the bottom of her dark shirt, water dripping through the metal grating into the deep pool below. Her violet eyes darted around the cavern, and a rare look of shock crossed her pale face.

"Look at this place," Zephyra murmured, pointing toward the high ceiling. "This isn’t an ordinary cavern."

Evren stood up, shaking water off his combat jacket, and took in their surroundings.

Every rift they had entered in the past had been a wild, empty wasteland of bare rock, boiling lava, or frozen mud. But this chamber was completely different.

They were standing inside a large subterranean reservoir built from poured concrete and reinforced metal arches. Massive pre-war steel trusses stretched across a ceiling at least eighty feet above, while broken crane rails and rusted catwalks crisscrossed the darkness.

The pool of dark water beneath their platform was huge, stretching hundreds of yards in every direction like a sunken lake. Faint, pale-green moss clung to the towering concrete pillars, casting an eerie, dim glow across the water.

"How is a human facility down here?" Amber whispered, staring at the decaying crane overhead. "Did the rift swallow an entire military base decades ago?"

"Either that, or the empire built this deep underground and lost it when the spatial cracks spread," Evren said, gripping the handle of his Frost-Bane Cleaver.

Before they could study the room any further, a series of sharp clicking sounds echoed from the darkness above. Evren’s Kinetic Flow flared with an instant danger warning.

He glanced up, his eyes narrowing as multiple dark shapes scrambled across the overhead crane rails.

A pack of large, six-legged creatures crawled out of the ceiling ventilation pipes. They looked like giant armored centipedes fused with predatory crabs, each about the size of a motorcycle.

Golden system text flashed across Evren’s retina:

[LEVEL 79 CORROSIVE TRENCH-STALKERS]

[TRAITS: ACIDIC BILE SPRAY, REINFORCED NULL-CARAPACE, BLIND-SPOT POUNCE]

"We have company," Evren warned, stepping to the front of the platform. "Stay back from the open edge."

The creatures didn’t rush in blindly like the hounds in the canyon. They spread out along the overhead girders, their sharp claws clacking against the rusted iron as they cut off every exit along the walkway.

Suddenly, three of the stalkers opened their mandibles and spat streams of bubbling, dark-green liquid.

"Look out!" Amber shouted, shoving Evren to the side as she jumped backward.

Evren threw up a mana shield, but the greenish liquid hissed violently the moment it hit the barrier. The acid ate straight through his mana in less than two seconds, splashing onto the metal platform.

Thick, foul-smelling smoke rose into the air. The steel grating dissolved like wet cardboard, leaving gaping holes that exposed the deep, churning water ten feet below.

"Don’t let that stuff touch your skin!" Evren yelled, backing up to a wider section of the walkway. "It eats through mana shields and melts steel!"

A stalker dropped from an overhead beam, landing directly in front of Amber with a loud clang. Its jagged pincers snapped aggressively toward her waist.

Amber slashed both of her twin sabers in a swift cross-cut, aiming straight for the beast’s neck. Her star-metal blades struck the thick black carapace, but instead of slicing through, the blades bounced off with a shower of bright orange sparks.

The monster’s null-shell absorbed the impact completely, leaving only a shallow white scratch on its hide.

"Their armor is too tough!" Amber grunted, dodging a barbed tail swipe that cracked the railing beside her elbow. "Regular cuts won’t go through!"

"Go for the leg joints and the underside!" Zephyra called out, lashing her whip-blade forward.

She snapped the steel links around one of the creature’s thin front legs, then yanked with all her strength, tearing the leg from its socket and spilling foul black fluid across the metal.

The wounded beast let out a high-pitched screech that echoed painfully off the cavern walls.

Above them, four more stalkers scrambled down the support pillars to answer the cry. Two of them spat another volley of green acid, targeting the narrow bridge behind Zephyra.

Zephyra blurred into shadow, reappearing beside Evren just as the bridge behind her melted and collapsed into the dark pool with a loud splash.

"They’re smart," Zephyra said, her breathing tight as she drew two shadow daggers. "They aren’t trying to overpower us directly. They’re melting our footing so we fall into the water."

Evren lunged forward as a stalker pounced toward Amber’s back. He swung his Frost-Bane Cleaver with two hands, aiming right into the creature’s open mouth.

The blade sliced into its soft palate, releasing a burst of sub-zero frost that froze its head solid. Evren kicked the frozen monster off the catwalk, sending it tumbling down into the dark water.

But as soon as that one fell, three more crawled out of an overhead drainage pipe with glowing red eyes.

More clicking sounds echoed from the far corners of the reservoir. Dozens of dark silhouettes were moving along the walls, scuttling across the rusted crane rails and gathering on the ceiling directly above them.

The platform beneath their boots groaned as acid dripped from the railings, eating away at the support beams.

Amber backed up until her shoulder touched Evren’s, her twin sabers raised and glowing with golden mana. "Evren, we’re running out of floor. If they melt this platform, we’re going into the drink with all of them."

Evren looked at the dozens of armored predators closing in from the ceiling, then down at the crumbling steel under their boots.

He tightened his grip on his cleaver, feeling the heat of battle rising in his chest. "Hold your ground and stay close to me. We’re going to have to carve our way out of this."