Chapter 249: Hardware Backdoor

Iron rested his chin on his hand, not taking his eyes off the smooth surface of the wall. If an obstacle existed in the material world, it had to obey physical interactions.

​He took a step forward and extended his palm.

​First, Iron applied a thermal phase shift. At the exact point of contact between his finger and the metal, colossal thermal energy instantly focused—enough to vaporize a layer of the toughest titanium alloy in a fraction of a second. However, the spot didn't even glow; the wall absorbed the heat without a trace, remaining cold to the touch.

​Immediately after came kinetic compression. Iron focused ultra-high pinpoint pressure of tens of tons into a tiny spot. The air around his hand crackled from the compression, but the monolith didn't suffer so much as a micro-fracture.

​The third step was a gravitational shift. His attempt to sharply alter the local mass gradient and create shear stress within the wall's structure met absolute resistance—it was as if the material had no mass to latch onto at all.

​Finally, Iron tried to employ acoustic neutralization. He began rapidly cycling through micro-oscillation frequencies, hoping to find the resonant frequency of the molecular bonds and force the material to destroy itself from the inside. The wall absorbed the sound waves with the exact same absolute efficiency.

​"Lumon, are there any alternative or bypass routes?" Iron asked aloud.

​"Analysis impossible," Lumon replied. "Insufficient data on the spatial structure and physical properties of the object."

​"Okay," Iron answered shortly.

​Over the next fifteen minutes, he continued to relentlessly combine impulses, trying to trick the absorption system. But with every new strike, the feedback into his own nervous system only grew. A sharp, throbbing pain flared in his head, his vision blurred, and his legs turned to jelly.

​Unable to stay on his feet, Iron staggered back powerlessly and slumped into the chair with a dull thud.

​He threw his head back against the worn headrest, breathing heavily and rapidly. His head was spinning, and gray spots swam before his eyes from sheer exhaustion.

​What the hell... flashed through his mind.

​Iron sighed heavily, closed his eyes, and went completely still, giving himself a moment to recover.

​About five minutes later, when the dizziness had somewhat subsided, Iron pushed himself out of the chair and walked back to the decaying desk. The generator unit still rested inside the alcove, its small display pulsing with the green word "WELCOME"—fading out, then flaring back to life.

​Iron carefully examined the casing. The block was entirely smooth: no buttons, no switches, no structural seams. He gripped it with both hands and tried to yank it free, but the module wouldn't budge, as if it had been cast directly into the tabletop.

​Narrowing his eyes slightly, Iron channeled his magic and instantly compromised the structural integrity of the internal mounts. Pressing down again, he violently ripped the block out of its socket. The module gave way, popping out along with a thick bundle of snapping, severing cables from underneath. Iron quickly flipped it over and inspected the back: nothing special—just standard communication lines.

​At that exact moment, a small circular module ground open right near the ceiling, directly above the monolithic wall. A compact turret deployed from the newly formed alcove, a bright red dot instantly flaring to life at its tip.

​A split second later, a razor-thin beam fired straight at Iron. At the very last moment, the engineer snapped his head back. The beam whistled a millimeter past his nose and punched clean through the floor, leaving a perfectly smooth, molten hole.

​Iron immediately swiped his hand, sending out a spatial slice to take off the turret. But the attack missed—the slash slipped past a mere centimeter from the retractable gun and sheared through the ceiling with a deafening roar.

​Meanwhile, the turret fired again. The beam ricocheted off the floor, struck the opposite wall, bounced to the ceiling, and hurtled back toward Iron. Without stopping, the laser began bouncing chaotically from surface to surface, picking up colossal speed. In a matter of seconds, the deadly red thread turned into a continuous, unbroken zigzag, violently shredding the remaining furniture, slicing cables, and turning the entire room into a chaotic death trap.

​Iron could barely dodge the beam in time.

​"Lumon, activate the skill," he barked the command.

​"'Lumon' skill activated."

​The irises of Iron's eyes instantly washed out, bleeding into a gray-white hue. The world around him immediately lost its frantic momentum: the deafening roar shifted into a low, drawn-out hum, and the laser that had been frantically tearing across the walls slowed its pace, stretching into a thin, scarlet-pink string barely crawling through the air.

​Iron smoothly stepped aside, letting the beam glide right past his chest. For a moment, he sank into the chair, calmly peering at the inner workings of the jammed turret near the ceiling, reading the kinetic trajectory of the beam.

​Rising from the chair, Iron pushed off the floor and floated into the air, hovering right up to the deployed wall module. Gripping the metal casing with his fingers, he tried to rip the turret out by brute force, but the heavy construct didn't even budge.

​Then Iron extended his palm. Right above his fingers, the transparent plane of a localized spatial slice crackled and materialized. With one short motion, he severed the flexible power cable connecting the turret to the monolith.

​The crimson beam instantly died.

​At that exact second, the wall's defense system retaliated with an instantaneous counter-pulse. The targeted spatial rift compressed and struck right back into Iron's palm. A sickening, muffled crunch echoed through the room: the blood vessels and soft tissues inside his hand instantly caved under the pressure and burst. Thick blood splattered in all directions, misting the ceiling and Iron's face with a fine crimson spray.

​Iron winced at the sharp pain. Unable to hold back, he hissed:

​"Lumon... activate healing."

​"Initiating regenerative protocol."

​Deep within his mangled palm, torn muscle fibers and blood vessels began to slowly knit themselves back together.

​Iron slowly lowered himself back down to the floor.

​Looking up at the monolithic wall, Iron noticed a change. After the turret's power cable was severed, the smooth surface had slightly separated—thin, barely visible structural seams appeared on the flawless block, outlining the distinct contours of a massive door.

​Iron stepped closer and tried to wedge his fingertips right into the narrow gap. Digging into the seam, he pulled the slab toward himself with all his might, but the monolithic block didn't even sway. Manual brute force was useless here.

​Realizing the barrier wouldn't yield mechanically, Iron turned around and went back to re-examine the complex's rooms.

​Returning to the first room, he started shoving the skewed desks and shattered shelving units out of the way. Behind one of them, wedged between the tabletop and the wall, a powered-down flat panel with a completely dark screen fell to the floor with a dull thud. Iron picked it up, gave it a quick look, and, satisfied it was just a useless, dead piece of plastic, tossed it aside with the rest of the trash.

​Inspecting the corners of the room, he noted details of the complex's past life: scattered casings of dead portable radios, rotted military gear, a few old rusty swords, and an unusual bow made of dark metal lying in the far corner.

​Finally, his eyes landed on the rectangular casing with white keys—the keyboard he had spotted earlier.

​Iron carefully picked up the device and headed back to the wall. A step away from the sealed doorway, he froze for a second and smirked, thinking to himself:

​If I had designed this entire complex...

​He remembered the bright green word that kept flashing on the display of the generator pulled from the desk. Plugging the keyboard's interface cable into the lower auxiliary port, Iron quickly typed out the sequence of letters:

W-E-L-C-O-M-E.

​At that very instant, a low, vibrating hum resonated from deep within the monolith.

​With a mechanical grind, the heavy central block of the wall shifted forward and slowly slid right into the center of the room, stopping dead in the middle to reveal a deep, dark passage behind it.

​Iron stepped over the newly formed threshold, mentally finishing his thought:

​...then I definitely would have used a hardware backdoor.

​Iron walked into the dark corridor behind the displaced wall. The glowing yellow orb floated smoothly ahead, flaring brighter with every meter and chasing away the gloom of the damp room.

​Right in the center of the spacious hall towered a massive, anthropomorphic metal creature. Thick bundles of heavy cables fed into its chassis and joints from all sides, vanishing deep into the concrete slabs of the floor and walls.

​Iron slowly stepped closer, examining the armor plating, hydraulic assemblies, and flawless mating joints. There wasn't a single chip or scratch on the smooth metal surface.

​"Magnificent..." Iron muttered quietly.

​He narrowed his eyes and issued a mental command for a deep diagnostic. Lumon's voice immediately echoed in his head:

​"Execution impossible. The object is blocking the internal scanning protocol."

​Iron scoffed and gave a brief shake of his head:

​"Hah... You have to be pretty smart to block an internal scan... I'd really like to meet the guy who built this thing."

​He took a step right up to the frozen giant, peered into its dark, dead ocular lenses, and placed his palm on its cold metal chest plate:

​"Your name is going to be Golem."

​Iron walked a full circle around the automaton, studying the connection points for the communication ribbon cables and the locks on the power mains. The chassis was intact, but there was no core reaction inside—the Golem was simply missing its startup pulses and internal power components. To wake this behemoth up, he needed to find working spare parts.

​Iron left the Golem's hall and went back into the corridor, scanning the dark walls for any technical bays. Suddenly, his eyes caught a strange defect in the masonry. Amidst the general chaos and tangled cables, it was almost invisible, but the faint outline of a dented metal door—without a single handle or keyhole—could be made out right in the wall.

​Iron stepped closer and simply reached out, touching the damaged metal. Under the influence of his spatial magic, the door's structure instantly disintegrated, the panel silently vaporizing to reveal a new passageway.

​Behind it lay a spacious command center. Rows of operator consoles lined the entire perimeter of the room, littered with cracked, long-dead monitors, overturned chairs, and dangling noodles of severed communication wire. Up ahead, looming over the whole room, hung a giant main screen, its protective glass fractured.

​Iron walked into the center of the room and started prying open one casing after another.

​"Alright, to bring this giant back to life, I'm going to need three basic things," he muttered aloud, yanking out another jammed drawer. "A high-density power cell, an optical control bus, and an impulse distribution module. Without them, this Golem is just scrap."

​He moved from terminal to terminal, ripping off protective panels and gutting the insides of the system units. But with every new dismantled machine, his confusion only grew.

​Inside the cabinets lay nothing but rusty gears and loose odds and ends, and the high-density crystals and optical nodes seemed to have been intentionally ripped right out of the gutted computers.

​"Strange..." Iron frowned, inspecting the empty slots in yet another tower. "Without these components, not a single one of these systems could even function in principle. Looks like someone systematically stripped all the power optics from this place."

​There was only one spot left. Iron walked over to the massive main screen. Stepping right up to the wall, he tilted his head back—the bottom edge of the massive display sat just above his height.

​Iron reached his hands up into the alcove beneath the screen, digging his fingers deep inside the metal framework, pushing aside bundles of old wiring, trying to feel around for an intact distribution block.

​And right at that exact moment, as Iron was neck-deep in the wiring under the screen, a heavy grinding screech echoed behind him. The Golem's iron fist was already hurtling forward, ready to smash him into the wall.

​Iron froze, having clearly caught the movement in his peripheral vision.