Unholy Player

Chapter 482: A Little Overdone

The tremors continued for a full 4 seconds. Each one felt stretched longer in their minds.

Just as they started to think the building wouldn’t hold any longer, everything finally went still, leaving behind damaged walls, scattered rubble, and a ruined ceiling above, but, fortunately, not bringing the structure down.

"Open the door now." Henry felt no relief when the tremors stopped. His anxiety spiked instead, and his voice cut through the lingering silence with urgent force.

The shaking and impact had been even greater than what Zephan’s attack had produced. Knowing Adyr was inside, trapped at the center of such power, he couldn’t help but picture the worst-case scenario playing out behind that sealed door.

To make it worse, the head researcher’s voice came out trembling, barely steady.

"The mechanism is not responding."

He was tapping the screen of his tablet frantically, his fingers slipping slightly. The impact had clearly broken something, because the door wasn’t reacting at all, not even giving a single confirmation sound.

The only thing the tablet showed on its screen, flashing red with a warning symbol, was the number 380.

It was a number equivalent to 3.8 times a 20 kt nuclear explosion. The value alone was enough to dry several throats at once.

"Can’t we open it manually?" Henry tried to find another way.

"We can." The head researcher answered, but there was a catch. "The pressure must be insane inside."

To open a door held shut by that kind of pressure, they would need an extreme amount of muscle power, far beyond what ordinary soldiers could provide.

Their eyes instinctively turned to Zephan and his Elders for the job. What they specialized in, however, wasn’t pure muscle strength but speed.

Zephan, noticing their stares and understanding the situation in an instant, spoke. "Tell me what to do."

Even though the translator was still in shock and struggling to perform her duties, there were instances where the language barrier did not hinder understanding.

The head researcher, understanding his words instinctively, hopeful and a little desperate, rushed to the door and pointed at the lever on it, indicating it had to be turned to the right and pulled.

Silverlight read the gesture and moved toward the door without hesitation. "Move aside."

He placed his hands firmly on the lever and pushed to turn it. The muscles in his forearms tightened beneath the layers of crackling lightning.

This time, the researchers didn’t stay nearby. They would rather not be caught by any suction again if the door suddenly gave way, so they moved to the end of the corridor, putting themselves at a safe distance and watching the Lunari from there with bated breath.

At first, Zephan found the lever stuck, not budging even when he tried with all his strength. The metal groaned but refused to move.

Then he began channeling his Spark skills to increase his power.

The lightning garment still wrapped around his body rippled with intensity, electric waves spreading like snakes across his hands and the lever. The muscles in his arms swelled, veins standing out.

Being an Ignis Path Practitioner obviously didn’t mean he was only about speed. He had skills to enhance his strength as well when needed.

The ground beneath his feet began to crack under the force he was pouring into the lever, thin fractures spreading outward.

The lever began to emit an ear-scratching screech as it finally started to move.

Zephan kept pushing until the lever finally completed its turn with a low clink. The mechanism wouldn’t move any further; it was fully in place.

Then he pulled it toward himself with brute force, testing his muscles against the suction still raging inside.

The floor under his feet crumbled more, fine tiles turning to powder and sliding under his bare feet, but he won the struggle against the door at last, forcing it open just enough for the pressure inside to begin equalizing.

Dust and loose fragments in the corridor were suddenly drawn through the narrow gap, riding the rushing air as it poured into the room.

Even Zephan had to wait for the suction to die down before he could pull the door fully open and look inside.

When he finally did and saw the scene, his silver eyes widened under the glow of his lightning armor.

All the walls of the room looked darker, the gold color from before now carrying a dirty, scorched cast from the heat they had absorbed.

And beyond that, there was another color painting the room: crimson.

Blood covered the interior as if it had been thrown in bucketfuls and spread with ladles across every surface, staining the walls from top to bottom. The smell of burned flesh and thick metal hung in the air, strong enough to make any normal mind flirt with the edge of vomiting.

But the most grotesque thing in the room was the figure standing in the middle of it.

The words slipped out of Silverlight’s lips as he stared at that abominable silhouette. "You are a madman, aren’t you?"

Adyr’s entire body seemed wrapped in a thin layer of black smoke, slowly drifting away from his skin. With every second, more of the flesh underneath was exposed, revealing its grotesque state.

His whole right arm looked like a mass of crushed meat. The shattered bone at his shoulder was visible, and the torn flesh around it, along with the blood, had been burned dry, frozen in place instead of dripping.

His chest and everything down the front of his body were laid bare.

His suit had been completely destroyed, his skin gone, and beneath it his wet, gleaming flesh and strands of muscle were exposed, clear and detailed like an anatomy model from a biology class.

Half his face looked as if it had been scraped away with a rough blade, leaving exposed skull and an empty eye socket like a dark tunnel.

The remaining eye, a bright crimson that burned like a small flame, rested on Zephan with an almost casual calm.

His mouth was half destroyed, one side peeled back to bare white teeth while the other side remained intact. The surviving half moved in an odd, uneven way as a calm, spine-crawling voice came out.

"I might have overdone it a little."

From his tone, it sounded like he was talking about overcooking a meal, not his own body.