Unholy Player

Chapter 545: Catastrophic Failure

As time passed and hours slipped by, even the gold-colored metal bed beneath Adyr began to show signs of softening under the relentless heat. Its surface dulled and warped at the edges, slowly deforming under the strain.

The surrounding researchers were forced to move farther back to escape the heat rolling outward. They gathered their devices and retreated toward the shade of the distant trees. The soldiers waiting nearby fell back with them, maintaining their perimeter even as they withdrew.

"How long will this continue?" Henry asked, having already taken off his jacket, his shirt drenched and clinging to his body as sweat ran down his temples and pooled along his collar.

Even from this distance, the heat pressed against him, thick enough to sting his lungs with every breath. Yet when he looked at Adyr, despite his skin turning red and smoking, he still endured without any open burns or visible damage, his body holding together through sheer abnormal resilience.

"We’ll continue until nightfall," Dr. Mara replied. Her eyes stayed locked on the instruments, forcing herself to read each shifting value. "If I’m right, we’ll need to keep going through the night as well to complete a full day-and-night cycle."

What they were attempting was to transfer Dark Radiation while preserving its balance characteristic. A daytime cycle alone was not enough. The night cycle had to be completed as well.

Hearing this, Henry muttered helplessly, "At least it won’t be this intense at night," wiping his forehead with the back of his hand as the sweat refused to stop.

He believed that if Adyr could endure the day’s heat, the night would feel mild by comparison, maybe even giving his body room to recover.

Dr. Mara answered with an evasive smile. "I’m not so sure about that." Her tone was light, but her gaze was too cautious to be reassuring.

Henry only understood what she meant when night fell and the Sun’s golden light once again began to shift into white and black.

When the first rays of monochrome light started to fall onto the giant antenna and the condensed light was transmitted onto Adyr’s body, it descended like a solid gray beam.

Adyr’s heated body and the gold-colored platform beneath him started to cool rapidly, steam-like wisps peeling off his skin as the temperature flipped in moments.

The redness of his skin faded quickly, and with the help of his regeneration, it returned to its normal color. Then, when night fully fell, it began to reveal a danger completely opposite to the daytime.

The light this time was not merely cold but freezing.

After just a few hours of night, Adyr’s entire body began to freeze completely. His skin lost its luster and turned rigid, freezing from the inside. Soon his whole frame took on the appearance of something carved from a block of ice, pale and glassy beneath the monochrome glow.

It was worrying to look at. A single hammer strike seemed like it would shatter his body into pieces.

Even his breathing pattern vanished. The rise and fall of his chest stopped, leaving no sign of respiration. His lips were still, his throat unmoving, and he looked completely dead.

Dr. Mara finally showed an expression of worry, which began to surface on her face as she leaned closer to her tablet, fingers tightening around it.

"Blood circulation has completely stopped. The internal organs are starting to shut down," she shared the information on her tablet with the other researchers around her, the words sounding clinical while the implication was anything but.

They were aware that if they continued, this time it would kill Adyr for sure, not through damage, but through total shutdown.

"You need to acknowledge that it’s failed. Stop it now," Henry pressed.

He had made up his mind. If these white-coated people insisted on continuing, he was ready to order his soldiers to intervene. He would do it even if it meant physically cutting the equipment apart.

But fortunately, it did not come to that, as Dr. Mara finally gave up. "I declare the experiment a failure. Shut down the power."

Feeling the collapse of all their calculations and theories, the other researchers dutifully followed the instructions, gradually shutting down the devices to conclude the experiment.

But at that moment, a change began to take place. All of them froze where they stood, the air suddenly feeling wrong.

"Something is wrong." Dr. Mara was the first to notice the change as the flowing data on her tablet began to show abnormal signs, numbers jumping in patterns that made no sense.

The amount of Dark Radiation on the readings suddenly spiked to unbelievable levels. It happened even though they had already begun shutting down the device transmitting the sunlight. The system no longer reacted the way it should have.

Then, one after another, all electronic devices began to malfunction. Tablets flickered, computers died, and finally the massive antenna stuttered and failed. The entire electrical flow started to cut out, alarms dying mid-tone.

Even the lights illuminating the area shut down one by one, plunging the surroundings into darkness, leaving only the Sun’s black-and-white light faintly washing over the ground and turning faces into pale masks.

Before Henry even needed to give the order, all the captains of the soldiers commanded a switch to backup lighting, voices snapping through the dark with drilled urgency.

But even the flashlights did not work. The power suits the STF were wearing stopped functioning as well. They became useless pieces of metal, servos dead and displays blank, as though the technology had been suffocated.

"Go check Adyr. Take his body to safety," Henry ordered, realizing that some unforeseen error was occurring.

Unfortunately, because of the lingering cold radiating from the gold-colored platform, it was not easy to approach his body and retrieve it, the air near him thick with a numb, invasive chill.

Without power suits, the regular STF soldiers were useless in this situation. Even the white-uniformed soldiers in the latest gear tried to approach, but they were forced to stop before getting close. Their joints started freezing in place, fingers stiffening and knees locking mid-step, until it became dangerous enough that they could have lost consciousness.

It was not a normal cold meant only to freeze them. It was the Dark Radiation. It felt so powerful that the cold seemed to freeze their thoughts and minds as well.

"Let us try."

From the darkness of the forest, three figures came rushing toward them. They all wore the same white uniforms as the special team, their silhouettes cutting through the dim monochrome with sudden urgency.

At the forefront of the group was a man with a blond ponytail whipping behind him as he ran, crimson eyes shining in the darkness of the night. It was Victor, his expression already twisted with alarm before he even reached the clearing.

Behind him, slightly slower, came Dalin Ravencourt. Her red hair caught the light, giving it a burning glare. Following her was Eren, massive in build, with bronze, metal-like skin, trying to approach the platform.

They had been stationed in the forest around the experiment area to oversee the perimeter. Their job was to keep the surroundings safe from intruders, watching from the treeline while the researchers were distracted.

But the moment they realized something was wrong and lost the signal on their radios, they rushed to the scene. They saw the chaos and immediately understood something had gone terribly wrong.

Seeing the three captains, all of them Rank 3 Practitioners, the soldiers felt relief. Henry and the researchers relaxed as well. They clung to the thought that stronger bodies might push through what their own could not.

"What the fuck were you trying to do here?" Victor shouted as he rushed toward the platform and saw Adyr’s body completely frozen, his skin looking almost transparent, as if he had turned entirely into ice, the outline of muscle and bone faintly visible beneath the sheen.

Seeing his friend lying there motionless, as if dead, he pushed all his strength forward, but even so, he was unable to endure the cold slamming into his body.

He was a Practitioner with [Will] as his main stat and [Physique] as support, so the freezing effect slowed his movements more and more as he approached the source.

Dalin was no different. Without [Resilience] to protect her mind and body, her breath turned thin and sharp as her muscles stiffened against her will.

The two tried to use their Spark skills to support themselves. At that moment, they realized whatever this cold effect was, it was disturbing their summons. No Spark in their Sanctuaries was responding.

The one enduring it best was Eren. With equally raised [Resilience] and [Physique] stats, he quickly passed the other two and moved to the front. His body absorbed the cold longer before it began to creep into his joints.

With only a few steps left to reach the body, his bodily functions began to fade as well. His vision narrowed, his thoughts slowed, and darkness crept into his mind.