Chương 90: CHAPTER 88: THE 20-SECOND PURGATORY

The deafening alarm bells from the northern border watchtower echoed down through the cracked stone shafts of Sector 9, rattling the iron rivets of the elevator platform two hundred yards below the surface. Inside the subterranean cavern, the foaming, neutralized remains of the Mother Slime were settling into shallow pools of clear water. Shin stood on the damp granite floorboards, carefully tightening the brass lock of his padded travel satchel around his newly harvested jar of high-purity alchemical base core.

Up on the high elevator ledge, the four royal knights were not celebrating their victory over the slime hive. They clung to the rusted iron railings, their faceplates turned upward toward the dark ceiling arches as massive subterranean tremors rolled through the bedrock. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

"Doctor Shin!" the lead knight screamed down into the abyss, his voice cracking with panic.

"The forest caverns above us are collapsing inward! The seismic shockwaves from the surface stampede are tearing through the granite vault pillars!"

"Structural assessment: Accurate," Shin remarked flatly, adjusting the secondary chest strap of his travel pack.

"The bedrock load distribution has exceeded its physical elasticity threshold." Before the knights could release the mechanical hoist chains to pull Shin up, a massive, fifty-ton slab of granite ceiling crashed downward through the central shaft. CRASH—THUNDER! The falling bedrock obliterated the iron elevator cables in a shower of sparks, snapping the thick chains like thread and completely sealing the upper exit shaft in a mountain of crushed stone and dark dust.

The four knights on the upper ledge were cut off behind fifty feet of solid rock. Shin remained standing in the cavern below. He did not run, jump, or duck. His passive Kinetic Analysis mapped the structural collapse around him, identifying a narrow, three-meter safety envelope behind a reinforced support pillar where falling debris could not crush his position. He stepped back two paces into the safe zone, watching calmly as hundreds of tons of rock sealed the upper exit. ROAAAAAAAR!

The collapse of the upper shaft was not the only disruption. With the primary ceiling arches destroyed, the deep subterranean cavern network connected to the northern forest ridge broke wide open. Through the newly carved dark tunnels surrounding Sector 9, thousands of mid-tier monsters—driven out of their subterranean nests by the forest stampede above—poured into the central cavern like a surging, bloodthirsty tide.

Over two hundred Level-40 Iron-Clawed Cave Crawlers, Mutated Cavern Hounds, and Granite-Back Golems surged over the fallen rubble, their glowing crimson eyes fixing directly on the lonely human standing in the center of the dark vault. Shin looked at the sea of snarling, iron-clawed beasts flooding his workspace. His deadpan expression did not shift by a single fraction.

"Environmental noise levels: Unacceptable," Shin stated flatly.

"Physical transit through the primary corridor is blocked by biological mass." His analytical mind calculated the variables in less than half a second. Escalating into extended hand-to-hand combat against two hundred Level-40 mid-tier beasts using standard kinetic strikes would require approximately twenty-four minutes of continuous physical exertion. That duration would allow secondary structural cave-ins to completely fill the subterranean chamber, destroying his newly acquired alchemical reagents.

There was only one mathematically efficient choice. Shin reached up with his organic left hand, pressing his fingers firmly against the central brass calibration valve mounted at the base of his dark-iron prosthetic wrist. CLICK. WHIRRRRRRR. A pale, crimson light flared beneath the seam of his metallic forearm as the internal safety limiters disengaged. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

[SYSTEM NOTICE: RESTRICTED SKILL UNLOCKED] [Skill Name: Cataclysmic Cell-Rupture: Radial Decay] [Class: Area-of-Effect / High-Density Cellular Disruption] [Activation Requirement: Mana Capacitor Charge 100%] [Current Capacitor Charge: 12. 4%] [Target Requirement: 100 Mid-Tier Biological Entities Neutralized]"Capacitor charge insufficient," Shin noted flatly.

"Manual charge accumulation required." To unlock the radial decay wave, his internal kinetic capacitor required the biological energy signatures of exactly one hundred Level 40 entities processed through his dark-iron hand's absorption matrix. A massive, eight-foot Mutated Cavern Hound lunged at Shin from his left flank, its jaw lined with jagged, bone-crushing teeth dripping toxic saliva. Shin did not draw a sword. He stepped forward thirty centimeters, sliding smoothly inside the hound's primary striking arc.

His dark-iron prosthetic hand shot forward with automated speed, his metallic fingers driving straight through the creature's thick leather hide to clamp firmly onto its central cervical vertebrae.

"Micro-cellular shock," Shin whispered. BRRRRRRR—CRACK! A concentrated, high-frequency kinetic pulse surged from his dark metallic palm directly into the hound's nervous system. In less than zero point two seconds, every single cell within the hound's spinal cord experienced catastrophic membrane rupture. The massive beast instantly collapsed into a lifeless, limp mass before its feet even touched the floorboards. [CAPACITOR CHARGE: 13. 4% (1/100)] Without stopping, Shin pivoted on his right heel.

A massive Iron-Clawed Cave Crawler lunged at his head, its heavy, armored claws swinging down like iron scythes. Shin raised his left forearm, catching the claw blade on his reinforced dark-iron wrist guard with a sharp CLANG! With his right hand, he pressed his dark metallic palm directly against the crawler's armored chest plate. PULSE—THUMP! The kinetic vibration bypassed the creature's thick physical armor entirely, destroying its internal organs directly through the shell.

The crawler dropped instantly into the dust. [CAPACITOR CHARGE: 14. 4% (2/100)] Abe saale... Rudra thought to himself, his internal voice razor-sharp, flat, and completely devoid of emotion as he stepped smoothly between the lunging beasts. In monsters ko lagta hai ki mass numbers se mera workspace overcome kar lenge... basic physical movement vectors ka zero knowledge hai in floating meat sacks ko. (Damn it... these monsters think they can overcome my workspace with mass numbers... these floating meat sacks have zero knowledge of basic physical movement vectors.) STRIKE. PULSE. DROP. STRIKE. PULSE. DROP. Shin moved through the ocean of monsters like a cold, mechanical harvesting machine. He did not waste a single centimeter of physical movement. He did not swing wildly, he did not dodge unnecessarily, and he did not breathe heavily. Every strike was a precise anatomical neural tap delivered directly to the vital organ centers of the Level 40 beasts. [CAPACITOR CHARGE: 45. 4% (34/100)] [CAPACITOR CHARGE: 78. 4% (67/100)] [CAPACITOR CHARGE: 99. 0% (99/100)] Minutes blurred together inside the dark cavern as a mountain of paralyzed, cellularly disrupted monster bodies built up around Shin's feet. A giant Granite-Back Golem—the largest beast in the cavern, standing twelve feet tall with a thick stone shell—roared deafeningly, swinging its massive stone fist straight down toward Shin's head. Shin stood his ground.

He raised his dark-iron hand, catching the giant stone fist directly in his palm. BOOM! The kinetic impact blew a cloud of dust out from beneath Shin's boots, cracking the granite floor beneath him by two inches. But Shin's dark-iron arm did not bend by a single millimeter.

"Entity number one hundred," Shin stated flatly. He closed his metallic fingers around the golem's stone knuckle, sending a massive, full-density kinetic shockwave surging up the creature's arm. CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—THUD! The giant golem's internal core shattered into fine dust. The stone titan collapsed onto its knees, sliding into the dirt like a falling mountain. [CAPACITOR CHARGE: 100. 0% (100/100)] [CRITERIA MET: MANA CAPACITOR FULLY CHARGED] [SKILL UNLOCKED: CATACLYSMIC CELL-RUPTURE: RADIAL DECAY] [WARNING: EXTREME BIOLOGICAL HAZARD / USER SAFETY UNGUARANTEED] The dark-iron prosthetic hand on Shin's right arm did not glow with fire or crackle with lightning. Instead, it hummed with a terrifying, colorless vibration—a silent kinetic frequency that caused the surrounding air, light, and temperature to collapse inward. The remaining hundred mid-tier monsters in the cavern froze.

Their primal instincts screamed in absolute, hysterical terror, but their muscles refused to move as the ambient kinetic energy in the cavern was completely drained into Shin's dark-iron wrist. Shin raised his dark-iron hand level with his chest. His face remained smooth, deadpan, and utterly detached.

"Sterilization phase active," Shin whispered flatly.

"Radial Decay." A SILENT, OMNIDIRECTIONAL BLINDING LIGHT ERUPTED FROM HIS BODY. It produced no physical shockwave. It did not shatter the surrounding granite rocks, snap the wooden support beams, or explode with kinetic force. The skill dealt zero physical structural damage to the environment. Instead, a blinding white sphere of pure cellular disintegration expanded outward at the speed of light, passing through stone, iron, and flesh like a ghost.

Within the 20 second window, every single biological entity inside the entire subterranean corridor—from the smallest cave tick to the hundreds of stampeding Level 40 beasts—experienced total, catastrophic cellular breakdown. Their physical cellular bonds unraveled simultaneously at the molecular level, dissolving their bodies into fine, odorless gray ash without a single drop of blood or sound.

The white light expanded endlessly, swallowing the cavern, the subterranean tunnels, and Shin's own body inside the blinding vortex. Up on the surface, the tracking arrays inside the Imperial Inquisition tent flashed violently before every biological signal, mana core, and life metric in Sector 9 flatlined to absolute zero. Down in the subterranean vault, the blinding white light slowly faded. The cavern stood completely intact—not a single rock had moved, and not a single stone was broken.

But the entire space was dead, hollow, and filled with a thick, silent blanket of fine gray ash. Shin's travel pack lay resting on the ash-covered floor. His canvas medical satchel sat beside the granite pillar. Of Shin himself, there was no sign. Whether the quiet, deadpan surgeon had survived the terrifying recoil of his own trump card or had been dissolved alongside the rest of the zone remained completely unknown—buried beneath twenty seconds of absolute purgatory.