Rusted Rhapsody (5)

“It’s an elevator.”

Vita tilted her head as Kang Shin-hyuk spoke blankly.

“What is it? Ah, I see now.”

“What was that pause?”

Vita seemed shy as Kang Shin-hyuk insisted on prodding.

“Elevators don’t exist today. So, I searched for information in the database Claire made.”

“What is she teaching you…? Onyx, is it okay to ride this?”

-Myu!

Onyx nodded confidently. He elongated his thorns as if to prove he had evolved into a super hacker.

“Oh, I think it will be okay. Until now, the building wasn’t hackable, but this elevator can be accessed with nanobots.”

While Kang Shin-hyuk struggled with Onyx, Vita approached the elevator and used her nanobots to inspect it. However, Kang Shin-hyuk looked at her suspiciously as well.

“You can that if you put the word hacking in front of it, you can explain anything?”

“As you can see, the building is the Gaia system itself. It isn’t wrong to assume that the system is built into each brick.”

Otherwise, there was no way this elevator would have appeared… But, to put it in a cool way, it felt more like a living creature.

“So it’s possible to hack?”

“It was impossible so far, but this hedgehog.”

-Myu!

Onyx’s self-assertion today was intense. Was he getting too big for his britches? Well, he could trust him here anyway.

“This isn’t dealing with metal.”

-According to my guess, Onyx was also influenced by your trait and evolved.

It was a convincing statement. Well, Onyx had been receiving the effects of his trait for the longest, so that wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. He was still a small black and white hedgehog, but now he was a powerful force that none can ignore. Maybe Claire, who had similar abilities, would like it a lot. When he thought of her reaction to this, a smile played on his lips despite the urgent situation.

“Shin-hyuk, hurry up. If my predictions are correct, this elevator… It’s better to rush before there is interference from the Gaia system.”

“Yes, yes.”

-Myu!

They climbed straight into the elevator. Only then did the system notice the hole in its body, sending all kinds of mechanical undead towards them, but the door closed before they could get inside. One metal ghoul had its arm outstretched, but Kang Shin-hyuk neatly erased it with Light Mastery.

-Vwooom

The elevator immediately began to rise. Kang Shin-hyuk looked around the interior, feeling like it looked too familiar.

“Isn’t this the elevator in Shinyoung’s dorm?”

-Myu!

“Then you made this?”

-Myuuuu?!?!

Onyx replied that he just customized the interior by using the system, but Kang Shin-hyuk had no clue what that meant. Now his ability was beyond the range of what he could imagine!

-Thud!

“Huh?”

Then, the elevator ceiling was crushed with a loud sound that shook the elevator. It stopped suddenly, and the sound of something battering it soon came. Something had fallen onto the elevator!

“…I saw this in a movie.”

-Myu?!

Onyx stretched out his thorns to the wall, and the elevator that was reinforced on the fly started to rise again. However, the enemy didn’t give in and continued to beat the roof harder and harder, until finally, a small hole was made, and a jagged sword like a saw blade popped out over their heads.

“Wait a minute, that sword…?”

Kang Shin-hyuk stretched out his soul connector’s threads to hold the sword. He could clearly grasp it with his spiritual power. Although it was rough, this sword was made with Anvil’s technique!

‘But it’s clumsily made, not by Anvil himself, and it has a strange artificial beauty…’

Could it be that the contaminated Gaia system made it? Did they pick up the sword that Anvil had discarded and mass-produced it? He groaned because he couldn’t figure out what it was, but the monster easily cut off the threads and used the sword like a saw to cut a hole in the ceiling.

-Kaaaaa!

It was a monster dressed in black metal armor and equipped with a fierce mechanical skeleton that rivaled a burning Terminator. Several magical engines inside its body drove it, giving it a terrible level of physical force.

“Ghost Rider?”

“It’s a metal death knight!”

“That’s a great name, though I did see the metal ghouls there!”

Kang Shin-hyuk immediately thought of death metal after hearing that name. However, instead of screaming while shredding on a guitar, he swung that grotesque saw-blade sword. Kang Shin-hyuk immediately lifted the Growing Scythe to stop him, but the opponent was stronger than expected.

“Kh…!”

His power was strong enough that he needed both hands to hold it back. Kang Shin-hyuk showed his light mastery to the maximum, injecting it into the scythe as he swung it, but the knight reacted sharply to block it with his saw blade.

-Keeek!

-Myu!

Due to the two colliding, the inner walls of the elevator were scratched up, and a hole was torn into them. Onyx was reinforcing them, but at this rate, the elevator would fall. Kang Shin-hyuk realized that was his foes’ goal right away.

‘Onyx!’

In all horror movies and games, the elevator was a deadly place where many people died, so why did they overlook it? Kang Shin-hyuk was careful not to hurt the elevator, but its speed was gradually decreasing.

“Vita, hack this guy?!”

“Sorry, Shin-hyuk! The nanobots cannot penetrate its magi!”

It might’ve been possible with Onyx’s help, but he was desperate to keep the elevator from breaking. Kang Shin-hyuk clenched his jaw and thought it over. The Great Heavenly Spirit was absorbing his magic, but it wasn’t fast enough.

‘Damn, I should’ve used the branches Halo gave me right away… I was too late, waiting for the best timing.’

No, but there must be a way. What was there… Buy Dark Mastery? Could doing that protect the elevator?

“Haaaaah!”

Kang Shin-hyuk immediately transformed the energy generated by the Great Heavenly Spirit into spiritual power and Golden Dragon energy before scattering it everywhere. No, it was absorbed into the elevator!

-Kyaaaaah!

The Metal Death Knight was pushing him back, shouting as much as the vocalist of a metal band. At that point, since most of his energy had been invested in the elevator, he was temporarily pushed back, but he continued to inject his energy into the elevator, focusing on only keeping it intact. As a result, the elevator, which was ascending with uneasy smoke, flashed gold for a moment then soared at a terrifying speed.

-Kiaaahh!

“It can’t be stopped, idiot!”

The knight screamed and swung his saw-blade sword, but Kang Shin-hyuk calmly focused on stopping him. Rather, he used his threads to imprison him and make it more difficult to move slowly. Within a few seconds, the elevator stopped.

“We’re on the top floor, Shin-hyuk!”

“Alright, let’s go!”

-Myu!

Vita jumped out first, followed closely by Kang Shin-hyuk and Onyx. The knight ripped off the thread that tied him down and tried to take control, but the Growing Scythe flew in and stuck him to the elevator.

“Go to the ends of hell!”

Kang Shin-hyuk’s eyes flashed gold as his spiritual power burst out. Accepting his trait, the elevator moved according to his well and began to fall.

-Kyaaaaaaaaaaaah!

His screaming grew further and further away. Onyx quickly filled the empty space where the elevator had been with a wall.

“I will inherit your fierce rock-soul…”

-You are surprisingly relaxed, member. A 500,000HP bonus for your movie-like battle scene!

It seemed the administrator was also relaxed. Kang Shin-hyuk decided to think about recovering the Growing Scythe later (having a vague worry that the knight might appear again).

“So, Vita, it’s the top floor, but…”

When he turned around after that short but intense battle, he noticed Vita standing blankly without doing anything. Kang Shin-hyuk looked around first. The ceiling was covered with transparent glass, revealing the foggy sky above, and on one side of the room was a wall covered in monitors, entangled wires, and pipes. Gloomy energy emanating through them all- magi. Some of the pipes were rising into the sky, forming fog and clouds, and some of them flowing through the walls to supply it to the building’s interior. However, what was most impressive was the sword stuck in the monitor at the very center of the wall.

“…That.”

Kang Shin-hyuk frowned and rubbed his face.

“Mokowood, Skoba…”

Vita muttered weakly. Kang Shin-hyuk vaguely remembered the names she spoke as his eyes followed where she was looking. There were twisted corpses with pipes plugging into their bodies as well. But before he could consider it further…

-Nice to meet you, Anvil.

The monitors on the wall lit up all at once as a mechanical sound assaulted his ears.

-Welcome to the heart of the Gaia system.

As Kang Shin-hyuk took a step forward, the bodies connected to the pipe wriggled and stood up. Among them were Vita’s past colleagues, whom they had come to save.

“Kuh, my comrades…! Gaia!”

-It seems that it wasn’t magic that contaminated Gaia’s system, but a different disease. What do you think, member?

“Just don’t say anything, administrator.”