Chapter 238: locking

The hull of the Ministry patrol cutter didn’t just slide through the blood-red portal; it cracked against the granite rim of the turntable pit like a heavy iron boot hitting a frozen puddle. The impact sheared the forward anchor winches clean off their rivets, sending a shower of bright, hot sparks across the grey salt blocks of the floor.

Forty corporate enforcers in thick, polished alloy plates spilled over the side rails immediately.

They didn’t drop into a standard parade line. They formed a tight, three-layer vanguard wall right on the stone tracks, their short arm-mounted crossbows already primed with blue tracking bolts that hummed with a heavy lightning current.

Behind them, standing on the elevated bridge deck of the cutter, the Tier 5 Maritime Knight drew a long silver broadsword. His white helmet was caked in dried sea muck, his visor glowing with a sharp, artificial blue current as his tracking lenses tried to lock onto Jun-ho’s silhouette through the rising steam.

"Target localized!" the Knight shouted, his voice echoing off the high basalt vaults. "The Sillim vanguard has breached the primitive core line! Mages, lock the perimeter! Do not let the asset reach the chains!"

In the center of the roundhouse, the three-meter black crystal sphere answered his shout. The white-hot fire inside the core flared violently, throwing out a thick, invisible wave of physical pressure that made the loose iron plates on the floorboards rattle like dry leaves. Three massive shapes slid out from the dark fissures beneath the foundation—the Ancient Guardians. They were four-meter torsos of twisted train wheels and black iron bars, their locomotive-shaped skulls grinding together with a high-pitched screech of ungreased iron.

Jun-ho didn’t look back at the corporate line. He stood five paces from the lowest anchor chain, his large boots planted firm in the grey salt crust. Under his gray hood, his face was an unmoving sheet of stone, his newly expanded eight-thousand-point mana lake moving in a deep, silent circle that turned the damp air around his sleeves into a thin wall of gray frost.

[Level: 37]

[ Mana: 2200/9000]

[Active Trait: Ashen Domain (Phase 4 – 70-meter radius)]

[Kinetic Multiplier: 5,000x Strike Weight]]

"Tae-woo, hold the center track," Jun-ho said. His voice was quiet, completely dry under the roar of the core fire.

"Locking!" the big vanguard grunted.

Tae-woo and the four elite front-line units stepped forward in unison, slamming the sharp edges of their basin rock shields flat into the stone floor boards. The five stone walls formed a solid, unbroken mountain barrier that closed the narrow lane completely, shielding the rear deck of Rea’s lugger from the first wave of crossbow fire.

Forty blue tracking arrows hit the dark rock face with a rapid series of dull, harmless clicks. The bolts didn’t leave a single white scratch on the basalt; their steel tips shattered into gray sand that fell to the ice plates below.

"The mages are setting up the lightning circle on the cutter’s bow, Jun-ho," Eun-bi called out from behind the stone wall. She had her canvas bag slung tight across her waist, her bare fingers keeping a hard, angry grip on her trauma scissors as she tracked the purple mana lines on her display. "If they complete the chant, the current will weld our rudder line from behind!"

"They won’t finish the chant," Rea said.

The two master rogues moved together in a single, fluid blur of black silk and red leather. With their multiplied Phase 4 speed, they didn’t run down the center aisle; they glided through the dark shadows of the iron pillars, their feet making no sound on the wet stone tracks.

Rea’s black tunic cut a clean, fluid line through the low purple mist, her golden-blue eyes spinning in a lazy, sharp circle as she reached the cutter’s auxiliary fuel crane. With a single, quick snap of her obsidian dagger, she sliced through the mages’ communication wires, cutting off their telemetry before they could even adjust their tracking loops.

Lilith moved right over her shoulder, her long ink-black hair pinned back tightly with the leather strap. Her crimson eyes glowed with a lazy, dangerous fire under the dim lamps, her full lips parting into a low, breathless chuckle as she reached the bridge deck. With her sharp crimson nails, she tore the silver staves out of the mages’ hands, throwing the broken rods straight into the gray muck below before the corporate knights could even release a single spark.

The four mages dropped to their knees, their active skill lines turning into solid gray boxes for sixty seconds, leaving their rear line completely helpless in the middle of the steam.

"The back line is dark, big guy!" Lilith called out, her voice a deep, sultry purr that carried the sharp scent of raw sulfur through the close air.

Jun-ho took three long steps forward, his rubber boots sliding smoothly over the white frost plates. He raised The Ash Remnant with his left hand, the new black hemp wrap dry and solid in his palm. He didn’t drop into a defensive stance, and he didn’t use his back. He let the lake of cold mana behind his ribs break its banks completely, the Ashen Domain - Phase 4 expanding outward in a flat, seventy-meter ring of thick grey frost that turned the wet grease on the floor boards into solid white discs of hard glass.

He brought the flat side of the five-thousand-fold blade straight down onto the side of the Ministry cutter’s iron hull.

The sound inside the closed granite roundhouse wasn’t a standard blast; it was a localized thunderclap that shattered the thick iron plates of the warship’s bow into thousands of tiny shards. The force of the strike, multiplied five thousand times by the weapon’s bound trait, didn’t just clear the deck; the shockwave traveled straight through the hull, fracturing the ship’s internal diesel block and throwing the forty enforcers and the Maritime Knight backward into the stone walls of the vault in a single, massive wave of shattered iron.

[Target Neutralized: Ministry Patrol Cutter Hull.]

[Target Neutralized: Ancient Guardian Entity x3.]

[Total Experience Gained: 4,500,000 XP.]

[Level Up!]

[You have reached Level 39.]

[You have received 10 Unassigned Attribute Points.]

The gray notification boxes piled up across his vision in clean lines before vanishing, leaving only the solid black text of his new level waiting on his screen. Jun-ho lowered his sword, his fingers uncurling from the rough hemp grip as the frost around his boots began to melt back into regular oil brine.

The three-way battle was over, the cutter was ruined, and the path to the primitive sea core was completely open, while the gray text at the bottom of his eye mapped out the final milestone breakthrough past Level 40.