Danmachi : Shinigami

Chapter 264: Chapter 264

The unfinished constructs climbed the walls before Rayleigh’s group had finished pulling themselves out of the shaft.

Some moved on six arms, driving rusted blades into the stone for leverage.

Others dragged incomplete bodies behind them, their exposed cores flashing with the same black light flowing through the Daedalus Orb.

Valletta stood beneath the hanging chains and laughed as the entire workshop came alive around her.

"Go on, Yōtōsai! Show me how many swords you need before Daedalus’s failures finally bury you!"

Rayleigh pulled Hyōrinmaru free.

"Reign over the frosted heavens, Hyōrinmaru!"

Cold exploded through the chamber.

A dragon of ice erupted from the blade and tore across the nearest wall, freezing every construct caught beneath its body.

Metal joints locked, stone limbs cracked, and six creatures fell from the surface before reaching the shaft.

The falling bodies struck those climbing below them.

Half the first wave disappeared beneath the wreckage.

Ryuu released Cassandra and dropped onto the nearest hanging chain.

Wind gathered around her feet as she ran down the steep length toward the central platform.

"Kaguya, take the left!"

Kaguya caught another chain and followed without hesitation.

"I had already decided to."

Two winged constructs launched from the alcoves beneath them.

Their unfinished wings consisted of sharpened metal ribs that opened like enormous shears.

Kaguya jumped from her chain before the first pair closed.

The blades snapped together beneath her boots, missing by inches, and she landed on the creature’s back with enough force to drive it lower.

Her sword entered the gap behind its neck.

She twisted the blade through the black mark inside.

The construct dropped.

Ryuu crossed above her on a burst of wind and cut through the second creature’s wing joint.

It spun out of control, smashed into three hanging chains, and dragged several crawling weapons into the pit below.

Merek and Cassandra reached the upper ledge while Rayleigh held back the remaining wave with Hyōrinmaru.

Merek pressed both hands against the wall.

Black symbols moved beneath his palms.

"The workshop is reconnecting itself! Valletta isn’t only waking the constructs. She’s telling Knossos to rebuild every failed design stored here!"

Stone ground against stone.

Empty alcoves closed, then reopened with larger frames forming inside them.

Broken pieces slid across the floor and disappeared into the walls, feeding material back into the workshop.

Cassandra’s red petals rushed toward the platform below.

"The Orb is pulling power from every corridor connected to those chains! If Valletta completes the connection, the workshop won’t stop making them!"

Rayleigh looked toward the chains.

More than a hundred descended around the Orb, each carrying black energy from a different section of Knossos.

"Then we cut the supply."

He raised Hyōrinmaru.

Valletta saw what he intended.

Her hand struck the Orb.

The hanging chains whipped through the chamber.

One tore past Rayleigh’s head and smashed the upper ledge apart. Another wrapped around the shaft opening, ripping away the route they had used to enter.

Cassandra lost her footing.

Merek caught her wrist before she fell, though the collapsing stone dragged both of them toward the edge.

Rayleigh drove Hyōrinmaru into the wall.

Ice spread beneath their feet and sealed the broken ledge together before it could give way completely.

"Stay behind me!"

A chain came straight for his chest.

Rayleigh caught it with Hyōrinmaru’s guard.

The impact drove him back across the frozen floor, tearing pain through shoulders already exhausted from the Ishtar battle.

Alfia’s medicine kept his legs beneath him.

It did nothing for the fatigue burning through his muscles.

’Careful lasted less than an hour. She’s going to be furious.’

The chain pulled hard, trying to drag him into the chamber.

Rayleigh turned the blade and froze the metal from the point of contact outward.

Ice raced down the entire length until it reached the ceiling.

"Ryūsenka!"

The frozen chain shattered.

The pieces remained suspended for one heartbeat before falling like spears around the platform.

Valletta threw herself behind the Orb’s stone pedestal.

Two of her followers were slower.

Frozen metal pierced one through the back and crushed the other beneath a falling link.

The final follower abandoned the ritual plates and ran toward an open passage behind the platform.

Valletta drew a dagger and buried it between his shoulders.

He fell before reaching the doorway.

"You don’t get to leave after seeing the central chamber!"

She kicked his body aside and returned both hands to the Orb.

Black light surged through her arms.

Merek stared at her from the upper ledge.

"She’s letting the Orb use her as part of the control network! If she continues, Knossos will read her thoughts as commands!"

Cassandra looked toward the dead follower.

"And if she loses control?"

"The labyrinth will keep reading whatever remains in her mind. Hatred, fear, pain—everything!"

Valletta heard him through the chamber.

"That sounds perfect!"

The Orb flashed brighter.

Every chain snapped toward a different wall.

Knossos answered.

The workshop expanded violently.

Stone pulled apart beneath Ryuu and Kaguya, opening a deep gap between them.

New walls rose through the platform, dividing the chamber into shifting sections while unfinished constructs crawled from the forming passages.

Ryuu jumped before the floor vanished beneath her.

Wind carried her across the widening gap, but a newly formed pillar struck her in midair and threw her against the opposite wall.

"Ryuu!"

Kaguya cut through the construct reaching for her and ran toward the gap.

A wall erupted between them.

Kaguya’s blade struck stone instead of the creature advancing on Ryuu.

"Rayleigh, the room is separating us!"

"I see it!"

He pulled Hyōrinmaru from the frozen ledge.

The moment the blade left the wall, the repaired stone began cracking beneath Merek and Cassandra.

Rayleigh drove his spiritual pressure through the Zanpakutō.

Cold swept through the entire workshop.

The moisture in the air froze first, turning Valletta’s breath white. Frost spread along every chain, entered the moving walls, and pushed deep into the joints beneath the floor.

The room continued changing.

Rayleigh raised Hyōrinmaru above his head.

"Hyōryū Senbi!"

A massive crescent of ice tore through the workshop.

It passed above Kaguya, split every construct surrounding Ryuu, and struck the newly formed wall between them.

Stone froze from the surface inward.

Kaguya drove her shoulder into it.

The entire barrier shattered.

Ryuu pushed herself away from the opposite wall with blood running from her forehead.

"You could have warned me before freezing everything around my face!"

Kaguya pulled her through the broken opening.

"He shouted the technique loudly enough for Valletta to hear it below us."

"I was being hit by a building!"

More sections of the workshop tried to rise.

Ice seized them before they moved more than a few inches.

Walls stopped halfway through forming. Alcoves remained open with unfinished weapons trapped inside them, while the floor froze around every hidden gear beneath the platform.

The entire chamber groaned.

Then it stopped.

Merek looked around in disbelief.

"You froze the construction network."

"Only temporarily."

Rayleigh’s breathing had grown heavier.

Hyōrinmaru’s ice covered the workshop, but the black light from the Orb continued moving beneath it, slowly eating through the frozen mechanisms.

Valletta pulled one hand from the Orb.

Dark lines had spread from her fingertips to her shoulder.

"You stopped one room! Do you think the rest of Knossos is going to wait politely while you climb down?"

The walls behind her opened.

A passage formed toward the lower control chambers.

Valletta grabbed the Orb from the pedestal.

Every frozen chain tore free at once.

The sudden release sent black energy crashing through the workshop.

Rayleigh reinforced the ice beneath Merek and Cassandra as the upper ledge shook.

Ryuu and Kaguya leaped toward the platform.

Valletta ran.

Kaguya landed close enough to cut the back of her coat, but a stone wall slammed up between them before the second strike.

The wall froze halfway through rising.

Ryuu hit it with a concentrated blast of wind.

Stone exploded into the passage.

Valletta had already disappeared around the first turn.

Kaguya followed.

Rayleigh caught her shoulder before she entered.

"Wait."

"She has the Orb!"

"She also controls the route ahead."

Kaguya looked at his hand, then toward the passage.

"If we stop every time she changes a corridor, she reaches the central network before we reach her."

"That’s why we’re done using her corridors."

Rayleigh turned toward Merek.

"Where is the main control chamber from here?"

Merek climbed down the frozen chains with Cassandra beside him.

He reached the platform and pressed his bloodied palm against the floor.

Daedalus markings appeared beneath the ice.

"The passage Valletta took curves through three defense sectors before descending to the stone eye. The direct route is beneath us, but no corridor connects to it."

"How far?"

"Approximately four hundred meters of reinforced stone, machinery, and sealed chambers. Cutting straight down could open sections nobody has entered since Daedalus was alive."

Rayleigh raised Hyōrinmaru.

Merek looked at the blade and immediately understood.

"You cannot freeze four hundred meters of unknown structure and expect it to remain stable!"

"I don’t need it stable forever."

Ice spread outward from Rayleigh’s feet.

It entered the floor, following the black lines Valletta had awakened.

Every gear, support, hidden chamber, and moving wall beneath them became visible through the pattern of frost appearing across the platform.

Hyōrinmaru mapped Knossos by freezing its movement.

A deep vertical route emerged beneath the ice.

Merek stared at it.

"That shaft connects the rejected workshop to the old maintenance spine. It passes within thirty meters of the central chamber!"

Rayleigh drew Benihime with his other hand.

"Everyone close."

Cassandra grabbed Merek’s sleeve.

"You’re going to cut through the floor again?"

Rayleigh positioned Benihime over the frozen route.

"This time we know what’s underneath."

"That doesn’t make falling four hundred meters better!"

Ryuu rested one hand on Cassandra’s shoulder.

"I’ll control the descent. Stay near me and keep Yumeutsutsu released."

Kaguya stepped beside Rayleigh.

"What happens to this workshop after Hyōrinmaru’s ice melts?"

"The construction network starts moving again."

"How long do we have?"

Rayleigh looked at the black energy already cracking the frost near the Orb’s abandoned pedestal.

"Ten minutes if Knossos remains calm."

The entire chamber shook.

A roar travelled through the floor from somewhere far below.

Merek went pale.

"That was the central mechanism."

Cassandra’s red petals turned black at the edges.

In her mind, the hanging chains returned.

The stone eye opened and Orario fell!

"Rayleigh, Valletta has reached the next control point! The labyrinth isn’t waiting ten minutes!"

Benihime cut into the frozen floor.

"Then neither are we."

A crimson line opened beneath them, slicing through the mapped shaft while Hyōrinmaru froze the surrounding structure before it could collapse.

Ryuu wrapped wind around the group.

The platform broke open.

All five dropped into the darkness.

They fell past frozen gears larger than houses, sealed rooms filled with incomplete bodies, and walls covered in names Daedalus had carved into the stone.

Far below, black light erupted through the shaft.

Valletta’s laughter rose with it.

"You wanted the direct route, Yōtōsai?!"

The stone eye opened beneath them.

"COME AND TAKE IT!"

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