Rosh stood at the absolute edge of the coastal cliff, his starry void form pulsing as he focused his perception deep beneath his boots. The surface of the coastline was completely quiet, but miles beneath the bedrock, a massive, suffocating vault of dark mana was humming inside the earth.
His eyes narrowed, and a cold, scheming grin spread across his face beneath the starry mist.
"So the thing here is hidden underground," Rosh whispered to himself, his voice laced with intrigue. "It must be quite important."
A sudden realization struck him. The divine Goddess on Qrith had personally requested that he locate the Doom Overseer across the dimensions. If an entity of such cosmic stature placed a personal mandate on finding that specific Calamity beast, it meant the creature was of supreme, unimaginable value. It was entirely plausible that the ruling human authorities had captured the Doom Overseer during one of the previous dimensional breaches and locked it deep beneath the earth where no one could find it.
Deciding to proceed with caution, Rosh raised his dark-taloned hand and snapped his fingers. The cosmic starlight and obsidian glass of his true form dissolved into a cloud of pitch-black smoke. When the mist cleared, he had assumed his modest, unassuming human template once more—appearing as a harmless, plain teenager.
Gliding silently through the dense canopy of the coastal forest, Rosh searched for a physical entry point into the subterranean facility.
As he reached a high ridge overlooking the shoreline, the natural forest ended abruptly, giving way to a heavily militarized Dead Zone. Piercing the grey sky were eight colossal, hyper-futuristic watchtowers constructed from dark steel and reinforced titanium.
Rosh paused on a thick branch, scanning the layout. The towers were arranged in a perfectly symmetrical octagon, their high-powered mana searchlights sweeping the perimeter in synchronized patterns. However, the eighth structure—Watchtower Eight—stood abruptly out of alignment with the rest. It sat precariously on the absolute edge of a jagged cliff, dropping straight into the ocean below.
’An intentional structural anomaly,’ Rosh deduced, his blue eyes fixing on Watchtower Eight. ’That misaligned tower is hiding something.’
Keeping his presence completely suppressed, Rosh dropped from the branch. He wove through the skeletal shadows of the rocks and trees, keeping his footsteps entirely soundless as he made his way toward the last watchtower, making sure not to draw anyone’s attention.
However, as Rosh crossed an invisible perimeter line fifty yards from the tower’s base, a sharp, metallic click echoed from behind a mossy boulder.
"Halt right there!" a voice barked.
Out stepped an Awakened human—a veteran Exterminator guard clad in heavy grey armor, holding a high-caliber rifle aimed directly at Rosh’s chest. The guard’s optical visor hummed with active scanning arrays as he glared at the intruder.
As Rosh was an unauthorized civilian in a restricted military zone where no one was allowed to come this far, the soldier was extremely skeptical.
"What the hell are you doing here, kid?!" the guard demanded, his finger tightening against the trigger. "How did you even reach this place in the first place? This entire coastline is a classified grid!"
Rosh didn’t draw a weapon, nor did he flare his mana. Instead, he immediately collapsed his posture, staggering backward a half-step while clutching his hands frantically to his chest. He widened his eyes, forcing a look of sheer, panicked terror onto his youthful face.
"P-Please don’t shoot!" Rosh stammered, his voice trembling like that of a startled teenager. "I was hiking with my friends in the lower public trail and got totally lost in the fog! I didn’t mean to trespass, I swear!"
The Exterminator guard stared at him through his glowing visor. He ran a quick baseline scan, seeing no active weapons or combat aura on the pale, trembling boy. Believing the act, the soldier let out an annoyed sigh and slightly lowered the muzzle of his rifle.
"Tsk. Dumb, blind kid," the guard grumbled, shaking his head. "Turn around slowly and put your hands—"
CRACK.
Before the man could finish his sentence, Rosh’s panicked expression flattened into an emotionless mask of absolute ice. A microscopic thread of razor-sharp spatial energy sliced through the air, cleanly severing the guard’s neck in a fraction of a second. The soldier went limp and collapsed without making a single sound.
Rosh dragged the body into the dense shadows of the brush. Working methodically, he stripped the guard of his uniform, vest, face mask, visor, and high-clearance ID keycard. Fitting the grey gear over his own clothes, Rosh pulled the face mask up, leaving only his eyes exposed.
Fastening the stolen ID card to his belt, Rosh stepped out from the bushes and walked casually toward Watchtower Eight.
Two patrolling sentries stood guard on the concrete landing near the heavy iron blast doors. Seeing the familiar grey uniform and visor, they didn’t suspect a thing and offered a brief nod. Rosh returned the nod and slipped smoothly past them into the building.
Inside, the watchtower was cold, sterile, and hummed with industrial power generators. Rosh navigated the corridor until he reached the central elevator shaft. He stepped inside the brushed-steel cabin and looked at the wall interface.
His brow furrowed beneath his mask.
There was only a single button on the console, clearly marked with an arrow pointing "UP" toward the observation decks.
’A watchtower guarding a massive subterranean energy signature... with an elevator that only moves upwards?’ Rosh thought, a dry smirk curling his lips beneath his mask. ’That doesn’t make any sense.’
Knowing there had to be a trick, Rosh began inspecting the interior of the cabin. He extended his spatial perception to scan the physical metal walls, searching for hidden mechanisms. Near the corner of the doorframe, he spotted an infinitesimal seam. Rosh reached out and pressed a hidden manual switch buried beneath the metal trim.
CLICK.
Instantly, the front doors of the lift locked shut with a heavy hydraulic hiss. A mechanical gear groaned inside the wall, and the solid back panel of the elevator cabin slid smoothly to the side, revealing an entirely separate control panel on the opposite side. This hidden console contained a single, glowing crimson button pointing "DOWN".
Rosh pressed the downward button. The elevator shuddered once, and then began plunging rapidly into the dark depths beneath the watchtower.
Once the lift started descending, what Rosh saw through the observation glass made him more and more certain that this place was exactly what he was looking for.
For the first few hundred feet, the lift passed through solid bedrock and damp soil. But after a bit of soil, the solid land completely ended.
Unfolding before his eyes was a massive, multi-tiered laboratory that opened up in front of him, spanning as far as he could see. Thousands of glowing fluorescent arrays, glass conduits, and automated containment bays stretched endlessly across an enormous subterranean cavern.
Rosh realized that the entire piece of land he had been walking on up on the surface was completely artificial—a manufactured cover built solely to hide this sprawling facility from the world.
DING.
The lift came to a smooth stop at the lowest sub-level. Rosh stepped out onto the metal catwalk, following the direction where he saw the largest amount of dark mana.
He navigated through a maze of white corridors, using the stolen ID card to clear the initial security doors. However, after passing through the first set of places, he reached a colossal, double-reinforced bulkhead sealed with heavy runic electronic locks.
Rosh swiped his card against the scanner.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP! The console flashed bright red, rejecting the access. His stolen ID card had stopped working, lacking the clearance required for this central sector.
Rosh clicked his tongue in mild irritation. Raising his gloved right hand, he tapped his index finger against the air. A series of microscopic spatial gates opened directly inside the electronic tumblers and wiring of the bulkhead, unlocking the mechanism from the inside.
HYDRAULIC HISS—!
The heavy multi-ton bulkhead unlocked and parted. Rosh stepped through the threshold, expecting to finally come face-to-face with the captured Doom Overseer.
But when he reached his destination and looked across the massive, vaulted hall, he could not believe what he saw.
It was not the Doom Overseer—he knew that much instantly. Instead, resting in the center of the chamber, were three colossal, cylindrical incubation vats filled with bubbling, bio-luminescent green fluid. Suspended inside the tubs, bound by thousands of neural cables and suppression clamps, were three distinct, fully preserved A-ranked Calamity beasts.
Surrounding the vats were complex gene-sequencing arrays and cloning tanks.
The humans were actively trying to copy them!
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