"Critical error..." Zeno's voice degraded into a digital screech. "Main channels overload... Reset... Reset... You... idiot..."
I collapsed on all fours and vomited bile. The taste of mana was the worst thing imaginable.
"Get up..." I felt Ephraim yanking my shoulder.
"You hear me?" Ephraim shook me.
"I only hear water. But never mind that. We... need to go higher..." I squeezed out, trying to focus my vision.
The skill flared in jagged flashes.
Warning: Magical poisoning detected — Stage II.
System energy: 90% (Critical overcharge).
Neural network stability: 14%.
"God, I just want to die..." I exhaled. But I had to keep moving.
"Higher where, kid?!" Ephraim yelled. The roar of the water drowned out everything else. "We're at a dead end!"
I looked around. The technical chamber was rapidly filling with glowing sludge. It had reached our ankles, and I felt my boots starting to smoke.
My gaze caught on a massive steel reservoir in the corner. An old caisson—a huge tank for equalizing pressure, riveted to the wall with heavy bolts.
I hope it's designed for colossal loads, I thought.
"There!" I pointed at the tank. "There should be air inside!"
"We'll be boiled alive in there!" Ephraim backed away from the advancing muck, which had already risen to his knees.
"If we stay here, we'll dissolve in five minutes!" I grabbed his good arm and dragged him toward the tank.
We reached the rusty hatch.
"Help me!" I yelled to Ephraim.
Together, we yanked the lever. The metal squealed, and the hatch gave way, revealing a black void reeking of fuel oil. I shoved Ephraim inside and dived in after him.
Inside the tank, it was dark and cramped. We huddled in the sticky slime. Outside, a crushing blow echoed, shaking the chamber.
"We need to seal it," I said, looking at my hands. "From the inside."
"With what? We don't have tools!"
Without overthinking it, I pressed my palm against the rim of the hatch.
"What are you doing?! Zeno shrieked. "That will destroy your nerve endings!"
"Shut up, just let me do this!" I said in irritation.
I focused every drop of mana into my right palm.
Blinding white flame erupted from my fingers, melting the steel of the hatch. Slowly, centimeter by centimeter, I traced a circle, welding the lid to the body of the tank. Molten metal splashed onto my face, burning through my clothes.
Seam temperature: 1800°C.
External pressure: 5 atmospheres.
Rate of increase: 0.2 per second.
The skill quickly gave a report.
When the circle closed, I collapsed to the bottom of the tank.
"Iron..." Ephraim stared at me in horror. "You... you're insane."
Suddenly, we felt the tank get torn away from the wall.
We started to rise.
We were thrown against the walls.
"We're in the main collector shaft. The flow is carrying us up to the distribution gates of the Outer Ring. If the pressure doesn't drop, we'll be crushed against the damper," Zeno said.
The air inside the tank was getting hot.
I felt around the bottom of the tank for a drainage valve.
"Ephraim, grab onto the struts! Tightly!"
I placed my left hand on the valve. The roar of water. The screech of metal. Impacts against the tunnel walls.
The sound changed. The flow accelerated.
"Now!" I yanked the valve lever and simultaneously injected a short pulse of mana into the remaining water at the bottom of the tank.
The tank shuddered from an internal explosion and shot upward, outrunning the flow of mana.
[Will to Live] burned with a dim light.
System energy: 2%.
Status: Near-comatose state.
Structural changes detected in the right limb.
"Thank God we survived..." Ephraim wheezed.
He was the first to crawl to the hatch. Using some scrap of metal, he started picking at my "weld seam," which had already cooled and become brittle. After what felt like an eternity, the lid gave way, and air rushed inside.
Ephraim climbed out and helped me. I tumbled out of the tank onto a perfectly smooth, cold tiled floor.
The hall was filled with strange structures resembling giant hourglasses, inside of which blue flames pulsed.
"Where are we?" I whispered, squinting against the bright light of the magic lamps on the ceiling.
"We... we're in the Inner Ring," he whispered, backing away toward the tank. "In the very heart of the Citadel's purification system."
I tried to stand up, but my leg buckled, and I fell again. My gaze fell to the floor. In it, I saw my reflection.
My hair had turned white.
And my right eye glowed with an emerald light.
"What the... hell. Ephraim..."
Ephraim looked back at me in fear. "Kid... what's wrong with you?"
"I... I don't know."
And then we were interrupted by doors swinging open at the far end of the hall.
But we were cut short by the sound of the opening doors.
"Welcome, Subject Alpha," a calm, logical voice said.
"V... Valerius?"
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