The dust from the Dreadnought's detonation took a long time to settle in the freezing sub-tier air.
Zeke led the way toward the rear of the basin, his boots cutting clean lines through the disturbed red sand. Behind him, the rest of the cell followed in a hushed, tentative silence. Myles was quietly collecting the high-grade Intermediate crystals from the fallen Trench Stalkers, while Iris and Kieran kept their weapons loosely drawn, their eyes scanning the dark perimeter.
At the absolute base of the cavern wall, a deep, jagged fissure split the ancient basalt. The gold pulse Zeke had spotted earlier was much clearer now—it didn't hum like traditional system mana, which usually carried a bright, rhythmic vibration. Instead, this energy was heavy, dense, and old, bleeding out of the darkness in slow, silent waves.
"The academy's regional mapping didn't include this structural fault," Luke muttered, holding a freshly materialized iron torch high. The flickering flame illuminated the tight walls of the crevice as they slipped inside single-file. "The deeper we go, the more the geological composition changes. This isn't volcanic rock anymore. It's unrefined iron ore and copper-veined granite."
After twenty yards of tight, winding navigation, the crevice opened abruptly into a perfect, circular vault.
The walls here were entirely artificial, lined with heavy, overlapping plates of dark, oxidized bronze. Unlike the sleek, clean architecture of the Vanguard Academy's upper testing facilities, this room looked completely mechanical. Massive, interlocking gears the size of houses were embedded directly into the walls, their teeth frozen in place by centuries of dust and mineral buildup.
At the exact center of the vault stood a raised platform wrapped in dense copper coils. Floating inches above it was a small, irregular fragment of black iron, etched with deep, jagged runes that burned with a dull, geometric gold light.
[MAIN QUEST OBJECTIVE DETECTED: SYSTEM CORE COMPONENT]
[ITEM: BROKEN CONDUIT FRAGMENT (ASURA ANCESTRY)]
[STATUS: LEVEL 10 EVOLUTION PRE-REQUISITE]
"What is this place?" Kieran breathed, lowering his shield slightly as his golden light reflected off the bronze plates. "The system's regional interface isn't loading any sector data here. We're completely off the grid."
"Look at the floor," Iris said, pointing the tip of her ice-tempered dagger toward the platform.
The moment Zeke took a step forward, the copper coils beneath the iron fragment groaned. Deep within the bronze walls, a heavy mechanical click echoed, followed by the slow, grinding turn of the massive gears. The ancient dust showered down like gray rain as a security matrix awoke.
From four hidden recesses in the floor, thick blocks of reinforced granite slid upward, locking together around the central platform to form a solid, seamless dome of impenetrable stone. Simultaneously, a series of heavy bronze levers snapped into place across the walls, glowing with a bright, high-frequency white light.
[TACTICAL DETECTED: PRE-SYSTEM MECHANICAL SECURITY MATRIX]
[LOCK MECHANISM: SECTOR PRESSURE VAULT]
[DEFENSIVE RATING: SEVERE KINETIC RESISTANCE]
"It's a pure physical lock," Luke said, his eyes widening as his creation talent mapped the internal layout of the chamber. He ran his hand over the nearest bronze plate, his cosmic mana tracing the invisible seams. "Zeke, don't just strike it! The entire room is balanced on a hydraulic counterweight system. If you try to smash the stone dome with raw force, the kinetic feedback will route directly into the ceiling bolts and collapse the whole cavern on top of us."
"How do we clear it?" Kieran asked, his knuckles tightening around his hilt.
"It's an asymmetric combination lock," Luke explained, pointing his iron torch toward three specific gears embedded deep in the left wall. "The internal gears are jammed by mineral deposits. Someone needs to manually force the main drive wheel to rotate against the hydraulic pressure, while I realign the internal pins from the outside. But the resistance threshold is staggering. The system requires at least thirty points of raw power to turn that dial against the fluid pressure."
"Keep dreaming," Myles scoffed, checking his own interface. "Even with my radiant enhancement, my Strength tree tops out at twenty-three. We don't have a vanguard tank in Sector Nine who can breach that baseline."
Zeke walked past them, his face a mask of absolute calm. He stopped in front of the primary drive wheel—a four-foot disc of solid, unyielding iron connected directly to the wall's gear matrix.
Inside his peripheral vision, his interface text remained locked, a stark reminder of the boundary he was tracking.
[STRENGTH: 25 (GAPPED)]
[AGILITY: 25 (GAPPED)]
[VITALITY: 25 (GAPPED)]
His stats were completely stuck. The Level 10 restriction felt like a dense, heavy governor plate bolted over his engine; no matter how much leverage he generated, he couldn't push past the gapped limit of 25. He was five points short of the mechanical requirement.
"Zeke, it's too risky," Iris warned, her analytical eyes tracing the massive structural tension in the iron wheel. "If your grip slips while the hydraulic fluid is compressed, the recoil will break every bone in your forearms."
"Luke," Zeke said, his voice flat, completely ignoring the warning. "Tell me when the pins align."
He reached out, his bare fingers wrapping around the thick, cold spokes of the iron wheel. Even at a capped 25 Strength, the physical density of his muscles was immense. The muscle fibers across his shoulders and back tightened like braided steel cables as he braced his boots into the basalt floor.
"Go!" Luke shouted, diving toward the secondary gear housing with his hands glowing with white creation mana.
Zeke pulled.
The iron wheel groaned, a horrible, metal-on-metal screech that vibrated through the stone floor. The hydraulic pressure behind the wall fought back instantly, a multi-ton wave of resistance that tried to wrench the wheel out of his hands.
Zeke's gapped 25 Vitality held his skeletal structure perfectly rigid, absorbing the immense kinetic feedback without allowing his joints to pop under the strain. But the wheel stopped after a mere two inches of rotation. The internal resistance was too high; his capped strength couldn't force the gears over the central hump.
[WARNING: PHYSICAL CONTAINER CAPACITY AT 100% MAXIMUM OUTPUT]
[RECOIL STRAIN IMPOSED ON LEVEL 9 BUFFER]
"It's jamming!" Luke yelled, his face sweating as he forced his creation mana into the seams to hold the internal pins from snapping. "The pressure is spiking! If you can't push it another three inches, the counterweights are going to trip!"
Zeke didn't have access to his true evolutionary form yet, nor did he have the secondary energy resources that lay locked behind the deeper sub-tiers of the labyrinth. He had nothing but a gapped human shell.
But he didn't need to break the system's rules to win; he just needed to use his gapped attributes with absolute, flawless efficiency.
Utilizing the frame-by-frame processing of his 25 Agility, Zeke altered his stance by a fraction of an inch. He dropped his center of gravity, aligning his spine in a perfect, straight geometric line with the wheel's axis. Instead of pulling with his arms, he routed the total mass of his 25 Vitality container into a singular, explosive rotational pivot through his hips.
He wasn't getting stronger. He was just eliminating every single ounce of wasted kinetic energy within his own body.
CLACK.
The sheer, concentrated efficiency of the torque forced the iron wheel past the resistance hump. The massive bronze gears inside the wall turned with a thunderous roar, the mineral deposits shattering into fine white dust.
"Pins are locked!" Luke screamed, slamming his hands against the housing.
With a deep, metallic thud, the hydraulic pressure subsided. The granite blocks surrounding the central platform split apart, sliding back into the floor and exposing the floating black iron fragment once more.
Zeke released his grip on the wheel, stepping back cleanly. His hands were slightly red from the pressure, but his breath was perfectly steady, his gapped container settling back into its baseline readiness within seconds.
"Unbelievable," Kieran muttered, staring at the deep indentations Zeke's boots had left in the solid basalt floor. "You just forced a thirty-point hydraulic seal with pure leverage. That's not training, Zeke. That's something else."
Zeke didn't answer. He walked up to the obsidian pedestal, his eyes fixed on the glowing gold runes of the fragment. He could feel the proximity of the core component vibrating against his skin, a silent promise that the tight, heavy wall holding back his stats wouldn't remain locked forever.
He reached out and took the fragment.