Chapter 88: Ticking Clock

  The air inside the drained containment vault was entirely suffocating, heavy with the absolute, cloying stench of corrupted rot and highly concentrated alchemical radiation. The massive, thick vines completely covering the ancient stone walls were not simply overgrown; they were entirely, aggressively sentient. As Zeno’s brilliant blue aura illuminated the damp corridor, the dark violet vines began to actively writhe and twist, highly agitated by the sudden introduction of oxygen and magical light.

  "They look exactly like incredibly long, very angry snakes," Zeno observed casually, cracking his heavy, spiked Rock Serpent gauntlets. He didn't seem intimidated; he seemed entirely ready to commence some heavy pruning. "Should I punch the walls, Lyra?"

  "Conserve your energy," Lyra instructed, her voice a tight, pained whisper, her twin daggers gleaming in the blue light. "We don't know how deep this vault goes, and we have a strict thirty-minute time limit once we harvest the core. If we fight every single vine, we'll run out of time."

  They moved cautiously down the center of the massive stone corridor, trying to perfectly maintain a safe distance from the writhing walls. The floor was incredibly slick with highly toxic, bioluminescent algae, forcing them to step carefully.

  Suddenly, a massive, incredibly thick vine, tipped with a heavy, jagged, petrified thorn easily the size of a short sword, lashed out violently from the ceiling, aiming directly for Lyra’s unprotected neck.

  Lyra didn't flinch. She engaged her pale green wind Tena, executing a flawless, high-speed lateral dodge, completely avoiding the lethal strike by a fraction of an inch. She countered instantly, bringing her daggers up in a devastating, sweeping arc designed to sever the appendage.

  CLANG-HISS!

  Her incredibly sharp Elvarian steel struck the mutated vine, but it didn't cut. The exact moment her magically enhanced blade touched the corrupted flora, the thick vine actively, violently absorbed the pale green light directly from her dagger.

  Lyra gasped as her entire right arm instantly went completely numb, the wind Tena entirely drained from her weapon like water sucked into a dry sponge. The glow of her blade died completely.

  "They don't just resist magic!" Lyra yelled in absolute horror, backpedaling rapidly as three more massive vines descended from the ceiling, completely blocking their path forward. "They actively feed on it! Do not use your aura, Zeno! They are anti-magic sponges!"

  "If we cannot cut the weeds with magic," Zeno announced cheerfully, entirely dropping his blue aura and completely stepping in front of her, "then we must simply pull them out by the roots with our hands."

  Zeno didn't try to punch the incoming vines. He reached out with both massive, heavily armored hands and entirely caught the three thick, writhing vines mid-strike.

  The jagged, petrified thorns ground violently against the thick, dark red scales of his Rock Serpent gauntlets. The corrupted vines immediately tried to aggressively leech the residual earth magic from his armor, but the incredibly dense, ancient properties of the Serpent scales severely slowed the absorption process, buying him precious seconds.

  Zeno tightened his grip, completely utilizing his monstrous Strength stat. He didn't try to rip the vines themselves; they were too thick. He planted his heavy boots securely onto the slippery floor, entirely bypassed the vines, and violently heaved backward, using his entire massive frame as pure leverage against the ceiling itself.

  With a sickening, deafening sound of tearing wood and violently snapping stone, Zeno completely ripped a massive, twenty-foot section of the entire ancient stone ceiling, roots and all, completely out of the architecture, bringing down a massive shower of ancient mortar and dust.

  The severed vines, entirely disconnected from their primary root system, thrashed wildly on the damp floor for a moment before entirely dissolving into a puddle of highly toxic, foul-smelling violet sludge.

  "The path is entirely clear now!" Zeno beamed proudly, wiping a smear of toxic sludge from his heavy gauntlet.

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  "You are absolutely terrifying," Lyra muttered, shaking the numbness from her hand and picking up her pace. "Keep moving. We have to find Vault Delta."

  They pushed deeper into the Flooded Depths, encountering increasingly aggressive, highly mutated flora. Zeno acted as an entirely unstoppable, heavily armored lawnmower, completely utilizing blunt force trauma and raw physical strength to physically rip, tear, and smash the very walls apart to bypass the carnivorous thicket, entirely starving them of the magic they craved.

  Finally, they reached the absolute end of the primary corridor.

  Before them stood a massive, completely shattered iron door. The heavy metal had been completely warped and twisted entirely outward, exactly as if something massive had violently exploded from within the room itself.

  They stepped carefully through the ruined doorway and into Vault Delta.

  The chamber was massive, easily the size of a grand ballroom, and the air was completely toxic. Scattered across the center of the room were dozens of heavy iron crates—the intercepted Black Lotus shipment. The crates had been violently burst open from the inside, spilling hundreds of raw, jagged, violently glowing violet crystals entirely across the damp floor.

  And feeding directly on that massive pile of highly corrupted, anti-magic radiation was their ultimate objective.

  The Abyssal Lotus was completely colossal, entirely dominating the center of the vault. It was a terrifying, deeply corrupted parody of a beautiful flower. Its massive petals were an incredibly dark, bruised purple, pulsing with a sick, erratic rhythm. Its thick, thorny roots were completely embedded deeply into the pile of raw violet crystals, actively, hungrily draining their lethal energy.

  And resting perfectly in the absolute center of the massive, dark bloom was a glowing, highly volatile, fist-sized core of pure, unrefined catalytic nectar.

  "There it is," Lyra breathed, her eyes locking onto the glowing core. "The cure."

  As they stepped fully into the vault, the massive Abyssal Lotus reacted instantly to their biological presence.

  It didn't lash out with vines. The colossal flower suddenly snapped violently shut, its massive, heavily armored petals completely enclosing the precious, glowing core within an absolutely impenetrable, dark violet shell.

  "It completely closed the door," Zeno noted, sounding genuinely disappointed. He cracked his spiked knuckles. "Should I punch it open?"

  "No!" Lyra stopped him instantly. "If you smash the petals, you risk completely destroying the delicate core inside. It will shatter exactly like glass. We have to force the flower to open naturally so we can extract it cleanly."

  "How do we make it hungry?" Zeno asked, his brow furrowing as he stared at the massive, closed bloom.

  Lyra’s highly tactical mind raced, entirely analyzing the biological reality of the mutated plant. "It's entirely feeding on the radiation from those specific crystals beneath it," Lyra deduced rapidly. "If we completely cut off its food supply, the flower will have to open up to aggressively seek a new source of ambient energy. We have to destroy the crystals."

  Zeno grinned, stepping forward, entirely ready to shatter the rocks.

  "Wait, Zeno, don't punch them!" Lyra yelled, suddenly realizing the catastrophic danger of her own plan. She remembered the factory. "If you physically shatter those raw, unrefined crystals in this enclosed vault, the toxic radiation will completely leak out! We will both suffocate on the anti-magic gas before the flower even opens!"

  Zeno stopped dead in his tracks, his massive fist hovering in the air. He completely understood the danger of the bad air. He looked at the massive pile of glowing crystals, and then looked at the heavy, ancient stone floor directly beneath them. His organically expanding intelligence offered a flawlessly physical, highly destructive alternative.

  "If I cannot break her dinner plate..." Zeno reasoned cheerfully, his amber eyes completely lighting up with a terrifying, brilliant idea. "...I will simply take the entire table away."

  Zeno didn't charge the crystals. He completely engaged his Flowing Step, moving rapidly to the absolute edge of the massive crystal pile. He dropped incredibly low, entirely ignoring the stinging radiation, and violently plunged both of his massive, spiked Rock Serpent gauntlets completely through the damp stone floor itself, burying his hands up to his elbows in the ancient bedrock beneath the roots.

  He widened his stance, his massive back and leg muscles bulging obscenely against his red tunic.

  With an absolutely world-shattering, terrifying roar of pure physical exertion, Zeno engaged every single drop of his Strength stat of 26.

  He didn't pull the roots. He completely ripped a massive, twenty-foot slab of the solid stone floor entirely out of the earth. He hoisted the incredibly heavy, colossal chunk of flooring—carrying the entire massive pile of glowing violet crystals perfectly on top of it—high into the air.

  With a violent, twisting heave, Zeno completely flipped the massive stone slab upside down, violently dumping the entire lethal pile of corrupted crystals into a deep, flooded drainage trench on the far side of the vault, completely and entirely separating the massive Abyssal Lotus from its lethal food source without breaking a single crystal.

  The massive root system of the Lotus, completely severed from its energy supply, shrieked a highly unnatural, high-pitched wail.

  Instantly, desperate for new ambient energy to survive, the colossal, dark violet petals of the Abyssal Lotus slowly, shudderingly began to peel completely open, flawlessly exposing the glowing, priceless core within.