Chapter 27: RETURNING TO THE SURFACE
The ascent through the vertical two-hundred-meter drop shaft was completely silent.
Noah Kurtz glided upward using the high-frequency micro-bursts of the Ashen Step, his boots tapping against protruding basalt ledges with liquid precision. Below him, Jiho Park simply leaped upward in massive, fifteen-meter leaps, his slide sandals slapping the stone walls with loud, lazy thuds as he carried his oversized canvas bag over his shoulder like a sack of laundry.
When they breached the concrete opening of the ruined fountain in Sector 21’s overgrown border park, the cool midnight air rushed over them, washing away the dry, suffocating dust of the 14th Cycle vault.
Noah reached out, sliding the heavy concrete basin back over the shaft entry with a quiet nudge of his boot.
Click.
The entrance sealed seamlessly, once again appearing as nothing more than a pile of wet concrete and dead thorn vines in an abandoned urban park.
"Ahhh..." Jiho let out a long, theatrical sigh as he stretched his massive arms toward the cloudy night sky, his broad back joints popping like firecrackers. "Fresh air! Now, Master... where is the kitchen?"
Noah didn’t answer immediately. He walked back toward the concrete slab under the shadow of the massive dead oak tree.
He didn’t bother leaving Sector 21 just yet. Down here in the overgrown wasteland park, no Association monitoring arrays were active. He pulled out his small iron pot, filled it with clean water, and lit a small, controlled campfire.
With practiced, minimalist movements, he sliced thin strips of dried ration meat, added the coarse survival spice mix from his Wood Tier memory, and let the broth simmer over the steady flame.
Within minutes, the divine, mouth-watering aroma filled the night air once more.
Jiho sat cross-legged on the ground like a massive bear, staring at the small iron pot with wide, glistening eyes. When Noah ladled a steaming portion into his tin cup, the S-Rank Tank drank it with reverent silence, practically weeping tears of joy over the peppery, meridian-warming flavor.
"Master..." Jiho sniffled, wiping his mouth with the back of his massive hand after finishing his second bowl. "If you ever start a restaurant in the high sectors, the S-Rank Guild Masters will start a war just to get a reservation."
"I don’t cook for Guild Masters," Noah replied dryly, blowing on his own cup of broth. "I cook to stay alive."
"Works for me," Jiho grinned, patting his rock-hard stomach in complete satisfaction. He leaned back against the trunk of the dead oak tree, closing his eyes as his breathing immediately slowed into a deep, heavy rhythm. Within ten seconds, the giant Tank was fast asleep, his passive Absolute Inertia turning his resting body into an unyielding steel wall in the middle of the wilderness.
Noah set his empty tin cup aside, his steel-gray eyes looking up past the dark canopy of the mutated oak trees.
High above the overgrown ruins of Sector 21, the sky was no longer dark.
A fleet of massive, silver-plated corporate transport airships hovered silently in mid-air, their high-intensity searchlights sweeping wide beams of brilliant white light across the desolate industrial wasteland below. Engraved prominently across the hull of the lead airship was a glowing crest—an interlocking shield of frost and steel.
The crest of the Vance Clan.
"Surveyors," Noah murmured softly to himself.
Following the glitched spatial implosion of the Sector 21 catacomb in Chapter 15, the Vance Clan’s deep exploration division had officially moved in. High-rank guilds rarely cared about low-yield F-rank portals, but an entire dungeon portal destabilizing into a historical layer was an anomaly that threatened the surrounding sector boundaries.
Down in the wasteland below, long lines of armored corporate vanguard soldiers and research teams were deploying from the airships, setting up containment pylons to sweep the area.
They were looking for energy traces, spatial fractures, or any high-rank entity that could have caused the collapse.
Noah reached inside his coat lining, his fingers lightly brushing against his two newly acquired treasures—Record Fragment #015 and the twin obsidian-alloy daggers resting in their dark leather sheath.
The corporate airships possessed state-of-the-art mana scanners capable of detecting high-density relics from miles away. Yet, as the wide white searchlights swept directly over the dead oak tree where Noah sat, the scanner arrays registered absolutely nothing.
To their high-tech sensors, the ground beneath the tree contained only two signals: the dormant, impenetrable physical density of an off-duty S-Rank Tank sleeping off his fatigue, and the flat, baseline signature of a worthless, uncoordinated F-Rank civilian.
The twin daggers and the obsidian fragment had been forged to completely dampen kinetic and mana friction. They were invisible ghosts, just like their owner.
A dry, quiet smile touched Noah’s lips.
Evelyn Vance was likely aboard one of those lead airships right now, standing behind high-security glass screens, analyzing tactical data streams, and trying to rationalize the sudden environmental glitches occurring across the city.
She believed she was standing at the absolute pinnacle of human advancement, backed by legacy wealth and A-Rank talent.
She had no idea that the answers she was frantically searching for were currently sitting six levels beneath her boots—and that the man who had retrieved them was casually finishing a bowl of cheap ration soup in the mud below.
"Sleep well, Evelyn," Noah whispered quietly into the cold midnight wind.
He stood up from the concrete slab, kicking a layer of dirt over the dying embers of the campfire. He didn’t disturb Jiho. He knew the giant Tank would sleep undisturbed for the next eight hours, completely immune to anything the wilderness could throw at him.
Noah adjusted the collar of his worn coat, sliding his hands deep into his pockets as he stepped out from the shadow of the dead tree.
It was time to return to District 7. Alistair Vance was waiting for the secondary decryption, and the next piece of the past was already calling out from the dark.