The Upper Tunnels weren't tunnels; they were a graveyard of failed empires. Massive, rusted gears the size of houses hung overhead, frozen in mid-grind for centuries. The air was thick with the smell of wet iron and something metallic—the blood of the machines.
"Keep moving," Han-wool rasped. Each step felt like someone was driving a heated needle into his hip. The deep plum veins had spread, tracing a map of jagged light up his neck.
Suji led the way, her small frame darting between the shadows like a flicker of soot. She stopped every few meters, her hand held high in a closed fist. Freeze.
Gwak was huffing behind them, his massive back straining under the weight of the Noble girl and their salvaged gear. "Kid, we're heading into the 'Forbidden Zone.' Even the Scav-Guild doesn't come here. They say the pipes down here still have minds of their own."
"Good," Han-wool spat, his eyes scanning the darkness. "Let 'em try to follow us into a maze that bites back."
The girl, bouncing against Gwak's shoulder, looked up at the ceiling. Her golden eyes were wide, reflecting the faint amethyst glow from Han-wool's skin. "This... this is the old filtration system for the Sky-Cities. My father told me stories. They stopped using these pipes because they became... infected."
"Infected with what?" Han-wool asked, stopping at a massive junction where five tunnels met.
"With us," a voice echoed from the dark.
Out of the blackness, a dozen pairs of eyes ignited. They weren't the red ocular sensors of the Cleaners. They were human eyes—yellowed, hungry, and desperate.
A man stepped into the faint light. He was gaunt, his skin the color of ash, and he wore a necklace made of drone-sensors. In his hand was a spear tipped with a jagged piece of a High-Blood's ceramic armor.
"The Rat, the Drunk, and the Mute," the man hissed—this was Mose, a scavenger king who had survived on scraps and spite for decades. His gaze landed on Han-wool's glowing arm. "And they brought a snack from the clouds. You've got a lot of nerve coming to the Throat, Han-wool."
"Move aside, Mose," Han-wool growled, his hand instinctively twitching toward his shiv. The Core inside him throbbed, a violent surge of heat that made the air around his fist shimmer. "I don't have time for your toll-booth bullshit."
"That's not a toll-booth look on your face, boy," Mose said, pointing his spear at the deep purple veins on Han-wool's neck. "That's a death sentence. You're leaking Mana. You're a walking lighthouse for every Enforcer within ten miles."
"Then let 'em come!" Han-wool roared. He stepped forward, and the ground beneath his boot cracked. A small shockwave of dark plum energy rippled outward, making the ash-skinned men recoil. "I'm tired of hiding. I'm tired of crawling in the dirt while they breathe the sun."
Suddenly, the girl screamed.
High above, a section of the rusted ceiling simply disappeared. It didn't fall; it vanished into a clean, circular hole, disintegrated by a high-frequency beam.
Descending through the hole was a figure in white-and-gold armor, floating on a platform of pure light. He didn't carry a gun or a saw. He carried a thin, elegant rapier that hummed with a sound like a choir.
General Kang-ho. The "White Reaper" of the High-Bloods.
"Found you," Kang-ho said, his voice smooth and cold as ice. He looked at the gathered peasants with the same disgust a man looks at a cockroach in his kitchen. "The Seed has been contaminated by a Low-Blood's filth. A shame. I'll have to cut that arm off before I take it back."
Han-wool looked at the General, then at his own glowing, scarred hand. He felt the anger—the raw, peasant rage—boiling over.
"You want the arm?" Han-wool grinned, his eyes burning with amethyst fire. He turned to Gwak and Suji. "Get the girl to the deeper vents. Now!"
"Han-wool, don't be a fool!" Gwak yelled.
"GO!"
Han-wool didn't wait. He launched himself into the air, his right fist trailing a streak of dark purple lightning.
"You want your Seed back?" Han-wool screamed, his voice echoing through the Throat. "Come and take it out of my cold, dead fingers, you golden prick!"
General Kang-ho didn't even flinch as Han-wool hurtled toward him. He simply shifted his weight, the platform of light beneath his boots humming. With a flick of his wrist, the rapier whistled through the air.
Slash.
A crescent of white energy tore through the smog. Han-wool twisted mid-air, the wind of the blade grazing his cheek and drawing a thin line of blood. He slammed his amethyst-lit fist into the ground where he landed, sending a jagged spike of reinforced concrete toward the General.
Kang-ho stepped off his platform, descending like a feather. He tapped the concrete spike with the tip of his blade, and the massive shard shattered into harmless dust.
"Feral strength," Kang-ho remarked, his voice devoid of emotion. "You swing that power like a club. It's pathetic. A pig wearing a crown is still a pig."
"And a god bleeding out in the mud is just another corpse!" Han-wool spat.
He lunged again, but this time his body felt lighter. The dark plum energy was no longer just in his arm; it was in his legs, his lungs, his very vision. He moved in a blur of violet light, his strikes coming so fast they sounded like thunderclaps.
Clang! Clang! Boom!
The rapier and the fist met over and over. Every time they clashed, a shockwave rattled the rusted pipes above. Mose and his scavengers scrambled back into the shadows, watching in terrified awe.
"Mose!" Gwak yelled, struggling to adjust the girl on his back. "Don't just stand there with your thumb up your ass! Help us clear these vents or the shockwaves are gonna bring the whole ceiling down on us!"
Mose looked at the General—a symbol of the power that had kept his people in the dark for centuries. Then he looked at Han-wool, a "Rat" who was actually making a God sweat.
"Dammit," Mose cursed, spitting on the floor. "Lads! Clear the debris! If the Rat dies, we're next anyway. Open the sub-sector gate!"
The Price of Power
Back in the center of the chamber, Han-wool was losing ground. His movements were fast, but they were jagged and unrefined. Every time he used the amethyst energy, his skin cracked a little more. Blood—dark and smelling of ozone—seeped from the edges of his Sync-Scar.
Kang-ho saw the opening. He parried a heavy haymaker and drove the pommel of his rapier into Han-wool's solar plexus.
"Gah!" Han-wool crumpled, the air leaving his lungs in a wheeze.
Kang-ho stood over him, the tip of the humming blade resting against Han-wool's throat. "The Seed is rejecting you. It's eating your nervous system. In five minutes, you'll be a puddle of charred meat. I'm doing you a favor, Vermin."
The General raised his blade for the final thrust.
"Han-wool!" Suji's voice—a rare, raspy scream—echoed through the tunnel.
She didn't use her knife. She threw a heavy, industrial-grade flash-core she had scavenged from the Hunter-Class wreck.
FLASH.
The room turned a blinding, violent white. Kang-ho hissed, his enhanced Noble vision burning as the sensors in his helmet overloaded. He swung blindly, the rapier cutting a deep gash across Han-wool's chest, but the killing blow missed.
Han-wool felt a pair of small, strong hands grab his collar. Suji.
"Run," she hissed, her voice sounding like grinding gravel.
Gwak grabbed Han-wool's other arm, hauling him toward the now-open sub-sector gate. Mose and his men were already vanishing into the lower dark, leaving behind a trail of smoke and scrap.
"I... I almost had him," Han-wool coughed, his vision swimming in purple haze.
"You almost got turned into a kebab, you idiot!" Gwak roared. "Move your legs or I'm leaving you for the Cleaners!"
They dove through the gate just as Kang-ho regained his sight. The General pointed his rapier at the closing heavy iron door, a beam of white light melting the hinges, but it was too late. The "Rats" had vanished into the Forbidden Zone—a place where even the High-Bloods' sensors couldn't penetrate the ancient lead shielding.
Inside the dark, damp silence of the lower pipes, Han-wool collapsed. The amethyst light in his arm didn't fade; it began to spread toward his chest, glowing through his shirt.
"The seal... it's breaking," the Noble girl whispered from the floor, her voice filled with a mixture of horror and fascination. "He didn't just sync with it. He's consuming it."