“It is… Tian Lie!” Roddy’s eyes were bulging out.
“The Angel Killer!” Chen Xiaolian’s face sank.
Tian Lie’s powerful voice was actually capable of penetrating through the thick metal vault door, just like that of a devil.
Who knew what kind of technique he was using.
Unless… it was as Nicole had said… he could transform his body into a stream of data?
“He… how could he have caught up to us here?” Roddy stared with widened eyes.
“Clearly… this fellow is much tougher than we had imagined!” Chen Xiaolian spat out furiously. “Hurry up and go!”
The both of them ran back to Fujino Masayoshi’s side and heard another loud bang coming from behind them.
BOOM!
This time, the impact caused the middle part of the vault door to twist inward!
The bottom area had clearly been pried open slightly. Light could be seen spilling inside from the other side.
“Guild Leader, what is that…”
“Shut up!” Roddy cut off Nagase Komi’s question.
Chen Xiaolian grabbed hold onto Fujino Masayoshi. “Is there any other exit here?”
“Eh? No…” Fujino Masayoshi’s face distorted in distress. “If there was another way, I would have ran off and not end up being trapped inside…”
Chen Xiaolian’s eyes were blood shot. He swivelled around and examined the demonstration hall. He then pointed toward another vault door. “Where does the door lead to?”
“That… I cannot enter… I do not have the clearance!” Fujino Masayoshi’s face grew more distressed. “I am telling the truth! I do not have the clearance to open that door… my status is not high enough! I am really not lying!”
Clearance?
Chen Xiaolian and Roddy glanced at each other, their eyes lighting up.
No clearance? Fret not! Roddy is here!
“Hurry!”
Without bothering to give an explanation, Chen Xiaolian dragged Fujino Masayoshi up and the four of them charged toward the door.
Roddy quickly utilized his Mechanical Heart upon the door and it was opened.
Fujino Masayoshi stared with bulging eyes. Seeing Roddy’s miraculous act of opening the door, he was left speechless.
Chen Xiaolian was surprised to find that there was no passageway or stairs of sort behind the door.
Instead, they found…
Something that resembled an elevator?
However, this elevator was oval in shape.
“Hurry up and enter!”
The four of them rushed inside and Chen Xiaolian quickly pressed the green button on the left wall of the elevator.
Weng!
The elevator shook for a bit and the doors then quickly closed.
During the final moment when the doors were closing up… Chen Xiaolian spied the deformed metal vault door being blasted off!
Tian Lie’s shining bald head emerged through the doorway. His imposingly robust body was glowing with a silvery metal sheen. He stepped forward, his gaze falling onto them.
Weng!
The doors closed up.
Next, Chen Xiaolian suddenly felt the ‘elevator’ accelerating. With a “weng”, it catapulted forward!
It turned out to be some form of railway car, speeding rapidly through a tunnel!
The gravitational pressure that resembled those evident when an aircraft was ascending could be clearly felt.
“This… where does this tunnel lead to?” Chen Xiaolian grabbed onto Fujino Masayoshi.
Fujino Masayoshi was terrified and he quavered. “It… it is the warehouse for the prototype machine! Heavens! I will be shot to death for this! I do not have the clearance to enter that place!”
…
BOOM!
After his punch had sent the closed door flying, Tian Lie caught sight of the oval shaped tunnel inside.
“You really do know how to run!” Tian Lie licked his lips. “I just love this hunting game! My dear prey, here I come!”
After saying that, Tian Lie jumped into the tunnel. Taking a deep breath, he took off, sprinting madly through the tunnel!
…
Weng…
The pod shook and they could clearly feel it decelerating.
After the pod has stopped, its doors slowly opened up.
The four of them quickly ran out from the pod and Chen Xiaolian quickly said. “We need to hurry up and move! That fellow will be catching up to us soon!”
Before them was a double door. Roddy’s face appeared pale as he opened the door. Then, his body staggered. Chen Xiaolian went forward to prop him up. “What happened?”
“I have been using my skill too much. I feel a little weak,” Roddy frowned. “It seems I may soon be reaching my limit.”
“We need to find a way out of here as fast as possible!” Chen Xiaolian knitted his eyebrows.
“I can still walk on my own. There is no need for you to help me.”
After saying that, Roddy gave a faint smile. In his hand was another beam weapon taken from the demonstration hall. “If that baldy catches up to us, then we will let him have a taste of this weapon.”
After the doors were opened, Chen Xiaolian and the others were shocked by what lay before their eyes…
This place… appeared like a huge… warehouse?
The ceiling was shaped like a dome with a height of over 30 meters!
This place was simply a giant underground warehouse!
Its walls, floor, all of it exuded a metallic lustre.
Smooth and spotless!
The humming sound of vents came from up above their heads.
This giant warehouse was extremely immense and dark. Only the gate area was set up with luminescent lights. However, the illumination from those lights was too weak and they were unable to see too far ahead.
“This is… just what is this place?” Roddy took a deep breath. “They actually built such a large space under the ground.”
“This is… this is the research institute’s most confidential area. Not even the Japanese Prime Minister has the clearance to enter this place…” Fujino Masayoshi appeared on the verge of crying. He gripped his head tightly. “I am so dead! I am definitely dead! I will be shot to death! I won’t even be given the chance to commit seppuku… wu wu wu wu wu wu wu wu…”
“Most confidential?” Roddy’s eyes flashed. “Is this the prototype machine that you mentioned? What is that thing?”
“Do not ask me that! I have never stepped foot inside this place,” Fujino Masayoshi cried out. “I have been here for nine years, but I have never entered this place! The tunnel we came through was one specifically made for researchers. One that I have never once came through! I… wu wu wu wu wu…”
“Shut up! Hurry up and move it!” Roddy kicked Fujino Masayoshi from the back. “If not for us, you would have died for sure! If you want to die, then wait until you get out of here. Can’t you think for yourself?”
The four of them walked inside the warehouse for a moment. Chen Xiaolian retrieved a tactical flashlight and took the vanguard position.
After walking for around 100 meters…
The warehouse was filled with an assortment of items, various metal desks, metal devices, lift trucks…
After reaching the end…
They found a closed metal door that was over 30 meters in height.
The gigantic metal door stood before them, exuding a majestic atmosphere that pressed down upon them.
“What is behind this door?” Chen Xiaolian’s eyes were bulged wide. “How could there be such a huge door?”
Doors were usually made based on the size of the object that was required to go through the door!
As for this door, it was made to be 30 meters high… the only explanation for this would be that it needed to allow an immensely huge object through it. Thus, the construction of such a gigantic door was necessary.
“Inside? Inside rests the prototype machine!” Fujino Masayoshi snappily shook his head. It appeared that he believed his death to be a certainty. Thus, he displayed a harsh attitude, one that was filled with indifference.
“There are words here,” Roddy suddenly raised his tactical flashlight, sweeping the beam of light over.
On the left side of the door was a metal nameplate with characters written on its surface. The characters formed two lines of text, one in Japanese and one in English.
“What is written on it?” Chen Xiaolian who was standing behind Roddy was not too concerned about it.
“…” Roddy did not say anything. However, his body began to tremble uncontrollably!
“What happened?” Chen Xiaolian was shocked and he quickly grabbed hold of Roddy’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“I… I am fine!” Roddy’s voice was slightly quavering from overexcitement and he stared at the nameplate that hung on the wall and carefully re-read it three times. After ascertaining that he had not made a mistake, he exhaled.
“I… if this is a dream, I truly hope I never wake up from this dream!” Roddy suddenly displayed an expression of someone who was close to breaking out in tears.
Roddy suddenly turned around and grabbed hold of Fujino Masayoshi. “Speak! The thing inside is the prototype machine? How is that possible? How could you possibly create something like this? How could you possibly have that level of technology?”
Fujno Masayoshi’s face revealed a bitter expression. “We? Of course, we do not possess the ability to create this item! This prototype machine was not created by us!”
“… it… where did it come from?” Roddy took a deep breath, his eyes focusing onto Fujino Masayoshi.
“It…” Fujino Masayoshi gulped. Roddy’s stare caused an instinctive sense of fear to engulf him.
This Japanese scientist said with a trembling voice. “I… truth is, I have never seen it before. I just do not have that type of clearance.”
“I asked you where it came from!”
“I…” Fujino Masayoshi’s voice was quavering. “I…”
“If you do not say it, I will kill you right now!”
“I…” Fujino Masayoshi covered his head and replied. “I really do not know! All I know is that, this thing was found several years ago from deep under the sea! It was after World War II, when our government sent out salvage ships to salvage some sunken warships that sank during naval warfare…
“They inadvertently found this thing!
“Hell if I know where this thing came from! This technology simply should not exist on this Earth! The top scientists of our country have studied it for decades! Generations after generations!
“In order to cover it up, all the people from the salvage ships were rounded up! Some were directly killed off!”
“Why?” Chen Xiaolian frowned.
“So that this information does not leak out!” Fujino Masayoshi’s expression turned somewhat mournful. “Considering the situation of our country… if its existence gets leaked, would we be able to keep it? The Americans would be the first to forcibly snatch it away from us!
“Thus, it has always been our most confidential secret… I have only heard about it and have never had the chance to see it at all! Additionally, the government also disseminated at least twenty or more versions of varying rumours to keep its existence a secret!
“What secret nuclear weapon research and development base, what secret nuclear energy research institute…
“We built this underground base in the 1990s in order to study it! In order to deceive the public, we created the huge project known as the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel!
“This place is 300 meters underground! Above our heads is a layer of concrete as thick as ten football fields!
“The weapons you saw in the demonstration hall earlier… they were all reverse engineered products made from studying it!
“However, even until this day, we are unable to grasp the technology behind it! We do not even understand most of the principles behind it!
“The weapons you see in the demonstration hall are all shoddy imitations of it. We cannot even create a suitable metallic material! We cannot even use its weapon! Because the strength of our metals are not strong enough! We cannot even research a way to reverse engineer out that type of alloy!
“After conducting elemental analysis on it, we found that there are at least 30 kinds of elements there that did not belong to the periodic table that our human technology established!
“The beam rifle in your hand is an imitation weapon, reverse engineered after we conducted research on it.
“However, we can only fire it out once every twenty seconds. Additionally, it can only be fired three times. After which the energy control device would overload and become scrap.
“However, that energy crystal… was cut out from it!
“The energy crystal that you picked up earlier… we were simply incapable of figuring out what that thing is. We were barely able to cut out a small part of it for analysis.
“In order to analyse the components within it, one large central computer would burn itself in the process of trying almost every year!”
“Energy source…” Chen Xiaolian suddenly thought of something.
He quickly retrieved something out from the system!
This was the item he had acquired from the previous phase of this Tokyo instance dungeon, one of the five energy sources!
Seeing the energy source that was the size of a cigarette box in Chen Xiaolian’s hand, Fujino Masayoshi became utterly shocked.
Fujino Masayoshi stared with bulging eyes. “You you you you! Where did you get that thing? You, you… just who are you people?”
Panicking, Fujino Masayoshi could only stutter.
As for Chen Xiaolian, his own level of shock was not small either.
Energy source…
As expected, it has a close relationship with the final quest of this instance dungeon.
This item that the system had distributed to them was not a useless decoration!
This energy source with a faint metallic glow…
Chen Xiaolian suppressed his own emotions and turned to Roddy. Chen Xiaolian slowly said. “Roddy, what exactly does the name plate say?”
Chen Xiaolian could see those words clearly now. However, those words were extremely hard to pronounce… at the very least, he did not understand what those words meant when written together.
Roddy’s expression grew increasingly peculiar.
Rather than being described as excitement, it would be better to describe it as…
Longing! And also… reverence!
“Fujino Masayoshi! The name written on the name plate. Did you people come up with that name?” Roddy suddenly forced out a smile.
“Yes… it is how we address it.”
“Hmmm, is this… a coincidence?” Roddy sighed.
Chen Xiaolian frowned. “Just what exactly is written on it?”
“The words written on it is…” Roddy swallowed his saliva and said slowly with a voice bordering on devotion. Its Chinese meaning is: Quán ling yù fàn yòng lián xù qiáng huà xíng jī dòng bing qì.”
Next, he slowly spoke out the English text:
“General_Unilateral_Neuro-link_Dispersive_Autonomic_Maneuver.”
“… why is the English name so hard to pronounce?”
Roddy forced out a smile. “Just put the first letter of each word together and read it out to understand.”
“G-U-N-D-A-M… … …” Chen Xiaolian’s face became one of amazement.
“Holy mother of shit!”
…