CLASS F’S MONSTER SON-IN-LAW

Chapter 6

The descent was swift and absolute. The steel platform beneath Alex’s feet dropped into a shaft that smelled of ozone and damp, ancient stone. The lights of the Annex Building had died, plunging the vertical shaft into perfect, suffocating darkness.

“All surviving Legacy Units in proximity, prepare for activation. Initiate Core Defense Protocol.” Jia’s command echoed one last time, synthetic and cold, before the silence of the underground consumed the sound.

Alex’s internal systems, however, were wide awake.

[Perception Mode: Activated. Infrared, Sonar, and Kinetic Vibration Mapping Engaged.]

In his enhanced vision, the darkness was irrelevant. He saw the cold outlines of the shaft walls, the heat signature of the platform’s ancient motor, and, far above, the faint, residual thermal wake of Jia where she stood at the entrance. More importantly, he registered a series of sudden, agitated kinetic signatures moving in the walls surrounding the shaft.

Legacy Units are moving within the maintenance ducts. Ambush imminent.

The platform reached the ten-meter mark when the first attack came.

From a narrow ventilation grate to his right, a slender figure exploded outward, moving with unnatural speed. It was a student—a petite, seemingly harmless girl Alex had seen serving coffee in the dining hall. Her face was contorted in the same vacant, red-eyed stare as Eric, and she held a sharpened piece of steel rebar aimed directly at Alex’s central nervous system.

Alex didn't move his body to avoid the strike. He maintained his stance on the rapidly descending platform, and instead, used his right foot to execute a Defensive Vibration Kick—a precise, upward snap that struck the student's inner wrist, where the control node for the Legacy Unit was weakest.

The rebar clattered harmlessly against the wall. The girl’s arm, which was channeling the System's kinetic force, instantly seized up and went slack. She hit the wall, her momentum broken, and collapsed onto a ledge three meters above Alex. Neutralized.

[Legacy Unit 1: Deactivated. Host Status: Stable. System Signature Detected: Low-Tier Student Unit.]

No sooner had she been silenced than three more signatures erupted from the ducts above and below him. Two were charging downward along the walls, using their enhanced grip to defy gravity; the third, a bulky figure in a chef’s uniform, attempted to drop from the ceiling, aiming for a lethal vertical spike.

The space was too confined for complex maneuvers. Alex had to use the environment.

He directed a massive, focused burst of kinetic energy toward the platform's braking mechanism, momentarily overloading the motor. The lift groaned violently and plunged downward at twice its previous speed.

The sudden, brutal drop threw the two wall-running Units—a librarian and a gym teacher—off balance. They shrieked as they tumbled past the platform.

The chef, however, timed his jump perfectly. He slammed onto the platform directly behind Alex, attempting a grappling sequence designed to choke a man to death in a single second.

Analysis: Too much mass. Too much momentum.

Alex smiled—a rare, brief contraction of his facial muscles. The chef was an anchor.

Alex performed a flawless Aethelian Decoupling maneuver: a lightning-fast forward roll off the platform. The chef, now alone on the descending steel plate, was committed to the grapple.

The chef was relying on the platform to support his weight. Alex was not.

Alex dropped free. He arrested his fall by grabbing a protruding pipe along the shaft wall, hanging vertically.

The platform continued its breakneck descent for another twenty meters, carrying the bewildered chef with it. Then, Alex heard the sickening CRUNCH of impact far below as the platform, still moving at lethal speed, slammed into the bottom of the shaft.

The Legacy Unit chef was silenced instantly.

Alex let go of the pipe and dropped the remaining distance, landing silently on the debris-strewn concrete floor beside the destroyed lift and the mangled form of the chef.

[Legacy Units 2, 3, 4: Deactivated. Host Status: Terminated. System Signature Detected: Mid-Tier Staff Units. Efficiency Rating: High.]

He was at the bottom of the shaft. The air here was heavy, thick with raw, uncontrolled mana.  He could feel the proximity of the Unstable Core. It was like being next to a faulty reactor—a deep, rhythmic thump-thump that resonated through his bones.

The Core is oscillating outside safe parameters. Detonation probability: 67%.

He had to move faster.

The chamber he had landed in was a large, vaulted space—a hidden sub-level of the Academy's ancient foundation. The Unstable Core was not visible, but its energy pulsed through massive, root-like conduits carved into the stone walls.

Ahead, across the chamber, was a single, heavy steel door—the entrance to the Core Chamber.

Alex approached the door, his kinetic senses scanning the area. The door was sealed by a dozen magical wards and three different biometric scanners. He could bypass the seals, but it would take time.

Time he didn't have. The Core's rhythmic pulse was accelerating.

Suddenly, a new kinetic signature appeared directly in front of the door—a signature that wasn't moving. It was simply there, like a statue of compressed, coiled power.

The figure was female. Her armor was thicker and more specialized than Jia’s, and her form seemed older, her movements more practiced. Her eyes glowed a vibrant, hateful crimson. She was a high-level Legacy Unit—perhaps a former instructor or a key member of the original Academy staff.

"Halt, Subject 001," the Unit commanded, her voice not synthetic like the others, but deep and resonant, laced with raw power. "I am High-Guard Antares. I was awakened 1,000 cycles ago and was tasked with defending this threshold until the System's final harvest."

High-Guard Antares raised her hand, and the raw mana from the Unstable Core conduits rushed toward her, forming a massive, crackling sphere of destructive energy—a high-level, Academy-sanctioned spell Alex hadn't seen demonstrated in public.

"You will not breach the Core. You will be erased," Antares declared, the power surging around her reaching critical mass.

Alex calculated the trajectory, the power output, and the damage radius. He couldn't dodge in this chamber, and blocking the attack with kinetic force would still result in massive collateral damage to the Core conduits.

He was trapped between an ancient, self-aware guard and a highly volatile energy source.

But as the sphere of pure, destructive mana surged toward him, Alex saw not a weapon, but a perfect power source. He executed a movement of pure audacity, positioning himself not away from the blast, but directly in the path of the conduit feeding the spell, ready to intercept the raw energy before Antares could finish the cast, knowing that a single miscalculation would vaporize him instantly. If he was successful, he would gain enough charge to overwhelm the core's defense system.

But just as he prepared to absorb the incoming wave, a terrifying thought echoed from his AI Core, overriding the combat protocol: [Warning: Subject 002 (Jia) is now descending the shaft, having bypassed the lift entirely. Jia will reach the chamber in T-12 seconds. Recommendation: Execute Evasion Protocol Beta immediately, or face simultaneous attack from High-Guard Antares and Subject 002.]