CLASS F’S MONSTER SON-IN-LAW

Chapter 7

The Core was screaming.

The pulse—the deep thump-thump that resonated through the ancient stone—was no longer a rhythm; it was a desperate, erratic hammering. The Core was oscillating wildly, and the massive sphere of destructive mana crackling in the hands of High-Guard Antares was only making the energy crisis worse.

Jia descending. Antares launching. Core near-failure. Time to reaction: 0.1 seconds.

Alex Vex executed Evasion Protocol Alpha—a counter-intuitive move that prioritized tactical acquisition over self-preservation.

He did not dodge Antares's blast. He moved directly toward the conduit feeding the spell.

He launched himself into the air, not with a jump, but by using a micro-burst of kinetic energy fired into the stone floor, propelling him like a missile toward the wall. Antares, programmed to eliminate threats, reflexively tracked him, and the massive sphere of mana fired, screaming through the air behind Alex.

Alex slapped the conduit. The ancient, carved stone pipe connecting the Unstable Core to Antares's spell had been designed for a thousand years of energy transfer.

Alex delivered a focused, precise pressure chop against the conduit's structural stress point, using the combined power of his Subject 001 physique. The conduit didn't shatter; it ruptured internally.

The massive, flowing river of raw mana—Antares’s power source—was instantly diverted.

The mana sphere Antares had launched, deprived of its continuous feed, flickered violently. It lost cohesion and exploded outward in a blinding, harmless flash of light and raw energy.

Antares, cut off from her power source, staggered back, her crimson eyes wide with disbelief. This was not a magical attack; it was a systemic sabotage of her energy architecture.

“Impossible! You severed the feed!” she roared, her voice echoing in the chamber.

Alex landed softly on the other side of the chamber, his body radiating heat from the near-lethal exposure to pure mana. He hadn't absorbed the blast, but he had temporarily choked the power flow.

[Conduit 1: Damaged. Core Discharge Rate: Temporarily Reduced. Host Status: Charged (Minor Energy Gain).]

Antares regained her composure and began to channel power from a second, smaller conduit. Alex knew he didn't have the time or the space to repeat the maneuver.

He seized the destroyed lift platform—a massive, twisted steel plate from the crash—and used a powerful, focused kinetic pulse to send the heavy debris spinning across the chamber floor toward Antares.

Antares, superior in power, simply vaporized the spinning steel plate with a quick, dismissive energy blast. But the action gave Alex the final few seconds he needed.

He moved to the Core Chamber door, ignoring the complicated magi-locks. He placed his right palm flat against the metal and initiated the Aethelian Security Bypass code he had partially acquired from the chef's unit data: [Subject 001 Access: Override.]

The three biometric scanners flashed green, and the heavy door groaned, beginning to retract into the stone wall.

Just as the door began to open, the Core’s pulse spiked violently, throwing all caution aside. The rhythmic hammering stopped, replaced by a deep, sustained vibration that shook the entire mountain. Dust and rock rained from the vaulted ceiling.

[WARNING! CORE FAILURE IMMINENT. DETONATION PROBABILITY: 99%. TIME TO CRITICAL MASS: 30 SECONDS.]

Alex glanced up. He heard the unmistakable, precise sound of Jia landing silently at the top of the shaft entrance.

He was caught between the Core’s catastrophic failure, the vengeful High-Guard Antares, and the arrival of his only peer.

Antares launched herself at Alex, abandoning magic for a physical takedown. "You die now, 001!"

Alex sidestepped the attack perfectly, letting Antares's momentum carry her past him and slam into the open Core Chamber door. The High-Guard bounced off the protective wall, stunned.

Alex slipped through the partially open doorway and into the Core Chamber.

The sight was overwhelming.  The chamber was a massive cylindrical space, and in the center, suspended by pulsing, flickering anchors, was the Unstable Core: a chaotic mass of raw, crystalline mana, glowing an angry, destructive blue. The noise was deafening.

[Analysis: Core is an Aethelian Fusion Reactor. Operating at 400% capacity. External System AI is attempting remote shutdown via System Override 77, causing the destructive oscillations.]

He had to stabilize it manually.

He turned back to the doorway. High-Guard Antares was recovering. But now, Jia, Subject 002, was standing directly behind her, framed in the archway. Jia had not come to help Antares.

Jia looked past Antares, her red visor fixed on Alex. “You are inefficient, Alex. You should have submitted. Now I must use the emergency procedure.”

Jia bypassed Antares, moving toward the core conduits. She didn't look like she was trying to save the city; she looked like she was following a checklist.

"Jia, what are you doing?" Antares shrieked, realizing the second Legacy Unit was not acting as an ally.

Jia stopped at the massive anchor conduits holding the Core in place. She plunged her bare, armored hand into the raw energy of the main anchor.

“Protocol 77 requires a controlled containment of the subject and the reactor. Antares, you are expendable,” Jia stated, her synthetic voice flat.

Jia initiated a sequence that was not meant to save the Core, but to isolate it. The main anchor conduits began to glow white-hot, shriveling the support lines like burnt wires.

Alex instantly understood her plan: Jia was severing the Core from the city’s power grid, containing the detonation radius to this chamber alone. She was sacrificing Antares and the entire Annex Building to prevent a global system collapse.

“Alex Vex,” Jia said, turning to him, her red visor glowing fiercely. “The detonation is contained to this space. You have 15 seconds. Die quickly, or I will initiate a forced System Link and make your death prolonged.”

Jia stepped back out of the chamber, leaving Alex trapped inside the closing steel door with the furiously surging High-Guard Antares and the screaming Unstable Core, which now had only seconds before reaching critical mass. Alex watched in horror as the giant steel door began to grind shut, trapping him in the inevitable explosion. And just as the gap narrowed to a foot-wide slit, he saw one final, chilling detail: Jia was clutching a tiny, engraved silver locket—a locket identical to one Lin Mei wore around her neck.