Supreme Disassemble: Rebuilding the World in the Iron Wastel

Chapter 12: The Opera of Scraps

The air inside the Grand Opera didn’t smell like the wasteland. Instead, it reeked of a sickeningly sweet perfume called "Civilization." Suger leaned against a velvet-covered wall, his stomach churning—not just from the aftereffects of overextending his power, but from a genuine physiological revulsion to the garish opulence surrounding him.

​Hey, genius. You look like a mutant lizard that got run over by a truck and then left to bake in the sun for three days, the Voice chimed in, sounding more energized than ever. But good news: the Disassembler System just hit Level 10. You don’t have to play 'tag' with metal anymore. You’ve unlocked a little thing called distance.

​Suger squinted, and a flickering blue frame appeared in his vision: [Remote Disassembly: Effective Range - 5 Meters].

​"Five meters? That’s barely a spit's distance," Suger grumbled internally, but his eyes immediately locked onto the heavy blast doors at the end of the corridor.

​Claire was already on one knee by the access panel, her chrome tactical arm plugged into the interface. Purple sparks hissed from her fingertips. "Dammit, Suger. The firewalls here are thicker than that golden bird’s skull. I need at least three minutes."

​"We don’t have three minutes, Soldier." Suger heard it—the rhythmic, metallic clanking of boots coming from the other end of the hall. Enforcer bots. Cold, efficient, and utterly relentless.

​He took a deep breath of the perfumed air, fighting back the dizziness. He didn’t walk toward the door. Instead, he stared at the intricate network of pressurized pipes hidden behind the decorative ceiling panels.

​"If I'm going to take this place apart, I might as well start with the plumbing."

​Suger thrust his left hand upward, fingers splayed, grasping at the empty air.

​[Remote Disassembly: ACTIVATED!]

​In that heartbeat, Suger’s consciousness felt like an invisible drill, boring straight through the expensive plaster. The brass valves, the pressure sensors, and the high-end climate control chips—everything turned into a blueprint of glowing geometric lines in his mind.

​CRACK.

​A sharp snap of metal echoed in the silent corridor.

​Suddenly, the ceiling buckled as if torn by a giant hand. A violent torrent of liquid nitrogen erupted from the ruptured pipes, turning the hallway into a frozen hellscape in seconds. The Enforcer bots, just rounding the corner, were instantly encased in frost, becoming expensive, unmoving statues.

​Ooh—now that was a classy move! the Voice whistled.

​Claire flinched, her hand slipping from the panel. She looked back at Suger, the "what-the-hell-are-you" look in her emerald eye growing deeper. "You didn't... you didn't even touch the pipes?"

​"It’s called 'wireless service,' Soldier. They don't teach that in the Inner City academies." Suger wiped a smear of blood from his nose, even though his hands were still shaking.

​Just then, the blast doors groaned and began to slide open.

​Behind the doors lay a nightmare. It wasn't an office or a vault, but a massive abyss extending deep underground. Thousands of transparent cylindrical pods moved up and down on tracks, each containing a creature that was half-man, half-machine—the Inner City’s "Conversion Line."

​Claire turned pale, her skin whiter than the frost on the floor. "They’re actually doing it... mass-scale conversion..."

​"Hey, don’t freeze up on me now, Claire." Suger grabbed her shoulder, pulling her toward the ledge. "If you want to write a report, do it after we turn this place into spare parts. Right now, we need to pick a pod and drop."

​Alarms wailed throughout the theater, a funeral concerto that seemed to have no end.

​Suger looked back at the closing doors, then at his own trembling hands. He felt more than just new skills from Level 10; he felt a deeper, more dangerous hunger. His system was craving to disassemble something much larger than a robot.

​"Let’s go," Suger grinned, revealing the sharp, reckless smile of a wasteland scavenger. "Let’s give these Inner City bastards a finale they’ll never forget.