Chapter 57

Chapter 57
Chapter: 57

Chapter Title: Bratsk’s Refrigerator

—

Han Sang-ah appeared as though she might collapse onto the floor at any moment.

“Are you planning on spreading out a mat and taking a nap right here?”

—No mat.

In response to Han Sang-ah’s dry reply, I gripped her arm and hauled her back to her feet. Seriously, you’re going to fold after just this much?

Did you actually anticipate a welcoming committee of models serving drinks when we breached the Erosion Core?

We had managed to adjust to this miserable gimmick somehow. Even if our roles were to flip-flop again now, I felt certain we could brute-force our way through.

“One orb, three, five. There is a solitary button. Doesn’t look like a trap.”

Han Sang-ah directed a skeptical squint my way.

—No traps, no enemies, just a random button sitting in the middle of nowhere. That is incredibly fishy.

“No argument here.”

I had zero inkling of what that button was intended for, but I doubted it was designed for our benefit. Regardless, this vast chamber seemed to have run out of tricks—as if its budget for surprises had finally dried up.

Ultimately, it seemed our only path forward was to engage that button.

The second Han Sang-ah made contact with it, my physical form was snatched away once more, and I touched down in an entirely new environment.

“…What kind of nonsense is this now?”

I performed a rapid sweep of the area. Five massive stone slabs loomed before me. Each one possessed a distinct hue.

—Hello? Can you hear me?

Han Sang-ah’s voice crackled through. Looking down, I noticed a compact communication device resting on a waist-high table. I grabbed it and responded.

“Yeah, I’ve got you.”

—I’m currently being swarmed by slimes.

The moment she stopped speaking, a heavy mechanical thud echoed, a massive gap opened in the ceiling, and slimes began raining down in a steady stream. There were over a dozen of them, categorized into five different colors.

Tightening my grip on my spear, I summoned the Paradox Flame.

“Explain what you’re seeing.”

—There are five stone slabs here, each marked with a specific icon. Also… there’s some bizarre machinery. It looks like heavy-duty piping hooked up to a main engine. What is the point of this?

I shifted my weight to evade a slime’s lunge while inspecting my own surroundings. Was the massive pipe linked to her machine the same one I was looking at?

“It looks like the plumbing on my end leads directly to yours.”

Beneath the pipe sat a receptacle designed for an insert.

Further off, I identified an empty vat and a row of five spigots. Each spigot had a matching icon etched above the handle.

A dull throb began in my temples. What in the hell were we expected to accomplish here?

“I’ve got a vat and several faucets on this side. The vat is currently being primed with something.”

—My attacks aren’t doing a thing to these slimes. I can parry them, but every offensive move I make is just sliding right off.

I suspected as much. It felt reminiscent of the mechanics found in the Great Maze. However, this wasn’t just a basic game of matching dice.

My mind raced to connect the dots. The shades of the slimes. The colors of the slabs in my room. The icons on the slabs in Han Sang-ah’s area.

“Dammit.”

The curse slipped out involuntarily. Dealing with the slimes was annoying enough, but this logistics puzzle was worse.

“You mentioned five slabs with icons. What’s the symbol on the far left?”

She paused for a heartbeat, searching for the word, before answering.

—A heart.

I checked the hue of the slab on my far left. It was blue.

I surveyed the slabs in my own chamber. One of them featured a heart icon.

Dragging the heavy vat over, I positioned it under the faucet marked with the heart and twisted the handle. A thick, viscous fluid began to pour inside.

—Do you have any clue what we’re doing?

“Managing the logistics. Just hold the line!”

Once the vat hit capacity, I slotted it directly into the pipe. A heavy churning sound followed as the machinery inhaled the liquid.

—Wait, the console on this side just lit up. There’s a toggle—should I pull it?

“Do it. Now.”

Momentarily, Han Sang-ah transmitted an update.

—The engine is humming. I’ve got a display panel here. It’s marked with five different colors. When I engage the power, the indicator needle starts climbing.

Understood; that was the sequence. I barked out an order immediately.

“Cut the power exactly when that needle hits blue!”

—Understood.

The logic of the room finally clicked. I had to provide the specific fuel to her engine that corresponded with the icons in her chamber.

Then, she had to operate the machine and time the shutdown to match the color of the slab in my chamber.

Only by syncing those two variables perfectly…

“Get wrecked, you gelatinous freaks.”

The slime that matched the current color finally took a lethal blow.

—As soon as I kill the power, the needle starts dropping back to zero.

“Obviously.”

She had to constantly toggle the machine on and off to keep the needle hovering over the correct color zone.

—The fuel level is bottoming out!

And I was tasked with periodically replenishing whatever substance her engine was incinerating. This was total chaos.

“They weren’t kidding when they said rank 1 was a different beast.”

I never dreamed the mechanics would be this convoluted.

Then, I anticipated the worst possible complication and warned Han Sang-ah.

“Watch out—there’s a chance the icons and colors might rotate on a timer.”

If the alignment wasn’t perfect, we couldn’t damage the slimes. If they shifted…

We would have to recalibrate everything in real-time through constant radio chatter. And, as if on cue, the slabs began to pulse with a faint light, and the icons scrambled into new positions.

“Why is it that my most cynical theories always…”

Prove to be 100% accurate? This was an absolute nightmare.

“Report the changes.”

—Copy that, give me a moment to verify my side as well.

Han Sang-ah and I exchanged data relentlessly over the devices, not daring to stop for a second. If we lost focus, we were finished.

—Fuel is below 20%.

“Hold on, I’m refilling it now!”

A lashing tentacle whistled past my ear. I continued shouting out color updates as the slabs cycled through their patterns.

“The colors just swapped—what’s the word?”

—Sorry, a bit of lag. We’ll be able to strike again in a second.

How many rounds did we go through, matching fuel to icons and babysitting that gauge? Slimes continued to tumble from the vents above, their ranks showing no signs of thinning.

“How many more of these things are in the queue?”

—Fuel… the clover icon…

I jammed the correct fuel into the intake, rolled under a lunging tentacle, and drove my spear through a slime. The Paradox Flame incinerated its core, the fire roaring brighter with the kill.

“You doing okay? You sound out of breath.”

—I can keep going.

“Still.” That word worried me. It was self-evident that if either of us slipped up here, it was over. You couldn’t navigate this two-person gimmick alone.

That was exactly why this specific Erosion Core barred entry to anything other than a pair.

“Ha, that should do it…”

After what felt like hours of combat, we finally vaporized the final slime. It lost its structural integrity and dissolved into a puddle, signaling the end of the wave.

“What’s the next trick?”

A grinding noise filled the room as a doorway materialized in the previously smooth wall.

—Can we take a quick second before moving on?

“Yeah, that’s smart. Whatever is behind that door feels like bad news.”

Through the threshold, a heavy white mist of frost rolled out. The sheer volume of mana bleeding into the air was staggering.

“I thought rank 1 Erosion Cores were supposed to be massive.”

Hunters always claimed the internal dimensions were vastly larger than rank 2 sites.

—Bratsk’s Refrigerator is limited to two people. Why waste space?

It made sense—there was no need for a sprawling layout when the mechanical complexity was already this high. I’d bet two high-level hunters who walked in here overconfident would have been wiped out in minutes.

“I have a feeling this is the grand finale.”

My intuition was screaming. The mana pressure radiating from the next room made the slimes look like toys.

‘At the low end: a wyvern. At the high end: an archdemon.’

Something that would cause a national emergency back home was waiting on the other side of that door.

Given my current stats, it was going to be a desperate fight. Once we had caught our breath, I finished my coordination with Han Sang-ah and stepped through the entrance.

“…Still haven’t regrouped, I see.”

Han Sang-ah wasn’t in the room. Instead, a single figure dominated the space.

Seated upon a complex throne of ice at the top of a staircase was a woman with skin as white as snow. A crown fashioned from translucent crystal sat upon her silver hair; she was draped in a deep blue gown, her eyes firmly shut.

She looked like a porcelain doll perched on that throne, fingers entwined, perfectly still.

—I don’t know what you’re looking at, but my side has a gargantuan slime over 30 meters tall. It’s pulsating and churning, and I can see human faces appearing and disappearing in the sludge—all of them are screaming.

I suppose I was the lucky one—at least I didn’t have to look at that.

“A guest arrives, and you don’t even offer a hello?”

The words had barely left my mouth when the doll-like woman’s eyes flew open. A piercing blue glare locked onto me as a localized blizzard of frost erupted, beginning to sap my internal heat.

“What the—”

A small icon of a thermometer manifested in the air above my head.

The red fluid within began to tick downward. What was the catch?

—This giant slime is literally birthing smaller slimes like waste.

“That’s a lovely image.”

Regardless, my priority was decoding this thermometer mechanic.

“My gut says this tracks body temperature.”

Did I have to execute her before the bar hit the bottom? Based on the speed of the drop, I had less than three minutes before it hit zero.

“Dammit.”

As the indicator continued its slow descent, the reality set in.

“It really is my core temperature.”

If that bar bottomed out, I was a dead man. The moment that realization landed, the woman on the throne gestured with a hand.

Vast quantities of ice crystals crystallized in the air, rapidly honing themselves into lethal spears.

“Han Sang-ah, it looks like you need to trigger something on your end.”

I ignited the Paradox Flame and barked into the radio.

—Another one?

“My internal temperature is dropping every second. If it hits the floor, I’m done.”

There was no mechanism in my room to generate heat. Therefore, the solution to my freezing had to be in her room.

“This is starting to get on my nerves!”

My spear carved a path through the air. I deflected and dodged the barrage of ice spears in a coordinated display of strikes. Yet, despite the exertion, I didn’t feel a drop of sweat.

My body was just getting colder and colder.

It was definitive proof that my temperature was entirely governed by that digital gauge. Then, the level on the thermometer above my head bumped up a fraction.

“What did you just do?”

—I took down one of the miniature slimes the big one produced.

Was it that straightforward this time? She clears the adds, and I duel the boss?

There was no way the designers made it that simple.

“Watch your kill count.”

—What?

The starting point of the gauge wasn’t at the top—it was right in the middle. If a human’s body temperature fluctuates by even a single degree, things start failing.

—So, I have to time my kills to keep your temperature at a specific equilibrium?

“Exactly.”