OP Absorption
Chapter 130: Open It

Chapter 130: Open It

The portal snapped shut behind them with a violent tearing sound, dumping Fin and Arachne back into the hellish heat and stench of the sub-level tunnel.

And the air, thick with ozone and the sickeningly sweet smell of cooked flesh, hit him like a physical blow.

He stumbled, his domain already screaming in protest from the unstable portal jump.

So then he looked up, and the scene in front of him punched the breath from his lungs.

The reinforced door to the Abyssal Lock chamber, the one he’d sealed, was still shut, thank gods.

But the tunnel itself was a goddamn slaughterhouse.

Walls were scorched black, metal buckled and torn like wet paper.

And pipes had burst, hissing steam and spitting noxious fumes that burned his eyes.

Then he saw the bodies.

Three of them, twisted into nightmare shapes, their advanced Unit 7 armor melted like wax, fused to the grating.

They weren’t just dead; parts of them were just... gone. Vaporized.

And in the middle of all that devastation, leaning against a miraculously intact section of wall, was Scarlet.

Her red hair was plastered to her skull with a mess of blood and who knew what else.

And her clothes were shredded, ripped away in places to show angry, blistering burns that crawled up her arms and neck.

So then he saw one arm hanging limp, clearly broken, useless at her side.

But in her good hand, she gripped a massive, smoking Association pistol, its energy cell obviously fried, because she was holding it like a club.

And she was surrounded by more bodies.

At least two more Unit 7 bastards, maybe three, it was hard to tell because they were barely recognizable as human anymore.

Just melted armor and charred, smoking meat.

She looked up as he and Arachne staggered out of the fading portal light.

And a grin, wild and triumphant and utterly feral, split her blood-caked face.

"Took you long enough, Boss," she rasped, her voice a broken shred of sound.

Then she coughed, a wet, rattling noise, and spat a thick gob of bloody phlegm onto the already ruined grating.

"Party got a little out of hand after you left."

Fin just stared.

At the bodies. At the destruction. At her.

He’d expected her to be dead. Captured, maybe.

Not... this. Not queen of the goddamn charnel house.

"What... what did you do?" he finally managed, his voice barely a whisper.

Because this wasn’t just a fight. This was an annihilation.

Scarlet’s feral grin widened, showing teeth stained red.

And she tried to shrug with her good shoulder, but winced, the movement clearly agony.

"Just... returning the favor, Boss," she rasped out, her voice like gravel. "They wanted to play rough. So I showed ’em how it’s done."

Then she gestured vaguely with the smoking pistol at the melted remains of a Unit 7 operative.

"Turns out," she coughed, a wet, ugly sound, "when you get really, really pissed off... things just kinda... pop."

Fin stared at her, then at the carnage.

Pop?

Unit 7 commandos, S-rank psychos according to Scarlet herself, didn’t just ’pop’.

This wasn’t a knife fight. This was... something else.

The level of destruction, the way they died, it was like a miniature sun had gone off in this tunnel.

And Scarlet was at the center of it, burned and broken but grinning like a demon.

Arachne moved forward silently, her gaze sweeping the devastation, then settling on Scarlet’s injuries.

Her usual impassive face was tight, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and... something else. Respect?

"Your internal energy signature is... volatile," Arachne stated, her voice low, almost awed. "The infusion... it seems to have unlocked something far beyond simple enhancement."

Scarlet just laughed, another harsh, barking sound that ended in a pained grunt.

"Yeah, well, tell that to my arm."

She looked down at her broken limb, then back at Fin, her grin faltering slightly.

"Speaking of which, Boss... a little healing magic wouldn’t go amiss right now. Pretty sure I’m running on fumes and pure spite."

Fin nodded, pushing down his own shock, his own exhaustion.

Later. He’d figure out what the hell Scarlet was capable of later.

Right now, she was a valuable asset, grievously injured.

And...

"Mara," he said, his voice sharp, cutting through the haze of smoke and the stench of death.

His eyes scanned the ruined tunnel. No sign of her.

Just bodies. Association bodies.

"Where’s Mara?"

Scarlet’s grin vanished completely.

Her face, already pale beneath the blood and grime, went a shade whiter.

"Mara..." she mumbled, her good hand clenching on the useless pistol. "Shit."

And her eyes darted towards the sealed door of the Abyssal Lock chamber.

"When those... things," she gestured at the nearest melted corpse, "breached the outer defenses, I told her to get inside. Through that door you sealed. Figured it was safer in there than out here with me going nova."

Fin felt his blood run cold.

Safer?

Inside the Abyssal Lock chamber?

With whatever ancient, unknowable horror resided there?

The horror he had just barely escaped?

’No. No, no, no.’

"You sent her in there?" he choked out, disbelief warring with a fresh wave of dawning horror.

The Mark on his chest, still throbbing with a dull, angry heat, seemed to flare in response.

The Abyssal Lock.

It had sensed him. It had reacted to him.

What would it do to a normal human? A baseline human like Mara, with no core, no powers, nothing but sheer terror to offer it?

Scarlet pushed herself off the wall, swaying precariously.

"Looked like the only option, Boss! It was that or let those Unit 7 freaks use her as a goddamn shield! I was a little busy, you know, not dying!"

And her voice was defensive, angry, but underneath it, Fin heard the fear.

She knew. She knew what a terrible gamble she’d made with Mara’s life.

He didn’t waste time arguing.

He turned back to the sealed door, the one pulsing with those dark, unsettling runes.

The door he’d sworn he’d never touch again.

The strain on his domain, already immense from the two previous portal jumps and the forced severing from the Lock, screamed in protest.

His head pounded. Black spots danced in front of his eyes.

’Can’t. I can’t open it again. Not now.’

"Arachne," he said, his voice tight, "your assessment of that door? Can it be opened from this side without... me?"

He hated the weakness in his own voice, the admission that he was too drained, too damaged.

Arachne stepped closer to the pulsing, runed door, her hand hovering near its cold surface.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, her brow furrowed in concentration.

Fin could see the strain on her face, the way her own energy, already depleted from the earlier fight and the escape, flickered.

"The wards are... complex, my Lord," she said finally, opening her eyes. They were filled with a deep unease. "Abyssal in nature. Designed to contain, not to be breached. My abilities... I might be able to disrupt a minor warding sequence, given time. But to open it fully..." She shook her head. "It would require a power output beyond my current capacity. Or a key. A resonance."

Her eyes flicked to Fin, to the Mark on his chest.

"Your resonance, my Lord."

Damn it. Of course.

It always came back to him. To the power he barely understood, the power that was slowly killing him.

He looked at Scarlet, leaning heavily against the wall, her breathing shallow, blood still trickling from a dozen wounds.

He looked at Arachne, pale and strained but ready to fight to the death if he asked.

And he thought of Mara. Alone. Trapped in the dark with something ancient and unknowable.

Because of him. Because she trusted him, just a little. Because he’d dragged her into this mess.

"No choice then," he muttered, more to himself than to them.

He took a deep, ragged breath, trying to draw on reserves he wasn’t sure he still possessed.

The Mark on his chest burned hotter, a searing agony.

His domain shuddered, a distant tremor that he felt in his bones.

This was going to hurt. This was going to cost him.

Maybe everything.

He stepped towards the door, ignoring Scarlet’s weak protest, ignoring Arachne’s warning gaze.

He reached out, his hand trembling, towards the cold, pulsing surface of the Abyssal Lock.

’Just... gotta... open it.’