"Ababa... shh shh... I can't hold it anymore! The big iron pipe's gonna explode!"
Naruto clutched his crotch, squeezed his legs together, and anxiously danced in place, naturally wiping his grease-covered hands twice on senior technician Azad's white coat.
Azad's face turned green. He took two disgusted steps back and pointed toward the shadows at the end of the corridor. "Over there! Don't run around! If you fall into the furnace, I'll have no choice but to scoop up your ashes and mix them into cement!"
"Hehe, off to pee!"
Naruto grinned stupidly, hitched up his pants, and vanished into the shadows in a flash.
The instant he was out of sight, the idiotic expression on his face—good enough for an Oscar—vanished instantly, replaced by a scalpel-like chill.
He glanced up at the rusted ventilation shaft overhead, tapped the wall lightly with his toes, and slid soundlessly into the dark ductwork like an antigravity spider.
This was Rōran's bloodstream, and also the intestines of an industrial hell.
The air reeked of concentrated sulfur and burnt residue, while the temperature reached forty-five degrees. Tangled brass pipes sprawled like a mess of yarn with no discernible pattern, and only the hiss of leaking steam echoed through the deathly silence.
Naruto crawled through the narrow duct, lightly touching the pipe wall with his fingertips as he sensed the vibrations rising from deep underground.
"The airflow in the main ventilation duct is unstable, and the vibration frequency of Power Furnace Number Three is too high. Anrokuzan is burning the core like a bomb." As Naruto crawled forward at high speed, he built a three-dimensional blueprint of the entire factory in his mind. "With this level of structural integrity, blowing up three load-bearing nodes will make the entire underground city collapse like dominoes. Typical deathtrap.