The chain of sympathetic explosions at the Seventh Fuel Plant was still continuing. Dull booms traveled through the pipes and spread across the entire underground city, like the wheezing of a dying beast suffering from pulmonary edema.
Inside the ventilation duct, the oppressive atmosphere made their ears ache.
The "idiot mechanic" who had been shouting and rolling around on the floor just moments ago seemed like an entirely different person now.
Naruto crouched low, moving swiftly through the narrow duct on all fours. His movements were impossibly light; every time his knees or elbows touched the metal walls, they landed precisely on stress points that made no sound, like a ghost with mute mode enabled.
There were no unnecessary movements, no hurried breaths. Even the smell of engine oil on him seemed suppressed by that icy aura.
Sara followed behind him, forced to give everything she had just to barely keep up. As she watched that silent figure ahead, the absurd feeling of having been "saved by an idiot" gradually faded, replaced by an indescribable chill.
That back was too steady. So steady that he seemed less like someone who repaired machines and more like a ruthless man who had seen too much death and crawled out of piles of corpses.
"We're here."
The person ahead suddenly stopped.
Naruto braced one hand against the duct wall and lightly gripped the grate beneath them with the other. His movements were as gentle as if he were disarming a pressure-triggered land mine.
Through the gaps in the grate, pale industrial lighting pierced the darkness like swords.
This was the "Second Vitality Extraction Zone."
Inside the vast underground cavern, countless purple pipes crawled over the walls like blood vessels before converging on a black tower at the center. At the ends of those