Danger and the source

That "squeak" in the darkness seemed to signal the start of something.

The instant Zhao Fan crushed the mechanical beetle, Benjamin's terrified warning exploded in his earpiece. "Boss! The detector's off the charts! Inside the walls... they're inside the walls!"

Zhao Fan and Old Dog had already sensed it without Benjamin's warning.

The previously silent underground tunnel began to shake. The moss-covered walls on either side seemed to break out in goose bumps as large chunks of earth and rusted metal plating peeled away. Then a dense sea of red lights lit up in the darkness, like countless bloodthirsty eyes.

"Oh God..." The flashlight beam in Old Dog's hand trembled. Wherever it swept, countless fist-sized metal beetles with three deformed heads crawled out of cracks in the concrete. The metal shells on their backs flickered with an eerie green radioactive glow in the darkness, and their compound eyes shone with mindless, bloodthirsty red light.

"This is what they call 'abandoned'?" Old Dog swore and swung his entrenching shovel. With a clang, he batted a beetle leaping at Zhao Fan's face out of the air. It struck the wall, its shell shattered, and a puddle of foul-smelling black slime spilled out.

"Don't let that liquid get on your protective suit!" Zhao Fan warned loudly, pressing the switch on his stun baton.

The beetles swarming around his feet were instantly burned to charcoal by the high-voltage current. As Analysis activated, the numbers on his panel flickered.

[Analyzing D-grade residue: 'Hydra Parasitic Guard', [Ability acquired: Hard Carapace]

"Fall back! Get to a narrow spot!" Zhao Fan directed calmly. "Ben, didn't you hack into the underground facility? See if you can turn on the tunnel's exhaust fans! Maximum power!"

"I'm trying! But this system's firewall uses World War II encryption logic. That's no challenge for me!" Frantic keyboard clacking came through the earpiece. "Give me thirty seconds!"

Thirty seconds was enough for them to be gnawed down to bare bones.

The swarm surged toward them like a tide. Though the creatures were small, their metal-reinforced mouthparts could bite through rebar, never mind their fiber protective suits.

"This job's impossible!" Old Dog complained, but his hands moved with seasoned precision. With his back against a recess in the tunnel, he swung his entrenching shovel in an impenetrable defense, every strike precisely smashing a beetle. These were survival instincts honed through years of fighting mutant rats and insects in the ruins.

Zhao Fan looked more "elegant." His body, enhanced by the Improved Extremis Virus, gave him the dynamic vision to track every beetle's trajectory. Rather than swinging wildly, he used his stun baton like a scalpel, picking them off with precise strikes.

But there were too many.

"Zzzzt-" One beetle slipped through and clamped onto Zhao Fan's calf. Although his protective suit blocked most of the damage, the tremendous bite force still sent a stab of pain through him.

Zhao Fan's gaze turned cold. In that instant, rather than shake the beetle off, he seized it with his left hand.

[Weak Energy Perception] at full power!

An extremely faint impulse to "absorb," which he could now clearly sense, flashed through his mind. This was not the system initiating Analysis, but an instinctive attempt born of desperation-he was trying to guide the energy within his body to "assimilate" the creature.

His palm grew hot. The beetle let out a piercing screech, its previously active bioelectricity instantly falling into disarray. Then it went limp in Zhao Fan's hand, as though drained of all strength.

It really worked!

The system could not only recycle dead matter, but also suppress these energy-powered, semi-mechanical creatures!

"The fans are on!" Benjamin's voice sounded like music from heaven.

A deep rumble came from farther down the tunnel, followed by a powerful rush of air. The small, lightweight beetles, which relied on their wings to glide, instantly lost their balance. The gale sent them tumbling, pelting the walls like rain.

"Go!" Zhao Fan kicked away a beetle's corpse at his feet, grabbed Old Dog, and ran deeper inside. "Now!"

Bracing against the gale, the two fought their way through the beetle corpses littering the ground. The farther they went, the stronger the sulfurous smell and that strange, sweet, bloody odor became.

At last, they charged through a heavy blast door. Zhao Fan turned back and gripped the rusted wheel with both hands, veins bulging in his neck.

"Haaah!"

With a groan of twisting metal, the blast door slowly closed, shutting out the scalp-prickling sounds of impacts.

The world fell silent.

Old Dog slumped to the floor, gasping for breath, the inside of his suit's visor completely fogged over. "Fan... we're getting a raise when we get back. This isn't cleanup work. This is a fucking special forces job."

Zhao Fan leaned against the door, steadying his heartbeat. He glanced at his status panel. That chaotic fight had actually unlocked another ability, but there was no time to test exactly what it did.

"It's not over yet, Old Dog." Zhao Fan looked ahead.

They were in a buffer zone behind the blast door. At its far end stood a massive reinforced glass window. Through the dust-covered glass, they could see an enormous circular laboratory below, like an arena.

And at the center of the laboratory, the source of all the energy anomalies was giving off a deadly, eerie glow.

Dr. Evelyn Reed's cold, clear voice came through the earpiece. "It seems you've made it through the warm-up. Now, Zhao Fan, what I want is down there. Don't disappoint me."

Zhao Fan raised his head toward the surveillance camera blinking red in the corner overhead.

"Understood, Doctor."

Following Ben's directions, they entered the interior through a ventilation duct.

The duct was not as long as they had imagined, but every inch of crawling felt oppressive. About ten minutes later, a faint green light appeared ahead.

"You're there." Benjamin's voice had steadied somewhat. "The sensors show a massive open space ahead. The air composition... is strange. Oxygen levels are normal, but it's full of some kind of inert gas and... acidic volatiles?"

Zhao Fan kicked open the vent grille beneath him and jumped out of the duct.

When his feet hit the ground and he looked around, even he, accustomed to scrambling through ruins, was stunned by the sight before him.

It was an enormous underground cavern, clearly expanded by human hands. The ceiling rose thirty meters overhead. Nazi-style eagle emblems from World War II were still faintly visible on the supporting pillars, but time had weathered the chilling Hydra symbols at their centers into mottled patches.

This was Hydra's secret laboratory.

But what truly made their hair stand on end was not the rusted instruments of torture or the massive computer arrays. It was an enormous transparent container in the center of the hall.

It was a cylindrical glass tank a full three stories tall, filled with cloudy, pale green liquid. Suspended inside was an enormous, indescribable mass of biological tissue. It resembled both a gigantic heart and a coiled tumor, with countless tubes extending from it to the long-inactive machines surrounding it.

"That's the source." A hint of fervor entered Evelyn's voice. "The product of Hydra's failed attempt to replicate the Super Soldier Serum during World War II, or some primitive attempt at alien biotechnology. Just as I thought, it's still 'alive.'"

Zhao Fan narrowed his eyes and activated [Weak Energy Perception].

In his vision, the enormous tumor radiated a dazzling red light, like a bonfire in the night. Beneath it, a ruptured delivery pipe was steadily leaking that glowing green liquid.

The liquid dripped onto the floor, eating large, smoking pits into the hard concrete. Clearly, those beetles had mutated by feeding on this leaking energy fluid.

"'Unknown liquid energy,'" Zhao Fan said quietly. "Doctor, is this what you're looking for?"

"Exactly," Evelyn said quickly. "Those liquids possess extremely potent cellular activation and assimilation capabilities. Zhao Fan, I need you to close the leaking valve and retrieve a sample. This is the first A-grade retrieval mission since S.C.U. was founded."

Old Dog looked at the strong-acid pits covering the floor and shrank back. "That stuff looks nastier than aqua regia."

"Double the bonus," Evelyn said evenly. "I'll also request the highest level of medical assistance for you and reimburse all your equipment."

"Deal." Zhao Fan did not hesitate.

It was not just for the money.

His system was vibrating wildly.

[Ding! High-concentration energy source detected! High-concentration energy source detected!]

[Notice: This energy source is highly compatible with the host's current physical enhancement path!]

[Recommendation: Absorb immediately!]

Zhao Fan licked his cracked lips. He could feel the power of the Extremis Virus within him, which he had yet to fully adapt to, resonating with the green liquid before him with something approaching ravenous thirst.

"Ben, give me the best route." Zhao Fan tightened his suit's collar. "Old Dog, stay here. If any beetles follow us, use the EMP bombs and incendiary grenades in the backpack to buy some time."

"Be careful, kid." Old Dog handed him a spare oxygen canister. "Don't melt yourself in there."

Zhao Fan nodded and strode toward that green hell.

The closer he came to the enormous container, the stronger the acidic smell in the air grew. Even through his gas mask, Zhao Fan could feel waves of stinging pain across his skin.

The ground around him was littered with mutant beetle corpses, some already rotting, others still twitching faintly. Clearly, even creatures adapted to this environment could not withstand the energy concentration in the core area.

"Warning: protective suit surface damage at 15%..." The tactical terminal issued a cold alert.

"Ignore it." Zhao Fan stared at the leaking valve. It was a massive manual wheel at the bottom of the container, already half-covered in green crystals.

To close it, he would have to step into the pool of leaked liquid.

"Zhao Fan, your wristband shows your heart rate rising," Evelyn's voice came through. "If this is too much, you can give up. I can dispatch heavy mechs, though that would take some time."

"I'm already here." Zhao Fan's voice was a little hoarse.

He knew Evelyn was testing him. Heavy mechs? In this structurally fragile underground cavern, the vibrations from their arrival would be enough to bring the whole place down.

This was a contest.

He had to prove his worth, prove that he was not merely an ordinary cleaner, but a subordinate capable of completing missions in all kinds of environments.

This was his pledge of allegiance.

Zhao Fan drew a deep breath and stepped into the bubbling green pool.

"Ssssss-"

White smoke instantly rose from his specially made protective boots, and alarms blared all at once.

"Damn it!" Zhao Fan gritted his teeth, enduring the burning pain beneath his feet. The liquid was not merely corroding matter. It felt more like it was eating into his nerves.

He waded through the viscous liquid, struggling toward the valve one step at a time.

Ten meters.

Five meters.

One meter.

At last, his hands closed around the searing metal wheel.

"Aaargh!!!"

Zhao Fan let out a low roar. Even through his custom hydraulic cushioning gloves, the terrifying heat and corrosiveness instantly penetrated his defenses.

"Zhao Fan! Your wristband shows your vital signs fluctuating!" A trace of anxiety finally entered Evelyn's voice. Although she was putting Zhao Fan through a stress test, she did not want to waste such a fine research subject for nothing.

"Shut up... let me concentrate!"

Zhao Fan exerted himself sharply. At that moment, [Kinetic Repulsion] no longer repelled outward. Instead, he forcibly compressed it into his palms, forming an invisible protective film that blocked some of the damage while increasing friction.

"Creeeak-"

The rust-seized valve gave a teeth-grating screech of twisting metal and finally turned a fraction.

But just then, an even fiercer torrent of green liquid burst from the crack, spraying straight onto Zhao Fan's chest!