Gacha Harem System

Chapter 242: Explosions

It took ten minutes of waiting before what Akira was waiting for finally arrived.

It started small, with a faint ripple breaking across the surface of the otherwise still lake as water began streaming in from the small streams that fed into it.

Akira’s eyes snapped open at once.

"There it is," she whispered.

The mechanism stirred to life beneath the surface, gears grinding as they prepared to shift the streets of the Undercity again, just as they had every time before.

But not this time. Not if Akira had anything to say about it.

The gears spun faster, rising up through the water until they broke the surface entirely, spinning into the open air.

Several tore straight through the vines holding the lowest corpses, severing them. The bodies dropped, splashing into the churning water one after another.

But Akira held her breath, watching the lake roil and twist below the rising machinery.

Then the mechanism at the center began to move, sliding open like a great stone eye.

Her heart leapt. "Yes. There it is."

That meant the spatial distortion was finally open.

She didn’t waste another second. Throwing herself flat against the ground, she let the thick tangle of vines beneath her cushion the fall, pressing herself low against the earth.

"Here goes nothing," she muttered through gritted teeth.

Her mind reached out, finding the threads connecting her to every corpse within range.

That included the corpses she’d hung above the lake, the ones near the ceiling, the ones that had fallen down into the lake, and those that had accumulated there before she’d even arrived in the Underneath.

And then, without hesitation, she activated [Corpse Explosion].

Of course, she didn’t detonate every corpse at once. That would’ve been wasteful, even reckless.

Instead, she activated the skill only on those still hanging directly above the lake and the ones that had fallen or were buried deep within the water itself.

The boom that followed was deafening. The ground shook beneath her, hard enough to rattle her teeth. ƒгeewёbnovel.com

She couldn’t see what was happening from where she lay pressed flat against the vines, but she could feel it.

The explosion tore through the gears below, ripping the metal apart from the inside.

The corpses hidden deep in the water, accumulated from every failed attempt people had made to break free over the months, added their combined force to the blast, reducing the submerged machinery to scrap in an instant.

The lake floor cracked and shattered, sending rubble crashing in every direction.

Even the walls surrounding the lake began to give way, crumbling into the churning water and widening the basin further with every second.

The force didn’t stop there. It rolled outwards, slamming into the buildings lining the edge of the courtyard, reducing them to splinters and dust in the blink of an eye.

The building above Akira came down with the rest, collapsing on top of her in a shower of debris, but she barely even felt its weight.

Her armor had taken the brunt of the impact, though the force of the explosion had already sent most of the debris flying behind her, leaving it scattered and useless around her.

She blinked through the dust, her ears ringing, and that’s when she saw them.

Automatons, crawling out from the darkness beyond the wreckage, drawn by the chaos like moths to flame.

This was exactly what Holly had said would happen. The moment an attempt was made, the dungeon itself would come out to punish anyone involved.

But Akira wasn’t finished yet.

Without hesitation, she reached out with her mind once more, finding the threads to the remaining corpses.

And then she activated [Corpse Explosion] a second time.

This explosion was the final nail in the coffin. The corpses clustered near the ceiling and packed tight around the center mechanism went off all at once, the blast ripping through both metal and stone.

The mechanism itself didn’t stand a chance. It was blown to shreds in an instant, fragments raining down and splashing into the water below, sinking without a trace.

The Automatons that had crawled out from the darkness moments before never even had the chance to react. The force of the explosion caught them head-on, killing them instantly where they stood and shattering their bodies.

Above, the ceiling groaned and shuddered, chunks of stone breaking loose and crashing down into the lake, sending up great plumes of water with every impact.

Akira waited until the worst of it passed, until the shaking beneath her finally settled and the air stopped trembling with the aftershock.

Only then did she rise to her feet, rubble and dust sliding off her armor.

She looked up, taking in the destruction around her.

The place had changed completely. Where the mechanism once sat at the center of the lake, there was nothing now but open water, which swirled chaotically.

The lake itself had grown, its edges pushed out by the collapsed walls, swallowing ground that hadn’t been water before.

But none of that was what caught her attention.

It was the water.

Water was falling, pouring down steadily from the spatial distortion above, which was a sign as good as any that the spatial distortion was wide open for her to pass through.

Akira’s lips curled into a grin.

It was time to move.

She dashed forward, sprinting hard towards the edge of the lake, her boots tearing through loose rubble with every stride.

When she reached the edge, she leapt, throwing every ounce of strength into the jump.

The ground beneath her shattered from the force as she launched herself into the air.

She sailed upwards, her eyes locked on the opening torn into the ceiling above. It was close now, so close she could already feel the cold spray of falling water against her face.

Then, without warning, a shadow blurred past her, the force of their speed blowing her marginally off course in the air.

Her eyes widened.

Someone had beaten her to it.

The figure slammed into the opening ahead of her, hands seizing the broken edge of stone.

For one brief moment, the person paused, just long enough for Akira to catch a glimpse of who it was.

Bull.

Then he was gone, hauling himself through the opening and vanishing into the spray, water scattering in every direction in his wake.

An instant later, Akira slammed hard into the ceiling just beside the opening, her hand shooting out on instinct, fingers closing tight around a jagged piece of stone jutting from the ceiling.

For a moment, she hung there, suspended.

Then a soft crack filled the air.

And the stone broke.