Previously, the air inside the first zone corridor of the Sanctuary had suddenly compressed, creating a visual distortion that made vision seem to blur.
Meanwhile, Elena could be seen having successfully triggered atmospheric compression to its maximum limit, turning the oxygen and other substances surrounding the room into thousands of tons of weight that should have been capable of crushing even mild steel.
However, what happened next completely defied reality. From the old monitor screen, Louise Vane saw something that felt off, defying her logic and common sense.
The white dot displayed on the screen was not only... not slowing down. Instead, it moved at a constant rhythm, piercing through the deadly air density without any significant resistance.
CLANG!
The sound of a sword clashing against iron or steel rang out.
The sound came from the first zone's steel door, which was not merely dented; instead, the material was cleaved with an incredibly clean cut, as if the high atmospheric pressure there actually aided the sharpness of The Huntsman's electromagnetic sword blade.
The figure attempted to step into the Sanctuary area.
There lay a horrifying fact: not only was his mechanical body uncracked, but the metal joints on his neck and arms were glowing with an intense purple light—the exact same light as the sample inside the test tube kept by Louise Vane.
"He... he's absorbing the pressure," Louise Vane whispered with an astounded expression. "All of his efforts are not only not fighting the atmosphere, but he is cleverly adapting his body's density to the challenge."
Elena gritted her teeth, her hands locked onto the control lever. "Impossible. There is no technology on Celux-9 that can perform molecular adaptation that fast. He has surpassed the limits of physics as we know it."
However, the real threat wasn't solely the physical attack from The Huntsman; there was something else equally threatening, something that perhaps not everyone could perceive.
.
.
.
Suddenly, for whatever reason, the entire electronic system of the Sanctuary began to behave strangely.
The incandescent lights that were once a warm yellow turned a pale purple.
Likewise, the green monitor in front of Louise began displaying lines of code moving in reverse.
This was not a physical attack. This was "Resonance Infiltration."
Meanwhile, something subtle slowly began to creep through the Sanctuary's copper wires.
This was not a digital virus, but rather a biological frequency emitted by The Huntsman.
A hissing sound began to emanate from the loudspeakers, sounding like the whispers of thousands of tortured souls. This frequency was undoubtedly highly dangerous, as it could directly attack the central nervous system of anyone who heard it.
On the other side, the man with the mechanical arm suddenly groaned, clutching his head as the pirated LQA in his eye began to shoot sparks. "That voice... he's inside my head!"
Elena staggered, a nosebleed beginning to flow. "He isn't hacking our machines... he's hacking our consciousness through the resonance caused by that strange thing connected to the god's blood."
Louise Vane felt the same way, realizing that this sensory attack was part of it all. Her world slowly began to sway, the college student's hallucinations reappearing at the edges of her vision.
However, amidst that sensory chaos, Louise's obsessive nature saved her once again.
With an absurd and bizarre idea, she looked toward the test tube, which was now vibrating violently.
Louise realized one thing: The Huntsman was using the sample as an antenna.
With her remaining strength and forced focus, Louise tore herself away from the control desk. She sprinted toward the lead isolation room, even though her head felt like it was going to explode from the purple frequency.
"Louise! Don't open the door!" Elena shouted with a hoarse voice.
Louise didn't listen. She grabbed a bottle of sulfuric acid-based chemical cleaner and mixed it with activated carbon powder from a broken air filter.
Her hands trembled violently as a nearby circuit popped, sending sparks flying onto her coat.
On the other side, just as The Huntsman slashed through the final interior door, Louise smashed the chemical mixture against the outer layer of the lead isolation tube while activating the phase inverter on the isolation console.
BOOM!
The chemical reaction created an instant thermal explosion that did not destroy the tube, but rather created an incredibly dense "Chemical Faraday Cage," abruptly cutting off the purple light radiating from the sample.
This chain of events caused the whispering voices from the loudspeakers to vanish suddenly, along with the lights returning to their original color.
At the threshold of the shattered door, The Huntsman stopped. The purple light in his mechanical joints dimmed.
His body, which had previously seemed invincible, now began to feel the effects of the still-high atmospheric pressure inside the room. Without the energy support from the sample, the laws of physics once again applied to him.
The sound of cracking metal echoed from the hunter's shoulder. He fell to his knees, his sword hitting the iron floor with a loud clank.
"Now! Lock the magnetic gate!" Louise yelled, panting heavily, her hands blistered from the heat of the chemical reaction.
Elena swiftly slammed the final lever. The heavy magnetic gate dropped, locking The Huntsman inside the isolation zone that had now become his prison.
The atmosphere suddenly fell silent. Louise slumped to the floor, staring at her trembling hands. They had managed to contain the deadly hunter, but Louise knew this was merely a pyrrhic victory paid for with the weakening of their defense system.
To be continued...
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Author's Note:
Glossary and Scientific Terms
- Extreme Atmospheric Compression (P=AF): Inside the Sanctuary, Elena artificially manipulated the air pressure. Theoretically, by increasing the force (F) through the compaction of gas molecules and reducing the surface area (A) to the size of mechanical joints, the resulting pressure should have been able to crush solid structures. However, The Huntsman utilized Molecular Adaptation to distribute this pressure throughout his skeletal frame, converting the load into potential energy.
- Resonance Infiltration (Bio-Hacking): Unlike typical cyber hacking that attacks digital firewalls, this is a phenomenon where the electromagnetic frequency of the "God's Blood" vibrates at the same frequency as human brainwaves (Alpha or Beta). This causes the victim's central nervous system to receive false inputs in the form of whispering voices or visual hallucinations, technically referred to as Neuromagnetic Induction.
- Chemical Faraday Cage: Traditionally, a Faraday Cage is a metallic structure that blocks electric fields. In her improvisation, Louise created a hybrid layer using activated carbon (as an absorbent conductor) and sulfuric acid (as a thermal reaction agent). This mixture created a dense ionic "cloud" around the lead tube capable of absorbing and refracting the Sub-Atomic Frequencies from the sample, effectively severing its function as an "antenna" for The Huntsman.
- LQA (Quantum Adaptive Lens): An advanced optical device implanted in the eye (or used by enemies and some residents of Celux-9) to process data in real-time. The LQA is highly susceptible to Electromagnetic Noise. When the purple resonance peaked, the quantum circuits in these lenses experienced an overload, causing sparks and data distortion known as a "code rollback."
- Phase Inversion: A method in wave engineering where a wave is emitted with a 180° opposite phase to cancel out the original wave (the same principle used in noise-canceling headphones). Louise used the isolation console to invert the phase of the sample's energy, which collided with the chemical reaction to create total isolation.