Luck Stat Broken: Ri Chapter 89 - 85: The Mass Coffins

Chapter 89: Chapter 85: The Mass Coffins

"Fracture."

??The space directly inside the squad leader’s reinforced gorget shattered like pitch-black glass.

??The plasteel collar didn’t just break; it ceased to exist. The localized spatial tear ripped the helt clean off the operative’s head, exposing a terrified, sweat-drenched human face underneath. The man squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for a decapitation that he couldn’t even see coming.

??But the void never reached his skin.

??The instant the skill engaged, a freezing, hollow suction clamped around Will’s heart. His veins felt like they were pumping liquid nitrogen. The black mycelium on his arm withered aggressively, turning the stolen arterial blood into dead, gray ash. The [Severe Vitality Drain] had taken its pound of flesh, and Will’s empty core simply couldn’t pay the final toll.

??Red static tore across his vision, blinding him.

??[HP: 1% — Critical]

??[Status: Extre Blood Loss]

??The spatial tear abruptly fizzled out with a sound like dying static. Will hit the steel grating hard, his vision graying out at the edges. He tasted iron and ozone, his lungs feeling like they had been lined with crushed glass.

??"Will!" Maddie yelled, her voice sounding entirely detached, like it was coming from underwater.

??He tried to push himself up, but his arms wouldn’t obey. Through the blurring red static, he saw the remaining operatives flinch back, recovering from the shock. They leveled their suppressed rifles, crimson laser sights painting his forehead like a row of accusing eyes.

??Maddie didn’t hesitate. The heavy black-iron haft of the Santa Mon halberd clattered against the steel catwalk. Elyas cursed bitterly, kicking his rusted blade away. Elizabeth simply raised her hands, clutching her scorched academic coat, her knuckles white.

??"Easy," Elyas snapped, stepping in front of Will’s prone body. "He’s down. We’re done. No need to waste the ammo on a corpse-to-be."

??Rough hands grabbed Will by the shoulders, hauling him upward. The sharp, ratcheting zip of thick plastic restraints tightened brutally around his wrists, biting into his raw skin and forcing a sharp gasp from his throat. Then, the world went dark.

??He drifted. Every ti his consciousness clawed its way back to the surface, the environnt had shifted.

??The lock-step thud of combat boots echoed against polished concrete, then shifted to the hollow clang of rusted iron. The aggressive, sterile stench of corporate bleach faded, slowly replaced by the thick, heavy scent of damp earth, ozone, and growing things.

??"You call that a weld?" Elyas’s voice drifted through the dark tunnels, sharp and casually insulting. "I’ve seen better patchwork on a goblin’s loincloth. Did you seal that breastplate with a plasma torch or a magnifying glass? Because if you’re going to arrest , I expect a modicum of professional craftsmanship. This is embarrassing for both of us."

??"Shut your mouth before I put a round through your kneecap," a guard rasped. The voice wasn’t filtered through an external speaker anymore. It sounded exhausted, rough, and entirely human.

??"Elyas, stop critiquing our captors," Maddie said, her tone clipped and breathless as she was marched along. "You’re going to get us shot over aesthetics, and I’d really like to live long enough to see the sun again."

??"He’s right, though," Elizabeth murmured, her voice a fragile thread in the dark. "Look at the gait. They aren’t marching in sync. They’re limping. Half of them are favoring their left side."

??Will blinked, fighting to keep his eyes open. His boots dragged along the floor, kicking up a fine, gray dust. He tasted copper and ash. Through the haze, he looked at the guard hauling him by the shoulder.

??Maddie and Elizabeth were right. The matte-black armor was a patchwork of scavenged plating and crude repairs. Mud was caked thick over the pristine corporate logos on the man’s boots. The operative walking point didn’t even have standard attachnts; he had a system-evolved, serrated bone charm strapped to the barrel of his corporate rifle with electrical tape.

??These weren’t polished soldiers. They were scavengers wearing stolen skin.

??"Keep moving," the lead guard ordered, shoving Elyas forward into a pool of flickering amber light.

??The air pressure shifted as they were pushed through a rusted, heavy bulkhead door. The Faction erged onto a suspended tal overlook, and the sight below forced Will’s glitching UI to recalibrate.

??It wasn’t a P.A.C.I.F.I.C. black site. It was a sprawling, subterranean city built from pure defiance.

??A colossal, pristine water tank dominated the center of the cavern, pulling directly from a deep-earth reservoir. Thick, jury-rigged pipes spiraled out from the tank, clearly feeding the corporate facility far above their heads, while secretly siphoning off a fraction of the clean flow for the hidden settlent below.

??Terraced hydroponic farms clung to the cavern walls, glowing with a soft, bioluminescent green moss. People in grease-stained overalls and patched clothes moved between the rows, hauling crates and checking pressure valves with practiced, rhythmic movents.

??Maddie squinted, her UI flashing softly as she accidentally scanned a group of workers repairing a humming generator.

??"They aren’t combatants," Maddie whispered, her voice laced with confusion. "I’m reading [Subterranean Artificer] and... [Deep-Earth Botanist]. These are utility classes, Will. Every single one of them."

??"Watch the step," a guard muttered, dragging Will down a rusted staircase toward the basin floor.

??As they descended, they passed pens holding bizarre, system-evolved livestock. Chickens the size of hounds strutted through the mud, their feathers entirely replaced by overlapping, calcified armor plating. They pecked aggressively at steel troughs filled with glowing, specialized feed, their black eyes tracking the newcors with predatory intent.

??But the true horror of the settlent lay in its foundation.

??Will’s boots hit the dirt floor of the cavern, and he finally saw what the terraced farms and scrap-tal houses were built on top of. Sunk deep into the earth were sprawling, crushed dormitory blocks. The concrete was heavily cracked, revealing the black char of high-yield demolition charges. Thick steel support beams buckled under thousands of tons of rock, looking like the ribs of so colossal, prehistoric beast. Rusted bedfras and shattered lockers stuck out of the rubble like jagged tombstones.

??They weren’t just ruins. They were mass graves that had been reclaid.

??The visual storytelling painted a horrifyingly clear picture. Soone had intentionally collapsed the cavern ceiling on the housing blocks while the workforce slept. It was a "clean" severance—no survivors, no witnesses, no overhead. But the survivors had dug themselves out, using their own crushed dormitories as the literal foundation for their new stronghold.

??The guards hauled the Faction toward the center of the settlent. They bypassed the hydro-farms and the water tank, heading straight for a cavernous longhouse constructed entirely of scavenged fiberglass, thick plastic sheeting, and heavy corrugated tal.

??The guards kicked the makeshift doors open and shoved them inside.

??Will stumbled, catching himself on his knees. The floor was packed dirt, slling of copper and ancient dust. The air inside was a heavy mix of stale coffee, sweat, and the sharp tang of hot solder.

??There was no grand villain monologue waiting for them. The room was a chaotic command center, littered with structural blueprints, cracked datapads, and coffee mugs that had seen better decades. They had dropped right into the middle of a screaming match.

??"I don’t care what the phosphorus yields are, tell botanical to re-route the flow!" a man barked, slamming his fist onto a folding table so hard the tal legs groaned.

??He looked like a forr corporate executive who had spent the last five years crawling through dirt. He wore a stained dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a ragged, unkempt beard, and possessed eyes so sharp they felt like physical scalpels.

??"We re-route the flow, the moss dies in Sector Four," a frazzled quartermaster argued back, waving a battered clipboard like a shield. "And the armored fowl need the specialized feed. We cut their rations, they start eating each other again. We can’t afford another cannibalism outbreak."

??"Then butcher the aggressive ones and feed them to the rest," the bearded man snapped, his voice a gravelly rasp. "We have seventy gallons of clean water missing from the primary siphon, and if the corporate ters upstairs register the drop, they’ll send a purge team down here. Fix the pressure valve. Now."

??"And what about the ventilation scrubbers in Sector Two?" the quartermaster pleaded. "If the air turns toxic down there, I have eighty people who will suffocate before the shift change."

??"Cannibalize the filters from the old tram cars," the executive shot back without missing a beat. "Get it done. I don’t want excuses; I want air."

??The quartermaster flinched, nodded once, and scrambled out a side door as if the longhouse itself were on fire.

??The bearded man let out a long, exhausted sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose with fingers stained by oil and ink. He finally looked up, his gaze locking onto the battered Faction kneeling in the dirt. He didn’t look like a conqueror; he looked like a man who hadn’t slept since the sky fell.

??He waved a dismissive hand. "Take the helts off. You’re giving

a headache, and I can’t think with all that plasteel staring at ."

??The operatives surrounding Will reached up, disengaging the pressure seals on their stolen P.A.C.I.F.I.C. helts. They pulled the gear off, revealing tired, scarred faces underneath—n and won with gray skin and eyes that had forgotten the sun. The squad leader—the man Will had nearly decapitated on the catwalk—rubbed his throat with a trembling hand, shooting Will a look of absolute, undisguised terror.

??The bearded man leaned over the folding table, resting his weight on his knuckles. "My na is Ned."

??He didn’t gloat. He studied them with the clinical detachnt of a man auditing a spreadsheet of liabilities.

??"My scouts find you bleeding out on a corporate catwalk, surrounded by dead ash and the sll of ancient rot," Ned said, his voice dangerously even. "You’re wearing scavenged armor, holding a halberd that belongs in a museum, and the boy with the cursed arm just ripped a hole in the fabric of space using his own blood. You’ve caused quite the disruption to my logistics."

??Ned walked around the desk, his boots crunching on the dirt with a deliberate, slow weight.

??"So," Ned continued, stopping a few feet from Will. He slled of recycled oxygen and cheap tobacco. "I’ll ask this once. Who are you, how did you bypass the tectonic alarms, and why did you blow a hole through my basent ceiling?"

??Will fought the darkness creeping into his peripheral vision. His chest ached, a sharp, biological tether pulling his attention upward, through the cavern roof, pointing directly toward the upper levels of the facility. Allison was there. He could feel her pulse like a beacon in the dark.

??Will forced his head up, glaring at the ragged executive. He tested the zip-ties on his wrists, finding no give, only the biting sting of plastic.

??"You’re wearing their armor," Will rasped, spitting a thick drop of blood onto the dirt. "You’re routing them water. I don’t care what P.A.C.I.F.I.C. sector this is. If you’re corporate, just get it over with. Bury us like you buried the rest."

??Ned didn’t get angry. He didn’t yell. He didn’t even flinch.

??He just stared at Will for a long, quiet mont, before letting out a grim, humorless laugh that sounded like dry leaves skittering over pavent. He squatted down so he was eye-level with the bleeding Vanguard, his gaze searching Will’s face for sothing he hadn’t seen in a long ti.

??"We aren’t P.A.C.I.F.I.C., kid," Ned whispered, his voice as cold as the deep earth and twice as heavy. "We’re the builders they tried to bury. And if you think you’ve seen a grave, you haven’t looked closely at the walls of this room."

??He stood up, looking toward the ceiling. "They hit the ’sink’ command and walked away, thinking the paperwork was finished. They forgot that you can’t bury a man who knows exactly how the shovel works."

??Ned turned back to the guard. "Put them in the holding pen. Get the dics. I can’t interrogate him if his heart stops, and I’ve got enough ghosts in this colony already."