Sliding through the buckled gap in the blast door was like willingly entering the maw of something vast, metallic, and deeply unwell. The air instantly changed. Outside, it had been damp decay and ozone; inside, it was thick, stagnant, carrying the heavy tang of irradiated coolant, ionized metal, and that same persistent, sickly-sweet organic undertone, much stronger now, like exotic flowers blooming on a circuit board. The oppressive silence of the reservoir cavern was replaced by a low, throbbing hum that seemed to resonate directly in Jax’s bones, punctuated by the faint, multiplied chiming he’d heard earlier and the sporadic crackle of dying electronics. Darkness here was profound, absolute beyond the reach of his utility lamp, which struggled against the energy-dampening field permeating the structure.

  He straightened up cautiously inside the threshold, vibro-knife held ready, its low hum a small comfort against the unsettling symphony of the reactor building. He swept his lamp beam around. He was in what looked like an outer containment corridor, designed to withstand immense pressures. Massive conduits lined the curved walls, coated in the same sickly phosphorescent fungus, pulsing gently. Sections of the wall flickered, glitching between solid meta-steel and brief, nauseating glimpses of what looked like churning, organic tissue interwoven with crystalline structures. Reality wasn’t just fraying here; it felt actively infected.

  “Charming,” Jax muttered, his voice tight. “Real inviting. Hope they left the radiation warnings up.”

  The chiming was closer now, echoing down the corridor from deeper within the structure. It wasn't just one source; it sounded like dozens, maybe hundreds, a discordant chorus of fractured crystal. He remembered the Scrap-Chimera, the way it assembled itself. Were there more? Waiting?

  He consulted the offline schematic flickering on his forearm comm. The reactor core, where Object Rho’s signature was strongest, lay at the heart of the complex, past several layers of containment and control rooms. His current corridor seemed to lead towards Secondary Coolant Control. Seemed being the operative word; the map was a pre-Bleed relic, and reality here had clearly taken extensive liberties with the original architectural plans.

  He moved forward, boots crunching softly on gritty dust and something brittle that might have been insect husks or shed crystalline fragments. The throbbing hum intensified, vibrating through the deck plating. His Axiom-sight, if he could even call the chaotic mess bombarding his senses that, struggled to make sense of the environment. Energy signatures bled into each other, structural integrity grids flickered and dissolved into static, and everywhere, that underlying wrongness pulsed, a fundamental dissonance in the code of existence.

  He passed shattered observation windows looking into darkened labs or control centers. Inside, consoles sparked intermittently, displaying waterfalls of corrupted data. Strange, geometric fungi grew in fractal patterns across terminals. In one lab, he saw something that made him pause – several dessicated corpses in Aethelian-era lab coats slumped over consoles, their bodies strangely elongated, skin stretched taut over unnaturally angled bones, mouths open in silent screams. Not victims of violence, it seemed, but of… transformation? Or reality just giving up on maintaining their correct dimensions. Jax shuddered involuntarily, popped another bitter stim-chew, and moved on. Dark comedy only stretched so far when faced with existential body horror.

  The chiming grew louder as he approached a branching intersection. Peeking around the corner, he saw them. Dozens of them. Not large Chimeras like the first one, but smaller constructs, scuttling on multiple legs made of bent piping, sheared metal, and sparking wires. They varied in size, from dog-sized down to things no bigger than his fist, all seemingly assembled from the debris of the reactor building. They skittered across the floor and walls, their fractured optical sensors glowing with that same sickly green light, emitting the discordant chiming that now felt like nails scraping down the inside of his skull. A welcoming committee.

  “Right,” Jax sighed. “Should’ve brought party favors.”

  There were too many to fight head-on, especially with his pistol out of commission. Stealth was the only option. He scanned the intersection with his unreliable senses. The main corridor ahead was thick with the scuttling constructs. To the left, a partially collapsed stairwell descended into darkness. To the right, a heavy maintenance hatch, surprisingly intact, though its control panel was dark.

  His Axiom-sight picked up faint energy traces leading towards the hatch – coolant lines, maybe, or secondary power conduits still carrying a trickle of current. An idea sparked, reckless and probably stupid. He crept towards the hatch, staying low, using overturned equipment Racks for cover. The chiming constructs seemed mostly preoccupied with aimlessly patrolling or assembling smaller bits of debris into even tinier, twitching constructs, their attention apparently limited.

  He reached the hatch panel. Dead. No lights, no response. He examined it with his perception, feeling the internal mechanisms, the dormant circuitry. He focused on the memory of the diagrams from the Resonance Engine, specifically the ones hinting at energy flow, at 'tuning'. Could he… jumpstart it? Directly interface, like with the console, but on a much smaller, cruder scale? The memory of the backlash pain made him hesitate.

  Then, a scuttling sound nearby. One of the smaller constructs, dog-sized, had detached from the main group, its optical sensors swiveling towards his hiding spot. Shit.

  No time for finesse. He placed his hand flat on the panel, ignoring the grime and corrosion. He didn’t try to understand the diagrams; he just focused on the raw concept: Activate. He visualized energy flowing from him, that chaotic storm within, into the dead panel, forcing the circuits awake. He braced for the pain.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  It came, but differently this time. Not the grinding friction or the sharp spike, but a sudden, draining leeching sensation, as if the panel was actively sucking the energy out of him. His vision dimmed, muscles screamed, but the panel flickered. A single red light blinked on, then green. With a hiss of depressurized pneumatics, the heavy hatch slid sideways just enough for him to squeeze through.

  He didn’t wait. He threw himself through the opening as the dog-sized construct emitted a sharp, alerting chime and scuttled faster towards him. He slammed his hand on the internal closure control – thankfully still powered – and the hatch hissed shut just as the construct reached it, its metallic claws scraping uselessly against the thick meta-steel.

  Jax collapsed against the inside of the hatch, gasping, heart pounding. That had been too close. And the energy drain… it felt worse than simple exertion. It felt like he’d paid for opening the door with a piece of his own vitality. But then, that now-familiar warmth bloomed faintly in his chest, accompanied by the almost subliminal ping. Another string of corrupted green characters flashed at the edge of his vision.

  [Reality Aberration Neutralized (Indirectly)]

  [Minor System Resonance Detected: Vitality +0.01?]

  [Cognitive Hazard Resistance +0.005?]

  He stared into the darkness of the maintenance tunnel he’d entered, utterly bewildered. Vitality? Cognitive Hazard Resistance? What in the seven sectors of hell was that? The text was clearer this time, less like pure glitch, more like… like a system notification from a badly coded game. Was he hallucinating? Was the Anomaly somehow… quantifying his actions? Rewarding him with fractional improvements? The LitRPG tags from the job posting Fingers had forwarded felt suddenly less like flavor text and more like a horrifyingly literal description.

  “No,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Not possible. Stress. Stims. Lack of sleep. Lack of decent booze.” But the faint feeling of lessened fatigue, the slight clearing of the mental fog that accompanied the visual glitch… it felt undeniably real. Progression Fantasy, indeed. The universe apparently handed out stat points for narrowly avoiding death by sentient scrap metal. The dark humor of it was almost enough to make him laugh, if he wasn’t so terrified.

  He pushed himself up. This maintenance tunnel seemed less affected by the overt reality glitches, though the air was still thick, and strange fungal growths pulsed dimly on the walls. According to the schematic overlay on his comm – which thankfully still worked offline – this tunnel should bypass the main swarm of constructs and lead towards the reactor’s auxiliary control section. One step closer to Object Rho.

  He moved cautiously down the tunnel, vibro-knife held ready. The journey became a tense crawl through decaying infrastructure warped by alien forces. He encountered more strange phenomena: patches of wall that dripped viscous, time-dilated fluid; sections where gravity felt subtly heavier, forcing him to crawl; airlocks sealed not by rust, but by fleshy, pulsating membranes that recoiled from his lamp light. He bypassed dormant security turrets half-absorbed by crystalline growths, their targeting lasers flickering erratically.

  He dealt with more minor threats – swarms of fist-sized, chiming 'mites' assembled from loose wiring and bolts, which he dispersed with wide sweeps of his pry-bar; patches of corrosive slime he neutralized by consciously focusing on the 'Cohesion' Axiom of nearby loose rubble, causing small landslides to cover the hazard (each attempt leaving him weaker, head pounding, but successful). Each minor victory, each hazard overcome, resulted in that faint ping, the fleeting green text, the subtle feeling of… improvement? Resilience? He started hoarding the sensations, analyzing them, trying to correlate the fractional gains with his actions. Was it defeating the constructs? Overcoming environmental hazards? Simply surviving the Anomaly’s pressure? The system, if it even was a system, was maddeningly opaque.

  Finally, after what felt like hours navigating the treacherous labyrinth, he reached another heavy blast door, this one marked with faded radiation warnings and symbols indicating ‘Primary Containment Access’. The schematic showed this led into the main reactor control room, one level above the core itself. Object Rho’s energy signature pulsed strongly from beyond this door, a complex, resonant frequency that felt both technological and strangely organic, making his teeth ache and the diagrams in his mind hum in sympathy.

  This door, however, was sealed tight, no convenient gaps forced by the Bleed. Its control panel was smashed, useless. Getting through would require finding an alternate route, likely through heavily irradiated or structurally compromised areas, or… forcing the door itself.

  He examined the massive portal with his Axiom-sight. It was incredibly dense, its internal structure reinforced, designed to withstand catastrophic failure. Weakening its cohesion seemed impossible. Trying to slide it like the blocking stone would require immense power, far more than he possessed.

  But perhaps… manipulation didn't always mean breaking or moving. He focused on the door's locking mechanism, a complex series of internal bolts and magnetic clamps he could dimly perceive through the meta-steel. He recalled the diagrams again, searching not for force, but for interference. Could he disrupt the magnetic locks? Introduce just enough Axiomatic 'static' into the control system to make it disengage?

  He placed his hand on the cold metal, took a deep breath, and focused his entire will, channeling not raw power, but a precisely modulated frequency of chaotic energy, aimed directly at the perceived location of the magnetic clamps. He visualized static, disruption, conflicting signals.

  The drain was intense, the familiar leaching sensation returning. The whispers shrieked warnings and encouragement. His vision swam. But he felt a faint click resonate through the metal beneath his palm. Then another. A heavy thunk echoed down the corridor as the primary magnetic locks disengaged.

  It wasn't fully open, but the main seals were broken. He could likely force it the rest of the way with the pry-bar.

  Ping.

  [Complex Obstacle Overcome (Axiomatic Interference)]

  [System Affinity (Resonance) +0.1?]

  [Energy Manipulation (Crude) +0.05?]

  Jax slumped against the door, gasping, a humorless grin splitting his grimy face despite the splitting headache. System Affinity? Energy Manipulation? The absurdity was profound. Reality itself was handing out skill points for lockpicking with existential static.

  “Okay, universe,” he panted, gripping his pry-bar. “Let’s see what’s behind door number one. Hope it’s not eldritch horrors wanting to wear my spleen as a hat.” He jammed the pry-bar into the seam, ready to face whatever waited in the heart of the corrupted reactor.