Whoosh—cr-r-ack!

The snapping sound of the primary support cable echoed sharp amid the roaring dimensional storm. Naya's body swung wildly in the air, hurled far from the tower's glass facade after the hunter drone's strike severed her safety tether harness. Beneath their boots, the vast spread of city lights looked like a bottomless abyss ready to swallow anything whole.

"Naya!" Zulfa screamed hysterically, his voice nearly drowned out by the night wind.

Without a thought for his own survival, Zulfa released his remaining safety anchor. Firing up his Aether-Tech magnetic gloves, he lunged straight into the gale-force storm, sliding downward in pursuit of Naya's free-falling form.

"Zul...!" Naya gasped, reaching her right hand out as she swung through the air.

Grab!

Right a fraction of a second before the distance grew too vast, Zulfa managed to hook a firm grip around Naya's wrist. He cranked his glove's grip mode to maximum, firing a backup magnetic anchor straight toward the concrete framework of the eightieth-floor balcony terrace.

Clank—yank!

The sudden gravitational jerk halted their descent, slamming both their bodies hard against the exterior glass wall. Zulfa pulled Naya tight into his arms, crashing roughly onto the balcony terrace of the eightieth floor with ragged breaths and pouring cold sweat.

"Naya... are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?" Zulfa panicked, checking the girl over as he untangled the fouled lines.

Naya squeezed her eyes shut for a second, then shook her head slowly as she buried her face against Zulfa's chest, feeling the youth's frantic heartbeat. "I'm... I'm alright, Zul. Thank you... you saved me again."

"I told you, never unclip your tether," Zulfa whispered in relief, pressing a warm kiss to the top of Naya's head before straightening back up.

The crack of plasma gunfire from the tower's outer corridor abruptly shattered the tense moment.

"Stop lingering in the romance department, Engineer! This balcony defense needs your help!" Captain Danu roared over the din from behind a concrete balcony pillar.

Zulfa turned to find Captain Danu and the Arkian squad leading a brutal, close-quarters firefight against the corporation's elite mutant forces defending the 80th-floor balcony gates.

"Come on, Naya! We need to join the Captain!" Zulfa called out, pulling Naya's hand to sprint for cover behind a protective pillar.

The exterior corridor of the eightieth-floor terrace had morphed into a lethal asymmetric combat zone. Four elite mutant troopers clad in dark-gray armor with razor-sharp crystal claws rampaged wildly, spitting plasma fire from short-barreled rifles toward the resistance forces.

"They're too heavily armored for standard rounds!" an Arkian soldier cried out, pitched sideways into a glass wall by a mutant's crushing blow.

"Use Aether-Tech shock ammunition! Don't let them close the distance!" Captain Danu ordered sharply. Though his ribs still flared with pain, the war veteran held the front line, dropping a mutant leaping for his throat.

Zulfa broke his embrace with Naya for a second, racking his hybrid rifle. "Naya, cover our left flank from any lingering aerial drones!"

"Leave it to me!" Naya answered firmly, leveling her compact rifle toward the balcony ceiling to drop a surveillance drone moments away from releasing a grenade.

Zulfa stepped up beside Captain Danu. Fusing their combat teamwork, they executed a rapid strategy. Zulfa targeted the mutant leader's mechanical leg joints, while Captain Danu delivered the finishing round straight to the creature's chest core.

Bzzzt—Boom!

The final mutant shrieked piercingly before shattering into a cloud of purple crystal dust whipped away by the night wind. The gunfire across the eightieth-floor balcony gradually faded, leaving only the screaming gale of the dimensional storm raging from the skies above.

"Incredible team play," Captain Danu praised, wiping sweat from his brow as he clapped Zulfa on the shoulder. "We cleared the eightieth floor. Now, the path to the main emergency stairs leading to the summit is open."

Zulfa nodded, but his eyes locked immediately onto a massive, five-meter-tall steel door at the far end of the main corridor—the sole vertical access point linking the eightieth floor directly to the ritual altar chamber at the tower's apex.

Naya and Captain Danu approached the steel door behind Zulfa. To the right of the door was embedded a cutting-edge biometric scanner panel glowing a fierce red, ringed by multi-layered encryption ciphers.

Zulfa fished into his tactical pocket, pulling out his frequency scanner to hack the door lock system. He pressed his decoder cable straight into the terminal panel, punching in strings of override code.

Yet instead of unlocking, the scanner panel blared a high-pitched warning tone accompanied by flashing crimson strobes.

"WARNING: ACCESS DENIED. ABSOLUTE SECURITY PROTOCOL ENGAGED," an automated computer voice chimed coldly from the corridor walls.

Naya furrowed her brow, studying the decoder screen displaying a string of error text. "Damn... the encryption is hardware-locked. Our bypass system can't pierce its core firewall at all, Zul!"

Captain Danu shoved hard against the steel door with all his might, but the portal didn't budge a millimeter, standing firm as the tower's concrete bedrock. "If we can't hack it from the outside, do we blast it open with plasma grenades?"

Zulfa shook his head slowly. He studied the unique geometric carvings etched across the biometric panel's surface—the exact same symbols found within his late father's antique journals.

"That won't work, Captain," Zulfa said quietly, eyes fixed intently on the scanner panel. "The primary access door to the summit ritual room cannot be forced open with physical explosives or standard digital codes. It's locked behind an absolute biometric system..."

Naya turned to look at Zulfa, realization dawning in her eyes. "Zul... you mean...?"

Zulfa drew a long breath, raising his right hand to stare down at his own palm. "Yes, Naya. This door can only be unlocked by one thing in this world: the bloodline of the Architect."