"Davy you are fucking insane! There's no way I'm going to let you go into the airlock to shut the outer gate when it's about to unseal. We'll be fine as long as the inner gate holds." Jocelyn's hand was pressed against Ronan's chest, keeping him from moving another inch forward.

Metaphorically, at least. He could push through her at any point, but there was no need to use force where words would suffice. "And what if it doesn't? It isn't just us we have to think about. Every single human living beneath the ground will be at risk if the seal breaks. I might die, but what's one life against our entire species?"

"You don't know that! They wouldn't have built the inner gate so that it would break the moment it was put under pressure."

"Were you there when they built it? I'll be fine, anyway. The gate hasn't actually opened yet, it's just in the process of doing so. There's plenty of time for me to go through the airlock, figure out how to stop it from opening, stop it, and then come back. Seriously. Someone has to do it, and it's obvious none of you are willing to put your lives on the line." Ronan brushed her hand to the side. She didn't put up much resistance.

"Don't die."

He chuckled and waved a hand. "If a bunch of bodystealers couldn't kill me, a bit of cold won't finish the job."

The guards parted and cleared the way to the airlock. He only knew it was an airlock because Jocelyn had been yapping about it when they were on guard duty together earlier. Apparently a system the original builders of the wall put in place so that radiation wouldn't get inside the bunker when people worked on the outer gate or if it ever needed to be opened.

Ronan stepped inside. It was a white metal box, just like everything else in this place. A hissing noise sounded out as the pressure was equalised. He doubted there was much differential between the air in the bunker and outside it, but he had no way to tell until he stepped outside.

When the other door slid open, Ronan wasn't sure what to expect. He should have known it would be more plain white metal. There was a large corridor between the two gates, a sort of bubble between the inner and outer wall. The outer wall was making a lot of noise. Whirring and clanking mostly, but there was the occasional hiss of air. Why it took four hours to open a gate was a mystery to him, but who was he to question the system's scenarios?

There was a smaller doorway set into the larger gate. He walked up to it. There was a screen next to the door. He tapped on it and it flickered to life.

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation has been initiated

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation will be completed in 4 hours

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation will be completed in 3 hours

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation will be completed in 2 hours

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation will be completed in 1 hour

That was all the screen said, with nothing else. No buttons or menu that he could access to try and cancel the unsealing at the source. In other words, they were fucked.

I might be able to stop the unsealing process if I can destroy the systems that control it, but that's also a big risk. If I blow up the wrong thing or just outright blast a hole in the gate then that's the same as allowing it to be opened. However, if I do nothing, everyone inside will die and I'll fail the tutorial. He scratched his head while walking along the gate and staring at it, trying to figure out which parts were responsible for actually opening the gate.

Given that it was essentially a featureless flat slab of metal, that was a challenging task. Ronan didn't get much. However, he knew that he had to try something. If he was going to die and fail the tutorial stage anyway if the gate opened, then giving it a shot was all he could do.

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He pressed an ear against the gate and attempted to listen to the sounds it was making. His hope was that by striking the area that was the most noisy, he would be more likely to hit an essential part of the mechanism and stop the gate from opening. If that didn't complete the stage for him, then he would have to go back inside the bunker and hunt down every last shapeshifter.

Ronan listened for a few more seconds before taking his ear off the wall. He moved up and down slightly, adjusting his position until he realised where the greatest concentration of sound was. He stepped back from the wall and started forming a mana bolt. He wanted precision over power, so he kept the quantity of mana low and focused on the shape, making it sharper.

When he launched it, he spun it like a drill. It was a test of his sorcery and it worked relatively well. The mana bolt bit into the metal wall and tore through the surface layers of metal, exposing the machinery inside. He heard something snap and a few crackling sounds. Two metallic clangs followed shortly afterwards, but the rest of the wall continued making noise.

The wall was around ten metres tall and the spot that he'd blown open was six metres or so from the ground. He took a run up and leapt up the wall, needing an extra leap off the wall's surface to make it to the hole and grab onto the metal. The sharp edge dug into his palm, but his stats meant that it wasn't able to cut his skin.

He hauled himself up so that he could stand on the metal and lean against the top of the hole. He stared inside and what he saw left him rather confused. It was mostly just wires and more metal, but there were some mechanical parts. A series of hydraulic tubes were set into the walls of the cavern and seemed to be undergoing a sequential unlocking. It was like some kind of giant mechanical lock.

Ronan conjured a sword. He made it as long as he could without overly straining himself. He needed to be able to maintain the construct for a decent amount of time, but he also wanted the length to cut through the thick metal tubes. He gripped the handle tightly and raised it into the air, before swinging at the first tube and activating as many of his skills as he could pack into a single sword-slash.

The blade sheared through the metal with ease. The cut was so powerful that it cleaved through half of the second tube before it lost momentum. Ronan lifted the blade into the air before swinging it again. He cut through the rest of the second and most of the third.

After the fourth he needed to jump inside the wall to keep going. Ronan managed to cut apart all of the tubes, eight in total. Once he cut the last one he heard a noticeable decrease in the noise that the wall was making. Satisfied that he had managed to stop the unsealing, he leapt back up to the hole and clambered out into the space between the inner and outer gates. He walked over to the screen that was placed beside the small doorway.

Nothing had changed.

Ronan frowned. It wasn't entirely a bad sign that the display was unchanged. The system probably didn't have an output for 'help my mechanisms are being cut open,' but he had expected some kind of warning about it being compromised or damaged. What worried him more was that he could still hear noises from inside the gate.

It must be a double gate. If I open it up on the other side of the door I should find a mirrored mechanism for the other half. Shit. Let's hope I can do this in time. Ronan realised why the gate was still opening despite his best efforts. He started to walk along the gate when he heard a beeping noise.

Please don't be what I think that is. Fingers crossed, he walked back to the screen and stared at the new line of text that had appeared.

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation has been initiated

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation will be completed in 4 hours

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation will be completed in 3 hours

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation will be completed in 2 hours

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation will be completed in 1 hour

Outer Bunker Gate Seal Deactivation Operation complete, Outer Bunker Gate will now open

Ronan cursed and ran down the wall. He was already late, but he hoped that if he destroyed the opening mechanism in time he might still be able to complete the tutorial stage. He was still there, after all, and the system hadn't sent him a message about failure yet. Not that he had ever been in a situation where there was another way to fail apart from dying. This was new territory.

Ronan tossed a mana bolt at the wall and started sprinting. The bolt exploded and he jumped into the air as soon as it did. He conjured a sword when he landed on the edge of the hole he'd created and started swinging at the hydraulic tubes that were exposed. He cut through the first. Then he heard a hiss of air. Ronan sped up the speed of his swings.

The air felt cooler than it had a few moments before. Ronan swung harder. Soon enough he had taken out all eight of the tubes. However, the air definitely felt colder than when he'd started. He leapt back out of the gate and his heart dropped at what he saw.

Both sides of the gate were slowly opening, revealing a thin beam of grey light. He heard the sound of wind through the crack that had opened in the gate. A solitary snowflake blew inside, swirling through the air until it fell onto the white metal floor and melted.

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