Doomsday Elevator

Ethan Quinn's crampons bit into the glacial blue ice as the spatial backpack pulsed against his spine—a diseased heartbeat syncing with the creaks of the ancient glacier. The System's warning flashed like a strobe:

Floor Type: Black Ice Quarry

Primary Objective: Auric Vein Extraction

Secondary Hazard: Unstable Timeline Anchors

Chompy the raptor snarled at shifting shadows, its breath frosting in the -50°C air. The creature's scales had begun to molt, revealing chitinous plates that clicked like typewriter keys.

The Descent

Ethan rappelled into the crevasse, ice screws screaming. The walls shimmered with gold deposits—not mere ore, but intricate circuitry frozen mid-flow. His pickaxe struck:

CLANG!

The glacier shuddered. A fractal crack spiderwebbed upward as the System blared:

Alert: Chronal Instability Detected

Gold dust rained like radioactive snow. Chompy lunged, swallowing nuggets whole before convulsing.

"Spit it out!" Ethan pried the raptor's jaws. Molten metal dripped, etching craters in the ice.

The Encounter

The mining laser sparked to life, its beam refracting through prisms of frozen time. Ghostly holograms flickered—Victorian prospectors overlapped with cyborg drillers, all mining the same vein across eras.

"Oi! This claim's staked!" A phantom in a steam-powered exosuit swung a pickaxe through Ethan's torso.

He returned fire on instinct. The shotgun blast shattered a ice pillar, releasing a avalanche of gold-laden slush.

The Revelation

At the vein's heart glowed a monolith—obsidian inscribed with the elevator's ever-changing commandments. Ethan's gloves sizzled on contact.

Memory Imprint Detected: Construction Log #001

"The elevators aren't escapes. They're feeding tubes."

Chompy vomited a stream of liquid gold, the fluid solidifying into a shrieking homunculus. Ethan's axe silenced it mid-screech.

The Escape

The glacier roared as timelines collapsed. Ethan's ascent became a nightmare ballet—leaping across disintegrating ice bridges, dodging falling miners from six centuries. The spatial backpack birthed a tentacle that anchored him to reality.

"Not…your puppet…" He severed the appendage with a plasma torch.

The Aftermath

Back in the elevator, the gold deposit glowed with sickly intelligence. The upgrade terminal digested the haul:

Level 6 Requirements Met

New Module: Chronal Stabilizer

The blackboard's latest edict bled through frost:

Dig Deeper. Scream Louder.

The Corruption

Midnight revealed the toll. Chompy's new exoskeleton pulsed with the quarry's circuitry. The raptor stared at Ethan with compound eyes, mandibles clicking binary code.

The spatial背包 split open, birthing a stillborn star.