My eardrums ruptured instantly as the overpressure wave hit. Fifty thousand tons of falling rock violently displaced the air beneath it, creating a localized hurricane that slammed into the drainage pipe. I was thrown against the curved concrete wall, gasping as the sudden pressure spike squeezed the oxygen from my lungs.
Then came the impact.
It lasted for maybe eight seconds, but in the dark, it felt like an eternity. The earth didn't just shake; it liquefied. The sheer kinetic force of the mountain crashing down sent a seismic shockwave tearing through the bedrock. The reinforced concrete pipe around me groaned in absolute agony, the steel rebar screaming as it bore the weight of the apocalypse. I curled into a ball, tasting dust and my own blood, my bones vibrating with the frequency of the shattered earth.
And finally.
For the next two minutes, the violent quaking faded into a terrifying, heavy grinding. Thousands of massive boulders rolled, crushed, and settled against each other, burying everything above in a tomb of granite.
Then... dead silence.
Darkness.
Absolute darkness where I couldn't see my own fingers. The exit of the drain was completely blocked by the collapse. The air was thick with the suffocating smell of turned earth, sulfur, and the metallic tang of ozone; every breath scraped against my trachea like swallowing rough sandpaper.
I fumbled over my body in the dark, checking for missing limbs. My voice rasped like a ninety-year-old chain smoker, barely audible even to myself.
"Still alive."
I leaned against the cold, damp concrete, my lips cracking into an ugly grin. The adrenaline crash hit me like a physical blow, leaving me weak and lightheaded.
Just then, a vibration came from above.
It was faint at first, then rhythmic. A muffled digging sound.
"Is anyone... anyone still breathing?!"
It was Brad. He sounded like a man possessed.
"Here!" I tried to scream, but it came out as a pathetic, bloody wheeze. I grabbed a jagged piece of stone and hammered it against the concrete slab above me with everything I had left. Clang. Clang. "Over here! I’m... I’m down here!"
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The scraping stopped for a heartbeat. Then, it turned into a frenzied roar of shifting stone. Metal shrieked against granite. The massive precast slab pinning me in was suddenly, violently lurched upward, grinding against the surrounding rubble.
A wave of grey-white dust poured into the hole, thick and heavy as volcanic ash. It cascaded down, coating my face and filling my throat instantly.
Through the choking haze, a massive hand reached down. It was wrapped in filthy, blood-soaked bandages, the fingers thick as iron bolts. Like a heavy-duty salvage crane, it locked onto the collar of my ruined breastplate and hauled me out of the grave.
I was dumped onto the jagged surface of the new wasteland. I coughed violently, spitting out grey mud, my vision finally clearing.
Brad was kneeling over me, his face a mask of sweat, dust, and dark lacerations. He stared at me for a second, his chest heaving like a broken bellows, his eyes wide with a primal, terrified relief.
"You... you stubborn, lucky son of a bitch," he rasped, his voice cracking as he slammed a heavy, trembling hand onto my shoulder. "I thought I was digging up a corpse."
My shaking fingers dug into his forearm. "I was about to say the same to you, you stubborn bastard. We actually made it."
The whole world was grey.
Just tens of meters in front of me.
There was no open square. No ruined streets. No Wolf King.
The grey mist there was darker, deeper, and solid.
As a gust of high-altitude cold wind blew past, the thick dust cloud was torn open slightly, revealing the truth.
I froze.
Through the swirling grey mist, I saw the tip of the iceberg of that behemoth.
It was a wall. No, it was the side of a new mountain.
Countless fractured rock layers, massive granite blocks, and twisted rebar rose from the ground like a chaotic tomb piled by angry gods.
Zone C was completely leveled. Buried.
"This is... a funeral of fifty thousand tons."
I murmured, my voice lost in the dead air. I couldn't see the peak, but I knew that under this mountain, even demons from hell would be crushed into paste.
"Is he dead?"
"Can't see anything." Ron's voice came from the mist, trembling. He sounded like a ghost. "My Lord, in this situation... do we still need to confirm the body? Should we dig?"
"Confirm where? Dig how?"
I pointed at the sheer cliff looming in the mist and gave a bitter, exhausted laugh. "Unless you have a fleet of industrial excavators and a month of free time, don't dream of opening this grave."
"Pass the order."
"All units retreat upwind. Immediately. The air here is toxic; too much silica dust. You'll get silicosis if you stay."
I turned around, putting my back to the giant mountain looming in the grey mist.
"Garza, this is your tomb..."
I closed my eyes, feeling the cold touch of dust falling on my face like the ashes of a burning world.
"This is the end."
Physics has spoken its final sentence. Or has it?
Question of the Day: Can anything survive 5 million tons of rock?
(Click to check for a pulse)
?? A) No.
Result: The Realistic Outcome. Biology is fragile. Rock is heavy. By all known laws of the universe, he should be a 2D sticker on the floor right now. Probability: 99.9%.
?? B) Only a cockroach.
Result: The Survivor. Unless Garza has the [Trait: Indestructible Exoskeleton], he's toast. Or maybe he's just too angry to die. If he crawls out, I'm moving to a farming simulator.
?? C) ...Run.
Result: Horror Movie Logic. WARNING. The background music didn't stop. The "Quest Complete" notification didn't pop up. That wasn't a death scene; that was a transformation sequence. Phase 2: Initiating.
Follow and Rate. The dust settles, but the nightmare might not be over.