The massive, three-hundred-foot vertical shaft leading into the bedrock was pitch black, a terrifying, echoing throat that swallowed the crisp morning sunlight just fifty feet below the ruined tarmac.
The stale, heavily filtered subterranean air continued to violently vent upward, equalizing the atmospheric pressure of the Old World's twelve-mile underground city with the completely sterilized surface. It sounded like the roaring breath of a dying, mechanical leviathan.
Ren stood exactly one inch above the yawning abyss, his Level 50 Abyssal Sovereign architecture completely negating the planetary gravity that sought to pull his two-hundred-and-seventy-pound frame into the dark.
He turned his completely solid, void-like eyes toward Chloe.
She was standing at the jagged edge of the cracked concrete, her knees visibly shaking beneath her heavy tactical pants. Staring down a three-mile vertical drop into absolute darkness was a biological nightmare for a Level 2 human.
