Ghost Knight King's Dungeon Project

Chapter 92 [The Lock-Knowing Method]

Every morning after his death, Sokofa would wake from unsettling fantasies to find himself lying on the ground, transformed into a giant grave beetle.

Is it morning now? Morning, or evening?
Suo Kefa didn't know, and... didn't want to know.

The tomb chamber had no windows or any light source; there was only darkness, endless darkness.

The fully enclosed burgundy-style round helmet moved slightly, and the local meridian time flickered in the helmet's dark blue UI. But he didn't look at it.

Click... Click...

The three pairs of limbs on its body slowly curled up.

He lay supine on the stone floor in the center of the tomb, his arm armor, leg armor, and three pairs of limbs bent awkwardly upwards, like the corpse of a dead cockroach, seeking an embrace from the dark tomb ceiling.

The floor of the tomb chamber was completely covered with a thick layer of discarded bronze, and even the original gray rock and soil were not exposed.

Suo Kefa's body was submerged among the mountains of discarded bronze armor plates and unfinished parts, making it difficult to distinguish him from the surrounding bronze waste.

For a moment, the helmet's vision flickered, and the dark tomb ceiling, illuminated by the Ghost Rider's unique night vision, appeared as gray specks, carrying a sense of despair and unfamiliarity.

Although their bodies have lost the ability to sleep and no longer feel tired, their minds still plead for rest—the Ghost Riders occasionally enter that weary, sluggish, absent-minded state, as if in a daze. This is the closest they come to hibernation.

However, none of the other Ghost Knights spent as long or as frequently indulging in their daze as Lockkoff.

Perhaps it's because the other knights all have their own things to do, Sokofa thought.

They are either brave and fearless, calm and collected; or ambitious and driven; or courageous and ready to take on a mission in a time of crisis; or fierce and ruthless, brimming with fighting spirit.

They are the masters of their own lives, eager to control their destiny and to seize new power from death to prolong an even more frenzied life.

Sokofa envied and admired his fellow human beings, but he was also self-aware.

He knew he wasn't a ghost knight, but a giant copper cockroach crawling in the shadows.

The best thing a large cockroach can do is hide in a dark corner and not be seen by anyone.

When it got dark and everyone was asleep, they would tiptoe out of their den and sneak away to steal things that others didn't want.

This is the survival rule of the giant cockroach.

The dark tomb was deathly silent.

It felt like taking a nap on a tiring afternoon after staying up all night, only to wake up at night. When I woke up, it was dark, the curtains were drawn tightly, and the bedroom was like a tomb, deathly silent. I checked my phone and saw zero message notifications.

No one will contact you, no one will care about you, and no one will even know if you die in your bedroom one day. Only when you've rotted like a dead cockroach will your curled, shriveled remains be swept out from under the cupboard and thrown into the trash can.

Suo Kefa stared blankly at the ceiling.

He had broken free from that dazed, ghostly resting state, but he was still lying on the ground, like a dead cockroach with its legs in the air, its limbs curled up, motionless.

Getting up means facing your current situation and your life.

Therefore, it takes a lot of courage to get out of bed.

In the dark, empty, and deathly silent tomb, a very long time passed before Suo Kefa finally mustered the courage he needed to get out of bed.

The limbs on his body twitched, driven by this faint courage, digging and clawing, making soft clicking sounds. The long limbs under his shoulder armor supported his thin body, slowly bolstering his languid form.

Like a pill bug, he struggled to move his limbs, finally flipping over and rolling his body off the floor in the center of the tomb. Using his cane-like limbs for support, he skipped the process of supporting himself with his arms and stood up awkwardly.

It has six bronze limbs, four long and two short.

Four long, thick limbs, located at the seam between the shoulder armor and the carapace, enable the user to lift their body off the ground or crawl quickly on walls.

Two slightly shorter, slender limbs, but with pincer-shaped appendages at the ends, fold and curl under the ribs like the mantis's clawed legs, fitting perfectly into the depressions on the sides of the thorax. The pincer-like ends allow these limbs to act like a second pair of hands, facilitating delicate and precise manipulations.

What...should...he...do...something...? He thought blankly, looking around, hoping that the ceiling of the tomb chamber would be blown open and a small piece of paper would fall down from the sunlit skylight, containing the secrets and steps to obtaining happiness and joy, which would help him no longer be confused.

The center of the tomb was empty, with no bed—after all, the Ghost Knight's metal body couldn't distinguish between a bed and the ground.

The ground was littered with discarded funerary bronze artifacts and complex unfinished products that were abandoned halfway through construction—these unfinished products would soon become waste as well.

Success is a rare possibility; failure is the norm.

He stood on the knee-deep, wasteland, staring blankly at the dark, silent sea.

The courage he had mustered to get out of bed was almost completely depleted. Maybe he should lie down again, just... rest a bit? Suo Kefa stared blankly.

But this only amplified my guilt about wasting time, especially compared to the other Ghost Riders, making me feel like a decadent, rotting cockroach.

He looked around, surveying his tomb, hoping to find something besides spacing out to make his existence more meaningful—at least, to make himself less like a cockroach.

One pillar after another stood in the tomb chamber—because the sand in this area was loose, but the surface layer of sand and gravel was extremely heavy, Suo Kefa had to add a large number of supporting pillars in the tomb chamber to prevent it from collapsing.

Thick, dark bronze pillars surrounded him like bars of a giant's prison. He was like an insect trapped in a cage—in fact, he had built the cage that imprisoned him himself.

In the corner of the tomb chamber stood a simple workbench, upon which lay an intricate structure of funerary bronze. Gears, connecting rods, rotors, and bearings were scattered about, yet they were strangely combined and interlocked on the frame to form a propeller blade driven by a funerary bronze power wheel.

The design of the twin propellers rotating in opposite directions barely offset the torque, although it resulted in enormous stress on the intermediate frame. However, the strength of the black brass made it barely acceptable.

However, the Dark Copper was simply too heavy. The frame structure was so heavy that it felt like a solid block of copper. The output power of the Dark Copper drive wheel was also limited, resulting in an overall thrust-to-weight ratio that was too small to lift off the ground.

He felt a pang of nostalgia for his past experiences with computer programming. Even the crudest assembly code was far more fluid than this kind of hardware control logic, and it was much easier to create something from it.

He opened the [Inorganic Psionic Construction - Component Library] in the interface UI and stared blankly at the [Propellant Injector] entry.

Clear text flashed on the ethereal, azure UI screen:
[Required fuel: High-purity psionic crystals.]

He turned off the screen, raised his long, thin, arthropod-like gauntlets, and grabbed the unfinished twin-rotor engineering machine on the table. He dragged it and slammed it violently onto the ground beside him.

Boom!

The heavy twin-rotor engineering machine crashed into a pile of ghost copper, submerged in a tide of waste and unfinished products, like sand being submerged on a beach, or garbage being thrown into a garbage dump, never to be found again.

The echo reverberated in the deathly silent tomb, buzzing like tinnitus. The dark and silent invisible sea surged up once more, drowning him again and again in the tomb, filling his already empty body with even emptier emptiness.

Click-clack-clack-clack... The limbs under Sokofa's ribs scratched restlessly and nervously, trying to drown out the dark and thick silence with these noises.

He pointed to a large barrel of necromancy that was standing to the side, which contained humus that he had recently dug up from the edge of the Dekgon territory.

His territory was a wasteland of ashes and stones, barren of vegetation, devoid of any necromantic materials except for copper ore and a small amount of dried bones. It was for this reason that other ghost knights looked down on this harsh environment, which gave him the opportunity to live here.

However, it needs humus—the fermentation of deteriorating humus gradually produces a small amount of mildly toxic, oily liquid that can be used as lubricating oil. Before this oil evaporates, the lubricating film will make the core drive wheel of the Nether Bronze construct rotate at a more stable speed.

Several spheres on the surrounding walls moved, and sharp limbs extended from the gaps beneath their spherical helmets—Suo Kefa controlled these bronze-helmeted hermit crabs, checking their physical condition.

One of the spheres emitted a dull, grinding sound.

"Are you broken?" He stretched out his gauntlet, and the thick, segmented limbs extending from between his shoulder and back armor clattered as he dragged him across the shallows of debris to remove the bronze-helmeted hermit crab.

“I’m broken too,” Sokofa said to the Hermit Crab with the Bronze Helmet. “Everything’s broken.”

His voice echoed in the deathly silent tomb, the sound buzzing.

Only when I'm alone do I not feel nervous when I speak to myself.

Suo Kefa flipped the Dark Copper Helmet Hermit Crab over, revealing its dense limbs and components. He reached his slender gauntlet between the limbs, removed a base that held a limb in place, and exposed a set of power gears deep inside.

He took a brush made of bone tube, dipped it in the putrid, light oil, and brushed the liquid onto the edge of the power gear. While controlling the gear to rotate, he spread the foul-smelling oil evenly.

After completing this series of tasks, he reinstalled the arthropod base and power gear assembly, watching as the bronze hermit crab resumed normal operation, clicking and clattering as it climbed back onto the wall and engaged.

He stared blankly at the wall, trying to figure out if he felt any better, but it didn't seem to work. He still felt like a giant cockroach, and a giant cockroach covered in stinking grease in an engineering workshop.

“…I can fix you, but I can’t fix myself,” Sokofa said to the Bronze Helmet Hermit Crab. “I’m a weirdo who can’t adapt to normal life.”

The hermit crab with the bronze helmet did not respond.

Sokofa continued to stare blankly into the darkness for a moment, a profound sense of deprivation and emptiness echoing in the tomb.

He couldn't help but compare himself to others like him. He felt like an artist without any works, aimlessly wasting time day after day in a daze, without desire, without impulse, and without any more noble reason.

Finally, he stealthily climbed onto the wall, and using his arthropods, he half-suspended himself on the edge of the ceiling, prying open a stone between the wall and the ceiling.

The stone was easily pulled out from the hidden groove plated with necromancer and slid smoothly out of the wall.

Two slender, spider-leg-like arthropods extended from below, clinging to the edge of the hidden compartment. Next came two more arthropods with chelicerae, and finally, a fully enclosed Burgundian-style round helmet slowly emerged from the edge of the hidden compartment, peering into what was inside.

In the hidden compartment hung rows of shelves, displaying small models made by Sokofa from necromancy, bone, and stone, sculpting and carving cartoon characters and unpainted, gray anime figurines.

With his powerful computing abilities and sharp limbs, Sokofa possessed the skill to carve with precision. He tried his best to recall and imitate his two-dimensional hobbies from his previous life, attempting to preserve the feeling of being alive in this way.

But this seemed to make him feel even worse—after all, while he was alive, cartoon plastic figures and big-headed plush toys were considered shameful evidence of a person's idleness and childishness.

An excellent, normal person should not have these immature and childish hobbies.

Being in your twenties and still not wanting to go out, stuttering when talking to people, watching strange cartoons and playing with big-headed plush toys, and burying yourself in computer games means you're a "weird, stinky, shut-in otaku".

While he was alive, he felt ashamed of this, watching others participate in competitions, shining brightly on the basketball court and in clubs, speaking eloquently, and cheering on the podium. In comparison, he felt like a cockroach in a corner.

While he was alive, he tried to hide these disreputable hobbies, sneaking around like a cockroach doing his own thing.

Even after he died, nothing seemed to change. He continued to secretly tinker with figurines and dolls in the tomb, afraid that others would discover his shameful hobby and ridicule him.

Suo Kefa extended his slender arthropod hand, picked up a homemade anime figurine of Goto Ichiri from "Lonely Rock" made of black bronze, and fiddled with a homemade stone sculpture of Takamatsu Takamatsu from "mygo". Leaning against the black bronze arthropod, he stared blankly at the wall.

Anime is an artificial world that presents only beauty, allowing people to immerse themselves in it without worry. If only the world could be as simple as anime. He stared blankly.

He placed the two figurines on the workbench and slid them down from a hidden compartment in the wall. The arthropods on the side of the breastplate scratched restlessly as he continued his calculations regarding the Nether Bronze mechanical construct.

On the wall opposite the workbench hung several plates of ghost bronze, with rough yet complex design diagrams etched on them using arthropod sculpting. These were notes left over from the previous construction of the arthropod tank, including the structures of some key components, as well as the implementation and assembly logic of the modules.

The previous arthropod was destroyed by the Decogon, and rebuilding it would require starting from scratch. Thousands of complex connection logics needed to be organized, and every transmission part needed to be manually welded.

It was a stupid method, but there was no other way, since he had no other way to improve it. Suo Kefa did the calculations in a daze, his limbs under his ribs unconsciously making a scratching sound, twitching nervously, leaving white scratches on the workbench.

When he got tired of calculating, he would lie down in the center of the room, daydream, and then get up and repeat the process.

This was his entire life.

Click.

A small piece of gravel, mixed with sand, fell from the ceiling of the tomb.

Suo Kefa looked up from the intricate connection logic and stared blankly at the spot where the rubble had fallen.

The stress on the support column was specifically calculated, and theoretically it shouldn't be there...

Wow!

A large chunk of rubble collapsed! A massive white object crashed down on the dark ceiling of the tomb chamber with a deafening roar, slamming into the pile of discarded bronze artifacts on the floor!
As the white metal object fell into Sokofa's tomb, a beam of pale sunlight shone through the broken hole in the ceiling, landing squarely on the object.

"Oh..." The humanoid platinum-colored thing slapped the dust off its helmet. "Hey, good morning, Sokofa—sorry, I was going to let you know, but all those little hermit crabs you had outside were dismantled by the Dirkgons the day before yesterday, and I couldn't find your other units either—"

"I tried to find the entrance to your tomb, but I couldn't, so I just dug a vertical hole... By the way, the entrance to your tomb is really well hidden."

"I...I...I..." Suo Kefa stammered, "My tomb, the burial chamber, it's...it's sealed off, there's no...no entrance or exit..."

“Oh, I see—then there’s nothing I can do…sorry.” Samael slumped among the junk, struggling to pull himself out of a pile of bronze arthropods, then suddenly looked up and pointed at something on Sokofa’s workbench.

Sokofa turned his head tremblingly, and in a panic, stretched out his arthropod gauntlet, grabbed the figure, hid it behind his back, and planned to crawl into a dark corner.

"Hey, isn't that Goto Ichiri from 'Lonely Rock'?" Samael poked his head out. "I remember seeing that song too—"

"Huh?" Suo Kefa stood there, his limbs curled up, stunned in the blinding light and shadow, like a proud giant cockroach.

(End of this chapter)