The Over-Break System

Spanning from the 20-meter tall ceiling to the floor and extending 20 meters to both sides, the massive vault door was imposing and impressive to Cynrik as he thoroughly examined it from top to bottom.

”Hm, it’s a tough nut to crack…if I could have left the systems up without fear of getting found out, I would have, but everything has been powered down, turning this door into a hunk of useless and heavy metal.”

Mumbling his thoughts aloud, Cynrik walked up, placed his open palm on the latch release wheel, and narrowed his eyes while observing its inner workings with [Mana Sight].

”What is the vault door rated for?” Watching as Cynrik did his thing, Selene asked cautiously since she didn’t want to disturb him.

”Tier-6, way above us; it was surprising that all of that furniture we found held up under this much g-force, but I guess that’s what you get with a lot of money.”

”Now… the door is an entirely different ball game. Since it is meant to secure the dead families’ valuables, it had to be strong enough to withstand high impact and a lot of force.”

”When I was going through the vault’s information in the system, I found its manufacturing info, including its power rating, and well, even if I use my most potent attack, all I will do is blow the room to smithereens, leaving a big metal box underground.”

”So what are you going to do? There’s a giant combination lock, so I assume that is the final option if the power fails and the electronic locks no longer work. Should we try to crack it as a safe or combo lock?” Taking a step back and looking around the room for any clues, Selene, too, fell into deep thought as though attempting to find a solution to help.

”That is our only option; unfortunately, the family was smart enough not to leave the code written down anywhere, even in the security office, meaning they had it memorized.”

”Yeah, that makes sense, so what is the standard way of getting into the vault?” Tilting her head to the side and following along, Selene asked.

”Finger and iris scanners, plus a slew of other biological shit like saliva and blood. They didn’t make it easy to get in, and from the records I found, only the fat lady, Molly Houter, ever opened the door.”

’Hm, I wonder if I can use echolocation to track the traveling Sound Mana particles through the chambers and locks until I find the combination.’

Closing his outstretched hand, Cynrik balled his hand into a fist and knocked on the wheel three times while observing how the particles traveled through the metal.

”Man, I fucking love this world, and Mana, it makes challenges like this so entertaining.” Cynrik’s lips curled into a smile upon seeing the clear-colored particles with a silver outline flowing through the vault door.

Each time he knocked, the particles would manifest at the point of impact and spread out before shrinking and vanishing from sight. Since he knew that Mana followed the principles of Matter, he didn’t believe for a second that the Sound Particles had disappeared.

Instead, he understood that they had lost power and shrunk to a size unperceivable to the naked eye.

”Hm? What happened?” Unaware of what he had done, Selene only witnessed him knocking on the door a few times before breaking into his signature smile.

”Do you understand the principle behind echolocation?” Removing his hand from the door and looking over his shoulder at Selene, Cynrik’s smile deepened.

”Uh, I learned it in elementary school, so it’s been a while, but I know that bats chirp at a high frequency creating ripples in the air that allow them to ”See” with sound…oh shit, SOUND MANA. You can see the movement of the particles and, in effect, have a pseudo form of echolocation.” With wide eyes and a dropped-open mouth, Selene fought the urge to rush up and shake Cynrik in her excitement.

”Pretty much, heh, that is going to help a lot, so when cracking a safe in movies, you know how you always see the people using a stethoscope to listen to the vault door, well that is them trying to hear the clicking sound caused by mechanisms moving into place.”

”Since I can see inside, I don’t need that, but you don’t know that unlike a standard vault lock, which can have a code between 5 and 10 digits, this one is much more difficult to deal with.”

”How so? Is the combination super long or something?” Not following, Selene looked back at the large spin nob filled with numbers starting at 01 and going to 500.

”Well, yeah, the combo length is annoyingly long, somewhere between 30 to 50 digits, but that isn’t the problem; it’s how the plates overlap. Because they are the same in construction and Mana particle content, it all looks like a solid glowing brick in my [Mana Sight], so I can’t differentiate between the positions needed to open the lock.”

”Here, look, this is what I mean; I am sending you a diagram I have from back in my lockpicking days. It was a hyperfocus of mine for a few weeks when I was a teenager.” Closing his eyes and remembering the diagram, he sent it over to Selene, and when she saw it, she clicked her tongue.

**I will post a small four-minute video in the References channel on Discord for those visual learners out there.**

In the image, she saw the standard numbered nob, of course, but an X-ray view of the inside of the combination lock followed it.

Three round wheeled plates filled with rectangular holes lined up with the numbers of the nob, but there were also three large notches. These notches were where the large pin attached to a metal arm and angled over the wheels was supposed to rest when the lock was unlocked after the proper combination had been put in.

However, this hammer pin wasn’t the primary focus; instead, it was the three small pieces of rectangular metal, which fit into as many of the small holes, only they were long enough to reach the next wheel.

Only the first wheel plate was attached to the nob, so when the nob was spun, that first wheel would rotate until the correct number was reached, and the metal piece connected with the one on the second wheel plate. From there, it was necessary to spin the wheel in the opposite direction until all three plates lined up along with the notches allowing the pin to drop and lock in place.

That was the basics of a combination lock, which was only for a combination with three plates. Cynrik was saying there were between 30 and fifty plates, meaning out of 500 points or potentially more if the numbers fell on decimals, getting everything to line up would be annoying.

Since he couldn’t see the individual moving metal pieces needed to get all the wheels spinning, he would have to rely on his new pseudo-echolocation and be on the lookout for when there is a faint burst of particles indicating a connection impact between the wheel plates.

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