Well, the doctor is VERY negatively affected by the loss of his elevator. It has escalated to the point he decided fixing and repairing the elevator before usage was redundant. Case in point: Riley is inside the box playing around with all the switches, penetrating further down in his denial of the situation. 

Shorty and Browski jump into a frenzy at the sight of their master in the works of risking his life, sitting inside this device that is on the verge of shattering.

They are not the only one. 

As soon as Zephyr looks to see what's going on, he lets a "Oh goodness" out of his mouth. It's bad enough to deal with an assassin on the fly. Now the person he's protecting is throwing his own life away by messing around with relics that shouldn't be messed with. He can vividly call back to the remaining villagers evoking on a regular basis to not touch the elevator. That prompts him to dash at the doctor's direction, ignoring his opponent entirely.

Alister is now left with complete loss. He broke his leg with no chance of clean restoration. Even if he could successfully bring Riley's head back, it's still the end of his career wether he makes it out of this desert or not. 

Nonetheless, emptiness begins to be replaced by more anger. Everything should have been going accordingly and this doctor...this filthy man, is going to escape thanks to this kid? Even if the scientist actually dies, without a trace of his death, Alister would have sacrificed his whole body only for forced retirement in return. 

Maybe the money as more to do with it after all. Maybe it's this teenager with a massive sword that somehow crawled out of nowhere and decimated him both physically and psychologically. Maybe it has to do with his old man and the legacy that has been stolen from him.

Many different factors that the hunter hadn't considered up until now, probably because he discarded them somewhere else in his mental, are now popping back in his consciousness. This new found resolve is making him limp with all his energy left towards the doctor.

As soon as Zephyr gets near the elevator, he shifts to damage control.

"- Sir, what are you doing!? Get out of this elevator now!

- FOOL! All of you are fools! How long have you been here!?

- I...Well, I've been here my whole life!

- ALRIGHT! Can you explain to me why no one, not a single SOUL, had the bright idea to fix this marvel of mechanical engineering!?

- With all do respect, everyone in Gallows left but me. I've been the last person here for a few months!

- That doesn't change anything! I left this goddamn village a decade ago! SOMEONE should have come down here during the last three thousand six hundred and fifty days and ARRANGE this BLASPHEMY!!

- Can you at least listen to me!? You need to leave the elevator before it falls down!" Repeats Zephyr, hoping the scientist would understand the predicament.

Zephyr's mind shifts in way too many directions at once hearing the doctor speak. This man is babbling nonsense like he used to live at Gallows...

"A...A decade ago?" Zephyr whispers to himself.

Wait, something in Zephyr's mind clicks, like a piece to a forgotten puzzle was suddenly restored. A scientist that left a decade ago...

Zephyr's face starts to sweat bullets. 

His eyes are becoming bigger than his stomach. 

His hands are trembling. 

He has only one question in his mind at the moment.

"Sir, I don't want to change the subject this drastically...But what...what is your name?"

Suddenly, Riley stops what he's doing and slowly...but surely... looks back at Zephyr, starring the young boy in his eyes. 

The young blacksmith cannot see it behind the scientist's goggles, but both realization and fright are the only thing the doctor can feel, almost like he got caught doing a fatal mistake. However, before Zephyr could confirm his terrifying suspicions, a voice in anger roars behind them.

"- I'll have to come and get you out of here myself, Doc! I won't my career without bringing your dead body back!" Screams Alister.

The assassin's presence alone is enough to pressure Riley into pressing every single buttons as fast as possible, praying internally that something works. Meanwhile, Shorty goes in front the young man, pebbles already loaded into its submachine gun, threatening to shoot Zephyr and the assassin down if they dare get any closer to its master. Browski is right behind him, hoping to propel its buddy's pebbles even faster with it's magical wind. El boyo is flying around  the elevator, ready to report on the current state of affairs.

The sudden team coercion the animals embody, the doctor frantically stomping everything that remotely looks like a button and the assassin limping behind him is a potluck of confusion for the teenager. He's unsure how to manifest a way out of this situation...

Until he hears something creek. 

 The flying crocodile then starts to screech in utter consternation at the strange creaking noise it's hearing from the elevator, as it begins to lose its grip. It cannot contain such a low amount of weight anymore, so Dr. Riley's meaty and juicy 6 foot and 155 pounds is enough to send this poor excuse of a mechanical marvel backwards, bending it. Slowly but surely, a skinny and tall lunatic is forcing his own creation to drop down inside the bottomless pit. It's only when he looks at the side and sees that the elevator is now bent 15 degrees back that the scientist understands his mistake. 

Saying that he is scared for his life is an understatement.

In complete dismay, the youngling starts running, dropping in the process the torch blade and instead gets his backpack, grabbing a rope. The hunter, simply trying to get his pray back, limps faster towards the elevator.

The doctor tries his best to open the front door, but can't make it bulge. Seeing this, Shorty's first order of business is to shoot the door's glass window with a pebble. The doctor sees this and moves his hands in agitation.

"- Shorty! You idiot! Don't shoot at my direc-!"

The doctor's sentence is cut short as a pebble flying at the speed of sound pierces the door and almost hits him in his left eye. The elevator is now bent around 30 degrees and the doctor could have died at the paws of his favorite pet.

He is about to die falling inside the treasure trove he was seeking for an inconceivable amount of time. It took him year after year of research and unfriendly cooperation after another to prepare, get back in Gallows and explore the damned pit. After all of this time, Riley will finally be able to see what's inside the unknown universe that thrived below humanity for the last four decades.... And perhaps the two idiots and the three pets, who all try to rescue this donkey from hitting his head on a cliff.

We then hear a *CLANG* as the elevator finally detaches itself from the last remaining parts that supported it. In one last act of desperation, the doctor activates his booster pads and prays the contact with the glass doesn't hurt him too much. He indeed smashes through the door before the elevator starts to fall too deep.

Shorty, El Boyo and Browski climb on Zephyr's back as he's running. The boy rapidly throws a rope at the doctor, hoping for him to catch it. 

Riley barely manages to grab on to it.

The elevator fell so deep that the doctor can no longer see it when he looks down.

"Oh!... Wh-Who did this!? That person deserves the blessings of the gods, I swear!" Ejects the doctor, happy and terrified of this deadly situation.

"- Mister, stay calm! I'll get you up in an instant! All you need to do is relax!

- Oh goodness it's you again! Boy, you have no idea how hard it is for me to stay calm right now! Get me out of there ASAP, please!"

Zephyr is pulling the rope as much as he can, even receiving the help from El boyo, which is using its mouth to pick the rope. 

Alister is watching them using all their strength to get the scientist back on the surface. He can't help but smirk as he's occasionally panting in pain. He gets rid of his mask before the blood pouring out covers too much of his face, throwing it on the ground nonchalantly despite the fatigue and hurt.

When Zephyr turns around as he's pulling the rope, his eyes meet with those of the assassin once again. Behind the mask and the bloody mess resides facial features akin to those of a prince. The ruthless hunter ready to throw his leg away for a bag of money looks like a charming man in those old early 2000s films his father usually played. The irony isn't left unnoticed by the blacksmith.

"- Honestly...I was... expecting scarier, Alister!

- Says boy wonder with his big ass sword. If I were you, I'd shut up and pull that rope.

- How about you stop the mockery and help me get your precious target out of there, if you care that much!?" grinches the blacksmith as he's trying hard to pull the doctor out of there.

"- No...No thanks... A part of me wishes you drop the rope and let him fall even...But I'm too pissed off to give this shithead that chance. I need him dead and I'll have him dead...Even if it kills me."

Zephyr has no words to give to the assassin. He barely even listens to what the hunter has to say, focused on pulling the rope.

Riley, in his small corner, is still looking downward. The prospect of descending in the bottomless pit is as scary as he imagined and that is not changing. Yet, there is...a feeling that is triumphing the overall sense of panic...

Remorse.

The doctor is thinking about the people he selfishly threw down in this hole a decade ago...

The doctor is thinking a LOT about the people he selfishly sacrificed in the name of science for the last decade.

He can faintly see in his twisted mind the corpses of all of those people climbing the rocks of the pit, trying to get back to the surface. They scream in agony and their hatred can be felt by Riley.

"I didn't want to...I wanted to contribute...I wanted to be someone you...you all could look up to, believe me." He mumbles to himself. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, and when he opens them back up, the living dead are gone from his vision.

Regrets are materializing inside of his thoughts. His body seems to weight more and more as he's piling on the atrocities he committed. He looks back at the surface with a somber look on his face.

"- That boy...He's one of those blacksmith folks...isn't he?...He is...His he really that boy?"

The more he wonders about the teenager, the less he can bear the fruit of his labor. He can picture the young blacksmith from when he was younger and that just adds to the slow but overbearing feeling of guilt that climbs the dark side of his mind. He's still unsure about if it's really him... but he's not mentally prepared to find out.

Upstairs, Browski decides to jump from the boy to go near the edge, simply to check on its master. The man that conceived him is now tearing a fountain of tears once again, which Browski can only see as a bad sign of things to come. He let's a loud ribbit noise, which Shorty picks up and goes to scratch Zephyr's right leg. The young man is at first confused, but takes it as a sign to pull up faster. Alister is curious enough about the situation...

But he won't have to wait that long for it to be satiated. 

Out of the blue, the scientist starts screaming:

"- BOY! FORGIVE ME! MY SINS ARE AWAITING ME DOWN IN THE DEPTHS!

- Huh!? What are you talking about! Enough of the crazy talk and let me help you!" Desperately screams Zephyr. 

He's this close to getting the doctor out of there. He's a just a few meters from reaching the surface again, he can feel it. And so close to the finish line, the doctor is going to give up on himself. Zephyr is trying to double down and pull the rope faster, but his supplies of energy are failing him. He can barely manage to hold on.

"- Hey hey hey what the actual hell!? It's not happening like this!" Alister lets out.

The assassin then decides, seeing how turbulent things have turned out once again, to limp back to the edge of the pit and to get Riley himself.

" Come on! Don't waste our fucking time!" Ragequits Alister. "You wanna face your sins now!? How about you come back up and get a taste of my blade, Riley J. Smith!?"

Silence...

Immediately, as if the world stops moving, Zephyr's expression shifts from desperation to...fear, rage, frustration. 

There's a lot that is combined in there and the emotional blender is having a hard time mixing it all together. One thing that can be perceived on Zephyr's face is pure utter shock. He somehow keeps the rope in place by pure reflex, but he's not moving a muscle. It's like he just got hit with a ton of bricks to the face.

Even Alister gets taken aback by this tone switch, as if the boy he just faced a few minutes ago had swapped into something different, abnormal.

Without saying a single word, Zephyr gets his composure with a new tinge of brutal determination and pulls the rope faster than before. He shouts with a powerful sense of exacerbation with every pull.

For Alister, this is unknown territory. Operating from there is going to be a mess, so he'd rather see what happens before doing anything.

For Riley on the other hand, this is a sign clear as crystal that he's got to let go of the rope now.

 Not just because the assassin is patiently waiting with his katana to dissect the bones of this scientist, but because this boy...It's that boy, isn't he? Just thinking about that boy and how much his rage must have been building up for the last ten years terrifies Riley beyond belief.

Without a second ounce of hesitation, Riley J. Smith lets go of the rope.