He watched the foreign material he had injected rise into the exposed core.
Karthanon's carcass began to collapse inward. Armored plating softened, then liquefied, peeling away from the main body as it was drawn toward the core. The mass glowed brighter as something new began to assemble around it, gathering volume and structure with terrifying purpose.
Nathaniel did not hesitate.
Golden energy erupted from his body as he blitzed forward, crossing the distance in an instant. His eyes locked onto Ivo's as he struck, severing the man's arm cleanly at the shoulder.
The limb did not fall.
It snapped backward, dragged into the growing mass around the core as if claimed.
Nathaniel roared.
Golden flames ignited around his hands as he poured everything he had into a single attack. He refused to let this continue. The battlefield vanished beneath a cascading beam of gold that tore through the space between them, light flooding the ruins as the blast detonated outward.
When the flames faded, a shimmering sheen of energy surrounded Nathaniel.
He could not move.
His senses flared as he identified the source.
Above them, the cloaked woman hovered calmly, one hand raised as a barrier held him in place.
Ivo stepped forward.
Where his arm had been, a newly formed limb flexed into existence, grown from the same alien substance that coated the core. A shallow gash ran down his chest, the mark of Nathaniel's strike, but it was already closing as the material crawled over the wound and sealed it shut.
Ivo smiled.
Ivo's smile widened into a smirk.
Then he laughed.
Not loud.
Not wild.
Amused.
Like the situation was playing out exactly as he hoped.
"Unfortunate timing, Alderman," Ivo said casually. "But this isn't personal. Not for most of them."
He glanced toward the cloaked woman.
"Separate the ones I don't care about."
Her mismatched eyes shifted.
"Who?"
Ivo tilted his head slightly, considering.
"The innocent ones. The contractors. The baggage."
His gaze flicked briefly across the battlefield.
"Jasper. Toshinori. Hilda. Niel. Max."
He looked back to Nathaniel, grin returning.
"I only need you."
The cloaked woman's hand turned.
Space folded.
A silent pressure swept outward, sliding between bodies like an invisible blade.
Jasper felt the world lurch.
Hilda shouted.
Toshinori tried to step forward.
They were gone.
Not thrown.
Not pulled.
Simply removed.
Empty ground remained where they had stood.
Nathaniel's eyes widened.
Ivo's laughter echoed softly.
"Now," Ivo said, flexing his newly grown fingers, "we can talk."
Jasper hit the ground on one knee.
Not from impact.
From disorientation.
Air rushed back into his lungs as reality snapped into place around him.
Voices.
Shouting.
Metal clanking.
He looked up.
They were no longer near the tower.
They were standing inside the temporary staging zone near the outer perimeter of the biome.
Association trucks.
Medical tents.
Extraction rigs.
Miners, botanists, and technicians moving between piles of gathered resources.
Several B-rank contractors were seated nearby, resting, drinking water, comparing injuries.
Every head turned at once.
Hilda stumbled forward, nearly falling before Niel caught her.
Toshinori scanned the area instantly, axe half raised.
Max blinked, still pale from exhaustion.
Jasper's heart hammered.
They had been removed.
Not rescued.
Removed.
A nearby Association handler jogged over.
"Where did you come from?"
None of them answered.
Jasper looked back toward the distant horizon.
The tower was still there.
Barely visible.
A thin pillar against the sky.
Whatever was happening near it.
Nathaniel was still inside it.
Alone.
Hilda clenched her fists.
Niel's jaw tightened.
Toshinori turned slowly toward the horizon, eyes burning.
"We're not done," he said quietly.
And Jasper, for the first time, did not feel like dead weight.
He felt like someone who had survived the opening act of something much worse.
Toshinori did not hesitate.
The moment his bearings settled, he broke into a sprint toward the distant tower, axe held low as his armor adjusted for speed.
He never made it ten steps past the perimeter.
His body slammed into something invisible.
The impact sent a dull shock through his frame as a translucent barrier flared into view, stretching upward and outward like a curtain of warped air. He staggered back, teeth gritted, one hand pressed against the unseen wall.
"What the hell," he muttered.
Hilda stepped closer, her senses probing.
"It's sealed," she said. "Past the point we entered Karthanon's zone. I can't push through it."
Niel tried next, placing his palm against the barrier. Green energy washed over its surface and dispersed instantly, absorbed without resistance.
Nothing.
Max swore under his breath.
Association staff had begun to notice now. Handlers froze. Extractors stopped mid-task. Miners and botanists stared as the barrier shimmered faintly in the heat.
An operations officer rushed forward, tablet already in hand.
"That area is quarantined," he said sharply. "No new entries registered. No exits either."
Hilda's blood ran cold.
"That's not possible," she said. "We were just in there."
The officer's expression tightened as he checked the feed again.
"There are two unidentified entities inside the biome," he said slowly. "Neither matches any known entry signature."
Jasper's fists clenched.
"And one of ours," he said.
The officer looked up.
"Yes," he confirmed. "One Knight Association combatant still active within the sealed zone."
Silence fell over the staging area.
Toshinori stared at the barrier, jaw set hard.
Nathaniel was trapped.
And whatever had sealed the zone had done it deliberately.
Ivo approached the suspended Nathaniel slowly.
He circled him once, eyes roaming over golden irises and hair lit by fading light.
A smirk tugged at his lips.
"Borrowed power," Ivo said softly. "By my estimate, it's finite. Fleeting."
He stopped in front of him.
"And now you're isolated. Trapped in here with me, my dear associate."
Ivo glanced upward.
"Drop him, Usagi."
The pressure vanished.
Nathaniel's body fell.
In that instant, something struck him.
A hardened viscous mass slammed into his side and sent him flying backward across the broken terrain.
The reformed Karthanon stared down at him.
Three purple eyes burned with Ivo's influence. Most of its recovered armor had gathered around its head, layered into a dense protective crown.
The substance coating its body stretched and recoiled like living resin.
Sticky.
Dense.
Corrosive.
Nathaniel disengaged immediately as the material ate through cloth and flesh alike. He hissed as strips of burnt fabric peeled away and raw skin followed with them.
He slid back across the ground and gathered energy into his palm.
Uratsu compressed tighter and tighter as he moved, dodging tendrils of Karthanon's shifting mass as they lashed out at him.
"Hellcharge: Hellcore."
The energy condensed further.
Cyan light formed first.
Then gold ignited through it.
The sphere spun faster, building pressure and momentum as he tracked through the wild attacks coming at him.
Jets of golden flame burst from his feet as he shot forward.
He closed the distance in a blink and drove his arm straight into Karthanon's head.
No hesitation.
He released the attack.
A spiraling mass of flame and concussive force detonated at point-blank range, carrying enough power to level multiple city blocks.
For a fraction of a second, he sensed the core.
Then the mass shifted.
Karthanon's body flowed around his arm during the blast, swallowing the strike and redirecting the force outward.
Nathaniel felt it clamp down.
Pressure crushed inward like a hydraulic press.
Bone snapped.
He flinched and hissed as the arm shattered from wrist to elbow, fragments grinding together under impossible force.
Pain lagged behind the shock.
He triggered another burst of Hellcharge and tore the arm free in a spray of blood and burning resin.
He staggered back.
Karthanon was unharmed.
Nathaniel was not.
He couldn't feel his fingers.
The limb hung useless at his side, swollen and turning purple.
Nathaniel looked at his ruined arm as he released more Uratsu, watching Karthanon take the offensive.
Its viscous body began to harden as it advanced.
Nathaniel timed it.
He pulsed Uratsu outward in a controlled burst. Golden resin-like tendrils spread from him and dug into the mass, injecting energy deep into its body. The material hardened rapidly, forming amber-like crystal that spread across Karthanon's form like a glacier until the beast was fully encased.
Nathaniel skipped back, breathing hard.
He looked down at his right hand. The skin of his scraped palm cleared as a black diamond materialized in the center.
The area was saturated with Uratsu.
He just needed time to use Uraforge.
Nothing else was working. He couldn't punch it apart. He couldn't restrain it.
Behind him the amber glacier began to crack.
Then it started to boil.
Karthanon's core brightened and its three eyes flared as the crystal began to melt from the inside.
Nathaniel watched for only a moment before launching into the sky.
Golden motes burst from his body as a white shell-like cape formed across his back. He spun through the air in a tight death roll, buying himself a brief moment as Karthanon finally broke free.
Then he dove.
His remaining arm drew back as cyan veins turned gold, then darkened, sparks of gold and black running through the muscles.
He remembered the first blow Magnum had delivered to him.
He came down fast.
The cape dissolved into light as he crashed several meters above Karthanon and drove his fist downward.
For a fraction of a second, everything went still.
Then he activated Impact Reverb.
The pressure released like a bomb.
His fist caught fire as a flash of light erupted outward, shockwaves rippling in diminishing pulses across the terrain. The ground trembled violently under the impact.
Ivo watched with wide eyes before a smirk spread across his face.
Usagi remained still, cloak whipping violently in the blast wind as her mismatched eye adjusted, focusing and recording.
Heat rolled across the battlefield as everyone was forced back from their positions.
Nathaniel felt the feedback strike him a moment later.
His body absorbed twenty-five percent of the kinetic energy.
The rest hit him normally.
His other arm failed completely.
Karthanon stood at the center of a massive crater, body cracked but hardened.
Nathaniel dropped through the dust and debris.
Two jade light vials appeared between his teeth and shattered as he bit down.
Warm energy surged through him.
His arms went from useless to functional in seconds.
He didn't slow.
He barreled straight into Usagi.
She turned too late.
Nathaniel struck her with the stored kinetic force he had absorbed, combined with the reverberating impacts still traveling through his body. The blow staggered her as she twisted to dodge, moving her head aside.
His fist crashed into her ribs instead.
The impact sent her flying sideways.
Nathaniel felt flesh blister under the strike before resistance gave way to metal beneath the surface. When his follow-up blow landed against her face, pain shot through his knuckles.
Then a violent kick struck him in return.
Even that hurt his foot.
Her focus was elsewhere.
Maintaining the barrier.
He had cracked the physical shield covering her body.
The thought of finishing her never turned into movement.
Something pierced him first.
A corrosive arm drove through his abdomen.
Nathaniel coughed blood as he looked down and saw the blade protruding from his body.
Behind him stood Karthanon, a long acid-coated limb driven clean through his torso.
Ivo caught Usagi as she flew back, stopping her momentum with one arm. His purple eyes pulsed as he set her down gently.
Nathaniel's vision shook as barbs spread from the blade inside him, digging deeper into his body.
His golden hair dimmed.
The aura faded.
The light in his eyes turned back to silver.
He couldn't maintain Arete's power anymore.
The borrowed reserve fizzled out.
Ivo approached.
Purple chitin spread across his arms as they thickened and hardened, mirroring the adaptations he had given Karthanon.
Nathaniel watched through blurred vision as Ivo smiled.
Carefree.
Crazed.
Then Ivo began to beat him.
Using the same adaptations he had given the beast.
"Useless overhyped piece of shite. Costing me time and money. Those subordinates you dealt with cost me a lot of time and money. Fucking reputation too."
Ivo spoke as he kept punching.
Acid ate into flesh while reinforced arms broke bone. Nathaniel winced and grunted through the pain, silver eyes fixed forward as he felt Ivo snap his legs like dry branches.
He looked past him at Karthanon, the creature driving its blade deeper before retracting it. Internal barbs dragged through his insides, burning as they tore free.
Nathaniel was launched into the air.
Part of Karthanon's arm liquefied and whipped upward, reforming into a fist that slammed into his head and face with crushing force. Flesh tore. Bone crunched.
Then he collided with the base of the tower.
Brick, mortar, and old stone gave way on impact. The structure shed debris over him, burying him in what felt like a mock grave.
He had taken severe trauma, most of it centered on his head.
Under the rubble, his scalp was slick with blood. Part of his face had split open, exposing cracked teeth that somehow still held. His skull rang with dull pressure, but it had not caved. His body had always been more durable than most.
Still, even that durability had limits.
And he had reached them.
Jasper and the others watched from the distance.
They had felt the shockwaves earlier. They had seen the flash of light. Over the span of thirty minutes they watched the tower begin to fail, stone shifting and collapsing in slow ruin.
They looked down at their bandaged bodies.
In Jasper's book, Nathaniel was dead if that man got what he wanted in there.
The Association representatives had made their calls. Reinforcements were on the way, they said.
Still, it felt less like a rescue was coming and more like someone was settling a will.
Ivo walked toward the modified Karthanon and placed a hand on its head.
"Wonderful beast," he said with a satisfied smile, looking into the sharp purple compound eyes set within its armored skull.
He turned to Usagi. Her cloak hung torn in several places as he helped her to her feet.
"Tell Azimuth he has my thanks," he said condescendingly. "He'll get what's owed next week. Just have to pick up the corpse and burn it."
He began walking, calculating distance. He had thrown Alderman far.
Ten kilometers at least.
It would be a long walk.
As long as he held Karthanon's core, the biome would not dissipate anytime soon.
The air smelled of ozone and ash.
Despite the devastation, the region remained heavily saturated with Uratsu, especially around Karthanon's original carcass and the land beneath it. Normally none of it would be accessed.
But beneath the rubble, Nathaniel lay half conscious.
His brain was bruised. His thoughts spun without direction.
The interface flickered in and out of view.
He still could not activate Max Regen. Another hour remained. His signature was weak, barely holding together.
It was fading.
Fizzling out.
Through the pain he felt the Uratsu in his body drain away until none remained.
Then something deeper stirred.
This body always seemed to know.
The diamond mark activated.
Nathaniel began pulling in Ura from whatever reserves he could reach. He tried for Valerie's reserves, but they were out of range. Blocked.
His vision went dark.
His heart slowed.
His thoughts retreated inward.
Something pulled him deeper.
It felt warm.
So warm.
Vast like a summer day.
He moved toward the core.
Was this the soul?
The inert mass sat before him and he pushed against it, pulling harder.
It cracked.
Red light bled through the fracture.
Pure Ura.
The purest he had ever seen.
Like the altar.
That thought felt strange.
He turned and saw figures in the darkness behind him, each glowing with smaller dimmer lights.
Horus.
The Hive Leader.
Then something appeared in front of him.
Smaller than he was.
It moved without hesitation.
An arm made of pure Ura drove straight into what passed for his head in this place.
His cyan spiritual form burned as the energy turned blistering crimson.
The figure held him in place as he pulled.
Outside, Ivo looked toward the fallen tower.
Something felt wrong.
There was no residual Uratsu in the air anymore.
Even the ambient Ura levels inside the sealed zone felt depleted.
Everything was concentrating at the tower's base.
His eyes widened.
"Fuck no."
He shot forward, his arm reshaping into a scythe as he closed the distance.
The blade struck —
—and stopped.
The rubble parted.
The eyes looking back at him were different.
Familiar.
Nathaniel's hair had darkened.
Open wounds closed as flesh knitted itself back together. White eyes stared back at him, bordered in crimson along the edges of the sclera.
A small smirk formed.
Ivo knew that face.
He remembered a younger man.
Sixteen years old.
Standing over him with those same pale eyes.
"I don't have long," he said, flexing ruined fingers that now worked again. "Got totalled pretty bad before I went under."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Nice to see you're alive, Ivo Galahade. You look like you saw a ghost."
A faint smile followed.
"Arc Kodonaki is back. Well... partially. For the next minute."
The last traces of damage receded from his body.
Then he disappeared.
He reappeared in front of Ivo instantly.
Pure Ura flared from him. Not a trace of Uratsu remained.
His hand struck Ivo's neck.
The nervous system shorted instantly and Ivo dropped.
"Hibino fixed you up recently," Arc said calmly. "These cybernetics are different."
He turned toward Karthanon.
Hellcharge ignited in his hands — then stopped.
He reversed the principle instead, mimicking earlier augment interactions with unnatural precision.
Usagi backed away slowly, fear in her eyes as her implant fed her readings.
His output exceeded a current S-Class.
Above Arete's level.
Still climbing.
Arc shattered the frozen mass and tore Karthanon's core free. The cracked orb collapsed in his grip as fragments of the Kaisen augment peeled away.
He absorbed the rest without hesitation.
Then he turned toward the remaining mass.
He absorbed that too.
When he finished, he squatted in front of Usagi.
"Scram," he said calmly. "Before I change my mind."
A faint smile returned.
"I'm in a good mood. Nice being able to feel the synthetic sunlight of a biome."
Inside, he counted the seconds.
His mind was already beginning to slip.
The minute was almost over.
Usagi did not move at first.
Her mismatched eyes stared at him, the human one wide with fear while the wrong one flickered with data streams she could barely process fast enough. The implant in her forehead pulsed faintly, its diamond surface catching the biome's synthetic sunlight in sharp reflections.
Readings kept climbing.
They shouldn't have been able to climb anymore.
The system flagged overflow warnings she had never seen before.
Energy density beyond measurable S-class thresholds.Pure Ura signature.Identity correlation — unstable.
Her breath came shallow.
"You…" she said quietly. "You weren't supposed to exist anymore."
Arc tilted his head slightly.
"For the next forty seconds," he said calmly, "I do."
His white eyes shifted toward the horizon where the biome's artificial sky glowed faintly.
"I suggest you start running."
That broke her paralysis.
Usagi turned and moved fast, cloak trailing behind her as she retreated across broken ground. She did not look back.
She knew better.
Behind her, Ivo twitched.
Arc glanced down at him.
Still alive.
Still conscious enough to feel fear.
The nervous disruption was fading faster than expected.
"Adaptation," Arc muttered.
He crouched beside him.
"Always ahead of schedule."
Ivo forced his head to turn slightly, purple compound veins faintly glowing beneath his skin.
"You…" he rasped. "Dead… supposed to be dead…"
Arc gave a faint smile.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
Ivo tried to move.
His arm shifted, chitin beginning to reform.
Arc pressed two fingers lightly against his chest.
The movement stopped instantly.
Not force.
Precision.
Ura threaded through nerve clusters and shut them down one by one.
"Stay still."
Not a threat.
A statement.
Arc looked toward the fallen tower.
Even from here he could feel them.
Jasper.
Toshinori.
Hilda.
Max.
Niel.
Alive.
Safe.
His expression softened slightly.
"Good."
Then it faded again.
He looked back at Ivo.
"You built something interesting."
His gaze shifted toward the space where Karthanon had been.
"Efficient transfer of adaptation traits through Kaisen."
A pause.
"Messy implementation."
He flexed his hand.
Fragments of purple crystalline residue broke apart and dissolved into motes of dull light.
"I improved it."
Ivo's breathing grew uneven.
"Monster…"
Arc shrugged faintly.
"That's subjective."
Silence lingered for a moment.
Wind moved through the ruined stone.
The biome light flickered faintly overhead.
Arc looked down at his hands.
They trembled slightly.
Time was running out.
"Twenty seconds."
He stood.
Ivo watched helplessly.
Arc looked toward the horizon again.
Then back down.
"You wanted blood compensation."
A faint smirk returned.
"You got expensive instead."
He stepped away.
Pure Ura radiated outward in a slow expanding field, not violent, just overwhelming.
The biome itself seemed to dim slightly.
Energy drawn inward.
Concentrated.
Stabilized.
Not destruction.
Correction.
Then Arc stopped.
His posture shifted.
Subtly.
The weight returned to his shoulders.
Breathing grew heavier.
The aura flickered.
"Five seconds."
He exhaled slowly.
"That's unfortunate."
The crimson edging around his eyes began to fade.
White receded.
Silver returned beneath it.
His stance wavered slightly.
The last thing Arc did was look once more toward where the others waited.
A quiet calculation passed through his expression.
Distance.
Energy reserves.
Injury level.
Probability of survival.
Acceptable.
Then the Ura presence collapsed inward.
The overwhelming pressure vanished instantly.
Nathaniel Alderman staggered where Arc Kodonaki had stood.
Breathing ragged.
Body barely holding together.
Silver eyes unfocused.
He swayed once —
—and collapsed onto the broken stone without a sound.
Ivo felt space fold around him.
A hand seized his shoulder and the world collapsed inward.
He barely had time to curse before the biome vanished.
The next instant he hit the floor of his quarters hard enough to rattle his teeth.
Usagi appeared beside him, breathing unevenly, cloak half torn and hanging loose from her shoulders. He had never seen her like this. The composure was gone. The precision was gone. Even the implant in her forehead flickered erratically as if struggling to stabilize.
Ivo pushed himself upright, wincing.
"What the hell was that?"
Usagi didn't answer immediately.
Her mismatched eyes stared somewhere far away, replaying readings only she had seen.
Finally she spoke.
"That wasn't Alderman."
Ivo spat blood onto the floor.
"I know that."
Her voice came quieter.
"It was worse."
Back in the biome, Toshinori felt the barrier vanish.
The translucent wall dissolved like mist.
"It's down!" he shouted. "Internal barrier is down!"
Association workers moved immediately.
Extraction teams scrambled into motion while the wounded B-ranks were loaded onto transport trucks and support vehicles. The miners and botanists cleared equipment as Knights reorganized for withdrawal.
The biome sky had begun to dim, its artificial light flickering in uneven pulses.
The anchor being was dead.
Everyone could feel it.
The pressure in the air was fading.
Reality was returning.
Standing on the back of one of the trucks was the strongest Knight they had managed to bring on short notice.
Kagami Ryuzen stood with arms folded, scanning the battlefield with sharp, reptilian focus.
They found Nathaniel half-buried in broken stone near the fallen tower.
His clothes were torn apart and blackened in places. His body showed the unmistakable signs of Uratsu overuse. Burn patterns crawled along his skin and his breathing came shallow and uneven.
To the left lay the original Karthanon corpse.
Massive.
Still.
Dead.
One of Nathaniel's short swords was buried deep in the inert core.
Around the area were scattered fragments of strange purple chitin and dried blood that didn't belong to any known biome species.
Which said a lot.
Considering the destructive scale of the kaiju, almost nothing should have remained intact.
Yet near Nathaniel lay the shattered remains of a beachball-sized core, broken apart into dull fragments like cracked glass.
Kagami dropped down from the truck and approached slowly.
Her eyes narrowed.
Something about this felt wrong.
Too clean.
Too final.
She crouched beside Nathaniel and placed two fingers lightly against his neck.
Pulse.
Weak but steady.
Alive.
She studied the battlefield again.
The dead Karthanon.
The shattered secondary core.
The purple residue.
Then back to Nathaniel.
Her expression hardened slightly.
"Whatever happened here," she said quietly, "wasn't a normal fight."
Behind her, the A rank members and the awakened Jasper approached in uneven steps.
Bruised.
Bandaged.
Exhausted.
But alive.
And all of them were staring at Nathaniel like they were looking at a miracle.
Or a warning.