The transition from the pressurized safety of the submersible to the raw, crushing reality of the Abyssal Trench was a sensory nightmare. For a split second, the team felt the weight of millions of tons of violet water trying to turn their bones into powder. Then, Kenji's field snapped into place.
[SKILL ACTIVE: Hydro-Kinetic Regulation]
Kenji stood at the center of a shimmering teal sphere, his veins pulsing with the bioluminescent scrap he had absorbed during his training. He wasn't just holding back the ocean; he was creating a localized bubble where the laws of physics were slightly skewed. Inside the sphere, the pressure was equivalent to a comfortable sea-level atmosphere, while outside, the violet water churned with lethal force.
"Keep your formation!" Kenji's voice echoed within the bubble, amplified by the resonant properties of the scrap. "If you step outside this perimeter, you're paste!"
"Understood!" Zola shouted, her feet planted on a floating platform of magnetized stone she had conjured the moment they left the sub. "I'm holding the anchor! Bjorn, get behind me!"
Bjorn, looking greener than the bioluminescent moss, gripped the stone platform. Priya stood between them, her hands glowing with a soft, steady white light as she pumped [Kinetic Restoration: Pressure Buffer] into the team's lungs, ensuring they didn't suffer from rapid decompression sickness.
Elara and Mateo took the flanks. Mateo looked like a silver streak in the dark water, his [Sonic Burst] power creating localized cavitation bubbles that he used as stepping stones. Elara, however, was in her element. The sub-zero temperatures of the deep trench didn't bother her; they empowered her.
"The Sentinels are coming about for a second pass!" Elara warned, her eyes glowing a frosty sapphire. "Kenji, I can't use large-scale ice here the pressure will shatter it instantly. I'm switching to [Crystalline Needle]."
The skeletal manta-ray Sentinels veered through the water with impossible grace. They didn't use propellers; they utilized the same "Void Scrap" that permeated the trench, allowing them to teleport short distances through the water in flickers of black light.
"They're blinking!" Mateo yelled, narrowly dodging a Sentinel that suddenly materialized inches from his head. "They're skipping through space!"
"They're not skipping space they're skipping density!" Kenji corrected, his Scrapsmith sense reading the energy signatures. "They turn themselves into shadow-scrap for a millisecond. We can't hit them when they're dark!"
A Sentinel lunged at the central sphere, its metallic claws glowing with a disruptive black energy. It slammed into Kenji's teal barrier, and the impact sent a shockwave through Kenji's entire body.
[BARRIER INTEGRITY: 88%]
[CORE DRAIN: 1.5% Per Second]
"Zola, now! While it's solid!" Kenji roared.
Zola didn't use a spike. She used a [Geomantic Vice]. Two massive slabs of seafloor rock erupted from the darkness below, slamming together on the Sentinel like a giant nutcracker. The metal creature screeched a sound of grinding gears and distorted magic before being crushed into a ball of scrap.
Sentinel Destruction Log: Void Scrap Detected. Absorption: +150 units.
"The Void Scrap… it's cold," Kenji whispered as he absorbed the residue. Unlike the warm kinetic scrap or the vibrating sonic energy, this felt like an empty hollow in his chest. But it was potent.
As they descended deeper, the ruins of the Sunken Citadel finally emerged from the violet gloom. It was a city made of black glass and silver bone, built in a perfect spiral that led down to a central, pulsing abyss. The architecture was alien, sharp angles that shouldn't exist and towers that seemed to bend toward the center of the world.
In the center of the spiral sat the Abyssal Spire, and atop it, a pulsing, dark-violet star: the Abyssal Heart.
"The energy readings are off the charts," Elara said, her voice trembling. "The Heart is acting as a gravity well. It's pulling the entire trench toward it."
"That's why the water is so dense," Kenji realized. "The Heart isn't just magic it's a black hole of residual power. If we take it, the whole zone might collapse."
"We don't have a choice," a voice crackled over their comms. It was Commander Kael, speaking from the surface transport. "The Central Authority has just authorized a Level 9 Purge of this sector. They're going to drop a Consecrated Light Bomb. If you aren't out of there with the Heart in twenty minutes, you'll be vaporized along with the Citadel."
"Twenty minutes?" Mateo panicked. "It took us ten just to get down here!"
"Then we stop being careful," Kenji said, his eyes hardening. "Everyone, hold on. I'm engaging [Scrap Velocity: Fluidity Protocol]."
Kenji stopped maintaining the protective sphere as a static barrier. Instead, he pulled the teal energy tight around their bodies, forming a streamlined, torpedo-like shell. He tapped into the newly absorbed Void Scrap, using the empty "hollow" to create a path of zero resistance in front of them.
SHOOOOM!
They shot through the water at a speed that would have liquified a normal human. Kenji was no longer moving through the water; he was "erasing" the water in front of them and "creating" it behind them.
[SKILL MASTERY: [Scrap Velocity] - 40% (Expert Level)]
They blurred past squads of Sentinels, the mechanical rays unable to track their movement. They reached the base of the Abyssal Spire in less than three minutes, crashing onto a balcony of black glass with enough force to shatter the stone.
Kenji dropped the field, gasping for air. His core was redlining, the mixture of Void, Kinetic, and Defense scraps creating a volatile cocktail in his chest.
"We're inside," Zola said, helping Bjorn to his feet. "But the Heart is still five hundred floors up."
The interior of the Spire was a vertical labyrinth. The walls were covered in moving inscriptions that seemed to watch them. Gravity here was subjective; one moment they were standing on the floor, the next, the ceiling became the ground.
"The Spire is a living Rank A construct," Elara observed, her breath visible in the freezing air. "It's trying to disorient us. It knows we're here for the Heart."
Suddenly, the shadows at the edge of the hall began to coalesce. They didn't form Sentinels. They formed Shadow Wraiths echoes of the civilization that had died trying to harness the Void.
"They don't have physical forms," Priya warned, her restoration magic flaring defensively. "My kinetic buffs won't work on them. They attack the core directly!"
A Wraith glided through a wall, its long, wispy fingers reaching for Mateo. Mateo fired a sonic burst, but it passed through the shadow like wind through smoke.
"Kenji! I can't hit them!" Mateo yelled, backing away.
Kenji stepped forward. He didn't use a physical attack. He reached into his core and pulled out the Epic Scrap of Absolute Defense, but instead of projecting it outward as a shield, he inverted it.
[Scrapsmith: Internalized Repulsion]
He coated his hands in a layer of "anti-scrap" a frequency designed to repel non-physical energy. He lunged at the Wraith, grabbing its shadowy throat. The Wraith shrieked as the repulsion scrap tore through its nebulous form, causing it to evaporate into a puff of violet dust.
"They're just disorganized energy!" Kenji shouted. "Hit them with high-frequency attacks or reversed fields!"
Elara caught on. She didn't throw ice shards; she created [Frost Resonance], vibrating the moisture in the air until it reached a frequency that shattered the Wraiths' spectral bonds. Zola used her Geomancy to vibrate the very air molecules between two stone slabs, creating a "sonic press" that crushed the shadows.
They fought their way up the spire, floor by floor, a relentless climb against time and the supernatural.
Thirteen minutes remaining.
They reached the penultimate floor the Chamber of the Void King. Standing in their way was a figure unlike the others. It was a massive, four-armed automaton encased in armor made of the same violet crystal as the Heart. It held two spears of black light and two shields of shimmering Void energy.
[BOSS: VOID KING ADJUDICATOR]
[RANK: A (Peak)]
"A Peak Rank A?" Mateo's voice was a whisper. "We're dead. We're actually dead."
"Bjorn, Zola, you are the wall!" Kenji commanded, his voice echoing with the power of the Star he was about to claim. "Priya, keep them alive at all costs! Elara, find the frequency of that crystal armor!"
The Adjudicator moved with a grace that defied its size. It lunged, its light-spears carving through the air with a hum that sounded like a dying star.
Bjorn met the first strike. His runic armor glowed with a blinding light as he poured every ounce of his Rank 4 strength into the block. The impact cracked the floor beneath him, but he didn't move. "NOT. TODAY."
Zola slammed her gauntlets together, creating a series of earth-metal pillars that boxed the Adjudicator in, limiting its movement.
Elara was focused, her eyes scanning the violet armor. "The armor… it's pulsing at 440 hertz! Kenji! If you can hit it with a counter-vibration, the whole shell will shatter!"
Kenji nodded. He didn't have much core energy left. He had to make this count. He engaged [Scrap Velocity] for a micro-burst, appearing directly in front of the Adjudicator's chest.
He didn't use a punch. He used a [Sonic Disruptor: Max Overload], feeding the vibration through his hand directly into the violet crystal.
CRACK.
The armor didn't just break; it detonated. The violet crystal shattered into millions of shards, and the Adjudicator's internal Void core was exposed a swirling vortex of black energy.
"Finish it!" Zola yelled.
Kenji reached into the vortex. He didn't destroy it. He absorbed it.
[VOX SCRAP INTEGRATED: +15,000 Units]
[RANK UP PROGRESSION: 85%]
The Adjudicator slumped, its light-spears fading into nothingness. The path to the roof was clear.
Five minutes remaining.
They sprinted up the final stairs, bursting out onto the roof of the Spire. The violet ocean swirled above them, held back by a thin, shimmering dome of Void energy. In the center, floating on a pedestal of black glass, was the Abyssal Heart.
It was beautiful and terrifying, a pulsing star of dark violet light that seemed to swallow the very concept of hope.
Kenji walked toward it. The pressure was immense, even inside the dome. The Heart was screaming a psychic wail of a thousand lost souls.
"Kenji, wait!" Elara shouted. "If you touch that, you might not come back. The Void isn't like the other scraps. It's... empty."
"I'm already an error, Elara," Kenji said, reaching out his hand. "The System says I shouldn't exist. The Void says the same thing. Maybe we'll get along."
His fingers touched the Heart.
BOOM.
A pillar of violet light erupted from the Spire, piercing through the ocean and reaching toward the sky. Kenji's mind was flooded with the history of the Sunken Citadel the pride, the fall, and the long, cold silence.
[EPIC SCRAP: ABYSSAL HEART INTEGRATED]
[EVOLUTION TRIGGERED: RANK 5 (VETERAN)]
[NEW PERMANENT SKILL UNLOCKED: [Void Step]]
The dome around the roof began to crack. The ocean was coming in.
"Kenji! We have to go!" Mateo screamed, pointing at the sky. A blinding white light was descending through the water the Central Authority's Purge Bomb.
Kenji opened his eyes. They were no longer brown; they were a deep, swirling violet. He felt the weight of the ocean, but it no longer felt heavy. It felt like a tool.
"Everyone, grab onto me," Kenji said, his voice calm and echoing.
They huddled around him. Kenji didn't use [Scrap Velocity]. He used [Void Step].
In a flicker of violet light, the roof of the Spire was empty. A second later, the Purge Bomb struck.
The surface of the violet sea erupted in a mushroom cloud of white, consecrated light. The Sunken Citadel, the Sentinels, and the history of the Void were erased in a single, blinding instant.
Miles away, on the deck of the Zero-Point transport, a violet rift opened in the air. Kenji and his team tumbled out, gasping for air and soaking wet.
Kenji stood up, his body radiating a cold, dark energy. He looked at his hands, then at the sky where the white light was still fading.
[RANK 5 VETERAN: CONFIRMED]
[CURRENT STATUS: THE VOID-SMITH]
"One Star down," Kenji said, his voice cold as the deep trench. "Six to go."
Behind them, the transport's radar flared. Multiple high-rank signatures were converging on their location. The Central Authority wasn't done. Alaric Vance was coming.
But as Kenji looked at the approaching lights, he didn't feel fear. He felt the Abyssal Heart beating in his chest, and for the first time, he felt like he was finally standing on even ground.