Hansen began to tremble. Horrid sounds kept ringing inside his head, drilling through his skull like maddened augers. He felt his limbs collapsing in on themselves, his body crumbling and compressing as if it were being sucked inward by its own core.
OVERLOAD. UNRECOGNIZED NEURAL FUNCTIONS. EVACUATE THE SUIT IMMEDIATELY.
Hansen ignored the pain.
Outside, "Hansen" let out a piercing, ragged roar. His body looked as though it were about to break apart into twisted masses of muscle. His legs refused to hold him up, shaking so violently they seemed ready to snap at any moment. Disgusting sounds echoed beneath the metal—wet, intimate noises of flesh and bone merging, clinging to one another as if desperately trying to avoid being separated, crushed, or devoured by the armor. It was a sound both unmistakable and deeply unwilling to be remembered.
Blood began to spill from the Kariudo.
"Hansen" started producing dreadful, choking gasps, as though he were suffocating.
He kept trembling in a slick, inhuman way. With every spasm, the noisy metal of the suit slammed repeatedly against the ground, scraping and screeching across the rough, granular floor whose small, jagged edges scratched against it.
The soldiers around him, initially frozen in confusion, suddenly rushed forward. They threw themselves onto him, desperately trying to pry the helmet off the Kariudo with all the strength they could muster. They pinned down the agonizing body as best they could, though it was nearly impossible to restrain due to its immense strength and frantic agitation.
"Press the button!"
"I'm trying! It won't work! It won't open!"
Abner watched the scene in deep distress. His eyes, fixed and terrified, had shrunk to little more than black pinpoints—perhaps the only truly expressive feature on his otherwise artificial face. His mouth hung slightly open. Air escaped from it as though it were the last breath of a soul eager to leave, fleeing from a body that did not exist and a mind that struggled to accept it as real.
The same was happening to Hansen.
It wasn't the armor that had gone mad. It was the man rejecting its nature. It was his soul, hating oppression, reaching for a freedom it had always desired—though that freedom was forbidden to it.
And so the body had to be destroyed.
The sound was like that of a misaligned violin, worn down from endless use. Its music became nothing but torture for the melody trapped within, forced to emerge only under conditions that suffocated it. The true torture lies in forcing one's own ego against its will—dragging it into a moment that does not belong to it, simply because its music isn't rejected politely or misunderstood.
It is simply worthless.
…EVACUATE THE SUIT IMMEDIATELY.
Which really meant: shut up. Do as I say, or I will kill you in the worst way possible.
But Hansen wanted to be enslaved.
His body didn't. His mind didn't.
But he did.
He almost begged for it.
Come on… come on…!
His thoughts were blocked, controlled. He was betraying his own essence, allowing himself to be destroyed by the armor. He had to fight against his own resistance just to survive.
A soul outside its body is nothing more than air dissolving into a perceptible void.
Hansen did not want to lose. He could not afford to. He would give even his soul if it meant living for those he loved.
Meanwhile, his body continued to break apart.
To him, he was losing yet another war.
…EVACUATE THE SUIT IMM—######################
MENTAL CONNECTION RESTORED. NEW NEURAL FUNCTIONS CONFIRMED. TENSION MINIMAL. SUIT STABILITY: OPTIMAL.
"Hansen" rose from the ground.
The way he did it was brutal.
Beyond the blood, he exuded madness—and rage.
He stopped trembling. Yet the horrific, wet, fleshy noises beneath the suit continued. They were no longer sounds of breaking.
They were something else.
The man stood tall, like a titan awakened from a long slumber—and an even longer dream. To a young soldier staring in a mixture of awe and terror, "Hansen" blocked out the sun, which until that moment had been shining directly into the boy's face, forcing him to shield his eyes with a hand smeared in blood and dirt.
Then, he attacked.
He wasted no time throwing himself at the two monsters who, for several minutes now, had been tearing through lives, destroying tanks, spreading chaos, and spilling blood and organs as if they were buckets of water.
In a moment of distraction, Starfish was ambushed by "Hansen." The beast suddenly found the man on its back, violently tearing and ripping with rigid, sharpened hands, lunging in as well with his mouth—now opened into massive, armored jaws lined with protruding teeth. He devoured the creature in the most cruel and savage ways possible, while the Ijo thrashed desperately, trying to escape his grip.
Starfish managed to throw him off.
In a brief opening, it struck him in the torso with one of its tentacles, flinging him away. Even as he was being dragged, Hansen clutched chunks of flesh in his hands and teeth—pieces that tore away violently as he was hurled across the ground and slammed into it with tremendous force, creating a deafening impact that cracked the floor.
That didn't stop him.
The moment he was released, "Hansen" lunged back at the Ijo. This time, the clash was frontal—a relentless exchange of bites, claws, and blows. Everything happened fast, frenzied, and grotesquely visceral. Gunfire and explosions had faded into the background. The true focus was the inhuman screams of the two creatures, roaring at each other as if hurling the most violent insults imaginable.
It wasn't just physical.
They were probing each other, searching for weakness.
This was a fight that had to end quickly.
Neither seemed willing to yield.
Then—
Bakunin struck Hansen.
The impact was sudden and devastating, powerful enough to fracture the air itself for a brief moment. His armor appeared to have hardened just before the blow. A new skeletal structure—like dark, rock-like crust—covered the beast, forming four pairs of horns layered over one another, reminiscent of a stag's, yet also akin to those of a bull. Despite his usual decayed and withered appearance, his body was massive. Each roar he unleashed was more powerful than the last.
Hansen was hurled several meters back, crashing into a tank, destroying it on impact and triggering an explosion.
For a few seconds, there was silence.
Then the aftermath.
The catastrophic blast had killed many nearby soldiers, reducing them to charred, mangled masses of flesh—half-cooked, blood boiling across their ruined bodies. A thick column of black smoke rose into the sky, as though the damned souls of the dead had finally escaped hell, ascending to seek purification above.
…LESS THAN 30 SECONDS…
"Hansen" burst out from the wreckage.
He roared with overwhelming rage.
Driven by a grotesque obsession and horrifying aggression, he charged once again at Starfish. Once more, only a few meters separated them.
But this time, it wasn't about revenge.
The soldier now saw Starfish as nothing more than an annoyance—like a buzzing mosquito. A distraction from the real battle he wanted.
It didn't take long.
As soon as he reached it, he tore into it, ripping and breaking it apart in atrocious ways, while the creature let out cries that sounded almost like weeping. Hansen smeared himself in that viscous fluid, as though baptizing himself—preparing for a battle that demanded such a sacrifice.
Starfish had become unnecessary.
Everything had already been decided.
It was as if the soldier had made a pact with the other creature.
Starfish had been betrayed.
The reason was pure entertainment. Amusement.
In a short time, nothing remained of the Ijo but blood—and tears.
Bakunin had watched the entire time.
He was impatient.
A small smile twisted across his distorted face.
Another revolting grunt echoed through the air.