The toxic green fog of Sector 2 parted lazily as the twelve Nullifiers marched perfectly in sync.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Their matte-black, visor-less helmets gave them the appearance of faceless monoliths. They had just erased a Mythic-tier anomaly without breaking stride, and now, they were recalculating their route to the Core Tower.
A shadow dropped from the ruined overpass above them.
It landed heavily on the cracked asphalt, right in the center of their pre-programmed path.
The boy—the First Shadow—stood up slowly.
His oversized, acid-burned coat hung loosely on his frame. In his right hand, he gripped the hilt of a broken iron dagger, its blade extended by a jagged, shifting mass of pitch-black void-mana.
He looked at the twelve faceless soldiers.
He tilted his head.
"You don't see me... do you?" the boy whispered into the dead air.
There was no response. No shift in their stance. No banter.
The moment the boy's physical mass registered on their proximity sensors, one of the Nullifiers halted for a fraction of a second.
A silent recalibration.
Then—
The twelve Nullifiers raised their heavy pulse-rifles in absolute, terrifying unison.
They didn't aim. They executed a firing protocol.
For a second... the boy hesitated.
Not from fear of death.
But from the terrifying realization of how much this was going to hurt.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The barrage of purified white-phosphorus rounds tore through the street.
The boy didn't try to dodge. His Agility stat wasn't high enough to outmaneuver twelve synchronized elite shooters.
A round grazed his shoulder, tearing away a chunk of flesh.
Another slammed directly into his thigh, dropping him to one knee.
A third grazed his ribs, the holy fire instantly sizzling against his skin.
The pain was blinding. Searing. Absolute.
Any normal Awakener would have screamed. They would have gone into shock.
The boy just kept his head down.
[Subordinate Trait Activated: The Broken Vanguard]
As the holy fire burned his flesh, the pitch-black void-mana inside his heart surged. It rushed to the wounds, not to heal them, but to aggressively drink the kinetic and magical energy of the attack.
The pain didn't just burn.
It sank.
It made him heavier.
The boy's breathing hitched.
He slowly lifted his head, his deep purple eyes staring at the faceless executioners. The sheer density of the absorbed agony was anchoring him to the ground like a black hole.
They weren't gloating. They weren't reloading in a panic. They were simply advancing, closing the distance to confirm the kill.
They're not fighting me, the boy's fractured mind realized, a twisted, bloody smile creeping onto his face. They're executing a function.
They were a system.
And a system could be overloaded.
"Good," the boy chuckled, coughing up a splash of dark blood.
He didn't retreat. He pushed himself off his bleeding knee and charged directly at the vanguard of the squad.
The Nullifiers didn't hesitate. They fired again. Point-blank.
CRACK!
A round hit the boy square in the chest, shattering two ribs.
The boy stumbled, his momentum breaking.
But he didn't fall.
The void-mana inside him flared, absorbing the catastrophic impact. The boy's skin began to crack, glowing with unstable, violent purple energy. He looked like a porcelain doll filled with liquid fire.
He was a furnace. And they were feeding him coal.
He reached the front line.
The lead Nullifier didn't flinch. He simply dropped his rifle and threw a mechanically perfect, bone-crushing punch aimed directly at the boy's throat.
The boy didn't block it.
He deliberately leaned his shoulder into the strike.
CRUNCH.
His collarbone fractured. The pain spiked into his brain like a hot needle.
But the boy's left hand shot out like a viper, gripping the Nullifier's armored wrist with an iron, desperate grip.
The Nullifier didn't panic. He immediately raised his other hand to strike.
"You don't feel pain," the boy whispered, black blood leaking from his nose as his purple eyes burned with a manic, euphoric frenzy. "But you still break."
The void-mana inside the boy—overloaded by sniper rounds, holy fire, and a crushed collarbone—violently reached its critical mass.
[Skill Activated: Void Reflection]
It wasn't a reckless explosion.
The boy channeled the entire, compressed kinetic force of the squad's own attacks directly through his grip on the Nullifier's wrist.
BOOOM!
The shockwave of dark-purple energy didn't just hit the leader. It detonated inside his armor.
The Nullifier's arm was instantly vaporized. The blast tore through his torso, completely obliterating his upper body.
The sheer directional force of the point-blank explosion acted like a shotgun blast, tearing into the two Nullifiers standing directly behind the leader.
Their seamless white armor shattered like glass. The holy mana filters imploded. The two soldiers were thrown backward with catastrophic force, crashing through a concrete wall, dead before the rubble settled.
Three Level 28 Elites. Erased.
The boy released the severed, smoking wrist of the leader, collapsing heavily onto his hands and knees.
He was mangled. His coat was shredded. His chest heaved as he coughed violently, spitting up more dark blood.
The void-mana rushed to his shattered collarbone and pierced lung, slowly and painfully knitting the flesh back together with black, unnatural scar tissue.
He looked up through his blurred vision.
The remaining nine Nullifiers hadn't broken formation. They simply stepped over the pulverized remains of their squadmates, re-aligning their tactical diamond perfectly, their rifles raising once more.
One of the Nullifiers staggered—his left leg had been partially destroyed by the shockwave, exposing sparking cybernetics and bleeding muscle.
But he didn't fall. He didn't even look at the wound.
He simply adjusted his stance... and continued aiming.
The boy grinned, his teeth stained black. He was exhausted, but the dark fire in his eyes hadn't dimmed.
High above, in the silent control room of the Core Tower.
Arthur watched the engagement through the Domain's sensory link.
He saw the boy take the hits intentionally. He saw the tactical direction of the explosion.
He saw the flawless, unfeeling advance of the remaining nine machines, even the one fighting on a shattered leg.
"Good," Arthur murmured, his cold eyes glowing faintly in the red emergency light. "You found the flaw."
The Nullifiers were perfect executioners, but their inability to feel fear meant they also lacked the instinct to retreat when outmatched. They were rigid. Predictable.
Arthur turned away from the window, looking at the massive, beating [Graveborn Mana Heart].
The boy had bought him enough time. He had gathered enough data.
Arthur raised his right hand. The terrifying, world-ending red lightning of [Absolute Synthesis] ignited in his palm.
He looked at the four elite corpses he had stored in his [Domain of the Dead].
"If they fight like a machine," Arthur whispered, a cold, abyssal smile spreading across his pale face.
"Then I will break their code."
The Heart behind him pulsed—once.
As if something inside it had just... understood.