The cold ground shifted beneath Leo’s steps as the Extractor charged, turning the surrounding scrap yard into a blinding blur of white motion.
The first rushing pass arrived in a flash, a plasma scythe flicking at half extension to slice his jacket sleeve and carve a smoking trench through a nearby container.
He was reading speed that no longer followed any human rhythm, his heightened perception struggling to track the alien’s complex movement patterns.
The second pass arrived with an armored knee from his blind side, and the impact lifted him off his feet before slamming his torso through the cab of a hauler.
Only his passive absorption trait drinking the kinetic slam kept his ribs from fracturing, the core siphoning the force before his bones could crack.
He shadow-skated along the perimeter of the hauler, his soles sliding over the gravel on frictionless paths of dark ether to bypass the next swing. His weapon vibrated against his hip, its circuits eager to drink more kinetic force from the titan’s assault.
The air grew thin as the Extractor swung again, the plasma edge cutting a glowing line through a pile of rusted chassis nearby. He kept his center of gravity low, shifting his footing with precise balance as the heat washed over his shoulder.
He spit a mouthful of blood onto the ground, rolling out of the twisted wreckage while maintaining his focus.
’It is fast,’ Leo thought, watching the alien reset its combat stance.
’It is burning its internal reactor to buy that speed, and it won’t be able to hold that output for long.’
On the third pass, he stopped trying to parry the glancing blows, choosing instead to sink his body into the shadows.
He dropped flat into his own shadow, letting the burning scythe bisect the empty air where his neck had rested a fraction of a second before.
Rising out of the dark behind the swing, he delivered a two-handed strike that the alien’s overclocked reflexes barely managed to deflect.
The dark edge kissed the reactor housing instead of cleaving it open, sending a crown of purple sparks showering between them.
The red glare in the alien’s chest flickered before stabilizing into a blinding beacon that cast sharp shadows across the slag.
Both of them knew how the math ended now, as the assassin surged forward like a roaring jet with nothing held in reserve.
The remaining scythe cocked back for an all-or-nothing decapitation swing aimed directly at his throat.
It was a deliberate, suicidal plunge that sacrificed the hunter’s own chassis to ensure the kill.
He tightened his grip on his weapon with both hands and held his ground without stepping back, welcoming the fatal impact.
"Grrr... come on, then," Leo growled beneath his breath, letting his shadow ether coat the single-edged crescent blade in humming darkness.
The plasma blade descended in a burning arc that lit the scrap piles in blinding white.
The clash when the weapons collided blew the smoke off the entire yard, and his knees buckled as cosmic force poured through his arms.
The weapon’s absorption matrix drank seventy percent of the devastating kinetic slam, channeling the compressed heat and pressure directly into his pathways.
[ Kinetic Intake At Maximum Capacity: Redirecting ]
The blueprint’s clean gates seized the roaring flood of energy, giving the borrowed power a single unified direction.
Pivoting off his back foot, he turned with the momentum of the charge rather than resisting the crush.
He whipped the blade around in a two-handed counter that unleashed twice the energy it had absorbed.
The dark edge met the alien’s armored chest mid-lunge and sheared through chitin, reactor, and spine without slowing down.
The crescent blade exited out the far shoulder in a fountain of violet sparks, caving the alien’s chest cavity in with a final, echoing pop.
The Extractor came apart in full motion, two smoking halves sliding past his feet on either side before collapsing into the slag.
The dying optics locked onto his chest one last time, projecting a transmission beam through the smog toward something waiting in high orbit.
It was a final report to the alien fleet, logging the location and power of the fallen vessel.
’Go ahead,’ he thought, his chest heaving as he watched the beacon fade into the night.
’Tell them what it cost you to knock on my door.’
The reactor light died, and the four crimson optics guttered out one by one into silence.
[ Vorn Bio-Extractor Neutralized ]
[ Combat EXP: +4,500 ]
[ LEVEL UP: Level 7 -> Level 10 (Peak G-Rank) ]
[ +15 Free Stat Points Awarded ]
[ Cosmic Pathways: 0% / 100% ]
Leo stood in the sudden quiet of the yard, his forearms still trembling from the violent recoil of the counter-strike.
A warm wave of vitality rushed through his marrow, and he allocated the points by instinct to balance his attributes.
He put five points into Strength, five into Agility, and five into Perception to stabilize his newly enhanced pathways.
[ Attributes Updated: Strength 23 | Agility 24 | Perception 20 ]
Every nerve ending in his limbs pulsed with fresh authority, his vision expanding until he could track the flight of single raindrops in the dim illumination of the yard. His muscles carried a dense, compact strength that made his physical form feel entirely renewed.
He flexed his fingers around his weapon hilt, feeling the spatial circuits hum in perfect alignment with his heart. The energy surged through his pathways without a single snag, showing the power of peak G-Rank progression.
The organic core rolled out of the ruined chassis a moment later, a fist-sized organ pulsing with violet and gold light.
It was the most dangerous artifact he had ever laid eyes on, and it was still twitching toward its pod across the ground.
He knelt in the slag and pressed his bare palm over the pulsing organ.
The core liquefied at his touch, sinking through his pores like warm mercury and sending a shockwave through his central nervous system.
Alien energy flooded his veins in violent surges, making his vision smear sideways as the scrap yard tilted around him.
He dropped to his hands and knees, gagging on the ground while the ancient code rewrote his biology from the marrow outward.
Beneath the ringing in his ears, his pulse sounded strange and layered, beating with an echo as two hearts harmonized inside his chest.
[ Biological Anomaly Absorbed ]
[ Vorn High-Tier Genetic Core Integrated: DNA Re-Sequencing Complete ]
[ Physical Dermal Density +30% | Alien Toxic/Plasma Resistance Unlocked ]
[ Mission Complete: Devour The Vorn Core ]
[ Reward Applied: Genesis Resonance Established | 15% ]
[ Status: HP 60/100 | Ether 60/60 | Condition: Genetic Integration In Progress ]
[ Recommendation: Rest And Cellular Recovery Required ]
’In a minute,’ Leo wheezed, bracing his weight on his palms until the world stopped spinning.
A faint thread of gold light now hummed beneath his sternum beside the All-Spark, beating like a second pulse that had learned his rhythm.
’Genesis resonance,’ he thought, remembering the pod’s initial scan as he slowly got his feet under him.
’Whatever that alien shard is, its power is running through my blood now.’
Dawn was bleeding grey light across the eastern skyline by the time his legs agreed to hold his weight.
He walked past the crushed syndicate buggies once, feeling no pity for the raiders who had tried to claim the prize.
He reached the empty bio-pod at the center of the crater, finding a split husk that was still trying to knit its seams together.
He drove his blade through the central cradle, and the organic shell dissolved with a final sigh of venting green gas.
’No more pods landing on this turf,’ Leo muttered, pulling his hood over his brow as he turned away from the ashes.
He shouldered his blade, slipped out of the scrap yard through the back lanes, and collapsed onto his apartment mattress as exhaustion overtook him.
He slept through the daylight hours while his body completed its genetic integration, drifting through strange dreams that didn’t belong to him.
He saw vast corridors of black glass, star fields burning with cosmic fire, and fleets of wedge-shaped warships fleeing from an ancient terror in deep space.
He watched the star destroyer split in two, its burning hull plates spilling purple plasma into the void before the shadows swallowed the remaining wreckage. A cold weight settled over his chest, warning him that the first Extractor was merely a scout for a larger armada.
The fleet was fleeing from an unnameable hunger that devoured entire suns, leaving behind only dead star fields and cold dust. He felt the All-Spark core pulse against his ribs, as if responding to the cosmic danger lurking in his thoughts.
The dread in the vision felt ancient and suffocating, leaving him with the cold realization that Earth wasn’t ready for what lurked between the stars.
He woke at dusk to the sound of rain tapping against his window pane, his phone vibrating against the floorboards beside the bed.
He picked up the screen and saw an incoming text from Luna asking if he was awake.
"I made hot chicken soup, and I’m a little scared to be alone tonight," her follow-up message read, glowing on the glass.
"Can you come over?"
He stared at the message, noticing the dried blood on his knuckles, and the lingering dizziness vanished from his thoughts.
He typed back with one thumb before rolling off the mattress: "On my way. Leave the window unlatched for me."
He was already pulling on his dark jacket as he stepped toward the window frame.
’I’m coming,’ he thought, his protective instincts surging to life as he pictured her gentle smile.
He lifted the sash and vaulted into the cool rain, letting the shadows carry him swiftly toward Seventh Avenue.