Chapter 2
Excruciating pain—a pure, nerve-stripping electromagnetic agony. It felt as if thousands of red-hot steel needles were repeatedly piercing my bone marrow, or as if thousands of nano-scale ghouls were traversing my shattered blood vessels, greedily reshaping my flesh.
I gritted my teeth until my mouth tasted like iron. My left shoulder was already a gaping void, and the radiation-polluted wound was glowing with an eerie fluorescent yellow.
【Biological gene and base metal weaving success rate: 12%.】
【Warning: Strong rejection detected! Biological brain entering load overload state. Abandoning reconstruction is recommended...】
"Shut up."
I squeezed these two words from deep within my throat, my voice as hoarse as two rusty gears grinding together. Give up? If death were the only forgiveness, I would have died completely the moment Marcus kicked me into this abyss.
I opened my eyes. The ghostly blue Ark System interface flickered on my retinas. In this completely desolate garbage disposal well, countless scrapped heavy industrial remains were scattered about—twisted hydraulic rods, shattered titanium alloy shells, snapped wires. What others saw as lethal industrial waste, to me—the former Chief Engineer—had now become supreme sacraments.
I propped myself up with my remaining right arm, crawling through the viscous radioactive dust covering the ground. With every movement, broken bones ground against muscle fibers, producing a teeth-grinding sound. I had to complete the final "docking" before my body temperature reached the critical point of total equilibrium.
【Target locked: 'Worker Bee' model hydraulic power arm repair component.】
【Establishing nano-aggregation loop...】
It was a marvelous feeling of resonance between soul and machine. I thrust my right hand into the pile of stinking waste; my fingertips brushed against an oil-covered hydraulic rod. The system emitted a low-frequency vibration. A silver torrent of nanites spewed from the wound in my left shoulder like a fountain, acting like a swarm of crazed predators, instantly wrapping, decomposing, and reconstructing that section of the hydraulic rod.
I felt a piercing chill seep into my bones as metal fibers began to spread rapidly from my wound, like barbed thorns rooting into my muscles, pinning this cold steel firmly onto my skeletal structure.
A sense of power unprecedented began to revive. I wasn't mending a body; I was reconstructing a killer.
Just then, the hatch at the top of the abyss well emitted a muffled, heavy sound of pressure. My keen hearing caught the roaring of mechanical rotors—the engine frequency of a "Hound" patrol drone. That bastard Marcus didn't even intend to leave me this final sliver of space.
The hatch opened, and two pale beams of light pierced the darkness of the abyss, accompanied by heavy metallic clanging—a jet-black mechanical hound leaped down. Its murky wide-angle lens scanned every corner of the pit until it locked onto me, curled up in the heap of scrap.
"Target identification: Discarded personnel. Danger rating: Zero."
The mechanical hound emitted a string of cold electronic synthesized sounds. Its back armor flipped open, revealing a sharp electromagnetic cutting wheel.
I didn't move. In its perspective, I was merely a lump of meat about to lose all life signs.
When its metallic, razor-sharp claws were less than half a meter from my skull, my left arm moved. The once-mangled, blood-stained shoulder burst forth with a blue radiance in an instant. A silver mechanical arm, composed of countless complex gears and nano-filaments, thrust out, precisely clamping onto the hound's neck.
Snap.
A crisp, rhythmic break rang out. Its alloy shell was as fragile as paper under my strength. I didn't even need to think; the system's logic circuits took direct control of my limbs, connecting my consciousness to the sensors of this mechanical hound.
In that instant, it became my extended organ.
"Is this the cleaner you sent?" I crushed the twitching hound body into fragments, its precious circuit boards and thermal batteries greedily swallowed by my Ark core. "Too fragile."
My left arm was now fully formed, its silver texture shimmering with cold luster in the ghostly light. I threw a casual punch; the alloy wall of the abyss well, thick enough to withstand conventional bombs from above, was smashed into a three-inch-deep crater. The output of this body had broken through the physical limits of human muscle.
I lifted my head, looking through the small hatch yet to be closed toward the direction of the Syndicate headquarters.
【Authorization confirmed.】
【Accessing Global Disaster Warning Network... Connection established.】
【Searching for unencrypted communication topology: Digital beacon of CEO residence found.】
【Target: Marcus Van der Wien.】
Lines of green code slid across the screen, an encrypted address marked with the coordinates of a "Private Vault." That arrogant man thought he controlled everything, yet he didn't realize that under the logic of the Ark System, his every move was already like a piece of torn, rotten paper.
"Marcus," I clenched the newborn metal palm, sensing the burgeoning murderous intent within the data stream. "You took everything from me; now... get ready to pay the debt. Not just money, but your fragile life, stuffed with capital."
