Chapter 4

The air at the bottom of the abyss was permeated with a heavy, pungent odor of ozone. It was my masterpiece of slaughter.

I lay in wait within the shadows, watching the greedy vultures who had entered the abyss under the banner of "cleaners." There were three armored squads in total—the "Black Scorpions," the most elite mercenaries under Marcus’s command. Their exoskeleton armor shimmered with a predatory cold light in the deep pit, and their expensive anti-material rifles were firing wantonly in every direction, attempting to flush me out of the ruins like a rat.

Marcus clearly hadn't realized that the people he sent were, essentially, not here to capture me, but to provide me with a buffet.

"Target not within sensor tracking range," the lead mercenary captain roared rudely over the radio, his infrared optics scanning the spot where I had been standing just moments before. "The Boss gave a kill order—bring back the monster’s remains, even if you have to dig them out with needles."

Remains? I looked at my mechanical hand, covered in a silver nano-grid; a faint hum of electricity emanated from my palm.

【Target locked: 'Black Scorpion' powered armor power unit.】

【Establishing deconstruction logic loop...】

I stopped hiding. I stepped out from behind the heavy industrial beams. My armored boots landed on broken circuit boards, producing dull metallic clangs.

"Look, what the hell is that!" a mercenary exclaimed, his muzzle shifting rapidly, spatting flame.

I didn't dodge the barrage of armor-piercing rounds. At this distance, my system's processing power was sufficient to deconstruct the trajectory of every bullet into a polar coordinate system. I traced a bizarre arc in the air; my body side-stepped in an extremely twisted yet elegant posture. Those lethal lead-core bullets were like obstacles passing beside a stationary object, grazing the edge of my armor and flying toward the distant alloy walls.

In their terrified gazes, I lifted my left arm.

【Matter Reconstruction Beam: Activated.】

A slender yet high-energy light-blue ring expanded from my fingertips, piercing the air. This was no ordinary shockwave; it was the "Dimensional Deconstruction" of the Ark system. The beam swept across the lead mercenary’s knees; his expensive Kevlar alloy armor became like melting butter, instantly turning into molecular-state particles, which were directly absorbed by my body.

"My legs—!" He shrieked tragically, kneeling in the mud.

His powered exoskeleton logic was rapidly failing, while I could clearly feel the power source that once belonged to his armor continuously conducting into my collarbone and shoulder blades.

"Two squads left." I muttered coldly to myself.

I shuttled through the barrage of fire like a silver phantom. These professional mercenaries, who prided themselves on their skills, were like piles of walking, un-recycled scrap to me. Every time I passed one, their armor lost a key component. Power furnaces, logic boards, anti-gravity thrusters... these precision military hardwares were forcibly stripped layer by layer by my Ark core like building blocks.

The heavy riot vehicle known as the "Abyss Reaper" attempted to ram me. Its massive tracks churned the debris, the roaring sound almost shattering the rock strata of the abyss.

I stood directly in front of the vehicle.

"Stupid."

I thrust my right hand into the cooling slot at the bottom of the vehicle, directly severing its electronic feedback circuit. The vehicle's power core let out one last unwilling wail, and the entire system paralyzed. I looked at this multi-million dollar war machine and shattered its cockpit door with a casual punch.

In their desperate eyes, I began my masterpiece like a deity—utilizing the reconstruction beam to weld and splice together all the alloy plates from the vehicle's wreckage, adding a thick, matte-textured layer of armor plating over my torso.

I felt stronger than ever before. The sense of security from being wrapped in layers of steel, along with the surging energy within, made me unable to resist closing my eyes to feel the temperature of the metal.

"Is this the war tool you rely on?" I looked at the surviving mercenaries on the ground and waved my hand coldly. "Now, it's mine."

As the last mercenary went completely limp in the nano-flood, the Ark system’s logic processing reached a critical point. This large-scale material consumption triggered a chain reaction; the bottom of the abyss began to shake violently.

Rumble—!

The ground beneath me wasn't collapsing; it was peeling away. As massive areas of the metal floor subsided, an extremely ancient and heavy metal radiation from deep within the crust gushed upward.

I lowered my head toward the gaping mouth of the abyss. In that bottomless shadow, a massive geometric structure emanating a ghostly blue glow was vaguely visible.

That wasn't ordinary waste; it was the core engine component of the Ark system.

【Engine core detected: Activated.】

【Ark: Zero, preliminary armed evolution complete.】

I clenched my fist, feeling all the metallic cells in my body cheering. Since the path had been opened, then, I would claim the secret buried beneath this ground.