MISSION: DECISIVE STRIKE – COMPLETE
Objective: Land one decisive blow against an enemy overwhelmingly stronger than you.
RESULT: Success.
You have levelled up.
REWARDS UNLOCKED:— Energy Reserve Blueprint— Material: Biome-Tungsten Alloy (Tungsten-based adaptive shell)— Independent Max Regen Activation (Passive)
Accept Rewards? [Y/N]
Y-(DELAYED COLLECTION CHOSEN)
As the others drifted away, scattering in their own directions, the atmosphere thickened—like a storm cell ready to crack.
Nathaniel froze.
He felt him.
Erementaru.
Standing behind him, his armor already self-repaired, thrumming with fresh energy. Though still scuffed, he was clearly restored—more focused, more lethal. Nathaniel didn't need to turn around to sense it. He knew that most high-rankers like Erementaru carried health packs loaded with regenerative energy. He could see it—even if faintly—how it pulsed beneath the surface, muted but alive.
Erementaru said nothing at first. Just stared, expression unreadable, his gaze peeling back Nathaniel's layers.
He was studying him.
Judging his worth.
And what he saw was… disappointing.
Nathaniel's uratsu emission was embarrassingly low, barely above a child's—a toddler's flicker compared to the blinding firepower expected at this level.
He called his name.
Nathaniel responded."Alderman."
Yes—respectfully.But there was indignation in his eyes. The kind you wear like a scar.
"You fought me at your hardest, didn't you, Alderman?"
Nathaniel's voice was low, steady."I wouldn't demean you by doing otherwise."
Erementaru's tone didn't shift. But the jab was clean.
"Then why were your emissions stuck at five percent of the estimated output for someone your age?"
Nathaniel's face twisted into a silent snarl—wolfish, grey, restrained only by breath.He sighed through his teeth.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he pulled off his glove.
He tried to accelerate his Uratsu production on the spot, sweat beading faintly under his brow. Erementaru just watched—his mode shifted, activating Uratsu Vision. The emissions didn't rise. Not even slightly. Still locked at five percent. Still feeble.
And then Erementaru saw it.
The boy's internal energy network pulsed weakly, like roots from a malnourished tree, coiled tight around the mind and heart, beating faint light. The rest of his body was void by comparison—hollow in its metaphysical cavity.
In contrast, Erementaru overlaid his own signature within his vision. His pathways were fully developed—wrapping around every nerve, vessel, and organ, pulsing bright like a living constellation. Every node of his body alive with current.
Except for the connectors.
His phantom limbs and prosthetics.Those glowed differently—artificial, man-made, but still flowing.
"They said I was injured. That I couldn't generate adequate Uratsu."
Nathaniel kept his voice steady, but his tone carried that edge—resentment bent into dry honesty.
"Barely enough to operate my augment's basic function. And even that only awakened a month ago."
He exhaled sharply.
"It's only thanks to these damn genes that I'm able to function physically on par with a B-rank Knight."He tapped his chest.
"I'm an amnesiac with a photographic memory who—far as I can tell—cheated his way this far. Faked an augment with nothing but a stronger-than-average body. A useless vessel with no augment strong enough to match it."
He motioned toward Erementaru."Power pack?"
Erementaru, curious, held out his hand. Testing a theory.
And when he touched Nathaniel's—he felt it.
Not skin to skin. Soul to soul.It was hollow. Not dead, but vacant—like the metaphysical touch of mannequin plastic versus living flesh.
He handed him the power pack. Nathaniel didn't speak as it rested in his palm.Just absorbed its warmth.
A subtle shift.The tips of his fingers began to harden—draw energy—darkening to a metallic silver hue that passed unnoticed by Erementaru.
He returned the block, his hand outward now. Normal. Composed.
But the emissions betrayed the truth.
Uratsu gathered inside his arm like a thermal hotspot—bright, unstable, burning too hot for a body this underdeveloped. Like someone forcing energy into an uninsulated wire. The glow was fading fast.
"You want to know what I am?" Nathaniel said flatly."A shitty battery."
His stare was empty, almost amused at his own bitterness.
"That's all I've been. No mind? Then I'm not even that. Just a conductor. A dead power pack.270 kilograms of nothing."
"My augment?" Nathaniel flexed his fingers slightly."It's called Kinetic Muscle."
He let the name hang a moment—dry, unimpressed.
"An accumulator type. Supposed to store force from movement and release it as power."A bitter smirk pulled at his mouth.
"But it doesn't even do that right."
He held his arm out again, the muscles barely twitching as if already fatigued.
"Twenty-five percent."He spat the number like a curse.
"That's all I get—twenty-five percent of each impact, each twitch, each bone-grinding movement. I damage myself just to keep up. Like a dynamo generator running on blood and desperation."
His voice darkened.
"It's inefficient. Brutal. Like me."
He tapped his temple, then his chest.
"Everything I do is compounded. Every small victory comes at a cost—preparation, broken limits, living sacrifice. There's no grace in it."
He looked Erementaru dead in the eye.
"This body doesn't get stronger from belief or willpower. It gets stronger from pain. From work. From bleeding for it."
Erementaru was satisfied.He gave a curt nod—dismissal and acknowledgment in one motion.
Nathaniel turned to leave.
Then… something shifted.
Just for a second, Erementaru froze, eyes locked on Nathaniel's silver ones.A ripple of unease passed over his features—subtle, but there.
A memory surged—burning, raw.
A duel. Three years ago.
High-intensity combat under artificial skies.
His opponent moved like a phantom—draped in an advanced cloak of dark grey and white.Armor gleamed beneath it: sleek, segmental plating interwoven with adaptive mesh, bearing no allegiance. Pure function, pure power.
But it was the mask that haunted him.
An advanced combat helm, seamless and alien, matte black with a bisected white pattern—razor-sharp across the vertical plane.Its eye lenses were narrow, horizontal slits—white and cold—angled ever so slightly downward, running close to the bridge of the nose but stopping just short of it. The gaze was hidden, but its weight remained.It had watched him. With surgical precision. Without mercy.
And now those same silver irises stared back at him—without the mask.Human. Vulnerable.But something deeper stirred beneath the surface.
Erementaru blinked.
The memory faded. The weight remained.
Then it left his thoughts. A trick of the light, maybe.
Nathaniel turned his head, casting a glance over his shoulder—confused, cautious.The look didn't match the figure Erementaru remembered. It didn't belong to the presence in his mind.
Flashback:
He was kneeling, cradling a half-dead comrade in his arms.
The air had been thick—soaked in dread.
A presence loomed at the edge of the battlefield.
It wasn't just killing intent. It was suffocating.It felt like a legion of entities stared through him.Not one man… but the essence of thousands—stitched together by war and death.
That aura wasn't human.It wasn't even alive in the conventional sense.It was biome-tier—like a conscious monster in a shell of flesh and steel.
The figure stepped through firelight, draped in a white-gray cloak and advanced armor, the segmented plates shifting with an unnatural grace.The mask—cold and unreadable—gleamed as it passed.
And in that moment, Erementaru had felt it: not fear, but absolute inferiority.The kind that stripped your pride clean.
He snapped back to the present.
Blinking once.
And just like that, Nathaniel was gone.