Sunlight violently pierced through the cracked panoramic windows of the penthouse, hitting Jhonatan directly in the eyes. He groaned, slowly peeling his eyelids open. For a few blissful seconds, his brain was completely blank, enjoying the rare sensation of a soft, king-sized mattress beneath his back. But the moment he tried to stretch his right arm, reality crashed down on him like a ton of bricks. There was no physical sensation of stretching muscle or popping joints. Instead, a cold, mechanical hum vibrated near his shoulder. Jhonatan sat up and stared at his right arm. The pitch-black, corrupted digital tissue writhed slightly, glowing with a faint, malevolent purple code. It was a phantom limb made of pure, weaponized data. A permanent reminder of the obsidian sword that had cleaved his human arm off. A reminder of the black pillar. A reminder of Emma."Fuck," Jhonatan muttered, rubbing his face with his human left hand. The brief peace he felt last night evaporated, replace

The entrance to the underground labyrinth wasn't some high-tech, glowing blast door. It was a rusted, foul-smelling sewage grate hidden beneath the shattered remnants of a highway overpass, barely two kilometers from the towering adamantium walls of Sky-High. The air down here was thick, suffocating, and reeked of centuries of urban decay mixed with the metallic tang of ozone. "Home sweet home," Val muttered sarcastically, pulling a heavy, tactical rebreather mask over the lower half of her face. The mask did little to hide the sharp, calculating glare in her emerald eyes. She adjusted the twin vibro-daggers strapped to her thighs, checking their charge levels. "Watch your step. The mud down here isn't just mud. It's a highly corrosive bi-product of the Architect's early terraforming experiments. If it gets in your boots, say goodbye to your toes.""I've swam in the stomach acid of a giant earthworm, Val. A little toxic mud isn't going to melt my fucking boots," Jhonatan replied col

Pitch-black digital tissue boiled and expanded around Jhonatan's severed right shoulder. It didn't form a human arm. Propelled by sheer, unadulterated human fury and the chaotic viral code he had absorbed in the Void, the limb morphed into a massive, jagged, three-fingered claw dripping with necrotic data. The Nullification Field surrounding the subterranean cavern was designed to suppress Alpha energy. It was built by the Architects to keep test subjects weak. But Jhonatan's new arm wasn't Alpha energy. It was a Trojan virus, a glitch born from the abyss itself, completely unrecognized by the facility's pristine firewall."You took my captain," Jhonatan growled, his voice dropping to a demonic, vibrating frequency that made the very air in the cavern drop by ten degrees. "I'm going to take your fucking core."The surviving right Cerberus Gatekeeper locked its glowing red optics onto him. Its logic processors calculated the sudden spike in unauthorized energy. Its twin plasma repeat

Twenty perfect copies of Jhonatan stood in the pristine white corridor, dripping with freezing blue amniotic fluid. They were completely naked, heavily muscled, and terrifyingly silent. The only sound was the wet, grotesque schlick of their bare feet slapping against the metal floor as they advanced in perfect, synchronized unison. Their eyes glowed with a mechanical, bloodshot red, and their forearms were actively morphing, the flesh parting to reveal jagged, three-foot-long bone blades extruding from their wrists."I have to admit," Val muttered, gripping her twin vibro-daggers tightly as she limped to Jhonatan's left side. "You have a great physique, Your Majesty. But seeing twenty of you naked and armed with bone swords is officially going to give me nightmares.""Shut the fuck up, Val. I'm trying to figure out how to kill myself twenty times without breaking a sweat," Jhonatan growled, raising his abyssal sword in his human hand while his pitch-black, corrupted right arm sparked

Shutting down the Alpha System manually while standing in front of a fifteen-foot-tall, cataclysmic cyborg is basically financial suicide. But Jhonatan didn't have a choice. "System. Deactivate all passive buffs. Turn off stat multipliers, cancel the kinetic dampeners, and shut down the auto-heal," Jhonatan commanded, his voice steady despite the blood dripping from his chin.[WARNING! Disabling passive integrations will reduce Host's physical parameters to baseline human levels.][Survival probability against 'The Warden of Flesh and Iron' will drop to 0.00%.][Are you absolutely certain?]"Did I fucking stutter? Do it!" Jhonatan growled. Instantly, the glowing red Alpha markings on his face faded into dull, lifeless grey. The heavy, dark silver aura that usually cloaked his body vanished completely. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Jhonatan felt incredibly... frail. His cracked ribs flared with blinding, unsuppressed agony. His boots felt heavy. He was just a guy