Down in the Sector-4 Arena, the giant scoreboard buzzed again. Three red lights. Only Xerxes and one lieutenant remained. Xerxes, the massive 80% titanium monster, watched his heavily armored team fall apart. He had started the match thinking he was a God. Now, he was terrified. The "naked beggars" were tearing his perfect machines to pieces. Frustrated by the brutal dismantling of his vanguard, Xerxes roared an order over his suit's external speakers. "Blind them!" Xerxes’s robotic voice boomed across the ruined concrete. "Deploy the smoke! Stop the blind girl from hearing us!" His remaining lieutenant quickly pressed a button on his wrist. Thick, heavy, chemical fog blasted out of the vents on the Aegis-X armor. It was not normal smoke. It was "Aerosolized Blind-Smoke." It was a highly advanced military weapon designed to neutralize all sensors. It absorbed sound waves, scrambled radar, and blocked heat signatures. The heavy white fog flooded the arena floor in seconds. It rol

The white chemical smoke slowly cleared from the Sector-4 Arena. Four of the Gilded Elite students lay completely unconscious, trapped inside their dead, multi-million-credit armor. Xerxes, the massive Rank 1 Cadet, was totally alone. His 80% titanium body hissed angrily. Thick steam vented from his shoulders. He looked at his fallen comrades, his mechanical eyes whirring with genuine panic and fury. "Cowards!" Xerxes roared. His voice boomed through his suit's external modulator, making the concrete walls shake. "All of you! Face me directly!" From the thinning smoke, four figures stepped quietly into the clearing. Marcus, Sera, Kael, and Lyra emerged. Their simple, coarse grey robes were stained with dark soot and a few small drops of their own red blood. But they did not look weak. They looked like ancient statues brought to life. They formed a quiet, unyielding semi-circle around the towering titanium titan. They did not taunt him. They did not celebrate their victories. Si

Absolute, stunned silence gripped the massive Sector-4 Arena. The heavy, transparent shields hummed softly around the combat zone. The dust slowly drifted down, settling on the ruined concrete floor. Tens of thousands of high-born spectators sat paralyzed in their expensive, floating VIP boxes. They did not whisper. They did not blink. They stared in absolute horror at the center of the arena. Xerxes, the massive 80% titanium titan of industry, lay completely motionless. His million-credit Aegis-X armor was frozen solid, a useless, heavy tomb of dead metal. His four elite teammates were scattered across the dirt, unconscious and stripped of their power. The impossible had happened. Down in the Sump, miles below the bright lights of the stadium, the atmosphere was completely different. Millions of Dregs stood packed together in the dark, rusted plazas. They stared at the flickering public broadcast screens, hardly believing their tired eyes. Then, the shock broke. The Sump erupt

The eight Elite Enforcers marched across the ruined concrete of the Sector-4 Arena. They were not scared students. They were professional killers. They moved with terrifying, synchronized speed. The Vanguard team, Marcus, Sera, Kael, and Lyra, stood completely still. They had dropped their weapons. They wore only simple, dirty grey robes. "They dropped their weapons!" the cyborg anchor screamed into his microphone. "Are they insane? They’re going to be carved to pieces!" The high-born crowd roared in delight, waiting for the slaughter. The Lead Enforcer was a ruthless upper-class cadet named Thad. He wanted the glory of the first kill. He broke formation and charged ahead of his team. "Die, mud-rat!" Thad screamed a brutal battle cry as he closed the distance. He raised his long, glowing vibro-sword. He swung the deadly weapon in a perfect, decapitating horizontal arc, aiming directly for Marcus’s neck. The blade was terrifying. It was vibrating at 50,000 hertz. The high-pitche

The seven Elite Enforcers screamed as the forbidden green drug flooded their veins. Their black armor cracked and groaned. Their muscles swelled with sick, jagged purple energy. But before they could even take a step toward Marcus, a loud, grinding mechanical noise echoed from the heavy steel gates on the east side of the arena. The retreating, broken Enforcers had called for backup. They wanted to suppress the advancing Vanguard before the drugs fully took hold. Bounding into the ruined arena was a heavy, four-legged tactical combat drone. It was a "Hydraulic Hound." The machine was terrifying to look at. It had no face, only a smooth, sloping metal head equipped with bright red targeting lasers. It moved exactly like a wild, angry wolf, but it was an 400-pound beast made entirely of thick, reinforced steel and loud pneumatic pistons. The Hound was designed to hunt down escaped prisoners in the Sump and tear them to pieces. Now, it was hunting the Vanguard. The heavy metal paws