Aethelgard Valley was no place for the living. It was a final dumping ground, a mechanical hell where the carcasses of failed Beast experiments were discarded to rot, producing methane gas that scorched the lungs.Kenzo Julian slumped against a pile of debris, his breathing ragged and shallow. Blood flowed from a deep gash in his shoulder, leaving a stark crimson trail against the radiation-stained gray earth. He was a nobody. He was merely a Zero-caste, trash in the eyes of Imperial law, and his life was worth less than a scrap of rusted metal here."Catch that filthy rat! Don't let him get away with that artifact!"Captain Hans's voice was shrill, cold, and arrogant. Behind him, three Earth-Hounds, muscular, canine-type Beasts with skin plated in hardened minerals, tore through the piles of giant bones with a sickening crunch.Kenzo forced himself to rise, even as the muscles in his legs screamed in protest. His vision began to blur. For a moment, his eyes pulsed, burning intensely

The damp air inside The Burrow bunker suddenly went silent, not just a normal silence, but a vacuum. Oxygen seemed to be sucked toward the surgical table, where Kenzo Julian lay limp, his palm still pressed against the black, cracking shell. There was no friction, only a low-frequency vibration that caused the concrete floor to fracture, sending dust motes floating in the air, weightless.Kenzo jolted in his sleep. His brain felt as if it had been doused in boiling liquid metal. He wasn't just hearing sounds; he was seeing memories that weren't his. Images of a gray sky covered by ancient warships, flames that burned not red but pitch black, and the screams of thousands of souls devoured in a single second.“Integration 40%, neural synchronization reaching critical levels!” the Eye of Origin system roared in his head."Argh!" Kenzo groaned, clutching his head. The pain was so sharp it split his vision in two. On one side, he saw the dilapidated bunker. On the other, he saw the form of

Neo-Berlin never slept. The city merely shifted colors, from the glaring neon yellow of the day to the crimson glow of advertisement holograms atop the nobles' spires at night. Kenzo Julian pulled the collar of his tattered cloak up to cover half his face, adjusting the worn respirator mask. The stench of the sewers he wore as a masking cologne was enough to keep anyone within a three-meter radius at bay.In front of the access gate to the elite sector, a shimmering barrier of light, three Sentinel-class patrol drones hovered low. Their thermal sensors scanned the crowd of laborers and scavengers queuing for entry into the Rejection Vault facility."Identity," a cold, robotic voice echoed from the gate."Kenzo, uh, serial number J-009, waste management division," Kenzo replied, his voice raspy, mimicking the stolen audio recording stored in his mind.The Aura-Lock detector at the gate scanned Kenzo’s chest. It should have triggered an alarm. He should have been caught, as a Zero, he w

The smell of scrap metal and ozone permeated the long-abandoned subway station. In the corner of the platform, Kenzo Julian did not look like a fugitive who had been moments away from death just hours ago; he looked like a maestro composing a symphony of death. The dilapidated wooden table in front of him was covered in illicit medical equipment, mana-infused wires, and the remains of beast parts he had salvaged from the lab.Kenzo hunched forward, cold sweat beading on his temples. Under the erratic flicker of a neon light, his hands moved with surgical agility, stitching the massive tears in the muscle tissue of the silver wolf he had named Fenris. Kenzo’s left eye, the Eye of Origin, pulsed wildly, projecting strands of genetic code into the air, dissecting the atomic structure of Fenris’s wounds with robotic precision."System, integrate energy into the central nerve cluster," Kenzo commanded. His voice was hoarse, reflecting the mental exhaustion that was beginning to gnaw at him

The Class E dormitory was not a building, but a series of underground cells located behind the school's mana waste disposal pipes. The atmosphere was stifling, a musty odor dominating the air, mingled with the poor-quality mana residue from heaters that were constantly breaking down. There were no light crystals there, only cheap, flickering magic torches that cast desperate, dancing shadows against the damp concrete walls.Kenzo pushed open the creaky metal door. As he stepped inside, at least twelve pairs of eyes, hollowed by malnutrition and stress, turned toward him. The room was vast but packed with rusted folding cots squeezed tightly together."New loser," muttered a gaunt, skinny man who was busy trying to repair the mechanical spider legs of his Beast. "Take bed number 24. The only one left is near the main vent. The air from there will sting your eyes if you don't wear goggles."Kenzo did not respond. He walked to the designated cot and tossed his backpack, which contained o