EXILE COG: OMEGA PROTOCOL

Chapter 4: Trash Tactics and the Cruelty of the Terrain

"Keep your heads down if you want to keep your necks!" Zenith hissed.

The whine of magical projectiles split the air above them, slamming into the concrete slabs behind them and shattering them into sharp gravel. The acrid smell of ozone immediately filled the nostrils of Marcus and Prince Elara. They were huddled behind the ruins of moss-covered, rusted Magitek pillars, in a suburban zone that was once an energy industry hub but was now just a dead labyrinth of scrap metal.

"They aren't showing up on my standard sensors, Zenith," Marcus reported, peering through a gap in the concrete. His hand gripped his sword hilt with white knuckles. "How is that possible?"

"That's called a thermal detection ward, Pops. Expensive tech for people who like playing murderous hide-and-seek," Zenith replied. His rusted hand traced the sparking circuits on his left arm. "Valerius is really serious about sending elite hunter units just for a snot-nosed kid like the Prince. Damn, what a waste of budget."

Prince Elara frowned, his breath catching from the fear he was trying to suppress. "Zenith, stop joking around. They're getting closer, aren't they?"

Zenith rotated his head one hundred and eighty degrees, scanning the darkness between the stacks of old containers. His optical lenses flickered, trying to recalibrate against the thermal distortion created by the enemy. "Relax, Sweetheart. This handsome robot already has a plan. But you two have to run toward two o'clock as soon as I give the signal. Got it?"

"Toward that industrial waste pile?" Marcus asked with a heavy tone of skepticism. "That's a dead end, Zenith! We'll be trapped there."

"Just trust me, Pops. Do you really think I'd let you die before I get my replacement parts?" Zenith gave a dry chuckle, the sound like sandpaper scraping metal. "That trash isn't just ordinary garbage. It's a treasure trove for a crazy mechanic like me."

Regular but nearly silent footsteps began to sound from the factory ruins ahead of them. Zenith detected subtle vibrations on the ground. There were five of them. Vesperus elite hunter units, equipped with sound-dampening armor and heat-signature cloaks. To human eyes, they were just faint shadows in the pollution haze. To Zenith, they were a set of variables that needed immediate elimination.

"Now! Run!" Zenith commanded.

Marcus immediately grabbed Elara's arm, pulling the teenager to run across the open ground littered with machine wreckage. Zenith provided cover fire using the residual energy from his damaged shoulder cannon, creating a dust explosion to obscure their escape. The elite hunters reacted instantly, launching purple energy projectiles that chased Marcus and Elara's footsteps.

"Holy crap, their accuracy is decent," Zenith muttered, leaping out from behind the pillar, drawing the enemy's attention toward him.

Zenith ran with deliberately chaotic movements, occasionally tripping over scrap iron to convince the hunters that their target was panicking. He guided the enemies deeper into the area he called his 'treasure trove', a valley filled with thousands of leaking ancient industrial gas cylinders and highly unstable Magitek fuel tanks. The air there felt heavy, smelling of sulfur and sickening ether.

"Zenith! We're in position!" Marcus shouted from a distance, taking cover behind the wall of a massive, intact tank.

Zenith stopped in the middle of the waste valley. The elite hunters surrounded him from five different directions, their cloaks gently billowing in the cold wind. They didn't speak, only raised their Magitek weapons, which pulsed with dark energy.

"Alright, the show's over," Zenith said. His voice suddenly changed. The nihilistic tone and crude humor vanished, replaced by a deep, mechanical, cold voice, as if it originated from the bottom of an endless metal well.

Instantly, Zenith's entire body shook violently. The circuits on his metal skin glowed a terrifying blood red. Prince Elara, watching from afar, felt his hair stand on end. He realized that Zenith's humor had always been a mask, a shield to hide a much darker side.

[OMEGA PROTOCOL: ON]

[TARGET ACQUISITION: ELITE HUNTERS 1-5]

[ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS: VOLATILE MAGITEK WASTE 98%]

[INITIATING PRECISION STRIKE]

"Damn ... why does that hurt so much," Zenith whispered softly, a remnant of his original consciousness complaining about the immense pain as Warlord mode forced his circuits to work beyond capacity.

One of the hunters leaped forward with an energy sword. With a speed impossible for human eyes to follow, Zenith caught the enemy's wrist and snapped it as if it were a dry twig. Zenith didn't stop there. He used the hunter's body as a projectile, hurling it toward the stack of industrial gas cylinders on the right.

"Detonation point calculation complete," the Warlord mode announced through Zenith's speakers.

Zenith fired a single, small, yet intensely hot projectile from his fingertip toward the leaking fuel tank in the center of the valley.

BOOM!

A chain reaction explosion occurred within seconds. Green and purple Magitek flames shot high, creating a shockwave that flattened the surrounding piles of trash. Zenith stood in the middle of that sea of fire, his metal armor glowing red as he moved among the debris, eliminating the remaining elite hunters with brutal, merciless precision. He didn't just kill; he destroyed every life function of his enemies as if they were merely wrongly installed components.

Prince Elara turned his face away, unable to watch the cruelty. He realized that Zenith bore an immense burden every time the Omega persona took over. The nihilistic humor Zenith often employed wasn't because he didn't care, but because it was the only way he could keep from being destroyed by the darkness he held inside his core.

Marcus could only stare, transfixed. He was a war veteran, but he had never witnessed such cruel military efficiency. "He really is a monster," he whispered unconsciously.

After the last enemy was reduced to ash, the red aura on Zenith's body dimmed. He staggered, nearly collapsing onto a pile of hot iron. Warlord mode relinquished control, leaving Zenith with unbearable physical pain and severe systemic damage.

Marcus and Elara immediately ran closer as the fire began to subside. They found Zenith leaning against an old pipe, his metal hand pressing against a large hole in his left abdomen that was leaking thick black lubricant fluid.

"Zenith! Are you really okay?" Elara asked with a trembling voice, tears beginning to well up in his eyes.

Zenith slowly lifted his head. His optical lenses flickered, trying to return to his usual Exile mode. He looked at his own wound, then looked at Elara with a weary gaze.

"Oh, Miss ... er, Prince. Don't cry," Zenith said, his voice returning to its hoarse, forcedly humorous tone. "It's just a little leak. Like a broken dispenser. Damn, my circuits feel like they've been roasted in hellfire."

"We need to get out of here immediately before their reinforcements arrive," Marcus said, helping Zenith stand. He no longer protested Zenith's tactics; a new respect had appeared in his eyes.

"Fine, let's run again," Zenith replied.

As they began to move away from the factory ruins toward the forest on the outskirts of the city, Zenith suddenly stopped. He pressed the wound on his abdomen harder, then abruptly burst into laughter. His laughter sounded hoarse, hysterical, and broken, echoing in the gripping silence of the night. It was not the laugh of a comedian, but the laughter of a logic core that was starting to crack under the pressure of past trauma and unstable Warlord energy.

"Hahaha! Damn, that's hilarious! Truly hilarious!" Zenith kept laughing while dragging his limping leg. "Valerius thought he could send these little dogs after me? That's so funny, damn it!"

"Zenith, stop laughing! You're scaring me!" Elara cried, clutching Zenith's cloak.

Zenith stopped laughing abruptly. He turned toward Elara, and for a moment, the red light in his eyes flared up again before extinguishing completely. "My bad, Prince. Sometimes my system forgets how to be normal."

In the distance, the roar of much larger Magitek engines sounded closer. The dark night sky began to be illuminated by the purple light of the Vesperus air fleet sweeping the area.

"They sent a carrier," Marcus hissed, his face pale.

"Of course they did," Zenith retorted, looking up at the sky. "Because they know this clown just showed his fangs."

Zenith ejected fluid, a functional action to clear lubricant that had entered his audio jacks. He turned toward an old tunnel overgrown with brush ahead of them.

"Get in there," Zenith commanded, his voice stable but full of urgency this time. "If we don't get inside now, we'll be roasted under those spotlights."

Just as they leaped into the darkness of the tunnel, a massive explosion struck the entrance, collapsing the stone ceiling and burying their exit. Total darkness enveloped them, leaving only the sound of Elara's ragged breathing and the electrical crackle from Zenith's damaged body. In the distance, the heavy footsteps of Valerius's killer automaton units began to descend the slope toward their trapped position. Zenith didn't move; he simply waited in silence, while inside his core, a system warning message continued to flash bright red.

[SYSTEM CRITICAL: LOGIC CORE FRAGMENTED]

[ESTIMATED TIME TO TOTAL SHUTDOWN: 45 MINUTES]