The God-Tier Beast Architect

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 from within his skull. Kenzo’s left eye, housing the mysterious Eye of Origin, suddenly emitted a faint glow, invisible to the common eye.

"Genetic data detected. Subject damage : 74%," a cold, mechanical voice whispered in his mind, sharp and emotionless. "Recommendation : Initiate environmental provocation immediately to maximize survival probability."

"Quiet!" Kenzo thought harshly as he broke into a run.

"You have nowhere to run, boy!" Hans shouted from ten meters away. He laughed dismissively as he saw Kenzo cornered at the edge of an overflowing toxic waste trench. "What can a Zero do but die like a stray dog?"

Kenzo didn't answer. His breath was choked by the valley's fumes. He glanced behind him, the trench below meant certain death, but in front, the three Hounds were already charging mana in their steaming, rattling muzzles.

Kenzo narrowed his left eye. Suddenly, his vision shifted entirely. He no longer saw the grim landscape, but rather the flow of energy, the leaking mana veins from the remains of a fire-type Dragon carcass petrified behind the hunters' feet. There was a concentration of unstable methane gas he could exploit.

"System, calculate," Kenzo hissed through gritted teeth.

"Mana flow trajectory located. Explosion estimate : 92% success rate. Brace yourself," the system replied.

Without hesitation, Kenzo reached for the remaining dagger on his belt. He didn't aim for the enemies, instead, he threw the blade with the last of his strength toward the protruding neck joint of the giant Dragon right beside the hunters.

CLANG!

Metal struck metal. The highly pressurized gas inside the Dragon's carcass erupted like a volcanic blast. It wasn't fire that struck, but a blast of instantaneous pressure mixed with compressed toxic vapor.

BOOM!

A greenish-blue explosion shook the entire valley. The unprepared hunters were tossed aside like dried leaves. Their screams were swallowed by the thunderous roar of the blast. The ground beneath Hans’s feet crumbled, sending him tumbling into the heap of junk cascading into the abyss.

Kenzo himself was thrown back by the shockwave, sent into a freefall toward the valley floor. He spun in the air, his shoulder slamming into sharp iron before his body landed hard at the bottom of the deepest, darkest basin, buried under nuclear-magical debris.

His consciousness began to fray. Darkness crept into the edges of his vision. "This is it, then ...." Kenzo muttered hoarsely. The world felt like it was spinning violently, and the stench of waste filled his nose.

He tried to drag his numb legs, looking for shelter behind the rusted scrap. His right hand brushed the ground beneath the scorching radioactive wreckage. Something odd felt beneath his fingers. An object that had no business being in this place of death.

The texture was smooth yet hard, like obsidian. As his fingers touched the surface, he felt a pulse.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The object wasn't iron, bone, or mana crystal. It was an egg.

Kenzo gasped, forcing his swollen eyes to focus. The egg was pitch black; its surface didn't reflect light at all, but rather seemed to consume the light around it. As he touched it, the Eye of Origin in his brain surged to its absolute limit. His neural sensors burned from the flood of incoming information.

"Analyzing Subject." The mechanical voice trembled this time, almost, it seemed, with surprise.

Kenzo couldn't think anymore. His breath was nothing but traces of toxic gas. He pulled the egg tight against his chest, feeling a coldness that contrasted with his feverish, wounded body.

"Subject identified : Genesis Prototype - Void Type," the voice echoed again, but this time it was accompanied by a hiss of black energy flowing from the egg, dulling the pain in Kenzo’s body as if providing an infusion of life force.

Up above, the mercenaries were still shouting for their comrades. But to Kenzo, the voices grew distant. His world narrowed, leaving only himself and the pitch-black egg now pulsing in sync with his own heartbeat.

He was no longer a terrified prey. As the Void energy seeped into his wounds, Kenzo knew one thing, the fate of his world had just changed forever.

"Void," Kenzo whispered before losing consciousness entirely. "Whatever you are, if you give me the strength to survive, I will make them all pay for every drop of blood they spilled today."

In the silence of the dying Aethelgard Valley, amidst the ruins of forgotten history, the architect of darkness and his first monster began to entwine in a forbidden bond. The hunt for the slave had ended. The hunt for the rulers of the world had just begun.