The God-Tier Beast Architect

Chapter 11 The Jaeger Cleaning Protocol

The Jaeger units moved first. Ten silver Mechanical Eagles, gleaming under the carrier’s spotlights, sliced through the forest canopy with the roar of mana-propelled blades cutting the air. In each Beast sat an Imperial soldier, sitting upright, their tactical helmets covering their entire faces. Each was equipped with magi-thermal sensors capable of scanning for a mouse behind twenty layers of steel plating. They were no ordinary soldiers; they were anomaly hunters, a special unit sent to purge genetic stains too dangerous to leave behind.

In the middle of the ruin-strewn battlefield, Kenzo Julian did not panic. His eyes, now burning a deep, crimson red after manifesting Nihilus, analyzed every shadow and shift in the air. The defensive net woven into this forest was no longer a secret. Everything had been scanned and logged into his data.

"They aren’t just any hunters, they’re chasing the Void frequency trace that Nihilus is emitting," Kenzo muttered to himself, speaking to Nihilus, who hovered like a shadow before him. "We can’t run in a straight line. There’s too much open space for them to exploit."

The hot blood from Valerius, who was still reeling from their lost skirmish, was still fueling the vengeance smoldering within Kenzo. A dark whisper in his mind urged him to destroy every soldier in this forest, to let Nihilus swallow all the mana roaming the area. But a grand plan requires small sacrifices. Exposing Julian’s true identity now would only lead to even greater trouble.

"Hans, Mia, Fenris," Kenzo ordered through the encrypted comms link he had set up in his friends' ears. "Stick to the plan. You have five minutes to reach Alpha Point. Understood?"

"Copy that, Boss!" Hans sounded panicked yet determined. His rodent-type Beast, a Plague-Shadow Rat, scurried over Hans’s trembling feet.

"Mia, ensure your spatial net covers the entire perimeter," Kenzo added. "I don’t want any gaps."

GRROOOOWL!

The roar of the first Metal Eagle echoed nearby. An elephant-sized Mech Eagle, its red laser eyes piercing the battle’s smoke, landed heavily a few dozen meters in front of Kenzo. Commander Richter jumped out. The man was tall, sturdy, and clad in black armor with a cybernetic left eye that flickered a cold, electric blue. He carried a dual-energy lance.

"Target sighted," Richter’s voice boomed, his natural tone a stark contrast to the cold Commander persona. "Void-Type anomaly and Shadow-Stalker in position. Do not let the prey escape! Implement Jaeger Cleaning Protocol, level two!"

Hundreds of energy orbs from the Mech-Eagle Jaegers began firing into the general area of the forest. They didn't want to kill Kenzo quickly. They wanted to narrow his movements. They wanted to force him to reveal more of his power.

"Arrogant brat," Kenzo hissed. His right eye was normal, but his left, the Eye of Origin, glowed brightly, tracing every sensor attached to the Jaeger squad. "System, track the primary command source."

"Tracking ... Commander Richter identified. Hidden internal signal. Eye of Origin detects an internal anomaly. Commander Richter is a half-human, sir. He possesses an artificial mana core. Genesis Prosthesis Code V.2. The target can be detonated if the primary power source is overloaded."

Kenzo smiled thinly. A weak point. All the better.

"Fenris, time to have some fun," Kenzo whispered. "Break the puzzle."

Fenris, Kenzo’s Shadow-Stalker wolf, let out a long howl. The climb up the cliff, which had seemed steep, looked effortless for the wolf. It split into three shadows, moving in different directions, leaping through branches with impossible agility. They left behind false mana trails, leading several Jaeger-Eagles straight into Mia’s spatial net.

"Hurry! The signal is fading!" Commander Richter barked through his armor’s microphone. "Follow the heat energy signature. It’s a Void-type Beast. It can erase its own existence."

Richter didn't realize he had just started a game of chess with a grandmaster.

While the Jaegers began to scatter in search of prey, Kenzo and Nihilus performed a more dangerous maneuver. They hovered high above the forest canopy; Nihilus was now invisible, his form like a thin blanket of darkness wrapping around Kenzo.

"Alright, Nihilus. Let’s make their frequencies overlap," Kenzo whispered. "Direct your Void toward their weakest tracking frequency. I want to hear the ghosts in their machines."

Nihilus responded with a micro-wave of Void energy, creating a small wrinkle in the dimension. A soft, static hiss filled the air. His Eye of Origin began projecting a visual data grid of the radio wave signals used by the Mech-Eagles’ communication and tracking systems.

"Looping the Jaeger radio signals back to their own sources," Kenzo muttered. "Inversion loop mode. Let them struggle to tell friend from foe."

In the distance, the Jaeger pilots inside their Mech-Eagles suddenly felt their magi-thermal sensors go haywire. The target, previously in Sector A, suddenly appeared in Sector C, then vanished above them in a matter of seconds. The red tracking lines on their cockpit displays turned into a nonsensical, random maze.

"Damn it! Severe interference!" one pilot shouted. "The target signal is jumping erratically! Commander, is this part of the Void Beast’s attack?"

Commander Richter frowned. His cybernetic eye flickered, trying to process the contradictory data. He didn't believe in anomalies; he believed in algorithms. "Impossible! Our tracking mechanisms are designed to be mana-distortion proof!"

"True, mana-distortion proof, but not spatial-distortion proof," Kenzo smirked from above.

The Eye of Origin gave him a safe path toward one of the most vulnerable Mech-Eagles, Lieutenant Valar’s. The craft was patrolling too close to Mia’s spatial net, signaled by a false trail Fenris had deliberately left as bait.

Kenzo descended diagonally, using the density of Nihilus’s Void to mask his gravitational signature. He landed on the head of Valar’s Mech-Eagle like a hovering ghost. Nihilus’s black armor enveloped his hand, allowing Void energy to seep into the main navigation panel.

"Eat," Kenzo gave the short instruction to Nihilus. "Swallow the internal frequency."

Nihilus reacted. A thin shadow emerged from the gaps in Kenzo’s hand armor, touching the Mech-Eagle’s head plating. For a moment, the metal plate appeared to rust instantly. The craft’s main battery surged, its circuits smoked, and then it died.

"Nooo!" Valar screamed, jolted from within the cockpit. The vital tracking machinery in front of him went dark, causing Valar’s Mech-Eagle to lose altitude and smash into a giant tree.

CREAK! BOOM!

An explosion followed. Valar was still alive, but the pilot, dazed in the cockpit, became easy prey for the residue of mana-poison left behind by Hans and his Plague-Shadow Rats.

"One target destroyed by enemy fire," another pilot reported nervously. "I’ve lost Valar! There’s been a toxic explosion in Sector D!"

Commander Richter finally reached his breaking point. His cybernetic eye glowed bright red. "Don’t panic! It’s an aura trap! Try scanning physically!"

Kenzo hid within the dimensional "blind spot" created by Nihilus, nearly invisible to the naked eye or even the most advanced sensors. He listened to the confusion and fear in the Jaeger comms, feeling a bitter, unparalleled sense of victory.

He then watched the movements of the remaining Mech-Eagles. One pilot fired blindly, panicked, at one of Fenris’s false trails. The laser shot didn't hurt Fenris, instead, it struck another Mech-Eagle searching in the wrong spot.

"Dammit, you shot your own teammate, you idiot!" the second pilot screamed, returning fire.

In the chaos of the frequencies Kenzo had intentionally induced, the Jaeger Mech-Eagles began attacking each other. Magical laser beams sliced through the forest, striking the aircraft steel with deafening thuds. The Beasts belonging to other students panicked, scattering and causing even more disorder.

Kenzo laughed to himself. "This is far more entertaining than just killing you all."

Commander Richter didn't know that he wasn't just fighting a rare Void Beast, but an Architect who could toy with the laws of reality. The Eye of Origin didn't just provide data it provided the ability to modulate the world around him into a canvas for deception.

Amidst the thick, foggy storm, Kenzo ordered Nihilus to create a sort of dimensional net a microscopic Void gate in the air, right above Richter. This gate was designed to absorb every radio signal and hack Richter’s tracking system at close range.

ZZZZZT

Richter’s eye flickered uncontrollably. On his scanner tablet, lines of data suddenly flashed wildly, Void Anomaly Signal approaching Genesis Prosthesis source. Core explosion risk, Critical!

Richter finally understood that he was being played. He looked up, trying to discern where the threat was coming from, but there was only the Void’s darkness creeping across the sky.

"Damn it! Pull all troops back!" Richter screamed in desperation. "All Jaeger units withdraw! Protocol aborted!"

With the last of Nihilus’s power, Kenzo delivered one final, small nudge. Not an attack, but a spatial distortion that tangled all the Mech-Eagles’ primary tracking signals, causing the Jaeger target-detection systems to go completely dark. The Jaeger pilots finally stopped shooting at each other and opted for an orderly retreat from a forest that now felt like an invisible trap.

Kenzo landed on a tree branch, panting. His blood was still boiling from overusing Nihilus. A normal human body still wasn't entirely compatible with the Void. "Just right," Kenzo hissed. "Fall back and tell your Emperor the story of your failure."

Below, a battered-looking Commander Richter surveyed his surroundings. Nothing was visible. He tried scanning the air around him with his cybernetic eye, but there was only static black shadow before him. His mind couldn't process this unmanifested darkness. It was worse than death, it was a denial of existence.

After ensuring all Jaeger units had departed, Kenzo finally let himself float down, the small Nihilus merging back into the folds of his clothes. Fenris also returned, emerging from behind the thick fog, exhaling cold air from his fangs as if to soothe the tension in the air.

Hans and Mia approached Kenzo with glowing eyes. "That was crazy, Kenzo! You did it! They ran away terrified! How did you do it? We didn't do anything, but they just disbanded on their own!"

"You don't need a golden Aura to win a war," Kenzo replied flatly. He tucked his hand into his pocket, feeling the sharp object he had picked up from the rubble. It was Valerius’s exam badge.

He had successfully made it back to the student safety zone, with three hours of rest time given by Hauer before the academy instructors returned to evacuate all students who had survived the trial. Kenzo felt hot energy radiating from the badge. A heat unlike ordinary mana.

"System Alert, Badge has been tagged. Micro-tracking device detected, undetectable by the naked eye or standard aura scanners."

Kenzo looked up. Above the forest, thousands of stars stared down at him, as if belittling his efforts. "They didn't even use ordinary tracking; they used core technology that only the highest noble families possess ...."

A small, black, hexagram-shaped birthmark was neatly imprinted on the badge’s surface. The exam badge was ordinary enough, made of copper alloy, but the tracker inside was woven with black Void fibers so hard to detect that even the Eye of Origin had barely caught it. This meant it was a trap for people like him.

The badge didn't just show identity. It pointed to the next target. And Commander Richter clearly knew exactly which direction to head now, even without Mech-Eagles or Jaegers left to pursue him. This badge was a kind of death contract tossed his way, a bounty sign that would lead him straight to iron bars.

Kenzo crushed the badge until it shattered. Not in anger, but to destroy the tracking evidence. In the ruin, Nihilus reabsorbed the Void fibers from the badge. They knew nothing.

He had escaped one trap. But this, Kenzo realized, was merely a long game between an Architect and the elite caste. He had already walked into the net cast by the Empire, and the badge was just a "welcome" sign. The question was, who would be hunting whom?

Deep in the forest, Kenzo leaned against an ancient tree. The defeat of the Jaeger unit was just the beginning. The stage of Aethelgard, which once seemed untouchable, had been shaken by the presence of a Zero who arrived without warning and without hesitation. He hadn't just destroyed combat craft. He had shattered every soldier’s mentality with one question, how do we defeat something that doesn't exist?

He would sleep for a while, then plot his next move. "Instructor Hauer," Kenzo whispered, thinking of the mysterious man’s name. "I hope you won't be surprised by the surprise I have in store for you tomorrow." That night, the fog in the Forbidden Forest began to thin slightly. But for the Neo-Berlin Empire, the darkest night had only just begun.